Africa vs. the West

The other day I walked down to the dining hall around sunset and many of my students were out eating their usual dinner of ugali (boiled maize flour with the consistency of mashed potatoes) and beans. Some of them invited me to join them and we began talking. They all seemed to want to talk about history and current events, particularly Africa's relationship with Europe and America over the last couple of hundred years. It was a very illuminating conversation.

Many of my students are very passionate about how much harm slavery and colonialism did to them. I think they are completely right about that. There is still an attitude among so many people here that Africans just aren't as smart and capable as Europeans and Americans. This self doubt is certainly at least partly because of colonialism. However, many of them see it, and the globalization they call a new colonialism, as the only reason Africa is still poor. This I argued vigorously with them. Now, before I go into detail in this argument remember that I am very liberal and am in what some conservatives call the "blame America first" crowd. I'll plead guilty to this, but it is because I feel that to be a country, or even a good person, it is much more important to see what you can do better than what others can do better because you can actually do something about your faults. In the end you can criticize others, but they have to make the decision to improve themselves. So I say that it's fine to talk about the bad things other countries or people are doing, but first let's look at what we are doing.

Having said that, I did defend America from my students, or at least tried to pursuade them to look at the things Africa can do to help itself. One thing I point out to them is that globalization does hurt many people, there's no doubt about it, but it helps many as well. Resisting it to me seems rather useless because it's a fact of life, and quite frankly poor countries that embrace it, like India and China, are doing a a lot better than poor countries that reject it, like Zimbabwe and Bolivia. So good or bad, I feel like you have to play the game. Of course many policies of the West hurt developing countries, but I feel like screaming tp these countries to change isn't going to help the situation here.

The other thing I point out to them is that there is another very important reason Africa and the Middle East largely stays poor--the treatment of women. Women in Tanzania and much of Africa are for the most part just expected to have as many babies as possible and stay home and cook, clean, and watch the kids. I told my students that doing this means half of the working age population isn't contributing to the economy. Now I'm not saying being a stay-at-home mom is so horrible, my mom was when my brother and I were real young. However, if she were African, she would probably have had 8 or 9 kids and most likely would have been out of the work force for a good 30 years. I told my students to look at the countries in the world that are rich, be they in America, Europe, or Asia. These are very different countries with different cultures, but the common factor is that in all of them there are good opportunities for women. Even countries that are poor, but richer than Tanzania, like South Africa, have more equality for women. Of course, countries made rich by oil don't have to fit this mold, but oil definately changes the equation. Anyway, I'm generalizing, but I don't have time to write a thesis, though I think it'd make a good one.

So anyway, I'm glad that my students are so interested in the world, but sometimes I'm discouraged that they don't want to help themselves, but just make excuses. Some of them also have crazy conspiracy theories. One even asked if as a Peace Corps volunteer I have to write a report for the CIA. Overall though, I really enjoy hearing the students' points of view on these things. I'm just going to be careful they don't provoke me into a political debate while I should be teaching them math.