It was a lovely morning at the hotel in Mombasa, a sprawling 1920s affair with some newer, more garish and rather vulgar buildings from the 1960s and 70s tacked on in the grounds.
The aura of Imperial opulence however was there and in spades, which the eager hordes of German, Israeli and Russian tourists gobbled up with gusto. The sun shone as the various quaint and antiquated Colonial practices such as afternoon tea and cake were played out in front of eager eyes waving their US Dollars.
Outside the hotel on the street, there was a relaxing wander up to the local branch of Barclays bank to exchange some traveller’s cheques. Stopping by one of the street vendors to pick up some souvenirs the radio was playing a song that seemed to be on loop then:
Jambo, Jambo Bwana,
Habari gani,
Mzuri sana.
Wageni, mwakaribishwa,
Kenya yetu Hakuna Matata
Which translates into something like:
Hello, hello sir,
How are you?
Very fine.
Foreigners, you are welcome,
In our Kenya, there is no problem!
Yes, this was Kenya circa 1994 and as a 13 year old, I found the place intoxicating. I went with my Dad for a couple of weeks and while he went deep sea fishing battling Tuna and Marlin for hours on end I went scuba diving with other kids my age and generally soaked in the atmosphere.
When outside of the manicured hotels however, there were a few things to get used to, the abject poverty for one and Dad’s tendency to just march off into what seemed to me as certain danger for another but there were some very humbling sights such as the sight of Kenyan kids my age standing at the bus stop turned out immaculately in their school uniforms.
I remember staring for a long time from the opposite side of the road. I went to a total ruin of a State run Comprehensive School in which most kids wore trainers with their school uniform and deliberately wrote stuff in pen on their ties so it was a huge surprise to see these people looking like they did. It made me feel ashamed.
However, I am getting off track here for a moment so back to that lovely morning in September 1994. Dad and I were sitting outside waiting for our drinks. Our waiter arrived with said drinks and soon got into a conversation with Dad who mentioned that he visited a year or two after Kenyan independence with the Parachute Regiment. While I sat there and happily enjoyed my 7-Up, the waiter excitedly asked Dad if he remembered this and that about Nairobi or Mombasa in the 1960s. After Dad answered however, our waiter got a touch emotional and leant in to whisper something into Dad’s ear: “I wish you never left…”
This was a surprise to me and I asked Dad what it meant. He did not reply at first but then said it was to do with the British rule in Kenya. After the British left, Kenyan development has barely advanced over almost 50 years due to authoritarian governments and crippling levels of corruption in every facet of government in the country.
The waiter then politely thanked us and went away on his business. The look of fear in his eyes when he realised what he had said was incredible. Did he really fear that we would turn him in for something as trivial as saying he wished the British had never left Kenya? It left a big impression on my mind ever since.
Earlier today, I read an interesting article on FT.com entitled “Is Aid working” which brought this little anecdote back. It made me cast my mind back to various aid related disasters in the Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe and the NGO community’s dogged resistance to a centuries old model of assisting the 3rd world though public subscription and legions of affluent volunteers from Europe and beyond offering their services to an ever burgeoning number of Aid agencies. The modern and very secular world of NGOs has its roots in the many Missionary Societies who campaigned for abstinence, a wholesale conversion of “native savages” to Victorian values and the eradication of the tyranny of slavery.
Even then people and government only ever saw the work of volunteers funded by public donation as a temporary fix for the issue of poverty and disease blighting the 3rd world which was why as the Sun of Empire set, Britain especially attempted to impose a professional middle class aided by a well trained civil service and an education system modeled upon British lines across its possessions.
In places such as the Far East it worked and today Malaysia and Singapore are some of the most dynamic and successful economies on the planet. It is interesting too that these areas were not the focus of intense efforts by Missionary Societies and later aid groups for it was Africa which was the target.
Similar attempts to impose civil democracy in Africa failed. Nigeria became a paradise of corruption, Uganda turned into a dictatorial nightmare and Rhodesia and South Africa were allowed to marginalise the black majority to cling onto a racist white supremacist pipe dream. To be fair, Kenya was one of the better off states.
As I read more into the history of Empire and the legacy that it has brought, the involvement of both commercial barons and idealistic Christan missionary workers the more I begin to believe that the reason why this is.
Accepted doctrine is that Europeans (for that read Britain which in turn read England because apparently neither the Irish nor Scots did anything wrong, perish the thought!) came to Africa and violently exploited Africa and its riches through wicked Colonial administrators and tyrannical corporate entities. This justifies the idea of keeping Africa on a kind of permanent financial life support through loans, grants and aid of the direct and indirect kind.
The reality however is slightly different. The tyranny was still there but when not interpreted through 21st century ideals of morality then these pale in comparison with the work of the missionary in both Africa and the South Asian continent. The constant desire to “reform the savage”gradually gave way to an almost paternalistic program of aid without end.
And it has continued to this day in various forms. As laudable as Oxfam and Christan Aid’s goals may well be to eliminate poverty, nobody has an end game scenario and nobody can say when the cycle of aid will give way to a cycle of economic development. The facts are there in the litany of mismanagement, famine and blood that has stained Africa during the last 50 years: keeping the place on permanent financial life support will not lift the continent out of poverty.
Only a combination of strong international pressure to encourage good governance, a cutback in non-medial and food aid, an increase in financial investment, encouraging other nations such as China to invest and encouraging liberal economic reforms can bring Africa out of the doldrums and enable Africans to stand up for themselves.
So when I think back to when I heard that waiter whisper those words and I ask myself how I feel about what he said? I feel sad that despite being independent for over 40 years at that point a combination of crippling corruption, national bankruptcy and an addiction to state aid had meant they still longed for the British to still be there.
That indicates a failure of the current policy of assisting nations in the 3rd world. That if we continue this cycle of encouraging debt and aid we will see many more Kenyas, Nigerias and Congos in the future which will mean Africa will never fulfil its tremendous potential. Not in our lifetime in any case.
