Will we ever have work to Bless?

Peace Corps trainee's conversation & reflections on his up comming work in Africa, as a young man gave him a ride. It's about how any of us feel as workers starting in a new region in Africa, where few have dared to work..

 

"'Good luck to you, friend,' the driver said a few minutes later, dropping me off on a campus sidewalk after telling me repeatedly what a great person he thought I was. 'God bless your work in Africa.'
'Thanks,' I said sincerely.
But as he drove away. I wondered if I would ever have work in Africa for God to Bless.
(Mike Tidwell. Ponds of Kalambayi, pg 9)

The Poorerst African, Gives More Than we Do.

Writing about his two years spent in Congo (former Zaire), Tim describes his life an involvement with the local African people in a manner that is oh so familiar to the experience most internationals.... I have felt it's reality in three African Countries. 

"There are few places in the world  where people are as poor and the life as traditional... But what I gave these people in the form of development advice, they returned tenfold in lessons on what it means to be human. There, in the center of the continent, they shared with me the ancient spirit of Africa's heart. They shared it's hopes, its generosity." 

Tim Tidwell. (The Ponds of Kalambayi: A Peace Corp's Memoir)

Best Time To Plant A Tree in Africa?

"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is now." 
African Proverb

What really Works in Africa- Honestly.

"Africa's development impasse demands a new level of conscious- ness, a greater degree of innovation, and a generous dose of honesty about what works and what does not as for as development is concerned. And one thing is for sure, depending on aid has not worked. Make the cycle stop." 

(Dead Aid. Dimbisa Moyo. Pg154)

Demand Returns From African Aid

"The West made was giving something for nothing. The secret of China's success is that its foray into Africa is all business. The West sent aid to Africa and ultimately did not care about the outcome; this created a coterie of elites and, because the vast majority of people were excluded from wealth, political instability has ensued. China, on the other hand, sends cash to Africa and demands returns."

( Dead Aid. Dambisa Moyo. Pg Pg2)

How USA and Euro Subsidies of Western Farmers Make Africa Poorer

"......subsidies have a dual impact......
In 2003, US cotton subsidies to its farmers were around US$4 billion. Oxfam has observed: 'America's cotton farmers receive more in subsidies than the entire GDP of Burkina Faso, three times more in subsidies than the entire US aid budget for Africa's 500 million people.'
Yet, the livelihoods of at least 10 million people in West and central Africa alone depend on revenues from cotton, including some 6 million rural households in Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Mali and Zimbabwe.
In May 2003, trade ministers from Benin, Burkina Faso, Chid and Mali filed an official complaint against the US and the EU for violating WTO rules on cotton trade, claiming that their countries together lost some US$ 1 billion a year as a result of cotton subsidy

In Mali, more than 3 million people - a third of its population - depend on cotton not just to live but to survive; in Benin and Burkina Faso, cotton forms almost half of the merchandise exports. Yet thanks to subsidies (USA & Europe), Mali loses nearly 2 per cent of GDP and 8 per cent of export earnings; Benin loses almost 2 per cent of its GDP and 9 per cent of export earnings; and Burkina Faso loses 1 per cent of GDP and 12 per cent of export earnings. Moreover, a 40 per cent reduction in the world price (that is, equivalent to the price decline that took place from December 2000 to May
2002) could imply a 7 per cent reduction in rural income in a typical cotton-producing  country in West Africa.

(Dead Aid. Dambisa Moyo. Pg 116)

Big Screwup!

"To err is human, To really screw up takes a committee." (unknown)

War in Africa.

"How many dead in this war? How many homes abandoned, how many refugees in neighboring countries, how many separated families? For what? When I think of all the suffering, the individual hopes destroyed, futures torn apart, I feel anger, impotent anger."

Angolan Novelist Pepetela.

Africa- There's Other Places To Invest

"African policy makers would remember that there are other developing regions much easier to generate similarly attractive returns with considerably less hassle. This is probably not accidental - their leadership just happens to care more." 

(Dead Aid. Dambisa Moyo, pig 101)

Hard To Do Businesses in Africa

"In Cameroon, it takes an investor who seeks a business licence on average 426 days (that is almost a year and three months) to perform fifteen procedures; whereas in China it takes 336 days and thirty-seven procedures, and in the USA, only forty days and nineteen procedures. What entrepreneur starting a business in Angola wants to spend 119 days filling out forms to complete twelve procedures? He is likely to find South Korea a much more attractive business culture, as it will take him only seventeen days to complete ten procedures." (Dead Aid. Dambisa Moyo. Pig 100)

Africa has Red-Tape issues.

"Truth be told, there are hurdles for investors to overcome. For the most part infrastructure (roads, telecommunications, power supply, etc.) is scant, and of poor quality, making the costs of overall production of goods and services (when transport costs are figured in) steep - which explains why it is cheaper to make almost anything in Asia and ship it to Europe, than produce it in Africa, although the continent is much closer.

