Saturday, July 9, 2016

Poverty Tours: Redux

Hope everyone had a Happy Eid celebration.

I feel like I might not quite be finished after that last post on Poverty tourism. For one, I recognize that a highlight of the post was one particular poorly-received chapel experience at my Alma mater, Messiah College. I must admit, it was a struggle waking up for chapel, especially after clocks got pushed forward "daylight savings" style in the spring; not every chapel was a gem, either, and sometimes that made chapel attendance more of a chore than anything else. However, for the most part, chapel was an enjoyable formative experience, and I was glad to see all the people involved put their hearts into making each session a success, no matter what small part they played.

Kibera is on my mind yet again. No less a celebrity than Madonna was in Kenya recently, and even she couldn't help but bring attention to Kibera. She visited the world famous slum, and highlighted the work of an NGO - Shining Hope for Communities. I'm pretty sure the NGO does good work, and Madonna will no doubt ensure that they get a great deal of funding. Against this backdrop, Kenya gets another slap in the face.

Sure enough, you can't deny the level of squalid levelled at you when you set foot in some parts of Kibera (and other less famous parts of Nairobi). I am not denying that one bit; however, with all things seemingly so permanent, there is the underlying thread that someone let all this happen. To paraphrase a quote I read somewhere,

"We celebrate those things which we hold dear."

Maybe we've just developed an uncanny ability to celebrate the mediocrity that surrounds us...to tolerate the sprawl and unplanned structures that have arisen in the recent past...to tolerate the poor excuse for public transportation that's supposed to get the majority of residents around. No less than a future aspirant for Governor of Nairobi intimated that his idea of progress was to turn a historic greenspace into a public transport terminus. Mediocrity par excellence.

I place this blame at the feet of our political class, and the other part on us for making it so easy to skate on by without any sort of work output.

The donors rush in and see all this desperation, and their response is to throw more money at the situation. That money is ultimately gobbled up by the attrition of Administrative costs. How can anyone in the developed countries that send us funding sit back in satisfaction as Kenyan politicians take home massive salaries completely incongruent to our GDP, refuse to contribute anything towards taxes, and plunge citizens into avoidable debt? And at the end of it all, the politicians still have the gall to ask for debt forgiveness and more aid.

Devolution, part of what was meant to address such issues, is not surprisingly stillborn. Rather than build institutions and capacity, the greedy politicians have instead diverted the funding to the top-heavy behemoth of government structure and personal emoluments; now that elections are a year away, they'll come to us with promises of what they will do if placed in positions of power, as if the past 4 years didn't count.

I might not necessarily be a fan of Donald Trump, but I certainly embrace one of his policies: refusing to send money overseas to foreign countries while there are pertinent issues that need to be funded within the USA. All the donor aid has made us lazy. How can we even claim to be sovereign if we have to factor the handouts from benevolent donors into the running of our country? In a country where we're forced to part with 30% of our earnings, it is not illogical to ask for some fiscal responsibility and maturity from those tasked with leading us.

And for goodness sake, we need to develop a semblance of a sense of shame. I've previously written about my South Korean friend (Park) and his sentiments about his country's current rise to prominence. There is a salient sense of shame about their humble beginnings and their treatment at the hands of Japan; that, in addition to a great work ethic keeps them striving onward. We need to be ashamed enough to keep these celebrities from doing things that we can address ourselves.

This is not middle-class me claiming that their money isn't needed; rather, I believe we have it within our own power to fix these things ourselves.

And in case anyone thought I've never been on a poverty tour, guess again. Yep, Messiah College times again. It was Spring 2003, and my crazy and loveable lecturer - Dr. Christian Van Gorder - took us to Washington DC. Part of that trip involved a drive in a tour bus through Anacostia (look it up!). In most likelihood, if I'd known about the itinerary beforehand, I might've given that trip a pass. Nothing of note happened, though, besides having our bus pelted by some kids who decided to toss eggs from their balconies! Sure it may have been a bad neighbourhood ("Training Day" bad!), but driving through it without any real interaction left no real impression on me.

