A Talisman

Another round of field work is coming up soon. In fact, I should have left already. As always, there are some glitches with the logistics (which is not handled by me; we hired a data firm). As always, the start date has been delayed for a day or two. Which leaves me some unexpected down time to wonder.

Sometimes, I wonder, in the big scheme of things, is what I’m doing actually going to help make the world a bit better? Or as the quote I saw once at the Gandhi Memorial Museum in Delhi:

I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you apply the following test:

Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?

Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.

– M. K. Gandhi

I always come back to the same mental picture when I think of this quote. I met a family of a grandmother and her granddaughter in the village I first stayed at when I arrived in Tanzania, back in 2009. The child’s parents had died due to, most probably, AIDS. The grandmother lived in a small, crooked hut that looked like it would fall over any second. I wanted to hang out with them at their house and interview them for my research.

I often wonder how the child is doing now. Is she still going to school? Does she have enough to eat? Is her health still holding up?

A few other mental pictures fly by: the old man living on the street in Hong Kong who mutters incoherently to himself all day long, the clearly mentally disturbed lady I saw wandering around the streets at night in Bongo, the children begging on the streets, the homeless man who said “Welcome to Canada” to me in the downtown eastside in Vancouver…

Then I think about the research program I am working on now. After spending all this money (gosh, that’s a whole other topic I can go on for days), will it actually affect that little girl in the end?

The chances are slim. Probably much slimmer than I can imagine.

But what could I be doing otherwise?

That thought leaves me both sad and determined at the same time.