Musings

What I find amazing is all the money being spent here unnecessarily - there are plenty of other places that need it a lot more (take Liberia for example). Everyone has a tv, electricity, motorbikes - I even saw a guy cutting his lawn with a whipper snipper this morning. This is not poverty. It was a natural disaster, but here casualties were minimal and the people weren't starving before it happened.

The money pouring in has provided plenty of additional wealth which will continue into the future as what was donated to this cause MUST be spent here. Still, the money is not being spent all that efficiently. For example, in some places the local (and very corrupt) govt construction agency, BRR, is building houses for people, and then Red Cross societies have also promised houses, so there is double-up. I don't even have a house - let alone two (ok, so its all relative but you get the idea)!

Plus it has created a false economy: people are leaving their traditional subsistence farming activities to take up brick manufacture or construction work, which will cease as soon as the NGOs move out – when this business dries up they will have to go back to what they did before, and will have twice as much work to do to re-clear and re-cultivate their land, which will have laid dormant for all this time… sometimes I wonder if we are doing more harm than good.