Hopeful Generosity

A few weeks ago, I threw out my inexpensive coffee grinder—not because the motor gave out, but because a miniscule bit of plastic broke off the cover when I dropped it on the floor and I could no longer turn the thing on.

This precipitated my hour-long tirade about the wastefulness of society, fed in part by a visit to Ecuador in 2004.

I was 36 years old at the time and mother to three young children and I was also a volunteer with Compassion Canada, a child development agency. The organization arranged the week-long visit so that Canadian volunteers could witness how they managed its projects.

Our group spent all of our time in or around three communities high up in the Andes Mountains: the capital city of Quito, Riobamba and Otavalo. I left my family behind to join volunteers from all across Canada who ranged in age from 18-year-old high schoolers to empty nesters in their mid-fifties.

Quito’s elevation is 2,800 m above sea level (9,350 feet) and Riobamba and Otavalo are slightly lower. I developed migraines as my body tried to adjust to the elevation, and coming face to face to such abject poverty required some adjustment, as well.

Our tour guides balanced difficult visits to poverty-stricken projects in the cities and among the Quechua (full-blood natives) with activities like a visit to Mitad del Mundo (the Middle of the World).

There is a tourist town built around the monument and a long orange line painted on the ground where the equator wasmeasured for the first time.

Systemic poverty breeds hopelessness, and that is not a cliché. I felt nihilism hovering in the air, a palpable sense that nothing is ever going to change.

Even as a visitor it whispers convincingly, “You and your children will always be hungry. You will always sleep on a dirt floor and your feet will never be shod.” The point was made all the sharper when, after a long day of visiting projects in poor mountain communities, we would retire to a five-star hosteria where we would enjoy candlelight dinners, a roaring fire and a decent bed.

Eleven years ago, $120 per month was the average wage in Ecuador while our local leaders told us approximately 60 Ecuadorian families were wealthy by American standards. These were the people who owned controlling interest in banks and owned and operated American-style shopping malls and restaurants. The banks preyed on the average wage-earner’s desire to own an automobile, which was a status symbol and creating debt that people couldn’t support.

I remember walking past one little boy’s home Riobamba, which was a windowless, doorless building made of adobe (a combination of straw, mud and water), but they still ran electricity so that one spare lightbulb could hang down in the middle of the room and power a small yellow television.

By contrast, we were staying in a beautiful hacienda, which is a ranch house once owned by a wealthy landowner, who undoubtedly employed many people. The building now welcomed tourists, with sectionscontaining old black brick stairways, dark brown rafters, high plaster ceilings and terrazzo floors.It was quite a culture shock to come and go in such a way.

Yet not all communities felt hopeless. Help had been in some communities for a longer period of time than others, and in those that were working together, the mood was much lighter. I realized that the point was not to try in vain to make people’s lives like mine, but to provide basic needs that would give them hope for their future.

The Compassion employees leading us on the trip told us that it takes approximately 12 months to lose the sense of urgency one feels after returning from an exposure trip. For an NGO, this sense of urgency is useful to motivate volunteers for as long as it lasts.

At first I felt guilty about my comparative life of luxury next to those living in Ecuador, but after eleven years, that guilt has morphed into a permanent dislike of waste. While I use glass instead of plastic and buy in bulk because there’s less packaging, the old adage that we should “live simply so that others may simply live” is always in the back of my mind.

I desire more than anything to not be ruled by the consumerism of the West. Therefore, I mourn when I have to throw out a coffee grinder that works perfectly well except for that little plastic bit that broke, making it more costly to fix than buy a new one. I buy in bulk because there’s less packaging.

I make time to cook things that people normally buy, like bread, skills that were necessary in my grandmother’s day but that most people have abandoned in lieu of convenience food.And speaking of food, I hate to throw it out. I find creative ways to use up every scrap of leftovers.

Though infrastructure, education and economics maybe the responsibility of governments, and while the hands of those same governments may be tied by corruption or the self-interested policies of other nations, I can still help one person at a time reach their full potential.

And not just abroad, but in my own community. In the end, it’s the relationships you initiate with people that have a far greater impact than giving money alone, because it is the driving force behind the giving that transforms people. When you give because you care, people know it. Life becomes worth striving for when you know that someone in the world cares about your dignity.

Though infrastructure, education and economics maybe the responsibility of governments, and while the hands of those same governments may be tied by corruption or the self-interested policies of other nations, I can still help one person at a time reach their full potential.

And not just abroad, but in my own community. In the end, it’s the relationships you initiate with people that have a far greater impact than giving money alone, because it is the driving force behind the giving that transforms people.

When you give because you care, people know it. Life becomes worth striving for when you know that someone in the world cares about your dignity.