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Nothing Went Wrong in Africa
The future Mrs. Bastiat pounding millet thinking to herself, “Well, at least this beats living in Toledo, Ohio…”
She served for two years as a Health Volunteer in the Peace Corps in Solo – a village of a few thousand people about 75 miles south of Bamako, and about 700 miles southwest of Mali’s most famous city, Timbuktu. Her village was remote – no utilities, very isolated, and most of the locals had never seen a white person before. My 6’1” gorgeous brunette girlfriend made quite an impression over there. She quickly became a celebrity.
I went to visit during her time there. The chief of her village adopted me as his son, and named me Moussa Doumbia. Doumbia is a common surname there, and Moussa is the Muslim version of Moses. I got to eat in the chief’s hut with the elders of the village – a great honor that even my celebrity girlfriend never got – men only. Mali is not quite as enlightened as America.
Anyway, I learned a lot there. Or at least, I observed a lot. I’m not sure if I learned anything. I left Mali more confused than I arrived. James Salerno’s recent outstanding post got me thinking about it again.
I had traveled some before that. I had lived in Sweden briefly with a former girlfriend right after high school (she was from a small town in northern Sweden), and we kicked around Scandinavia a bit. But American culture is based on European and Christian culture, so the differences were small. Mali felt truly foreign to me. I loved it. Although I couldn’t imagine living there long-term.
Dr. Bastiat with the slowest chicken in southern Mali.
When I first arrived in my girlfriend’s village, the chief had a party for his honored guest – the first white man to visit there in anyone’s memory. He gave me a gift – a chicken, so I could feast on my first night there.
He told the ever-present gang of adolescent boys to go catch a chicken. They chased the chickens around in the 115F heat for maybe half an hour, until one of the chickens basically fell over from heat exhaustion. They gave the chicken to the chief. When he presented me with my nearly dead chicken, I thanked him graciously.
Then I rustled through a pile of stuff next to his hut. I found a few feet of wire. I bent a kink in the end, waited for a chicken to wander by, and casually hooked its foot with the wire, picked it up, and handed the chicken to the boy who had caught my chicken. He was astounded.
I was astounded, too. These people have been chasing chickens for thousands of years. And it never occurred to them to make it easier by using a simple tool.
There are easier ways to do everything in this picture.
James mentioned in his article that the European colonists were amazed to find African tribes who had not adopted use of the wheel yet. The first Europeans to explore the Americas were similarly surprised at the primitive, yet ancient, cultures they discovered. I had that feeling over and over during my stay.
Much of it was not technology, like the wheel or my chicken-catcher. Much of it was simply attention to detail.
I was walking around the village, and couldn’t put my finger on what seemed vaguely unsettled. Then I realized that there was not a square corner, or a plumb wall, or a flat surface, anywhere. Nowhere. Granted, it was mud brick huts. But why can’t the walls be true? Even in the cities, the concrete block buildings looked like they were built by Dr. Seuss.
Me with a friend in Solo. Very impressive guy. Ambitious, extremely smart, and hard-working. And he has no chance to get ahead. No chance at all.
Give me a rock and a string, and I could build anything. I could use that as a plumb bob to get vertical. I could make a 3-4-5 triangle out of something, so now I have a square. I could figure other angles from there, and build something that at least was plumb, square, and level, for Pete’s sake. And I’m not a carpenter – this is basic stuff.
At one time, one of the greatest universities in the world was in Timbuktu. And now, they can’t build a mud brick hut. Well, they can, but it looks sloppy. Why?
Maybe it doesn’t matter, right? The mud brick huts don’t have to be perfect to be usable. But why can’t they be straight and true? It doesn’t take any more work to do so. Why not?
I just didn’t understand.
The future Mrs. Bastiat dancing with a friend – she always danced with this old woman on the way to the well. The Malians are wonderful people.
Since she left Mali in the early ’90s, some Christian organizations have built more concrete block buildings in town, which look like they were dropped there by aliens. How does a concrete block building look like advanced technology?
Some of Africa’s problems are certainly ideological. Marxism has been as damaging to Africa as it has been everywhere else it has been tried.
But there is something else, too.
