Africa has always been held hostage by small gifts it receives from ‘well-wishers’ and donors. Such gifts have rendered the continent dependent on the West. Most often, such gifts do not just come but have strings attached, writes WONDER GUCHU as he looks into Nurrudin Farah’s book ‘Gifts’, the second offering in his trilogy Blood in the Sun
Published in Britain in 1993, ‘Gifts’ reads like nurse Duniya’s simple story about her daily struggle to make ends meet.
As a young girl in the village, Duniya’s father gives her over to a blind rich man, Zubair, who gives her twins but soon becomes a widow and moves into Mogadishu.
There she meets and marries an alcoholic journalist who also comes from a rich family. It was a short-lived union but one that also brings about a child.
Then she meets Bosaaso, a wealthy American-educated economist and they fall in love but again Duniya is not one to depend on a man. She casts away her head scarf and teaches herself how to drive and swim.
She takes her children aside and forbids them from receiving gifts from their fathers’ families because she is aware that ‘no giving innocent’.
Her children come up with the term ‘corpse food’ referring to gifts from their fathers’ families.
It is this term ‘corpse food’ which rings true about the state of Somalia that has been reduced to a corpse, as a result of the civil war. In a way, Duniya’s children seem to chillingly refer to Somalia as dependent on various donors.
Duniya’s life mirrors collusion between donors, local chiefs and multi-nationals to loot the ‘corpse’ Somalia in form of pay-back for loans.
Farah, who spent some time living in the Gambia in the early 70s, says he learnt about the “debilitating and dehumanising impact of food aid” then.
Apart from benefiting from pay-backs, those who give to Africa also help boost their industries back home. In terms of grain, the farmer in the USA or Europe gets a boost because their products are bought.
For the recipient country, such aid can only suppress the effort by local farmers to provide for their nation and earn a living for themselves.
“A gift, which can also be interpreted as aid, is in a sense a type of poison,” says Farah in one interview. “It destroys the receiver.It is the same story in Somalia.
What’s worse,” he says, “much of the aid in Somalia is controlled by a ‘mafia’ that has little contact with the people who are supposed to be its beneficiaries.”
There has always to be some strings attached to the gifts and in the case of the British in Somalia, their interest is the untapped oil reserves while Kenya benefits from the civil war by hosting aid agencies operating in the civil war-torn country.
In the novel, Farah notes: “We give hoping to receive something corresponding to what we’ve offered… We give (to) express our affection and compassion towards the recipients… We give as members of a group, to confirm our loyalty to it… We give to meet the demand of a contract… We give and may consider this act as part of our penance… We give in order to feel superior to those whose receiving hands are placed below ours… We give to corrupt… We give to dominate…”
As a young girl in the village, Duniya’s father gives her over to a blind rich man, Zubair, who gives her twins but soon becomes a widow and moves into Mogadishu.
There she meets and marries an alcoholic journalist who also comes from a rich family. It was a short-lived union but one that also brings about a child.
Then she meets Bosaaso, a wealthy American-educated economist and they fall in love but again Duniya is not one to depend on a man. She casts away her head scarf and teaches herself how to drive and swim.
She takes her children aside and forbids them from receiving gifts from their fathers’ families because she is aware that ‘no giving innocent’.
Her children come up with the term ‘corpse food’ referring to gifts from their fathers’ families.
It is this term ‘corpse food’ which rings true about the state of Somalia that has been reduced to a corpse, as a result of the civil war. In a way, Duniya’s children seem to chillingly refer to Somalia as dependent on various donors.
Duniya’s life mirrors collusion between donors, local chiefs and multi-nationals to loot the ‘corpse’ Somalia in form of pay-back for loans.
Farah, who spent some time living in the Gambia in the early 70s, says he learnt about the “debilitating and dehumanising impact of food aid” then.
Apart from benefiting from pay-backs, those who give to Africa also help boost their industries back home. In terms of grain, the farmer in the USA or Europe gets a boost because their products are bought.
For the recipient country, such aid can only suppress the effort by local farmers to provide for their nation and earn a living for themselves.
“A gift, which can also be interpreted as aid, is in a sense a type of poison,” says Farah in one interview. “It destroys the receiver.It is the same story in Somalia.
What’s worse,” he says, “much of the aid in Somalia is controlled by a ‘mafia’ that has little contact with the people who are supposed to be its beneficiaries.”
There has always to be some strings attached to the gifts and in the case of the British in Somalia, their interest is the untapped oil reserves while Kenya benefits from the civil war by hosting aid agencies operating in the civil war-torn country.
In the novel, Farah notes: “We give hoping to receive something corresponding to what we’ve offered… We give (to) express our affection and compassion towards the recipients… We give as members of a group, to confirm our loyalty to it… We give to meet the demand of a contract… We give and may consider this act as part of our penance… We give in order to feel superior to those whose receiving hands are placed below ours… We give to corrupt… We give to dominate…”
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