R-E-S-P-E-C-T from Isla Mujeres

Just returned from the usual 10 day break in Mexico and Isla Mujeres, the Island of the Women, exerted the usual healing and regenerative powers leaving me to readjust, nearly painfully, to “normal” life here at home in Sacramento. What’s wrong with me? Why can I do on a beach in Mexico what I can never do here at home? Maybe it is because what I do on a beach in Mexico is NOTHING and here at home I had 482 emails waiting for me!

The regenerative powers of doing nothing have to do, possibly, with the way our brain works and the fact that, when we are silent, we allow thoughts to bubble up from a different place. Once I heard somebody describe meditation as shutting down the computer’ terminal as to be able to communicate directly with the mainframe!

And one thought did bubble up from the mainframe! It came to me that the fundamental, distinguishing feature of our work is that we respond to people and to communities. By responding I mean truly respond not like responding to famine or to poverty, in the abstract, like an NGO in Africa for instance. Everywhere you look these days you see people doing good work. Social enterprises, philanthropic organizations, Bono at the White House, even famous actresses adopt African orphans. The difference with us is that we only go where invited! What’s the big deal about it? Well actually it is a very big deal.

To be invited by the local people you have to deserve it, you have to have done something that makes people wanting you to be there. To show up uninvited is easy; it only requires the belief that you are better than the local people and that you have something to offer them. And don’t we western people, by definition, are better than anybody else’ in the world?

There is uneasiness with unrequited charitable work. People question the wisdom of past and modern “missionary” work. And I am not talking about the “Poisonwood Bible” here. I am talking about the criticism by many people, including African people, of aid that pours into their countries creating more problems than it solves. Andrew M. Mwenda’ article “Foreign Aid Sabotages Reform” in the International Herald Tribune is just one of the examples of what I am describing here.

The fundamental principle of aid is respect. If you don’t respect people how can you help them? And to show up uninvited, no matter how well intentioned, in somebody else’ home is not respectful. To conceive what to do in a village without being invited there is not respectful. To conceive what to do in a community without being invited there is not respectful, and to conceive what to do to a country or to an entire continent without consulting the local people and being invited there is still not respectful no matter how well intentioned you may be and how much money you are bringing.

Much more bubbled up on that beautiful beach on the Island of the Women, but I don’t want to bore you…after all you haven’t asked me to talk to you!

Ernesto Sirolli
5 January 2007