Many Hands Make Light Work... Vs. ... Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth...

Sunday night, I went with some friends to the PAF Museum parking lots, which are serving as the drop point for disaster relief donations from Karachi citizens. I didn’t exactly know what to expect as we headed up there, but I was hoping to help out in some way, however small. When we arrived, we were confronted by lines of cars dropping off donations, and people like us hoping to lend a hand. Every available space in the parking lots was piled with mounds of supplies, crates of water, milk and juices, and mountain ranges of quilts and blankets. The extent of the generosity was heart-warming. Of course, it’s impossible to look at a vast pile of supplies such as that and try to estimate just how many people it might serve, but whatever the numbers, it was certainly a start.

We made our way toward the main staging ground, where things seemed strangled and confused. Hundreds of people stood around or wandered from place to place, looking for things to do. Civilians pitched to, working at one thing or another, while the military stood by watching, or sitting looking bored. I had been afraid of something like this. I looked around and tried to assess what was going on. Finally, I did the only thing I could do. I stood around, and wandered from place to place, looking for something to do.

Here and there, I found bits of work. I taped together some boxes, helped move some supplies from one pile to the other. I am a hard worker, when it comes to it, but I also have an embedded sense of what I might call "intelligent laziness." By that, I mean that I have no problem working, but I am against doing more work than is necessary, and am always looking for simpler, easier ways to do things. I could already see that the enthusiasm of this workforce was being wasted. Women, in typical fashion, were being relegated to sorting medicine, since someone had decided that it was suitable work for women. That’s fine, since medication is one of the most important aspects of the relief effort. But the tent where the drugs were being sorted was crammed into one corner with a throng of people crowded around trying to help. It was hard to make head nor tail of what was going on. Piles of blankets and sorted supplies were already being moved from one area to another. That is the kind of thing that irritates me. Without an organising principle, everyone will do what they think is best, which is admirable, but not necessarily helpful to the entirety, if things have to be continually moved from place to place. Everyone around me seemed to be saying, "We need more people!" But I didn’t find that to be the case. What they needed was someone to take control and organise. In fact, I felt there were too many people. There was hardly room to move. Trying to carry something from one area to another was a nightmare, as you were forced to weave your way around people and piles of goods.

Finally, I settled myself toward the outskirts where truckloads of rations were being unloaded. I helped form "bucket-brigade" style lines to shuttle supplies from the trucks into piles in the parking lot. Each truck would start out well, but then, with the sight of activity, more men would arrive, the efficiency level would be broken, and we would actually have too many people trying to unload the truck. It was almost comical, as people tripped over each other in an effort to help. Men were crying out encouragement to each other to unload the truck as fast as possible. The enthusiasm was fantastic to see, but of course, there was really no hurry to unload the trucks. I was shouting out, "Slow down! … Chill Out!… Aram Se!" because bags were being broken open in their haste to unload the trucks at lightening speed. There was no line of trucks waiting to be unloaded; there was no rush. Stacking the supplies in a more orderly fashion would have been a better plan than unloading as fast as possible, but of course, there’s really not much you can do in that kind of situation, so I moved on.

I worked with another group, packing boxes with supplies. Again, everyone was cramped together, so I tried, somewhat successfully, to spread them out into stations of boxing the supplies, taping up and fortifying the boxes, and labeling and stacking them together. I was hindered by language as usual, but was proud to have worked out a small system. Unfortunately, the trucks I had left earlier had stopped arriving, so dozens of people came to help with the boxing. As two groups started to squabble and fight over what to do, I walked away.

Huge, double-transport trucks arrived that would be taking supplies up North. I found one with less people around and helped load extremely heavy bales of blankets into the back. A volunteer came back to rear of the truck, where I was wrestling these huge bales into position. He admonished me for not stacking them one on top of each other. In fact, I was lining them up to do just that, but I’m afraid I lost my temper just a little bit. "Then why don’t you help me lift them then?" I said forcefully (yeah, that’s about as angry as I get). I had just maneuvered these things into position that had taken five guys to lift into the back of the truck. I wasn’t about to try to lift one up by myself. Someone decided that each truck should be loaded with a mixture of blankets, water and other supplies. I was having trouble, without the use of language, to convince the guy I had argued with earlier not to stack the boxes of water bottles in the puddle at the back of the truck. I clinched my argument by forcefully picking up an already saturated box and letting the bottles fall through the ruined cardboard and onto the floor. "Acha," he said, as comprehension dawned.

By this time, it was after midnight, and we decided to call it a night. On a small scale, I had witnessed exactly how, without coordination, good intentions and enthusiasm can bog down relief efforts. I could see exactly how organisations find themselves criticized for mismanaging resources. On the plus side, I had also seen more genuine hard-work, effort and focussed enthusiasm than I had yet seen in Pakistan. The next day, I heard that things became much more organised and much more was accomplished, which is excellent. As more donations continue to pour in, I can only hope that it will be enough to help meet the incredible demand.