a tale of aid
One of the foreign ministers in our country once narrated this story in his prologue for a book by a Taiwan doctor who went to serve his military conscription (all males above the age of 18 are expected to be go through military training for a year in Taiwan) by going to Burkina Faso and serving as a doctor there. The minister told this story (and I’m translating it word for word):
One year a country’s international aid organization sent an agricultural specialist to survey a famine problem in one of the regions of an African country. The specialist from the developed nation discovered that the area’s main dietary supplement was corn, but the natives there planted a strain that belonged to ‘long stemmed corn’. This kind of corn becomes very tall, the leaves are profuse, but the corn production is low. So the specialist suggested that they import ‘short stemmed corn’ which could produce crop several times the amount of ‘long stemmed corn’, this could solve the famine problem. Following this report, the organization planned to disburse an amount of funds and an amount of loans plus technical support to help the farmers switch to planting ‘short stemmed corn’. To their surprise, the villagers protests violently, not willing to accept this new strain; on the other hand, the organization, according to it’s professional status, claimed that if the project did not go according to their plan, they would rather retract all assistance.
The professional insistence made the government of the country in question nervous, and in order to gain aid, they sent troops to destroy the ‘long stemmed corn’ fields to force the villagers to obey. The people revolted, both sides went under furious conflict, and what had started out as good intentions became a bloody civil war. When the conflict was a little more settled, the organization sent another group of specialists to investigate, and they discovered that for the inhabitants of this impoverished land, the long stemmed corn was not only their food source, the stem was also their most important material for house building, and the dried leaves were their main fuel. Once they switched to short stemmed corn, the problem of famine may be resolved, but the problem of living and fuel would become another issue…
One year a country’s international aid organization sent an agricultural specialist to survey a famine problem in one of the regions of an African country. The specialist from the developed nation discovered that the area’s main dietary supplement was corn, but the natives there planted a strain that belonged to ‘long stemmed corn’. This kind of corn becomes very tall, the leaves are profuse, but the corn production is low. So the specialist suggested that they import ‘short stemmed corn’ which could produce crop several times the amount of ‘long stemmed corn’, this could solve the famine problem. Following this report, the organization planned to disburse an amount of funds and an amount of loans plus technical support to help the farmers switch to planting ‘short stemmed corn’. To their surprise, the villagers protests violently, not willing to accept this new strain; on the other hand, the organization, according to it’s professional status, claimed that if the project did not go according to their plan, they would rather retract all assistance.
The professional insistence made the government of the country in question nervous, and in order to gain aid, they sent troops to destroy the ‘long stemmed corn’ fields to force the villagers to obey. The people revolted, both sides went under furious conflict, and what had started out as good intentions became a bloody civil war. When the conflict was a little more settled, the organization sent another group of specialists to investigate, and they discovered that for the inhabitants of this impoverished land, the long stemmed corn was not only their food source, the stem was also their most important material for house building, and the dried leaves were their main fuel. Once they switched to short stemmed corn, the problem of famine may be resolved, but the problem of living and fuel would become another issue…
posted by Mignon Chang at 12:51 AM
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