In 2002, after the end of the civil war, Aminatta Forna went back to the land of her people in western Africa. When she got to the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown, she said, “There were a huge number of people working for NGOs and the UN. There were wine bars, 4-wheel drives, international restaurants — but no electricity and no running water.”
This in a country that had received post-war aid from Britain alone of US$ 1.3 billion. When she asked why, no one could give her an answer. She asked the British High Commissioner and the President and they couldn’t explain either (and still haven’t). Those in positions of authority, so practiced in art of artifice and eloquence, were left embarrassingly speechless by this simple question. The promises made to restore the country were words lying still and empty amongst the uncleared rubble of the war.
This in a country that had received post-war aid from Britain alone of US$ 1.3 billion. When she asked why, no one could give her an answer. She asked the British High Commissioner and the President and they couldn’t explain either (and still haven’t). Those in positions of authority, so practiced in art of artifice and eloquence, were left embarrassingly speechless by this simple question. The promises made to restore the country were words lying still and empty amongst the uncleared rubble of the war.
Meanwhile, aid agencies and public institutions expounded their policies for international consumption either oblivious to or unconcerned by their patent ineffectiveness. Or did these international aid workers truly believe the word-spun myths of their own assumptions? When NGOs told Aminatta time and again that, “Africa cannot govern itself,” the people being too disorganized, disorderly and dishonest to allow their well-meaning schemes to last and prosper, she decided to put this axiomatic conviction to the test.
She went to her family’s village, Rogbonko, where she knew the people, and told them: you build a school and I’ll raise the funds for a teacher. After that, she went back to Freetown and from there to London, where she lives. A week later, she got the message: “We’ve built the school.” And it was true: they had, from bamboo and thatch, in just 7 days. Aminatta fulfilled her side of the bargain, sent a teacher, and today the school now has 230 children, 5 teachers, and the highest graduation marks in the region. The village has passed a decree that all boys and girls should go to the school. “I didn’t do anything but raise a bit of money to pay for some books and a teacher to go there. The secret of our success,” said British/Sierra Leonean Forna, “was that we believed in African institutions.”
To do so, she had to challenge the established viewpoint collectively subscribed to by people and organizations working in the country. To challenge assumptions: nothing more than words fixed in people’s minds, but which obstructed progress, hope, change. “The stereotypical account of Africa portrayed in Heart of Darkness is destructive and dangerous,” Aminatta said. Although the moral of Conrad’s novel of 1902 may have been that civilization is barbarianism dressed up in flattering attire, it was nonetheless this supposed barbarianism and savagery of Africa that the imagery and narrative placed in Western readers’ minds. “Geoffrey Sachs, the global economist, writes in The End of Poverty[1] about the persistence of that stereotype: the belief that Africa is corrupt, cannot govern itself and has no history. It becomes an argument against giving aid. If Africa is not democratic at higher levels, at village level it is very democratic. I have never paid a single bribe.”
By way of illustration of how pernicious well-meaning beliefs can be when they are imposed and not tempered by consultation with the people they affect, Aminatta told another story about Rogbonko village. It had an old well, she said, on which everybody depended on for their water. They had been hauling it up by the bucketful for generations. Care International, one of the largest relief and development organizations, came to Rogbonko and put a cap on the well, installing a pump that would raise the water more quickly and plentifully. All well and good. After a few months, the pump broke down. By this time, the NGO was no longer around. The village clubbed together to pay for two different mechanics, neither of whom was able to fix it. Women resorted to using river water. At this time, a cholera epidemic broke out in the region. Aminatta Forna happened to be there and to have access to a simple book on health and hygiene that that instructed the villagers to “boil everything.” As a result, while cholera claimed many lives in the surrounding area, Rogbonko was fortunately spared.
Some time later, Aminatta was introduced at a dinner in the capital to a man who turned out to be the Director of Care International. She rebuked him for the irresponsibility of capping the village well without foreseeing the consequences and without talking to the people first. “Hundreds of people could have died in the cholera outbreak.”
“But we did talk to them,” said the man. “They signed a Memorandum of Understanding.” “Who signed it?” Aminatta asked. “I know the people in this village and I happen to know that they are all illiterate, even the Head Man.” It would be another question to remain unanswered.
After the civil war in Sierra Leone, there was left a gaping crater from which the truth about the conflict remained to be rescued. Aminatta Forna decided to write it. The fact that her brother might well have been expected to undertake such a task gave her a certain cover: “As a woman and younger sister, they didn’t see me coming,” she smiled. Without non-conformist individuals like Aminatta, who as a writer and journalist is in a position to give them a voice that will be heard, millions of people suffer in a forgotten silence. They are disenfranchised by not having a voice to speak to the world.
Education, she says, is the key. Together with investment in health care and infrastructure. Education: giving people the power of words to understand and express the reality in which they live as a means of changing it. It is both a fundamental first step towards individual freedom, and a model for aid agencies rooted in handing over decision-making processes and organization to local people.
