Dree’s parents could not have afforded to send her off to Africa. If she’d been sassy, they would have made her muck out the barn alone for a month. “Slackers.”
“That was a doomed project from the start. The project coordinators chased off the local people instead of including them in the project. They wanted the little white kids to dig the wells and feel accomplishment at helping the poor people. Instead, they dug wells, and nobody who lived there helped build them, had any emotional investment in them, or knew how to maintain them. Those wells broke within a year, and nobody who was there could repair them because they hadn’t been included in the project from the start. This feels like that project. No one in these villages will be able to run the NICU incubators or maintain them. At this point, I’m here to gather information on what weshoulddo.”
Dree tried not to have a freaking fit at the stupid rich people who thought these things up. “These people need access toallmedical care. They donotneed one high-tech preemie mono-tasker. It’s like they have an empty kitchen with no refrigerator, no stove, no food, and these guys are like, ‘Here, have an avocado slicer.’”
Maxence nodded. “The problem is that Alfonso is donating a bunch of these micro-NICU units that he’s designing. The charity wants to use the units because they are getting them. If they weren’t getting these specific devices, this project would never have been conceived.”
That,Dree understood.“Ah.Got it. When you’ve got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
“Exactly. It’s why you can’t trust billionaires when they ‘do philanthropy.’ Alfonso is designing and testing these units in the field here in Nepal. He’ll get a tax write-off for the donations, which will reduce or eliminate the cost of design and production. Then, he’ll take the design with a track record and sell them to small hospitals at a profit.”
“It’s a scam,” Dree said, already pissed.
“It’s a smart business strategy, but it’s not quite a scam. You should see some of the scams that real estate investors figure out.” Maxence rolled his eyes. “Half the real estate transactions in New York are money laundering for the Russian mafia, and the other half are intended to screw working people. The real estate tycoons are doing both at the same time.”
“Oh, come on. No real estate guy is going to admit that.”
Maxence laughed. “I went to boarding school with Russian mafia kids, the Butorins. They’ll tell you all about their family’s money-laundering deals. That one guy who runs around putting his name on all his real estate, Michael Funk, is a half-billion dollars in debt to the Russian bratvas, so he launders money for them. Every time I see a new Funk Tower somewhere in the world, I just roll my eyes because I know the Butorin bratva just cleaned another couple hundred million dollars.”
“Okay,” Dree said. She hadn’t meant to get him going on what was obviously a pet peeve of his. “But what are we going to do about this little girl, here?”
Maxence sighed. “Sorry. I have to remind myself that I can’t change the world. We can give her mother some of our supplies, but we can’t do that for every family in every village. We’re going to have to go back to the town we flew into or some other larger city to resupply soon since we’re accepting as little as we can from the communities we help because they can’t afford it.”
“Surely the Church should open their coffers to do something for these people. I mean, even our little parish church in New Mexico wasopulent,and my people there were dirt poor. The parish had gold chalices that the priests drank out of and precious metals and treasure all over the place. Even the airport that we flew into in Kathmandu had so many riches compared to the poverty that we’re seeing here, where the children are severely malnourished. How are we letting this happen?”
Maxence shrugged, and his strong jaw set. “Good question.”
That night at the campfire, Dree was still seething over the fact that she’d seen seven pediatric patients with a primary diagnosis of severe malnutrition and that expensive preemie incubators weren’t going to solve the problem.
Alfonso tried to dish her up extra of his nightly lentil stew and flatbread, which was tasty, though it could use a bit more heat. The soil of her childhood sheep farm grew chili peppers with the same heat level as a blast furnace, and she was just used to scorching New Mexican food.
She also kept picturing the handsome Spaniard pouring over balance sheets and figuring out how to deduct his design and experimental costs by donating stuff to charities that they didn’t need and might actually hurt the communities where they ended up.
Finally, Alfonso said, “Dree, you are so sad today. What can we do to cheer you up?”
There was a moment when Dree seriously considered letting go on him, but that wasn’t the point.
Alfonso hadn’t started the game. He was just another player.
Instead, Dree said, “Several of the children in this village that I treated today show signs of severe malnutrition. I’m angry that the world seems to have forgotten them.”
Alfonso nodded. “But we haven’t forgotten them. That’s why we’re here. We are here to save the lives of premature infants. If we had already built these NICU micro-clinics, the child of that woman you saw last week might have been saved. Don’t you think that is a worthy goal?”
“Of course, it is, but there’s just so much that these people need.”
Alfonso waved his hand. “There’s so much thatso manypeople need. Right now, we’re doing this. Next year, we may be able to address other things.”
Dree sighed. “A lot of these kids aren’t going to make it to next year. Even if they do, severe malnutrition like this confers lifelong problems. Their growth will be stunted forever. They’re not going to catch up. Their bones will be softer and more easily broken for the rest of their lives. Their brains will not have gotten the nutrition they need, and they’re going to have lifelong cognitive deficits.”
“But we are doing what we can, yes?”
“Are we?Why can’t we do more? If that were my kid, I’d move Heaven and Earth to get them more food. Why can’tweget them more food?”
“You said that if you were the parent, you would do this. Why do the parents not get them more food?” Alfonso asked.
“Well, I—” Dree said, still mad but not knowing. “Because—but there’s—theycan’t.”
“Correct,” Maxence said, holding a bite of food in his fingers but not eating it yet.“They can’t.There is no place that they could go to get enough food for their children. Even if they left their ancestral villages and moved to Kathmandu, they couldn’t. If you divide the wealth and available income of Nepal by the number of people,it’s not enough.On a population level, there isnothingall these parents can do to feed all these children.”
