On Development.

So, this is the subject of an email I just received from Oxfam:

I need totell you what I saw in West Africa.

It’s from Emily. She works for Oxfam and it’s not her job to write emails but she really wanted to write this one because she just came back from Chad and she’s finding it hard to forget what she saw out there.

-____________-

I’ve already stopped reading.

Sigh.

I mean, I’m sure the work Oxfam is doing is excellent, and that they’ve helped millions of people the world over. I just can’t help but be mad at this e-mail.

It’s difficult though. People are suffering. But I feel like the way aid and development is going at the moment is not hot. One of the articles I came across while reading about post-colonial theory wrote about how the mainstream development process was simply a replica of colonialism - the colonial subject has become the aid recipient and the colonial master has become the development practitioner… I think I agree.