The worst
seasonal rains of this wet season, which caused most of the property damage and
loss of life, are now six weeks behind us.
The rains have continued, but we have been spared the high winds and nasty
torrential rains of January that did most of the damage. The final tally among the Zingwangwa Branch
members was two homes destroyed and four others with one or more walls down,
leaving the homes dangerous or uninhabitable.
This inventory does not include damage to outbuildings or leaky roofs
or cracks in walls, all nasty problems, but nothing like the loss of a wall or
roof. Had more minor problems been included,
the list of affected families would be much longer. Members in the three other congregations in
Blantyre (Blantyre First, Blantyre Second, and Ndirande Branches) sustained
similar levels of damage. Recently we
were told that roughly 20 member owned homes in the Blantyre District were
totally or partially destroyed.
For weeks,
the local Church leaders have worried about how best to help these
families. Not surprisingly, even though
the homes are modest structures, the affected Church members do not have the savings
at hand to purchase the bricks, cement, sand, support beams, and metal roofing
materials, and to hire the labor, needed to restore their homes. In most cases, the families have been able
to move into temporary housing, often staying in crowded quarters with other
family members. Malawians are amazing
generous, always willing to open their homes, frequently for months on end, to
help out others in the family, even though distantly related. They do this without fanfare; it is simply
what family does. Few, if any, have
private insurance and local government assistance is non-existent. Foreign aid, and there are many NGOs working
in Malawi, is primarily directed at the high density disaster areas, where the
needs are the most visible. And while
extended family can and does help with shelter and food, they are usually as
poor as those displaced and can’t loan or gift the money necessary to fund major
restoration projects.
By
Westerner standards, the requisite financial outlay to repair or restore one of
these homes is inconsequential in amount.
The bricks, sand and cement needed to build a wall will not cost more
than 100,000 kwacha or roughly $200. Two
or three men or women, working one or two eight hour days, can supply all the
labor needed. Labor costs are cheap, so
it is not expensive to hire the labor to replace a wall. Roof materials (the wood beams, nails, and
corrugated metal strips) are more costly, but all of the materials to build one
of these small brick homes, from scratch, could be acquired for less than
500,000 kwacha or $1,000. Remember most
of these homes do not have electricity, indoor plumbing or water—adding those
amenities would substantially increase the construction costs. Usually, the main home is serviced by at
least two outbuildings—one an outdoor toilet, the other a small shed for
cooking and to ensure privacy for sponge baths.
We estimate the construction materials for the five affected home in the
Zingwangwa Branch would not exceed 1,250,000 kwacha or $2,500, a manageable
number in the United States, but an unreachable sum for our poor members.
An easy
solution will come to mind for most of you.
We could fund the total costs out of our reserves or, if we wanted to
spread the expense, could fund it with our own monies together with modest
contributions from family and friends.
It would be easy to raise the money, knowing the generosity of friends
back home.
But the
easy solution ends up being a bad one for the members, even if it is simple for
us, represents a quick fix, and may make us feel good. The problem is that undermines the teaching of
important principles that many Africans, including Church members, have yet to
learn fully. The Church is working hard
to teach the African members the importance of self-reliance—the skill of
standing on their own--so that they are not dependent upon gifts or loans from
senior missionaries, aid from NGOs, handouts from Westerners. Instead, they are to look to their own
resources, working with what they have at hand, to make ends meet. That way they can stand on their own, in the
months and years to come, without external aid or crutches. By solving their own problems, through
initiative, hard work and resourcefulness, they will develop the skills and
aptitude requisite to becoming and staying independent. And as they do so, they will acquire feelings
of independence, develop a pride in hard work and obtain a sense of
self-worth.
The Church
recognizes self-reliance is a skill that must be taught and is in the process
of implementing a major program throughout all of Africa, available to Church
members and others as well, teaching the basic skills people need to master to
stand on their own—budgeting, distinguishing between basic needs and wants,
learning to save a portion of one’s income (however modest it may be), learning
to “invest” in oneself through education and training. The program also includes materials to help
participants continue their education, get a job or start a new business. Learning these skills is the ultimate solution
to Africa’s poverty. While the task may
seem daunting, there are enough local resources in Blantyre, if harnessed and
properly put to use, to improve dramatically the quality of life here. Hard work, initiative, budgeting, investment,
and shrewdness are the qualities that must be harnessed. The weather in Blantyre is close to being
perfect—almost everything grows here—with diligence and sweat, it could be transformed
into the Garden of Eden
Still
floods, earthquakes, devastating rains, and other natural disasters call for
short-term solutions, to address the critical, and immediate, needs of shelter,
food and water. The challenge the Church
faces is to care for the poor and needy in their distress, without undermining
the core principles of self-reliance that the Church is so urgently trying to
teach. How is it possible to help out
without making Africans aid dependent, undercutting the urge to work hard (why
work if it will be given to you), or destroying the personal discipline one
needs to invest and save for the future.
Why should an Africa work or invest or save, if Westerners (whether the Church
or others) always are around to bail them out when they have unexpected
crises.
