Summary Of Everything Is Written By Nina Muck Summary Sparknotes

Nina Munk’s chapter Everything is Written, examines the challenges of changing cultural beliefs, values, and practices of the Dertu, even if the changes are for their own good. For the people of Dertu, the more children an individual has means that person has been blessed by God. From a Western perspective, having many children increases the economic stress on the family but in Dertu the children are a form on cheap labor. Not only that but having many children is, as Munk puts it, an overcompensation for the inevitable loss of many children in their infancy and formative years. Dertu also lacked easy access to “conventional medicine.” The village was not supplied with clean water or running water and therefore the sanitation standards of Western medicine are far from being met.
The advancements, or interventions, provided by the Millennium Villages’ Project brought progress to Dertu. The dispensary was supplied with a generator to run a microscope and a propane refrigerator to store vaccines and antivenin. A small lab was built and the primary school had a successful school-feeding program. While
Changes was seen via standard metrics, but even this was difficult due to the amount of data as well as the inaccuracies drawn from personal interviews. For Ahmed, who was on the ground in Dertu, success was seen in the number of tin roofs, a status symbol of the society. Over the course of the Project, Dertu changed from a hole in the ground one passed by to a budding village. Garbage became a measure of prosperity. Yet while they people were flourishing, they still drew from the same habits of their past. They continued to take handouts from UNICEF and other aid organizations. The overall goal of self-sufficiency was still out of reach for the people of Dertu who, as Ahmed said at the very end, still suffered from “refugee