The Israel-Hamas war and the lives of Israeli hostages and 2 million Palestinians in Gaza were in a state of whiplash Tuesday.

Back-and-forth diplomatic and military brinkmanship by Israel and Hamas teetered the conflict between a cease-fire and an all-out Israeli offensive in Rafah – the trend lines seemingly changing by the hour – which closely paralleled the acute dilemma that Israelis face over their priorities as the war concludes its seventh full month.

In response to a surprise announcement by Hamas late Monday that it had agreed to a cease-fire deal – only to reveal that some key wording had changed from a draft Israel agreed to – Israel sent midlevel negotiators to Cairo Tuesday to further discuss the counterproposal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the latest draft was “far from Israel’s essential demands” and that he had instructed Israeli negotiators to “hold firm” in talks over the counterproposal, of which the United States and Egypt were previously aware.

Israeli news reports, citing officials, said major differences in Hamas’ counterproposal changed its commitment to releasing 33 civilian hostages to 33 “alive and dead” civilian hostages in the first six-week phase. Also at issue: a commitment to a “return to a sustainable calm” in the second phase – language short of a permanent cease-fire but seen as restricting Israel’s future ability to conduct operations to degrade Hamas’ military capabilities.

As of late Tuesday, Hamas, Israel, Qatar, and U.S. delegations were in Cairo as host Egypt and Washington tried to salvage what Hamas described as the “last chance” for a hostages-for-cease-fire deal.

Israeli incursion

Even as negotiators met, Israel increased its pressure on Hamas in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

By early Tuesday morning, Israeli tank forces had taken control of the Palestinian side of the Egypt-Gaza border in Rafah after a night of fighting – seizing the main entry point into the blockaded strip and raising the Israeli flag at the border terminal.

For the second straight day, Israeli air and artillery forces pounded east Rafah – an area from which Israel ordered 100,000 Palestinian civilians to evacuate Monday. Many of them are displaced people whom Israel previously pushed into Rafah, then a “safe zone.”

Tomer Appelbaum/Reuters

Israeli protesters block a highway, demanding the immediate release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack, in Tel Aviv, Israel, May 6, 2024.

Israeli officials said they believed four Hamas battalions remained in Rafah. The airstrikes killed 27 Palestinians, including several children, according to Palestinian health sources, while Israel said 20 gunmen were killed in their overnight operation.

As part of its seizure, Israel closed the Rafah crossing, the only exit for the few Gazans allowed by Egypt to leave, and the main entry point for humanitarian aid to the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

It came 24 hours after Israel closed the Kerem Shalom crossing, another main aid entry point, on Monday after Hamas rocket fire from Rafah killed four Israeli soldiers at the crossing Sunday.

Jens Laerke, deputy spokesperson for the United Nations humanitarian body known as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, warned Tuesday that Israel’s closures of the two crossings left Gaza “choked off,” with U.N. agencies there facing very low stocks of foodstuffs.

The U.N. said the enclave had one day’s worth of fuel supplies, which are needed to power hospitals, water pumps, and trucks for food distribution.

The Israeli military said Tuesday that Kerem Shalom “will open once security conditions allow.”

It remained unclear whether Israel’s incursion along the “Philadelphi” border route into Rafah was a limited operation designed to pressure Hamas to release hostages, or the first stage in what Mr. Netanyahu had vowed, and large segments of Israeli public had demanded, for months: an assault on Rafah itself.

Dual war aims

Or, perhaps, it was an attempt at both.

“Seizing the crossing in Rafah today is an important step on the way to destroying any remaining military capability of Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu said in an address Tuesday.

“The entrance into Rafah serves two main war goals: the return of our abductees and the elimination of Hamas,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “We continue the war against Hamas.”

The prime minister’s citing of two war aims that have often been in conflict accentuates what Israelis see as another impossible dilemma since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack:

On the one hand, a deal with Hamas to free the 132 remaining hostages risked leading to an end of the war that leaves Hamas standing. On the other, storming Hamas’ last purported Gaza stronghold, while offering Israelis a whiff of victory, also risked a surge in Palestinian civilian casualties and further global condemnation.

Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the opening ceremony marking Israel's national Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, May 5, 2024.

Mr. Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition partners have clamored for a Rafah invasion, and the prime minister himself vowed to invade with or without a cease-fire deal, leading some to allege he was sabotaging negotiations.

“I say to the leaders of the world, no amount of pressure, no decision by any international forum, will stop Israel from defending itself,” Mr. Netanyahu said Sunday evening, addressing a ceremony marking Israel’s observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. “If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.”

Israelis’ attitudes

For Israelis, including members of the military, attitudes toward a Rafah operation or potential alternatives vary widely. Many believe the government’s priority should be the hostages, yet nobody wants Hamas to continue to be a threat.

At the same time, a cease-fire and the end of the war could open the door to several desired outcomes for Israel: the rehabilitation of Israel’s standing globally and with the U.S.; a much-desired normalization of ties with additional Arab partners, especially Saudi Arabia; and the strengthening of a U.S.-led coalition of moderate Arab nations and Israel to counter the Iranian threat.  

On the other hand, entering Rafah to defeat the four Hamas battalions there would likely cost many more lives: of hostages, Israeli soldiers, and Palestinian civilians.

In a survey released Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute, a majority of Jewish Israelis, 56%, said a hostage deal should be a higher priority for Israel than a military action in Rafah, while 37% thought that military action should be higher.

Opinions differed significantly by political orientation. A large majority on the left (92.5%) and in the center (78%) prioritize a deal to release the hostages, while on the right 55% say military action in Rafah is the top priority.

SOURCE:

Map data from OpenStreetMap, BBC

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Gilad Segal, a reservist who fought in Gaza before being demobilized, says he’s ready to go back to fight.

An attorney who lives in London, Mr. Segal was in Israel visiting family when the war started in October. He dropped everything to join his paratrooper brigade. If needed, he says by phone from London, he’ll return.

“Without going into Rafah we will lose this war, because we live in the Middle East,” he says. If he goes back to fight, he adds, he’d likely lose his London job. “But I wouldn’t like to lose my country,” he says. Mr. Segal, like others interviewed for this story, spoke before Hamas’ announcement on a cease-fire and Israel’s incursion into Rafah.

If the four battalions in Rafah are untouched, they could be “the incubator” for Hamas raising its head once again, warns Israel Ziv, a retired Israel Defense Forces general who earned national acclaim for his individual response organizing military resistance on Oct. 7.

The remaining Hamas battalions must indeed be dismantled, he says. But because Hamas will never let the more than 1 million Palestinians living and sheltering in Rafah to evacuate as it needs them as human shields, he says, the risks of a major Rafah operation would outweigh benefits due to the high civilian casualties it would entail.

Instead, Major General Ziv says, Israel should clinch the hostage deal, including a cease-fire, and set out a day-after-the-war plan for Gaza, together with moderate Arab allies and the U.S., that would ensure disarming Hamas.

Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Palestinians inspect a house damaged in an Israeli strike in Rafah, May 7, 2024.

Michael Milshtein, however, a former military intelligence officer who heads the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, supports entering Rafah, but only after prioritizing the release of all the hostages via a long-term cease-fire.

Dr. Milshtein says Israel should occupy Gaza and then cede control to a local administration made up of an alliance of “leaders, heads of professional associations, academia, prominent figures, which will be ready to take responsibility.”

In military ranks, caution

According to Amos Harel, defense analyst for Israel’s Haaretz daily, there has even been ambivalence toward a Rafah operation among Israeli military leaders.

The Israel Defense Forces will do what the politicians decide, but behind the scenes it was leaning toward a deal on the hostages, he says.

“They will be very careful about saying do not enter [Rafah] at all because ... they don’t want to appear too weak,” especially considering the tensions with members of the government over who is to blame for the failures of Oct. 7, he explains.

Any Rafah operation likely will be limited, possibly on the outskirts of the city, Mr. Harel says.

The outbreak of fighting in Rafah, even if limited so far, and the dire state of cease-fire negotiations weigh heavily on families of the remaining hostages and their supporters.

