I recently finished reading “The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity”. It was one of those books that I’d randomly picked up at the Strand Annex after work, and then let sit on the shelf for a long, long time. I didn’t bring many books when I moved here, so I figured I should bring something thought provoking that I hadn’t already read. After I made my way through Harry Potter and a few other 700+page fantasy books, it was still there waiting for me. The author spent a lot of working with charities in Somalia in the 90s. The stories he tells are terrible, and really make you want to consider whether we do any good by giving development aid. Who’s really being developed? The poorest and most vulnerable? How often is it the already-elite profiting from the influx of money and goods?

Food aid in particular received a lot of attention – and criticism – in Maren’s book. Walking around town I saw a little sliver of that aid pie going somewhere other than its intended destination. Walk into the Embassy Supermarket and you’ll see a tall pile of USAID vegetable oil cans for sale right in the entrance. As the name suggests, its right across from the US Embassy. The same thing’s happening all over town – I took this photo in a market near my house.