"Beyond the mountains, more mountains" is a Haitian proverb. It is also the title of a book by Tracy Kidder about Paul Farmer, who, since last August, holds the unenviable post of UN deputy special envoy for Haiti.
According to an article by Jennifer Wells in the Toronto Star, Mr. Farmer has serious doubts about whether Haiti will ever rise from its position in the economic basement of the western hemisphere. Appearing before the UN Committee on Foreign Relations a couple of weeks ago, he asked "Does this catastrophe create a chance for all of us to have a sounder, more solidarity-based relationship with Haiti? Or is to to be yet another chapter in a jeremiad of suffering and abuse of power?"
My bet is on the latter. First of all, I don't understand what a "solidarity-based relationship" means. It sounds to me like yet another example of foreignaidspeak.
Secondly, as I wrote a couple of days ago, Haiti is fundamentally an African state which, by an accident of geography, just happens to have drifted into the Caribbean. As several writers have pointed out (see Walt, passim, ad nauseam), guilt-ridden white western nations have for decades been pouring aid into Africa, writing off debt and generally trying to be helpful. And their efforts have done more harm than good.
In his testimony, Farmer remarked that 85 per cent of donor monies gathered after the serial storms and hurricanes of 2008 remains undistributed. That's right! The Haitian government and NGOs already had more than enough financial resources to cope with the recent disaster.
Yet the majority of the Haiti's population still had to live on less than $2 a day. More than 70 per cent of the workforce remained unemployed. The 2010 earthquake has made things only a little worse. The additional money now being collected and the bales of clothing and containers of food being sent to that wretched nation will make things only a little better for a little time.
Then Haiti will be forgotten. It's yesterday's news. We've had the concert, passed the hat, wept on TV and said how much our thoughts and prayers go out to those poor suffering, people. The show's over; nothing more to see there.
How about if we just leave Haiti alone? Our well-meaning ministrations over the years have reduced the Haitians to a nation of beggars. But as a Ugandan proverb says, "Begged water does not quench the thirst."
What Haiti...and Africa...need is to develop a sense of self-reliance, a pull-ourselves-up-by-the-bootstraps will to work and will to live. The resources are there. Food aid is starting to rot on the docks. Instead of helping each other, Haitians are fighting with each other over the loot.
Let them look after each other, without our do-good intervention, and they will be better off for it. Perhaps they will even start to see opportunity in scaling the next mountain.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
In Canada, better to be a refugee than a pensioner
If you come to Canada as a refugee, here's what you get from the federal government:
A monthly pension of : $1,890.00 (to a single refugee -- more if they have dependents)
Plus: 580.00 in social assistance
A grand total of : $2,470.00 every month
x 12 months comes to $28,920.00 annual income.
By comparison, the old age pension of a senior citizen who has contributed to the development of our beautiful country for 40 or 50 years cannot exceed more than:
$1,012.00 per month Canada Pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement
x 12 months gives Canadian seniors a not-so-grand total of $12,144.00 annual income.
The difference? $16,776.00 per year
The lesson? In Canada it's better to be a refugee than a senior citizen!
Just by coincidence, last night Walt saw an episode of South Park in which the old folks [seniors, surely! ed.] revolt and take over the town to demand better treatment. But that's only fiction.
And only in the USA. Canadian seniors wouldn't protest the incredible nonsense of refugees getting more than they do...would they?
A monthly pension of : $1,890.00 (to a single refugee -- more if they have dependents)
Plus: 580.00 in social assistance
A grand total of : $2,470.00 every month
x 12 months comes to $28,920.00 annual income.
By comparison, the old age pension of a senior citizen who has contributed to the development of our beautiful country for 40 or 50 years cannot exceed more than:
$1,012.00 per month Canada Pension and Guaranteed Income Supplement
x 12 months gives Canadian seniors a not-so-grand total of $12,144.00 annual income.
The difference? $16,776.00 per year
The lesson? In Canada it's better to be a refugee than a senior citizen!
