hard things & good lessons

“give me pen” “give me shoes”  “give me money” 

“give me bottle”

every time we pass by we are bombarded with requests 
i think I have talked enough about how much I love it here, and I truly do, but the first couple days brought an onslaught of upturned hands and expectations that I didn’t know how to fulfill and i have finally had some time to reflect and write about it 

a good number of people out where we stay during the week, outside of the staff and families enrolled in the school, have only interacted with white people who are working for NGOs and non-profits and who are there to distribute aid.

the city gets a little tourism but still not that much 

and even though I had been prepared it was all still a lot to handle.

As anyone who has ever encountered poverty knows, the difficulty isn’t in the giving, but in the withholding.

I would love to be the one giving away free stuff and seeing the excitement and joy and probably feeling pretty good about myself.

But that’s selfish and I know it.

So instead I have tried my very best to focus on developing relationships and giving out high fives and creating secret handshakes and playing games (as you have also already heard about, sorry)

I think that’s why it feels even harder when things like this happen.

Like when we are talking to some teenage girls down by the pump and laughing and joking and they are teaching me how to dance and translating for the little ones and then I have to start walking back and when I am about a 100 yards down the road I hear

“MACIE MACIE WAIT FOR ME! I NEED YOUR HELP”

and I turn and it is one of the girls, about 14 years old, running towards me and I turn back and she says, “Macie. I want to go to school. I want an education. I need you to help me. Will you pay for my school?”

and my heart just breaks because OF COURSE I want to pay for her school and every other girl in the world’s education

but I can’t

I think it was so much harder because it was specific and personal

an individualized plea made specifically to me by someone who I had a relationship with.

& it jarred me

a lot

that was my second day in the country. 

~i wanna cheer this post up with a memory of learning how to dance which was the happiest thing~

About a week later 

I was walking down the one dirt road that passes through the surrounding villages with a fellow intern and an SUV comes ripping around the bend scattering the children we were with; the smallest, a 20 month old little boy, barely getting out of the way

I glared at the driver, frustrated by their lack of caution only to realize as they slowed down and rolled the window down that it was JOYCE BANDA THE PRESIDENT OF MALAWI and her driver

The children started chanting and dancing and clapping and swarming the car and the driver kept apologizing and smiling and I was so confused because why was the president of Malawi racing through the bush, 100 kilometers from any real city?

The driver starts gathering a large stack of bills, trying to hand them to me through the open window and I am caught off guard and just keep saying no no no 

but by this time all of the children have seen them and the driver is telling me to take them and distribute them and I keep saying no no please no but the kids are jumping and fighting and looking at me and trying to push me toward the open window so I take them and they drive off without a backward glance 

& now I have a stack of bills and a huge group of starving kids who are looking at me to give them money and I am in the exact position that I had been working so very hard to avoid

but before I had time to really think about it even more kids starting running over from villages close by and they all started grabbing the money  and screaming and pushing and my efforts to get them to line up only worked for a couple seconds before all hell broke loose 

& before I knew it my hands were empty and I watched an impressively old woman run from her hut, grab some bills from a couple of children, laugh gleefully and run back down the road

I looked around and felt heat and anger and frustration at everything that had happened

These were children who had been playing and skipping and having fun just 5 minutes earlier and they were now fighting and screaming and pushing for 20kwacha

That is the equivalent of 5 cents in USD

I know that they are in need and hungry and maybe it will buy them food for the day or chip in for their families or help with a huge number of things that they really need

And maybe kids in America would have reacted the same way if a treat was up for grabs

But everything inside me screamed that THIS WAS NOT THE ANSWER

Aid is good and important, but throwing money out a window solves nothing

Maybe President Banda’s actions were well-intentioned and she just wanted to help out a couple of kids

But it was only a week before the election and I really don’t know that much about Malawian politics but I can’t imagine that driving through the bush throwing money out the window is a sustainable or transparent way to further a platform of development

And they didn’t have to stick around to see the chaos that occurred once the bills settled

& maybe there was no ill intention 

Maybe they were just being nice and trying to help out the kids that they almost hit or just wanted to make them happy or whatever else they were thinking

Maybe this really is a good idea and I just don’t know enough yet

I KNOW similar events happen all over the world every day so maybe I should just count my blessings that it was money being thrown out the window instead of something far graver and more dangerous happening

I don’t know

But I do know that I hated it

I hated being a part of causing contention and fighting and unrest

It doesn’t matter that no one was seriously hurt or that no one died or was kidnapped etc

and yeah they probably all got to have a treat that day

but something inside my still cringes at the memory

I don’t know what I would do differently if I could go back.

I guess I could have just kept refusing and walked away but it was the president of the country for crying out loud

Maybe I would have worked harder to make sure that everyone stayed calm and got an even amount

I don’t know

  

I think that the only answer I have right now is the reminder to see every one I meet as a person not an object

More specifically as a brother or sister from the same creator

Because if you see poverty only as a problem to be solved, then yeah it becomes easy to see hand outs of money or resources as the solution

But it is not just a problem to be solved

& maybe that is backwards because it is so hard to not want to literally take the clothes off your back and give everything you have and wouldn’t that be a way to see others as people? 

Loving them enough to want to help?

But I think that really seeing people and not objects comes from being aware of sustainable agents for change and aid

And maybe that’s just because sustainability is one of the latest buzzwords in development and that is what I have been taught by my professors and development articles

I don’t know 

I don't know what the solution is or how to distribute it yet, but I know it is not just temporary handouts

Especially not by the president just mere days before an election

Maybe it is education, more equal rights of women, economic opportunities ETC ETC ETC

But probably it is a mix between all of the above and more

I know that millions of other people have thought about these things a million times over.

People that have more experience and are smarter and more qualified

BUT WE STILL DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER/SOLUTION/WORLD PEACE 

so obviously something is missing

I don’t know what it is, but every day I hope to become more committed to trying to do whatever is within my abilities and opportunities to help

I’m glad I’m not popular enough for this go viral because I know that I have so much to learn and am really truly trying and am probably wrong about so many things

If you have advice or knowledge or an opinion to share please do

Comment or email or facebook me

Or we can go to lunch when I get home and work on a solution together

I would love that

I am fully aware that my experience and scope and understanding is limited

I thirst for more and for now that gives me peace and hope

& that’s enough, for now

p.s. we haven’t had internet in a while and while it has been hard for mostly everyone else because they have boyfriends/lovers back home who they need to talk to, but I have kind of loved it 
(but sorry to all of my pining boyfriends back in the states)

I love my whole world being right here in Malawi and I love that we are all pretty much forced to pay attention to each other because there are no distractions

So, sorry that I haven’t responded to lotsa you (shout out to my mama) but responses are a’coming

p.p.s I was serious about advice and knowledge-sharing

hit a sister up