'This is Africa'
on Emily Hopkins (Ghana), 01/Jun/2010 15:53, 34 days ago
“This is Africa”, sometimes shortened to TIA, is a phrase I hate. It is meant to lessen the shock of what you see here, but I don’t want that shock lessened. When spoken by whites you can almost hear the unspoken “and what did you expect from a bunch of savages?” When used by Africans theresignation and defeat is depressing.Personally I want to remain angry about the poverty I see and corruption I hear about and witness. I want to remain angry that a child born in northern Ghana is 11 times more likely to lose his or her mother when she bears them than a child in England, and that they can expect 20 fewer years of life than an English baby. I want to remain angry that the Ghanaian child is going to receive a much worse education and have almost poor job prospects. Righteous indignation seems the only response to the incompetence and corruption that fritter away the meagre resources that are available.“This is Africa” is intellectually lazy, applying one explanation to many phenomena, complacent in its implicit assumption that this is how things must remain and often inaccurately assumes certain problems or categories of problems are particular to Africa rather than to poverty generally, or indeed universal.But we are presented with challenges everyday that frustrate us and have been known to bring me to tears, not because I feel moved by the poverty I see but because I feel so incapable of doing anything about it with the systems here. But still we continue one step at a time, a small drop in the ocean. I am scared that the often laissez-faire attitude of many here is rubbing off on me, when you no longer feel moved by the beggars on the street or knowledge that people die from malaria as they can’t get the drugs needed…what emotion do you feel?…I’m not sure…something like exhaustion I guess…Probably what most Ghanaians feel on a regular basis and who can blame them...seeing and experiencing the challenges of Africa but feeling exhausted by and powerless to do anything about it.My prayer is that I would have patience, grace and diplomacy in situations when I know I can do nothing about them, but I would have courage, determination and motivation to act when I see I can.