Baby Steps

On the last day of the Berkeley undergrad class “Global Poverty”, Professor Ananya Roy

spoke to some

500 students about the correlation between knowledge and confusion; confusion and inaction. The more that we learned about the history of aid and development, and the more aware we became of the dire need for basic “human rights” such as clean water, food, shelter from the cold and protection from warfare, the more we privileged students became frozen - not knowing what

to do, only that we need to do it. Ananya told us to act through our grayness, to act with as much awareness and wisdom as we could, but to act nonetheless.

Huge, scary, insurmountable questions abound in the field of development and aid. Questions like “is this money going to get past a corrupt and hungry go

vernment to a starving child?” or “will this clinic do any good if the funds run out in a year?”. I have always felt, though, that the only way to approach any big task, is in small pieces and the

first piece, for me, is a woman named Alice. When I was an intern working alongside her in Rwanda, Alice began, bit by bit to unfold her life story over African Tea on

Sunday afternoons. I have been back in the US for two years and it comes as no surprise that things in Kigali have not gotten any easier. School fees have increased and Alice needs help sending her two children to school. I am attempting to raise $500 to pay for Sandra and Ivan’s tuition for one year.