Super Size It and Throw in a Funeral Plan

We have two more days in Clare and I’m pondering death. Before you decide this is going to be a depressing post and leave, hear me out.

Death is a part of almost daily life here in Clare. Animals are slaughtered for food, kill one another or, like the two tiny kittens we found and tried to nurse, die for no apparent reason. While I dislike seeing this kind of death, I understand it is part of the food chain here and ultimately, probably for the good of the community.

However, the almost constant reminder of human death has really struck me. Funerals are conduced almost weekly. Ask any community member and you will find that they have lost at least a few siblings. People rarely seem to know the cause of deaths, either. Most seem to be caused by car accidents or “illness,” which I’m fairly certain means HIV/AIDS related deaths. Even commercials casually reference death. “Support the Kaiser Chiefs soccer team by SMSing this number and you can win a funeral plan!” It even includes groceries for a year.

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These commercials bring two thoughts to mind.

1. Those selling funeral plans sure know their target audience.

2. How in the world is everyone okay with this many people dying so often from so many unexplained causes?!

I realize the answer to the second question is a simple: this is a vastly different world than the one I came from. But realistically, anyone living in these communities has to be okay with it in order to function—whether that be someone who has lived here all their lives, or us, here for a two-month stay.

I was chatting with a friend in the states the other day to learn that her cat had undergone a number of tests to understand a recent ailment. I believe a brain scan was involved. She, being the socially astute person she is, acknowledged the strangeness of telling someone in a rural African village where healthcare is virtually nonexistent that she had just spent time and money on rigorous medical testing for a cat. However, it didn’t phase me. And I wanted to understand why. I think the reason is three-fold:

– first, we are in totally different situations at the moment and clearly one should act as logically and compassionately as possible given the potential to do so;

– second, if I constantly worried about the rural South African death rate, I wouldn’t do my job of helping those who are living to be empowered as business people, gain income, and afford decent medical care and nutrition;

– third, many people are doing fine. Which means, my meddling in something I don’t fully understand yet, could disrupt the system that is working for the majority.

I am certainly not saying that this is an issue that can be swept under the rug, but that instead if I focus on being sad and dejected because of the harsh realities of development work, I will miss out on how to actually make an impact.

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Speaking of impact, here’s how the bread baking business is going: awesomesauce.

This week, the goals were to: put a constitution in place, train core staff members in the business basics, decide on the areas for fully integrating the businesses social mission of increasing academic motivation of local students, and test and refine the recipes. We tested two types of white bread, raisin and banana bread.

Oh, and all of these goals needed to be reached without us doing anything. That is, it was time for us to only facilitate and not “do” anything so that ownership was solidly in the hands of the community partners at least a week before our departure. Unsurprisingly, this was much more challenging than simply attacking action items. This facilitation process actually helped us to get out of our own way. And it made delicious bread!

While I don’t know what will come of the business, everyone has high hopes. We are getting things in place to keep in touch through a mashup of facebook and email when people can get to it. Hopefully ThinkImpact will return to Clare next year and have a local bread company supplying the impressive 21 loaves a week our group consumes.

Clearly this half of the post had little to do with death. But my hope remains what I stated above: Creating jobs, and especially jobs where people feel empowered to make their own decisions and build things as they see fit, leads to all manner of improvements to quality of life.