Just by coincidence, last night Walt saw an episode of South Park in which the old folks [seniors, surely! ed.] revolt and take over the town to demand better treatment. But that's only fiction.
And only in the USA. Canadian seniors wouldn't protest the incredible nonsense of refugees getting more than they do...would they?
Friday, February 5, 2010
Weird way to drink milk?
Normal people have been drinking their milk out of jugs ever since ever since Eve introduced the concept to Cain and Abel. But some progressive [un-American! ed.] types have hit on the idea of selling, storing and serving their milk out of plastic bags!
In this video, Sheryl Ng explains how they get milk in her home in Ontario, Canada.
WARNING: This video contains material which may be offensive or disgusting to some viewers! At least that's the reported reaction of many American viewers: "Milk in a bag... ewwwwwww!"
Next time, Sheryl will discuss putting vinegar on french fries, or "chips" as they are known in Canada.
In this video, Sheryl Ng explains how they get milk in her home in Ontario, Canada.
WARNING: This video contains material which may be offensive or disgusting to some viewers! At least that's the reported reaction of many American viewers: "Milk in a bag... ewwwwwww!"
Next time, Sheryl will discuss putting vinegar on french fries, or "chips" as they are known in Canada.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The Haiti connection
For the first three days of this week we've been looking at Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, by Richard Dowden. Mr. Dowden is a British journalist and has written for the Times, and the Economist. As the book tells you, he has spent many years travelling in and reporting on virtually every country of sub-Saharan Africa.
Dowden wants to be sympathetic to Africa and its people, but his conclusions are gloomy. Since independce, i.e. for the last half-century, Africa has declined into poverty and chaos, and the writer sees little hope of much improvement any time soon.
A reader has wondered about the relevance of this subject to today's news. Africa is not in the news at the moment. Somalis are killing each other. Comrade Bob Mugabe's regime continues to push white farmers off their land in Zimbabwe.
The president of South Africa has taken another wife (his 5th, by most counts) and admitted paternity of his 20th love child. (This is the same man who said in court that he was careful to take a shower after unprotected sex so he wouldn't get AIDS.) In other words, things are normal in Africa.
But there is a little bit of Africa in the western hemisphere which has been much in the news of late. That would be Haiti. Watch the video clips from the earthquake zone and note the similarity between the look of the place and the look and actions of the people.
Yes, Haiti is an African nation. The people are ethnically African, the descendants of slaves brought from Africa in the 18th century. Since Haiti was then a French colony, they did not have the admixture of Spanish that altered the ethnicity of their neighbours in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. They remain African.
Politically too, Haiti resembles Africa more than its Caribbean neighbours. The slaves revolted nearly two hundred years ago, expelled the French and established the western hemisphere's first republic. Since then there have been a succession of regimes, including dictatorships and one short-lived empire, not to mention the occasional invasion by America. In a word, western democracy has not exactly flourished in Haiti.
Visitors to Haiti before the earthquake could be forgiven for thinking they were in Africa. There was the same decay and disintegration, the same incompetence, the same corruption, the same slums and poverty...the same people.
Haiti was a mess, and that in spite of billions of dollars in foreign aid and the tireless efforts of thousands of white missionaries, aid workers and Doers of Good. Just like Africa.
Then came the earthquake, and now everyone's jumping on the Let's-Do-Something-For-Haiti bandwagon. Ah, the white man's burden -- perpetual guilt combined with a nagging fear that maybe the terrible racists are right after all.
Opening our hearts and wallets to the stricken Haitians (and those who will do well out of doing good) is very commendable. But do we really expect that when the dust settles and all the relief money has been spent, the situation of the Haitians who are left will be any better? Cyncial Walt says don't bet on it!
Dowden wants to be sympathetic to Africa and its people, but his conclusions are gloomy. Since independce, i.e. for the last half-century, Africa has declined into poverty and chaos, and the writer sees little hope of much improvement any time soon.
A reader has wondered about the relevance of this subject to today's news. Africa is not in the news at the moment. Somalis are killing each other. Comrade Bob Mugabe's regime continues to push white farmers off their land in Zimbabwe.
