RPCV Robert McCormick arrived 15 years ago in Bukavu, an African city situated on the magnificent Lake Kivu in eastern Zaire
Ugly Westerners despoil again
By Robert McCormick
graduate student, journalism
When I first arrived 15 years ago in Bukavu, an African city situated on the magnificent Lake Kivu in eastern Zaire, I immediately harbored mixed feelings about my presence.
I had come to Bukavu for seven weeks to enhance my paltry French, which would be the means of communication at my future Peace Corps post in Cameroon, another African country. While language-learning in Bukavu seemed harmless enough, I always wrestled with the murky issue of what purpose hordes of Westerners really served in exotic locales like Bukavu.
Today, Bukavu and other sites around Lake Kivu are experiencing great upheaval. Ethnic groups in the region are battling each other, with no end in sight to the fighting. Americans and other westerners can read all about this tragedy and smugly blame it on the intractable attitudes of those Africans.
If only it were so simple.
For almost 40 years now, numerous Westerners, including Americans, Belgians, English, French and Germans, have inhabited Bukavu, Bujumbura, Goma, Kigali and other sites involved in the present conflict. Stated intentions of those Westerners may have appeared admirable: Let's help the undeveloped and impoverished residents of this area improve their lives. Good intentions, however, have failed to satisfy actual needs.
Ever present consultants lectured locals about new methods of agricultural and industrial production, whether suitable for the region or not. Peace Corps Volunteers and their equivalents from other countries taught science, mathematics and other subjects,
without linking that knowledge to concrete and practical goals.
Frequently frustrated by their failure to improve social conditions, many Westerners developed a more pragmatic view of what they could accomplish. A reverse process began in translating Western largess into substantive benefits. In many cases, it was not the locals who benefited from foreign assistance; it was the foreigners themselves.
Aid workers often collected large salaries with substantial rewards for deprivations suffered by living in a place like Bukavu, which is a truly beautiful site. A donor country, like the United States, also reaped benefits by allocating foreign aid to purchases of goods from the donor country. The sight of cumbersome American trucks mired in rugged African terrain never made much sense except in the accounts of the United States manufacturer.
At times, foreign aid propped up local elites, who were then expected to follow the party line of the donor country. Usually this required the host country to open its doors to Western businesses, which could then profit from these new markets.
The Western presence in the Lake Kivu region created a sense of privilege. The mere fact that I was from the great land of America meant residents would offer me gifts and other items in recognition of my elevated, but contrived, status. Many locals, though, felt resentment toward this favored position of Westerners. For instance, one young man expressed contempt that all good tennis shoes went to the West for sale there, while Africans could buy only second-rate products.
For all the efforts of hundreds of Westerners, no apparent success has resulted in constructing a stable, multi-ethnic society in the tormented area around Lake Kivu. From a Western viewpoint it would be easy to slot Bukavu and its environs into the too-hard basket and simply forget about this area. That might even be an ethical option if Westerners had not already massively intervened there.
Recent events occurring in Zaire, Burundi and Rwanda need to be viewed in connection with the Western presence. Without that presence, it is difficult to imagine that the situation could be as horrific as it is now. Tribal rivalries in this region existed before Westerners arrived. But not until Western intervention has the carnage been so widespread and profound.
By ensconcing themselves around Lake Kivu with little regard for regional attitudes and conditions, Westerners have found it difficult to improve significantly the lives of local residents. Instead, our weaponry, cynical politics and vulture-like business practices have provided even more fertile ground for conflict than had we never descended upon the peoples of this region.
Distrust of Westerners may hinder any significant involvement in negotiating peace among warring factions. However, the West must demonstrate that it wants to build a constructive, genuine and non-partisan alliance with the region.
No matter how treacherous the existing situation at Lake Kivu appears, the United States and other western countries have an obligation to assist in repairing the damage.
