Reflections on the Jungle
Sun. July 7 - 10:45 PM I've been meaning to write more this last week but one thing after another came up. Perhaps you can empathize--when you're working all day, then go out for dinner in the evening and wake up the next morning with little time to finish the things you were meaning to. The past Friday afternoon we arrived safely back to Shell. We were out in the jungle for a little over 3 days in total, but it felt like much longer, though not necessarily in a bad way. Earlier this summer I was living in luxury; this week in the jungle was the opposite of that. Washintsa is still well-removed from civilization. Access is primarily by airplane (the only alternative would be a long hike from the nearest road.) All the cement, water tanks, steel rebar, etc. had to be brought in with us on the flights. There is a small generator that someone owns that powers the church and one of the houses sometimes and there is a solar panel on the pastor's house, but otherwise there is no electrical power. Water has to be carried from the river, which is where baths are taken. The food consists almost entirely of boiled yuca (manioc root), green bananas, and potatoes, all without salt. Occasionally someone will go hunting and come back with squirrel, monkey, sardines, or some other wild animal. And yet, there is something appealing about all this. The people live simply and without many of the concerns we have. They lack a lot and yet they make do with what they have. Most aren't well educated, but they make up for it in hospitality. I don't want to set up Washintsa as a paradise, but contrary to the assumptions we tend to make about underdeveloped areas, it's not all bad. Perhaps the most important thing I gained from the week in Washintsa was a better understanding of poverty and development. HCJB focuses on development; not on aid. Aid is meant to temporarily relieve someone from a disaster that has occurred. If it is used for more than this--to better someone's circumstances by offering them free stuff--it causes dependency. Development has to work with the person to better their situation. You can no longer give free stuff but you can offer them help in bettering their situation themselves. Development is harder than aid, but instead of dependency it results in more self-sufficiency. Poverty is not what someone has, but what they want. By this definition, if you walk into a village and give something to someone, you could even be making them poorer! For these reasons, HCJB doesn't initiate projects, but they wait for the community to ask for help. HCJB then raises the money for the equipment (pipes, solar panels, tanks, faucets, water meters, cement, rebar, etc.) They volunteer their time and expertise and pay for the transportation into the village. But the community agrees to provide food for the HCJB missionaries. They have to collect and provide local materials for the project (sand and gravel for the concrete). And perhaps most significantly, they are the ones who put in the labor for the project. This can be quite significant. The next step in Washintsa is digging the trenches for laying out the pipe. There's probably 400 m of trench that needs to be dug 1 m deep by shovel and pickaxe. This will probably take them 2 months to do if they work hard on it. In this way, for the community to finish a water project they have to actually want it. 2 months of digging in the hot sun is no joking business. They have to take ownership of the project for themselves, and in this way they will be sure to take care of it in years to come. I've included a few pictures of Washintsa, courtesy of my fellow interns. |