Want Makes me Guilty

“Come back tomorrow.”

The woman who had been “supervising” my work that day followed me out of the office and into the hall. I’d just said goodbye and was headed home when she stopped me.

“There’s no need,” I assured her, “I finished the job today.”

“I know,” she said, “but I’ll find something for you, just come back here tomorrow.” She was insistent.

I shrugged but agreed reluctantly. I’d spent the day folding and stuffing envelopes. When I’d arrived they’d told me it was a three-day job but I completed it in one; intent on not returning to the tiny windowless room I was working out of and wondering why they thought it would take more time in the first place.

The next day that woman found something for me to do, and the day after that, and within a very short period of time I was holding the temporary place of some middle management position in the marketing department. The subject was boring but it was better than stuffing envelopes and so I stopped substitute teaching (my other hustle in the world of temp work) and dedicated five days a week to my office job. 

By the time my Peace Corps application finally landed me a placement in South Africa I was more than ready to leave. The folks I worked with were great people but I had my sights set on something different. 

The company had other ideas.

Once I gave my notice my boss offered me a permanent position. Fresh out of college, the amount he was offering was nothing to sneeze at; in fact, it was the same amount I made working for the government two years later with more experience.

My mother was ecstatic, as much about the compliment to my skills as to the idea that I might not go gallivanting halfway across the world; but I never even blinked. The money never tempted me; I was ready for something new and different. 

Looking back it is strange that I was so unmoved by the paycheck, growing up I’d had an affinity for money that translated into a thriving babysitting business flush enough with cash that my mother made me open a savings account in middle school. 

Babysitting magnate ways aside, Peace Corps was not a cush gig…in any way. Payment was a living stipend. Hell, I didn’t have electricity the first year I served and my water was pumped up from a borehole, coming up clear and cold for bathing. The work wasn’t lucrative but it was rich. 

A little more than two years in rural South Africa led to working for the government and then graduate school and I’ve been wed to non-profits ever since. On more than one occasion I have returned to my “living stipend” roots and shrugged at the idea that I should pay attention to paychecks. I shrugged, that is, until recently. 

In the last two years I have found myself preoccupied with how much money I make, how much I should be making, how much I need to retire, how much I have in my retirement fund at the moment. For the first time in my life I’m thinking at least as much about how much money I could be making as the contribution my work makes to the world.

And I feel guilty.

I feel guilty that I am distracted by such an inconsequential thing as money…but then, money isn’t exactly inconsequential. 

My logical brain understands that I am the only thing I can count on when I’m too old to work. Longevity runs in my family (my grandfather just turned 99) and I’ve long since let go of the dream of recouping anything from Social Security. That leaves just me. And these are my prime earning years so now is the time to be fixated. 

Still, it feels foreign to want money...daydreaming about work not for love of anything other than the paycheck attached.

I know the desire for a secure(ish) future isn’t criminal. Still, it is space that in my many decades of life, I have never occupied. Maybe if I had fixated on this earlier there would be no reason for it now. But, there is no looking back to undo only to lament and so I look forward. I am looking forward to a future with more money in it without the guilt that warranted or not, taps lightly on my shoulder.

Prompt courtesy of The Daily Post: The Guilt that Haunts Me

Republican state of mind?

He looked at me the way I looked at the guy from this weekend’s car ride. Actually, that isn’t true. He looked at me the way I look at people who said Trayvon Martin shouldn’t have been wearing a hoodie. He looked at me with fatigue and maybe a little bit of derision.

We were at the tail end of a conversation about gentrification. And it seems, where that is concerned, I am the equivalent of a right-wing republican talking about the sanctity of male female marriage and the gift of childbirth. Instead, I was just expressing an opinion urging more nuanced thinking regarding gentrification than what I often see as knee-jerk reactions.

“Us” and “them”. Good and bad. Right and wrong. Resident and interloper. And I’ve written about this before. I’ve expressed the unease I have lumping every new person that comes into a community as a gentrifier…at least when the term gentrification is synonymous with someone who doesn’t belong. 

But my colleague, an older man of color, looked at me with a kind of sadness. Like I am a traitor to the cause. And it threw me. I went inward, trying to sort out my feelings. Trying to see his side. I initiated conversations with other friends who had similar reactions. Not so much the sadness, but irritation and anger. Again, it appeared we were picking teams and I had picked wrong.

Only, even in the midst of the righteous anger about the way things change and the people who are responsible for that change, my friends didn’t disagree with me. Not wholly; hell, not mostly. 

