Why I don't want to "save" Africa

Mistaking Africa: Problem Defined

On a recent trip to South Africa, I experienced some of the misunderstanding that Curtis Keim explains in his book, Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind. As I was giving a walking tour of Zonkizizwe, South Africa (the township I had been living in for three months working at a children’s center) to a visiting group of Michigan State University students, several girls began to take pictures of children standing by the side of the road. The children were obviously poor, and were watching, bewilderedly, as a group of strange abemulungu (white people) passed. I had to ask them not to do that, because it was disrespectful to the children. They didn’t understand why it was rude, because they were simply capturing how “cute” they were. They didn’t realize that they were treating like these children like animals in the zoo, viewing them as “exotic,” or different enough to capture on film. I though to myself, would these girls have taken pictures of random children in the United States? Why were these children, despite their impoverished condition, any different? This theme of Americans depicting African people as “others” is the primary concern of Keim. Throughout the book he presents several stereotypes and misconceptions ‘we,’ the West tend to have about the African continent and its people. Africa appears in the public eye quite frequently, Keim argues, though it might not show up in the news it “shows up in advertising, movies, amusement parks, cartoons, and many other corners of our society” (Keim 3). Usually, through these interpretations, Africa is seen as distant, exotic, filled with famine, disease, civil war, cannibals, and primitive people, cultures, and languages. Africa is portrayed as backward and needing help from outside countries to deal with the great many ills of society and the economy. African people are often portrayed as ignorant and child like, depending on aid and gifts from these outside countries in order to survive. These images are caused by leftover and current racism, a history of Western exploitation of Africa, and through the self-definition of Western culture and identity. One way in which Americans in general misunderstand the interaction with Africa is through the savior complex of “We Should Help Them,” described more fully in chapter 6 of the text.

Should We Help Them?

After showing his class a video about a village named Wassetake in northern Senegal, Keim was approached by several of his students who wanted to help the people living there. They saw the everyday life of the people living there to be a struggle to survive, while Keim saw strong people dealing learning to handle tough situations in their lives. While he recognized that the students wanted to help purely out of good will, Keim questions the notion of “helping” African countries all together. He asks the reader to keep three questions in mind in this situation: Do they really need our help? What is wrong with life as they live it? What kind of help would be truly useful to them? (83).

For the last 150 years, Keim says, Americans and Europeans have made it a tradition to “help” the continent of Africa. In fact, much of the colonization done by the West was justified by using this excuse. Colonialism was considered the “white man’s burden” to take care of Africa, not exploit it. Missionaries were also sent to African countries to “spread the good news,” while the Cold War attempted to save Africa from communism. The West frequently comes into Africa during time of war to help refugees, or during times of famine. More recently, ‘we’ assist in “developing” African countries by reforming their governments, regulating their economies, and influencing the lives of the people living there in other ways (Keim 83-4). Keim argues that there are five different ways in which this “assistance” to Africa has been administered by the West: authoritarianism, through the market economy, gift giving, conversion, and participation (84). He also critiques each mode of assistance, attempting to analyze its effectiveness in truly helping Africa and its people.

Authoritarianism – the “Top Down” Plan

Authoritarianism, according to Keim, came in the form of the new African leaders that took power when African countries began to achieve their independence in the 1950s and 60s. These new leaders, with their western educations, took power and implemented “top-down” policies that greatly affected their countries. They believed that the poor were unable to make rational, informed decisions about the economy, so they took steps to invest in their countries by borrowing money from other to invest in education, health care, roads, and state run factories (85). By the 1970s, many of these countries were deeply in debt and could not afford to pay back the money they had borrowed. Here enters the second form of “aid” to Africa—loans made to boost market economies.

