40 Chances

by Howard G. Buffett

  The section of our fence that faced the Koevoet “camp,” as many called it, was in an area with a lot of trees. The fence was high because it enclosed the preserve. We needed to keep people out, and cheetahs and other game in. Cheetahs are not great tree climbers because their claws are built for traction to give them speed on the ground. However, it is not good to have trees bridging both sides of the fence, as cheetahs will sometimes jump up onto low branches and could conceivably escape—or foolish people could easily climb in and be injured or killed. We also wanted some distance cleared for a firebreak, as lightning fires are common in the grasslands of southern Africa called the veldt.

  Therefore, we began removing trees along the fence line following the road. We were paying attention to the spacing of the trees because we wanted to keep an enclosed feel to the fenced-in areas. We ended up removing dozens of trees, and so I had our property manager offer the cut-up wood from the trees to the Koevoet people, to use for cooking and heating. I thought it would help them, and we did not have a use for the wood. I felt it would demonstrate our intentions as a good neighbor.

  The Koevoets, happy to receive the wood, carted it off and burned it. A few months later several men from the group approached our property manager and said they wanted more wood. Sorry, he told them, we’ve cut down all the trees we planned to. We need to keep the rest for the animal habitat. “But you have so many trees inside,” the man from the delegation responded. “You have plenty of trees.” We need them to stay up, our guy responded. We aren’t going to give you any more wood right now.

  Not long after, our property manager drove out to the road and found stumps all along the outside of the fence. The Koevoet men had gone away from the conversation peacefully enough—not happily but without obvious rancor. And then they just cut down the trees that they wanted on the outside of the fence. Our manager approached the representative and complained. “But you have plenty of trees inside the fence” was his answer. “You gave us trees before.”

  TIA. In many parts of Africa, the act of giving opens the door to expectations. If we had not offered the initial load of wood, the group probably would not have cut any trees. But once we did, an informal new relationship began, and the Koevoet members believed they had been given the sign that we wanted to continuously support them.

  What I did not mention earlier about the man I had helped with the flat tire is that out of frustration and a lack of time, I did not drive him back to his car to retrieve his wallet. Instead, I gave him a few dollars in local currency to purchase the repair kit. When I told our work foreman about that, he frowned and said I’d made a mistake. A month later the water pump in that worker’s car went out, and he asked me to replace it. He could not understand why I would help him with his tire but not continue to support his car’s maintenance.

  This attitude is sometimes mistakenly interpreted as people preferring handouts to working. I do not believe that. Once bags of food aid or other forms of assistance arrive, many African people in difficult situations adjust their views and believe it is the new way they will eat. It is a cultural response to new resources coming into their territory: “If you start feeding me, I will let you keep feeding me; and if you stop feeding me, I will demand to know why.” If one NGO is giving out food and seed, and another is saying, “We will train you to farm in a way that will deliver higher yields next year,” these farmers are likely to embrace the immediate resources. That’s understandable.

  In fact, the whole idea of charity and giving is not seen in many parts of the world the way that it is in the United States. Throughout our early years at Jubatus, I sensed a deep mistrust from many different people—including neighbors; professional, highly trained researchers; and local officials—regarding the idea that I was coming to Africa just to help cheetahs. This was its own form of TIA, in the sense that Africa has been exploited by foreigners for a very long time, and local people are wary of outsiders arriving with the stated reason of helping or contributing. In the United States, our tax code has so institutionalized the idea of giving that we generally treat it as common and desirable. In South Africa, for years we had trouble getting permits from local officials; we even sensed a lack of trust among our research staff regarding our intentions.

  These experiences have convinced me that to create sustainable solutions, we need to get local people on board much earlier in any process that involves new ways of operating. We recently ended a project with an NGO that was teaching sustainable farming techniques in an area of Liberia where a previous organization had distributed seed and fertilizer. The point of the program we were supporting was to teach farmers to develop their soil with animal manures and other techniques that did not involve giving away anything. The farmers came at first, but over time they drifted away.

  The problem was, the previous NGO group had set the expectation that foreign assistance consisted of dropping off bags of seed or fertilizer. Our partners did not take that into account in planning their program. Nor did they realize that the other organization had sort of poisoned the well in terms of a training package without aid attached. And so the money we spent did not change anything. In two years, nobody will remember that we were ever there. These discussions can make NGOs and others working in development nervous. But I am convinced that all the energy and good intentions in the world cannot trump cultural disconnects. To be effective, we have to ask questions of and listen to the people affected by what we want to do. Then we must engage them early in our planning and keep adjusting our approaches.

  Story 23

  What Does Doing Better Look Like?

  By Howard W. Buffett

  My father had his epiphany about life’s forty chances in a cold, drafty building filled with farm equipment at Sloan’s in central Illinois. Mine came on a steaming hot morning while I was touring a small village in Thailand about fifteen months after the devastating 2004 tsunami that killed over two hundred thousand people.

