Urban babe in the bush: a not so secret aid worker

This post was originally posted on berniemshana.com

Gasp! I traded in my American OPT and turned down a great fellowship program in South Africa for a job in the middle of nowhere Tanzania. Sounds ridiculous, but deep down in my heart, I knew I wasn’t going to be fulfilled anywhere else but home in Tanzania. And if it meant going back home to a bush, so be it.

So here I am, after 6 years in exile, overlooking the Serengeti plains from a window. I knew my hundreds-of-thousand-dollar degree would take me places, but I didn’t imagine it would bring me to a job in the Serengeti.

Yet here I am, an urban babe in the bush!

I’m working at a nonprofit organisation committed to wildlife conservation and community development work in the western corridor of the Serengeti ecosystem. This wasn’t an easy decision! I had my reservations. See, I took this job because I’d been doing “development work” in other countries on the continent and beyond and I really wanted to do the same at home. However, over the years I’d begun to doubt that nonprofit organisations -especially ones started by foreigners- could really achieve sustainable development at scale. I felt that it’s necessary for “locals” to be involved in development work for real and lasting change to happen. Because you can’t ignore how when foreigners come to Africa to do “development work” it eerily parallels colonialism.

And then there is the truth that no organisation is built to die. They’re all built to last. So, what does it mean for an organisation that’s trying to solve a problem to last? The problems it’s trying to tackle must continue, isn’t it? So, it’s not unfounded that one ought to be sceptical of organisations doing development work and the purity of their intentions. And so the question is, does the addition of people like me, “locals”, in these spaces, make a difference?

I want to believe that yes, it does — but I honestly don’t think it’s always the case. It’s not enough to just add some local voices in the mix, we really ought to sprinkle some radical feminist critique on how the work itself is being done. I believe it’s important for everyone who works in this field, including myself, to critically analyse their own positionality. At some point, one needs to scrutinize the ways they’re contributing to the conditions that lead to there being a need for “development work” to begin with. We must be cautious of deeming ourselves faultless-do-gooders while we find self-fulfilment in delivering material excesses, to a few people on the “other side,” while residing comfortably in our zones of abundance.

Barbara Heron, in her book, “Desire for Development: Whiteness, Gender and the Helping Imperative,” makes a point on this matter that may help in the self-assessment. She argues that the very identity and role of a development worker are inscribed with entitlement and superiority complexes that can be traced to colonial constructions of bourgeois identities. She makes a case for a sober de-romanticised perception of the development worker. Development work for Heron is neither noble nor innocent but rather a colonial continuity that has shape-shifted to fit neoliberal moralities. My and her scrutiny of entities or persons doing “development work” however, isn’t malicious but rather warranted by this understanding of development work.

Neither Heron, nor I can be the judge and jury on this matter, so I focus on my own complicity in choosing to be a development worker. Trust me at no point did the irony escape me. I constantly question the way my choice may reflect an internalised colonial bourgeois mentality. I ask myself, “have I, as Maya Angelou puts it in her book “All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes” become a “Beentoo? Have I been consumed by my own experiences and relative privilege to the point of seeing myself as superior to my fellow Tanzanians, dubbing myself a bringer of development?”

While the possibility that I too have become complicit in hierarchical structures that create the development worker imperative eats at me, I still need work -a girl needs food on her plate after all! Plus, I also still believe that there’s a need to include beneficiaries of development in the work that’s meant to serve them. Even though I’m not the benchmark of who development is for -considering my relative privilege and all- I feel it necessary for a liminal person like me to be in this space anyway. And yet, I can’t say that without feeling guilty of buying into the nobility politics that give me the license to march into these communities to “help” them. But we can’t dwell in self-critique! At the end of the day, someone needs to do the work! Plus, am I also not, in so many ways, a product of other people’s development work anyways? I’m a classic case of the save-a-poor-African-child trope by way of scholarships and financial aid.

So, I try to not let this inner turmoil distract me from seeing the value this experience may bring for me personally, and as a contributing member of society. Besides, I’m not claiming single-handily changing anything here, but I am carving out space for self-development and potentially upliftment of a community. My heart is in the right place, that oughta count for something!

As I negotiate space within and beyond this organisation, I commit to constantly reflect on my own positionality and the ways I may be complicit in perpetuating underdevelopment.

We’ll see how it goes.

Sincerely,

Bernie

an urban babe in the bush