Glory: laptop/river road/USA for Africa/textese/forgotten vegetables/NGOs

Bidoun: Glory: laptop/river road/USA for Africa/textese/forgotten vegetables/NGOs (HT: David Ker)

… There is an odd and silly dance that plays itself out around the developing world, where certain goodgraced individuals and communities have learned to respond correctly to "development projects." Such people are well loved by funders, as they allow them to satisfy their reporting requirements. But the dynamic and arrogant those who are not willing to turn up for an "awareness" meeting, because they feel they have better things to doend up being ignored. The sly can become "community leaders" if they can persuade people to become dependent on them; it is they who distribute the food parcels. It is a good and caring way to acquire political power without a gun or greedtalk or anything that would undermine the idea of yourself as good and caring.

There are few useful "development models" for genuinely selfstarting people. I am sure the One Laptop per Child initiative will bring glory to its architects. The IMF will smile. Mr Negroponte will win a prize or two or ten. There will be key successes in Rwanda; in a village in Cambodia; in a small, groundbreaking initiative in Palestine, where Israeli children and Palestinian children will come together to play minesweeper. There will be many laptops in small, perfect, NGO-funded schools for AIDS orphans in Nairobi, and many earnest expatriates working in Sudan will swear by them.

And there will be many laptops in the homes of homeschooling, goattending parents in North Dakota who wear hemp (another wonderproduct for the developing world). They will fall in love with the idea of this frugal, noble laptop, available for a mere $100. Me, I would love to buy one. I would carry it with me on trips to remote Kenyan places, where I seek to find myself and live a simpler, earthier life, for two weeks a year.