Development in Guinea

The first week of teaching went well - I did have over 100 kids per class and it was just barely controlled chaos. I'll write more about it when I get to Conakry, but my first official week teaching was great - you all know how much I enjoy being the center of attention. :) I just talked to my mom and was telling her all about my conflicting feelings about development and she told me I should write about it on the blog...so here goes. I'll try and make it relatively coherent. People in Guinea are happy. They don't have much, but they are generally happier than the average American, from what I can tell. So why bother with development? Well, for 2 reasons - women don't have choices and babies/people die all the time. Just during my first 3 months in Forecariah there were at least 6 funerals that I knew about, 5 of which were for people under 40. Guineans have little to no access to health care and even those who can buy medicine are never properly diagnosed. So everyone has sores that don't go away on their legs, gets malaria, and if you are in a car accident and are injured you might never get better. There are a few people who can afford to go abroad, like the President, who gets treated in Switzerland, but for all but the richest Guineans health care is a luxury they can't even dream of. Same with education. Only 15% of the population makes it to high school and an even smaller number makes it to university. I'm really teaching the most educated kids in the country - those are the ones who generally don't get married off at 15 to start having babies. So I oscillate between feeling like things here aren't really that bad and then realizing how few choices people have and feeling like Guinea really needs Western help. Not charity - I've seen what too much charity can do and I wouldn't want Guineans to develop a culture of dependency on foreign aid. But assistance. Right now a lot of money is going into neighboring countries, Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular. These countries have been at war for a long time and are now stabilizing. Sadly, they will end up developing much more quickly than Guinea - part of that is because they were more developed before their respective wars, but a large part of the reason is that it's easier to get money from foreign donors after a war - gives good newspaper coverage and it's something people are supportive of. Guinea is now being punished for not having a civil war. It's just not sexy for the international community to help a country that's remained stable for so long. Guineans are Muslim, but very tolerant and understanding. There is almost no fundamentalism here. I think it's short-sighted for the US to ignore this country that could be a strong ally while pouring money into more fundamentalist countries to try and get them to be our friends. So what needs to be done? From what I can tell the Gates Foundation gets it - they have put a lot of money towards ending diarrhea and malaria. Next they are going to work on getting more kids educated. That makes sense to me - it's so easy to get money when natural disasters and wars happen, but thousands of kids die every day in Africa from preventable diseases. If kids are sick, they can't learn. I think that once children are vaccinated and fed and given medicine when they are sick there will naturally be an increase in education. Once that happens it's time to turn towards economics and jobs. Basically, development only occurs when there's a perfect storm of people working towards goals simultaneously. There is no one answer. Hopefully I'll be able to think and learn more about this during the next 2 years. While my life here is better than the average Guineans life, and while I can get out of here in 24 hours if I really wanted to, I still am living at a level that more closely approximates an average Guinean life than the people at the US Embassy. And if I think that I want to work for the Foreign Service I think it's important to remember that I would not just be an advocate for the US's interests, but also take an interest in the country I'm living in. And Peace Corps is one of the best ways to do that. Once a person joins the Foreign Service they are really cut off from what life is like in that country - I even heard that our PC doctor gets called to help them out when people get sick. They all live in such protected environments that they don't know what to do with things like amoebas and gihardia. For me, this is an important time to live in a community and figure out what should be done and also what doesn't work at all before I get a "real" job with a real paycheck and am kept far from the people I'd like to be working with. I'm not sure how much sense this all makes, so I might go back and attempt to make it more coherent later. Basically, Guinea needs help, not charity. And I have 2 years to figure out how to assist without creating a culture of dependence. Maybe development workers should take a Hippocratic Oath similar to what doctors take - first, do no harm.