Living with Enough

I've been reading about aid again and have been particularly impressed by William Powers's fine Blue Clay People: Seasons on Africa's Fragile Edge, which describes his stay in Liberia from 1999-2001.  Like another Catholic Relief Services administrator,  Michael Maren (author of the aptly entitled The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity), Powers offers up a picture of large aid organizations that is not very flattering: highly paid administrators enjoying posh accomodations and multiple servants while overseeing poorly conceived projects.  Yet Powers is nevertheless transformed by West Africa.  He struggles and to a certain extent succeeds in making his agency's projects more useful, and he also learns to relax and learn from the remarkable Liberians he is surrounded by.  He becomes determined to live with "enough."  This entails fewer material goods and more dense and meaningful social relations.