A mother with 27-year-old disabled son on her back, their hardships will continue until it’s time for one of them to pass away. I saw them at a support supply distribution center among victims of the use of defoliant during the Vietnam War. The mother and the son cannot hide, but rather have to “expose” their appearances to remain eligible to receive support supplies, i.e. “food” to survive. It was rather obvious that they were not exposing themselves because they liked doing so; they had to do it just to survive.
When the extent of those who must expose their private struggles so that they can receive a means for them to survive grows to be large enough, the need for a role of “coordinator” emerges and becomes an indispensable role. Among such coordinators, there are almost always “bad apples”, who try to live off of being such coordinators by raking in fat profit margins. It’s easy to condemn such immoral coordinators; however, they are an important figure, and maybe the only such figure, for those whose lives are filled with numerous hardships in poverty while enduring usual and constant bias and prejudice from other classes of a society. In short, they must appreciate the work done by their coordinators, however unethical they may be, so that they can survive. Again, it’s easy to look only at what’s obvious on the surface and criticize those immoral go-betweens as corrupted. Yet, it’s imperative to deal with the situation at hand calmly and objectively to substantiate the intertwined, delicate and usually subtle balance of various forces, obvious and less obvious alike. When “such coordinators” are government- or NGO- contractors, they already are compensated by the organizations and they should be deplored for their despicable behaviors to take advantage of the vulnerable; however, it’s also true that if you try to get things done in a proper way and by the proper way only, you may be hindered by numerous obstacles, and you may never be able to get done what you aim to achieve. For anybody who play a leadership role in humanitarian aid effort, any experience that lead them to accept the harsh reality and develop this kind of perspective, or in other words accept “the tacit agreement”, is not only helpful but often essential. An old proverb, “No fish is seen in a river with clear water” is such a clever wisdom that seems to stand true today.
After all and in a way, the act to provide humanitarian support is for me to learn “how the world works” and to reflect upon myself. And the money it takes to continue various support activities and initiatives is like a tuition for invaluable experiences and life lessons I can gain. I used to feel distracted by my own thinking filled with words like “How miserable!”, “How horrible!”. I also have felt defeated when I realized I could not share their sufferings or comfort their sorrows…. Over the years, I have had to realize, face and overcome my naiveté so that I can focus on keeping doing what I need to be doing in the way I can and by the best way I can, partly so that I can endure to continue endeavoring to help the vulnerable while they continue to persevere in every way possible.
While the example mentioned above is from Vietnam, circumstances in Laos or Cambodia are not so much different. I’ve seen a group of tourists from abroad to visit care facilities as a part of sightseeing tour to see a singing and dancing show for about an hour, performed by disabled children, among whom some are quite heavily disabled. And child performers were trained to ask for donations at the end of the show. I’ve witnessed similar occasions in Mongolia and Bangladesh. At an orphanage in Mongolia, even little children were taught how to say words like pencils, notepads, medicine, clothes, etc. in Japanese so that they can ask for donations of specific items to tourists that come and visit their facility as part of a sightseeing tour. Some kids were even able to do so in French and English. Near the border with Myanmar in Bangladesh, I once visited a care facility for heavily disabled people. The facility was quite well built and equipped by the local standards, and it had a quite a nice website of its own which solicits donations from all over the world. However, when I visited the facility, I so happened to find out that disabled people from the surrounding neighborhood were called in to gather at the facility before a pre-arranged visit by benefactor(s).
Even though the facility was donated by a Japanese humanitarian organization, it had not been in use and it sat empty. Only when benefactors or prospective sponsors were scheduled to come and visit, “the show” was put on. I so happened to find out the truth as we visited the facility on a different day by mistake from when it had been originally scheduled. When a group of local men gathered to find out what was going on and what we were doing in their community, we could not help feeling a peculiar sense of hostility from them, and we decided to leave as if fleeing from a danger. It is suspected that “the show” was an important source of income for the community. By the way a usual source of income for families in this region is “sex chat” by wives and/or girl(s), as approved by their husbands or the head of the family, so that they can maintain a certain level of livelihood. This topic may be elaborated and posted in future….
