No Hurry in Africa (44 page)

Many of the larger charities are doing excellent work; their efforts are precisely targeted. They work tirelessly to improve health and education, to establish water infrastructure, and they feed many hungry people in emergencies. Less well-known charities like Childaid (whose work I got to know from my climb of Kilimanjaro) were also doing invaluable focused work, funding schools and clinics. None of Childaid⁏s staff was salaried. At the same time, a few Africans I spoke to view some Western agencies with suspicion, accusing them of profiteering, political interference, and arrogantly tramping on the wishes of local people. Some even speak of neo-colonialism. As with everything in this world, some charities do it right, others do not manage it so well.

Lifting the debt burden on African countries is important, but perhaps more so is helping to build up their infrastructure. Even in the more developed urban centres of East Africa, I encountered rutted dirt tracks, power failures, and taps with no water. Proper roads, ports, water and power installations are urgently needed if Africa is to move beyond a failing subsistence agricultural economy. The Kenyan government can balance its own day-to-day spending from its own resources without recourse to foreign aid or borrowing; the difficulty is that it has little or nothing left over for long-term infrastructural projects.

It is certainly not a case of throwing money irresponsibly at sub-Saharan Africa. Corruption is still a big problem unfortunately, being endemic throughout every single level of society— as I saw myself all too often. At the same time, corruption should not be an excuse to withhold properly monitored funding to the continent. Corruption is a fact of life in Africa that will not disappear by simply cutting off the money. To the Kenyan government’s credit, probably for the first time ever on the African continent, ministers resigned from the cabinet over corruption allegations during my time in the country. Sadly, this progress seems to have been reversed in more recent times.

The Irish missionaries draw from a deep well of experience and wisdom where helping Africa is concerned. They often cooperate with and get assistance from the well-known charities on specific health, educational, infrastructural, and employment projects. They have been in the field longer than most of the charities, though, and they often work in much more remote areas that the charities do not reach. There tends to be a much more personal dimension to the assistance rendered by each missionary as well.

A typical missionary might have fed a baby girl after her father died, then paid for the education of the same girl in the school where he or she taught her. Some time later, they might have donated money to her so that she could start a simple business, and a while after that, drop everything in the middle of a very busy day in order to drive her to the nearest hospital to give birth. Sadly, and all too frequently nowadays, the missionary might have to arrange for someone to nurse her, and then bury her if she dies from AIDS a few years later. The missionary would then take on the responsibility of clothing and looking after her now orphaned child, and the whole cycle would start again for the next generation. It is this personal cradle-to-grave involvement, tending to their spiritual needs along the way, which makes the role of the missionary unique.

It is not always easy to get it right, and I certainly did not at times. There was a desperately poor single mother called Mumbe, whom I knew well in Nyumbani. She literally had not a bed to sleep in at night. I gave her money to buy schoolbooks for her three children. I heard a few weeks afterwards that she was walking around with a mobile phone.

‘Are we saints or fools?’ Sr. MM queried, when I told her this.

The missionaries themselves admit to being taken advantage of from time to time, even after living in the country for decades. It is not an easy life, it can be lonely at times, and people they know well can burden them with the expectation of solving their problems, whether financial or otherwise. Yet most of the missionaries told me that it is extremely fulfilling work, if thankless at times. (Incidentally, Sr. MM, Fr. Paul and Sr. Mary Dunne amongst others, have since returned from Kenya.)

For my own part, during my months of volunteering, I nearly always felt I was exactly where I wanted to be. I was greatly enriched by my work in Nyumbani and at the Centre for street-children. I believe I made a small difference to the lives of some people.

Some websites that prospective volunteers might find useful:

Comhlámh:
www.volunteering-options.org

Combined Agencies:
http://www.HowYouCanHelp.ie

Irish Aid:
www.irishaid.gov.ie/centre

Volunteer Centre Ireland:
www.volunteer.ie

VSO:
www.vso.ie

Some books that visitors to Africa might find of interest:

Chinua Achebe:
Things Fall Apart

Felice Benuzzi:
No Picnic on Mount Kenya

Karen Blixen:
Out of Africa
and
Shadows on the Grass

Joseph Conrad:
Heart of Darkness

James Fox:
White Mischief

Elspeth Huxley:
The Flame Trees of Thika

Ryszard Kapuscinski:
The Shadow of the Sun

Martin Meredith:
The State of Africa

Thomas Pakenham:
The Scramble for Africa

John Henry Patterson:
The Man-Eaters of Tsavo

Ngugi wa Thiong’o:
A Grain of Wheat
and
The River Between

Lonely Planet:
Kenya
and
Africa on a Shoestring