The president of South Africa has taken another wife (his 5th, by most counts) and admitted paternity of his 20th love child. (This is the same man who said in court that he was careful to take a shower after unprotected sex so he wouldn't get AIDS.) In other words, things are normal in Africa.
But there is a little bit of Africa in the western hemisphere which has been much in the news of late. That would be Haiti. Watch the video clips from the earthquake zone and note the similarity between the look of the place and the look and actions of the people.
Yes, Haiti is an African nation. The people are ethnically African, the descendants of slaves brought from Africa in the 18th century. Since Haiti was then a French colony, they did not have the admixture of Spanish that altered the ethnicity of their neighbours in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. They remain African.
Politically too, Haiti resembles Africa more than its Caribbean neighbours. The slaves revolted nearly two hundred years ago, expelled the French and established the western hemisphere's first republic. Since then there have been a succession of regimes, including dictatorships and one short-lived empire, not to mention the occasional invasion by America. In a word, western democracy has not exactly flourished in Haiti.
Visitors to Haiti before the earthquake could be forgiven for thinking they were in Africa. There was the same decay and disintegration, the same incompetence, the same corruption, the same slums and poverty...the same people.
Haiti was a mess, and that in spite of billions of dollars in foreign aid and the tireless efforts of thousands of white missionaries, aid workers and Doers of Good. Just like Africa.
Then came the earthquake, and now everyone's jumping on the Let's-Do-Something-For-Haiti bandwagon. Ah, the white man's burden -- perpetual guilt combined with a nagging fear that maybe the terrible racists are right after all.
Opening our hearts and wallets to the stricken Haitians (and those who will do well out of doing good) is very commendable. But do we really expect that when the dust settles and all the relief money has been spent, the situation of the Haitians who are left will be any better? Cyncial Walt says don't bet on it!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The reality of Africa: MY conclusion
Yesterday we looked at some facts and figures from Richard Dowden's Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, showing how Asia has progressed since the end of the colonial era. On Monday we saw how, during the same 40-50 years, Africa has regressed.
The book is full of examples of Africa "going back to bush". It's actually quite a depressing read, especially for those who believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we are all created equal. Here's Dowden's observation of a small west African country, a long-time British colony now suffering from the "benefits" of independence.
Sierra Leone seems to be turning away from modernity and retreating into the Iron Age. I had felt the same sensation in Uganda, in Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, Ghana and even in some countries like Senegal and Kenya that had not suffered a complete political breakdown.
It is as if everything manufactured -- bricks, cars, engines, paper, plastic bottles, oil cans -- had been carried into Africa on a tide that is now retreating. The strange imports lie like rusting and rotting flotsam beached on an alien shore. Africa is strewn with buildings and machinery that were supposed to bring development but somehow got adapted or transformed into something else or now lie broken and useless in the sun.
And it is not just things. Sometimes the very nation states themselves, with their borders, flags, airlines, presidential palaces and government offices, seem to be disintegrating and dissolving.
I hear a wise old African saying with a polite smile: "Thank you for these things but they do not last long and they really are not suitable for Africa. It is better we rely on what we know, mud and wood, fire and a little smelted iron."
Exactly. Africa is going back to the iron age because that's all Africans know and that's what they are comfortable with. The problem with Africa, which The Economist called "the hopeless continent", is Africans!
Yes, yes, I know that'a a sweeping generalization, but that doesn't make it untrue. Nor does saying so make me a racist. I lived in Africa for six years and saw firsthand the effects of African ignorance, incompetence and corruption, as described in Mr. Dowden's wise, compassionate and understanding account.
Dowden is not a racist. I am not a racist. We are just realists. That is the way Africa is!
It has always been so. Travelling in Europe and Asia you see, in the architecture alone, evidence of civilizations and cultures which have subsisted for thousands of years. In sub-Saharan Africa there is virtually nothing.
Of course there's the odd exception, like the Great Zimbabwe ruins, which may have been built by Africans...or not. But until the Europeans came there was virtually no infrastructure, no written language, no government or social structures beyond the tribe or small "kingdom". African society before the advent of the white man was primitive.
