Growth or Development? (1)

For a long while, I’ve been cruising charity and development organisations’ websites, looking for jobs, ideas, and general awareness of issues in developing countries. Doing this, you’ll notice that they all talk about ‘sustainable development’. Development is itself a more slippery term than you’d like to think, adding ‘sustainable’ does little to make it much more specific. What I find more interesting, though, is the fact that we only really talk about sustainable development as something other countries do.

In the west, we talk about ‘growth’, our euphemism for development. When you look more closely at these two superficially synonymous terms, you start to see a disconnect in parallel with the disconnect between our two worlds.

We adopt a different term because our political masters don’t want to suggest - by using the term ‘development’ for their own nations - that they are in any way underdeveloped – we are, after all, the developed world. 

We just grow.

I’ve never heard anything about ‘sustainable growth’. Of course not – no one in government will dare suggest that growth is anything other than ‘sustainable’ because growth is the holy grail of capitalist economics. During the financial crisis, growth became one of the biggest metrics by which we judged a politician’s success or failure. To introduce this small qualification is to question the basis of the West’s economic trajectory over the past century. 

But poor countries need ‘sustainable development’. We qualify the nature that their development must adopt. The term has different facets of meaning, encompassing use of natural resources and the preservation of the environment, and the necessary sense that the development is not being imposed, but simply helped along – ‘sense of ownership’ being a stereotypical key phrase.  All of these facets come together into a system that circumscribes certain kinds of development and promotes others at the discretion of powerful NGOs, IGOs and donor governments.

To do ‘sustainable development’ in the first-world capitalist system is a contradiction in terms – our development is not sustainable. In the long term, it only consumes. We create things certainly, wealth, huge buildings, marvellous technologies – but only through consumption of primary resources. To be sure, we can recycle, when we can be bothered, but there’s no recycling oil. The linchpin of nearly all the development the western world has undergone in the last hundred years.

Many of our unsustainable activities are outsourced from the Growing World to the Developing World. The domestic and industrial waste we can’t easily deal with – we export it. Think PCBs, for example. The food we can’t manage to grow ourselves – we just buy up land in Africa, pushing up prices and depriving those whose land this has been for thousands of years, whilst lining the pockets of crony regimes, landowners and the military. In short, we harness powerful people in these countries for our own ends, they enable this outsourcing and become fantastically rich.

With all this in mind, it isn’t surprising that most of those working in the NGO world are fairly left-wing. But is this a natural response of a system, or the cop-opting of idealistic lefties by the dark forces of capitalism? 

Minus two degrees Celsius.

Most of my experience of Africa comes from the mass media – until recently my image was pretty uniform – Muslims in the north with some Christians, Christians in the south with some Muslims. Everywhere was a potential warzone just waiting to erupt, probably because everyone was starving and living in huts built from sticks and stones. My assumption was that people’s attitude to westerners – Mzungu, Faranji – would be ambivalent at best. Bloody occupiers, eh?

Whether deliberate or not, the media and often some charities constantly reproduce this image of a continent of people living in isolation, ignorance and want. We often forget that ‘Africa’ consists of sixty-three countries (only 54 legally recognised), hundreds of languages and ethnicities, many of whom are extremely outward looking. Most of Africa is out of sight to westerners, and therefore out of mind. Cool animals on documentaries notwithstanding.

Not once during my time in Tanzania did anyone other than I broach the subject of colonialism, likewise Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is unique amongst all the countries of Africa in that not once has it been successfully colonised. For most of the first half of the twentieth century, the Italians gave it a shot, but never really managed it. Towards the end of the Second World War, the British booted them out.

This has shaped the national psyche in a way unlike any of sub-Saharan Africa. Most nation states south of the Sahara were formed along fairly arbitrary colonial lines, throwing disparate tribes together to varying degrees of success – compare the majoritarian tradition of government in Kenya to the almost contrived pluralism of neighbouring Tanzania. A river here, a mountain ridge there and you’ve got a border. Ethiopia, on the other hand, has existed in some form, centred around the Entoto mountains, since at least the first century AD. The Empire that Ethiopia became was a major world power – they traded and had diplomatic relations with Europe, Persia, Arabia, India etc etc. They were, in essence the first and for a long time, the only unitary state in the whole region.

