Donations

Donations. I think in some situations donations are a really good idea but in some situations they totally aren't. In the US there are systems set up to handle donations and get them into the right hands. Of course there are other systems of donations that don't get things into the right hands but you can always find a good organization or system to work things right. But here in China I really don't believe that donations are all that great an idea. First of all who are you going to give things to? The countryside people who are the poorest? Sounds like a great idea until you realize that the countryside people are all farmers. They grow all of their own food so they don't need food donations. The food they don't eat themselves gets sold for things they need (which really aren't that many things) - clothes, electricity (which there are ways of stealing if you don't have enough money for), and health supplies (like toothpaste, toothbrush and other things - which they can make themselves to some extent). The things the farmers need are good schooling systems, good education of birth control, good education of better farming or health techniques or other crops to sell. These aren't things we can donate. Who else are you going to give to? The poor. How to give to the poor in a country where there is no organization for the poor. There are no places that give food to the poor. Plus there is always the problem of cycles. Like giving money to the poor. If you give money to the poor in many places it does absolutely nothing cause they simply have to give it to those higher than them in the chain of work. Or it teaches them that begging can make them rich and wealthy people and so it thus encourages the system. The more people who beg the more money we get, ok, so lets go out and have a zillion children and make them all beggars too. There are tons of people who have that idea and it often works because people give them money. The same would happen with food and clothes, if they realize they can get food and clothes without even having to work for it it will simply make them even lazier if there are no systems of organization to bound them by. There are many in need but how to get things to them is a really difficult thing to do. My mother-in-law just taught me recently how to recycle things here. She collects all the bottles, boxes, tins and cans and takes them over to just outside our apartment complex where there is always someone sitting waiting for us to give them things so they can sell to others or sell to the recycling plants. As for clothes? Even my mother-in-law just tells me to throw them away. I do my best to give them to my aunt or mother-in-law who can wear them as second hand but beyond that who knows what to do with them here. There are no PTA Thrift Shops or any places like that where we can just give them away to be sold again. I think that there are tons of things needed here but the things needed the most are education, health and schooling related, not donation related. I met a doctor from a Chinese orphanage a while ago who told me that the best way he knew for me to help was to learn Chinese perfectly and go to help translate at the orphanages, they don't have anyone who can translate there and it makes things really difficult. This is an idea that I still believe to be a really good one and one that I hope to do in the future (when my Chinese is good enough).

Peace Corps. This is yet another organization that is highly debated in my mind and one that I could never convince myself to join. The Peace Corps is run by the government. So you are helping the government's ideas of how the world should become better. Often time these ideas are completely worthless. For example, teaching farming techniques to a group of people who have been farming for hundreds and hundreds of years without any acknowledgement of their own systems already available. It's like a child going up to an old man and trying to teach him new tricks. The old man simply thinks to himself "it's an idea but one I can't learn and one of no use to me, after all I've been living like this for years and nothing will change." Trying to teach my mother-in-law new ideas is about the same, she always tells me she's too old and dumb to learn new things. First of all my parents are older than her and learn every day how to do new things or about new ideas. Second of all it's a mind set, she thinks she's too old to learn new things so she is. Just like many areas. I remember in India people would try to teach the native Indians about the Ganga without any acknowledgement of their own beliefs and customs with relation to the sacred river. It's absolutely useless to try. I'm sure this doesn't hold true for all places but even if we think we're helping why is our way always the best? I'll give you an example. Before our companies brought bottles, boxes and bags into a country like India they never had these products. I remember going on a picnic with some native Indians and everything we brought - the bowls, the cooking supplies, the pots to hold the food was later thrown into the river, after all it was all made of clay or leaves (which we used as plates). And how could these things possibly hurt the river? But now that the west is dragging in new products with new containers, the Indians have no idea how to treat these new containers and it just makes a dirty messy place. After all they have no ideas for systems of dealing with trash and landfills. They have had no use for these things in the past and why would you need these systems for clay pots, bowls and leaf dishes? So a lot of the time an idea like trying to teach other societies how to do things without learning about their society first isn't the way to go, only a few times is it actually a good way to deal with things.

Wow, I didn't know how many strong opinions I have about things until now! I guess I've actually formed some opinions over the years of traveling.