There is an
undeniable irony here that is hard to ignore: when aid is given to those who are
already self-reliant and hardworking and self-disciplined, one does not worry
about the effect of giving the aid upon those receiving the help. The act of charity is precisely that--an act
of charity—a blessing to the recipient at the same time it is a reward to the
one showing compassion. No one thinks
that the recipient of the aid, after it is received, will be any less hard
working, independent, self-motivated, or prudent. The aid is nothing more than a bridge to span
what is seen as an unexpected, but short-term, gulf in one’s journey through
life. On the other hand, when aid is given to those
already aid-dependent, or lacking discipline, or prone to laziness, the receipt
of aid may have a corrosive effect upon the ones being helped, causing them to
be more dependent, and less able to fend for themselves. It is perverse that it is easier to help
those who need less help, and more challenging to help those who need help the
most.
Our local Church
leaders struggled to find the correct balance: teaching correct principles of
personal responsibility, while at the same time demonstrating compassion and
charity. After considerable thought and
prayer, the district presidency, and the four branch presidents, endorsed a
plan, to be implemented on a district wide basis, incorporating these key
elements.
First, Church
leaders had to come up with guidelines defining which members the Church would
assist. After discussion, there was
quick consensus. The Church should focus
on dwelling houses—not outbuildings--and should limit their assistance to those
members who owned their own homes, not those who were renting. The landlords of
the renters should be responsible for restoring rental homes and, if they
couldn’t or won’t, the members should move out of their current homes, even
then livable, into new rental homes. The
scope of the restoration was also defined.
The project should be confined to restoring, as nearly as possible, the
existing structure, using the current footprint to set the boundaries. The intent was not to use the Church’s funds
to expand or improve the homes. Everyone
agreed, however, to one qualification to this rule. The Church would use “fired bricks” for the
new construction, even if the home had previously been constructed using
“unfired bricks.”
The second
element of the plan dealt with the level of sacrifice that members
participating in the program would be asked to make. The sacrifice required was finally defined in
two ways: one financial, and other in terms of donated labor. With respect to money, each family should be
asked to contribute some money toward the rebuilding of their homes, however
modest that contribution might be. It
was not considered wise to establish a fixed percentage. Some of the affected members were extremely
poor and would be hard pressed to come up with any money for the project. In other cases, they were better off, and
could probably come up with 5% to 20% of the estimated material costs. So it was decided that the branch president
would first sit down with each family separately to review their finances and
to assess whether extended family members were in a position to help. Based on that assessment, the branch
president would determine the amount of money the family needed to raise before
getting financial support from the Church.
The family’s donation would need to be in hand, before the construction
began.
The branch
presidents thought teams of 6 to 8 men and/or women would be ideal for doing
the labor. Each team would need at least
one member who had experience in building homes of this type—laying the
foundation, building up the initial layers of bricks, getting the right mixture
of sand to cement, fixing the right plumb line.
Given that most homes are homemade, this requirement is easy to
satisfy. With teams of this size, single walls could be reconstructed with a day or two of labor,
and an entire house within a week, once all building materials were on
site. While families may not have money,
they certainly can work. The general
rule was that each assisted family should work, not only on the construction of
their own house, but also on at least three to four other homes. The branch presidents would also ask other
members to help provide labor, following the model of the early Mormon
pioneers, when they can together as whole communities to help one another in
building their barns and homes. The leaders thought this communal effort would
do much to knit the branch together.
As the plan
was being devised, the leaders worried about whether other members would become
envious of those being helped or would get unrealistic, and unhealthy,
expectations about the level of assistance they might receive in the
future. Members should stand on their
own and should look to their own resources, and those of their own extended
family, before asking the Church for help.
If they act prudently, and invest wisely, they will be blessed and
should, absent extraordinary events, be positioned to weather the adversities
they face. Even in this case, it should
be remembered that the families affected were in part at blame for their own
problems. Most had built their homes
without proper foundations, using unfired bricks and mortar with too much sand
to concrete. Had they been more patient
in the first place, their homes could have withstood the problems. Moreover, others, even with homes similarly
constructed, were able to screen their walls with large sheets of plastic on
the days of the worst weather and hence keep their walls standing upright,
despite the driving rain.
The members
whose homes survived the bad weather should not resent the help to be given to
the less fortunate. Their blessing was
that they were preserved. But the
members are still new in the Church, and envy, jealousy, pettiness, back biting
can still creep in. And, as mentioned before, the greatest risk was that of undermining the
members' understanding of the principle that they are responsible for
themselves and their own families and should not look to others for help. After much discussion, it was decided to
dedicate this past Fast Sunday to praying for and remembering the needy, asking
all members to be even more generous than normal in contributing their fast
offerings. President Chikapa spent time, both the Sunday before the fast, and the Sunday of the fast, explaining the role of fast offerings in the Church. He encouraged everyone to be more generous than usual when contributing fast offering, and to pray for the relief and comfort of those whose homes had been destroyed or substantially damaged. I thought he did a marvelous job and, as best I can tell, the Branch members have rallied around those most in need of help.
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