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A Caveat Before You Read
Apologies for the delay in posting my latest blog entry, but getting access to affordable internet was a bit difficult once I reached South Africa. But don’t worry, reflections on my experience in Ghana have only been heightened by the experiences I’ve had in the few weeks since then. As you read this, keep in mind that these are my personal opinions and do not in any shape or form represent the views of the NGO I worked for, and that I’ve only had a few months’ time working “in the field” and have a lot more to learn; these are just my preliminary thoughts.
Don’t Try to Change Africa Without Letting It First Change You
I started out this whole Africa “experiment” to make sure that I wasn’t throwing tons of hard earned money to go to a masters program that would be a waste of my time. I dabbled in non-profits and public service work domestically for the past year, and really liked it, but was I ready for the big plunge? There was only one way to find out, so the next thing I knew I was in Ghana trying to survive
culture shock and reminding myself that in just a few months there would be a light at the end of the tunnel that read “Welcome to JFK International Airport.”
When I arrived in Ghana, I had this overconfident mentality that the problems in Africa were easy to fix (i.e. just heap on more money and cancel outstanding debt! Listen to Bono, he’s a rock star.) but wanted to see for myself why, if so many people were committed to poverty alleviation, the situation in Africa had only marginally improved. It only took a few weeks to find out the problem. It’s a lot about what Jeffrey Sachs, in his book
The End of Poverty identifies, which is that people in the field of development are not trained sufficiently enough in “clinical” studies and are often passing judgment on countries while never having experienced the situations there first hand. He alludes to becoming much like doctors - they go through years of rigorous training, spend many hours in the lab studying patients and are always learning about new procedures to help cure patients. It’s similar to what needs to be done with development, we simply don’t have sufficiently trained “doctors!”
I can’t stress enough the importance of really working in the field. The woman who runs the NGO I worked for is an amazing example. She spent so many years in this region of Ghana, really got to know the people in the community and its problems. She spent so little capital compared to these huge multi-million dollar government investments that largely fail, and has directly (and POSITIVELY) impacted so many women in the area. Because of her hard work and commitment, these women can have better lives. And by the way, she never got a Ph.D. or studied years of development theory or econometrics or statistics. She spent her years in the field. Now let’s see what has come of those professors. Hmm. Millions of dollars in aid to projects that FAIL. And why? Because they sit in their cushy offices halfway around the world and only take “observer” trips to the country with their significant others and make split second decisions on what is going wrong with the project. My roommate Sarah met a team that told her they were sent to Ghana to check up on the project team to see where the $50 million had gone and what it had been spent on! Now tell me, how much more money do you think it cost to send this secondary team to check up on the first team?! Again, these guys just read the news and the textbooks and write intricate economic models on the computer and they think they know all the answers. Of course I am exaggerating - there are definitely those who do know what they are doing, but unfortunately they are so few and far between. The majority come to Africa set on changing it in their way without first absorbing their surroundings. And this is why no matter how much money the government gives and how much people protest at the G8 summit to give aid and how many ONE campaign bands you buy, the problems with poverty will remain. You want to help alleviate poverty? Then take some time off work, sign up for a volunteer program with an NGO and go experience it yourself. It will change you forever.
Further Reading
If you are interested in these topics, then I highly recommend, if you haven’t already, to read two books. One is definitely Jeffrey Sachs’ book I mentioned above - he tries to explain in the very simplest terms the problems affecting the field today, and it is a real eye opener. Another book, just to see how this place really affects you, is Barbara Kingfisher’s
The Poisonwood Bible. It really related to so many things I experienced, and I could relate a bit to each viewpoint in the book.
Next up, South Africa!
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