Wherever rice is cooked in Diitabiki, it is cooked in abundance. A cultural rule is that the pot must have something to eat too, and therefore, a lot of food is thrown away. Nevertheless, almost every day, someone asks me for food. The reasoning behind this phenomenon may provide an answer to why the West has poured trillions of dollars into developing countries with little results.
Insight A: Saving is a foreign and mistrusted concept. Without refrigeration food needs to be consumed quickly. A fish or a tapir must be sold, eaten, or given to someone else right away. Staples, on the other hand, rice and cassava, are planted in abundance, and waste (whatever the pot doesn’t eat) does not mean less for the future.
Insight B: Culturally, planning ahead is unnecessary. I grew up with leftover nights and being told to finish what was on my plate. Ndjuka kids grow up being told that it is rude to eat all of what is cooked because if someone is hungry, you should be able to give them something. Many people anticipate that they will be able to find something to eat if they need it, so few plan ahead for what, if anything, they will cook on any given day.
As an aside, cooking more than what I can eat to give food away is one facet of life that I have decided not to adapt to very often. Unlike my neighbors, I do not have a farm; I need to bring much of my food from the city when I fly in, and paying for extra kilos can be very expensive. I am limited in how long I can stay at home by how long my food supply lasts. In addition, I do not want to contribute to the culture of dependence on outsiders that I see around me, but I try to help in durable, sustainable ways. Though I explain my actions to my neighbors all the time, people think it is strange and probably even rude that I should have a stock of food and not give it away or at least sell it.
Insight C: A stable way of life, not growth and improvement is the principle concern of the Ndjuka. Because a community engages in subsistence farming, it does not mean that they can only grow enough for themselves or even far more than they can eat, only that they do not grow food to sell. Once again, providing what you need for yourself with extra to give away and asking others to give you what you do not have are a normal way of life. There is no economic growth because there are no markets and nothing is saved, but rather, everything is consumed right away. In the West we assume that if people work simply to feed their family they have no alternatives. In places with few jobs available and plenty of land for the population, people feed their families by growing food. The process of preparing a farm becomes an expected male role, as much as mowing the lawn is in the States, and failure to work the ground is equivalent to letting the grass grow for a year. One family, even if they need to carve a new farm out of the bush each year, can easily grow enough to feed several families, but since everyone farms this way, they do not sell anything. A large farm simply serves as a mark of industriousness.
Insight D: Money, to many people in less developed countries, is like anything else: if you have it, you use it right away; if you have too much, you give it to others. When someone goes to the city, they spurge on far more than they need, distributing the excess among the village once they return home, and this is expected. Saving food, money, or anything else is greedy. Similarly, to much of the world, development is the result of some countries having more money than they need, and therefore, giving it away. When the aid gets to less developed countries, they either use it or assume that it goes away, so the effects of development do not last very long. Economic growth is simply not an acceptable behavior in many cultures.
In this mindset, development is a great and potentially insurmountable challenge. For development to work, aid must be invested or used to buy durable goods such as machinery that will spur growth by increasing income in the future. Development is not simply a handout, such as giving someone a fish, but an investment, such as giving someone a fishing pole and teaching them how to use it. In places where this concept is counter-cultural, development only contributes to a dependence on others.
Instead of serving as an instrument of change, development often reinforces a culture of deterioration and creates a dependence on a new, regular source of resources. When cultures that rely on tradition as a way of life encounter development aid, they find a new resource, such as a fruit tree, which may reduce the amount of effort people need to maintain, but not always improve, their original living standards. This is key. Just as stability, not growth, is a goal, if people can maintain a certain standard of life, that is good enough. Something new may not improve their life, but rather act as a substitute for working for what they need. In fact, many people in less developed countries realize that if they actually improve their standard of living, horror of horrors, development organizations may no longer pour their resources into the community. In this way, development has the potential to severely harm a lot of people.
The best way to help improve living conditions in less developed countries is to begin a fair, legitimate business that supplies things that people need, that teaches people the value of saving and investing, and that circulates and invests money within the community. The free market is where I have seen development success in Diitabiki, and I believe it is the only way to effectively combat poverty anywhere.