During my stay, I fixed everything in her village. Every bicycle, every moped, every roof, every door, everything. The village people were astounded. And I’m reasonably handy, but geez – I have no specific training in any of that. It was broken, so I fixed it. And everything was broken. Why was everything broken? Why didn’t someone else fix it before I arrived?
Once again, there are easier ways to do everything in this picture.
It’s obvious that race is not a factor here. Africa was not unique in its lack of technological development – that was the state of most of mankind until very recently (including large sections of Europe). European explorers found primitive cultures not just in Africa, but also in South America, North America, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and so on. Again, Africa was not unique in its lack of technological development.
In fact, rather than wondering what delayed the development of Africa and nearly everywhere else, it might be a more interesting question to wonder what accelerated the development of the Christian cultures of Europe.
Africa was not an outlier – Europe was. I wonder why?
It’s also interesting to wonder why we’re not allowed to wonder about that. I suspect that Christianity may play a role in our efforts to ignore the elephant in the room.
Jesus Christ was a radical, who was one of the first to build power not through connections to the rich and powerful, but rather by connecting to the downtrodden and powerless. The Romans feared him because of his success with this novel approach. And their fear was well-founded. Machiavelli was fascinated by what he viewed as the political genius of Jesus Christ. How did he accomplish so much by hanging out with a bunch of peasants?
But my point is that the Christian tendency to root for the underdog can sometimes lead to disdain for the successful. Which leads us to ignore the success of our own Christian cultures – even resent it. I think.
Transportation is extremely difficult in Mali. You can’t see the goats in crates on the roof, peeing on the people in the back of the pickup truck. Fun times! Still better than Toledo, though…
Maybe I’m off base there. But for some reason, we spend our time trying to rationalize what went so wrong everywhere else in the world, rather than trying to figure out what went so incredibly well in our own backyard. Which is understandable, I suppose.
But from my perspective, nothing went wrong in Africa. Or South America. Or Australia. Or anywhere else.
Something went right in the Christian cultures of Europe. I’m not sure what that was.
But I think that exception of human flourishing is a more interesting topic than the general rule of widespread cultural stasis present in the rest of the world.
Published in General
Relevant book: The WEIRDest people in the world.
WEIRD = Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.
I wonder what role travel and exploration played. Surely, not all technological advances came from one place, but as we are exposed to more cultures we could take what was learned by one and build off that. But then, why the lack of curiosity? If they aren’t curious enough to even try and fix things, would they wonder what is outside of their homeland? Is there something about the tribal culture that makes them not want to branch out? As you mention Christianity, the Bible does command believers to take the word to the ends of the earth, but I don’t know if that really explains it.
I don’t have an answer but I think it is safe to say that while people are all created equal, some cultures are better than others.
Don’t let Maxwell Q. Klinger see that.
Nice post Doc. And I tend to agree with the gist of your argument. But I’d suggest whatever it is that set some slices of humanity on a different course goes quite a way back before Christianity.
You may be right. I honestly don’t understand.
I used to have a tape recording of a missionary to a Pacific island. I forget where exactly. His assignment was to get to know the language and translate the Bible into it. He was annoyed by the constant interruptions of the people who came to him asking him to “fix their stuff”while he was trying to work on his translation. When it came time to report in person to the missionary society, he thought that he would be criticized for wasting so much time fixing things. It turned out that he had made more progress in translation than any of the other missionaries that year.
I’m think perhaps Ice Ages put a premium on doing things differently/trying something new. In parts of the world that weren’t frozen you did things the way they had always been done. It worked reliably. Maybe not perfect, but it worked. Most innovations then, like most small businesses today, failed. Best to stick with the way its always been done.
But in areas with suddenly freezing temps doing things the way they had always been done was a recipe for death. You needed to come up with new ways of doing things. Sure, most of those innovations probably failed, but the end result was the same as doing the same old same old. Successful innovation, though, meant survival.
Just spitballing.
As for what went right, I love the work of Rodney Stark, especially
The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success.
Well, I’ve been to Toledo (though not to Mali), and I don’t think the future Mrs. Bastiat was wrong.
It’s likely not race, per se, at least not on the large scale, and when you get down to fine scales, it can merge into ethnicity. Yet there is something genetic. This is why advanced thinking does not catch on like wildfire once it has been introduced.
