Set a New Direction

In 1997 a book came out by an African-American correspondent named Keith Richburg. It was called Out of America: a black man confronts Africa. I have selected some sobering excerpts that tap into the sometimes awful intensity of living in Africa (and other parts of the world sometimes called 'zones of turmoil'). It's a reminder of an existing reality that we often gloss over. It's a challenge to not forget the real lives of many people.

"So endemic is African corruption—and so much more destructive than its Asian counterpart—that the comparison has even spawned a common joke that goes like this: An Asian and an African become friends while they are both attending graduate school in the West. Years later, they each rise to become the finance minister of their respective countries.

"One day, the African ventures to Asia to visit his old friend, and is startled by the Asian's palatial home, the three Mercedes-Benzes in the circular drive, the swimming pool, the servants. 'My God!' the African exclaims. 'We were just poor students before! How on earth can you now afford all this?' And the Asian takes his African friend to the window and points to a sparkling new elevated highway in the distance. 'You see that toll road?' says the Asian, and then he proudly taps himself on the chest. 'Ten percent.' And the African nods approvingly.

"A few years later, the Asian ventures to Africa, to return the visit to his old friend. He finds the African living in a massive estate sprawling over several acres. There's a fleet of dozens of Mercedes-Benzes in the driveway, and indoor pool and tennis courts, an army of uniformed chauffeurs and servants. 'My God!' says the Asian. 'How on earth can you afford all this?' This time the African takes his Asian friend to the window and points. 'You see that highway?' he asks. But the Asian looks and sees nothing, just an open field with a few cows grazing. I don't see any highway,' the Asian says, straining his eyes. At this, the African smiles, taps himself on the chest, and boasts, 'One hundred percent!'.

"This joke carries the message about the debilitating effects of corruption in Africa versus its more benign counterpart in Asia. In Indonesia, the president's daughter might get the contract to build the toll roads, but the roads do get built and they do facilitate traffic flow. In Africa, the roads never get built. It was the difference, between productive corruption and malignant corruption."

"There are some photographs I have kept here in my desk drawer from one of the local English newspapers in Nairobi. The first, taken on the streets of downtown, shows a Kenyan man in a sports coat, trussed up like a chicken, tied down to what looks like a wheelbarrow, and he is surrounded by a jubilant mob, smiling white teeth at the camera, flashing the victory sign. The man tied down to the wheelbarrow has a strange look on his face—fear, yes, but also what seems to me like complete resignation to his fate.

"One of the women in the office, a woman who had been the object of his earlier advances, then pointed out that she knew for a fact that the man was uncircumcised. Upon hearing this, the man's co-workers had surrounded him, stripped off his pants, verified the presence of foreskin, and arranged for a ritualistic circumcision right there, on the spot. He was tied down to the wheelbarrow and rolled ceremoniously through Nairobi's streets, the procession attracting more and more onlookers en route. He was being wheeled to tribal chieftain who would perform this rite of passage to manhood with no anesthesia, probably using a dull, rusted, unclean blade. The unfortunate victim, the caption read, was on his was to “face the knife”."

"There was another photograph I saved, this one from a rural village, that showed three men seated and staring forlornly at the camera. The caption here explains that the three have all undergone forced circumcisions, held down while an elder with a knife performed the rite, not bothering to properly sterilize the blade between the three. And an editorial in the same paper a few days later calls on Kenyans to stop this spate of forced circumcisions, which it says has now reached alarming numbers, with new incidents reported regularly. In dire language, the editorial warns that the practice can indeed prove harmful if the instruments are unclean and there are no trained medical personnel on hand to supervise.

"There is one last photograph, a more recent one, and I still shiver when I look at it. This one, taken in a Nairobi slum not far from my home, shows a boy, maybe a teenager, lying flat on his back, being held down by a mob, screaming with terror. One of his hands has been chopped off. An older man is standing over him, gleefully holding what looks like a giant meat cleaver. The older man with the weapon is smiling, preparing to drop down hard an chop off the other hand. The caption explains that this boy has been caught stealing, and the crowd is now imposing street justice. I became fixated first on the boy's screaming face, but then on the faces of the crowd in the background; they are all laughing and smiling. And I ask myself, what on earth could these people possibly be thinking?

"How could I ever understand what is going through the minds of the people, average people, who would stand in the background and smile in the face of such suffering? Had my ancestor not made it our of here, I might have ended up there in that crowd, smiling gleefully, while a man with a cleaver cuts off the hands of a thief.

"...What future do I see for Africa, this strange and forbidding place?

"What future can I see for a place where kids don Donald Duck masks and ballroom gowns before inflicting untold horror on each other [the war in Liberia].

"What future has a place where the best and brightest minds languish in dank prison cells? Where a ruthless warlord aims mortar shells into a crowded marketplace, where teenagers strip down cars and fit them with antiaircraft guns to roam through the streets terrorizing and looting? Where a dictator begs the international community for food aid to avert mass hunger even as he erects a new international airport in his dirt poor hometown? What future is there in a place where the poets are hanged by the soldiers, and where the soldiers riot and kill when they are unpaid?"

"Tribalism remains the single most corrosive, debilitating influence plaguing modern Africa in its quest for democracy and development. Tribalism is what prompted tens of thousands of Rwandan Hutus to pick up machetes and hoes and panga knives and farming tools to bash in the skulls and sever the limbs of their Tutse neighbors Tribalism is why entire swaths of Kenya's scenic Rift Valley lie in scorched ruins, why Zulu gunmen in ski masks mow down Xhosa workers outside a factory gate in South Africa, and why thousands of hungry displaced Kasai huddle under plastic sheeting at a remote train station in eastern Zaire."

"After living here in Africa [3 years as a correspondent] I can tell you that no part of me feels any attachment to this strange place. I've had an AK-47 rammed up my nose, I've talked to machete-wielding Hutu militiaman with the blood of their latest victims splattered across their T-shirts. I've seen a cholera epidemic in Zaire, a famine in Somalia, a civil war in Liberia. I've seen cities bombed to near rubble, and other cities reduced to rubble because their leaders let them rot and decay while they spirited away billions of dollars—yes, billions —into overseas bank accounts."

Back to "My own experiences in Africa"