In a way, “coordinators” may appear fraudulent and should be treated as criminals. However, by what and how should they be judged as criminals? In a way, they are simply doing what they can so that not only they, but their community members can also survive. From their viewpoint, they do not understand how and why donors and supporters feel “cheated” or “disgusted” by their behaviors. On the contrary, it might be because these benefactors are drowned in a tendency to evaluate too highly of themselves for having done something charitable, further endorsed by a self-induced and vivid imagination of how their contributions should be used and how it should lead to benefit the receiving communities, and this may be why certain benefactors feel betrayed if and when they are struck by the reality.
Practitioners of Theravāda Buddhism, a branch of Buddhism commonly practiced in Southeast Asia, do not express their gratitude to donors. I’m writing this article at a hotel in Bangladesh, and I’m watching a news on TV. The news is allocating so much time to report on Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, and even when each refugee is given 500 BDT (Note: BDT is the Bangladeshi taka, the currency of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh; 500 BDT is equivalent to approx. US$6.0), nothing changes in their facial expressions among all the refugees, i.e. no expression of gratitude or joy despite having been given an amount of money….
Then I remembered what I was told and taught by a Buddhist monk: “Even to think that I have done a good deed is a bad deed, and therefore, an act of appreciating or expressing a sense of gratitude is not encouraged in order not to trigger such an evil thinking.” I wonder whether the same, or a similar philosophy exists in the teachings of Islam. While we are encouraged to express our gratitude and a sense of appreciation quite vividly and explicitly with big smiles, tight handshakes and/or embracing hugs in the western cultures, the definition of appreciation itself is contrastingly different.
After all, I cannot help wondering what the difference might be between what these coordinators are doing, i.e. helping residents in a community so that they can maintain a level of livelihood, and what churches and temples are doing, i.e. collecting donations to care for orphans and children. They both issue receipts for donations and they both send out Thank You cards. Red Cross also sends out a standardized Thank You letter, regardless of the amount of a donation, and also in the Thank You letter is a step-by-step instruction and a return envelope for the next time.
While issuing a receipt for a donation and sending out Thank You cards afterwards seems to be a proper way by our standards and expectations, how are they different from all other individuals who so happen to exist and live outside of the reach of these organizations and whose job is to “solicit donations” just to survive? For example, how different is a person who cannot walk on his own to have to beg passersby for their compassion and donations on busy streets in a city so that the person can survive yet another day? How different from those coordinators, churches or temples is a blind person who is led by his wife or his child to a safe area of a busy street so that he can sing to earn however amount of compassion he can collect for his family? A young mother carrying a baby with an empty baby bottle in her hand and a broken brick in the other hand is walking in and out of slow-moving traffic of cars, buses and motorbikes while challenging drivers and passengers a choice between the two, albeit silently but with such a dire but fiercely strong determination in her eyes to survive another day. Another mother with a disabled child on her back is not as aggressive as the young mother with a baby; nonetheless, her determination and diligence to keep knocking on the windows of cars and buses to ask for spare coins is as strong and on the edge as the young mother with an empty bottle and a brick.
When I was visiting an area in Bangladesh where the people of a lower social class lived, I witnessed a person (of whom I could not even guess his age) without forearms (up to the elbows) and without legs (amputated at above the knees closer to the pelvis) “placed on a cart” begging for tangible compassions from passersby. On a different occasion, I found a naked baby placed on a busy crossroad in a business district in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. The baby was surely alive, as the baby’s arms and legs were moving, all the while passersby kept walking around the baby, seemingly without any hesitation. The person without his limbs on a cart or the baby placed on a city street or men hiding around a corner, keeping eye on the amount of donations to collect without it being stolen, are all helping each other to survive another day of their lives while playing the part they can perform. In developed nations, the disabled person would be admitted to a care facility and the baby would first be taken to a hospital immediately, while the unscrupulous men would be brought before a court of law. Nonetheless, there still exist many regions and countries where the application of such moral standards is not commonly respected, accepted or even established as a law.
As the primary purpose of our humanitarian support activities is to help the people that we have identified to be deserving of our help, we continue to work with local “coordinators” as long as we don’t find their intentions to be utterly evil. While this does not at all mean we have approved of all their decisions and their choice(s) of behaviors, we must remind ourselves of the proverb, “No fish is seen in a river with clear water” from time to time so that we can continue with our mission.