The Market Economy and Help

In order to stop the economic decline of African countries in the 1980s, two large financial agencies called the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) created new plans to help develop African countries—with a price. Countries would now have to abandon their goals of industrialization and turn instead to the production of raw materials. In order to receive money, countries had to agree to certain structural adjustment plans (SAP) that would “reduce the government’s rode and shift economic growth into private hands” (Keim 87). These programs created significant changes in the way the countries ran. Taxes and tariffs were lowered, education and health care budgets were cut, many government owned businesses had to be sold, currencies were devalued, and urban food subsidies cut (Keim 87). How the SAPs have affected Africa is still under much controversy today. Some SAPs have seemed to produce economic growth and income equity, others have not. Some have proved to disrupt the social and economic aspects of countries by taking away jobs from people, raising inflation to the point where local currencies were destroyed, or education and health care systems completely gutted. Either way, the question becomes: were the goals of the SAPs to help the African people, or to help the West, as the west “reaps the rewards of African raw materials, investments, and interest on bad loans, while Africans struggle to survive” (87).

Conversion—Cultural Relativism Gone Wrong

Another way in which the West has attempted to aid Africa is through the sharing of thoughts, ideas, and rituals (or in the opinion of some, the forcing of these ideas). The main idea behind such exchanges is that African countries are inferior and their goal should be to become more like the West. This can be done through religion, education, and commercial advertising among other mediums (Keim 89). Conversion can be harmful to Africans because often times it influences them to step away from traditional cultures, villages, and countries. The educated people then leave Africa to work in Europe or America as a part of what is known as the “brain drain” (Keim 90). Though Keim believes there is nothing wrong with two different cultures coming in contact with one another, he does believe the interaction between the two should be constructive and that a sort of cultural harmony should be reached. One culture should not take priority over the other, and people should never be made to feel that their culture is inferior. When this happens, people are more likely to become dependent on the culture that claims to dominate.

Gift Giving, or Creating Dependents?

Gift giving can happen in the form of individual donors, or through foreign aid. Critics of such aid point to the fact that it is often given in amounts too large, too little, in ways too useless, or too inefficient. Many aid attempts in the past have failed miserably, creating a wide variety of social problems. It has helped widen the gender gap between men and women in African societies, benefitted urban elites at the expense of the poorer villagers, and has taken away pride, work, and initiative from local people. Keim goes on to say that gift giving, if not properly moderated, can “foster dependence, weaken local initiative, and empower people who do not care about all members of the community. It can advance ideas and tastes that are not good for Africa. It can promote superior-inferior relationships between the West and Africa” (92). Creating such relationships goes against the meaningful ways in which human being and cultures can most constructively learn from one another.

Participatory Help—the “Bottom Up” Plan

Help through participation assumes that no country needs to do something for another country, but that both countries work together to “identify problems and needs, mobilize resources, and assume responsibility themselves to plan, manage, control, and assess the individuals and collective actions they decide upon” (Keim 94). This kind of interaction also assumes that local people are educated, have resources, self-confidence, organization, and self-discipline—not rely on gifts or other people’s skills to get the job done. In these situations, if outside money, knowledge, or equipment is provided, they come in small, appropriate amounts (Keim 94). Such partnership makes it possible to help people of African countries without turning to large lending agencies such as the IMF or the World Bank.

Military Assistance

Though military help does not offer help to African countries such as the more direct form of aid previously mentioned, it greatly represents the way in which Americans and other Westerners view Africa. These forms of help have come in the form of military presence in Africa, much of which has been oppressive rather than liberating. Two examples of this are the United State’s military advice and aid during the time of the Cold War, and the newly created AFRICOM military operation—with a headquarters that is to be permanently based somewhere in Africa (Keim 95-6). Military help is often justified by the United States as being a way to promote African security from such ills as “communism,” or the influence of countries like China. When threats like these arise, US military presence in Africa goes up. It is still in question whether or not this kind of help is truly being administered for African security, or to help the United States secure their economic interests African countries.