Ron Hantman, a website developer, says he spends every evening protesting with the families in Tel Aviv, armed with his megaphone.

For seven months Israel has tried to get back the hostages through military might, he says.

All this talk about entering Rafah and winning is a “masculine attempt to show that we are stronger,” he adds. “We don’t only have to be forceful; we have to be wise.”

Mike Stewart/AP

A supporter takes a photo as former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally March 9, 2024, in Rome, Georgia.

For decades, American presidents routinely offered government jobs to political allies – and expected those employees would do their bidding in return.

Then in 1881, a campaign supporter who did not win such a favor assassinated President James Garfield. That proved to be a tipping point, spurring the creation of a civil service mostly staffed by nonpartisan workers selected on merit, not on political allegiance. 

Nearly a century and a half later, the two presidential front-runners are debating whether to keep it that way.

Former President Donald Trump has threatened to fire thousands of “rogue bureaucrats” if he wins the election this fall, as part of his plan to dismantle what he calls “the deep state.” In response, the Biden administration has issued a new rule, which goes into effect this month, shielding the civil service against “corruption and partisan interference.”

The tussle comes against a backdrop of growing polarization and declining trust in institutions. Two years ago, just 52% of Americans said they had confidence in career government employees – a 9-point dip from four years earlier. 

Central to the debate is a tension over whether unelected civil servants really are nonpartisan. Many Republicans see the government as a liberal-leaning bureaucracy – and indeed, a 2021 study found that the plurality of career civil servants are Democrats, an overrepresentation that increased with seniority. From 1997 to 2019, the share of Democrats hovered around 50%, while the share of Republicans ranged from 32% in 1997 to 26% in 2019.

But these federal workers – many of whom say they are committed to working in a nonpartisan way – also bring valuable institutional knowledge and policy expertise from one administration to the next. Replacing them en masse every four years could disrupt government functions, including services that millions of Americans rely on.  

“Probably presidents of both parties find that they are sometimes frustrated that the permanent agencies are not as responsive to [their objectives] as they would like,” says James Capretta, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “What’s at stake here, really, is balancing that objective, which is legitimate, against another equally legitimate objective – which is that the electorate, the voters, also want some confidence in government and good public services.”  

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

President Joe Biden is shown walking into the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, May 6, 2024.

How Trump’s plan would change the civil service

George Washington University Professor Christopher Kojm, a former State Department employee who also served as deputy director of the 9/11 Commission, has encouraged many of his students to enter the civil service. 

“I told young people: Whatever your politics are, the public sector needs you. It needs your talent, idealism, enthusiasm,” says Professor Kojm.

Among them is Vanessa DuBoulay, a civil servant at the Department of Justice. “At the end of the day, we serve broader U.S. objectives. We serve our taxpayers,” she says. “Remaining nonpartisan is the only way we can truly commit to that.” 

Since World War II, the civil service has encompassed about 90% of the federal workforce. Today’s 2.2 million civil servants work on everything from collecting military intelligence to assessing the safety of America’s food supply. Unlike those in the more than 4,000 positions that each new president appoints, they can’t be fired for political reasons, only for failure to perform duties.

Mr. Trump’s plan would change that. In fall 2020, then-President Trump unveiled an executive order known as Schedule F that would have removed job protections for tens of thousands of civil servants, notably those involved in making or implementing policy. Career employees would become, in effect, political appointees. 

The Trump administration said the move was necessary to address long delays and substandard work on important agency projects. It cited a 2016 survey that found that fewer than one-quarter of federal workers believed their agency handled “poor performers” effectively.

Mr. Trump was also infuriated by anonymous federal employees who proclaimed themselves part of an internal “resistance” that was working to undermine or block what they viewed as the president’s “misguided impulses.” A May 2023 academic article found that civil servants in the Trump administration “largely complied” with political directives but at times “resisted” in ways that “helped mitigate perceived harm to agency missions,” for example by slow-walking projects.

Critics view Schedule F as rooted in Mr. Trump’s desire to assert greater power over the executive branch and remove anyone who stands in his way – particularly lawyers within the Department of Justice, which he says has been “weaponized” against him. 

