The Anvil of God

Life from the fifth floor of the Holiday Inn is no way to see a culture. I draw a clear distinction between the various sorts of travel. Each of these types of travel serves a purpose and I have done them all at one time or another. There is the recreational traveler who observes the sanitized stage production of the local culture. There is the backpacker who wanders seeking new experiences and perspective, flitting from one interaction to another but never invested in what is around. Then there is the expat who lives and works with the locals for a myriad number of reasons. I have been all of these people but this is the first time I’ve done so to this level.
This experience has led me to view the developing world and the people in it not as a place of shortage but as a place of potential. This week, I saw a man using, only a hammer and chisel, cut a straight line in a piece of sheet metal. Despite this skill, I was faced with making the difficult decision to take this one man operation’s work away due to quality issues and farm it out to a large firm in Nairobi who could cut a straighter cleaner line. I have struggled enough in my life to know the affect that this would have on someone using every ounce of their resourcefulness and creativity. The bitterness that this denial of opportunity engenders is palpable. The origin of this bitterness is the knowledge that if you had the same access to tools and resources, you too could get this contract instead of that guy who inherited all of his money from his father who got it from opium trafficking.
So I rethought my dilemma. How can I improve quality and save the work of a poverty level laborer with obvious skill? What do I need to do to give this guy an edge over the large firm in Nairobi? Then it hit me. All I need is a $100 saw. The problem is that a $100 saw is a fortune for a small businessman in Busia. It is pocket change for the foundation for which I work. A $100 saw would save a struggling yet skilled businessman AND save the foundation thousands of dollars outsourcing to Nairobi. This is what I call a “leveraging” factor. Small inputs into a system that have create exponential outputs.
I am convinced that this laborer whose skills have been forged under hardship will become a brilliant asset to the foundation for a miniscule investment. What is the score?
The little businessman – 1
Heroin Trafficker – 0

I feel good about this.