Rethinking Our Notion of Help

In this chapter Keim makes it quite clear that there are indeed problems on the continent of Africa, and that it is perfectly ok to “want to help them [African people]” develop their countries, but that it must be done in such a way that preserves the humanity of those helping, and those being helped. Throwing large amounts money at the problem isn’t going to fix anything. It can create dependence on aid, and leave room for individuals to make a profit off of resources that were supposed to go to the greater good. Other forms of assistance can often be exploitative, or suggest that certain aspects of different African cultures are inferior. Assistance can be helpful and beneficial to both sides, if done correctly. If we are to help countries develop, we should keep this in mind, along with a few other suggestions from Keim. He reminds us that all cultures, including our own, have room for development. Development does include economic growth and material comfort, but personal wealth should not be a primary goal—equal resources should be guaranteed for all in order to live a happy, healthy life. Development should help empower communities and ordinary people to organize for themselves. This means that the ideas about what is to be done in the community should come from those living there, along with the primary energy and resources.

What must be remembered however, above all things, are that all parties involved are indeed human, and should be treated as such. African people are not so different from Americans, though cultures, customs, languages, and histories may vary. No human being is so low as to require the assistance of someone who thinks they are better than everyone else. The same goes for countries. I think back to my days in Zonkizizwe, watching the children get treated like pets, and sometimes babies because they were “different” or “poor.” I know I could have easily been born into any one of their situations. Because of that, and the simple fact that I have respect for all of humanity, I refrained from any treatment that would have made them seem like the “other” from myself. If more people could think that way, I am confident that more plans to help aid African countries would succeed.

Works Cited
Keim, Curtis. Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind. Boulder: Westview Press, 2009.

Say NO to SAPs in Africa!

It is refreshing to read African perspectives on the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed on African countries by Bretton Woods institutions, as is the case in Our Continent Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment. Such a view is not often heard, as reports of failures, deficits, and continued underdevelopment in Africa made by mainly Western sources is what reaches media outlets. Authors Thandika Mkandawire and Charles C. Soludo weave together evidence from 30 different individual studies, 25 of which are done by Africans themselves, in an attempt to summarize an African perspective on the poor economic state of African countries and the systemic policies and programs that continue to inhibit their growth. Not only do they describe Africa’s economic problems due to SAPs and their continued failure to bring about positive growth, but they propose alternatives (or ‘policy prescriptions’) that move away from structural adjustment policy and toward ‘broadening and developing fundamentals’ in a number of economic development sectors, including socio-politics and sustainable development of which I will focus exclusively. Progress in this sector, Mkandawire and Soludo argue, is vital to the development prospects of African countries and to Africa as a whole.

Africa, in the Ages of Development and Structural Adjustment

Africa wasn’t always in the poor economic state that it is now. After the majority of African countries gained their independents after the 1960s, Africa was on its way to becoming a developed continent. According to Mkandawire and Soludo, by the mid-1970s, many African countries were progressing in economic and social development as “[s]ome level of industrialization had been initiated, levels of school enrolment had increased, new roads had been constructed, [and] the indigenization of the civil service had advanced…” (20). Even so these economies were still extremely underdeveloped because of their recent history of colonialism and colonial exploitation of economic means. In an attempt to better develop their states, African countries turned to Bretton Woods institutions for loans. When these countries found that they could not repay the loans, loaning institutions such as the World Bank began to impose Structural Adjustment Programs on them in order to open up their economies and leave room for economic growth. Three major policy actions that were central to these growth-oriented programs were “(a) more suitable exchange-rate policies; (b) increased efficiency of resources use in the public sector; and (c) improvement in agricultural policies” (Mkandawire and Soludo 42). These policies were implemented as short to medium terns macroeconomic stabilization measures to restore the balances of countries both internally and externally. Various reforms were implemented such as industrial policy, agricultural, financial, trade, labor market, education, and administrative reforms (Mkandawire and Soludo 42-8). Several countries, such as Ghana, had effective implementation up until 1994 but then suddenly dropped and were replaced by new ones such as Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia and Uganda (Mkandawire and Soludo 84). This pattern of growth and then relapse continues to occur today, and for the large part SAPs have failed in most African countries. Many are wondering, what are the reasons for this?

