Page 15 - Volume 1_Go home mzungu Go Home_merged with links

Notes from the Author

Origins & Destinations

The African president who challenged a conference of INGO by asking them

“Why, if you have helped so much over all these years, are you still here?”

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The ‘B list’ celebrity m'zuŋ u academic who published a book in which he
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posited that the British Empire might actually have been a ‘good thing’ because
his statistics showed that British colonies enjoyed a higher growth in GDP than
after their independence. No mention of the cost of the decades of chaos that

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followed independence. Nor any admission of the role that the m'zuŋ u played
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that made that chaos inevitable. Such a position of influence used to reinforce
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negative m'zuŋ u v African stereotypes.
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And the unfolding story of the Cambodian orphanages

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m̩̩ ̩̩
A story of the distortion unthinking ‘charity’ can do. A story of 'zuŋ u
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m̩̩ ̩̩
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m̩̩ ̩̩
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hypocrisy as minor 'zuŋ u TV channel after 'zuŋ u TV channel uses it to
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reinforce their image of investigative reporting. All it needed was for one major
INGO to partner the government and provide the resources, expertise and
training to build up that government’s relevant department. But it’s easier for the
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m'zuŋ u to ‘point the finger’ than it is to ‘solve the problem’.
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Then came the big-endian v little-endian mindlessness that led to the creation of DfiD v
FCDO.

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Destinations

My original ambition was to write a book that would encourage people to provide the

funds that would allow me to direct a community economic development in northern
Ethiopia.

(Subsequent events have somewhat overtaken that idea. The creation of FCDO, the economic
consequences of Covid-19, and party politics generally dominate UK decision-makers’ thinking. At the

same time, Ethiopia has seen a civil war. It may well be the last post-Derg era ‘wrinkle’ that always had to
be tackled’.

There will come a time when it would be possible to help this community. After all the fighting dies down,
the central government will have its own priorities. There will not be enough resources to do everything.
This community would benefit from having its own community economic development project. Making
this possible almost certainly means having funding from outside that made possible by central
government.