Given a meaning of the proverb “No fish is seen in a river with clear water” per our understanding, we not only assume a possibility that some amount of rice and cooking oil we donate will be re-sold in a local market but also acknowledge that it’s neither a prohibited or an ashamed conduct by the locals. For example, when I visited Nepal soon after the devastating earthquake, I started to see more bags of rice donated by the United Nations on the front of local stores as I got nearer to the epicenter area of the quake. It was obvious that those bags of rice had been resold after having been donated. Moreover, you could not help but notice after the earthquake that styles in fashion among women in nearby cities were different from the styles of their traditional attires. It turned out to be that most, if not all, of the used clothes donated from all over the world for the residents of villages in the mountains in the hardest hit area were sold in nearby cities for money by the eligible recipients of donated clothes because the villagers in the mountains wore their traditional attires only, and they valued the donated clothes as something that could be exchanged for money, which they needed the most. The thought process was basically the same for the bags of rice donated and then resold.
There are still many regions in the world where not only traditions and cultures, but the moral standards of socially accepted conduct and the quality of living standards are totally different from the developed nations with welfare state systems. When I was far less experienced, I wanted to prevent an act of resale because I thought it would only defeat the aim of the cause, i.e. to help the needy. In fact, there were times when I donated only used pens, used pencils so that the items donated would not be re-sold. I even made sure that medical supplies were opened before being donated. It didn’t occur to me then that used pens or pencils were eatable and a pack of instant ramen noodle was more desired. Looking back, I must admit that those days were of my adolescent phase as a humanitarian support activist.
What is somewhat disappointing is that there are so many people with their narrow range of common sense and moral standards who so easily evaluate and judge the results and efforts of those who diligently devote themselves to humanitarian support activities while pondering and continuing to seek answers for the gaps of the ideal world we wish to be in and the reality we are all part of.
AHAN Nippon Kan has been doing Monthly Meals Service to the homeless in Denver for the past 27 years. While we had worked with a reputable support facility with a long history to offer free meals on a monthly basis for 20 years, we decided to leave the facility for a change 7 years ago. While the facility offered a safe place to sleep and meals for homeless people, I came to a revelation that there were so many organizations with so many full-time jobs which all relied on the homelessness for their source of income and livelihood. When I was struck with a conundrum that organizations with full time jobs whose mission was to help the homeless and alleviate the suffering of homeless people were in a way taking advantage of the homelessness to validate their existence, I needed to reflect and implore for a change, and that was 7 years ago. For the past 7 years, we have been offering free meals in an alleyway behind a church. Unlike before, we serve the meals outside, regardless of weather condition of the day when we serve free meals. For those who would like a free meal have to stand in line on a sunny, windy, rainy, or snowy day until AHAN Nippon Kan volunteers do the set up and get ready to start serving meals. While AHAN Nippon Kan is helped by the cooperation of a church to allow us to use the alleyway as the place to serve free meals on a monthly basis, there is not any ulterior motive from either side for the monthly event to have to take place in the alleyway. Yet, it’s also worth to mention rather as a disclaimer that both organizations may still, rather intangibly, benefit from the fact that both organizations are fostering a good deed on a monthly basis.
As I have been through various experiences in offering humanitarian support activities to many organizations while working with so many different groups of people with so many different backgrounds and values, “the meaning of providing humanitarian support activities” has evolved in me. Today, even a thought of “Why?” no longer emerges in my head, let alone adjectives like “miserable” or an emotion like “I want to help better their lives.” I have seen a young charity organization and its members to distribute a modest size of sandwiches to needy people with flamboyant enthusiasm. After having done the job of charity, they gathered in a circle and started singing a song as if explicitly praising a great achievement they have just attained. I went through this phase of a growth curve as a humanitarian support activist and an advocate for providing support for the homeless over 20 years ago.
When a homeless man complained and told me to add more chicken, he reasoned by yelling, “You can do this only because we are here.” I thought, “The world is still an interesting place.”, and I took it as a lesson as well as a reason and a confirmation to continue this monthly initiative.
