Blog 19

2/12/10 The penultimate blog!

This blog was done after our return to the UK and following some more reading and thought about development. This is a very complex subject and our views are heavily dependant on our experience of working for one year in one relatively well-run mission hospital in one sub-Saharan country. However much that we have heard and read in Zambia and since leaving has re-enforced our views rather than challenged them.

So more on the problems of development in sub-Saharan Africa.

In Barack Obama’s book “Dreams from my Father’ he discussed the problems of African Americans establishing themselves in a white man's culture, how it feels for them as individuals and how this impacts on them compared with the many other different communities of people that have established themselves in the States from the Irish through to the Koreans. He and many of his African American friends point out how much more difficult it has been for Africans to be integrated into the American culture. Successful African Americans can be very critical of their ‘fellow man’ accusing them of having a bad attitude to work and not helping to build strong economically successful groups within their own communities.

Barack Obama writes that the white man’s view is that the problem of African Americans is due either to ‘bad’ culture or ‘weak’ genes, another version of the nurture or nature debate. We have concluded that although both factors may have some effect, we have become more aware of how powerful cultural factors have been on the way we behave and work, and how these factors, probably developed over centuries, could be a dominant force in determining the attitudes and behaviors of societies. We also felt that, although these cultural attitudes could be significantly changed in one individual’s lifetime it may take 2-3 generations to change a society’s attitudes and behaviors.

‘Weak’ Genes or ‘bad’ culture?

We are now learning that genes not only control eye colour but also some aspects of an individual's behaviour and it is now at least possible that there may be differences in behaviour between nationalities predetermined by their genes which is reflected in their culture and overall national characteristics. Just as some nationalities have mainly blue rather than brown eyes it is possible that some nations may have dominant behavioural characteristics. For example, being on average more or less extroverted or more or less aggressive. Just as it may turn out that certain nations will more often but not necessarily always win Olympic gold medals in swimming as compared with long distance running because they have on average broader feet and strong legs compared with longer legs and slim bodies, quite mild genetic differences may explain the differences in overall behaviour and culture between the French, English, Germans, Chinese, Indians and Eskimos as well as Africans. If there are significant genetic differences affecting individuals and national groups, this will particularly affect those groups that have been geographically isolated reducing the chance of gene mixing as Darwin clearly showed. This seems to have been the case in Africa at least until 200 years ago with relatively small numbers people living in relatively self-contained communities in a vast country.

However our experience of working in medicine in the States for 2 years and Africa for 1 year is that in our close working personal relationships there were no discernable differences between individual Africans, Americans and our friends in the UK. In fact there seemed to be far more similarities than differences. It is only when one is working in groups that we were more aware of different attitudes to, for example, work and punctuality. Although it is possible these characteristics may be due to ‘genetic’ differences it is more credible to us that cultural characteristics that developed in a quite different environment over long periods of time have resulted in the differences.

There are now many examples of individual Africans adopting western cultural characteristics who achieve success equal to any other American or European which is strong evidence that it should be possible for African nations to do the same. The differences in national attitudes to work and the ability to accumulate wealth which seems to be a pre-requisite for the development of all aspects of a western society are much more likely to be culturally determined than by differences in genes. Even if there are small, genetically determined differences in ‘behaviour’ between different ethic groups we don’t think they can account for the very big differences in the way their country functions and its success in achieving a modern society in terms of education, health and wealth.

So our vote is not for ‘bad’ but ‘different’ culture as a cause of sub-Saharan African’s problems.The African culture which evolved and was appropriate for an earlier epoch when the needs for a ‘successful’ society were radically different is now incompatible with and 'bad' for building a modern western society.

The African culture now and in the future: why it needs to change but not too much!

There are several aspects of African culture that may act as a block to development. A lot is made of the position of women in an African culture that may have led, for example to women’s lower social position and vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, but there are other aspects which may have an equally powerfully negative effect.

