Pride of the Local and the Prejudice of the NGO Professional
Upon arriving at the Kigali Airport on his three-day trip in Rwanda, the author was greeted at the arrival gate of the beautifully constructed and maintained building by a young, uniformed taxi driver. "Where would you like to go, sir?" the young man respectfully half-bowed and politely asked in fluent English. The author, usually doubtful of airport taxi solicitors (too many bad memories of getting ripped off in Asia), was initially a bit hesitant to disclose his destination, but quickly relented when shown the car in the impressively well-organized rank of uniform and clean blue taxis.
When in the taxi, the driver inquired, "where do you come in, sir?" When told that the author is from Tanzania, he showed visible joy, "oh, sir, I was born in Tanzania, lived there until 13. Swahili is my language!" But he quickly switched topic, "but you know, Kigali is not like Dar, no traffic jam. And roads are good. People like walking around at night, and the lights help us see." Despite a Tanzanian origin, the young man was visibly proud of the Rwandan capital that he now calls home. The 20-minute drive was full with praise for this city.
Indeed, despite being in the city for only a few hours, the author has to agree with the young man. From the the very moment of arrival, Kigali impressed. Everything is so clean...the streets, the cars, and even the motorcycle taxis, whose driver wore identical uniforms. Security is tight. Every street corner in downtown Kigali is manned by a uniformed, rifle-totting police officer. The presence of bright streetlights (a rarity in Dar and nonexistent in Iringa) ensure all pedestrians are visible. And there surely are many pedestrians at night. The author felt, first in months, safe walking at night.
But some of this, while impressive, was within the author's expectations. Before he decided to come to Rwanda for the long weekend (4 days of presidential elections in Tanzania), the author spoke with a few American acquaintances (who also happened to be former NGO types) with experiences living and visiting Rwanda. They told him about how Kigali is "different" from other East African cities due to its organization, cleanliness, and...streetlights. The sanitized atmosphere that this city has, they told the author bluntly, makes the place a "strange, weird" location for visit.
The negative connotation with which this associated with the superb level of organization in this city is quite odd. After all, comparing to the urban chaos that characterize Addis or Dar, any sane person would consider a more convenient and secure place to live. Just the point about being able to work around at night without constant fear of robberies (or worse) in pitch dark already sets Kigali apart from other major cities in the region. And the development of the city to such an extent is all the more noteworthy considering in was a genocide-filled rubble a mere two decades ago.
Somehow, seeing a devastated city come so far 20 years after complete collapse, something the local resident is truly proud of, is not particularly palatable for the American NGO professional. Perhaps it is because Kigali did all it has done with top-down decision-making and authoritarian execution reminiscent of Chinese development style rather than a bottom-up community-focused visions that American NGOs espouse. Perhaps it is because Kigali's cleanliness and organization cannot mask the fact that half of the country's population is still eking out a living by subsistence farming.
Or perhaps it is something even more basic: that there is a fundamental dissonance of Kigali's visual reality and the non-African's imaginary perception of a standard African city as a messy, sprawling collection of grinding traffic and impoverished slums. The fact that Kigali exists as it is makes it difficult to sell the massive NGO presence. If the local administration is already capable of molding a city into such a safe and organized place, then are these expensive foreign NGO professionals, along with the massive donations to sustain them, even needed?
In this train of thought, the NGO professional seems to forget why he is here in the first place. No, not because he, as a career development professional, needs to make ends meet by running projects in the developing world, but that he is here to teach locals how to develop their own countries. The end goal is not for NGO projects to become sustainable, but to become unnecessary. The NGO professional needs to be altruistic enough to move in directions that eventually allow, to put in straightforward terms, himself and the organization he works for to be unemployable.
As such, the pride of the local for his city's improvements ought to be celebrated, no matter how partial or misplaced that pride may be. Because every visible sign of the locals' realization of their villages/cities/countries moving toward the real direction economically means a bit more increase in their motivation to learn the necessary skills to take over management of their societies' and communities' betterment. Any selfish attitude on the part of foreign NGOs to prolong aid dependencies through denial of such improvements can only dampen locals' pride and motivation.
When in the taxi, the driver inquired, "where do you come in, sir?" When told that the author is from Tanzania, he showed visible joy, "oh, sir, I was born in Tanzania, lived there until 13. Swahili is my language!" But he quickly switched topic, "but you know, Kigali is not like Dar, no traffic jam. And roads are good. People like walking around at night, and the lights help us see." Despite a Tanzanian origin, the young man was visibly proud of the Rwandan capital that he now calls home. The 20-minute drive was full with praise for this city.
Indeed, despite being in the city for only a few hours, the author has to agree with the young man. From the the very moment of arrival, Kigali impressed. Everything is so clean...the streets, the cars, and even the motorcycle taxis, whose driver wore identical uniforms. Security is tight. Every street corner in downtown Kigali is manned by a uniformed, rifle-totting police officer. The presence of bright streetlights (a rarity in Dar and nonexistent in Iringa) ensure all pedestrians are visible. And there surely are many pedestrians at night. The author felt, first in months, safe walking at night.
But some of this, while impressive, was within the author's expectations. Before he decided to come to Rwanda for the long weekend (4 days of presidential elections in Tanzania), the author spoke with a few American acquaintances (who also happened to be former NGO types) with experiences living and visiting Rwanda. They told him about how Kigali is "different" from other East African cities due to its organization, cleanliness, and...streetlights. The sanitized atmosphere that this city has, they told the author bluntly, makes the place a "strange, weird" location for visit.
The negative connotation with which this associated with the superb level of organization in this city is quite odd. After all, comparing to the urban chaos that characterize Addis or Dar, any sane person would consider a more convenient and secure place to live. Just the point about being able to work around at night without constant fear of robberies (or worse) in pitch dark already sets Kigali apart from other major cities in the region. And the development of the city to such an extent is all the more noteworthy considering in was a genocide-filled rubble a mere two decades ago.
Somehow, seeing a devastated city come so far 20 years after complete collapse, something the local resident is truly proud of, is not particularly palatable for the American NGO professional. Perhaps it is because Kigali did all it has done with top-down decision-making and authoritarian execution reminiscent of Chinese development style rather than a bottom-up community-focused visions that American NGOs espouse. Perhaps it is because Kigali's cleanliness and organization cannot mask the fact that half of the country's population is still eking out a living by subsistence farming.
Or perhaps it is something even more basic: that there is a fundamental dissonance of Kigali's visual reality and the non-African's imaginary perception of a standard African city as a messy, sprawling collection of grinding traffic and impoverished slums. The fact that Kigali exists as it is makes it difficult to sell the massive NGO presence. If the local administration is already capable of molding a city into such a safe and organized place, then are these expensive foreign NGO professionals, along with the massive donations to sustain them, even needed?
In this train of thought, the NGO professional seems to forget why he is here in the first place. No, not because he, as a career development professional, needs to make ends meet by running projects in the developing world, but that he is here to teach locals how to develop their own countries. The end goal is not for NGO projects to become sustainable, but to become unnecessary. The NGO professional needs to be altruistic enough to move in directions that eventually allow, to put in straightforward terms, himself and the organization he works for to be unemployable.
As such, the pride of the local for his city's improvements ought to be celebrated, no matter how partial or misplaced that pride may be. Because every visible sign of the locals' realization of their villages/cities/countries moving toward the real direction economically means a bit more increase in their motivation to learn the necessary skills to take over management of their societies' and communities' betterment. Any selfish attitude on the part of foreign NGOs to prolong aid dependencies through denial of such improvements can only dampen locals' pride and motivation.
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