President Joe Biden reversed the order as soon as he took office. Mr. Biden’s new rule “clarifies and reinforces” long-standing protections of civil servants, but could be overturned by a future president – though experts say that could result in a lengthy legal challenge.

Andrew Harnik/AP/File

The Food and Drug Administration campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, is shown Oct. 14, 2015. Its employees are among the 2.2 million civil servants that the Biden administration is trying to shield from "partisan interference."

From 4,000 new political appointees ... to 50,000?

The battle is playing out alongside Project 2025, a conservative initiative organized by The Heritage Foundation to empower a new Republican administration to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left.” It includes a 920-page policy playbook and a database of “properly vetted” candidates to carry out that agenda. While Heritage has recommended presidential personnel in the past, this appears far greater in scope than previous efforts. Heritage, after numerous interview requests, declined to speak with the Monitor. 

Conservatives have long been concerned about the size and reach of the federal bureaucracy. But there is debate, even on the right, about whether Schedule F is the right solution.

Philip Wallach, another senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, acknowledges that many conservatives – including those who, like him, are not Trump supporters – were “really troubled” by the way executive branch employees adopted a “#resistance mentality from Day 1 of the Trump administration.” 

So he understands the impetus for civil service reforms.

“I see it as a pretty justifiable fight to pick,” says Mr. Wallach. But “just because it’s justifiable doesn’t mean that it can’t be taken to excess.” 

If the next president rolls back the new Biden administration rule and adopts Schedule F, it would reclassify an estimated 50,000 civil servants, opening the way for Project 2025 candidates to enter the administration in much higher numbers than the usual 4,000 appointees. In addition, some say the threat of firing could have a chilling effect on those who remain. 

What high turnover can mean for a president – and citizens

In the first year of a presidency, there is typically a 21% increase in turnover among the highest-ranked civil servants.

Professor David E. Lewis of Vanderbilt University says such turnover can be good. It weeds out employees who have serious qualms about serving an administration. But he’s concerned that Mr. Trump’s plan could replace quality with partisan loyalty.

“The evidence we have shows pretty consistently that efforts to politicize the bureaucracy result in lower performance overall,” says Professor Lewis, who studies productivity and politicization in the public sector. 

Many of the new hires would have far less institutional knowledge, particularly when it comes to complex regulations and their implementation. 

“This is not something where you sit through a three-hour training video and now you know how to do this,” says a civil servant at the Department of Treasury, speaking on background because of his organization’s ethics policy about political commentary.  

Some members of Congress, including both Democrats and Republicans from states with large numbers of federal workers, have been working on legislation that would further codify protections for civil servants. 

“We have a short list of draft laws that we’d like passed,” prohibiting things like political loyalty oaths, says Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees. But those efforts have met with “a lot of resistance,” Mr. Lenkart says, from Republicans.

Scholars and federal workers also worry that just the possibility of losing job protections may cause many more civil servants to resign. In a worst-case scenario, they say, that could have far-reaching implications.

“If all of a sudden there was a mass exodus of career civil servants, there would be widespread fallout across the range of government services. People wouldn’t get their Social Security checks; people wouldn’t be able to get passports,” says Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “People would quickly learn how vital civil servants are to day-to-day living.”

Staff writer Christa Case Bryant contributed reporting.

Jackie Valley

Jeanette Sanjurjo, shown in her classroom, April 9, 2024, teaches at Laura Dearing Elementary School in Las Vegas. She finished her bachelor’s degree and obtained her teaching license through an apprenticeship program.

Where’s the best place to look for an aspiring teacher? 

These days, school leaders are launching talent searches inside their own buildings. In Nevada, districts are increasingly turning to their support staff members – such as bus drivers, substitute teachers, cafeteria workers – as possible recruits.

That’s how Jeanette Sanjurjo, a long-term sub, found a path back to college to become a full-time classroom teacher. In 2022, she received an email from the Clark County School District in Las Vegas. The message invited her to apply for an apprenticeship program that leads to a virtually no-cost bachelor’s degree.

