Can do-gooders do good?

William Hamilton cartoon, New Yorker

There have been numerous articles lately challenging the notion that wanna-be do-gooders in developing countries actually do any good. The criticism is primarily aimed at white, middle-class volunteers. And the image is that they do little more than pop into some rural village just long enough to feel smug and take selfies with small, smiling brown children.

One article describes how the author, while volunteering in Latin America, discovers that the brick wall she and others are trying to build has to be torn down and redone properly each night by the villagers they are supposed to be helping. She ends up concluding that her volunteer time is better spent raising money for good causes, rather than trying to do work on the ground. Another story in the Guardian quotes a study concluding that, "voluntourism is more about the self-fulfillment of westerners than the needs of developing nations.”  The Onion also gets into the fray with a satirical story about a supposed volunteer describing how her 6-day stint in a rural Malawian village has totally transformed her Facebook profile picture.

Well, that’s all very fine. I agree that voyeurism and selfies may not seem like appropriate motivations for volunteer work. And I’m sure that not every volunteer project is valuable.

But I also think it’s easy to be critical. 

Living in Peru and Kenya has shown me multiple examples of places where well-meaning, foreign volunteers actually do make a positive difference.

Our older son was involved with a group that spent years building houses for people who had lost everything following a dramatic earthquake and tsunami in southern Peru. Staffed almost exclusively by short-term, foreign volunteers, they not only laid the bricks properly but also successfully moved countless families in need from shacks made of straw and scraps to solid, if basic, housing. Was it enough? No. But it was a step in the right direction. What’s more, they filled in where no one else would. The government’s response was negligent, at best. And the town suffered a fate similar to poor parts of New Orleans or Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina – left in the wake, while wealthier and more touristy areas were rebuilt.

Here in Kenya, government investment in human capital and potential is meager to non-existent. I had lunch with two Kenyan women recently, who argued that the only working health and education services are either private and expensive or run and supported by NGOs. That might not be 100% accurate. But it’s clear that large swathes of the population lack access to basic services, such as decent schools, sanitation, clinics, roads, power, clean water, and anything resembling a social safety net. 

So it’s the private sector that fills in many of the gaps, including not only the entrepreneurs and NGOs, but also lots volunteers.

In our year and a half of living in Kenya, we have met an impressive array of people who have mounted schools and businesses and organizations aimed at helping to improve the lives of those the government leaves behind. It is a testament to the incredible potential, energy, and enterprising spirit of this country.

But the task is great. And in some cases, it benefits from the help of foreign, wanna-be do-gooders.

In February, I visited an orphanage just outside of Nairobi for children whose mothers are in prison and have no fathers or other family to care for them. I was with a small group that was bringing them donations of food and art supplies. The center has a school, dorms, playgrounds, and kitchen, eating, and cleaning facilities. Everything is very basic, but also bright and cheery.

While the staff and teachers are Kenyan, the center also uses the help and hands of non-Kenyan volunteers (many of them white, middle-class foreigners), who come for periods ranging from one month to one year. The volunteers live on site and help feed, bathe, clothe, teach, and play with the kids. Some have further professional skills, like a physiotherapist we met. But mostly, they offer affection and support to children whose experiences of trauma and challenge seem so much bigger than they are.

Critics of volunteerism, and voluntourism especially, will site examples of projects that are ill-advised, exploitative, and more likely to deepen divides between the haves and have-nots than to build mutual understanding. This really gets to broader issues of what it takes to create programs that are actually useful, appropriate, and effective. Development specialists have been arguing and struggling with this question forever, though most agree that you have to listen and learn from local stakeholders about what they see as the key problems and potential solutions.

Clearly, being paternalistic, patronizing, or self-promoting is not the ticket to successful volunteerism. But all I’m trying to say is that not every volunteer’s selfie represents a portrait of selfishness and superficiality. Sometimes, there is a measure of good in do-gooder efforts, even if it comes in pint-size packages.

World Turned Upside-Down

Even since Britt got me hooked on yoga, I’ve been spending a lot more time upside-down than I used to. Yoga is big on “inversions”, postures like headstands, handstands, and shoulderstands that get your feet up and head down. But that’s not all. Many of the basic poses – the bends and bridges, the triangles and twists, even the omnipresent down dog – involve putting your head lower than your hips.

If you ask, many yoga instructors and enthusiasts will tell you that getting upside-down is good for you. They claim it improves blood flood, helps the lymphatic system, and decreases stress. It increases upper body and core strength, they say, and takes pressure off the diaphragm and lower back.

There doesn’t seem to be much science to either back or disprove these benefits, though I can vouch for the upper body workout part. In contrast, there’s pretty strong evidence of the risks involved with inversions among people with glaucoma, high blood pressure, or congestive heart failure. Also, if you are prone to vertigo or inner ear problems, as I am, you have to take it easy and build up your tolerance over time. If you hang upside-down too long, the science is clear. Too much blood pools in your brain, and you die.

Whether literally or figuratively, many people recommend turning yourself (or your world) upside-down every once in a while to get a new perspective on things. In yoga, that generally has to do with clearing your mind of clutter, refocusing, and getting your mind and body more in balance.

In the wider world it can mean rethinking previously held notions.

Malcolm Gladwell has a Ted Talk and series of lecture tours based on his most recent and best-selling book, David and Goliath, where he argues, “We are never more alive than when things get turned upside-down.” Much of what he describes in the book is about challenging common viewpoints by inverting widely held assumptions. As he turns certain arguments on their heads, he tries to reveal their flaws or, conversely, the hidden strengths lying beneath the side we usually see.

Moving from the northern to southern hemisphere, as we have, turns lots of things on their heads. Summer is winter. The north-facing side is sunniest. The moon is reversed – or for those of us living near the equator looks like a boat instead of a crescent. Because of the way most modern maps are drawn, we think of the southern hemisphere as being on the bottom half of the world. And I confess there are days when it does feel like we are walking upside-down.

Long before Malcolm Gladwells’ books, there was an Argentinian cartoon character called Mafalda, created by “Quino” Lavado, who became very famous in the Spanish-speaking world for her way of innocently re-examining common views, stereotypes, and politics. In one series of panels, she explains to a friend that it is because the southern countries live upside-down that they are less developed than the northern ones – as it causes all their ideas to fall out.

With Mafalda in Buenos Aires

There are different groups and thinkers and artists who suggest that flipping world maps everywhere would be a way to break old thought patterns – including the notion of who’s on top. Joaquin Torres-Garcia (1874-1949) was an avant-garde Uruguayan artist, who wanted to turn Eurocentric art traditions, including their elitist tendencies, on their heads. Along with creating a style he called constructive universalism, meant to be accessible to everyone, he worked to promote Uruguayan and South American art and artists. His own work features geometric images of towns, common objects, and characteristic people. Among the most famous, however, is an inverted map of South America, where it is the continent’s southernmost point that gets the top billing.

América Invertida, Joaquin Torres Garcia.

For many people, having their world turned upside-down comes as a result of a dramatic or traumatic change in their lives.

For us, it has come more often through choices – and a deliberate sense of curiosity and adventure. I may never fully master the acrobatic inversions of yoga. But my life has indeed become richer and broader from turning it upside-down from time to time.