immuno-intelligence

When she came to the door yesterday the young woman with the badge that read 'In Training' wanted me to sponsor a child for World Vision. Since the moment she walked away with a happy expression on her face and a spring in her step I haven't been able to live with myself.

It was like she knew I wasn't the person I tell people I am the entire time she spoke with me. In the dull tones that I gave her, in my refusal to even touch the brochure with the picture of a happy young lad she had proffered to me, I gave away the essential, tight-fisted, and ultimately, lamentable me.

Silently, I even questioned the value of going into a developing nation and teaching people for which there may be no economic opportunity. Maybe waves of immigration to my country will follow from putting expectations in someone's head who can not possibly capitalize on any of them. The gulf would exist between the educated and their ability to use what they know within a system that doesn't operate the way it is 'expected'. A new intelligentsia following blindly the dominance of market capitalism with an iron rule.

Would I be funding sustained development or would I be putting some future oligarchy into power? An entire nation into the hands of capable and experienced corporate raiders who would carve out resources as 'cost effectively' as possible and flood markets with 'inexpensive' goods.

How could I be sure that my investment would guarantee human rights, honest wages, pollution control or any of those things I can barely expect from my own countrymen? Shouldn't my money go into educating the powers-that-be in my sphere in how to manage something they barely understand themselves?

Predictably, these are the paltry pseudo-intellectual arguments I have against spending my money to save a child from a life of squatting along the edges of a landfill. A landfill that represents the only economic opportunity for the families of children who must perform a job usually reserved in my country for multiple repeat offenders on parole. The difference here is that here the parolee gets a full range of protective gear, two fifteen-minute breaks, a half-hour lunch and occasional access to the bulldozer.

-- garbage may make money as long as you are willing to risk status --