Posts

Showing posts from January, 2006

What's wrong with Africa

When I left the continent in 1998, I told people "I love Africa, but it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better." Score one for me. I didn't really understand why , though. Now I think I do. (Long, political, may piss you off.) Go for a long walk through rural Kenya, or a town in Rwanda, or downtown Lusaka, or just about anywhere in poor Africa, and at some point one or more of a group of children will approach you to say "Give me money," "Donnes-moi d'argent." Not beggars, I hasten to add; they're not there on the street looking for rich people; they're just hanging out, playing, and when they see you, they rush to make their appeal. It's easy, and wrong, to generalize from that to Africa-looking-for-a-handout. The famous "culture of dependency," the notion that white people screwed up the place, so white people should throw money around to fix it. That culture of dependency certainly does exist; and Western gove

back home

In case you were collectively curious, I survived the Dark Continent, yet again, and am back in Canada, grinding away on Book Four.