Until this happens, said Forna, “International aid is like giving money to an animal charity so that you can carry on kicking your own dog.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Aminatta Forna was born in Glasgow and raised in Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom. Formerly an award winning journalist for BBC Television, she is now a full-time writer. Her most recent published works are Ancestor Stones, a novel set in West Africa, and The Devil that Danced on the Water, a memoir of her dissident father and Sierra Leone.
Reference
[1] Wikipedia’s entry on Jeffrey Sachs reads: “In his 2005 work, The End of Poverty, Sachs wrote that "Africa's governance is poor because Africa is poor." According to Sachs, with the right policies, mass destitution —like the 1.1 billion extremely poor living on less than US$1 a day— can be eliminated within 20 years. China and India serve as examples; China has lifted 300m people out of poverty in the last two decades.
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She went to her family’s village, Rogbonko, where she knew the people, and told them: you build a school and I’ll raise the funds for a teacher. After that, she went back to Freetown and from there to London, where she lives. A week later, she got the message: “We’ve built the school.” And it was true: they had, from bamboo and thatch, in just 7 days. Aminatta fulfilled her side of the bargain, sent a teacher, and today the school now has 230 children, 5 teachers, and the highest graduation marks in the region. The village has passed a decree that all boys and girls should go to the school. “I didn’t do anything but raise a bit of money to pay for some books and a teacher to go there. The secret of our success,” said British/Sierra Leonean Forna, “was that we believed in African institutions.”
To do so, she had to challenge the established viewpoint collectively subscribed to by people and organizations working in the country. To challenge assumptions: nothing more than words fixed in people’s minds, but which obstructed progress, hope, change. “The stereotypical account of Africa portrayed in Heart of Darkness is destructive and dangerous,” Aminatta said. Although the moral of Conrad’s novel of 1902 may have been that civilization is barbarianism dressed up in flattering attire, it was nonetheless this supposed barbarianism and savagery of Africa that the imagery and narrative placed in Western readers’ minds. “Geoffrey Sachs, the global economist, writes in The End of Poverty[1] about the persistence of that stereotype: the belief that Africa is corrupt, cannot govern itself and has no history. It becomes an argument against giving aid. If Africa is not democratic at higher levels, at village level it is very democratic. I have never paid a single bribe.”
By way of illustration of how pernicious well-meaning beliefs can be when they are imposed and not tempered by consultation with the people they affect, Aminatta told another story about Rogbonko village. It had an old well, she said, on which everybody depended on for their water. They had been hauling it up by the bucketful for generations. Care International, one of the largest relief and development organizations, came to Rogbonko and put a cap on the well, installing a pump that would raise the water more quickly and plentifully. All well and good. After a few months, the pump broke down. By this time, the NGO was no longer around. The village clubbed together to pay for two different mechanics, neither of whom was able to fix it. Women resorted to using river water. At this time, a cholera epidemic broke out in the region. Aminatta Forna happened to be there and to have access to a simple book on health and hygiene that that instructed the villagers to “boil everything.” As a result, while cholera claimed many lives in the surrounding area, Rogbonko was fortunately spared.
Some time later, Aminatta was introduced at a dinner in the capital to a man who turned out to be the Director of Care International. She rebuked him for the irresponsibility of capping the village well without foreseeing the consequences and without talking to the people first. “Hundreds of people could have died in the cholera outbreak.”
“But we did talk to them,” said the man. “They signed a Memorandum of Understanding.” “Who signed it?” Aminatta asked. “I know the people in this village and I happen to know that they are all illiterate, even the Head Man.” It would be another question to remain unanswered.
After the civil war in Sierra Leone, there was left a gaping crater from which the truth about the conflict remained to be rescued. Aminatta Forna decided to write it. The fact that her brother might well have been expected to undertake such a task gave her a certain cover: “As a woman and younger sister, they didn’t see me coming,” she smiled. Without non-conformist individuals like Aminatta, who as a writer and journalist is in a position to give them a voice that will be heard, millions of people suffer in a forgotten silence. They are disenfranchised by not having a voice to speak to the world.
Education, she says, is the key. Together with investment in health care and infrastructure. Education: giving people the power of words to understand and express the reality in which they live as a means of changing it. It is both a fundamental first step towards individual freedom, and a model for aid agencies rooted in handing over decision-making processes and organization to local people.
Until this happens, said Forna, “International aid is like giving money to an animal charity so that you can carry on kicking your own dog.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Aminatta Forna was born in Glasgow and raised in Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom. Formerly an award winning journalist for BBC Television, she is now a full-time writer. Her most recent published works are Ancestor Stones, a novel set in West Africa, and The Devil that Danced on the Water, a memoir of her dissident father and Sierra Leone.
Reference
[1] Wikipedia’s entry on Jeffrey Sachs reads: “In his 2005 work, The End of Poverty, Sachs wrote that "Africa's governance is poor because Africa is poor." According to Sachs, with the right policies, mass destitution —like the 1.1 billion extremely poor living on less than US$1 a day— can be eliminated within 20 years. China and India serve as examples; China has lifted 300m people out of poverty in the last two decades.
Next article Back to introduction