Employees or Beneficiaries?

Extract

A look at royal non-governmental organizations in a country where the head of government is in fact a royal, where 80 percent of foreign aid finds its way back to foreign donors, and where it is difficult to determine the difference between ‘beneficiaries’ of income-generating NGO projects and employees working in substandard conditions. The dichotomies here are real, though the lines fine.

During the seasonal pressures of Christmas last year, an order was placed in Amman for an unusually big Bani Hamida rug. The design was determined in the office in Amman, including colors labeled in English abbreviations. After the request was brought to Gebal Bani Hamida, the orders for the appropriate colored wool were sent to the dyers. The women there realized that they did not have the exact shade of yellow requested, but amongst the over three-hundred other colors they did have, they found an approximate replacement. However, they could not make the decision to dye the wool on their own. Instead, they contacted the office in Amman, where their question was noted. Some time later, the designer was informed, and sent back the answer that only the exact tint of yellow would do. So the dyers waited for the stock to be refilled, over the timeliness of which they had little control. The office in Amman complained of the slowness of the work, pressing the women as to why they were behind in filling the order.