Once a dojo student of mine with a relatively long tenure at Nippon Kan said to me, “Because they are fed for free, they don’t get a job. They would be dead if not for the irrelevant use of tax money.” After all, the world is still an interesting place where I should remain as a humble student to continue learning. By the way, it’s been quite a long time since he left Nippon Kan.
When we were still at the old location, a student came to help serve the meals. It was her first time to help the monthly event, and when she saw homeless people eating their free meal in a cafeteria, she became quite emotional and burst in tears. While I understood her feeling that broke her heart and made her cry, it was rather homeless people who probably wanted to cry for the circumstance they were in than herself who was leading a comfortable lifestyle compared to that of homeless people. While such a strong emotion may drive a person’s conviction to continue lending her/his hand to a charitable cause, she never came back to help the monthly event again. Again, the world is still an interesting place.
It takes much help from many volunteers to offer over 300 free meals every month. While DOMO restaurant donates the ingredients, it still costs me about $500 per month for the monthly event as I’m the owner/chef of the restaurant. And it’s also worth a mention that an hourly rate of my time to cook the meals is also a form of donation. To me, it’s all worth it for invaluable life-lesson opportunities. It is in a way like paying tuition for invaluable lessons you cannot get anywhere else.
“Although described in a beautiful way with convincing words, it’s only an act of self-promotion in the name of doing something charitable” was a comment by a former Consul-General of Japan in Denver. He went so far to share his personal view with not only the staffs at Consulate-General of Japan in Denver, but members of a local Japanese-American community in Denver. It was an act of name-calling and defamation on his part, and he was later convicted of an embezzlement to end up having to spend his later years quite miserably. Again, the world is still an interesting place.
I need to make sure that I mention that there are many, many humanitarian support organizations that are properly managed while abiding by the legitimacy of process and procedures that they must adhere to. What I’ve described in this column is an outline of a gray area that still prevails but in which less legitimate humanitarian organizations can still function for their beneficiaries who otherwise may only be destined to struggle more just to survive another day.
As any conduct in any gray area cannot be trusted wholly or blindly, AHAN Nippon Kan always conducts a thorough investigation before deciding on a commitment of supporting any organization. I am almost always actively involved with a decision-making process by visiting each and every one of target organizations firsthand as well as on an ongoing basis. When I cannot do a follow-up visit on a timely basis, AHAN Nippon Kan has a network of local staffs to keep a tab on making sure that the integrity of our support activities remains valid and not compromised.
This column is based mostly on my experiences in Asian countries since AHAN Nippon Kan has decided to focus on providing humanitarian support activities in this region of the world. Currently, Central and South American countries are not identified as target regions of AHAN Nippon Kan’s initiatives for the reasons that may be discerned relatively easily.
Although I am becoming a Budo-ka with more noticeable effects of aging as I have turned 67 years of age, there still seems to be countless number of things to learn in the world.
Although my last name in Japanese literally means “a place of books (e.g. a library, a study) and my first name “to learn”, it feels as though I cannot help getting out in the real world to continue learning!
NOTES: Readers’ understanding of this editorial thought process below is appreciated.
In this column, the writer decided to report on cases that he would rate on the bad half on the spectrum of “Best to Worst”. And it should be clarified to the readers that not all the organizations, that AHAN Nippon Kan support and regularly work with, are like the organizations that are mentioned and discussed in this column.
While AHAN Nippon Kan has worked with and continue working with various different organizations in different countries with varied levels of expertise and capabilities, the author hopes that this column will shed light on the side of humanitarian efforts AHAN Nippon Kan undertakes that may not have been so obvious, easily seen or understood, as there is always something sensitive, inexplicable and complicatedly intertwined about providing humanitarian support activities, for it touches regional, religious, tribal and historical aspects of human lives.
The uses of certain words, phrases and descriptions in this column have been carefully reviewed prior to the posting of this column with an aim to inject a certain level of realism in a written account of the writer’s firsthand experiences. While striking a balance by choosing to use less controversial words, phrases and descriptions would have been an easier path, a decision was made against unnecessarily sugarcoating the writer’s accounts of events.
AHAN Aikido Nippon Kan
Founder & Kancho Gaku Homma
Near Cox Bazar in Southeastern Bangladesh