I am working on (that is, I pretend to think about typing something about) the idea that the northwestern Europe phenomenon had its greatest success at lateral transfers when accompanied by a genetic bottleneck — small or compressed populations.
No external culture can beat the figure arrived at by multiplying the population affected by the duration by the extent of British colonial influence when applied to India. Yet India is hot China without too many commies. India is rich and diverse, you say? So is China. You know who leapt ahead? Hong Kong. Singapore. Who did not? Rhodesia. India (for the most part). Meanwhile, the rest of the Anglosphere is in a different contest as the descendants of this culture — children, not cousins removed.
So that’s my argument that there is a genetic component independent of race which must be selected for in order for western style civilization to take hold.
And in order for that to happen, the allele must be present in the host population to begin with AND there must be selection pressure sufficient (that is, duration x pressure in inverse proportion to the population size), AND the selection pressure ust operate in the right direction — i.e., you do like Sahib says, or your family withers. You learn to climb the greasy pole of representation and contracts, as opposed to the greasy pole of strongmen and expropriation.
There’s a counter-argument that the British weren’t exactly tutoring the Indians in how to conquer the world, but in how to be subservient. Yet, sustained interpersonal contact does more to transfer culture than any program. When you teach an Afghan to clean a rifle, you also teach him to shift the fork.
Caribbean blacks in the US consistently outperform other varieties, even those who hail from the same places as early Caribbean stock. Racial admixture may be part of it, yes, but what if the real culprit is a bottleneck effect under the right conditions?
Obviously, Toledo is right out.
And I presume that we get to make enduring references to “Doc Bastiat’s girlfriend’s African village” from time to time.
Great stories, loved the post.
Major Houlihan had been to Toledo also, and told Klinger what she thought of it.
A friend from church spent a couple of years in the early 2000s in Nairobi, Kenya (by African standards hardly a backwater place) trying to teach (mostly unsuccessfully) basic business concepts like cost accounting, process controls, and inventory controls to people running some manufacturing businesses there. My friend was astonished not only at the lack of basic knowledge, but the lack of interest in improving their processes. He was convinced these people were smart enough; just not interested.
Thanks Doc, and great stories.
My gross oversimplification: incentive structures matter. They are the key to human flourishing.
So is that why certain European cultures did so well? What exactly led to the explosion in technology of western Europe? The Lutheran belief in decentralization? The Magna Carta? The Scottish Enlightenment?
What was it?
Our Western societies “Get ‘er done” attitudes were way ahead of some other cultures. Right up until quite recently, when the new rule of the all powerful bureaucracies began to flourish at the expense of everything else.
We can laugh at how pathetically wobbly thatch huts are in Africa. But at least when a family needs the hut, just a few days after they decide to get it built, they have their new residence
Right now it takes a minimum of three years to get housing built in California. And I don’t mean a tract home development – I mean, a single home.
John Denver’s Dad was an officer in the Air Force. For a while he was based on Columbus, Ohio. John often wandered over to Denison University’s campus, half an hour away.
Pretty girls there. Which I can attest to.
The first time he played ‘Leaving On a Jet Plane’ was sitting on the bridge by the clock at Denison. He sold the song to another group. Presumably after he got laid. It’s a great song.
But my parents graduated from Denison, as did my future wife and I. We consider John to be an honorary Denisonian. Because he was there for the same reason I was.
Very pretty girls there. Nothing wrong with that.
And yes, Toledo is horrible…
It’s a combination of things. For most of history, Britain was a backwater. A dirt poor island that the rest of the world paid no attention to. When the Romans bring Christianity north, that’s critical juncture 1.
The Black Death affected Europe differently. In Eastern Europe, the drastic drop in population caused monarchs to become paranoid and tighten autocratic rule. In Western Europe, the population change created a rehaul of the feudal system, and the development of more inclusive political systems. Think of disaster movies where some black swan event forces the weirdos and the cool kids to buddy up, because they’re the only ones left. That’s what the plague did to Britain.
In 1588, Britain defeats Spain to become the rulers of the seas. Britain never had a navy, so this defeat was a bit of a fluke. If we just go by the rules, Spain should have won and controlled the Western world. But that didn’t happen. Spain and Britain, both Christian, had very different political institutions. Spain and Britain left very different legacies in the New World.