  I was twenty-two. I had finished my undergraduate work in political science and communications at Northwestern University, and I was pretty sure I wanted to go to law school. I also had traveled with my father in the developing world, and I wanted to focus my career on helping others. We had many conversations about development and aid projects that just did not seem to deliver on their promise. When I was in college, my father encouraged me to study the actual practices and structures of philanthropy and how it could be more effective, so I signed up for a yearlong program called the Philanthropy Workshop West, which taught the best practices of social change to individuals taking on new roles in philanthropy. For a dozen of us, the program included a trip to Thailand, where we focused on various environmental and humanitarian efforts.

  The Indian Ocean tsunami (or Boxing Day tsunami, as many called it) followed a major earthquake in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. It was one of the first major natural disasters to happen during the internet age. Because of the growing use of digital cameras and media sharing, people all over the world almost immediately witnessed the event secondhand through chilling photos and riveting amateur video. Thailand was a favorite winter vacation destination during the holidays, and many tourists were shooting footage from the balconies of beautiful resorts or other elevated spots that morning. They would be chattering about the weather or talking to their children about new Christmas toys while panning the pool area or the beach as unsuspecting tourists strolled or children played in shallow water. In so many videos, the first crush of high water hits the beach, followed by the massive wave that blasts through a scene that was orderly and calm just minutes prior. The water swallows people, screams erupt, and structures shatter into fragments of metal and wood. It happens so fast that many of those shooting video clearly are not even processing what is happening in their viewfinders.

  Much of the actual cleanup of the 2004 tsunami had been completed by the time I arrived in Thailand. I spent most of the program’s sessions in Phuket, where some dramatic wave f
ootage had been shot, although the actual damage and loss of life there were nowhere near as severe as in many other regions. For example, in the province of Aceh, Sumatra, 170,000 people perished. In villages near Aceh, the tsunami had destroyed as much as four-fifths of some towns. The death toll across fourteen countries, including Thailand, India, and parts of East Africa reached 230,000.1

  On my visit, I learned that countries committed billions of dollars to help the Thai people rebuild, and NGOs rushed in to help. In the immediate aftermath, tent cities sprang up, since thousands of homes had been leveled and their owners’ possessions washed away or destroyed. There were fears of contamination from the dead bodies and difficult sanitary conditions, although thankfully widespread disease largely did not materialize. Huge shipments of food aid were sent to the region through disaster relief efforts that fed over a million people in Thailand alone.

  The program in which I’d enrolled was trying to understand the lessons of the last fifteen months. We took a number of field visits to villages that had been rebuilt by NGOs. People were working diligently; the landscape was humming with activity. There I saw hardworking, sincere, devoted relief workers and NGO staffers still on the job. Their stated goal was a good one: to help the nation rebuild, and to protect the health and well-being of those who had survived that terrible disaster. There were some touching stories, and I heard about people who had showed great bravery during the crisis. I met a young woman from the United States who had been visiting Thailand with her fiancé over Christmas 2004. They were asleep in their hut when the waters hit. He was swept out to sea, and she never saw him again. She decided to stay in Thailand to help with the reconstruction; when I met her, she was serving as a counselor to those who lost loved ones, and I remain in awe of her courage and compassion.

  And yet I also had some disheartening conversations with local experts about the use of the resources that came pouring into Thailand. To me, the most troubling signs, literally, were the actual signs erected all over the villages we visited that promoted the involvement of different NGOs. In some towns, there were twenty-five or thirty homes, each one bearing a large, billboard-style sign or shiny plaque promoting the NGO that had helped reconstruct that village. There were more signs on the road on the way in and in public areas. I couldn’t help but think, “Really? They have so thoroughly restored this community that there are resources left over to advertise that? Couldn’t the money and the effort to erect signs have funded more resources for a clinic, or vaccines, or some agricultural assistance that ensured enough food for those who had been wiped out?”

  In Thailand, hundreds of signs like this advertising the sponsoring NGO went up even before construction of much-needed housing was complete. My aim isn’t to point fingers at any one organization, so I have obscured the name on the sign in this instance. Photo: Howard W. Buffett

  WINTER GARMENTS IN THE TROPICS?

  I also learned during our conversations with NGO experts, academics, and other local leaders that there was extensive wasted effort and disorganization in the early phases of the crisis—mostly the result of poor coordination. Containers of donated clothing had been shipped to Aceh, but it was heavy winter clothing. Thailand’s average daily temperature during its coolest season is 75 degrees. Other inappropriate or even damaged material was shipped to Thailand in the guise of aid as well. Earl Kessler, deputy executive director of the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center in Bangkok, stated in a report, “Response to this disaster was unprecedented. It has proven to be a blessing and a curse. It should never happen again that used winter garments, outdated medicines, and broken toys and other debris from donor countries be distributed to affected families as part of a ‘job well done.’ ”2

  One aggressive NGO came in, brought their plans from some other part of the world, and quickly began constructing two-story homes. The problem was: Thai people in the particular villages we visited don’t live in two-story homes. They were uncomfortable with the idea of moving upstairs. So they would rarely use the second stories—wasting 50 percent of the materials, labor, and living space in the house. Foreign workers and project managers also installed toilets inside some homes, expensive add-ons that would never be used because by custom these villagers never placed those facilities so close to their living quarters. In many phases of the tsunami response there was a dramatic disconnect between what the local people were used to or desired, and what NGOs (or in some cases, government officials) from outside the region had imposed. Consultation was minimal—or nonexistent. Imagine if in an American city devastated by a hurricane, a foreign aid organization came in and rebuilt an entire community using 220 volt wiring instead of the standard 120 volt?

