Lizard

My lizard is alive!! Until yester day I had not seen her for several weeks. But I was packing things away in the kitchen last night and there she was, sat on the wall behind a chopping board. She stared at me accusingly for a couple of moments and then scampered away. She clung briefly to the underside of a shelf, and then squeezed into a gap at the top of the window. I am pleased to see her. I have missed her company but more than that I am glad to have a lizard in the kitchen to eat insects. There are too many mosquitoes and a few cockroach in my house, and the lizard is helpful to control these uninvited populations.

On a stretch of the highway near my house, a number of people sell what I believe to be second-hand goods from Europe. I presume that those who have kindly donated these things innocently believe that their cast-offs are going to a good cause (and indeed they are, but not as direct gifts). The reality is that there are not many free handouts here; if something has value then someone will find a way of making money from it. The same is true of donated rice from Japan and Taiwan; much of the rice to be found in the market come from sacks printed with “Food Aid – Not to be Sold”.

So there is a ‘jumble sale’ of second hand goods along the highway; clothes, toys, saucepans, glassware and crockery, and bits of computers. It is amazing how out-of-place some of this stuff appears to be. Not many people use saucepans; most people cook on a fire so anything with a plastic handle is useless. Crockery and cutlery are rarely used too; most of my neighbours eat with their hands from the communal bowl. Few people here have much use for wine glasses, hair straighteners, toasters or video tapes. Some of the clothing is in good condition. But fabric and clothes are a good price here anyway, and tailoring is one industry that thrives.

Then there are bits of computers – there are charities (eg. ComputerAid) dedicated to taking discarded computers to places like this. It is kind of people to bother. I know that people in schools and offices want to pass on their out-of-date machines to someone, and not simply throw them out. And some are put to good use. There are a scattering of internet cafes around that use PCs donated in this way. But many end up in landfill. They are old and not quite working. Some could be coaxed into life by an experienced technician but very few people here have that kind of expertise. It might be more appropriate to lend support to the $100 laptop scheme (see: Wikipedia and BBC News article).

We have received a whole bunch of new computers at work recently. My colleagues are very pleased, and are learning how to play FreeCell. However, in the absence of coherent strategy and training the provision of advanced ICT sadly causes as many problems as it solves in a place like this. I suspect that the main beneficiaries of such aid packages are the computer manufacturers and traders, and that the gain for Africa is limited. This country would be better served by poverty-reduction measures, not fancy toys that will soon break.