The Complexity of Giving
We are sharing a series of journal entries that the author, JH, contributed following an invitation from Insight Myanmar for publication on our website. She includes the following message: The following entries from my journal along the Burma-Thai border were first shared more than 18 years ago. On the advice of a respected teacher, they were distributed only on paper, so as to protect involved parties while raising awareness. Later, when the Internet became available, many of us still hoped in our hearts that these descriptions would soon become obsolete. Finally, I offer these words here in realizing that certain details remain far too accurate. May they bring benefit. Please forgive my youthful ignorance and arrogance. Errors are my own.
“A number of organizations supporting Karen education in the camp restrict their funding and welfare work to serving only Christianized peoples and require a certain degree of indoctrination blended into the reading, writing, and arithmetic. I wonder if Jesus was that picky about which hungry mouths to feed.”
Burma Border Journals #11
Yesterday at lunch with a newly arrived Canadian public health student I noted aloud how I find myself sitting back and watching an organization before diving in, and on the surface it might look like inactivity. The effect is to first convince myself that the contribution actually benefits the recipient, rather than simply offering up unobtainable visions of material panacea, adding the pain of new desires to that of pre-existing poverty, malnutrition, homelessness, and untreated illness. She replied rather firmly that such a view is paternalistic. I had not thought that way before and didn’t really have a response. Thank you friend for pointing out one of those blank spots. I can only start where I am, acknowledge ignorance and proceed to contemplate. Here goes.
I can see her point. She said that we treat the beneficiaries as equals only by bringing our full culture to them and having the full confidence in those fellow humans to choose what suits them best. She meant, I think, that one must acknowledge the two-way exchange in relationship, that we too can own our presumptions about what is good and what is bad. She was pointing out how empowerment or lack thereof is affected by our conviction in the developing nation to make its own responsible decisions. When one gives, ideally one does so unconditionally. Having made the decision to let go of what is donated; one sets the intention of generosity and relinquishes attachment to outcome.
Allow me to indulge the mind. There is no dictionary here, but I’m pretty sure paternalism has two components. First, some person or organization with power makes some bequest to persons of lesser power in order to satisfy a need. Then after that, in order to qualify as a case of paternalism, the giver must take whatever action is necessary to assure appropriate use of that which has been granted. The giver defines what is appropriate and also decides upon the manner of education or enforcement. The ideal type of giving explored by our conversation involved trust, trust in the compass bearing of the heart, trust in the recipient to make wise use of the gift, but as I added, also trust in the cognitive self. I think this last part is where the confusion with paternalism comes in.
Living from the heart does not imply shunning intellect. By this I mean that a third-generation teak logger might benefit from a free elephant; whereas someone living on the third floor of a dilapidated inner city apartment might not, but we all know the excitement of giving or receiving a large unmanageable gift. We must also know our own ability to choose recipients that benefit directly or who will direct the gift toward an application we deem useful or kind or good. This choice-making is common sense, a type of pre-meditation, prior to the act of giving. It differs from paternalism, which would entail micro-management after the transaction has occurred, a type of controlling I would not advocate. It is not trying to govern how the toddler rides the motorcycle; rather it is giving the motorcycle only after the child comes of age, gets used to riding a bike, applying the break, watching the traffic, crossing the street, signaling. The choosing is an educated decision. One has familiarized oneself with the causes and effects of the action within the system or systems it can be foreseen to affect. One takes into account both long-term and short-term ramifications, in addition to ultimate unknowing. The recipient, in some cases, is less aware of certain pitfalls, and so the giver has a certain responsibility to inform and, in some instances, to teach. If the giver chooses accountability for these additional components and gives anyway, only then can paternalism be a possibility.
As with any action, one investigates the source of intention. Whose need is it anyway; will this gift really satisfy some deficit experienced by the receiver? Am I simply caught in my own patterns, employing the recipient as object? Am I able to see clearly that the least possible harm for each participant will come about? Am I in any way enabling the recipient to join in some subtly pathological process? Such questions beg that we engage the cognitive component equally with the empathic. They require reckoning with our own tendencies to shift the balance one way or the other. We all know intellectually brilliant people who fail to practice their expertise in a sharing way. Likewise, there are those with huge boundless hearts who do tremendous harm through confused counsel, misguided relationships, poor advice. I mention this not to be overly critical or prescriptive but to receive reflection from my peer and to consider two observations in light of her suggestion.
Last Friday, a new friend made preparations to leave the clinic. Before his departure homeward for wrap-up of research and resumption of clinical duties, a number of colleagues and friends, including myself, accompanied him to a nice restaurant for a celebratory meal. This man I know and quite like had easily formed close ties with the refugees training at the clinic and chose to invite a young man and woman from two separate ethnic factions along with us that evening.
The disparate states of origin were a non-issue and not the part of the story subject to my interpersonal relational scrutiny. Our two less foreign guests were also non-Karen, temporarily rotating at the clinic that they might return healthcare work in their respective states inside Burma. This difference in ethnic affiliation between people, who to some Westerners do not appear dissimilar, means a great deal in terms of personal safety and mobility. The Karen, with no legal papers, cannot leave the compound, that is unless they want to risk being reported by informants, piled into a van by Thai police, and sent back to Burma. In fact, babies born at the clinic do not have birth certificates recognized by any country and so do not belong anywhere; for some purposes they do not exist at all. Our visitors, on the other hand, came with Burmese identification cards. They told us these offer about 40% security. What this means is that even with official documents there is a relatively high risk of harassment by Thai officials. These are the same folks that just last week vandalized an American NGO worker’s home; certain of them are figuratively in bed with the SPDC, regularly raiding offices for records and computer files and tapping the electronic devices of humanitarian organizations. Practically speaking, it means we were tailed by a silver-grey truck all the way to the restaurant; coincidentally, a similar looking vehicle with identical license plate numbers could be seen behind us as we returned to the guesthouse much later that night. As for my friend enabling this sort of risk-taking behavior by inviting the two trainees, I think he knew that at least one of them is pretty much unstoppable in terms of his desire and tenacity for going out on the town with Westerners. The young man would have found a way to come even if he were not invited; so extending welcome at least prevented pouting and salvaged my friend’s sense of connection with him.
