Mo' money

Okay, forgive me if I wax a little financial here.

On Thursday, MCC Dezam's Pwogram Edukasyon Anviwonmental (PEA) hosted a first-annual student conference to get them pumped about all things environmental. I think the conference went relatively well, but the thing that most impressed me was the food preparation. We were serving a morning snack and gwo manje for about 150 people, so there was quite a to-do.

We spent an entire day at the Dezam market securing provisions, which is always an expedition in and of itself. By the way, here's a brief explanation of Haitian money:
The current exchange rate of gourdes to U.S. dollars is currently about 39 to 1. However, back when the U.S. Marines were openly occupying Haiti in the first part of the 20th century, the exchange rate was 5 to 1. The 5-gourde note became known as the Haitian Dollar, and - you guessed it - things are still sold in Haitian dolas. So a fairly straightforward answer to my "How much is this?" - "37 dola" - produces a long pause from me as I frantically try to run the numbers. Thirty-seven times five divided by 39... So is that a good price? I can't ever tell.

Anyway, back to the konferans. They slaughtered three goats [hey, meat-eaters: is slaughter the technical term, or is there a more neutral word?] and prepared steaming vats of coffee and rice and bean sauce and a pickled-cabbage relish and juice.

I peeled shallots and washed dishes and tried to generally help out, but the whole time I was nearly bursting open, I was so impressed. In my brief Summer of Food Service, I discovered that cooking mass quantities of food in the U.S. generally involves opening a lot of cans. Here, it involved:
- Buying, roasting, and grinding coffee beans
- Shaving heads and heads of cabbage by hand, with a knife
- Sorting out tiny stones in the rice and then winnowing it
- As mentioned, preparing three goats from the ultimate scratch
- Making peanut butter
- Picking pecks of citrus fruit and hand-squeezing each and every one

That level of freshness qualifies this as gourmet, right?

Now imagine doing all of this at a primitive campsite without running water or electricity and over an open wood fire. Wow.

Here's where the money comes in. Maybe I'm coming into my honeymoon with Haitian culture a little later than expected, but I feel like I'm so impressed by their hard work and used-to-it-ness that I don't think of this lifestyle as a poverty situation. Like:
- You're more well-off if you have a concrete house than a tin-and-wood house.
- Having access to a faucet is pretty lux.
- Being able to take a bucket bath is better than having to bathe in public in the river.
- Who really needs constant electricity anyway?
- Gas stoves are almost over-the-top compared to charcoal and wood fires.
I know that poverty can be defined in relative terms, but I do feel like my perception about what qualifies a person as "poor" will change, courtesy of Dezam.

In fact, I am often uncomfortable with the idea of The Poor or Serving the Poor, because in a way it's an objectification that can dehumanize (or deify) individuals just as much as anything else. And I can even confess that, as far as Serving the Poor goes, it was easier for me to come to Haiti than to really engage with poor people in Philadelphia. Maybe that extra layer of cultural differences makes it easier for me to relativize poverty and see it less as something to which I - as part of the dominant culture - am personally connected.

Even here, it's easier for me to play peasant ("Washing clothes by hand! How fun!") than to own up to the fact that I still have far more resources than many people around me. In Philadelphia I was conditioned to not give money to people on the street (perpetuating dependency, there are so many social systems in place, enabling drug abuse, etc.), even though it seems like an easy fix, an easy way to feel better about having resources and sharing them.

The drawback is that giving money to people who ask for handouts does not feel good at all. I'm not opposed to sharing or helping people in need, but it feels ten times more awkward and self-demeaning to do that than to give money to someone in need who doesn't just ask for money because of my skin color.

On the other hand: given the legacy of colonialism that has long-favored people of European descent, should I just count mandatory giving as a white-privilege tax?

I still believe that one important way to responsibly use money is to seek out locally-grown and handmade items as a way to support the people around me who are part of our local economy. And of course, to make responsible choices about consumption.