What would you do?
Just remembered a lecture from a long time ago.
Assume you are an aid worker somewhere in Africa.
One night, you hear hurried footsteps followed by rapping at your door. You open the door to find a young women carrying her babies. She pleads for you to listen to her story.
She tells you she has had the misfortune of having twins. Her village elders will kill both of her children if they ever found out. She needs your help to figure out which baby to get rid of.
What do you do? (Be as creative and as elaborative as you deem necessary.)
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she isn't overjoyed at the possibility of keeping both children? she is so stubborn she would stick to her original idea of killing one? fine. since there aren't really any ways of judging which life could be worth more at that point, it's just a 50/50. whether you kill the one she will never see again or raise it somewhere, it makes little difference to her. 1
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Yes. This would keep both children alive. It would also take quite a bit of your time and resources. You probably would need to explain this to your supervisor and terminate the aid work at that point. When you do put the child into the foster system, would you keep track of his/her status? If the child does not get matched, would you adopt the child as your own? I just wanted to point out the consequences of the decision. 1
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I would invite her to make a pact with me by pointing out that I won't tell her my problems if she doesn't tell me hers. In the biggest money sponge in the world, being Africa, hard luck stories abound in the 1000s every day. If anyone was sufficiently stupid to offer assistance under such circumstances the jungle press would spread the news in seconds and the foolish Good Samaritan would have bongos around their door like flies round the brown stuff on a hot day. We're bombarded with pathetic advertisements showing sick and dying Bongo children in the hope that the well rehearsed images will pluck the heart strings of the gullible and they'll send their hard earned dosh to the cause so the directors can spend the summer in the Cote de Azure. Aid workers are not required to respond to every hard luck story to which they are subjected. Your most improbable scenario could, and almost certainly would, incur unnecessary problems and impede the achievement of the overall goals of the aid organization of which your dumb worker is only one of a team. For instance, if the Bongo chief and/or the tribe's witch doctors heard of the aid organization's interference in their customs and practices then any unilateral action by an individual aid worker could have the shrunken heads of their work comrades dangling from the spear of the chief Bongo. At best such a situation should be referred to the senior management team for a professional and collective decision and not left to the arbitrary whims of some sanctimonious individual. Insofar that it is not at all appropriate for meddling aid workers to interfere with the traditions and conventions of the native population my first post was the correct line to adopt. Aid workers are not required to respond to every hard luck story to which they are subjected. No one is asking you to respond to every situation. The purpose of this debate is to respond to this situation. You are pushing your own agenda onto this debate instead of actually responding to it. Your most improbable scenario could, and almost certainly would, incur unnecessary problems and impede the achievement of the overall goals of the aid organization of which your dumb worker is only one of a team. Actually, it did happen. It was a lecture on tough decisions faced in real life and how to assess emotional situations objectively. If you think life always turns out how you want it to, then you have not been living life. Insofar that it is not at all appropriate for meddling aid workers to interfere with the traditions and conventions of the native population my first post was the correct line to adopt. If you read the description, there is nothing to suggest that you should meddle. That is left up to you. Again. Stop with the confirmation bias. Your agenda is affecting your reading comprehension. Listen you scum sucking pig, this is an open forum and designed to be a platform on which people can express their opinions. Dirt balls like you will not stop me from responding to any issue about which I have an opinion. If my opinion doesn't agree with your shallow thinking then that's hard shit son. Now go and yodel up the canyon. Were you always stupid or did you fall off a ladder recently and land on your nut? I have already stated my opinion that I feel it would be wrong for one individual to make a decision independently of the team management in case of jeopardizing the wider and long term aims of the aid organization. In other words the individual should have told the mother to return to her village and abide by the established traditions of her tribe. There is no room for emotional decisions in such circumstances and the aid worker as well as her colleagues have no right in interfering with the customs of the indigenous populations of any nation. Aid workers, missionaries and all the other sanctimonious charities try to apply western standards in situations about which they know little or nothing, usually with devastating consequences as we have witnessed in Iraq and Libya. Once more I state; my initial response was the correct solution. It's P.R. fools like you who have the Bongos feeling persecuted and sorry for themselves. I'm Irish and am referred to as a 'Paddy' or a 'Mick'. The ''Yanks' call the English 'Limies'. A Welshman is referred to as 'Taffy' a Scotsman as 'Jock', a Frenchman as a 'Frog' a German as a 'Crout' and so forth. None of these groups take exception to their 'pet' names so why should the Bongos. A Bongo is a Bongo whether they're in Africa or Detroit. |