Arguments for the Effectiveness/Ineffectiveness of SAPs

Mkandawire and Soludo explore a few on both sides of the spectrum. Some argue that is the fault of the African countries, that African societies are too unstable to handle reforms, that money is being misused, or some other kind of corruption is taking place. Explanatory variables blame Africa for trade restrictions such as the lack of openness to trade, lack of financial depth, deficient public service and infrastructural provision, lack of social capital, high macroeconomic volatility and uncertainty, terms-of-trade shocks, drought, offsetting effects of aid, and external debt-burden (Mkandawire and Soludo 82). Others argue that is the staunch and unfamiliar policies of primarily Western nations being out of place in African societies, and that BWIs take little care to incorporate policies that are in accordance with the specific histories African countries and that is has nothing to do with the inherent characteristics of African countries. In any case, the fact of the matter is that Bretton Woods institutions are failing to effectively implement their programs. It is time to move onto something else, argues Mkandawire and Soludo, toward something they term as ‘broadening and developing fundamentals’ in African countries. What they mean is simply that when creating effective policies, the following issues must be addressed: equity, economic growth, economic stability, and political legitimacy. Emphasis must be put on not only economic growth in areas of GDP or trade, but equal attention and investment must be put on the social and infrastructural development, something SAPs have tended to ignore in the past. One area in which the fundamentals need to be strengthened are in the realms of socio-political and sustainable development.

Socio-political and Sustainable Development:
The Push for Capacity Building and Democratization

Areas in which need attention are those in which “social capital,” “social capability,” and “social structure of accumulation” can be achieved (Mkandawire and Soludo 124). This would prepare Africans for the task of controlling their own countries and in turn controlling their own fates. Africans need to gain the technical skills to deal with what Mkandawire and Soludo call the “physical hardware of investment,” along with organizational skills, the skills to govern markets, workplace management skills, the ability to form labor relations, state-society relationships, and the freedom to participate in ideological, social, and cultural consumption patterns that correspond with class, gender, and ethnic lines (124). In order for such a society to be possible, economic policy must be compatible with the process of democratization.

According to Mkandawire and Soludo, SAPs have affected democratization of African countries in three ways. SAPs relate to a growing private space, which ends up informalizing economic life and marginalizing large parts of the population. SAPs have also affected the political legitimacy of post-colonial governments by affecting its ability to implement its own policies. Finally, SAPs have interfered with the process of policy making by leaving little room for countries to make their own policy choices (75-6). Mkandawire and Soludo believe that in order to have enough strength to carry out effective policy dealing with technical capacity, political legitimacy, and social welfare, and due to the extensive history of social pluralism and the artificiality of national borders, democracy is the only way to carry out the necessary programs (125). Moving toward amore democratic governance would take reforming civil service sectors, generating programs for capacity building on both the micro and macroeconomic level—only then can the fiscal capacity of the state be effectively reformed.

Conclusion

I completely agree with Mkandawire and Soludo that only through democracy is the kind of change necessary able to be implemented. No economic policy can flourish if the political system of the country is on the verge of collapse. Thus far, Bretton Woods Institutions have failed to take into account pre-existing factors such as social pluralism and arbitrarily drawn national borders of African countries, and they have tried to impose a foreign, Western culture through their policies and programs. This naturally creates resistance, and the SAPs have failed to significantly increase growth in all sectors of African countries. Socio-political strength is necessary for African people to make choices that correspond with African ways of life. If Africans were given more say in how SAPs were implemented in their countries, and then were allowed to be agents of change, perhaps more structural adjustment would be affective. I believe this is the message that Mkandawire and Soludo have been trying to get across in their book, and that this is the only way Africa will be able to catch up in the world of development. Any time wasted due to pride, stubbornness, economic exploitation or misunderstanding on the part of the Bretton Woods institutions means more suffering for individual African people. The children and future leaders of African countries face a future of concentrated poverty, unemployment, lack of access to health care, income and housing disparities, insufficient educational systems, unattainable higher education, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic among countless others ills that come with economic underdevelopment. If this is to change, the African people cannot afford to wait any longer. Structural Adjustment Programs must attempt to meet African people halfway, or there will be no more Africa to speak of to develop.

