CULTURE: Life in a Global Village

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, Apr 28 1998 (IPS) - Faith, hope and charity came together in Washington this week in a somewhat mawkish and misleading mix at the ‘Global Village’ – described by organisers as “a life-sized re-creation of living conditions among people from around the world.”

Sponsored by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) and the World Bank, the ‘Global Village’ featured a Masai kraal, a Southeast Asian stilt house, and a refugee camp, all set up on the city’s famous Mall, a grassy expanse bounded by the Washington Monument, the U.S. Capitol, and the museums of the Smithsonian Institution.

Visitors to the exhibit could wander through Totora reed houses from Lake Titicaca, the slum dwellings of a Brazilian favela, and the decrepit interior of a North American tenement – all authentically crafted by Hollywood set designers.

The Apr. 16-29 event, designed primarily to educate elementary school children, was staged at a cost of 350,000-400,000 dollars, according to Norma J. Sahlin, the project’s communications coordinator. Similar exhibits had been organised in California and Europe and the show is expected to travel to Toronto, Canada, in the year 2000.

Billed as a ‘Journey of Understanding’, the exhibit served merely to underscore the stereotype of the Third World as a place of many needs – needs best met by the event’s sponsors.

Many Third World children “live in small villages that are miles away from the city centres,” visitors to a display of pole, plank, and notched-pole suspension bridges were advised by a sign.

“Sometimes canals, rivers and streams are so wide and dangerous that villagers need a stronger, bigger bridge. When this happens, they work with an agency such as Adventist Development Relief Agency (ADRA) to make a bridge that will last a long time.”

Despite much hype in ADRA’s press materials about the ‘dignity’ of the poor, only one member of the army of dedicated volunteer guides spoke about how the poor – in this case, favela residents – “watch out for one another” during a two-hour tour of the Global Village. The guide, clearly well-meaning, nevertheless lacked any first-hand knowledge with which to illustrate her point.

Poverty and tradition often were confused, as when one Asian guide explained age-old food preparation and wrapping techniques thus: “We use leaves because we can’t afford plastic bags.” And while the exhibit focused on poor people’s lack of possessions (“They don’t have closets and they don’t have dressers,” visitors to the Southeast Asian stilt house were told), it offered no answer to a curious youngster’s question: “How come they’re poor?”

Poverty was treated as a given – the product of some law of nature. Lost in the appeal to “better the lives of others” was any discussion of means by which those improvements might be made to stick – for example, through fair trade arrangements, or by recognising that communities have priorities other than receiving charity.

Likewise, there was no acknowledgment of what many children in the developing world understand all too well, that ‘development’ can do more harm than good, especially when it is foisted on them. Entire communities have been displaced by infrastructure and energy projects. Families have been split – and children effectively have been orphaned – in countries exporting cheap labour to generate foreign exchange with which to pay off debts to donor governments, agencies, and commercial banks.

Hints of deeper political issues lurked behind the Global Village’s charitable facade, but these were glossed over. A sign in front of the Village’s African outdoor classroom told visitors, “Government-aided schools are expensive. The government of the country asks parents to participate in ‘cost sharing’.” Because of that, and because teachers don’t want to work in rural areas, “there are not many government aided schools.” No mention was made that donors were pushing ‘cost-sharing’ in education and health care.

Rather, the sign stated, “Mission-aided schools are run by different religious groups…(which) provide a teacher in return for small fees from the parents.” ADRA is supported by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Some children, impressed by the misfortunes of others their age, made pledges to their parents that they would donate some of their pocket money to charity. While Global Village thus may have appealed to their finer instincts, its public-relations material evinced the baser instincts of corporations, which appeared to seize the opportunity to appeal to caring consumers.

Virtually every piece of Global Village clothing, advertising, and literature was emblazoned with the logos of corporate sponsors – including a department store chain and “Washington’s most watched television station”.

ADRA’s glossy ‘electronic press kit’ – complete with promotional video tape – included a news release trumpeting: “Popular breakfast cereal to help ease hunger in North Korea.” Famine-stricken communities there were to receive a shipment of “the number one selling breakfast cereal in Australia for 32 years in a market category worth more than 466 million U.S. dollars each year,” said the statement, which named the famed product three times in five short paragraphs.

Visitors to the Village’s ‘Pack-a-Box’ centre were invited to pack boxes of ‘relief supplies’ for shipment to Haiti. Brand-name bars of soap and shiny bottles of plaque-loosening mouthwash to be used prior to brushing one’s teeth dominated the array of goods destined for the Caribbean country’s slums.