If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Issue Investigator—Chapter 9—10—Ericka
The issues in these two chapters were—is Islam misogynistic, small things can make a difference in education (deworming, bribery, feeding children) and the debate of education for females but scattered throughout the pages where mistakes made by foreigners. That will be my focus as the issue investigator because it interested me.
FemCare (arm of Proctor and Gamble) decide to help girls stay in school in Africa by handing out sanitary products for menstruation. Well, running water was needed for toilets, which the built. Then there was the taboo about female blood and had to purchase incinerators to dispose of the female products. All of this was fine and dandy but not well thought out. The company spent more money than needed because they didn’t think things out. Money they could have put toward tuition, uniforms and other things.
Andrew Mwenda said “the international cocktail of good intentions.” The people who aid other countries truly have their hearts in the right places but sometimes need to take a back seat, write the check and “carry the luggage” so to speak. A lot of the mistakes are made because customs and cultures aren’t taken into account in what is being done.
Handing out soap to Afghan women is saying a women are promiscuous, not a great thing to be saying about Afghan women. Christians coming in and asking Afghan women to take of their burka, read, work, be strong is quite a lot for people who lived this way all their lives. Some educated Afghan women feel we run around naked; there are more important issues than the way they dress.
Another project gone badly: cassava. Women grew this potato like root in Nigeria—the women sold surplus at markets (a little extra money for the women. The UN project got seeds that grew better and it did. Now, the women can’t harvest the entire product and it has more cyanide than the original type. The ground water is being contaminated—have to take care of it. The need for processing equipment to take care of the more product. Well, now the women are making more money and the men come and take over what the women normally had done all along. Women have no money now. Did this really work?
Maybe we need to stop being so in your face and back up a bit. Hire people who are from the community to make hygiene suggestions to Afghan women—not from people who don’t believe as they do. People in a community need to help the community. I know if someone, from half way across the world and a totally different religion, came to my house and said get an education, clean yourself, be strong and dress differently. I would probably tell them to go pound sand—you are messin’ with my life, culture, beliefs and community. Sometimes things work the way they do for a reason. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.