There are several situations where cultural traditions may be preventing development but we feel a major one is the difficulty for individuals to accumulate wealth. We feel this was an important factor in the evolution of successful western democracies. The development of universal health and educational services, now a major feature of all western democracies, could not have been achieved without first establishing the capital to fund them and this occurred over many years before the industrial revolution. In Africa there is an assumption that these great successes of western countries can be achieved instantly at the same time as creating the wealth they require. This belief is encouraged by western countries through giving aid to fund health care and education.

Another assumption is that the rural to post-industrial revolution changes in cultural attitudes of people in western societies, which took at least a hundred years can be achieved much more quickly in Africa.

African culture and way of life evolved over many years and is well adapted to living in a vast continent with a climate that produced an abundance of food. People lived in relatively small groups, which could easily move to adequate supplies of food and unpolluted water. Their greatest dangers were from larger animals, occasional extremes of climate and other tribes. The fight for a good simple life was generally easy when the overall population was small and they could avoid more territorial tribes.

One of the dancers we saw at the British High Commission celebrating VSO's 50th birthday

This could explain many of their cultural characteristics and their very relaxed attitude to work and time. As in pre-industrial Britain, work was adjusted to the weather and time of the year. There were times to work hard and times when it was impossible to work because of the weather, in Britain rain and cold, and in Africa the heat. There was little light after sunset and the Chief I spent some time with went to bed at 21.00hrs, which probably hasn’t changed for hundreds of years. The people including many of the children were also up at or just before dawn.

This was also the pattern of life in Britain before the industrial revolution and a book I read recently on the art of being lazy, a skill that most people living in the western world have lost, I found comments made by the people running the first factories and cotton mills on how lazy and unpunctual the workforce was in Britain. These were people who probably found it difficult to change to the new way of working, which ran against the grain of their natural instincts, and which like the African culture, had developed over hundreds of years of living in rural communities and couldn’t be changed overnight.

Perhaps it is the cultural habits developed living the rural life which results in a much more relaxed attitude to life. In contrast the lifestyle generated as result of the industrial revolution nearly 200 years ago may have been a major pre-requisite of the work ethic, which in some individuals particularly surgeons results in them working long hours. How ‘normal’ is it for an individual to work 12 hours a day for 5-6 days a week with virtually no lunch break for 27 years of their life as Mike has done? How does a society get some of their citizens to do this and what is the individual’s motivation? Our culture is now promoting work life balance and trying to have a much more reasonable approach to work, perhaps forgetting that this very imbalance may have played a great and important part in western society’s journey to where it is today. Can Africa bi-pass this route to development?

The work directed person who spends 90% of his or her non-sleeping life working is as rare in an African society as the number of people in a western democracy who spend most of the day happily sitting chatting in the sun. In a western society there is less sun and few cheap comfortable places to pass the time of day. There are considerable social pressures and the essential need to work at least 5 if not 6 days a week in a western society, which have evolved over hundreds of years. We have now reached the stage where young women, some with small babies, are expected to go back to work in western societies because of these pressures, which are much less apparent in a still mainly rural Africa.

What is the most natural attitude for a well-balanced happy human being? What is the default position for a human being if such a thing ever existed? If there is I suspect it is closer to an African than someone living in a western society.

African culture appears to make people more fatalistic, which is said to help them deal with the inescapable injustice of life. Accepting their poor situation as unavoidable also means they are resigned to it and will therefore feel it is not worth the effort to get out of it. This is quite different to the American culture which preaches that anything is possible with hard work and Americans are surrounded by the evidence that that this is true. This now includes a President with a Kenyan father who left him when he was too young to remember, has a family in Kenya, was brought up by his white grandparents in Hawaii and lived and was educated in a developing country, Indonesia, until the age of 11. He went to Harvard and was the first non-white President of the Harvard Law society.

However whereas in America there is a strong chance that anyone who works hard will accumulate wealth that certainly is not true in Africa. One wonders whether that was always true in America in its early days or whether they brought that cultural characteristic with them from Europe.