Britain spreads Albion’s Seed across the world, and for better or worse, liberalism. And the inclusive economic and political institutions they developed over hundreds of years of happy accidents came with it.
https://denison.edu/magazine/fall-2015/139417
I spent my Freshman year at Denison, 1980/81 school year. Nice place, but it wasn’t the right fit for me.
Just did a drive-by on the campus the last week in March while taking my son out to DC over Spring break.
To borrow from “Blazing Saddles,” excuse me while I whip this out…
There is much evidence that many ancient cultures were much advanced; massive structures, amazing sculpture, vast cities, civilizations, writings and art. This evidence is scattered across the globe. And all these civilizations are now gone. Technology, that is civilization, does not guarantee success. The mud hut people, though, persevere. Perhaps the better question is, does civilization always lead to decline, replaced by mud hut people? If WW3 does come, will western civilization crumble into ruins? Will everyone become naked and afraid?
The answer to your question lies here. Christian belief and teaching have allowed civilization to persist, with its focus on charity and individual value and rights. When those basic tenets fail, I suspect that modern society will succomb like those that came before. First, totalitarianism, then, anarchy. When power is no longer worth much, you get mud huts.
Any or all of those. Maybe something about Francis Bacon and Descartes as well.
I expect @iWe could answer, and he’d be right. Something about the importance of believing that man is the Image of G-d, with ability and responsibility to build up creation.
Maybe something about the Protestant work ethic too.
Aristotle and Christ are the central figures of the West as far as I can tell. From Aristotle we get to harness the power of science. From Jesus we get individual rights.
I don’t know, but it was localized. P. J. O’Rourke wrote of a trip through the Soviet Russian hinterlands. The roads were soupy. He speculated that someone with a truck, a log-drag, and sufficient gravel could fix it right up. It wouldn’t be the Appian Way, but you wouldn’t sink up to your axles every time it rained, either.
I spent a couple weeks in Togo, about five years ago. Didn’t have time or opportunity to fix things, but did come face – to – face with the concept that “I can’t do these things for myself. I need a white man (or European, or something) to do do it for me.” I’ve decided to name it the “Bwana Complex.” But I don’t have time to describe in detail what happened. Maybe later.
I do disagree re: “us” looking at them, and wondering, “what went wrong.,” rather than looking at us, western civilization, and seeing what has gone right. You cite several things, of which much can be argued re: cause or effect as they apply to the present question. I believe it is Western Man’s willingness to experiment, to try to make things better. You can see it in many things. The violin comes to mind. Nearly every culture has some form of a stringed instrument. But the western form has the most color, versatility, ability to manipulate in dozens of ways. It can mimic the sound, to at least some extent of most other cultures’ stringed instruments. That’s just the one that comes to mind right now.
Thomas Sowell wrote a fascinating book on the reasons for the international development of nations. I think it was Wealth, Poverty and Politics, and the cultural, geographical and economic differences.
Great post.
It’s now clear why your daughter’s are all 6’4 basketball stars. Your wife!
I can understand a reluctance to go to Toledo. As you may know there was a territorial border war between Michigan and Ohio in 1835. Apparently Ohio lost because they had to keep Toledo.
Winston Churchill wrote about the effects of the inshallah culture in Islamic countries leading to a weird passivity. If Allah wanted the trains to run on time, then they would.
Americans take our optimism and belief in material progress for granted. The roof can be better, the roads paved, water and sewage properly engineered. We innovate, build and improve. Much of the world is ideologically crippled which imposes not acceptance but resignation.
Everyone will think I’m nuts–probably they do already :)–but I think the Great Motivator is love. You wanted to fix things for the people in the village because you wanted to help them. That’s love pushing you to do that.
Some societies encourage it. Others don’t. It’s the problem with communism. It ignores or squelches human love for others. It enslaves people rather than encouraging people to love each other.
Love is what elevates human beings above the animal instincts of ordinary existence. Wanting to help people pushes us to heights we never thought possible. That has been true for me.
When we love other people, we want to make their life easier.
I now turn the conversation back to the sane people here. :) :)
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