African Insights Ezine - February 2006


African Reflections February 2006:

Africa has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. Wherever I turned in places like Kampala or Nairobi I saw new construction: another hotel, another office building, another restaurant. I could feel the economy just roaring onward.

The new malls and shopping centers are the delight of the upper crust and small middle class. The expatriate community loves them also. The newspapers are filled with advertisement and weekly specials for washing machines, DVD players, stereos and TVs. Even computers are now more reasonably priced having some excessive taxes removed.

While I was in Africa Ugandan elections took place and peacefully they were, most likely as the direct result of every spiritual group, from mosques to churches, having special prayer time at this gathering or that one. The first multi-party elections in Uganda went over peacefully and quite well. Every news organization was in Kampala taking pictures, interviewing, asking questions and trying to find something newsworthy to report.

Change is taking place. More children are going to school. The literacy rate is up and the AIDS rate is going down. People are living longer in Uganda (three year increase to 45 years, from 42 just three years ago.) Yes, Africa is changing.

I saw hotels in Nairobi, Kampala, Mombassa filled with Western aid agencies conducting workshops and meetings, planning and strategy sessions. I suspect that Africa is the most met over, planned over and strategized over continent in the world.

I thought of all of the money wasted in talking about Africa rather than doing and insuring that the money goes to the intended, those who need empowerment. Once again I came to the conclusion that real change, not cosmetic change, will be brought about by those who receive an education, the children of Africa.

I spent time with Victoria. She has been with an organization that deeply cares about for many years ever since she was a young orphan. She represents the Africa of today. She is a woman of faith, university educated. She has lived in the United Kingdom and the USA, and is now off for Canada to be trained in peace and reconciliation counseling. This young woman has deep convictions as to how she wants her country to be. She knows the value of education and is savvy in the ways of Africa. She loves her country and at the same time she is working in a non-profit organization because her heart is for children who are as she was, children who do not have a future and a hope unless someone intervenes with a heart of compassion.

As I traveled beyond Ngong Road toward Kabernet Road in Nairobi, I headed toward one of the largest slums in the world. The former president of Kenya lived on that very road. As he drove to work in the morning he would pass the thousands upon thousands that stream out of the slum toward Nairobi. This is Kibera, home to over 700,000 people. This is the slum that was recently featured in the movie, The Constant Gardener. The movie made the slum look better than it does in real life. That is because you do not get a sense of the smells, the sounds, the sights of Kibera. This is where the people live who make Nairobi happen. They are the guards, dishwashers, maids, drivers, thousands without whom the economy of Nairobi would collapse. It is the little people who are the real workforce of Nairobi.

If you drive off the main road of Kampala, right near Wandegeya , just behind where all of the body shops are, you will find a world that looks very different from the activity of downtown Kampala, different from all of the building. You find the slum where I met Elizabeth, a woman who lives in an 8foot by 10foot room with one bed and four children. Her husband died. She is 35 with no income to speak of. Life seems hopeless and yet she is determined to live in spite of her circumstances. She is convinced that what her children need is an education to help them break out of the very slum where she lives.

Africa is changing, it will change. I see it, have seen it, and look forward to seeing it, but it will not happen through more meetings in five star hotels, more planning and study sessions. It will happen as people like my good friend Trevor Stevenson, who I spent time with in Uganda, who single-handedly raised funds and labor to build over 40 schools and 10 hospitals without a lot of meetings, without more studies and no administrative overhead. He did it simply by doing what needed to be done to make it happen; as in that famous Nike slogan: Just do it. I would add, now.

I met a Danish pastor who was in the process of building a school that would house 400 children and give them a future through education. This one is even equipped with computers, courtesy of Microsoft.

Then there is my friend Robinah, a woman that is simply known as mummy to thousands of children, since often she was the one to be mommy in their life. She never wastes a day. Out of the door at 6 am and back late. In between it is - what can I do to change the life of another child? Changes I have seen where heart warming and real, they were beyond the photo opportunities, but made an everlasting impact in the lives of children.

On the way home, as I sat in the Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands I thought of the words of Nelson Mandela who said. Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Africa is changing, and real change will happen as its young people have the opportunity to learn. That is one thing that is happening yes, Africa is changing…jon