It offered a way for Ms. Sanjurjo to finish her education degree – a feat she previously considered impossible for financial reasons.

“How do you figure out how to go through your practicum and your student teaching?” she says. “Those are times where you’re expected to be in the classroom with no pay.”

In April, federal, state, and local leaders converged inside Ms. Sanjurjo’s fourth grade classroom at Laura Dearing Elementary School in Las Vegas. They came to tout the apprenticeship program that landed her here. A few years ago, no states offered registered apprenticeships for teachers. Now, 34 states and Puerto Rico offer such programs, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

“Nevada is raising the bar on how you grow and support future teachers,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said during his visit with acting Labor Secretary Julie Su. “And it’s a model I’d like to see in workplaces across the country.”

The concept reflects a change in the way the education field recruits and retains its workforce given ongoing struggles. A majority of teachers – 77% – say the job is frequently stressful, and more than half would not advise a young person to enter the profession, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. 

At the same time, enrollment in college education programs is dropping. The dampened interest is forcing school districts and higher education institutions alike to rethink how they recruit.

“The way we think about [college] students is changing,” says Danica Hays, dean of the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “The student is no longer your 18-year-old.”

Jackie Valley

Eboniee Rose and Christina Romero, who co-teach third graders at Laura Dearing Elementary School in Las Vegas, pose inside their classroom, April 9, 2024. They’re in an apprenticeship program through the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to finish their degrees and receive their teaching licenses.

Instead, they’re people like Ms. Sanjurjo or her colleagues, Christina Romero and Eboniee Rose. All three felt drawn to teaching but, for a variety of reasons, didn’t immediately pursue it. 

The Nevada Forward Initiative, housed within the College of Education at UNLV, offered them a way into the profession. It also helps people with degrees in other fields get licensed to teach. 

By Nevada law, apprentices operate under a learn-and-earn model, meaning they cannot pay for tuition and fees. State legislation passed in 2021 and 2023 also opened the door for student teachers to work as long-term substitutes without any waiting period.

Under those parameters, aspiring teachers accepted into the apprenticeship program pay no tuition and can earn money while working in schools. The two-year apprenticeship program is followed by an additional two more years of support and professional development.

“It definitely takes the weight off your shoulders,” says Ms. Rose, an apprentice who works as a long-term substitute at Laura Dearing Elementary. She co-teaches a third grade class with Ms. Romero, who is also an apprentice.

That’s exactly how the program authors envisioned it. 

“The full concierge approach is about saying, ‘Your job is to be a student, and we have a team that will take care of the rest,’” says Kenny Varner, an associate dean for academic programs and initiatives at UNLV’s College of Education. That includes registration and course scheduling.

The program boasts a nearly 95% graduation rate and currently has 509 registered apprentices across the state, according to data from UNLV. So far it also has a 85% retention rate within the teaching field among the first two cohorts of students who graduated.

Though the bulk of apprentices are in the Las Vegas or Reno areas, 75 live in rural counties, where recruiting is even more challenging. 

Dr. Varner says the apprenticeship program stands to create a fully licensed school district staff in tiny Esmeralda County, which counts fewer than 800 residents. “Their solution isn’t to try to recruit people to come up there,” he says. “It’s to say we have this talent here.”

Even amid teacher shortages, it’s not just about plugging classroom vacancies. The program tends to yield licensed teachers who have ties to the neighborhood schools where they work and who look like the children they serve. In other words, it’s boosting teacher diversity and retention efforts, too.

Ms. Rose sees the advantage of relating to her students and modeling what they can achieve later in life.

“I’m like, ‘Hey, everything that you guys are doing right now, I’ve walked these same streets. I know that same Jack in the Box on the corner,’” she says. “For me, I am dedicated to teaching in areas such as these – the lower socioeconomic areas – because this is where I grew up.”

Ms. Romero, who speaks Spanish, finds pride in breaking down language barriers with students and their parents. A parent whose child has since moved to a higher grade still comes to her with questions.