The thing that concerns me is that he is young for someone in his twenties. He saw some of the guys drinking whiskey and therefore consumed most of a bottle of the stuff on his own, by the tumbler-full, on the rocks. No small feat for a small guy. He spends his attention learning English come-on lines, and his limited monies on Western attire. Here’s what got me: he has this incredible singing voice and tries to learn American Top Forty songs by ear. He had to be really quite drunk before sharing with us his people’s national songs of pride, the folkways teaching songs, ballads of love. We couldn’t help but give wholehearted positive feedback in the moment, but overall the market economy does not select for such beauty. What he chooses to mimic is not cool, is not healthy, does not bring happiness, and is a product of the culture we offer to him. Luckily, the other girl, who like him sleeps two hours per night, works one or two eight-hour shifts, and studies on top of that, had to be back at the clinic to light some Pūja candles by midnight. So that’s one example of possible paternalistic sentiment, only what is shared in this case is more than an object; culture is multifaceted, dynamic, is too big to even know where to begin. In terms of responsibilities, there are too many generations and organizations to assign comment. The history of violent conquest and forced incorporation pre- dates the Mughal Empire. Unable to backtrack, analysis breaks down, and we have only what springs from now.
Then just yesterday, I was huddled in the back of a vehicle returning from one of the camps proper. We sat like friendly sardines in what is called a “bus,” an old beat-up pick-up with a bench along each side of its covered rusting bed. I sat with lowered lids and breathed in a way softening my blue irises into invisibility, their hue is the only thing that marks me. Also crammed in with the chickens, the locals, and me was a woman born in 1984 of a Karen mother in a field during active shelling along the border. After all others had disembarked, we made eye contact and spoke aloud. Her brothers were born in the relative safety of the camp closest to the clinic. She received education until the age of seventeen there and now helps with the teaching. She finds the refugee camp tolerable, not having known much else, except that there is no river access. Her people love the river. Sometimes she doesn’t feel good either, since they eat mostly internationally donated rice, chili peppers, and fish paste, and sometimes they run out of fresh water to drink. Her mother makes the traditional local style shirts from high-quality woven fabrics created by other women from the Karen Women’s Organization (KWO). The young woman is lucky to have one living parent and grandparents too.
Her grandmother evidently sews wonders, but shares another gift with the community as well. She is the one soldiers would seek out after their long marches in the jungle, with skin diseases for which there is no Latin diagnosis, with dehydration, malnutrition, wounds, aches and pains. For them she has a special blend of fish paste from camp staples and just the right amount of liquid. They drink it one evening and wake up the next morning feeling refreshed, ready to go. For the young woman, whose vertebral fracture proved sore beyond hospital remedies, a special green leaf, ovoid and about ten to twelve inches long was sought out from the jungle. “The camp have some but distance, Burma forest more.” The woman gestures pouring a tiny bit of drinking water onto two palms upturned like a leaf; she rubs them vigorously together. Raising her cupped hands to thirsty lips, she demonstrates with her face and demeanor the immediate analgesic relief obtained from the juice of her homeland’s foliage. She says she carries both the Western medicine and the plant medicine in her bag, then wrinkles up her nose to say she only takes pills if Grandma’s concoction makes her gag. “Tree work much better than doctor,” she adds.
Her grandfather meanwhile sings the Karen Hill Tribe teaching songs by heart. When I ask her what she assists in teaching at the refugee camp school, the reply begins with requisite Bible studies, then English, and finally Western medical vital signs, such as pulse, blood pressure, temperature. She confides in me that like the women in her family she really likes to sew, whipping out a lovely cross-stitch of hut and palm trees for my admiration. She collects poetry from people she meets too. She shows me big soulful brown eyes for a moment when recounting how she copies each poem by hand, handing me one to read for myself. I love poems. “Type is not the same feeling as hand.” We share this opinion empathically before even a nod can arise. A number of organizations supporting Karen education in the camp restrict their funding and welfare work to serving only Christianized peoples and require a certain degree of indoctrination blended into the reading, writing, and arithmetic. I wonder if Jesus was that picky about which hungry mouths to feed. Anglican priests and other proselytizers must periodically be granted entry and authority of instruction for the humanitarian efforts to continue. The shared wall panel and floor between rooms where I stay has intimately acquainted me with the habits of just such a man; does he know the repressive history of the missionary position? I asked the girl if her grandparents had taught her from their seeming depth of wisdom. No. What will happen when they are gone? The topic, like her elders soon will do, came and went. There is a sense of loss. Not necessarily that someone should fix it, but if there is a tad of paternalism what’s so bad about that anyway?
May this writing heighten awareness about the plight and great beauty of the people from all parts once called Burma. May it bring benefit to all who are described herein and to all who read it. May you be truly happy.