The second act of This American Life's May 21st Episode (408: Island Time) resonates with a lot of the themes that I've been encountering and thinking about for my dissertation. The reporter, Apricot Irving, returns to the missionary compound in Haiti where she grew up, and she interviews some of the mentors and figures who remained in Haiti. Irving reports how in the decades since she has left, the missionaries have changed their methods from foreigners-in-charge to more local-led "community" or "capacity" building. In a revealing exchange between Irving and one of the missionary doctors Steve, Steve says that he had to make an either/or choice:
In the face of dysfunction, and in the face of extreme human need, what was required of me was to build a citadel, to become a dictator. And in that benevolent dictatorship, I could be the cowboy who could fix the problems, that would bring efficiency, service, and security. And what's wrong with that? Why not become a benevolent dictator?
The problem I found with that... was that model creates a new slave plantation mentality, where the slaves become dependent on the slave masters. And in the end one reaps the fruits of slavery -- discontent, anger, and violence.
The choice to then go to the other extreme, to purposefully work hard at not becoming a dictator... means that people are going suffer, people are going to die, goods will not be provided, services will not be rendered.
This conundrum also stood at the heart of a lot of the German missionary work I study, although the German missionaries were a lot less self-conscious of the cultural biases that they carried with them (although they were also obsessed with the idea of inculcating a slave-mentality and a spirit of dependence). The goal of transforming societies and communities on a larger-scale is slow and hard work, but the imperative of saving souls (literally and metaphorically) is one that requires immediate results.
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