UNLV leaders have started emphasizing these fulfilling aspects of teaching careers as they recruit both adults and high school students. The university is launching a youth apprenticeship program that will give high school students the opportunity to accumulate up to 36 college credit hours and embedded work experiences, usually in the summer, before they graduate.

“We talk about the value of teaching versus the job of teaching,” Dr. Hays, the dean, says.

As for the sustainability of the program, Dr. Hays says she’s optimistic UNLV can continue securing federal, state, and other funding sources. The program was initially funded by federal pandemic aid. Dr. Cardona highlighted $48 million worth of federal investments toward these types of programs during his stop at Laura Dearing Elementary.

For Ms. Sanjurjo, it was an easy decision to join the program, even if it seemed too good to be true. All she needed was a great work ethic, she says, to get her where she is today: leading a class of enthusiastic fourth graders.

“I didn’t even have to think about a job,” she says. “It was there.”

It’s 7 a.m. on a Monday, and the clamor of automobile engines fills the air, the soundtrack of millions of Lagos residents heading to work. Kindergarten teacher Fatimoh Adeyemi is one of them. But first, she stops in front of a simple white stucco house. With her teenage daughter Ayomide strapped to her back, she heads inside.

The bright-green room that greets her is thrumming with energy. Two caregivers in matching geometric tops help lift Ayomide, who has cerebral palsy, into a cushy red lounge chair.

Since 2022, Ayomide has spent her days here at Flora’s Trust Center, playing and receiving specialized therapy alongside a dozen other kids with disabilities. “I go to work with a relaxed mind,” Ms. Adeyemi says.

At the same moment, on the other side of town, Olajumoke Bankole is also beginning her workday. She walks to the stairwell in her apartment building, looking for residents who want to buy a soda from her. Ms. Bankole can’t go any farther than this, because her 8-year-old daughter, Temitope, also lives with cerebral palsy, and she is her sole caretaker.

For Ms. Bankole, the sound of the traffic outside is a reminder of a lost life. Before Temitope was born, she sold drinks on a bustling street corner. Now, she hardly ever leaves home. 

Although they live in the same city, Ms. Adeyemi and Ms. Bankole sit on opposite ends of a global divide. From Nigeria to Nebraska to Nepal, 2 billion people work as informal, unpaid caregivers to older adults and people who are sick or disabled. More than three-quarters are women, and the consequences for their careers and general well-being are often severe.

Kate Okorie

Fatimoh Adeyemi, a kindergarten teacher whose daughter Ayomide lives with cerebral palsy, entrusts her to Flora's Trust Center each day, allowing her to pursue her career

“I don’t want other mothers to suffer,” says Chika Ugochukwu, who founded Flora’s Trust Center after years of caring for her son Arinze alone. 

The burdens of care

Public funding for disability support in low- and middle-income countries like Nigeria is minimal, averaging less than 0.3% of gross domestic product, compared with 1.4% in high-income nations. 

That void is filled by family members, usually women. Indeed, across the African continent, women spend more than three times as much time as men on unpaid “care work” – a broad term that encompasses everything from drawing the children’s nightly bath to walking an older parent to the clinic to hanging out the family’s laundry on the line to dry. 

“Nigeria has a patriarchal society, so there are ... expectations that women should handle all the household chores and not complain,” says Emilia Okon, a Nigerian gender and development specialist. 

For instance, although Ms. Bankole’s husband doesn’t work, it is she who is solely responsible for helping Temitope eat, play, and sleep. When their daughter has a seizure in the middle of the night, as she frequently does, it is Ms. Bankole who rises to comfort her.

The value of this labor is enormous. In Nigeria, experts estimate that if the domestic work of women like Ms. Bankole were paid, it would add between 10% and 39% to the country’s GDP. More broadly, if unpaid care workers received wages, they would contribute an additional $11 trillion annually to the global economy.

Meanwhile, the burdens of unpaid caregiving also impoverish women in other ways. 

When she was Ayomide’s sole caregiver, Ms. Adeyemi says, her world shrank to just their immediate family. Without a wider circle of friends, she rarely received invitations to owambe parties – the lavish celebrations of life milestones common in her Yoruba culture. She was isolated and deeply lonely. 

