Shohini 4

We have almost been here for 3 weeks. There's so much we've learnt, so much we've experienced both in the personal sphere as well as in regards to our education. Being in a different place, being thrown out of one's comfort zone leads to meeting new people in random settings and learning so much from them. Yesterday we were at a new restaurant and the owner was a second generation Malawian whose great-grandparents were from India. Just talking to him, we got to learn so much like about the Malawian Indians and how many had left with their British passports while many were forced to leave Malawians villages and move into cities. Random things like that help so much in knowing more about a country than just reading it. I keep marveling at this fact that everyone has their own story and how that connects with a history of a place to explain the present. Anyway this past week, we were working in Consol Homes and I think we had a first-hand experience of the practicality of aid and the difficulties of it including distribution etc. One of the days, we were asked to create some sort of inventory of the donations that this center received to aid them with distribution. We were led to a warehouse where all these donations were stored. Let me describe this warehouse: it was a gigantic room filled to the brim with boxes of all sorts of things from expensive shoes to clothes to food to medicines and anything one can perceive as important for a child or his/her family. There were thick winter boots that in reality weren't useful. There were tons of crayons but no paper to use because when people donate crayons, I think papers are assumed to be in a classroom. But there were also many useful things like beautiful children's clothes and food and such other things. This just tied in to what one person was saying earlier about the fact that there is aid but a lot of it isn't effective and despite the fact that there are many willing NGOs who are here to help (and they have done so much and continue to do so) but there isn't a corresponding up-to-date distribution system that is effective enough to reach everyone in a proper way. There are just so many difficulties of development. For example, you have so much donations and there's so much to think about; allocate it over a period of time so it doesn't run out, make sure no one steals them, if you give it out to individuals it might not work, but giving it to centers takes forever to send, transportation hindrance, and then forgetting about a lot of supplies. Having worked here and with 2 more weeks, I think I am starting to understand the frustration of development in a day-to-day basis despite having people wanting to help and having the money and laws to create wonderful projects to help people, but there are so many practical problems that just don't even appear relevant till you see it firsthand.