Anthropologists have long noted that in a lot of ways, debts are very similar to gifts. When you receive a gift, in most cultures there is the social expectation that you will return it in some form, be it gratitude, a return-gift, a thank-you note, &c. In a sense, giving a gift to somebody puts them in your debt, which usually isn't a bad thing at all (though sometimes it obviously can cause embarrassment about being unable to give nearly as a nice a return gift, feeling like one can't accept it, or that it's inappropriate). So gift/debt relationships have all of the juicy, complicated social "stuff" that makes social interaction so compelling (and vexed).
Debts are sort of the flip side...you can choose to recognize contractual debts (i.e. fulfill or break your contract) just like you can choose to recognize your social debts (i.e. return an appropriate gift, or feel badly about being unable to do so). They are not fundamentally different social processes, even if they are regulated by different norms or "rules" as it were (and usually with differing consequences...i.e. your friend might get in a huff if you don't thank her effusively enough for the muffins she brought you, but she probably won't report you to a collection agency or repossess your moto-bike as recourse).
So if microcredit-based development loans are contractual debts, what other sorts of social debts are people juggling at the same time? What happens when the payment of one conflicts with the payment of another? Do people borrow in order to fulfill other obligations? Sometimes the answer to these sorts of questions come from unexpected places, and really can only be parsed out after getting to know a place pretty well. So the more I'm learning about the settlement out at KM 11, the more I'm finding out about all of these other social relationships that can be broadly glossed as gifts and debts. One really interesting example is a community-initiated free lunch program for kids in the neighborhood. A loose coalition of women who live in the settlement cook every day for 50-75 kids; some sit and eat at the little house where the women prepare lunch, and a lot bring pails, bowls, tupperware, and plastic bags to bring the food home and share it with their siblings and neighbors. It's a pretty monumental task, especially since financial support for the program is pretty sketchy....the locale itself is owned by a local bakery, that also donates day-old bread, crackers, and eggs. But most of provisions come from local donations, with everybody helping out when they can to keep it running on a shoestring. But luckily, hungry kids will scarf down just about anything, so the culinary standard isn't terribly exacting.
So I've been spending a good deal of time interviewing the members of the "committee for women entrepreneurs" that spend a good deal of their day *not* working as entrepreneurs (i.e. remunerative labor), but rather giving away food to their neighbors' kids. Which would be one thing if it were the socioeconomically better off residents doing charity work for their less fortunate neighbors. But here, pretty much everybody is struggling to make ends meet, so pitching in to keep it running is sort of a big deal, financially. Which is why it's an interesting place to parse out these sorts of questions about gifts and debts.
And kids are pretty cute too, which makes hanging out there fun! Here's some photos.
Unfortunately for my poor stomach, though, every time I go do interviews at the lunch program the very generous ladies also offer to feed me too (they all sit down to eat after the kids gobble up their lunch...the eating often being interrupted by the little kids, who are liable to be little terrors!). And sometimes the food is pretty yucky. Like stomach-lining and intestine soup (the stomach lining is sort of spongy and gross on its own...and even worse when it's floating in broth, sort of like a sea anemone, swaying in the ocean), or bone and bean stew (that was today, not as bad as I expected. And gnawing on a cow femur is sort of fun!). Mmmm. But, like I said in the last post, since sharing food seems like a great way to build and fortify social relationships, saying no is not an option. But I'm going to have to balance the imperative to collect anthropological data with the limits imposed by my stomach.
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