  In a 2005 research paper from the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, the lack of local community participation was seen as a key theme across the entire region. “Across all areas studied,” said the paper, “survivors complained that decisions about relief, resettlement, and reconstruction aid were largely taking place without consultation with their communities, leading to frustration and despair.”3 Preexisting human rights problems, corruption, inequities in aid distribution, lack of coordination, and land development issues were among the other themes.

  The agendas of aid organizations also explained some of the bizarre advertising I saw in the Thai villages. Clearly, the publicity about the tsunami and the global response meant that NGOs were trying to both raise money based on the publicity about the situation and also show their donors a quick response and tangible contribution. However, one of the local disaster coordinators shared with us that in a couple of villages, local officials realized that some NGOs had more resources than they could deploy but were under pressure to demonstrate prompt action. So the villages conducted unspoken “auctions” of sorts, requiring cash under the table for the exclusive right to work in a particular village. Yes, that’s right: NGOs were bidding cash against one another for permission to be charitable.

  In turn, NGOs would bring major donors to these villages to talk with local leaders, who would reinforce the “tremendous impact” their donations were having on the victims’ lives. The donors felt good. The NGOs looked good. But the villagers? Well, I’m not sure exactly what the reality was beyond the “arrangement,” but while NGOs were competing to work in some areas, other victims received little or no assistance because they were out of the way or their village was not as politically visible or well connected. Eventually an NGO called Disaster Tracking Recovery Assistance Center (D-TRAC) was established specifically for the purpose of coordinating the activities of other NGOs, to try to spread the resources more equitably and more efficiently.

  As the Human Rights Center report noted, “While [NGOs] indicate that their primary responsibility is to those in need, in reality they answer to central officers far away who define the objectives and strategy.” Here’s a good example: a prominent NGO had promised to build homes, but a restriction in the organization’s worldwide operating procedures specified that it had to use specially certified wood—which could not be obtained in Thailand, particularly after the tsunami. Apparently, although other wood was available, the NGO focused on importing only this special wood. When the plan to do that became cost prohibitive, it announced that it could not build the structures after all.

  There were so many examples of interventions and intentions that seemed to miss the mark. In a journal I kept during the trip, I wrote, “I find it hard to understand how—if you’re building a set of homes for a community that just lost everything—you don’t get their approval for what you’re building before you build it.” It reminded me of a term I had heard my Uncle Peter use: “philanthropic colonialism.”

  After that visit, I was preoccupied with my frustration. I know that disaster response is by definition a reactive exercise. The benefits of sending in a variety of resources that you think you may need and that you can assemble quickly outweigh the risk of some waste or inefficient deployment. Af
ter a catastrophe, there is chaos and confusion, as communication structures and plans are formed. But this situation seemed to have gotten out of hand and stayed that way. People all over the world responded generously after the disaster, but then some organizations exploited that generosity by wasting resources. According to representatives from D-TRAC and other local groups, the corruption, inefficiencies, and posturing were still widespread even fifteen months later.

  Thailand raised some other issues about the traditional NGO model for me as well. My father and I had talked many times in different settings about the inevitable challenge of large NGOs that hit a certain scale. Having to fundraise means that the organization must show tangible progress even when working in complicated, difficult situations where improvements may not occur for some time. Thus, the tendency is to pick activities that are doable but will likely have less long-term impact, rather than evaluate what is needed so that there is something to show for the efforts. Showcasing one town that received world-class support, while other communities got little or no help, seemed to be a clear example of that.

  The more serious concern is that over time this approach tends to institutionalize narrow thinking. I focused on this thought: doing good does not excuse us from doing better.

  I can only hope that bidding cash for the right to provide charitable aid and then advertising that fact to foreign donors is as unusual as it is shameful. I suspect it occurs mostly in the kind of media fishbowl that develops following some high-profile, heavily covered disaster. However, trampling on local customs and norms because of ignorance or a lack of planning is not uncommon in aid projects around the world. In northern Kenya during a drought in 2000, food agencies ignored the fact that pastoralists’ diets consisted of meat, milk, and tea, and sent food aid in the form of maize. The result? The food was not eaten, and the immediate need remained unmet. In Mali, a friend of ours told us about one NGO that shipped in large numbers of sewing machines to try to help women who had been forced to prostitute themselves to survive. The NGO’s intentions were good. Unfortunately, Mali is located in the middle of a desert where fine sand is absolutely everywhere, and it quickly jammed up the mechanisms. Not only did the machines stop working but the women also became terrified that they would be blamed for breaking them.