Concord Monitor Online: "Disaster aid is breeding envy and greed, By MICHAEL DOBBS The Washington Post, March 02. 2005 8:10AM
WELIGAMA, Sri Lanka - When Priyanthi de Silva asked me for a new pair of glasses, I was naturally sympathetic. My own glasses had been swept away during the tsunami, and I knew what it was like to wander around in a blur. Priyanthi was obviously deserving. She had also lost her mother-in-law, her house and most of the possessions she had ever owned.
After all the other requests I had been receiving since my return to Sri Lanka to try to help out with the relief effort - a fishing boat, a house, a new school building -this one seemed easy enough to fulfill. It would cost just a few dollars - money I had in my pocket. I was in a position to bypass the difficulties that normally bedevil aid operations and give a needed object directly to the person who needed it. But little about the aid business is simple, and certainly not in Sri Lanka two months after the tsunami that had devastated much of the southern and eastern coastline.
A harsh truth
As I was talking to Priyanthi, a neighbor rushed up, reeking of arrak, a potent coconut brew much loved by Sri Lankan fishermen. He was full of Dutch courage, willing to say things he might normally have kept to himself. "She's cheating you,"he screamed. "All these people here"- he gestured at a group of villagers who had gathered around me -"they're just trying to fleece the foreigner, and get what they can out of you. Go away."
I was dumbfounded. I was back in Sri Lanka with the best of intentions. When the tsunami struck on Dec. 26, I had been staying with my family on a tiny island owned by my hotelier brother, Geoffrey. Like many other Western holiday-makers caught up in the world's worst natural disaster in living memory, I wanted to contribute somehow to the recovery operation. But here I was, blundering into a situation I didn't fully understand, stirring up enmities and jealousies among the very people I wanted to help.
This was the first time I had gotten involved in anything like this. During the course of a 30-year reporting career, I have witnessed more than my share of human suffering, from wars to earthquakes. I have always cultivated a sense of professional detachment, taking the view that reporters can contribute most by sticking to reporting.
But the tsunami was different. I wasn't simply an observer; I was a participant. When the waves came in, I was swimming in the sea. I survived by grabbing hold of a fishing boat, less than 100 yards from Priyanthi's house. As I clung to the catamaran, I could hear the desperate cries of people drowning in their houses.
I am pretty sure there was nothing I could have done to help them at the time. But those screams still echo in my head, and I continue to feel a sense of personal obligation that I've rarely felt as a journalist.
After I got back to Washington, I asked my bosses at The Post for a month's leave of absence so that I could assist in the relief work. Somewhat to my surprise, they agreed, while stipulating that any articles I wrote would disclose my personal involvement and would not be presented as news stories.
Aid that angers
Over the past few weeks, I have been helping Geoffrey raise funds for a charity he launched called Adopt Sri Lanka. I have also been working on a blog (http://www.washingtonpost.com/weligama) that is tracking the reconstruction of Weligama, a fishing community of 30,000 people next to Geoffrey's island. The result has been a worm's eye view into the disaster relief business that has caused me to revise many of the rather naive ideas with which I came to Sri Lanka. If dispensing aid were mainly a matter of helping needy individuals, life would be very simple. But everything turns out to be much more complicated than I had imagined.
An army of would-be philanthropists descended on Sri Lanka and the other tsunami-affected countries in the wake of the disaster. There were, of course, the big relief agencies like CARE and Doctors Without Borders, known in the aid business as NGOs, or nongovernmental organizations. And then there were private individuals, like me, who simply showed up wanting to help.
Some of the assistance has been extremely effective. Some of it has been next to useless. And some of it is spawning new conflicts and rivalries, upsetting the local power structure in ways that are often incomprehensible to outsiders.
Consider what happened to a group of German divers who arrived in Weligama soon after the tsunami, intending to retrieve boat engines that had been washed into the bay. Since they were on a humanitarian mission, they offered their services free of charge.
They thought they were doing everyone a favor until one day someone threw a stick of dynamite into the water after them. The explanation favored by aid workers: The Germans were stealing business from local divers who had been charging fishermen $50 for every engine they recovered from the bay.
