About
seventy years is all the time the European was 'owning' East Africa;
we took medicine, religion, education …. and also I think, avarice.
The first white men to venture into Eastern Africa were the
explorers, but they were soon followed by expanding trade from the
coast. It was obvious that easier and safer access was necessary,
and a railway was planned …. the so called 'Lunatic Line' from
Mombasa to Lake Victoria, to Port Florence, which became Kisumu. It
took six years to build, with many deaths along the way of imported
Indian workers (whose children and grandchildren formed the core of
traders all over Kenya and Uganda). But it opened up the highlands
to would be settlers and farmers, the rich 'Happy Valley' set of
philanderers and wife swappers, the remittance men, missionaries,
doctors, teachers ….
Was
that the right thing to do ? European medicine meant that African families
who had previously had ten or twelve children, of which perhaps two
survived to become adults, now could raise most of them - and
created problems for their parents to feed and educate. Education
taught children about the world so that they had ambition and
eventually wanted jobs that didn't exist. Religion … both
Christianity and Islam …. replaced animism and traditional beliefs.
And avarice and greed of the wazungu meant the countries
natural resources were plundered for the benefit of people in other
countries. Now avarice and greed …. and corruption …. is the way
of the educated minority in many African countries. Was that what we
meant to teach ?
When
I first went to Kenya in the 1960's, just after independence, even
back then I realised that teaching boys (and later girls) to become
'white collar' workers in Nairobi government offices and businesses
wasn't going to work. A young man of perhaps 25 was going to be
filling that office job until he was 60 …. thus preventing his
younger brothers from taking that job. Training for careers as
artisans would have been MUCH more useful for 90% of the students,
but the only working white people on view to the newly liberated
Africans were doing
'white collar' jobs, so that is
what they aspired to.
The
draw to the city meant the growth of slums like Kibera outside Nairobi, Nyalenda outside Kisumu and so on, with street
children and beggars on every street, pollution, and the easy spread
of diseases …. like HIV. And of course, the pull to the cities
meant the rural areas were being depleted, leaving the family 'homes'
to be looked after and the shamba's dug by the women and the elderly
…. or abandoned (although people who die elsewhere are usually
taken back to be buried traditionally in the 'home' with their
ancestors so there is still a link). When I went to the talk last year in September by
Harry Hook, he kept emphasising the fact that urbanisation is taking
over much of Africa …. but not to its benefit. Here in UK, the
'country cottage' is the desire of many retiring city workers who have had more than enough of city life !
Perhaps
it will take many generations for the people of Africa to realise
that not everything 'European' is good. In the time of my great
grand-parents, who were born and lived and worked in rural Dorset in
the 1800's, around 1900 there was the move, for work, to the south
Wales mines. Now, 100 years later, half of my family are back
living in the country ! I
had a long discussion with Paul at the workshop about the need for
his children to know about their roots and traditions. He has taken
up my suggestion of writing down his family history for future
generations. There is no need to ape the white man; doing things the African way in Africa must be best, surely ?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
An almost invisible cicada (another of my recently found old photos.)
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