On Aid Philosophy and Failure: The Great Beanie Baby Handout

Early on in my service I realized that the kids in my family had no toys.   One day as I was preparing to head to Kedougou, my host sister-in-law pulled me aside and asked me to buy a doll for Alamuta, her youngest.  As in the States, kids here try to emulate adults in their play, Alamuta sometimes walks around with a piece of cardboard strapped to her back as if it were her baby.  I never quite know what to say when people ask me to buy and give things, and probably muttered a “Nin Allah sonta” (If God wills it—whole blog post devoted to this phrase coming soon).  When I was in the market in Kedougou, I noticed that there were some dolls, but there were mostly both creepy and crappy, so I decided to pass.  At the time, I was falling in love with the kids in my host family, so I decided to ask my mom to devote a large portion of the precious space in a care package to dealing with the toy situation in the Cissokho family compound.  My younger sister was wildly into the Beanie Baby craze in the 90’s, and knowing that there was an abundance of unplayed-with toys sitting in a crate in our crawlspace and that some of them had already been emptied of their beans and given to my parents’ golden-doodle, I figured some could be spared to provide these kids with one toy each to love on.  I requested 6 beanie babies and two action figures for the oldest boys, along with some children’s books that I could translate into Malinke.  My parents were happy to help out and put together the package.

Five weeks later (it takes about a week to get to Dakar and then another four to make it down to Kedougou, but packages are so worth the, hint hint), the package arrived.  I could just picture the wide smiles of the kids as they would hug the toys to their chests and grateful looks from the parents and was feeling really good about things, and we prepared for just the right moment to distribute the goods.  Since it’s Ramadan, everyone gets together around dusk to break fast, even the kids, who don’t fast, but wait eagerly beside the adults around the shared bowl of mono (porridge made of corn flour, bissap, and sugar).  Pat and I showed up early to take advantage of the gathering for the Great Beanie Baby Handout.  Our camera was ready to capture the coming moments of joy. 

The kids had known that something was up since I kept asking about their siblings/cousins’ whereabouts and had a plastic bag in my hand and wouldn’t disclose its contents.  Excitement was in the air as the last kid was rounded up from the fooseball table that has recently appeared under a tree near the motorcycle hangout.   We told them each to close their eyes, but when that didn’t work, I just started to call out their names and have them choose right or left hand.

 Saxoba and Sambali went first, since their Transformers were different from the Beanie Babies everyone else got.  Mistake number one.  As Pat pointed out later, the norms for the toys that kids should like by age or gender don’t extend to toy-less settings, so we should have avoided following our understood norms and creating a division.  When we moved on to the Beanie Babies, of course Khalifa wanted a Transformer.  Until the Transformers broke.  And by broke, I mean that they came apart in order to transform.  But these kids don’t know that.  They live in a place where everything you can buy is pretty crappy and will most likely break or never work, so they did not understand the whole transformation thing.  We didn’t even have time to demonstrate the transformative powers of their new toys because chaos was ensuing over the Beanie Babies.  

The distribution was roughly organized from oldest to youngest.  Samuro was thrilled with her frog, and  Jelemba was stoked about her lizard.  Khalifa was already upset about not having a transformer and is always upset about something, so I didn’t pay him any mind other than explaining that a dolphin is kind of like a fish.  Then Kounadi got an otter.   Unlike the frog and lizard, otters are unknown creatures in this part of the world.  While American kids love exotic African animals, African kids get no exposure to the animals of other lands, and Kounadi threw a fit about not getting the frog.  Such a fit that I don’t even remember what animal Alamuta got.  Then, finally, if was Oumou’s turn.  The last animal was a jellyfish, which absolutely terrified her.  Her mom tried to give it to Alamuta to show how safe it was, and Alamuta got wide eyes and made her arms into flapping chicken wings, the Senegalese sign for “I refuse!”

I didn’t know what to do.  I just sat there paralyzed while the kids fought and complained, with the exception of Samuro and Jelemba, who I think were trying to look extra happy in order to rub it in Kounadi’s face about the superiority of their animals.   My grand plans of importing happiness had turned out to be a grand failure. 

“They don’t know how to receive gifts,” Pat tried to explain as I fought back tears and even snapped a little bit at Kounadi for her ungratefulness.  As we prepared to break the day’s fast, I continued to feel sorry for myself, being both robbed of the joy of giving and the trail mix that could have been sent in the place of the toys.

The next morning, however, as we were stumbling to our family’s compound for pre-dawn Ramadan breakfast, I had a lucid thought (rare for me at 4:45 am).  The whole Beanie Baby situation was a microcosm of foreign aid gone wrong.  How many well intentioned programs have delivered gifts for the development of the recipients that have set unused?  One of the reasons I was drawn to Peace Corps service was their emphasis on human capacity building and the two year commitment that was different that a give and go kind of development.  The games that I have spent endless hours teaching these kids (http://www.lineoverthee.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-if-hokey-pokey-really-is-what-its.html )have brought them far more joy than the material gifts did, and can be sustained and taught to others.   Lesson learned…right?

If only it were that easy.  The outcome of this story and my own realizations do not match the expectations of many people here, who see Toubabs as having lots of money, and who are not shy about their desire for gifts.  Children often know no other phrase in French than, “Toubab, donne-moi un cadeau.”  (Foreigner, give me a present.)   I have been asked straight up for the clothes I am wearing, for my sunglasses, for my shoes, for my bike.  It is uncomfortable.  Even though I only make about ten dollars a day, that is so, so much greater than the income of my friends and neighbors.  But the wealth differential in this world should be uncomfortable, and if figuring out the best way to give aid and do development work were easy, that differential would be far less.  So we try, and often fail, but rejoice in the small triumphs, whether it’s the 16 children in a small village getting treated early for malaria because of an innovative new program designed by a fellow volunteer or the grins you see when you get over your self-pity about the Beanie Baby failure and offer to play Duck, Duck, Goose.