And THAT is what made you come to Africa. The idea that you could save the world. And if you think that my pointing this out (and my lack of sympathy for your story) means that “I hate White People” then you really don’t get it! The fact that you don’t see it is just another indication of the white privilege that is blinding you to how condescending your actions were.

The point is: You went and intruded on someone else’s community without being asked or invited to offer help that you were never asked for.

And you did it because YOU felt that YOU COULD and YOU HAD THE RIGHT. And that is arrogance.

There are many, MANY starving, helpless, poor, etc White people scattered all over Europe, America, and the rest of the world that wealthy or even just plain old middle class Nigerians could help significantly but you don’t see us girding ourselves in entitlement and tramping uninvited into the lives of others to force our “help” on them.

And look how you pat yourself on the back for “living with Africans”. Yay!! Congratulations to you!! You went Native!! You went Tribal!! Shall we dance for you and build a fire? What is so special about that, yet you tout it as though it’s something we should applaud you for.

Guess what? I lived in Nigeria everyday surrounded by Nigerians and did things the Nigerian way. Now I’m studying in America and I live surrounded by Americans, and I do things the American way and get close to real live Americans roaming about in my environment.

I don’t see anybody offering me an award for doing this. I don’t see anybody offering me a book deal.

How can you not see that the very fact that you think “living among the villagers” is something worthy of mention is an act of condescension in itself. It’s like you’re saying “Oh wow, can you imagine how brave and humble I was? Wow! Gee!! Look at me!! I bet you other Swedes would never dare to try this!”

And then to write a book about it (in which I am sure you undoubtedly mentioned this fact) is like icing on the cake.

So enjoy your white privilege from Sweden. Do you know when it’ll stop being white privilege? When someone thinks my life as a Nigerian student in America is worth a book deal.

First of all I want to say that the title of my book – Blue-eyed in Luhya-land – shows that my husband and I realize that we had been very naive; we did have a picture of Africa which in reality proved rather different from the real world.
Since we had to move away from Sweden to a warmer climate because of health reasons it was not possible for us to start a help project at home in Sweden. And actually there are no poor Swedes – at least not starving ones.
We had been checking in beforehand with the rural community in Kenya whether they would welcome us and need our help. We were living in Kenya between 1996 and 2001 and at that time the villagers were lacking a lot of means to survive. In our village 35 percent of the people had HIV/AIDS and lots of our friends died. People were starving to death, water borne diseases took many lives. Lots of children were illiterate since there was no money to buy school uniforms.

I can’t see that teaching people how to help themselves by showing them village technology and easy and cheap means of surviving could be bad. Remember, we did not live within an enclosure with guards etc like so many Westerners in help projects. We lived AMONG the people.

We taught the villagers a lot of things that they are still remembering and using. We paid the school fees for lots of orphans; we paid medicine and hospital care for lots; we organized free seminars for the villagers in mushroom growing etc. We employed lots of villagers and gave them much higher salaries and advantages than what they could get in other places.

We are not feeling as experts on rural Africans but after five years in our village during which we tried to get to know the luhya way of life, we think we have SOME knowledge of that.

My book is not a sob story. In fact we were discussing, my husband and I, before he got his stroke, whether we should return to Kenya to continue helping our villagers, since there were so many requests for our help. Today, almost 10 years after our departure we still get many emails asking us to return.

You write “Thanks for your help in treading all over their dignity.” That is one thing we NEVER did. For Swedes that is something very essential; integrity and dignity are so essential to all Swedes – there is no excuse if you forget that. So we lived the Swedish way – and maybe that was wrong of us. Maybe we would have been better off being harsher but we did not want to do that.

I am sorry that you have such hatred against WHITE PEOPLE. I know that lots of big international help organizations send “experts” overseas to among other places Africa, where they live in enclosures and do not know much about real African life. And I dislike that since that way you do not learn much about the way of life the locals are having.

It was our intention to spend the rest of our lives in our Kenyan village but unfortunately circumstances made it impossible. It is however a nice feeling for us to know that on our former property a school has now been built.