Works Cited

Thandika, Mkandawire and Charles C. Soludo. Our Continent Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment. Trenton: African World Press, Inc, 1999.

The Language of Oppression: the degradation of Black languge in the USA and South Africa

I know about structural racism …. Racial oppression through entrenched systems in society through various public bodies, laws, corporations, the prison system, universities...you name it. But when the idea of racial oppression through use of language was introduced to me, I was suddenly taken aback. I had never though about it before-- was there such a thing as a linguistic hierarchy? After making some connections in my mind, I came to conclude that this is so. For the sake of making this blog entry brief, I will say that English is at the top of this hierarchy. I come to this conclusion because it seems like everywhere you go, you can find some sort of evidence that English is spoken there.

In a world where global politics are becoming more important than ever, how will people continue to communicate with one another? Will people continue to place an emphasis on learning to speak English as a common language, or will they attempt to broaden their horizons and learn to speak the language of others?

Some more things to ponder:

Have you ever stopped to think about the words you are using, or the way you are speaking in order to express yourself? How does your language or diction differ from that of other surrounding you? Do you think you speak "better" English than others?

Picture this scenario. It’s a stereotypical one at best, but it speaks to my point. An African-American child grows up in the ghetto where she learns to speak a form of colloquial English known to some as "Ebonics," or in more technical terms, Black Vernacular English. She grows up in a community where this is the dominant form of languages spoken. She doesn't think anything is wrong with the way she talks, it's just how she grew up. However, the outside world of "proper English speakers" would tend to disagree. The way she speaks is unacceptable and crude. She is accused of sounding ignorant and stupid because of the way she speaks and misses out on many opportunities in life such as being considered for job, housing, etc. How is this fair? Why isn't it OK for her to express herself in a way that feels comfortable for her? Why must she conform to certain standards of language in order to be taken seriously?

Geneva Smitherman, a university distinguished professor at Michigan State University, explores such oppressive parallels between the Black speech communities in both the United States of America (USA) and the Republic of South Africa (RSA). Though the culture, history, demography, legal structure, and other important elements of both countries have significant differences, there is a basis for comparing the Black politics in both countries as it relates to language (316).

Both the RSA and USA are attempting to adopt policies centered around the creation of the English language as an official and premier language of the country. In the RSA this would be a policy of “English Plus,” and in the USA “English Only” (316). This presents fundamental problems for all linguistic minorities, including those who speak African or Pidgin Languages in the RSA or Black Vernacular English (Ebonics) in the USA (317).

According to Smitherman, such impositions can be though of as modern day “internal colonialism” in both countries, similar to the extermination of Native Americans from the USA, the introduction of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to the global market, and the conquest of South Africa by the Netherlands and later Great Britain (317-18). Such internal colonialism is not just a polarization between and oppressor nation and a colonized people but an entrenched system of “racial capitalism” where Europeans are socially constructed as the “superior” race with superior qualities and characteristics (318). In order to do this, the Europeans created elaborate systems of law, education, politics, customs, and cultural belief sets to support the economic exploitation of the indigenous peoples (318). One can see how the European claim of superior language could greatly affect each one of these systems.

Linguistic colonialism in both the RSA and USA negatively affects the Black populations. The colonizers’ languages, English and Afrikaans in the RSA and English in the USA are considered to be much more prestigious than African languages or Ebonics. Such imposition of language makes it impossible for Africans and African Americans to experience life and learning, as they are forced to use a language that makes it impossible to properly reflect the real life of Black communities (320). Though Blacks share this major similarity, they do experiences some differences as well in their experience.

