First things first. This video provides relevant information for anyone who is interested in this blog. Thanks to Jane Hale for showing it to me. Also, check out Lauren Kraus’s blog, if I haven’t already recommended it. She is interning all summer at the Family Art and Literacy Center, and she has some great insights as well as a phenomenal writing style.
In the past week, I think I’ve changed a lot. I’ve meet some really interesting (and really important) people in Lesotho through Jane Hale and her husband Bill Bicknell, which was great because I felt like I was in the company of people who had similar visions of what i wanted to do with my life, but they had actually done it. Like, I talked to one man who was about 65 or so who had gone to medical school in the US and UK and then returned to Lesotho to work. He’s been in the government, worked on HIV/AIDS, and now has a private practice (I think it’s in lieu of retirement, he doesn’t seem like someone who wants to slow down). I’ve talked about the need for Basotho to return to their country, but it was a completely different experience talking to a man who had done it and getting experience from him. It was also refreshing to talk to older, wiser people and get advice from them instead of being the constant giver of advice like I am in the classroom every day.
I’ve also really started to investigate Basotho culture. Before, I didn’t really know any Basotho my age, so I kinda just stayed at home, cooked my own food, and sat online, but over the past week I’ve done more “hands-on” culture exploration. The experiences have been varied from warm and inviting to fun and exciting to isolating and frustrating with each event being a unique combination of those. Being pulled into the dancing at the cultural fair on Saturday was just downright hilarious and provided a much needed example of the kind and jovial components of Basotho culture after the previous evening’s frustrations with the prominent elements of passivity and accommodation. After collapsing into bed with Lauren after a really long day of navigating an increasingly difficult cultural terrain, she and I were both able to use each other for support (key step in avoiding breakdowns) and we also rationalized to ourselves that having bad experiences comes as a risk when we agree to go out and experience grassroots culture, and that we have gained so much perspective from taking the risk to venture out of our culture comfort zones. And honestly? We’ve had lots of great experiences and made lots of friendships, this was just one bad night. (To all of you that worry about my use of the word risk – I don’t mean it in a physical risk kind of way. Lauren and I were very safe. I mean it in a culture way.)
I’m also starting to really understand the backwards racism here. Because I’m white, I’m expected to be a repository of wealth – monetary as well as informational. I can supposedly fix any situation on a variety of levels. The first level is my skin. If I ask for something, I get it because I’m white. I’ve been told by multiple Basotho friends that I (or some other white friend associated with the project) should negotiate a transaction because Basotho don’t trust each other, but they trust white people. I’m not entirely sure why this is (apartheid, anyone?) but they assure me it is true. I have vehemently avoided using my skin as a way of getting things done in Maseru, but it is asked of me at least once a day.
If I can’t use my white skin as catalyst for getting things done, then I, as a white person, have the money to get it done. Also, very much not the case. Today I asked my driver how much a cab ride to Leribe would cost because I’d like to visit the G.R.O Foundation there, and he replied with 490 Maloti, which is about $60. Now, considering Leribe is an hour away, $60 is not a bad price, but it’s still a lot of money! Then my driver said “So, when are w going to Leribe?” and I told him that I probably wasn’t because it was too much money. He looked at me with a rather incredulous look and then proceeded to say “490 to go to Leribe?Surely that is not too much for you.” He didn’t really believe me when I told him that even though I’m white, I do not have a lot of money and I couldn’t afford to go to Leribe. The cash method of solving problems is less personally offensive than using my skin as incentive, but it is morally offensive because it reinforces the detrimental idea of aid that Dambiso Moyo and William Easterly have spent so much time roundly criticizing.
On to method number three of how being white makes me so much better at making things happen. If it’s not my skin, and it’s not my cash, it’s my brain. If my African counterpart can’t figure out how to solve a problem, they throw up their hands and defer to me and say “I can’t fix it, you fix it.” I’m supposed to swoop in with my American problem solving magic skills and find a solution. Now, don’t get me wrong. I know I came with the intention of using my problem-solving skills to help create solutions, and I have gladly used them. It’s not the fact that I have been asked to help in this way, but the manner in which I am asked which offends. Problem-solving skills and creative thinking have nothing to do with being white. It has everything to do with the way that I learned to approach problems. American or not, problem solving is a skill that is learned, and when my African counterparts defer to my problem-solving skills, they don’t make an attempt to learn from me the way in which I would solve the problem, they’re just looking for the answer.
Granted, in the short term, the direct answer is what is needed. But constantly addressing the immediacy of short term needs only intensifies the long term problems which will soon come to fruition. Proverbially, it goes something like, “Give a person a fish, feed them for a day. Teach that person to fish, feed them for a lifetime.” It’s harder to teach someone to fish than to just give them a fish every day, but it’s infinitely harder when that person doesn’t really want to know how to fish, for the long term solution because they don’t think they are capable of it. I find this final form of backwards racism, that of an internalized intelligence inferiority complex, the most insulting of all.
Now, let me step back with a few disclaimers. I am NOT saying that Africans are lazy, don’t want to work, or don’t care. That is absolutely not the truth. I work with people every day at two completely different locations who have vision and drive to improve the world around them. At Masianokeng, I work with teachers who work during their vacation time to prepare students for their upcoming standardized tests and I teach students who want to learn business skills so that they can work their way out of poverty. At the Family Art and Literacy Center, I work with artists whose dream is to see beautiful picture books written in Sesotho so that children can learn to read and who work every day to make sure that this generation of children does not fall victim to the ravages of HIV that will consume my generation. These people have strength and courage to fight against problems that I can never fully understand or experience. But, for some reason, I find these tendencies and undercurrents in my daily experiences with them. Maybe it’s the culture of aid, maybe it’s remnants of imperialism, maybe it’s the confusion of “educated” with “white”, maybe it’s a million things, but honestly, I don’t care what the real cause of it is. I will never know. The best thing I can do is try again tomorrow to prove that people with white skin don’t have super human problem-solving skills.
P.S. On a lighter note, Lauren and I are proving to our counterparts here that getting things done sometimes takes a little creativity. Stay tuned for updates from the Family Art and Literacy Center’s Children’s Picket Line at the shelving business that will not return to finish it’s work. Video shall be included.