Insight, Views and Advice from an Africanist

 

 A comment on Born in Kansas but made in Africa by Mark Wentling. Ebook off Amazon.

     Wentling had a long and storied career in Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Peace Corps staffer, USAID employee and contractor for various NGOs.  He has visited all of Africa’s 54 nations. (I’m jealous. I only have 46.)  Mark has written about thirteen books describing his experiences. Perhaps this is his last one. He goes back over well plowed territory to recount and relate pithy bits of conversations, mostly with Africans. These recollections are full of opinions, both theirs and Wentling’s, which collectively reveal a realistic cynicism about Africa – about culture, about the role of experts, about American development efforts – guided and misguided - about whites in a black land, and foremost about how interlocutors see themselves in their societies.

    If there are themes in this collection they are: home grown corruption complicates everything, development projects have a short life span, western ideas for agricultural progress are flawed.  Wentling harps on the last point. Africa’s food production has declined due to urban migration, poor soil quality, uncertain land rights, insufficient inputs, market issues, and limited irrigation.  Efforts to mitigate these constraints have not been very effective.

    The book is somewhat difficult to follow. Ostensibly organized along chronological lines by decades, nonetheless it jumps around forward and backward in time and across regions. You can be reading an anecdote from Niger in the 1970s and then be transported to Mozambique in the 90s.  Fortunately, there is no plot, just the stream of anecdotes and observations. 

    All told, I found the book to be interesting and truthful.  Wentling admits that the Africa he first knew is gone. He describes the past and his experiences well, but the continent is changing as are attitudes, policies and possibilities.  Increasingly decisions of what Africa is to become rest with its peoples.