Yesterday's post about Africa, AIDS and the Church begat considerable discussion around the old hot stove. An old buddy paraphrased my argument thus. "What you're saying is that trying to teach Africans that you can prevent aids by abstinence and chastity is like trying to explain Sunday to a hog."
Ummm, yes, you could say that! But if you say such things, you will be accused, as surely as day follows night, of being a racist. One of my small-l liberal friends says my saying "Africans will be Africans" is implying that all the efforts of missionaries, teachers, aid workers and other "forced for good" are wasted because Africans don't "get it". Exactly!
Why should this be construed as a racist statement? I lived in southern Africa for six years. I saw what I saw. I am not a racist. I am a realist!
Hear the voice of another realist. This is Paul Theroux's take on helping Africans, as expressed in Dark Star Safari (2003).
The whites, teachers, diplomats and agents of virtue [love that phrase, ed.] I met at dinner parties had pretty much the same things on their minds as their counterparts had in the 1960s. They discussed relief projects and scholarships and agricultural schemes, refugee camps, emergency food programs, technical assistance.
They were newcomers. They did not realize that for forty years people had been saying the same things, and the result after four decades was a lower standard of living, a higher rate of illiteracy, overpopulation, and much more disease.
Dark Star Safari is Theroux's account of his jouney from Cairo to the Cape just after the turn of this century. Like me, he spent some time working in Africa, years before. His view of that continent, its people and its future is far more jaundiced and dyspeptic than mine. Go ahead. Call him a racist. But read the book first.
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