Hello from Zanzibar, kind of.

First apologies for the gap in blogs. We ran out of things to say. Actually, I was waiting for Nadine to write a piece on her amazing experiences working with HIPZ (Health Improvement Project Zanzibar) but she didn’t. A waiting war ensued. She could outwait an elephant.

Second, we’ve just moved to Thailand (an exciting new banner competition will shortly be unveiled), but I still have a few things to say on the subject of Zanzibar so you’ll have to use your imagination and pretend we’re still there for the next few blogs. Perhaps Nadine will also relent and at last write her piece on HIPZ.

Or perhaps not.

In the best traditions of Anglo-Germanic culture I’ve decided to have a bit of a rant and moan about the useless government. No, not the Tanzanian government, even though the money-grabbing corrupt thieving bastards could fill several blogs with their criminal practices. No, I’m going to blether on about western governments for, even out here, you cannot escape the sheer ineptitude of our own incompetent political classes. If you’re seated comfortably . . .

Zanzibar is black hole, a hole into which Western government aid flows like a gushing torrent. It has for the past few decades and shows no sign of slowing. Yet, surprisingly, all the standard indicators of aid impact: education, sanitation, roads, power, poverty, none of it, not one single indicator has improved in any meaningful way over that period. Zanzibar to all intent and purposes might as well be a failed island state.

It is estimated that between 20 to 40 billion US dollars is stolen every year from developing countries in Africa through bribery, misappropriation of funds and other corrupt practices. Only five billion US dollars of this stolen money has actually been returned over the last 20 years, one third of it from Switzerland. There are currently 200 million US Dollars sitting in Swiss accounts held by Tanzanian officials that the government can’t account for. You could actually argue that the only concrete development of the last 60 years and $3 trillion (to put that into perspective if you spent $1 million dollars every day since the birth of Jesus you wouldn’t be anywhere close to spending even one of that 3 trillion) of large scale foreign government donor aid in Africa has been the biggest money laundering, corruption ring the world has ever seen. Oh and a few billion more poor and impoverished people in a litany of failed states. All, one could argue, largely thanks to western government aid.

So how does this happen? Western governments, our governments, surely want to alleviate poverty not create it, prevent corruption, not encourage it? Well, the reasons are a highly complex interconnected set of socio-economic factors. . . . . actually that’s a load of rubbish. The reasons are simple. Western governments are completely useless at alleviating poverty and preventing corruption in their own countries. Why should they be any better doing it in countries thousands of miles away with cultures they have no real understanding of?

There is a more cynical viewpoint on all of this, one that evidence on the ground unfortunately tends to support. It goes along the lines of …. ‘Hey you, poor impoverished country government man, here’s a few million dollars to help the poor and impoverished in your poor and impoverished country . . . What? No, we don’t need a receipt.  No, we’re not going to check up on what you do with the money. Just write us a report every now and then saying everything is hunky dory. But you remember, poor and impoverished country government man, when our oil, coal, gold and engineering firms come knocking on your door asking for contracts, you remember who gave you those dollars. So long poor and impoverished country government man’. You might say, back door imperialism with cash instead of guns. So the political, power classes in Africa, Zanzibar included, drive ever bigger 4x4s, their beach side villas get bigger and more numerous, their kids get sent to the best schools (there are none of note in Zanzibar). If they need medical treatment they fly family members to India, and the UK to get top notch care (again none of note in Zanzibar). It’s a classic poverty wealth gap only this one suckles at the teat of western government aid.

Either totally ignorant of the impact their donor aid policies have in Africa or totally aware and completely comfortable with the consequences. You choose which is worse.

The problem with being crap at governing in your own country and crap in a country a few thousand miles away is that in a place like Tanzania bad, externally imposed pan-national decisions spiral out of control and leave you with a pile of dire consequences, you couldn’t even dream of, let alone plan for and contain. A few pertinent examples follow:

Example A: Some bright government spark in the west (a few governments have done this including the UK) decided the best way to improve education was to build schools. Cue a school building spree in the 70s and 80s. The result were thousands of empty school buildings splattered willy nilly across Tanzania with no regard for school catchment areas (‘No, we’re not going to check up on what you do with the money. Just write us a report every now and then saying everything is hunky dory’). Teachers were still untrained, underpaid and brutal with the kids, who basically associated school with fear and arbitrary physical beatings. So seeing that their nice schools were empty, the same western governments threatened Tanzania with reduced aid if school attendance didn’t reach a certain standard. Literally overnight, attendance in Tanzanian schools all the way up to secondary level shot up 90+% (in the existing old schools. The new ones were unusable) Why? The Tanzanian government simply made student non-attendance a criminal offence punishable by gaol terms for the family head. Tanzanian school attendance is still one, if not the highest in Africa, a fact loudly trumpeted by the UN and others. Educational pass rates on the other hand are not loudly trumpeted by the UN and others. Perhaps because they’ve crashed to 10% over the same period. The outcome is, Tanzania still has untrained, underpaid teachers who brutalise their pupils and kids still associate school with fear and arbitrary beating, but now they have even less chance of escaping it thanks to western government aid.

