One recent afternoon Jeff and I arranged to meet at a beach near our house for a swim. I had finished work a little earlier than usual, and I figured I’d be able to get there by 4:15.

By 3:30 I had checked off everything on my to-do list and was almost set to go. I couldn’t believe it—for once I was early! Here’s where I made a critical error. With a few minutes to spare, against my better judgment, I decided to check my email.

Last month I applauded aid workers who stress long-term commitment to poor communities over dependence on silver bullets -- new inventions like sustainable toilets. As I wrote then, lasting change comes only from building respectful, compassionate relationships with people in need. Also, situations evolve over time, which can make solutions as difficult to find as the proverbial moving target.

 Occasionally a novel idea or a new approach really does improve thousands of lives. When that happens, there’s cause for celebration. But as a story from sub-Saharan Africa shows, the benefits may be short-lived.

Recently a friend sent me one of those broadcast emails with the sarcastic subject line “Detroit is Making a Comeback.” The message contained nine photos presumably taken in Motor City. None was flattering. They showed business signs with misspellings and grammar mistakes like “We open” and “Closed—Out of Meet.” Some were offensive: a fat woman with the words “Child Support” tattooed across her buttocks, a second woman wearing large earrings that said “Trust No Bitch.”

There were more, but I’ll spare you the details. A comment introducing the pictures read, “Corrupt politics, handouts, and dysfunctional family units will get you this in a short while.”

I can’t tell you exactly what led to Detroit’s monumental problems, although corrupt politics and drugs certainly played major roles. I do know, however, that similar photos could have been taken in numerous U.S. cities—Camden, for example, or New York or Oakland. And the coal country of West Virginia, although the citizens portrayed there would be white. The Detroit residents shown were all black. Most of us seldom encounter poor people of any race, because we don’t venture into poor neighborhoods.

In March I attended a few sessions of the Colorado WASH Symposium, a gathering of some of the world’s top thinkers on the tricky question of how to provide clean water and sanitation to the world’s poor. The symposium included a series of debates about what does and doesn’t work in “the field”—in this case, developing countries with some of the most squalid conditions imaginable.

I was most interested in a session on providing resources to the urban poor, because the trend in world population is strongly toward cities, and packing lots of people into a small area with no planning is usually a water and sanitation disaster. I was curious about the panel members’ thoughts on the Reinventing the Toilet Challenge.

Twenty years ago, more or less, I was invited to join some other writers who were touring the Appalachian Mountains, visiting colleges and giving readings. Jeff and Reid, then age three, came along. This was a fun group. They joked and talked about their work and formed a loose camaraderie with just about everyone. “Just about” is the operative phrase.

As the days unfolded, I became aware that a poet and essayist from Oregon named Kim Stafford kept abandoning the central group and making a point to talk to those on the fringes,