“I know you are right about the ‘us’ vs ‘them’, but sometimes you are angry and you need a place to put your anger.” My friend shrugged. A native of San Francisco she has no love for the techies that have overtaken the Mission. At the same time, she love/hates the new restaurants they have brought with them. 

Everyone seems to want things to change for the better but only if they can stay exactly as they are. And that isn’t how it works. You don’t get new restaurants with the same folks in the same place.

That doesn’t mean I believe that the level of change, the speed of it, is a good thing. It doesn’t mean I think the eviction of families and the skyrocketing cost of living is inevitable and the price of progress. I don’t. It only means that misplaced anger isn’t the route we need to take. Policy is.

My friend argued that policy is made by the rich for the rich. And of course that is true. People don’t hear you until you make them hear you. Uphill battle though it may be, pushing for policy that protects the residents that have been here, paying taxes and making a home of Oakland, has long-term benefits. I’ve got the long stare. I want policy in writing and enforced (with recourse for folks trying to ignore it) so that on cold and rainy days when people are too busy with life to come down to city hall to protest some new development, they are still protected.

I don’t have THE answer. I have some thoughts that might get the conversation started. A tiered pricing structure in every new building, dedicated space for different income levels. Preferred status for long-term residents. All of these suggestions have their benefits and their problems, but they start a constructive conversation that has potential to end in something other than shouting. I’m tired of shouting into the housing I can no longer afford.

$5 proves you care

.

"Oakland is my home: there's too much killing going on." Jay had stopped to read the white banner, slung between a row of recycling bins along Lakeshore Ave. The pictures beneath it are sadly familiar to anyone who has lived in Oakland for at least a year...the homicide spread of the Oakland Tribune (complete with names and pictures) for the last few years.

It was a strange sort of contrast, the California blue sky, brilliant and perfect like Crayola makes colors, cloudless. The sun shone down brightly, gently warming me in my jeans and t-shirt, the breeze whispering across Jay's legs.

"Do you have someone on this list?" an older black man with a few wrinkles and a speckling of gray walked toward us and nodded his head toward the sign.

"I don't," I responded, "but I work in violence prevention at a non-profit."

He didn't respond to that intersection of our missions but continued to speak. "I've lost too many people. I put this banner together myself, " he paused for a moment, "with my own money. My son and I put together a CD and we're selling it for $5 so we can buy t-shirts and a billboard with the same message." He paused again. I waited for what I knew was coming.

"Do you want to buy a CD?"

Not right now, I answered and smiled.

"That's the problem," his voice changed from genial - if distracted - to harsh and his expression hardened as well. "White folks pass by here and hear what I'm doing and they give me $20. They don't even take a CD they say, 'give it to someone else' but black people- black people don't care. We don't donate. That's the problem."

At this point he had already raised my hackles, and he continued.

"I'm going to give you one of these CDs. You take it. Take it. That's the problem..." he continued to mutter. Jay had begun rummaging through his wallet just as the man began his diatribe - but having nothing smaller than a $10 he'd declined to hand over he pasted a bland smile-like expression on his face and took the CD I refused to accept.

Livid.

I was cursing mad.

Who the hell was this man to tell me what I cared about? To lump me into a category of mythical people who don't care about Oakland because I don't want to fund his t-shirts and a billboard? Who wasn't even listening to the work I was involved in that intersected with his mission?

I cursed all the way to Arizmendi. I cursed in Arizmendi. I cursed to Jay, whose bland expression shifted into amusement.

"Just because I don't want to buy into his theory of change all of a sudden I'm the problem?" I spat. "He doesn't know me. I am involved with this work every day and we do more than make t-shirts."

Jay laughed. I wasn't amused.

The situation reminded me of the charity trolls on the same stretch of sidewalk. They hold clipboards and try desperately to make eye contact and lure you into a conversation. "Can you spare $5 for [insert enormous international aid institution whose work I'm either unfamiliar with or not particularly impressed with - especially if they are hiring charity trolls]?"

"No thanks," I'm polite.

 Someone asked me once, in the same emotional guilt inducing way as the violence man, "you don't care enough to spare a few dollars?"

Immediately I was irritated. Never mind a bout with shisto and several bouts with malaria while I was working in the countries they have pictures of, but the implication is that I don't give a crap.

And it shouldn't matter. I know it doesn't matter. But it still gets under my skin. It still irks me. I'm still irritated that people have the audacity to think that the only way to help, to care, to make a difference, is their way.