What the white man did was to attempt to graft a skin of civilization over the raw body of African society. It didn't take. And now that the doctor is gone, the patient is rejecting the treatment, just as the "wise old African" says.
The book is full of examples of Africa "going back to bush". It's actually quite a depressing read, especially for those who believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we are all created equal. Here's Dowden's observation of a small west African country, a long-time British colony now suffering from the "benefits" of independence.
Sierra Leone seems to be turning away from modernity and retreating into the Iron Age. I had felt the same sensation in Uganda, in Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, Ghana and even in some countries like Senegal and Kenya that had not suffered a complete political breakdown.
It is as if everything manufactured -- bricks, cars, engines, paper, plastic bottles, oil cans -- had been carried into Africa on a tide that is now retreating. The strange imports lie like rusting and rotting flotsam beached on an alien shore. Africa is strewn with buildings and machinery that were supposed to bring development but somehow got adapted or transformed into something else or now lie broken and useless in the sun.
And it is not just things. Sometimes the very nation states themselves, with their borders, flags, airlines, presidential palaces and government offices, seem to be disintegrating and dissolving.
I hear a wise old African saying with a polite smile: "Thank you for these things but they do not last long and they really are not suitable for Africa. It is better we rely on what we know, mud and wood, fire and a little smelted iron."
Exactly. Africa is going back to the iron age because that's all Africans know and that's what they are comfortable with. The problem with Africa, which The Economist called "the hopeless continent", is Africans!
Yes, yes, I know that'a a sweeping generalization, but that doesn't make it untrue. Nor does saying so make me a racist. I lived in Africa for six years and saw firsthand the effects of African ignorance, incompetence and corruption, as described in Mr. Dowden's wise, compassionate and understanding account.
Dowden is not a racist. I am not a racist. We are just realists. That is the way Africa is!
It has always been so. Travelling in Europe and Asia you see, in the architecture alone, evidence of civilizations and cultures which have subsisted for thousands of years. In sub-Saharan Africa there is virtually nothing.
Of course there's the odd exception, like the Great Zimbabwe ruins, which may have been built by Africans...or not. But until the Europeans came there was virtually no infrastructure, no written language, no government or social structures beyond the tribe or small "kingdom". African society before the advent of the white man was primitive.
What the white man did was to attempt to graft a skin of civilization over the raw body of African society. It didn't take. And now that the doctor is gone, the patient is rejecting the treatment, just as the "wise old African" says.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The reality of Africa, cont'd
Yesterday I gave you rather a long quote from Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, describing how Africa had regressed in the post-colonial period. Now let's look at Richard Dowden's account of what happened in Asia at the same time.
By the end of the century, Asia had leapt ahead while Africa had gone backwards. Many Asian states started from a lower economic baseline than Africa in the early 1960s, but then made rapid progress in the 1980s with hi-tech industrialization policies implemented with rigid political, social and educational discipline.
Economic policies, technology, social organization and, above all, attitudes had changed. Within a couple of decades Asian countries were able to sustain increasing populations and offer them a future. More of their children survived, more families had clean running water and electricity, more were going to school, were learning to read and write and were able to find jobs when they left.
Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia and a new and mighty China began to become the world's manufacturers, making better and cheaper cars, textiles, ships, plastics, radios, toys and computers. Life got better for more people in Asia in the 1980s than at any other time in the history of human development.
The italics are mine, once again.
So...why the difference? Why did Asia succeed while Africa failed? My conclusions (if you haven't already guessed) tomorrow.
By the end of the century, Asia had leapt ahead while Africa had gone backwards. Many Asian states started from a lower economic baseline than Africa in the early 1960s, but then made rapid progress in the 1980s with hi-tech industrialization policies implemented with rigid political, social and educational discipline.
Economic policies, technology, social organization and, above all, attitudes had changed. Within a couple of decades Asian countries were able to sustain increasing populations and offer them a future. More of their children survived, more families had clean running water and electricity, more were going to school, were learning to read and write and were able to find jobs when they left.
Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia and a new and mighty China began to become the world's manufacturers, making better and cheaper cars, textiles, ships, plastics, radios, toys and computers. Life got better for more people in Asia in the 1980s than at any other time in the history of human development.
The italics are mine, once again.
So...why the difference? Why did Asia succeed while Africa failed? My conclusions (if you haven't already guessed) tomorrow.
Monday, February 1, 2010
The reality of Africa
I'm reading yet another book on Africa, a continent and a subject that fascinates me endlessly. Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, by Richard Dowden (PublicAffairs, New York, 2009) is a history, gazetteer and travelogue all rolled into one. It covers recent events -- the last couple of decades -- and the reasons therefor in most of sub-Saharan Africa.
Like most journalists of our time, Dowden, an Englishman, lays a lot of the blame for Africa's ills at the feet of the evil colonialists. How could the British, French, Portuguese, Belgians and others have the temerity to inflict upon the poor Africans roads, hospitals, power and water and the other evils of the civilized world?
That is the legacy left to Africa by the wicked imperialists. But what has happened to Africa since the British and others lost the will to govern and decamped in the 60s and 70s? At page 263 we read this:
According to the economic historian Angus Maddison, Europeans were only three times richer than Africans at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Today they are twenty times richer and the gap is getting wider. By 2000 Ireland's 4 million people, once among the world's poorest, produced more wealth than 200 million West Africans, including the mighty Nigerians with their abundance of oil and gas. The entire continent south of the Sahara, apart from South Africa, produced less than tiny Belgium.
The figures tell the story that the living standards of most Africans fell during the last three decades of the twentieth century. In 2008, on the UN Human Development Index, the world league tables that measure human well-being, African countries fill twenty-eight of the thirty bottom places for health, education and per capita wealth.
Some African countries are beginning to improve, but most Africans are still worse off than they were thirty years ago. By 2000 some 315 million Africans out of a total of about 770 million were living in absolute poverty. Only 15 per cent lived in "an environment considered minimally adequate for sustainable growth and development," says Paul Collier of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford.
According to the World Bank, it will take at least a decade of strict policies and sweat to achieve and maintain growth rates of more than 7 per cent. That is the target if Africa is to get back to the levels of prosperity that African countries enjoyed when the imperials powers left at the beginning of the 1960s.
The italics are mine. The conclusions are for you to draw. More on this tomorrow.
Like most journalists of our time, Dowden, an Englishman, lays a lot of the blame for Africa's ills at the feet of the evil colonialists. How could the British, French, Portuguese, Belgians and others have the temerity to inflict upon the poor Africans roads, hospitals, power and water and the other evils of the civilized world?
That is the legacy left to Africa by the wicked imperialists. But what has happened to Africa since the British and others lost the will to govern and decamped in the 60s and 70s? At page 263 we read this:
According to the economic historian Angus Maddison, Europeans were only three times richer than Africans at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Today they are twenty times richer and the gap is getting wider. By 2000 Ireland's 4 million people, once among the world's poorest, produced more wealth than 200 million West Africans, including the mighty Nigerians with their abundance of oil and gas. The entire continent south of the Sahara, apart from South Africa, produced less than tiny Belgium.
The figures tell the story that the living standards of most Africans fell during the last three decades of the twentieth century. In 2008, on the UN Human Development Index, the world league tables that measure human well-being, African countries fill twenty-eight of the thirty bottom places for health, education and per capita wealth.
Some African countries are beginning to improve, but most Africans are still worse off than they were thirty years ago. By 2000 some 315 million Africans out of a total of about 770 million were living in absolute poverty. Only 15 per cent lived in "an environment considered minimally adequate for sustainable growth and development," says Paul Collier of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford.
According to the World Bank, it will take at least a decade of strict policies and sweat to achieve and maintain growth rates of more than 7 per cent. That is the target if Africa is to get back to the levels of prosperity that African countries enjoyed when the imperials powers left at the beginning of the 1960s.
The italics are mine. The conclusions are for you to draw. More on this tomorrow.
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