Leave Africa

I've been reading a bit about the Kony2012 2.0 follow up and even more blog posts and news articles since the initial Kony 2012 movie.

The conversation about Americans and our savior complex is interesting. The article by Teju Cole, which you can find here gives an interesting perspective. I could not help but think that in his critique he was also falling into the same savor complex. However, he has some valid points.

It actually reminded me of a heated debate in one of my grad school courses. The class was a communication and advocacy course: how to put together an advocacy campaign, etc. We were told to choose a topic that we would use throughout the course, at the end culminated by a speech that appealed to our audience to action. I was young and new to the development world. Most of my work experience was US-based but I wanted to branch out into the international realm. So I chose a controversial topic based on three months work experience in a slum outside of Nairobi. Land rights. To make it even better, there were four or five Kenyans in my class. I spoke with all of them before I decided to commit to the topic. I wanted their opinion, I wanted to know if they would be offended if I chose a controversial topic from their country. Most were okay with me learning more about their country, land rights, and tribal differences. One man, was a bit more hesitant to give me his blessing. However in the end, he said okay.

By chance, the topic of land rights in this particular slum had become popular news in Nairobi. Land reform was happening, construction of new buildings, moving people from their old homes to new ones, etc. By the time the course was over, things had dramatically changed within the country. Something I was not expecting. My final presentation had to be changed significantly because what I had started out advocating for was indeed happening while the class was taking place. However the way I came across started a heated conversation: should Americans be involved in development or should we allow for locals to address their problems?

My personal opinion which I spoke about in my original blog post about Kony2012 is that local people should be the ones to create change in their communities and should first ask for help from the outside, international community before anyone comes blazing in to help. This opinion was, in fact, strongly influenced by this advocacy class.

The last class of the course we had a three hour discussion about the involvement of westerners in international development. I was, as a white American woman, a minority in my academic program and also this class. Eighty percent of the class came from emerging countries and economies. In the end, many people in this class were personally hurt by the very blunt and forward comments by my classmates. What went down would have been a scene from a movie if the UN all of a sudden just said what they wanted to say without thinking about the repercussions. One of the very few comments I remember stuck with me. "Americans, you need to get out of Africa and let us Africans handle our own problems." I was blown away. The very Kenyan man who had told me to seek out this topic in this class just told me, as an American, to never enter his country again. I left hurt, confused, and wondering why I had quit my job, moved to Boston, and enrolled in an international development program when my classmates did not even want me involved.

I had the chance to speak with this Kenyan later, to follow up with his comment. Other Africans came up to me in the days following to say that they did not agree with this man's statement, that they wanted me to part of changing their countries, but not in a top-down, Americans know-all mentality. They wanted me to work with them instead of Americans controlling them. For the record, this Kenyan man actually became a good friend of mine in graduate school. And I thank him for making such a bold statement in an advocacy class because in the end, it changed my perspective. I will never understand the culture as well as a local. I will always have the option to use my blue passport and bail when things go wrong. I will always have the ability to change my career and find something new to do in the United States, find a man, get married, buy a house, and forget about the troubles of the world. My classmates, my friends, do not have that luxury.

So in our effort as Americans to try and save the world, we forget that we can not save the world. We can not tell an entire continent what to do. The Kony2012 2.0 video shows more Africans than Americans, which is good. It was also the first time that I have ever seen the organization demonstrate any depth in their understanding of the problem. It was the first time I have ever seen them acknowledge that they are not the only ones who are working on this issue. Yet I am still not ready to jump on this bandwagon. Namely because I still have no clue what they are in doing in Uganda (and now the Central African Countries) except put up a radio tower and follow Kony around the bush. Invisible Children is still an advocacy group to rally the US government to capture Kony. Someday a Harvard Business School Case Study will be written about them and their use of video to rally a world around a cause. I'm just wondering what the ending will be. American superheros capture the vilan? Or Ugandans step up and use the resources of the world to decide what they want to happen.