The African Dilemma

Sorry for the delay.  The internet hasn't been available to my PlayBooks due to the fact that they've only given us one IP address for wifi here and Shawn/Jen have monopolized the Netbook with it.  I did have a whole long post typed out on my trusty BlackBerry but the connection dropped and I lost it all.  The internet connections here are pretty spotty at the best of time and I've noticed that it doesn't matter which network you are on (I got a plain internet connection for the BlackBerry on AirTel when I first got here and then when it ran out, I got a BlackBerry unlimited data plan from Vodacom for it - for 30,000 TSH/$21 for a month ).  The Vodacom one is better from the perspective that I can get BBM and emails on the Blackberry natively (without going through the browser) but neither one of them allows you to refresh a web page without getting a "Internet not available" message every three tries.  It's unbelievably frustrating to have 4-5 bars of signal strength but not have the internet because their internet is down... same goes for the wifi connections.  We've seen probably six different carriers at the various spots and wifi cafe's we've frequented but reliable internet isn't common here... add to that the constant power outages just when you think you've got the internet working and ... well my hair isn't getting any darker!

Last I posted, we were finishing up our stay in Moshi and contemplating our beach time on the Indian Ocean somewhere.  We spent the last few days in Moshi catching up on the kids school work, swimming at the local Y and wrapping up loose ends with our efforts with Esther's house.

Esther as you may remember is the HIV infected mother with three daughters, one of which is also HIV infected and is expecting in March.  They had been hoping for someone to help them patch some holes in their house to stop the snakes from coming in and the clinic had thought that we might want to help them build an outhouse.  When we got there and had a look around it quickly became clear to us that they had much bigger issues and that half of their house wouldn't make it through the March rains so we'd scrapped together our pennies and hired a "Fundi" to rebuild the worst half of the house.  He was to start Friday but the big rain storm (mentioned in my last post) had turned the mud on the road to her house and the lot itself into a mudhole.

On Tuesday Agnes, one of the nurses from the Pamoja Women's Clinic, clinic took us back out to see the progress before we were to leave last Friday.  Man, were we impressed!  The Fundi had ignored our request to rebuild half the house and had used our funds to build a new clay block wall about .5M outside of the entire house with the intent of reusing some of the existing roof to complete it.  It won't have glass windows or doors or stucco on the inside but it will keep the rain and snakes out and will be 1 metre bigger on every dimension so it'll end up being 14x9 metres with two rooms of about equal size.  That's about 1300 square feet in total so a fairly decent sized home albeit not to the same standards as Canada!

I was extremely impressed by how much the Fundi and his helper managed to get done in the 4 days.  They'd dug (by hand) a trench around the perimeter of the house 70cm's deep.  That's about 120 cubic metres of earth! Then they'd laid down a concrete and stone foundation up to the surface and then had laid about 4' of block all the way around the house.  All the while not disturbing the existing mud hut in the centre which could be knocked over by a strong breeze.  They did this without the aid of a single power tool or wheel barrell.  Just the stone foundation itself required moving over a thousand 60-120lb irregular sized granite boulders more than 100 feet from their nearest location in the middle of her plowed field.  They mixed up all the concrete and mortar from base ingredients by hand with nothing more than a trowel and a 5 gallon pail.  There is no water anywhere near the house so the women carried it on their heads in those 5 gallon pails to 2 large 45 gallon drums from about 500' away.  While I wasn't keen on seeing the women have to work so hard, we did appreciate that they were putting in some "sweat equity" into their new digs.

Agnes told us that Esther had told her that she could die tomorrow very happy in the knowledge that her girls were going to have a safe place to stay.  It was obvious they were overwhelmed.  We know that we can't (and shouldn't) help everyone here but it made us feel pretty good that we were able to help one family that had fallen through the cracks and needed some immediate assistance.  Agnes said that she felt very sure that the rest of the construction (new roof, windows, doors and stucco) would happen before March as the next medical caravan would take up a collection to finish it off.

Being in Africa the last 5 weeks has really got us all thinking about giving aid to these poor folks and the consequences thereof.  Since the early 1970's, western countries have given over a trillion dollars on foreign aid.  Poverty in Africa has risen from 9% to over 40% and there is still a complete lack of progress on basic infrastructure.  Throwing more money at is not the solution.  There is a whole industry here of NGO's and agencies providing basic support (orphanages, basic health care and food aid).  These all have conflicting agendas and provide patchwork support and have let the governments completely off the hook.  Over 90% of the government funding comes from abroad and not from the citizens of the country.  This means the government is accountable not to the citizens that elect them but to agencies like the IMF who's business it is to lend money with no accountability.  This has resulted in single party states even in so called democracies like Tanzania with no hope of change.

We've seen lots of NGO's and government agencies driving around in new 70K Toyota Land Cruisers but there are far too many orphanages, and you would't go to a local hospital unless you couldn't last for the 8 hour drive to Dar or to Nairobi.  The more we've looked at the situation here, the more I'm convinced that we aren't helping them with broad based donations like the ones advocated by Bono and Co...  Ditto, for signing up and volunteering through NGO's.  Most of the "volunteers" we've talked to spent hundreds if not thousands to donate their time and then show up and find they are baby sitting or doing something that should be provided by the local governments.  I'm convinced that this just further encourages the local governments to ignore the basic infrastructure required to provide even rudimentary services.  Sending money without accountability is more destructive I think than not donating at all.  It might make us feel good, but we are just encouraging dependence and a culture not conducive to ever getting better.

Anyway, enough with the pessimism although I will say that it is hard to see so many things wrong with no clear obvious solutions.