Late Night Thoughts about Poverty in Africa

Hello friends,

So I have been back in Canada for many months and many of you (the 5 family and 3 friends) that read this site have given up checking for updates. But I will continue to Blog for my own sanity and my own purposes.

The issue of poverty in some/ most countries within Africa is something I hold close to my heart. It’s a complex puzzle and Chirs Tenove did a good job of explaining it closer to the end of his 2006 Walrus magazine article. I completely agreed with his comments about “band-aid” solutions, political corruption and conflict, insufficient infrastructure and false imaging. Does knowing this make me apathetic? No. Cynical perhaps, pensive yes, but definitely not apathetic.

I spent a good chunk of my childhood in Nigeria, and remember the lush gardens and the beauty of the country. But, as I grew up in Canada I began to forget those images, and started to believe that Africa as a whole was going through massive crisis’ and drying out. I went back to Africa in 2005 (the first time since 1988) and was shocked to see the green fields and constant down pours in Kenya (during its rainy season of course). Okay I thought to myself I remember these monsoon type rains….and come to think of it the green aswell. But surely drought is rampant…maybe in other countries ….Ethiopia, Malawi etc., and surely even here in Kenya poverty is crippling.

I spent the first weeks of my trip to Kenya in a small village in Kirengero, north of Nakuru, in a run-down building with about 60 orphaned Kikuyu children and saw the resilience of their spirit. These children were bright eyed, generally happy hopeful children, with many having real aspirations for success in life, and firstly in school. (Granted, perhaps in their society they were in an upper-class for having been placed in the orphanage, here they were almost always guaranteed 1 full nutritious meal, and had the freedom to attend school. ) In thier minds they were not crippled. Why aren't these clothed fed children, shown in our media? Thier life was hard, but not any more hard than thier peers, and they often said they were lucky. Dont get me wrong, these children were aware of the realities of thier situation but they wanted change and spoke of bright futures. But by our standards these children were still severely underprivileged, and surely recounts of thier specific situations would have any forigner sad about the torn pants they were wearing. These are our own imposed value judgements. Again later that year in Malawi I saw similar children, and villagers. Some of those villagers had literally NO money….not even 10 kwacha to spare…(10 kwacha being something less than 10 cents) and yet there they were in their villages smiling, chatting eating mangoes off of trees. Day to day they were not helplessly awaiting our help. As modest as these situations are certainly you cannot deny that there is a contextual truth that is being hidden in our media.

The thing about African people is despite their troubles, and despite their woes they are resilient. This is an image that should be represented. I really think this might help compassion fatigue. As well as starting a new way of thinking about the continent.

Sometimes I wonder if NGO’s should be saying please offer your help in partnership with African communities aiding them to reach their goals, instead of please save them. Maybe this is less 'sexy'. But already innate to that statement is an issue of empowerment. I think the biggest failure of western aid funds (as widely mismanaged as they may have been) is the fact that it lead to the continued disempowerment of the African people. I have think, unfortunately, that the majority of aid regimes are administered in such a way that they are effectually a continuation of imperialism. This isn’t a novel concept, but it is under discussed. I have seen first hand the submissive attitudes of some very capable Malawian leaders to foreigners and their “aid,” so much so that they would go against their own better judgment to accommodate the wishes of said aid organizations. So if an old lady at a bus stop near a stop light is mistaken for someone who wanted to cross the street and is escorted fasly to the other side of the road. What if in this senario, once you walked her across the street, you asked the old lady what she wanted and she only replied that she was fine and politely smiled at you. How would you even know that she was worse off? You wouldn’t, not until you found her there hours later, fatigued and you asked her again if a she was ok...then perhaps she would tell you that she was missing her bus. Now what can you do in this situation?

If Africans continue to see the Muzugu “or foreigner” as their “saviours” then we’ve truly failed, I think, because I believe that they will continue to look beyond their borders for effective solutions instead of driving their own from within. This idea of waiting for change and praying for a solution is frustrating and I think there needs to be more mobilization for peaceful well planned internal change. Internal expertise and will-power is a key part of effective development, and it is, in my opinion, a vital ingredient that drove the success of development projects in places like India, Latin America and China.

The potential for great leaders within African communities exists, without a doubt, so why aren’t we investing in it? Large aid organizations such as Oxfam and World Vision should be moved to devote at least 50% of their monies to long-term aid solutions that empower communities; be it political lobbying, irrigation development, community education, leadership training, etc. It is these projects that are important, which in fact we work towards here in North America with our poverty stricken population, that we fail to fund properly in African communities that are most vulnerable and in need of such things.

This idea of curing and saving has to be dropped. We cant hope for that. When you are helping a friend in need, it is better to be supportive and nurturing than over-bearing. You cant expect to solve thier problems. It is better to equip them with the tools to solve their own problems than to tell them what to do.