A long time missionary in Africa, Jim Harries accurately observes how outside resource destabilises "normal" African life. Find more by Jim at http://www.jim-mission.org.uk/articles/ or email him at jharries@africaonline.co.ke
"It is not an enormous exaggeration to say that whatever a foreign donor touches, falls apart. The king who found that everything he touched turned to gold, soon discovered that this was not always a good thing. The foreigners' hand that always carries money has a similar impact.
Voluntary groups such as churches or self-help initiatives may be thriving, until someone puts in outside money at which stage infighting, jealousy and suspicion take over. Someone's productive small business is destroyed by the importation of cheap foreign products. A relationship between husband and wife turns to arguing and fighting resulting in both turning to drink when the wife gets involved in a women's project for making money independently of her husband, funded from a distant land. A chief or headman accustomed to serving his people changes his behaviour radically when he realises that those he needs to serve in order to enrich himself are foreigners who have little clue as to his peoples problems. Those insisting on the imposition of unfamiliar moral codes are not there to see their impact. For example, the ruling that was brought banning corporal punishment in schools so as to continue to acquire donor funds, that caused chaos in Kenya in 2001.
I was in Kenya at this time and saw this happening. The Kenyan media announced that corporal punishment in schools had been declared illegal. There followed a widespread spate of extremely destructive strikes by school children up and down the country. To my understanding, corporal punishment has been continued. Hence we have yet another example of the separation of the legal system from actual practice, for the sake of the continued acquisition of foreign aid. Corporal punishment is declared illegal in Kenya so as to please foreign donors, but continues unabated in its schools.
People revert to telling lies and half-truths in order to protect their well-being and that of their families. A foreign intervention promises x on the condition of y. Y is clearly impractical and the foreigner would realise as much if he were to hang around long enough. There are two options. Telling the truth and watching the money go somewhere else makes you look a fool. Better to tell a lie, get the money to feed your family, and hope that the things that fall apart in the process will somehow come right in the end.
Once lying to foreigners has begun it soon gains respectability and becomes the norm. From here on the foreigner no longer realises that his activities are destabilising. What he has in view is the formal sector, which gradually grows as a foreign implant rife with corruption and lies. Meanwhile the local sector on which most people depend struggles to survive alongside it."