However, physical constraints are nothing when compared with man-made disincentives: widespread corruption, a maze of bureaucracy, a highly circumscribed regulatory and legal environment, and ensuing needless streams of red-tape.

Doing business in Africa is a nightmare. The World Bank's annual 'Doing Business' survey provides data on the relative ease (or difficulty for that matter) with which business can be conducted around the world. The results are all too revealing, and do much to explain why Africa remains at the bottom of any FDI investors' list."

(Dead Aid. pig 101. Dambisa Moyo)

Hardship in Africa. A Peace Corps View

"I learned an important lesson in understanding and living life. I've lived in one of the poorest countries in the world, where people struggle each day to feed their children. I've seen happiness in places that seemed so dark that I never thought light could reach. And that is what Peace Corps allowed me to do. It allowed me to take my problems and take a step back and say, “Is this really how you want to handle your life?” The things and people that have been taken away from me this past year will always be a part of me. Living in Mali .....did not downplay the pain of the past year, but it did allow me to learn how to react............Malians showed me first hand that you can't live in the past. Especially in a place where so many things go wrong, it's not feasible to focus on every hardship. Instead, you celebrate when the good things happen."

(Lee, Female Peace Corps workers reflections on Mali in July... thoughts about Mali after her evacuation in March 2012)   (Link)

We Are The Same!

 "People from all over the world have passed through this village, son," said his father.  "They come in search of new things, but when they leave they are basically the same people they were when they arrived.  They climb the mountain to see the castle, and they wind up thinking that the past was better than what we have now.  They have blond hair, or dark skin, but basically they're the same as the people who live right here"  

(The Alchemist,  Paulo Coelho p. 9). 

Saying No to Damaging African AID Models

"Africa is addicted to aid. For the past sixty years it has been fed aid. Like any addict it needs and depends on its regular fix, finding it hard, if not impossible, to contemplate existence in an aid-less world. In Africa, the West has found its perfect client to deal to...

This book provides  a blueprint, ..... for Africa to wean itself off aid. This goal cannot be easily achieved without the cooperation of the donors And like the challenges someone addicted to drugs might face, the withdrawal is bound to be painful...Drug-taker, or drug-pusher, in the end someone has to have the courage to say no."

(Dead AID: Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa. Dambisa Moyo. pg 60)

AID Fosters Lack of Urgency in African Government Policy

"Aid engenders laziness on the part of the African policymakers. This may in part explain why, among many African leaders, there prevails a kind of insouciance, a lack of urgency, in remedying Africa's critical woes. Because aid flows are viewed (rightly so) as permanent income, policymakers have no incentive to look for other, better ways of financing their country's longer-term development.. As detailed later in this book, these options, like foreign direct investment and accessing the debt markets, offer more diversified and greater prospects for sustainable development.

Relatedly, in a world of aid-dependency, poor countries' governments lose the need to pursue tax revenues. Less taxation might sound good, but the absence of taxation leads to a breakdown in natural checks and balances between the government and its people. Put differently, a person who is levied will almost certainly ensure that they are getting something for their taxes - the Boston tea party's 'No taxation without representation'."

(Dead AID: Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa. Dambisa Moyo. pg 66)

Death By War in Africa

"In the past five decades, an estimated 40 million Africans have died in civil wars scattered across the continent; equivalent to the population of South Africa (and twice the Russian lives lost in the Second World War)."

 (Dead AID: Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa. Dambisa Moyo. pg 60)

Double Clutching Tactor Trucks And Institutions: A Life Lesson About The Importance of "Flushing"

Learned to "double clutch" this week. Double clutching may not only apply to 18 speed tractor trailers. You have to gentily tap the clutch to take the tractor out of one gear, then release the clutch to synchronize the transmission with your road speed, then quickly clutch again to make the up shift gear. (both clutches, exiting and entering the new gear all have to be done in about 1 second or you loose synchronization) Also, to down shift, you first clutch to take the tractor trailer out of the higher gear,  release the clutch and 'flush' the transmission ( rev engine up to 1400 to synchronize) then tap the clutch and before the RPM drops below 1200,  put the stick into the down shift gear...... it's mechanically impossible to enter the new gear until you do this......down shifting is really a three stage process each gear.....

Looking back on life and service, I'd have to say most of the difficult issues with me (and the tribe I was running with) were the result of not truly leaving one gear, 'fushing' the old,  before trying to shift to another gear.  Never really fully leaving the old one......but trying to ram in a new gear. To start new, you first have to purge (flush) the old, or it's just more coasting, as you mechanically can't move into the new gear without it. We just keep clutching, grinding at the gears, making lots of efforts, grinding 'noise' as we fish for a new gear. However,  we will never get the new gear because the transmission is still synchronized to the old gear.
We spend most of our time building on the old, tweaking here, grinding there, clutching seriously, but making no change, because we are not willing to give up the old gear we are synchronized with.