 “I’m [still] trying to rekindle my social life now,” Ms. Adeyemi says. 

Kate Okorie

Two caregivers employed at Flora's Trust Center attend to one of the children they care for.

One mother’s mission 

Ms. Ugochukwu knows what it is like to face caring for a child with a disability on your own.

Soon after her son Arinze was born in 2004, he developed cerebral palsy and needed round-the-clock care. It quickly became obvious to Ms. Ugochukwu that she wouldn’t be able to return to the law firm where she had worked. 

Instead, she began freelancing, and sent Arinze to the only local care center in her price range. But it was only open in the mornings, and often took hours to reach in snarling rush-hour traffic. Some months, Ms. Ugochukwu’s earnings didn’t even cover the costs of the care center, let alone rent and groceries.

Ms. Ugochukwu’s tipping point came when Arinze was 4 years old and fractured his hip. She still doesn’t know exactly how it happened, but he was in someone else’s care, and the experience terrified her. Soon after, she quit her law work completely.

Driven by her experience, Ms. Ugochukwu launched Flora’s Trust Center in 2021 to provide specialized, professional care for other children with cerebral palsy. Even after Arinze died two years later, Ms. Ugochukwu’s resolve remained unshaken. Today, the center is open 24 hours a day, and has three full-time staff members. Occupational, speech, and physical therapists also visit the children regularly. 

Originally, Ms. Ugochukwu funded the entire operation with donations. But as inflation in Nigeria skyrocketed, she couldn’t keep up. Today, she estimates her running costs are more than $600 monthly, and she charges families on a pay-what-you-can basis. 

“Even the minimal fee we initially proposed was unaffordable for most,” she says. Meanwhile, demand is soaring, pointing to the wider gaps in care for people with disabilities in Nigeria. 

“Only the government can scale such operations,” says Ms. Okon, the gender and development expert. But Nigeria’s public health care system is also heavily reliant on donor funding, meaning money often ebbs and flows, she notes.

For mothers like Ms. Bankole, professional caregiving support would be life-changing. Within the dim confines of her apartment, her days unfold in a predictable manner, monotonous as the leaks from the sewage pipes lining the building’s exterior. 

On a recent morning, she slumps wearily onto the room’s solitary sofa, keeping her eyes on Temitope, who is entertaining herself with the crinkling sounds of nylon bags.

The girl’s happiness is simple but profound. “I have accepted everything as God’s plan,” Ms. Bankole says. However, she still wants more for herself and her daughter. She says she dreams of them both one day having a life beyond these four walls. 

Meanwhile, back on the other side of town,  Ms. Adeyemi’s workday ends at 2:30 p.m. She still has a few hours to spare before she is due back to collect Ayomide, so she preps her lesson notes for the next day, and daydreams about the general store she wants to open soon. 

“Having a place I can entrust my daughter’s care gives me room to pursue my dream,” she says. 

When a copy of “The New Yale Book of Quotations” crossed my desk awhile back, I quickly turned to my favorite selection, which came courtesy of the late anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I look up Mead’s most famous observation from time to time – in much the same way, I suppose, that folks once checked their own numbers in the local phone book. In seeing this small nugget of wisdom still in place, I feel that life continues to make sense, and I regain a measure of hope about human destiny.

That hope can seem harder to come by these days, as the headlines bring their usual news about rancor and division. But a recent event in my Louisiana neighborhood reminded me that Mead’s basic trust in the power of community is still on the mark.

I live within a nice stretch of city blocks that’s known for its manicured lawns and oak-shaded streets, though I began to notice on my morning walks that the pavement was tainted by litter. I started picking up what I could, stooping to collect the odd gum wrapper or empty soda can, but my modest efforts seemed too small to do much good. I vaguely felt as if I were trying to bail out the ocean with a beach pail.  

In my hurricane-seasoned part of the world, we know a thing or two about tackling cleanup jobs that, at first glance, look overwhelming. One key truth is that regardless of whatever help outsiders might offer, there’s really no substitute for banding with folks next door.

