Well I'm at the end of the West African adventure... the past few weeks have passed in a blur and I am struggling to recollect the detail of them! After we returned to Ouagadougou I fell ill with a particularly nasty intestinal infection but was amazed at the efficiency and professionalism of the Burkinabe medical system (albeit private system) - I was given comprehensive reports of all the bacteria in my system and prescribed proper antibiotics that came in a labelled box and not just unidentified pills in the corner of an envelope like in Ghana! I guess Africa, like the rest of the world, is full of inconsistency and while Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world it also supports a wonderful private medical system (I certainly wouldn't hold such positivity for their public system though I'm sure and probably adequate health care is something far beyond the reach of the majority of Burkinabe). So the infection knocked us back a few days and we left for Bobo Diollasou later than expected - unfortunately I was ill for most of this time also so the majority of my impressions of Bobo came from within the walled compound of the Rastafarian 'auberge' we stayed at!! It was a great experience though because not only was it a guesthouse (with three rooms) but also a bar, restaurant and recording studio for local artists! It was more like staying in some bizzarre extended Rastafarian family and there were small dreadlocked children running around the entire time with an array of dogs and cats and wonderful African art and two huge mango trees that were wonderful to sit under during the heat of the day!! The music in Bobo was incredible however (and the main reason why we journeyed down there) and so a lot of time was spent listening to music. I ventured out one day to see the old part of the city, like a village within a city, and incredibly poor which was really sad within this relatively prosperous city - halfway through our exploration of the 'old centre' I had to return to the auberge though from the huge pains in my stomach!! Never mind, it was a great experience nonetheless and we travelled back to Ouagadougou with the Rastafarian family in the back of a colourful muralled Bedford van with "Zion" painted across the front!! After Hedy's patient nursing of me during the previous week she fell ill the day we returned to Ouagadougou and was diagnosed as having contracted malaria for a second time! So it was my turn to play nurse and this extended our stay in Ouagadougou for another two days...
I finally made it through the border back to Ghana on the 31st and spent two nights at the Hand in Hand project before heading down to Accra to meet Emily (my friend working for Medecines sans Frontieres next door in the Ivory Coast) on the 2nd of April. We spent a wonderfully relaxing and inspiring week at an eco-lodge on the coast near an area called Dixcove - what a wonderful time and what a wonderful friend to share it with!! It was a perfect ending to my West African journey and so important to have time to digest everything that I have experienced and to compile my thoughts on the experience...
Ghana is a wonderful and complex country filled with natural resources, huge 'people power' and huge potential to develop into a "first world" nation but it is jam-packed with small NGOs and development organisations who have been working there for years without any real social or environmental change or sustainable and lasting development from their presence. In fact the environment in Ghana is worse than it has ever been with massive deforestation, soil erosion, water and air pollution, huge waste issues particularly relating to the black plastic bags that everything is sold in and are then thrown out the windows of buses and acres of land completely burnt in the north simply to make it easier to catch "bush meat" by creating fire traps with no regard for the huge environmental impact (it would take decades to restore the soil quality and to regenerate the destroyed scrub). Sure there have been schools, orphanages and hospitals built and thousands of volunteers have passed through the borders to help run these institutions but is this success? I am not so sure. There must be over 400 small NGOs and development organisations working in Ghana alone and this is completely without regulation or the requirement of them having to be accountable to a higher authority for the effectiveness of their work. And the huge number of volunteers who come to work in the country (while doing a wonderful service and doing so with the best of intentions) actually implicitly perpetuate western cultural imperialism. Even with the best will in the world just the presence of volunteers in small villages creates this from their bringing with them "necessities" like mobile phones, iPods, electronic clocks, even shoes and clothing are through their presence western cultural imperialism and I am beginning to have doubts about the effectiveness of the presence of so many volunteers. In addition to the implicit cultural imperialism and the creation of a misconstrued perception of the "western world" the huge amount of NGOs and development organisations has also (in my opinion) disempowered the Ghanaian people from resolving their own problems. In Ouagadougou we met a British documentary film-maker who was travelling through the region providing some basic medical kits to remote villages - he said every Ghanaian village he went to the people expected him to make an analysis of their village and to answer all of the problems that they experienced. "What is wrong with our village?" they would ask, "what are you going to do to fix it?". He said it was quite shocking and like nothing he's encountered before in his travels to many other remote parts of the world. I began to realise the dangers of having too many development organisations in a country and began to realise some of the issues that surround this sort of work. Especially in Ghana people have become over-reliant on foreign help for the solution to