It's a normal institutional thing..... It applies to all the institutions I have been apart of. I have seen it in churches too (not unique to church), from Christian Churches, Churches of Christ, Baptists, Pentecostals, to Presbyterians. We are all talking change, but all it ends up being is a little tweaking, no real gear change at all.

From the hippest latest church, to the small church bringing in 'reform' and 'new vision'. I've sat at their tables during a myriad of meetings, and every word indicates they don't know how (or are not willing) to flush to drop the old gear. Tweaking, and reshuffling is the order of the day. If you have contact with many other churches you see how little we change, actually changes anything. However, churches basically look, sound, act, and do service the SAME'  on Sunday. Don't fool yourself......your not doing anything new, radical, nor different, and in most cases, not even anything 'better' than other places. Nothing wrong with what is being done. God bless them all. But few really change any gear.  To change gears you have to flush first. I've met few, on three continents,  who would. But the few who have, I walk with them, and I call them my mentors and friends. Flush....for heavens sake flush.......to synchronize, and get into that new gear

Corruption in African Aid Industry.

"In 2004, the British envoy to Kenya, Sir Edward Clay, complained about rampant corruption in the country, commenting that Kenya's corrupt ministers were 'eating like gluttons' and vomiting on the shoes of the foreign donors. In February 2005 (prodded to make a public apology for his statements given the political maelstrom his earlier comments had made), he apologized - saying he was sorry for the 'moderation' of his language, for under estimating the scale of the looting and for failing to speak out earlier."

(Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa. Dambisa Moyo, 2009, pg 48)

Why Don't African's Voice Solutions To African Problems?

"...despondent with their record of failure, that Western donors are increasingly looking to anyone for guidance on how best to tackle Africa's predicament.  Scarcely does one see Africa's (elected) officials or those African policymakers charged with the development portfolio offer an opinion on what should be done, or what might actually work to save the continent from its regression. This very important responsibility has, for all intents and purposes, and to the bewilderment and chagrin of many an African, been left to musicians who reside outside Africa.....As one critic of the aid model remarked, my voice can't compete with an electric guitar" 

(Dead Aid. Dambisa Moyo, 2009, pg 27)

Where the poor are- Sub-Saharan Africa

Why We Work in Sub-Saharan Africa....

"....sub-saharian Africa has the highest proportion of poor people in the world some 50 percent of the world's poor.

Dead Aid....Aid Destroying Africa

"Millions march for it. Governments are judged by it. But has more than US $1 trillion in development assistance over the last several decades made African people better off? No. In fact, across the globe the recipients of this aid are worse off; much worse off. Aid has helped make the poor poorer, and growth slower. Yet aid remains a centrepiece of today's development policy and one of the biggest ideas of our time.

The notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty, and has done so, is a myth. Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but have increased. Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world.

How this happened, how the world was gripped with an idea that seemed so right but was in fact so wrong, is what this book is about. Dead Aid is the story of the failure of post-war development."

(Dead Aid. Dambisa Moyo)

Poverty Voice

"It has long seemed to me problematic, and even a little embarrassing, that the public debate about Africa's economic problems should be conducted by non-African white men." 

(Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa. Dambisa Moyo)

Message on Bodies From Africa

Message found on the bodies of Guinean teenagers Yaguine Koita and Fode Tounkara, stowaways who died attempting to reach Europe in the landing gear of an airliner.....  

"To the Excellencies and officials of Europe: We suffer enormously in Africa. Help us. We have problems in Africa. We lack rights as children. We have war and illness, we lack food...We want to study and we ask you to help us to study so we can be like you, in Africa."

The Last Discovery.

Speaking of living and working in third-world countries.   "......the chance to enter in some degree into the hearts and minds and feelings of alien peoples with exotic cultures. The final discovery, that we are all ultimately alike, is a hard-earned revelation. And it is well worth the trouble." 

(Living Poor. Moritz Thomsen. pg vii)

Know Yourself

You can know how to climb a tree, ride a horse, and swim, but it is better to know yourself.

Jiri don, so don, ji don, yere don nyogon te.

They Gave and Gave.....

I read this today from a girl who worked in Benin, West Africa with Peace Corps...... It describes the truth of Africa.....they give, and give, and give......

"I usually joke about my years spent in a West African village, and as if they were simply a sweaty, stinky, rat eating, tummy cramping adventure, as if Afi and the villagers hadn't given their homes, their laughter, their grooves, their children, their food,  their lives, as if they hadn't given and given and given their strength, their love, their spirit-concocted with a little mango breeze, some marché dirt, and a little Nigerian palm oil-bounded and danced and lived..." (Last Moon Dancing: A Memoir of Love and Real Life in Africa. 2005, pg 2)