Return to Salvatierra

"It's better to give than to take."

This message is scrawled on the wall of the Santa Cruz bus terminal.  I pass it every time I head out to Salvatierra.  The first time I saw it, I had just arrived as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 2002. I was moved by the message, and inspired:  wasn't that what I wanted to do, why I was here in Bolivia? To give... my time, my experience, my skills?

Oh my.  I quickly realized that I was the one with a lot to learn. I arrived in Salvatierra with the sophistication of a child. I had to be taught the very basics: how to wash clothes in the river by banging them with a paddle, how not to fall into the latrine, why I must drag my feet when I wade across the river to avoid stepping on a stingray.  I couldn't even talk.  The people of Salvatierra did a lot of giving; I did a lot of taking. 

It was at least a year before I wasn’t a burden on the community and could actually offer anything of value.  By then, the message in the bus terminal had taken on another meaning about giving and taking.

Salvatierra is in an area called Guarayos.  Guarayos is mostly indigenous, inhabited by the Guarayos people (sensibly).  It is also heavily forested.  These two qualities made it extremely attractive to international development projects; for development agencies nothing is hotter than indigenous rights and forest conservation.  As a result, Guarayos was crawling with aid projects.  Land Cruisers rumbled down the streets, the restaurants at noon in Ascension de Guarayos were filled with professionals wearing smart polo shirts with logos of international organizations; the same Land Cruisers were parked outside of the bars at night.

Some of these projects – in health, education, forestry, etc. – were great. And there were talented, dedicated people working in Guarayos.  But most projects were terrible wastes of time and money.  People didn’t care.  As long as the money flowed in from the Americans, the Dutch, the Germans, everybody was happy:  free meals, hotel rooms, trips in the Land Cruisers, trips to Santa Cruz, nice salaries, high status.  Boring trainings, useless reports, arrogant attitudes, unfinished projects.

Giving, giving, taking, taking.  There was no incentive to get anything done.  Why work yourself out of a job?

This troubled me so much that I abandoned the development agency that I was working with.  I decided to do my own thing with the communities, following my own conscience.

That is, in part, why Salvatierra Imports is important to me.  There’s no giving or taking because it isn’t a development project; it’s a business.  We work together, we do things fairly, we make great stuff, we sell it, we all benefit.

Are all development projects a waste?  Of course not.  Maybe things were particularly bad in Guarayos.  And not all good works can, or should, be handled by private enterprise.  But when we want to do good, maybe we should think a little bit about what it means to give, and to take.