Sisyphus
By Steven Scher | November 18, 2010 | Liberia
How does a failed state rebuild? How do chaos, destruction, murder, rape turn into peace, justice and prosperity?
Bill Powers' book, Blue Clay People, concludes with a nod to Sisyphus. In a world of so much pain and poverty, is even a small push back up the hill worth the effort when the boulder slides back down again? Of course the mayhem must be quelled, but will outside help ever do more than gloss over intractable differences? Will international aid only create a weak dependent society?
Powers was conflicted about the work of the international aid community. Too many seemed more enamored of the adventure and opportunity for self-advancement and less interested in creating and managing effective programs. Powers fears that international aid programs create too much dependency even with effective projects.
The president of Liberia begs to differ. She believes that aid, done right, with ongoing audits and attention to the peoples desires, saves nations. Liberia cannot rebuild without assistance. The nation today has a budget of 300 million a year. I don't know how much aid it receives, but a mile of paved road costs a million. In a country the size of Washington state, getting good roads built is prohibitive. The Chinese are helping build roads for them now. But of course they want access to resources in return.
Countries like Liberia need help to rise, and the wealthy world benefits from a more stable partner. Unless you are the gun-runner, the warlord, the rapacious logger, people and nations can be better off when help comes. But how high can we all rise?
How many Liberia's are on this planet? After seeing a failed state in the incredibly difficult process of just starting to rebuild, I see Powers' point of bringing up Sisyphus. What can we do? To help one person is a drop in a huge bucket. What impact does it have on the big problem?
But what of the other part of that equation--the one drop? For that person who is helped, who gets a chance to go to school, or get vaccinated against typhus or see a sign that reinforces the moral imperative against rape, the drop is heaven sent. Maybe the tremendously slow process fools us. It isn't a Sisyphean task, just astoundingly hard.
But given the way we live in the developed world, is it really possible to bring everyone a better life? How many planets will it take for 9 billion of us to live like Americans, 6 or 7? We don't have them. Can we make a hard task simpler? Powers talks about enough. The Liberia's of the world need enough food, clean water, access to schools, hospitals, markets. The America's of Earth need to accept the notion of enough too. But most of us know this. We know Powers is right. But how to get there effectively?
Sitting on this comfy plane, watching a movie at 35,000 feet, watching the plastic tray passed back to the stewards, the empty cups of juice, the lids, the empty sugar packs, the plastic spoons and forks filling up the trash bags, I remember a moment from our visit. I had run out of gifts to give our hosts, former combatants, now struggling farmers. All I had left were the ziplock bags that stored the gifts. The young women wanted them and I gladly shared. Now, I don't know how they survived the years of war. Were they sex slaves, were they raped, their parents murdered? Surely that is possible. Now they are often hungry, and always poor. We had extra food from the dinner we had brought out to them. The ziplocks, strong and durable, were filled with food, to carry home, to share, to save for later. It may have been the only truly useful gift I handed out. It was absurd, it was profound, it was mortifying.
A drop in the bucket, a Sisyphean task, enough.
Steven Scher traveled to Liberia this month on an IRP Gatekeeper Editors trip organized by the International Reporting Project (IRP). Read more of his blog here.
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