Africans brought to the USA as slaves were almost completely stripped of their native languages while Africans were allowed to keep their languages in the RSA. However, the British policy in the RSA regulated other African languages in the RSA as having a lower status by considering them “dialects” instead of “languages” (321). Africans who learned to speak English were given rewards by the British in form of allowing them to become part of a class of Black elite with special economic and social privileges.

On the other hand, African Americans developed a form of pidgin English in order to communicate with their masters as well as other Blacks who were brought to the USA as slaves. Their masters often mixed slaves who spoke different languages and came from different parts of West Africa together, and they developed their own forms of communication as a survival mechanism (322-3).

Presently in both the USA and RSA the legacy of internal colonialism continues to connect to Black language politics and pose barriers to moving toward a linguistic democracy. Blacks who speak primarily Ebonics or an African English are scrutinized for not speaking “good” English and award social and economic benefits such as jobs and mobility to those who can speak English properly (340). Language is being used to divide the Black community into groups competing with one another for material and social wealth, making it that much more impossible for Black people across the globe to stand in solidarity against the capitalist systems that continue to oppress them. At the end of the article Smitherman pushes for the Black community to unite and pressure the dominate white elite toward linguistic democratization (341).

One thing is for certain—these languages with their variations, history, and cultural influence aren’t going away any time soon. Both sides need to develop a way to make room for the diversity of people within them and the way in which they express themselves. If some happy medium can't be reached, future generations of Black people will be both physically and psychologically damaged by the internal colonialism of language heiarchy and its practices.

Another thing that certain-- respect should be given to all people, regardless of what words they choose to use. All language is sacred; it brings dreams and ideas to life, sharing the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of humans to the rest of the world.

Works Cited:

Smitherman, Geneva. “Language and Democracy in the USA and the RSA.” Ed. Roseanne Dueñas González and Ildikó Melis. Language Ideologies: Critical Perspectives on the Official English Movement. Lawrence Elbaum Associates, 2001. 316-344.

Putting a human face on AIDS statistics in Africa

It is easy to take the statistics, even one of an epidemic,
and never fully understand them as anything else other than numbers. No emotion
goes into reading numbers, no humanity is necessary to analyze graphs, charts,
or percentages. But there is some emotional baggage that comes with hearing the
stories of those individual people who are affected by something like HIV AIDS.
There is something deafening, something biting, something ultimately
frustrating and scary that comes with choosing to take a walk on the human side
of a figure like: "Some 15 million children under age 18 have lost one or
both parents to AIDS," or "...new projections that expanded access to
prevention could avert approximately 30 million of the 60 million HIV
infections expected to occur by 2015" (statistics can be found at
UNAIDS.org). What does 15, or even 30 million people look like? How many tears
shed, how many hearts breaking, how many homes lost, how many and lives
destroyed does that amount to? How do you measure the social stigma-the
loneliness, feelings of despair and helplessness-or the excruciating pain that
comes with those vast numbers of people affected by the HIV AIDS virus?

These were things I tried desperately to grapple with as I
began to study the history and current consequences of AIDS. What I found is
that the issue is much greater than I had ever thought. AIDS is not just a
disease that coincidentally happens to affect mainly poor, southern Africans,
the majority of which are women and children. There are real systematic,
institutional, social, and economic factors that add up to the highest rates of
HIV AIDS infection rates being concentrated among poor, southern Africans.
These factors together are what Dr. Paul Farmer has termed "structural
violence." Structural violence is "historically given" and often
"economically driven" factors that conspire through "routine,
ritual...[and] the hard surfaces" to constrain the lives, well being, and
mobility of people. Examples can include but are not limited to racism, sexism,
political violence, and poverty (Patholgies of Power, Farmer, 2005). The
majority of structural violence is aimed toward the poorer peoples of their
earth, as they are easy to exploit due to their lack of socio-economic voice. I
plan on posting more with specific examples of these structural problems in a
few days, as I am researching this further for a paper, so don't kill me for
leaving off here for now!

