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I already wrote this once, but due to slow internet and a power outage, it was lost. This is my attempt at a recreation.

Basically today I encountered many examples of the frustrations of trying to do something meaningful in Africa. None of them firsthand, but they are still worth mentioning.

First of all, it was reported by the BBC today that the Red Cross/Crescent has been working in Zimbabwe in response to the Cholera outbreak. Over 3000 people have died from the water-borne disease. The Red Cross/Crescent has been setting up water distribution sites where they are purifying and giving out water in at-risk areas. However, it was reported that right near some off the distribution sites people were still consciously choosing to get their drinking water from the boreholes, where it was known that they were infected with the disease. The Zimbabweans did not like the taste of the chlorinated water and decided to drink from their usual spot. So…what’s the solution?

Another water-related example comes right here from the project I was working on last week. Apparently many of the communities that had boreholes constructed for them to provide safer drinking water quit using them after a few months. Efforts had been made to place the boreholes as close to the community as possible. And that was the problem. The long walk to the distant river or dug-out served as the social center for the women of the village. It is the African water cooler reserved for gossip about men (you will almost never EVER see a man fetching a 5 gallon pot of water and carrying it back on his head). This is the result of leaving women out of the development process. While I was in the field, in most of the interviews conducted, whether they were the community or household interviews, the men did all the talking, and men were doing the interviewing. I imagine if there was more attention paid to women things would be done more efficiently.

I read an article this morning that was extremely disturbing. It was about pregnant women in Ghana, particularly in the predominantly Christian south, foregoing proper medical care for “prayer centers.” Instead of delivering their baby with a doctor in a hospital, they go to a Christian center to pray for long periods of time with the people who work at the center (I doubt they are priests or any legitimate religious figure). This is partly because most people in Ghana didn’t get the message that in 2005 the government made maternal healthcare free. Free! Awesome! I mean, awesome if you have access to a hospital…But many people here have taken their devotion to their faith so far that it puts their life in danger. Plus these prayer centers charge money. One woman, who the article highlighted, refused to go to the hospital for weeks. Even though she was in desperate pain she remained in the prayer center, refusing food and water for several days. When she was on the verge of death, she was finally taken to a hospital, and it was found that her child had been dead for a week. This bizarre devotion seems like the result of a dangerous blend of imported Christianity and traditional African beliefs. Or maybe it is the perceived correlation of the abundant wealth in the Western world and Christianity. I don’t know if that exists, but it seems logical that people would make that association.

And finally, another unfortunate situation for women. I met a couple Peace Corps girls last week during the trip out of town. One of them was complaining about a program a Ghanaian man had started to help victims of Domestic. She was not complaining about the program, but the man himself. She knew a woman who had been beaten and she went to him to ask what to do. He told her that she shouldn’t tell the police or anybody else, and no he couldn’t really help either. The response? “Well, that’s how it is here. Men beat their wives. This is part of our culture.” And this is the guy who is supposed to be watching out for the women.

All of these issues pose obstacles based in culture. I hate the idea of “behavior change” as a means to help people’s situation. I mean, who are we to come and say, “oh, no, sorry, your culture is wrong. If you don’t want to be poor anymore, well, you’re just gonna have to be more like…us.” But at the same time, who are we, as people, “global citizens” to idly stand by while women are beaten, or drinking disease-carrying water, or being convinced that intense prayer is better than a doctor…

And this is what keeps it interesting. Unfortunately, as I could have predicted, I will leave here with far more questions than answers.