Donations disappeared

It’s a culture of hand outs and you are a gringa. What you are going to do, how you are going to help, but more importantly what are you going to give. “What can I have when you leave? Those sandals i like? Your computer? Can your project buy us a new air conditioner? A little laptop for me like yours?” After months of your donated time and resources, you give something a bit more tangible. Desperately needed supplies. Sphygmomanometers. Measuring tapes for pregnancies and child head circumference. They are received joyfully by the personnel. The materials are not yet distributed for use, but put in a pharmacy closet by the administration to do some preliminary “inventory”. Finally you are able to provide the tangible donations that are expected of a foreign aid worker while still adhering to your values of sustainable development. You are overcome by the, too well known, good vibes resulting from the act of giving.
Then you get pulled aside by several nurses. “Watch where those materials go.” A week goes by. Still no sign of the new tools. You’re in the field doing vaccinations and your coworker pulls you aside. “We used to be able to do a lot more out here in the rural areas. We had medicine kits that were donated by someone from your organization but when she left they disappeared with the administration.” You ask the administration for the materials you donated. When can you disburse them to the various clinics? “Everyone already has one for now,” they say. You decide to see for yourself. In Clinica 2a/b, where the rooms for general consultations and pap smears are separated by a sheet, Doctora Martina and Licencia Chepita share a sphygmomanometer. Fatimah in Tuberculosis doesn’t have one either and the excuse for the one that Doctora Tellez uses in Clinica 3 is ancient.

What’s going on here? You are confused, then angry, but above all heartbroken. Just when you start to feel that nothing can come in between you and your hope for humanity, it does. So this is what discourages most westerners from doing developmental work. CORRUPTION. Shameless, guileful, grimey corruption.
Discouraged and helpless, you despair. You cry for the world. For Nica. For your meagerness to it all, your inabilities and limitations. For the lack of centers, doctors, materials, and medicine. For the kids with no vaccines, the women who can’t read, the barrios with no latrines, and the babies with no milk. You grieve the unfair triumphs of depravity over good deeds. For the hard work and good intentions that lie in vain beneath supreme systems of cruelty and greed. So much for Sandinismo. Beyond the gleaming red flags of the romanticized revolution now lies a tarnished idealism of breeched trust and greed. Somewhere between theory and practice lies viability.

Somewhere between your pessimism and idealism is hope.