What is your deepest fear?

I was invited to a dinner held for a friend who wants to travel to an African country to do some volunteer work.  At the dinner a lot of people were invited to come over and give this friend a different perspective on what is happening in African countries.  I am always curious about Europeans opinions of African countries and so I was quite happy to join.

At the dinner we started talking and, I would almost say naturally, the issue of aid and helping African countries came up.  And somebody said that with the economic crisis, aid would be the first thing that would be cut down.  And my response, “I would be happy if this happened”.  From there it was a whirlwind of discussion.  Basically a lot of people were of the view that while aid might not work well, it works.  And I stuck to the guns that better leave African people to sink or swim.  That in the long run is a much more sustainable solution.

It is a very simplistic argument and solely based on my view and how I think things could work, but at the same time I ask how come people are not willing to give money to a beggar on a European street and yet somehow feel that Africans are special enough that they need help with their problems.  Basically I was told it is an idealistic stand and that it does not address the people who are not able to help themselves.

So today after a bit of reflection, I realised that perhaps it came out that I simply want all aid agencies and Europeans to pack up and leave African countries to handle themselves.  One thing did not come out clearly from my argument is that I would very much appreciate a cooperative kind of relationship.  Just like how you can look for opportunities to work with people in areas where you feel they have strengths.  Just like I have seen with a number of academics visiting Ugandan universities and working with people there.  It is a work in progress.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 at 11:55 am and is filed under Recreational. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.