Community action day.

One of my underlings is blogging the team's experiences, and it's well worth a look. No point in me re-writing this stuff after all.

Here it is.

Andy.

Growth, development and containment

Containment

In my last post, I described the disconnect between development and growth, and how that is reflected in the world's economic order between the developed, or 'growing' world, and the 'developing' world. 

Though I take a critical view, 'sustainable development' per se is not a bad thing, but the picture that emerges from this disconnect is that, often, development becomes a strategy of containment or mitigation. In practice, what we call 'development' in a charity context is often to mitigate the negative effects of economic development.

When tribes have been dispossessed of their truly sustainable lives, and pulled into developed urban chaos where poverty and wealth exist in ways that never did before, they need this form of ‘sustainable’ development. There is little reason why, having lived the same kind of life for countless centuries, they might need anything else.

Let me be clear that I am not trying to romanticise tribal life. These are hard people, living hard lives. I do not at all begrudge them access to facilities and institutions if they want them. My issue is with the practised belief that they must want these things, whether they realise it or not. 

Post tribal

I’ve seen streets of typical post-tribal African towns. Empty sachets of sugar cane spirits flake and crumble in the red dust. Old men, still in their traditional shuka cloaks sit beneath a tree drinking all day, receiving handouts from the local NGO. Meanwhile a group of well-intentioned young people build a water pipeline for them – a great way to fix a formerly itinerant community. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it(1).

Hard folks, hard lives.

The tribe in this example, the Hadzabe, are one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in Africa. Since the end of traditional empire-based colonialism, when Africa coalesced (more or less) into nation states, the government of Tanzania has been trying to 'fix' these communities, with fairly minimal success. In 1961, a town was built for one of the communities. They moved in and, following their custom, moved on with the game. The government made several more fruitless attempts and gave up until 2007, when they tried an opposite approach, attempting to lease massive tracts of their traditional hunting grounds as a safari reserve for a company based in the UAE(2). After a huge international outcry, the Tanzanians reneged on the deal(3).

Education is an informative example when we look at the interaction of the modern with the traditional. Within Hadza hunter gatherer communities, many young people elect not to go to school, despite it being in some way available. Many young people in these communities are aware of school and what they can get from it, but do not see the ‘gain’ that we presume. Most development workers, myself included, have harnessed huge gains from education – usually up to post-graduate level. We are not even faintly comparing like with like. Exercises of power like formal education are normally viewed as benign at worst, but can play a part in erasing distinctive identities by forcing people to operate within a larger culture than their own.

                                       

To attempt to join a global modernised society would severely disempower members of this kind of community, according to their cultural views of power. The ability to track game, to survive for days on end in the wilderness, to navigate, to fletch arrows, to make and use a bow. This is their empowerment. The only empowerment that we can hope to provide is a strange, warped kind that operates within our metropolitan, modernised sphere of experience and this form of empowerment can only become relevant when this kind of world begins to encroach upon the social and physical environment of these tribes. That is fine in theory, except that this kind of progress works at a different rate than a human life. In the social spaces in which tribal communities live, the difference between the wealthiest and the poorest members is negligible. In a town, a fat man without the first idea of how to catch a Dikdik*, but who knows how to sell a car, might be immeasurably wealthier than the average Hadza*. It is no wonder that when faced with rapid social and physical alienation, that rates of alcoholism, drug-addiction and suicide in post-tribal communities are staggeringly higher than in metropolitan communities. 

(*a small, incredibly fast antelope. Slightly bigger than a hare.)

(*I mean immeasurably – they don’t use money for day-to-day activities)

Another thing to make clear, these folk aren't afraid of the wider world, they welcome strangers, sharing food and fire. The Hadzabe don't even mind if you break their cultural norms (within reason - I would often run around the countryside tops off. They thought it was strange, but didn't much care). They want to enact their lives in a manner of their choosing. Instead, global society seeks to put them into the prison we have built for ourselves.

As I had a lot of trouble last night starting a fire - with matches and charcoal - I remembered seeing a man starting a fire in less than a minute using two sticks, a handful of grass and a piece of cow dung.

Tbc.

Sources

1. My old blog

2. Briefing note on the threat to the Hadzabe people of the Yaida Valley, Karatu District, United Republic of Tanzania
3. Survival International - Hadza Tribe celebrates first land titles 

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.

Dr Dire

Hi to everyone (anyone) out there. Sorry it’s taken so long to get this going. I’ve been in Dire Dawa for a week now. To give you some context, it’s the second largest city in Ethiopia, a paltry 330,000 people and it’s strange, as African towns go. It was built by the French as a stopover from the port city of Djibouti. Hence, in addition to the odd colonial building, the streets are about 50% cobbled, a nice break from the dust, pitted tarmac, dust and dust of most African streets. They still throw rubbish on the ground without a care.

This is a welcome break from Addis though where we stayed for a week. There is tons to do in Addis, it’s colourful, not too hot (think nice British Summer every day, including rain), but your lungs are in stiff competition for oxygen with the cars and trucks covering the roads, maybe something to do with the altitude – 2,200m – leaving stairs a bit of a challenge, but I’m too stubborn to use a lift. I’ll say more about Addis when I go back.

As for Dire Dawa, in contrast to that constant ‘Capital City’ effect of people being relatively unfriendly*, you can’t go for a walk without folk bombarding you with “HEY FARANJI”, “Hello, how ah yoo!”, “What is yu-a name!”. They aren’t messing about or taking the mick, most people want to meet you and have a halting inter-lingual chat. Little handshake, some pleasantries and you’ve made a friend of sorts. This may have something to do with the fact that it really isn’t much of a tourist town and foreigners are more of a novelty. The Bradt guide pretty much writes it off. As a tourist, there’s not much to keep you going for more than a day or two, but it seems pretty decent to work in. Get a camera out and the friendly effect doubles.

Again, compared to Addis, there are virtually no cars. Plenty of trucks on their way through, but Dire Dawans get about almost exclusively with Bajaj (aka Tuktuk) – picture above. It’s like a Vespa scooter mixed with a car and there are hundreds of them. At any moment, five of them are usually competing for two Bajaj worth of road space. Hauling goods – Bajaj won’t manage that, no for that you need a horse and cart, or a camel.

I’m quietly impressed at the lack of crap on the roads.

Nice way to sign off my first post.

Peace.

*This is not to say that Addis is unfriendly, more that DD is hyper-friendly.