Now that I better understand what's going on...what do I
plan to do about it? The last thing I want to do is sit around and do nothing,
theorize and criticize the situation without getting my hands dirty and trying
to fix it. So this summer, I'm forsaking the beach, the movies, the vacations,
TV, internet, shopping, and whatever else people do for fun in the summer to
have what I'm sure will be the experience of a lifetime. I'm going to Africa.

During the upcoming summer, it is my intention to take my
newfound AIDS prevention knowledge and put it into practice. I will complete an
internship at the VumundzukuBya-Vana Youth
Center in Zonkizizwe, South Africa.
Zonki, as they call it, is an extremely isolated village south of Johannesburg. I'll be
there anywhere between 10-14 weeks, depending on the cost of travel and
obligations back in the States. This youth center's purpose is to provide
physical, emotional, and social support for children and youth made susceptible
by HIV AIDS. Many of the children living in the area have lost a family member
or friend to the virus, and some may be infected themselves. Some of the
children live in youth headed households, or are being raised by someone other
than their natural parents. As an intern at the Youth Center,
I would be responsible for planning after school activities for the children
living in Zonkizizwe. These activities include providing health and nutritional
education, promoting academic progress, self expression, social responsibility,
and communication as well as problem solving skills. Educational programming
would specifically focus on addressing high risk behaviors in the environment
that many children in South
Africa experience daily: teen pregnancy,
unprotected sex, drug and alcohol abuse, crime, illiteracy, and poverty. I
would not be leading these activities by myself, however, as I would have the
pleasure of working with and helping the existing native staff at the facility
to undertake these responsibilities.

Getting to know the staff and experiencing life in
Zonkizizwe like they do is one of the things I am most looking forward to. I
also absolutely cannot wait to interact with the children! I realize that many
of them are not proficient in English, but that's OK. I know about two words of
Zulu, the language primarily spoken in the area, so we'll be even. Finding ways
of communicating with each other should be very interesting, and I'm up for the
challenge. Plus, the older kids will be able help me out. My primary reason for
this trip has always been then children...they are the ones that suffer the
most with no voice.

I have chosen this internship because as a Social Relations
and Policy student with a Black American and Diasporic Studies (BADS)
specialization at Michigan
State University,
I am interested in how policies affect the social development of people. I am
especially interested in learning about educational policies and how they
affect the physical, emotional, and social development of Black children across
the globe. I have participated in a mentoring program called My Brother's
Keeper (a program through Malcolm X Academy in Detroit) to understand how post-
Brown v. Board of Education educational policies have affected children of
color in the United States, and now I wish to experience these affects in the
greater African Diaspora. I would like experience first hand how post-Apartheid
educational policies are affecting black children in South Africa. It is my wish to
compare and contrast the experiences of Black children in the educational
system across the Diaspora, and potentially expand my study into a dissertation
topic on my road to earning a PhD in African American and African Studies. If I
don't decide to go into academia, and go in the direction my heart truly lies--
non-profit work-then I'll have some great experiences under my belt to get me
ready for the rest of my life. I know that if I truly wanted, I could do both.
There is nothing stopping me other than financial burden, but even then I know
that where the will's strong enough to do something, there will be ways to make
it happen. I have that will, that drive, and that passion to help others. I
recognize as an outsider my role is not to come in and play the savior to any
group of people, but to listen to their concerns, needs, and cares. From there
I will work with them, to meet the needs in the best way possible, for that is
all I can really do as a human being. I will fill in the blanks and teach
others what I know for the sake of progress, but otherwise I am happy to be a
servant.

I know throughout the course of the summer, my heart will
break and the tears will flow, but I will move on. We cannot stop and grieve
for the sorry state of the poor in this world. There is a time for sadness, frustration,
and anger, but it must lead us to action rather than to apathy. If you have
time to be angry about something, if you have time to cry, then you have time
to love and time to labor toward bettering it. This is what I plan to do for
the rest of my life, no matter how much it hurts.