Genuinely disturbing how missionary "work" is still so normal. Like I do not understand how anyone can listen to someone talk about their cutesy little Christian colonizer vacation to a deeply exploited community and not just be horrified and disgusted.
Not just normal, but lauded. Missionaries are praised for (supposedly) bringing resources and infrastructure to impoverished people without it ever being acknowledged that 1) that aid is contingent on converting and abandoning local beliefs and traditions and 2) those communities are usually only impoverished in the first place because of Christian colonialist empires.
It boggles my mind that people will talk about somebody's missionary work like it was some act of charity and self-sacrifice when it's really just going up to a bunch of people who are starving to death and telling them you'll give them some rice if they join your cult. It's 50% White Man's Burden and 50% extortion racket.
Not to mention how often that "aid" is useless to the people who are suffering.
Missionary-built houses are often made with incredibly cheap materials by people who are absolutely not qualified for that work AND they aren't designed with the cultural and social needs of the people they're for or the climate and infrastructure of the area in mind. Immediate aid like bottled water produce even more trash and pollutants that many communities are not equipped to handle. Farming methods taught often aren't designed for the area or climate and don't fully provide for the nutritional needs of the community (and then those people are demonized for poaching by Westerners who don't understand that an animal being endangered means very little when your family is starving). Even educational materials are poorly translated, Western-centric, and strictly Christian (along with often being controlled and modified by extremist, militant, and terrorist groups that control the areas).
And on top of all that, it doesn't include or involve any of the local community in any part of the process. Nobody local is distributing it. Nobody local is building it. Nobody local is producing it. Nobody local is getting training, employment, wages, or any kind of permanent uplifting infrastructure. Missionary aid creates more dependence on the Western Christian apparatus instead of creating any kind of Self-Sufficiency.
