Rural development in sub-Saharan Africa is a vast area of activity embracing one of the most intractable problems of the 20th – 21st centuries. Much has been done since the end of the colonial era in the 1960s and a great deal has been achieved and yet the problems remain endemic and a real blight on the progress of human achievement. In almost all countries there remains enormous challenges in all sectors – health, education, agriculture, housing, financial systems, human rights, and basic services such as energy, water supply, transport and communications. The great irony is that today – March 30, 2010 – whilst millions of people carried dirty water to impoverished homes all over Africa, scientists celebrated the first successful particle collision in the Large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland in the biggest machine ever built costing untold billions of dollars. Continue reading “Dealing with demons – Part 1: Development work – the realities of the long haul.”
Tag: Africa
Dealing with demons – Introduction
I am not sure this is very wise – putting it all out there in a blog. I think that Blogging is somewhat pretentious, the assumption that you have something useful to say to the whole wide world that anybody would be interested in reading. It reminds me of a radio talk show I listened to in South Africa some years ago – a listener had phoned in and explained in intimate detail her gynecological condition. When asked by the talk-show host if she had spoken to her doctor she said that she was too embarrassed. . . ! There is a point at which mass anonymity is easier to cope with than one-on-one intimacy. In a series of articles I will be writing about the experiences of the long-term development worker and depression. Dealing with demons. Each article will be a work in progress – I will probably go back to each multiple times and edit them substantially over time.
I have decided to do this in the hopes that the exercise may be of help to others if this is not too vain or presumptuous. It may also be cathartic for me, if this is not too indulgent – boy do we have hangups sufficient to stop anyone from writing anything!
The initial set of topics will be as follows:-
1. Development work – the realities of the long haul.
2. The dark hole – dealing with the demons of depression
3. The myth of “Making a difference”
4. Footprints – the impacts of development
5. Large or small – the dilemma of scale in development
6. Travel – the Temptress and the Slave Driver
Getting a boarding pass in Lagos
In all my years of working in Africa I did not personally come across a great deal of corruption – this particular experience at Lagos International Airport is the exception rather than the rule.
Lagos is a very large city in Nigeria – it is the second largest city in Africa (Cairo is the largest) with an estimated population of 15.5 million. It is an overwhelming city which is full of life but also mostly poor and dilapidated. I first visited Lagos in the late 1990s on an assignment for UNICEF – the UN Childrens’ agency. We could only travel in convoy with an armed escort and it was not recommended that you walked around in the city. I recall very clearly arriving at the hotel I was to stay in with a colleague from the United Nations. As I checked in the clerk asked me how I was going to pay and I put my credit card on the counter. My colleague slapped his hand down on the counter covering my card and gave it back to me saying that I must not use it or let it out of my sight anywhere in Lagos – I paid in cash.
My memorable experience of catching a British Airways flight from Lagos to London happened on the same trip as my remarkable flight from Abuja (read about it here) – it was a long day. Continue reading “Getting a boarding pass in Lagos”
Gorongosa Images
Gorongosa National Park in Central Mozambique provides an excellent opportunity for wildlife photography including a wide range of bird species, animals and insects.
Gorongosa – Eden restored
“The rehabilitation of Gorongosa National Park in Central Mozambique represents one of the great conservation opportunities in the world today.” Goroongosa.net web site. I have been fortunate during the past couple of years to be able to visit the Gorongosa National Park in central Mozambique, during development missions for the World Bank. We were looking at assisting a local town to provide a sustainable source of water. The National Park is very large and brought to mind a vision of Eden in its tranquility and wealth of diverse species of flora and fauna. The park was all but destroyed during the long and brutal Mozambican civil war but a programme of the government and the US Carr Foundation was begun in 2006 to restore the park. Continue reading “Gorongosa – Eden restored”