On the violence front, I know the other component at work is trauma. Losing someone to homicide is traumatic and the ways trauma impacts people are often mistaken as character flaws rather than symptoms. It isn't unusual for people with trauma symptoms to be angry, irritable, distrustful, to be short with people who care about them or are on their side, to be sad. I don't know that that man has trauma symptoms but I wouldn't be surprised if he does. I should interact with him...with everyone really...as if they might. Give people the benefit of the doubt and deescalate wherever possible.

And I did...kind of. I didn't curse at him. I didn't even engage with him after he began his tirade about my lack of heart. Instead I walked away, cursing only loud enough for Jay to hear me. And when I finished cursing and venting to a bemused Jay I located my center again and was reminded that the man cares too...in his own way.

Broken boats and starfish

I argued with Maureen earnestly. I was leaning on the door frame to my room, she was sitting on the floor of Soni’s room and they were both looking at me –quizzically, maybe. I’m not sure what the expression was exactly. But they were not in agreement with what I was saying. They didn't think I should stop the international work.

A few months away from my departure from Uganda, my plan was to leave international development work altogether. 

Conflicted didn’t begin to describe it. Doesn’t describe it now. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about my career trajectory in one breath and cultivating joy in another. Sometimes the notion that the two can come careening together in an epic and entangled way makes me smile with enchanted wonder. 

What if someone paid me to travel and eat and write (or any one or combination of those things)? I could pay my bills doing something I do anyway! But as I’ve been unable to cobble together a feasible business plan for that dream I instead focus on other passions. Travel still floats to the top but so does making a difference in the world. 

My brain has been ticking. What does my future look like? What is my next step?

Friends urge me to take stock of my skills and consider their application in a wider arena but ultimately I find myself crafting an imaginary position that is neither imaginary nor new. International public health emerges again and again. And I find myself circling back to that conversation with Maureen and Soni. I left that work for a reason.

I spent an evening talking to a new friend about my disillusionment with development. I talked about the macro: money inspired power dynamics, cultural ignorance, unintended consequences, differential pay scales, Sisyphean feats (because we really aren’t clear on the problems let alone the solutions). The list goes on. I rattle them off periodically when the call of some place far off tickles my feet and makes me wonder if just maybe I could manage it. 

He takes more of a starfish approach. 

“If you could help 100 people in the next 10 years doing this work that you are frustrated is not being done, isn’t that worth it?”

I remember having this conversation with a friend while we working in South Africa. She  was frustrated then. Feeling useless then. Wanting the development system to be as dedicated to meaningful change as the people on the ground – host country nationals and foreigners – who stretch the money, work the programs, celebrate each new well and properly erected mosquito net and grieve each mother and infant that die in childbirth and each outbreak of a preventable disease. And then, I urged her to think about each starfish tossed back into an expansive ocean. “It matters to that one.”

It still matters to that one. To those many that manage to find their way back to the water. 

I can’t measure the worth of a person. Not in the line item of a budget, or the salary of a community worker, or the time in transit to a village. I can’t measure that worth to say interventions shouldn’t continue to happen as they are.

I can’t measure the worth of a person and so I struggle with continuing to throw people back into an ocean one by one when I know that the tide will wash them back on shore once the temporary safeguards (programming without infrastructure or sustainability) are gone.

There is no perfect solution; perfect is the enemy of the good. Waiting for a perfect system would mean countless deaths. Countless more than we see now. 

So what then?

When cholera swept through London in 1854 John Snow figured out that drinking water had something to do with it and then the work of protecting the water source became the priority. Energy is wasted if attention is only paid to the effects of something and not the cause.

My fear, both when I’m working in a country and when I’m sitting comfortably in my bedroom as I am now, is that everyone is so busy bailing water from a damaged boat that no one has time (inclination) to fix the hole in the boat…or even the hole in the bucket (the development system). 

There are a lot of people doing amazing work helping to save lives, partnering with people to improve quality of life…hell, years of life. But Teju Cole wasn’t wrong when he wrote about the White Savior Industrial Complex. The problems of any region, or country, are complex. Piecemeal answers aren’t the only answers, the ways things are currently done aren’t the only ways they could be done, and good works don’t erase the other inextricable issues tied to poverty, illness, and politics.

My new friend is right that sitting here in the US doing other things isn’t helping. But I am still cautious. I still see the danger that doing something can do whether from unanticipated consequences or feeding a system that needs a lot more than tweaking. 

It is easy to sit by the wayside and “tut tut” the work being done, but that isn’t my intent. I want to repair the bucket, patch the boat. Hell, I want a new boat altogether. To my friend’s point, I need to think harder how to make that happen.