I get it! Even the mighty US has some patches of roughness scattered in among the prosperity...that's basically every country that ever existed. I have no illusions about this world and the hard work needed, but set against a foundation of meticulate planning and funding, we can nip a lot of these poverty issues in the bud.

Have a blessed day.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Memories: Messiah Chapel + poverty tour

I've got to admit that the highlight of my week was running into an old friend of mine from Wenzhou Medical College (or "University" for you young turks). Mrin - now known as 'Maureen' since some Kenyans can't pronounce her name right - happens to be volunteering in Kenya right now, a long way off from her native South Africa. Even stranger still, she's practically staying 2 kilometres from the hospital where I work.

I met up with her earlier this week, and it was great catching up. Lord knows there's some things that only a fellow doctor can relate to. In addition, one of the other things we ended up talking about is the 'poverty tours' that people are running around town, and how one of her colleagues wanted to attend one. Now, Kibera, Kenya's premier slum - the largest urban slum in all of Africa - is typically a fan favourite spot for such activities. As she puts it, and I 100% concur, poverty tours are a wholly unAfrican thing.

Seriously, every country has some sort of area 'over the tracks' that is understood to be low income or a rough neighbourhood. We all know they exist, and for the most part steer clear of them. For other people, these are opportunities for service, and God Bless their hearts, they settle into those areas and interact with the locals and bring meaningful change. Then there's a third group - people who are essentially just gawkers. They just want to look and see, providing nothing meaningful in the end, except money for the unscrupulous folk who take it upon themselves to hawk this 'poverty porn'. Perhaps, that's a bit harsh...the tourists provide a job opportunity for some folk (keeping them gainfully employed); but this topic is a bit loaded, considering that the same tourists wouldn't do the same thing in their own countries. NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) seems to be their favoured approach.

It reminded me of an event which happened while I was at college, circa the early 2000s. So, I was down at Messiah College, down in Central PA, and one tradition of the Christian college is chapel attendance; with a required total of 24 chapels attended by semester's end, or the option of facing dire consequences. So there I was in chapel, one early Tuesday morning. On this particular day, can't be sure if the theme of the chapel was 'mission work' or 'show & tell', but I remember a student walked onstage and began to talk about how he spent his summer. He had come to Kenya, and spent practically all his time in Kibera. He detailed the squalid conditions, cited the erroneous statistic that millions of folk are squeezed into that slum (made it seem like he interacted with a sizeable number of them), and of course he broke down onstage. If that wasn't enough, he had written a song, for which he specifically dragged his guitar onstage, and decided to belt out for our consumption.

I remember that a bunch of the international students and missionary kids were clustered at one side of the chapel, and we pretty much had the same look on our faces: Disbelief. A couple of thoughts ran through my mind at that juncture:

1. You dragged me out of bed at this ungodly hour to sit through this??

2. Kenya, like all places, is a place of delightful variety and complexity. Who on earth spends their whole summer solely in a slum?

3. As someone meant to serve as an ambassador for people who won't bother to find out anything more about the country, this is the limited view you're bringing?

4. There are parts of your own country (USA) which are steeped in 3rd world poverty - the projects, the Native American reservations, Appalachia - and you choose to highlight those of another country far removed from yours (and comparably less wealthy)?

Personally, it was quite the gut-punch. Having people come over to this country to tour the slums as some sort of safari is gut-wrenching. At the heart of Kibera's problems are complicated socioeconomic forces exacerbated by the gross unemployment in this country; there are the complicated land issues concerned with Kibera, lack of viable low-cost housing solutions, and the slum-lords who make tons of money just doing things business-as-usual; and of course issues of gentrification. These are the kind of problems that an impartial government and political class should band together to solve, but as it stands, only uses for cannon fodder. Therefore, rather than use it as a cheap tearjerker, people need to put in the work to ensure that Kibera and all the mushrooming slums become a thing of the past; so that people don't have to resort to lowering their dignity to have to eke out a living.

Poverty tourism is not only unAfrican, it is quite simply inhuman. NIMBY, and certainly not in yours

Rant done (for today, at least)!

God Bless.