Reeling them in
There are several hundred fishing boats in Weligama bay, around half of which were damaged beyond repair by the tsunami. Among the various donor groups, there should be enough funds available to replace all the boats that were damaged. But it's tough to decide where to begin. Some fishermen are claiming replacements for boats they never had, while others have submitted duplicate claims to different donors.
What's more, part of the fishing fleet is controlled by relatively rich individuals, who have succeeded in intimidating the poorer fishermen and are trying the same tactic on the donors. The other day, one of these richer fishermen threatened to burn all the boats on the beach unless his own claim for a new engine was satisfied immediately. He was taken aback when the donor filed a police report.
So many foreigners are passing through Weligama - the southern Sri Lankan coast had become a magnet for Western tourists even before the tsunami - that playing one against another is a simple enough exercise. From a local fisherman's point of view, submitting multiple claims for the same boat is perfectly rational behavior. Only half the foreigners deliver on their promises, anyway. The obvious solution is for the donors to cooperate with each other much more closely. But this is difficult when no one person, or organization, is in charge.
I quickly discovered that there is little love lost between the "professional" aid workers and the "amateurs." The professionals speak disparagingly of the amateurs as "disaster tourists," with no idea of how to run a proper relief operation. The amateurs wonder why so little of the money collected in Western countries after the tsunami has yet to reach the disaster areas.
It's true that some of the amateurs can be clueless, pushing aid packages out of the back of a van to whoever is around to grab them. But the fact remains that most of the relief that flowed into Weligama in the weeks immediately after the tsunami was provided not by NGOs but by local businessmen, both Sri Lankan and foreign.
Just in time
The big aid agencies have been practically invisible on this particular section of coastline, at least until now. The first time I became aware of a USAID presence in Weligama was last week, when teams of laborers wearing USAID caps showed up in the town, frantically shoveling away rubble in advance of a visit by presidential tsunami envoys George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Of all the challenges confronting aid workers in this part of the world, the biggest and most debilitating in my view is envy. If you buy a fisherman a boat, the next fisherman is likely to be upset, both with you and with the first fisherman. The answer, you might think, is to buy boats for an entire community of fishermen. But then the neighboring community would be angry. And so on.
Such envy is self-defeating because it scares away people who truly want to help. A wealthy foreigner who lives in Weligama told me he was racking his brains to devise a way to help his four immediate neighbors, whose homes were destroyed. He doesn't want his name in the paper for fear of drawing attention to himself. He is afraid that the moment he helps his neighbors, he will start a chain reaction of envy all along the coast.
Does this mean that we should throw up our hands in despair, and conclude that it is impossible to do anything to alleviate human suffering? Of course not. These are the kinds of difficulties that are familiar to anyone who launches a relief project in a Third World country. There are solutions to these problems, but they require patience and persistence and a willingness to adapt to local ways.
After my encounter with Priyanthi's neighbor, I began rethinking my approach. I felt uncomfortable in the role of the bountiful foreigner dishing out presents. I decided that it was not for me to determine who needed a new pair of spectacles and who didn't. I also concluded that working with communities and institutions is more productive than working with individuals.
A total of eight people - four women and four young children - were killed in Priyanthi's tiny 10-house community in the space of 15 minutes. All this happened within my earshot, and I wanted to do something for all the survivors, not just one or two. At present, they are all living in tents, pitched on the rubble of their former houses.
The local option
It could take years to provide permanent housing for everybody. The Sri Lankan government has banned construction within a 100-yard buffer zone from the sea, and has yet to announce a long-term building project for Weligama. So the short-term solution is temporary housing.
In order to provide Priyanthi and her neighbors with shelter, I turned to a local tire company called Loadstar, which has been leading relief operations in the most devastated section of Weligama.
I have every confidence that the company can manage my little project well, something I realize I cannot do myself. As a local company, Loadstar can draw on the resources of a large factory, as well as the knowledge and contacts of its Sri Lankan employees. By contrast, most foreign NGOs have been obliged to start from scratch.
We hope the temporary houses will be finished for the community within the next two weeks, before the villagers' tents are washed away by the springtime monsoon.
(Michael Dobbs is on the national staff of The Washington Post. He has reported from many of the world's trouble spots and was swimming off Sri Lanka when the tsunami hit.) "
