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Why It's Time to Dismantle USAID: My...
Right Away
 Yesterday at 07:43 pm
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I had unforgettable moments dealing with USAID, and they were not positive. All of us who work with the less fortunate learn the adage that we are to teach men to fish and get out of the business of giving them fish and pretending that we are helping. My response to that adage had an exception. “Unless you are USAID, of course.” When I learned of the recent recommendation to dismantle that organization, my response was immediate. “Duh! This is decades overdue.” When I served in the late 1980s, I would always stop what I was doing and turn my head when I heard a vehicle coming. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I found it uncommon to see motor vehicles on any road in Nepal. Entire weeks would pass without ever seeing a car, truck, or Jeep. Private individuals did not own cars in the Dang Valley, where I lived and worked for two years. The sound of a car engine always made me look up to see who it was. Yet, when I got passed by a vehicle on the dirt roads where the rest of us walked or rode bicycles, the most common decal on the side was USAID. They used Jeeps and sported a dedicated driver who I later discovered was paid more than a High School Principal with a Masters Degree. During those rare moments when I hitched a ride in the back of one, I learned that they carried spare fuel containers in case they had a meeting with someone of influence who needed some. If you needed fuel, you were certainly in the top 1% of all Nepalis. That was, I later learned, the primary group that USAID served. My experience with USAID wasn’t limited to their jeeps. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I remember visiting one of their employees who lived in the nearby town of Tulsipur, about two hours from my village. He had been in the country as long as I had and knew some of the language, but not much more than was needed to say hello, get his hair cut, and order a traditional Nepali meal of rice and lentils at a shack on the side of the “highway.” He was serving in Nepal as an agricultural consultant; it was ironic to learn that he didn’t know the difference between the words garlic and onion. My strongest memory of my meeting with him was my experience walking into his house. He lived south of Tulsipur in what I would call a castle. In US Terms, it was probably a 2000-square-foot home, but it looked like Anywhere, USA once we entered. He had carpeting, a dishwasher and a large refrigerator (with not a whole lot inside of it). When I asked him where he got that, he told me that USAID gave him an allowance to get Western goods delivered to Tulsipur as part of the “hardship” of serving outside of the United States. I don’t remember how I asked him how much it cost to get a fancy frig sent to the middle of the Himalayas, but I do remember his answer. He rolled his eyes and said, “You don’t want to know. More than a Peace Corps Volunteer makes in a year, for sure.” Nepal is a Himalayan country. It is landlocked and is famous for 6 of the 10 largest mountains in the world. The country was destitute by all measures. When I lived and served there, per capita annual GDP was something like $150. The country had no real exports. Tourism and mountaineering were the primary sources of foreign currency, outside of development dollars, mostly from the US. I worked on a project called the PEP-Primary Education Project. My job was to educate primary school teachers in modern educational methods. The issue was that the teachers didn’t want to learn new ways. They were happy with the old ways. As such, we had to encourage them to attend training. Someone at USAID had a brilliant idea that personifies how the agency operates. USAID paid them a stipend greater than they would make as classroom teachers in order to come to one of our trainings. Once the training was complete, it was my job to visit them back in their places of work and encourage them to use what they had learned in the training. When I began my conversation with them about the teaching methods they learned, I asked them to recall what they remembered of that week in training. The most common first reply was a statement of gratitude about their bonus for attending the training. Few, though, could remember more than a single point from the 5-day curriculum the trainer covered. During our Peace Corps training, we learned how other organizations worked in the areas where we worked. It was like Walmart employees being told about Target. The Brits had an equivalent organization called VSO, as did the Japanese. Yet, by far, the biggest source of cash inflow into the country was USAID. I don’t remember how much money it was, but it was something like ten times the amount that the Peace Corps spent, but both organizations had the same number of employees. Interesting. Over the years, I asked many of the people whom I worked with inside the local and state governments about USAID. No one knew anyone by name, nor had they ever stepped inside the man's house in Tulsipur. One winter, I decided to take some classes to get better at Hindi. My Nepali was excellent, but I needed some help for those moments when I would hire Indians to do work. I was referred to a young married woman, and I met with her every morning for three weeks. It was helpful. Her house in Kathmandu was huge. One morning, in Hindi, I asked her how she could afford a palace like this one. She said, “my husband. He works for your USAID. They will never miss it.” She was right. They had been in that house for ten years, and USAID never missed the money that he skimmed off of a construction project to build a palace for himself and his family. Once I heard the announcement that USAID was going away and gave my quick “Thank God” speech to my friends, I looked up the current financial situation for USAID in Nepal. According to fiscalnepal.com, the US Government provided money to 176 nations via USAID in 2023, and little Nepal was the 16th largest recipient on that list. The largest project in the country is called MCC. It has a $700M budget. Of that, the US is contributing $500M. That equates to $16 USD per Nepali citizen just for that project. That is just one project in one country. On my last visit to Nepal, I spoke to elected officials and leaders within the education community. No one had ever seen a penny of MCC money reach the local community. No one had ever had a visitor to come and see what the problems might be, nor did anyone other than Peace Corps types ever show up and try to learn their language. And there are 175 other countries getting money from USAID, each with its own experience where the people yearn for help and assistance. Our response to send money via USAID, and the rest is a mystery. My experiences are from a single country that I have repeatedly visited over the last four decades, but I am sure I am not alone in my conclusion. I would have written the recommendation and testified before a congression committee pro bono. USAID’s collapse will not be felt as we are being told. I already called one Nepali congressman, and he doesn’t anticipate the impact of hitting his budget until October, as his coffers are already filled. We need an organization that works with those in need, using skilled people who are culturally sensitive to their needs. We don’t need to carry around gas cans to fill the tanks of the rich or build monuments that don’t make a difference to the average man. Let’s fire everyone and start over. Those who start over need to be skilled in language and culturally sensitive to the needs of people who live abroad. This has been a waste of epic proportions.

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