The extended African family with strong male leadership seems in most cases to have resulted in a very emotionally secure, well-disciplined and economically sound basis for raising children in small closed communities for hundreds of years. However this tight and strong culture has had to change, starting with the first contacts with the western Christian missionaries in the mid 1800s, followed by the demand for migrant labour and finally contact with the very different modern western culture. This seems to have corrosive effects on important parts of their culture without providing alternative viable alternatives to enable them to feed and care for their children and themselves.

This means that some of the best aspects of African culture are disappearing while leaving other aspects, which greatly slow any possible progress to an economically successful society.

The stable society which the traditional old culture created for children seems to have largely gone with some children brought up with little male involvement, while other previously positive aspects of their traditional culture persist and are now an inhibition to progress. The principle of sharing food so that every member of the community didn’t starve, once an admirable and essential part of a caring society may now be preventing successful individuals accumulating wealth. We met several successful professionals who were reluctant to hang onto their surplus money, as they knew they would be expected to help, even quite distant members of their families in financial difficulties. They knew they would be heavily criticized if they refused. This simple initially positive cultural trait could now be a big disincentive to save money and could be one of the reasons that few Africans have developed successful businesses or farms which might have been a considerable stimulus to the national economy.

It might be argued that African culture has also led to a much more relaxed attitude to sex and this may be correct. In small tight communities with little contact with other tribes in the Africa of 200 years ago this would not have led to many of the great problems of the modern world of unwanted babies and venereal disease.

It was also interesting to observe that sex in Africa is much more about having babies as well as having fun whereas the opposite is true in the western world. In Africa the ‘big man’ is not the one who has the most conquests but the one who has the most children and wives, which is as much a reflection of his economic success as his sexual potency. In contrast for some men in the west the idea of being responsible and providing for children is much less appealing and one or two is more than enough. A man's standing in society is determined much more on the basis of economic success than the number of his children.

The old traditions, which resulted in African’s more natural and probably more ‘normal’ attitude to work and extended family may have to change to a more western style if they want to build a western style economy and this may take a long time. Certainly after over 50 years of the wind of change and independence there has been a significant deterioration not improvement of most African economies and their infrastructure, which has not been prevented by enormous amounts of western aid.

We believe that change will not be achieved until there are substantial changes in their culture for the many Africans who still or have only recently left the rural life.

It is possible that all cultural traditions regardless of their origins have a much more powerful effect on our behaviour than at least we imagined and it may take several generations for these traditions to lose their power over the way a community behaves and organizes itself.

There are very real and complex problems to which there are still no clear solutions. However we feel the evidence is that most of Africa’s problems can be solved by a change in attitudes that have been culturally determined. This will take time and it may be that Africa will have to find its own way of evolving to a modern society. The west has to face up to the fact that aid as currently given is not only doing no good it may actually be slowing Africa’s development and that the west urgently needs to re-think it’s approach. We feel the VSO’s way is the least likely to do harm and could be the best way to help development at the moment although there are other ideas, which are being tried and could be very successful in the future.

Overall we felt that Africa has a great future with an amazing climate, large amounts of water,

A view of the Zambezi from our rondavel at the wonderful Tongabezi


One last look on the mighty Zambezi which we saw it all its glories from the northwest as the vast shallow waters of the Barotse flood plane at sunrise to sunset over the Kariba dam in the southeast which has created the vast Kariba Lake we visited at Siavango. Finally and four times at Mosi-au-Tunga (Victoria Falls) from a helicopter and then right at its the edge in Devils pool in its amazingly warm waters.

large areas of fertile land, masses of natural resources and great people.

In turn India and China may have their day but Africa has all the attributes to be one of the most successful continents in the world and will one day be bailing out cold, sunless countries with limited natural resources, too much water and snow in northern Europe and America where increasingly small numbers of people will want to live.