Responsibility

Yesterday I was updating and re-writing a proposal for us to get some money in order to provide some basic foodstuffs and clothing for Chadian refugees in the far north of Cameroon. The donor had suggested that our logistical costs were too high and, seeing as one of our main priorities with this piece of work was to establish a connection with this donor for the future (I know, shouldn't the main priority be to help the refugees...we can debate that another time), we were happy to put these costs at almost any level so as to make the proposal acceptable to the donor. As my manager was out of the office and it was very urgent to get this proposal submitted, the responsibility for balancing the budget fell on me. Basically, I was told to 'reduce' the logistical costs, but given a lot of leeway as to how much to reduce them by (indeed as I described, from our point of view it didn't really matter how much we reduced them by, so long as it appealed to the donor).

So the end result was me sitting with a small spreadsheet and fiddling with the numbers, adding a few hundred portions of rice here, 50 sets of clothes for children there, subtracting if I thought it got too much, etc. The thing is, these numbers, once I've set them, become to a significant degree what will actually happen if we are successful in getting the money. We're accountable to the donor to do what we said we'd do and so if I fiddle the numbers one way or another, it probably will result in 100s more or fewer refugees receiving rice or clothes or whatever from us. That's the immediate welfare of hundreds of people at stake, and little old me, straight from the UK and fresh as a daisy, on the other end playing with the numbers.

I had real difficulty reconciling that in my head. You can say it shouldn't happen, but that's no good, it's already happening. You can say you should just give them as much as possible, but there is always a limit and you have to choose that limit.

It was a very strange sensation, and will no doubt become even stranger if the project goes ahead. But what can you do? Just do your best I suppose. I daren't think what it's like for people at a very high level where they are making daily decisions about the lives of thousands or even millions of people. The human mind is not wired for this kind of responsibility, it doesn't make any sense. All of our emotional frameworks, as individuals, are based primarily on interactions with other individuals or small groups of people. It seems to me that it's best just to accept that it feels strange, and wrong, and that it will make you uncomfortable. You can't make 2+2=5, so why try.

It's a difficult thing, and one that I know other people struggle with. If you spend the briefest of spells in Africa or many other parts of the world you will see how much £1 can mean to someone. What does that mean to you the next time you're in London paying £3 for a pint of beer or spending £200k on a poxy flat in a crap part of town? How can you reconcile that? Should you? You can't ignore it and you can't make it go away, but it's not easy to pinpoint blame or solutions. It's really not easy. If you can't reconcile it then perhaps you can just accept it, but then if you accept it you might start to think it's ok, which it's not. So... any ideas?

Me neither.


A couple of interesting news articles from the last couple of days:
1. A little insight into some problems that clearly existed prior to the elections in Kenya. I'd take some of this with a pinch of salt (I suspect this guy is no angel), but I equally don't doubt that Kibaki's government has always been dodgy in many ways (e.g. in this article effectively inciting murder) or that there has long been impunity for certain crimes, significant clamouring for resources involving foul play, racial tensions, and other such like in Kenya.
2. An insight into the value of freedom of the press. This isn't the article I was looking for, which has disappeared, but is still worth reading to get some idea how a controlled, pandering and manipulative press can prop up the most monstrous of regimes. If that link doesn't work then just browse through that day's articles at the same paper and I'm sure you'll find something equally ridiculous.