Afrikan Goddess (AG) Online

By: N. Amma Twum-Baah (December 1, 2009)

The last time I picked up the phone and called a charity, it was after I saw an ad on television. I had skipped church service and was already laden with guilt for finding other ways to occupy my time on a Sunday morning. I happened to be flipping through channels when one of numerous charity ads purporting to help poverty stricken countries greeted my conscience. In the ad was a bearded white man surrounded by impoverished looking African children in some remote village.

The children were half-naked and barefoot with noses dripping and flies swarming around them as they stared into the camera with cute puppy eyes even the most hardened heart couldn’t resist. I set aside my bowl of cereal. The ad went something like this “for as little as ten cents a day, you can feed a starving child like Mansa, and many others like her. Just pick up the phone and call. You can help improve the life of a child, send a child to school, or help feed a whole village in Africa if you just dial the number on the screen. Agents are on hand waiting to talk to you.”

My conscience was wracked with guilt as I walked to the trash can and poured out the cereal then walked to the sink and poured the milk down the drain. The box of cornflakes cost about four dollars; the milk another two dollars and fifty cents. I calculated that what I had poured down the drain, and in the trashcan cost maybe about twenty-five cents a day – more than double what the man on TV was asking. That could feed five villages and send five girls to school if I saved it up for a month. My math may be rusty, but you get the picture. So, I picked up the phone and dialed the number. Before I knew it I was sponsoring a Zimbabwean child I would never meet with a portion of my paycheck all because I was feeling guilty for not going to Church on Sunday. I had fallen into the “doing good to make yourself feel good” category, or maybe I was bribing God – I’m not very sure.

Only later did I question myself: “You’re from Ghana. You lived there for over 10 years. When were you ever able to feed yourself on $3/month ($.10/day multiplied by 30 days)?”

Led by an unsettling feeling, I asked some of my most opinionated African acquaintances and friends to see if the feeling was mutual. It was! In conversations that ensured, I realized that that nagging feeling on my conscience was not just me. That love-hate relationship I have for foreign charities was not uniquely “me,” but commonly “African.” In a sense, you want to open your wallet and heart to the poor, but at the same time, something about the picture you see on TV doesn’t quite seem right – that is if you happen to be an African living abroad who is sick of seeing your beloved continent portrayed as nothing more to it than poverty, Aids, wars, and hungry, nose-dripping, ribs-protruding children running the streets.

It’s a love-hate relationship because charity is a good thing. We all know that! Yes, there are definitely starving children who benefit from the goodwill of strangers they never meet. At the same time, however, it is a hate relationship because proud Africans have to sit in their living rooms and forego their bowls of cornflakes because they are appalled with the way their continent is being represented to the outside world, while they question the real motives of those charity organizations who have set up camp on their home turf. The last time “kind strangers” came bearing good news; they stripped us of our identity, dignity and sense of self-worth.

One acquaintance I talked to pointed out the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report released just weeks ago. According to the report, almost 15% (that’s about 49 million Americans) of Americans had difficulty putting food on the table - and lacked adequate nutrition - in 2008. The number of Americans homeless on the streets probably amounts to a much higher percentage. He also shared my view that even though he appreciates the kindness of strangers, seeing charity ads on TV leaves him with a sense of embarrassment. He thinks the negative publicity only helps to fuel the inaccurate stories of poverty and hunger in Africa. What many fail to realize is that the few shown on TV as a mass representation of the continent only represents a fraction of the population. In his words, “it would be like taking the most recent US report and parading to the world the fact that Americans go to bed hungry every night and are malnourished.”

The many sentiments surrounding foreign charities that resonated throughout my conversations landed on a common sense that something just didn’t quite add up. Take, for instance, another acquaintance, Kwame. Kwame views the use of aid by foreign governments and “so called” charities as a brilliant ploy to control African governments receiving aid. “It is nothing more than a brilliant, calculated ploy for political control.” According to him, this trend is a modern twist on slavery. He is obviously very angry with the level of control and what he terms “Africa’s blind submission to the countries getting rich off of our natural resources.” I even became a target of his anger for buying into the sad sobbing story of some hungry child in Zimbabwe, and I don’t blame him.

Africans grow rice, sugar, maize and other food produce, and yet foreign charities ship these very items to us as aid. We have all the natural resources at our disposal, and yet we are begging others to come in and dangle what we already have under our noses because of our “poor helpless victim mentality, or what they choose to paint of us for the world to see!”

Let’s just say that after hearing what others had to say, the monthly deductions from my paycheck going to sponsor some unknown child in Zimbabwe and to feed his whole village don’t make me feel so good after all. To think that as an African, I actually bought into the notion that it only takes ten cents a day to feed a hungry child in Africa only goes to show how easily these organizations can exploit our sensibilities in an effort to convince us that we are indeed a despondent continent without their hand-outs.

Do you think that’s crazy? Do you have a different view? Weigh in below, respectfully.