Corruption, witchcraft and superstition are not only found in Africa; there are so many places all over the world where they are included in the daily life.

OK, Sugabelly; I have at least tried to show you something of what we felt. I do hope you will try to see our way too.

Summery regards from Sweden,
Sotanini

Why couldn’t you help poor Swedes? If you wanted to help a fellow human being you could have helped a nearby underprivileged Swede but no, you just had to go to “AFRICA” and help an “AFRICAN COMMUNITY” and be thwarted by “CORRUPTION” and “WITCHCRAFT” and “SUPERSTITION”.

Whatever. Next.

I’m sorry but I am SICK of Westerners coming to ooh and aah and then leaving feeling like they have experienced some profound moment or something.

You went to Kenya because you had the SAME preconceived notions about Africans (in this case Kenyans) as are being written about on this post. Why did you go to Kenya to waste five years of your life? Or do you think that there are poor people only in Africa? Charity begins AT HOME!!!! Help dying starving and goodness-knows-what-else Swedes in YOUR OWN BACKYARD and stop wasting plane ticket money to come to my CONTINENT just so that you can pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you’re such a good benevolent person and then later write a book about it to boot because suddenly you’re now an expert on rural Africans.

Oh right, I forgot, because THERE ARE NO POOR EUROPEANS OR AMERICANS OR WHITE PEOPLE FOR THAT MATTER.

I’m so sorry I forgot the empirical rule: ONLY AFRICANS CAN BE POOR, DYING, STARVING, AIDS RIDDEN, and IN NEED OF HELP FROM GREAT AND BENEVOLENT WHITE PEOPLE.

As a Nigerian I have NO SYMPATHY for you. Carry your sob story elsewhere. You went to “help” a community full of grown adults. Did you even consider that maybe they could help themselves? No, you just automatically treated them like children by swooping down to help them without even consulting them first.

Thanks for your “help” in treading all over their dignity. Next time sit your butt down in Sweden and help your neighbour and let grown adults in Kenya worry about themselves.

Belatedly, I guess the ideal would be to make room for those cultures to talk about themselves, instead of relying on middle-class(ish) white western people to do it. Where’s the Maasai woman with a book deal about her life?

No, this comment is not to advertise it. It is simply to tell that it is tough to get to know people really deep inside if you come from different cultures. And in Kenya there are lots of different tribal cultures. If you get to know things about them, it is rather natural that you will want to tell others about them.

Learn about it is the goal. But the problem with her and all those Westerners who take a year off in a developing country, join the Peace Corps, do an semester abroad etc is that they arrive with preconceived notions and by some amazing trick, seem to leave with even more preconceived notions, made worse by the fact that they then consider themselves mini-experts.They laugh openly, no judgement exists – the fact that she can seriously make such blanket statements is testament to the fact that she still thinks of the people she lived with as a group, not as individuals. Surely it’s illogical to think that a whole village or community could lack a couple of judgemental people. I am being deliberatly jokey beacuse I can’t take Robin seriously and I can’t take you Emma seriously if you’re not seeing what so many other people in these comments are seeing.

Think of the opposite. What if an Masai person came to live in the US, say in SomeTown, Arizona for a year. She would live as the people lived, going to Burger King and watching Lost. Then a year later she would tour Africa promoting her book claiming insight on the American people and their way of life. “They listen and talk to a voice named Bluetooth who lives in their ears” “Everyone has 2.5 children and 2.5 cars” And this person would be taken seriously and would be booked to talk to other kids in African high schools and would be commended for her awareness-raising. That’s how absurd Robin sounds to me, an African.

For example, note how often she uses “I” statements in the video, making the experience centered on her. It’s a classic example of how privileged westerners tend to enter disadvantaged cultures with good intentions, yet still fall into the trap of making the experience all about them. Note also who is doing the speaking in the video: 3 white folks. There is video footage from the Maasai community, but no one’s voice is heard.

I am not placing blame solely on her for the video production: I’m pointing out some of the reasons I had problems with the video and the way it presented her experience.

I can’t stand it when people don’t take a moment to think before they speak.

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