Food and drink.

Because of all this, Ethiopians have strong and distinctive food – another source of pride, socialising and symbolism. Injera is what it’s all about for these guys. It’s a thoroughly odd kind of bread made from Teff flour (coeliacs take note), it seems to be fermented like sourdough, cooked on a hot plate with a lot of water until it resembles a big flat (2-4mm thick) greyish-brown sponge. This is selling it short. It’s a little bit sour, but as is usually the case with bread, it’s supposed to carry other flavours – texture first. Bayaynet is a typical vegetarian Injera dish (below. If in doubt, say ‘Bayonet’). 

Clockwise from bottom right, cabbage, spiced split peas, chilli and rice, salad, beetroot, more cabbage, sauteed potato, spicy sauce and in the centre, spiced lentils.

It’s probably an acquired taste but heck, I like most everything. Some westerners can’t seem to get into it that much. I reckon most of you would like Injera Tibs. This time, you get a charcoal burner brought to your table, on top, charred strips of beef tossed in spices with chopped onion and chillies.

To come back to the Italians – pizza is ubiquitous – they aren’t much fussed on Italian people, but Ethiopians show a certain flexibility in acknowledging the brilliance of Italian cuisine versus the brutality visited on them by Mussolini’s armies. I haven’t yet eaten somewhere that didn’t serve decent pizza and pasta is almost a traditional food.

Perhaps it’s something to do with a mutual love of coffee that you can get a Macchiato (or Makayato) anywhere. It’s normally served with a spoon of sugar settled at the bottom. Ethiopians usually add two or three more. They’d probably add sugar to their coke if I suggested it.

Rolled up Irish Flag.

Probably my favourite thing to eat/drink is their juice. I do mean eat/drink, because juice (JOOSE!) here is really pulp, you can use a straw if you want* but I use a spoon. The best is Spriss, mango, papaya and avocado pulp layered with a little fresh lime juice on the top. An honourable mention to Ergo. It’s cold yoghurt that, again, you can eat or drink as you like. It’s quite creamy and a little sour, always super fresh and better than any ice cream. For those who’ve been to Turkey, it’s a lot like Ayran. It’s also a little like Tajik Chakka, but actually tastes nice with none of the pungency.

 

Ethiopians reckon they like spicy food, and warn me all the time about that. They don’t know what spicy means. 

*If you want to look like a girl or a child. I had a sudden urge to find out what the lowest temperature ever recorded at the Equator was. Minus two degrees Celsius on Cayembe Volcano in Ecuador. I don’t really want to confront what the highest temperature recorded at the poles. 

A bunch of photos of things.

Just before I came out here, I was generously given a rather nice camera, one that far outstrips my ability. With the help of some local friends I'm starting to understand about 5% of the features of a digital SLR. Here's what I've got.

Weaver birds build their nests in less than a day using bits of grass, string, and most things that are longer than they are wide. This is a female.

Bright gold with purple and red faces, Male  of this species of Weaver birds are much more visible. Various species are found all over Africa and Asia.

Weaver Bird nests.

A view from the hill of the Muslim Quarter of Dire Dawa. Low down, the architecture is very Arabic and Turkic influenced. Minarets everywhere.

And looking up into the poor neighbourhoods, built on an improbable gradient.

Brother and sister. Show the slightest hint of a camera and you've got a plague of kids.

Another sister.

Leading to another sub-village on the outskirts, every resident walks this slab every day, hence it is incredibly polished. I dread to think what it's like when it rains. Unsurprisingly the locals had no trouble at all

The Muslim quarter. That's the mosque you see on the Wikipedia article for Dire Dawa.

A plague. These kids walk  unshod over rough, sharp stones and don't even notice.

Wind blows in dust from the surrounding savannah, so the sunset looks pretty dramatic.

The village on the hill.

The street.

More of the Turkish-Arabic style architecture which has almost everywhere fallen into disrepair. This is the door into someone's house.