Example B: Another few government and UN bright sparks decided they wanted to help Zanzibar build up its health sector. A good idea you’d think, and one backed by cash, millions of it, every year and medical equipment and supplies, tonnes and tonnes of the stuff.  This has been going on for decades in Tanzania. Again great, but for a few minor oversights. Practically none of the cash, equipment and supplies comes with any contract, auditing or accountability structures and where they do exist they’re either under the control of the very local decision makers receiving the cash and equipment or, even worse in my book, careerist western government aid officials who can’t afford to rock the boat (no government wants to hear it’s their cash and equipment that’s getting nicked or misused). I know what I would do if some money shovelling foreign government suit from over the horizon dropped a huge stash of dollars or top dollar medical kit into my lap and didn’t ask for a receipt. So, yes, endemic, systematic, large-scale corruption. An entire political class and a swathe of leaders and decision makers from the very top (stand up the president of Tanzania) down to middle management (doctors, mid-level ministry officials etc.) dedicated not to the improvement of health but to swindling as much money, equipment and supplies from idiotically managed large scale government donor aid as they can get their hands on. Those individuals trying to fight against it are too few and simply become marginalised. They either sink, join the corruption ring or leave the country in search of a better life.

Example C: It costs a local up to a week’s wages to have a baby here. It’s supposed be free, by the way. Before going to hospital, a pregnant mother must buy her baby delivery kit complete with plastic sheeting, bottle of disinfectant, scissors etc. It entirely consists of supplies from a range of international health organisations that are syphoned off by crooked local officials. They’re sold in pharmacy shops in ready bundled little pink baskets. The expectant mother hands over her little basket to the nurse and . . . it’s never seen again. Never used. It will miraculously appear back in the same pharmacy the same day untouched and ready to be sold on to the next expectant mother. Why? Donors provide medical supplies to the hospitals for free dispensary to patients. Hospital make sure most of it is syphoned off to their controlled pharmacies (all pharmacies within spitting distance of a hospital in Zanzibar will be owned by doctors on the make). Locals are then charged for supplies, most of which they don’t need, but since the doctor is writing the prescription who’s going to question?

Example D: There’s a new sonography room in one of the ancillary hospitals in Zanzibar, containing state of the art kit. Again provided for free by some government body, Dutch perhaps, who cares. It’s only opened when the local doctors or nurses are short of cash. They charge up to a week’s local salary for a scan. Remember health delivery is free in Tanzania. They make so much money with this, they’ll only come in to run off a couple scans and then go home again. They pay orderlies to fill in for them. By orderlies I mean cleaners, people with no medical training. Most can’t even read or write. As a patient you have as much chance being treated by an orderly as a nurse in Zanzibar. Some of the orderlies have picked up so much that they even masquerade as doctors. Their training? On the job. Perhaps a 15 minute run through of the basics by a nurse then a quick buck before the nurse pisses off home. You end up with babies being forcibly pulled one handed (and that’ll be a filth covered hand) from women. Women simply die because the orderly didn’t know what to do next. Or they got bored or they weren’t paid so didn’t hang around. The common sight in wards apart from dirt (orderlies are too busy nursing to be cleaning) and empty medical cabinets (all of it whisked away to private doctors’ pharmacies) are of nurses slouched over chairs tip-tapping away on their 3G phones or sleeping in patients’ beds. The actual western doctors and medical staff out hear can do bugger all to combat this as they have no authority and are viewed as threats or hindrances to lucrative money making operations. Their attempts to train staff or make changes to improve health care delivery are met with disdain, apathy and lies as local staff try to protect their ‘turf’.

How bad is it? Well, if you ask a local Zanzibari why they go to hospital, the usual answer will be ‘to die’

Hey ho, just a few small examples what large scale western government donor aid can achieve.  I need to point out here that small scale donor projects, usually based on personal relationships built up over time and in targeted, controllable environments does appear to work, in stark contrast to the vomit loads of easy cash and equipment preferred by government organisations. Just ask Nadine about her experiences working with one great example, HIPZ. Go one Nadine, write that article.