all of their problems and I think this is incredibly dangerous for the spirit of the people within a country, I guess in NZ terms it's like destroying someone's mana. Of course the issues are incredibly complex and Emily and I discussed this for days without coming to a clear conclusion but something we thought would help to reduce the harm would be for a government (if able) to dictate the requirements of the country from development organisations ( i.e. for the construction of accessible schools in all regions and volunteer teachers to train locals teaching methods and the provision of books) and then have the NGO be accountable to the government (or regulatory authority) for completing this goal within a specified time period and a date for completion, with the NGO leaving the country and having the local population then take responsibility for running the new infrastructure. The other obvious issue is the dis-empowerment of people by having so many volunteers brought in from overseas instead of training local people to carry out these roles themselves - I think MSF is a good example with their policy of having a staff comprised 80% of local employees and 20% foreign volunteers. This ensures in some small way that the organisation is working in a way that is sympathetic to the beliefs and culture of the local community and that is also in keeping with the desires of the community for their own development. I think I need to think about all this in much more detail before I can adequately convey my thoughts but I think that the crux of it is that I think that development work should be focused on empowering local people to resolve their own problems. And the involvement of foreigners is really dubious as to its effectiveness - while yes I can say that the children of the orphanage benefited from my presence, to what extent did my presence also damage them with the implicit cultural imperialism that I undoubtedly brought with me and also from the short time period of my involvement. I know for a certainty that the smaller children developed strong bonds with me through my care for them that would have been broken by my departure and this is certainly emotionally damaging when there is no permanent mother figure in their lives or any consistent care-giver. I think I have concluded that to actually be of any lasting benefit you must dedicate your life to the cause. The only NGO that I was really impressed with, and really certain as to its effectiveness, was the Hand in Hand project and I think that that is solely from the fact that the woman who set the project up (Ineke) has dedicated her life to it - she has lived for 33 years in Africa (25 of those years in Ghana). She speaks the local languages, she understands local culture and the problems of the local community (and the issues of the country in a broader sense) and has dedicated her life to it. I think it takes a lifetime to understand the issues let alone begin to resolve them and while I care deeply for the plight of Africans, I don't think that it is something that I want to dedicate my life to. At this stage if I will dedicate my life to anything it will be to a cause in New Zealand. So I guess I'm less sure about the role of development organisations than I was at the beginning of this journey and I'm more confused about the world!! But, I think that's also healthy and I can definitely see some areas for improvement - perhaps the role of international organisations should only be for emergency aid work in times of crisis and in stable countries should be only to provide expertise in setting up infrastructure that is sympathetic to local culture and beliefs and training local people to run that infrastructure therefore empowering people in their own development and limiting cultural imperialism by western countries?? I don't know the answers right now, but my head is certainly full of the questions!!
It was an incredible experience though and something I will never forget. I just hope that my environmental and cultural footprint on the lands in which I travelled was as light as it could be. I will have to think in much greater detail and do much more research on the issues surrounding development work to reconcile the questions that have been stirred within me and will limit my international volunteering to environmental causes until I have reached a more definite conclusion!! Planting trees seems wonderfully simple in comparison and the potential for creating harm is pretty limited!!
Friday, 13 April 2007
I can hardly believe it but I have left - en route to Morocco but having to stop over in London due to restrictions with the flights. How strange to not be in Africa anymore and even stranger to be here in London where it feels like a complete other world so devoid of colour and smell!! Travelling into the city was quite awful, sitting next to me on the train were two wealthy English women talking about their recent skiing holidays, the layout of their chateaus in the Swiss Alps, the private schools their daughters attended and how they hated having to cater for vegetarians! It was awful to listen to them; how artificial are their worlds!! I felt like a person in grieving - being on the tube was harder still, surrounded by so many white people - so white that they are almost transparent and all wearing suits and faces absent from all emotion, staring down in front of them. I felt so alone and so alien! Public transport in Africa is so... public! Everyone wants to know who you are, where you're from, your family history, your religion, your world. Life is so public in Africa and so incredibly private here. It truly is a completely different world, but yet geographically, reasonably close. I've found it really hard to readjust and can't wait to leave again on Sunday morning for Morocco. Admittedly however after taking my first hot shower in three and a half months (which was truly divine) I felt like I could get used to living in the "Western World" again!
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