This is not going take much of your time. There is plenty to read and plenty to do. As an American living abroad, I am following what I can from this guide (thank you kottke.org), and calling every day (thank you Kerri!).

I wanted to briefly share what it was like to work with USAID some years ago, when a Malian woman and I teamed up on a project called SOS Democracy.

To be very clear, the project was 100% Coumba’s idea. She wanted to mobilize people to vote – and to vote for the right reasons – in Mali’s post-coup election in 2013. I played a support role, launching a crowdfunding campaign and trying to get the most out of contacts I had with different embassies and NGOs in Bamako.

In the beginning, the project was self-funded, with Coumba contributing much of her own money, and everyone volunteering their time. We organized town halls in Bamako neighborhoods in conjunction with Yeredon, a community dance troupe, who put on a satirical performance mocking politicians who try to buy votes by giving away t-shirts and sacks of rice.

The town hall Q&A’s were revealing. We realized that many people didn’t know how to vote – from what documentation was needed to where they could obtain it – or how to find out who was running and what policies they were promoting. Almost no one knew that you could still vote even if you didn’t find a candidate to your liking (at the time, you could submit a blank ballot. If over 50% of the vote turned out that way, the election was nullified and rescheduled).

Things were going well but we started to run out of money. Coumba couldn’t really put anything else in, I barely had enough money to buy my evening meal of sɔ ani macaroni (beans and spaghetti), and we had exhausted the crowdfunding money. The weekly meetings were suddenly less well attended. Membership dwindled.

Then we got the call from USAID. They wanted to meet. We were received by a team of 5 or 6 people. We gave our pitch and then fielded some questions. Many questions in fact. Most of them, very good questions.

At this point, we had several different gameplans depending on whether or not we could find funding. The most ambitious plan involved a call center where Malians could freely call in to ask questions, an expanded campaign of countrywide town halls, and TV spots on ORTM, the national television station.

After several rounds of meetings, USAID was on board with the ambitious plan. So what happened next?

Elon Musk would have you believe that USAID forked over a wad of cash and then went on their way. There were actually some members of SOS Democracy that thought this would happen. They quickly disappeared once they realized that the USAID collaboration was not their ticket to a payday.

What actually happened was that USAID worked closely with us to carefully disburse funds and to monitor their use every step of the way. In many cases, they didn’t actually give any money directly to the organization.

For example, the call center. There is no unlimited calling plan in Mali. You put credit on your phone and then when it runs out, you add more. For many Malians, phone credit is a luxury. You are not calling up your friend to chat for hours. And most Malians were not going to spend money they didn’t have to get info about voting and the election.

So we created a number that Malians could “beep.” Beeping someone is free and doesn’t use your credit. You just call their number and if you hang up before they answer, they get a missed call notification. Malians beeped our hotline number and then we called them back and talked to them for as long as needed.

We of course needed to buy the phone credit to call them back. Instead of giving us the money to buy it, USAID went directly to the two telecom providers in Mali and worked out a deal to buy phone credit in bulk at a discount that would then be issued to the hotline numbers.

The phone credit was released incrementally, and USAID required that we keep detailed call logs to show how the credit was being used. They regularly dropped in to monitor the call center in-person.

And so it was with the TV spots on ORTM. USAID worked out a deal for multiple ad spots and then they handled the payment directly.

Throughout this collaboration, regular meetings were held, questions were asked, feedback was offered. The USAID team was helpful and thoughtful. But what I want to stress more than anything else is the relentless scrutiny when it came to finances.

In the years since, I have come to know dozens of USAID employees in Mali. They have been some of the most hardworking and dedicated people I have ever met.

I don’t agree with all of their programming, and I’m sure USAID has its share of waste and inefficiencies, but the idea that this agency (and every federal agency?) is nothing more than an army of faceless bureaucrats ripping off American taxpayers is a steaming pile of bullshit.

You may have already known that. But maybe you have a friend or an uncle or a colleague that has been parroting Elon Musk’s talking points and hurling (now debunked) claims that USAID spent $50 million on condoms for Gaza. Feel free to show them this alternate perspective.

Or not. I don’t really know what to do anymore. Other than make phone calls.

I do know that the US needs its own version of SOS Democracy right about now.

P.S. if your concern with USAID is not waste, but rather the idea that we are spending money outside our borders — if you can’t even see the practical reasons for it nevermind the idea that maybe we should be invested in some idea of shared prosperity and collaborative living as human beings, then I am at a loss for what to say to you.