And since I’m in a groove here’s a few more western government numbnut aid ideas. Western governments provide scholarships for training including overseas bursaries. Again, you’d think smashing idea. As it turns out, in Zanzibar, and I suspect in other African states, there’s a mismatch between the training on offer and the person getting it. Imagine financial accountants flying off to Vietnam for 1 year midwifery training. Receptionists, who can’t point to the PC in their office, being sent on database design courses. Social workers being sent off on 2 year courses in dentistry in Australia. Why? Most western government donor funded training is policed by local administration and on a use or lose it basis, again with inadequate auditing and reporting. It therefore gets dished out by local decision makers as a perk. A nice little holiday or a means to a quick buck on expenses. We had one bloke who was supposed to be our counterpart turning up after a year on some donor funded MSc in the UK. He jacked that in after the first 6 months and spent the last 6 stacking shelves in Tesco somewhere in Scotland. He finally returned to Zanzibar because the work and the cushy donor money dried up.

Another amazing scheme cooked up by western government aid agencies is something called the ‘per diem’, a fee paid to attendees of donor sponsored training. What a wheeze this one is. It was initially created because donor agencies couldn’t get locals interested enough to sign up for their workshops etc. so in their wisdom decided bribing them with cash to attend would do the trick. Surprisingly enough, it did. However it also created a per diem price inflation war between competing donor agencies ratcheting up the rates in order to get the largest audiences for their workshops so they could in turn write super little reports for their government bosses. And yet again it’s managed by local officials or aid agency officials with no power or no will to exercise it. So another perk bonus system is created and the results are workshops for health workers filled with cleaners and secretaries and whoever else hasn’t had a per diem hand-out for a while.

Here’s a weird but interesting insight into how a lack of cultural understanding by donor agencies can screw things up. AIDS. Millions pumped into its prevention and even today the results are at best questionable. For a start as AIDS is socially stigmatised most cases are hidden from public view in remote bush villages so it beats me where these ‘official’ figures come from. Certainly not from roving bush reporters (the average UK Department for International Development staff member in Kenya spends just one day in the field per year). Secondly, a big government donor agency drive in fighting AIDS was via legislation to discourage polygamy. Whether you agree with it or not, a significant part of the male African socio-cultural value system revolves around polygamous sex. Legislating against it simply drove them to the illegal kind and a spike in prostitution and, strangely enough, a spike in AIDS. It also left a significant number of unmarried girls having to be supported by their families. Who couldn’t, so the result was an ever increasing proportion being sent to the cities to earn their way. For most that meant prostitution and a one way ticket to the AIDS clinic.

There are tonnes more stories like these all across this government donor infested continent. However I shall finish on a high note.

This is what volunteer inspiration looks like.

Juanito is his name. Every time I start whinging about my lot in life or start thinking I’m going through a hard patch then I turn my thoughts to the ‘Philippine Dynamo’. In placement for his 4^rth year in Pemba the poorest island in the Zanzibar archipelago as well as roving volunteer specialist on the Tanzanian mainland, he’s a volunteer’s volunteer. He makes his own candles, detergent, soap. Foraged and fished his way through a couple of months when his VSO allowance didn’t get through. He plants mangrove trees, literally an entire mangrove swamp with his bare hands as foreshore protection for the village. Suffered racism from his local employers the first year. Discovered and confronted the ministry on corruption involving falsification of volunteer records. His house (a shack) was broken into 9 times in the first month. He had huge resistance from a lot of local teachers and head staff to his project so he circumvented the lot of them and set up shop in his own place for those teachers who wanted to learn, using his own cash. In his spare time he teaches the local village guards to cook, reps for the other island volunteers, hands out free condoms in his personal crusade against AIDS and has set up his house as refuge for villagers suffering abuse and for kids running away from beatings. And yes, I have a tattoo of him on my arm.

While the dark continent might have sucked me in, laughed in my face, spat me out a bitter, twisted, and cynical shadow of my former happy go-lucky self, stronger men and women like Juanito have fought through the above obstacles and have indeed brought lasting impact in places such as Zanzibar. Perhaps not on a national scale but they have made a positive difference.  I was very lucky to have come into contact with a few of them (Juanito, Jackie, Tim, all you HIPZ doctors and VSOs who fought through the bureaucracy, ignorance, corruption, and general bullshit, take a bow). And I was also very lucky enough to have hitched a ride along with one of them. Nadine shall now tell you her blood and guts tale (literally, blood and guts) of how you do aid with impact and style. Over to you Nads.