One of the very first photographs I took when we arrived at our language learning location in the village of Kangirisae was a scene of free relief food bags piled high in the middle of the village. It was printed in our first prayer newsletter from the field over 7 years ago.
Not much has changed.
Yesterday I traveled through the villages along the Kerio River to take medicine and a repaired motorcycle out to the CMF medical clinic in Nakaalei. It was food distribution day. In some ways, food distribution days are good if you want a chance to meet with people and you don’t have lots of time to find them—everyone is at the food distribution. All along my 10-hour trek yesterday, World Vision was distributing food in all the villages on the same day (a recent practice that keeps people from traveling from village to village to collect food—as many are on the roster in different villages under different names… but that’s a whole other story).
In most ways, free food distribution in Turkana reminds me of how much work there still is to do in Turkana. Free food is one symptom of the disease called “dependency” that has spread all over Turkana. Free food has been distributed off and on in Turkana for over 20 years. It is a part of their culture. It is all most young people have ever known.
If your family is hungry and there are things you could do about it, but you know that your family will be receiving 300 pounds of free food the next week, what do you do? You wait for the food.
If you are a small shop owner in a rural village trying to make a living by selling food and basic necessities to the community, and World Vision drops 10,000 pounds of food in the middle of your village, what do you do? You close your shop and loose all the capital you spent on the last food you bought for the shop. No one will buy your food when food is given for free—and it will all go bad by the time the relief food runs out.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not opposed to giving food to those who are starving. People were starving in Turkana in the 80’s. Free food was essential then. There was another time in the 90’s when things were really bad. Help was needed. But not now. What are the long term consequences of handing out food to people for over 20 years?
So much of what we are trying to do in Turkana is build up a church that is not dependant on outside support. To enable church leaders to face and deal with the real needs in their communities in locally appropriate ways. The mindset that free food instills undermines so much of our efforts.
Free food has become a cycle that seems unbreakable here in Turkana. Some very wealthy, influential people make lots of money transporting free food in their trucks. Relief organizations cannot raise money if there are not places to distribute lots of food. Those who work for relief organizations no longer have jobs if they assess that an area no longer needs free food. An entire generation of young Turkana have little desire to try and make a difference, or would even know how—the free food is coming.
Please pray with me about the difficulties of dependency and free food here in Turkana. Pray that the cycle will be broken; that instead of giving out free food, efforts and resources will be used to enable people to deal with the problems in their communities. Pray that God will work through His church in Turkana to bring about change. Pray for us a missionaries to know which injustices we can be vocal about.
Please pray…
Kip