Which is why, one recent Saturday, I joined my neighbors in picking up litter in and around our local park. It turned out that many others had noticed the litter, too, and a few of them had decided to organize a cleanup day.

I couldn’t help noticing, as we gathered under a small grove of pines, that our group included volunteers who diverged politically. I’d followed some of their social media posts well enough to know how sharply they disagreed on hot-button topics.

But none of that seemed to matter as we gave a few hours to litter patrol. Equipped with yellow vests and garbage bags, we worked our motley harvest: drinking straws, cigarette butts, paper cups, a coat hanger or two, bits of wire, discarded plastic knives and spoons. Lifting a dirty paper napkin from the median of a busy intersection, I spotted a snail, beautiful as a brooch, hidden beneath the refuse.

I didn’t hear anyone discussing politics as we threaded our way through the grass and shrubbery, peering at the ground as if reading the fine print of the landscape. Instead, we talked mostly of children and grandchildren, gardens and birds, favorite novels and TV shows. Soft laughter occasionally broke the trance of our humble work.

Slowly filling our sacks, my neighbors and I reconsecrated what was around us, comforted by the thought that decline is never inevitable. In reclaiming a park, I felt that we were reclaiming something else, too: a sense of trust with those beyond our doorstep, and the idea that we can work together for common good regardless of partisan differences.

After turning in my yellow vest for the day, I signed up for more litter duty the following month. Whether we had changed the world and fulfilled Margaret Mead’s prediction, I can’t say. But on that bright morning, my own small corner of the world, and my trust in its possibility, felt renewed.

AP

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo walks from the National Palace to Congress in Guatemala City, May 6. He proposed legislation to make it easier to remove the attorney general.

Across Latin America in recent years, citizens have tossed out one government after another in search of honesty and accountability. Yet reformers have mostly failed to break entrenched cultures of graft and impunity. A novel approach in Guatemala might break that trend.

The Central American country’s recently installed new president, Bernardo Arévalo, on Monday submitted a bill he hopes will strengthen judicial independence by making the attorney general’s office more accountable to the public and less vulnerable to political influence. It coincides with a raft of additional measures opening government procurement to scrutiny and shielding anonymous whistleblowers from prosecution.

On the surface, such reforms make as much sense as jousting with windmills. The president’s party has too few legislators to enact his agenda on its own. The current top prosecutor, meanwhile, is a fierce opponent of corruption reform, with powerful allies on the courts and in Congress. Delay is costly. The constitution bars reelection, which gives Mr. Arévalo just four years to change Guatemala’s governing norms.

The strategy, however, has a hidden strength. Unable to dominate his country’s democratic institutions – in Guatemala, presidents neither appoint nor nominate the attorney general – Mr. Arévalo seeks to challenge them to function more faithfully. The reform bill, he said in a televised address Sunday night, is meant to ensure that public offices are not used again “as a political weapon by any government.”

The aim of renewing democracy by reforming its institutions is to, Santiago Palomo, a Harvard-educated lawyer recently appointed head of a new National Anti-Corruption Commission, told Americas Quarterly, “strengthen integrity and transparency.”

The approach underscores how societies embed equality before the law. As Massachusetts Institute of Technology economists Daron Acemoglu and Alexander Wolitzky wrote in a 2020 study published in The Economic Journal, laws and governing norms are interdependent. In addition to improving economic opportunity, they noted, honesty in office sets a higher civic tone for everyone. By “stripping elites of their privileges, equality before the law ... encourages [citizens] to exert greater effort, which can benefit everyone in society, including elites.”

It also emphasizes public good over personal enmity and grievance. The attorney general, María Consuelo Porras, faces European and U.S. sanctions for corruption. She tried repeatedly to overturn Mr. Arévalo’s election and has charged several election officials for upholding the results. Those attempts require “an exit ramp in Guatemalan legislation,” the president told the Central American news outlet El Far. That amplified a point he made in January prior to taking office: “I have no personal conflict with the prosecutor, she ... simply refuses to comply with the law.”

Uprooting corruption is a labor of patience. Success, Guatemala may show, rests on individual integrity and equality before the law.