BRIAN DEER:
TRAVELLING WHITE Page
2
I had arrived
in Ghana as VSO's guest. They were looking for
anniversary publicity. Four decades ago this summer,
The Year Between had sent its first crop of suitable
boys to this, the first modern African country to
retrieve independence from Britain. Also travelling
on our expedition, courtesy of the British aid
budget, were two of the organisation's local staffers
and one of those original pioneering youths - now
himself a headmaster - retracing the right road
"to make a video".
The
original plan had been to take a different
journalist, who was scheduled to fly to Accra, attend
a catwalk show featuring work by the organisation's
"fashion volunteers", check-out the beach
and then go home to write. But she belatedly
discovered that she would be entering a yellow fever
zone and balked at the mandatory shot. So instead
they got me, and I straightway changed the brief to
VSO's work with the poor. Hence the flight north: Fan
Airways, FA 812, from Kotoka International to Tamale.
I
suspected rural poverty would be more taxing than
fashion, and did a fast cuts job for background.
Along with interviewing VSO staff, including its
director David Green, at its south-west London
headquarters, I'd clipped, scanned and pasted a bunch
of extracts from its publications and news reports
into my notebook. As the Beech slumped and soared
above scattered straw-roofed settlements, I did what
I could to absorb the contents, so as not to waste
time spent on the ground.
The
VSO stuff suggested that it had come a long way since
Fleming and Dickson's scam. The suitable boys
requirement was progressively phased out, and by now
more than 22,000 volunteers of both genders and all
ages have travelled overseas - with nearly 2,000
presently deployed in 59 countries. They perform
various tasks, including teaching, nursing and
engineering, for locally-based employers, who pay
them. This year, VSO will nevertheless spend more
than £21m of British taxpayers' money - four fifths
of its total income - thanks to Clare Short's
Department for International Development.
"How
do we define 'volunteer'?" asks a shiny
blue-on-white text, which I may have clipped from the
annual report. "Look up the word 'volunteer' in
the dictionary. It will describe someone who freely
offers their services with no promise of
remuneration. We have our own definition."
(Surprise) "We see VSO volunteers as people who
share our values. They all see adventure, enjoy
challenge and are motivated by the prospect of living
and working in a community with a very different
outlook. Qualified in their particular field of work,
they want to share their skills by doing a real job
from day one. In return, they receive a modest
financial package and accommodation - plus the
experience of a lifetime."
This
wasn't even true. Volunteers spend up to half their
time in training, not doing the job from day
one. But when I turned to the news clips, a somewhat
darker picture emerged than even this
"help-yourself-helping-others" kind of
hype. Marking the organisation's tenth anniversary in
1968, The Observer (whose reporter may have been on a
freebie like mine) noted volunteers' motives to be
"uniformly non-idealist," and quoted one
Julie Wootton ("a slim, 23-year-old brunette
from Hampshire") stating: "Actually, my
living conditions are better here than they would be
if I worked in Britain. People acted as if I were
going to a steaming jungle. Well, I didn't expect
quite that, but I certainly didn't expect hot baths
and a houseboy."
I
thought count me in, as the missionaries
chatted about their project to train preachers in
Bolgatanga. But the press coverage also showed that
despite its popularity, the organisation has proved
endlessly controversial. In 1971, for instance, The
Times noted criticisms from a commonwealth education
conference, declining acceptance of volunteers by
former British colonies, and reported: "With
more than a little regret VSO has been forced to
phase out its school leaver programme almost
completely."
Much
of the criticism focused on nagging accusations that
VSO was more concerned with providing adventure
holidays than bona fide overseas aid. But there was
also evidence that the recipient communities resented
the "white children" who arrived. In 1972,
The Daily Telegraph announced: "India wants no
more foreign volunteers." The following year,
The Guardian reported that the British Foreign Office
had cut off funds to the organisation. And by 1981,
placements had collapsed to only half their former
heyday numbers.
Before
leaving London, I had phoned around to check on the
hindsight of former volunteers. "It was very
good for me, but not very good for them," was
the conclusion of a Sunday Times feature-writer who
taught in Algeria in 1963. A senior editor on the
Sunday Times Magazine, who taught in Nigeria in the
early 1980s, spoke in frighteningly similar terms.
"My feeling is that it was a brilliant
experience for me, but a complete waste of time for
Nigeria," she said. "People regarded me as
being like a cross between Princess Diana and
Madonna."
Back
to fashion, then. And that's not my style. I'm more a
Rudyard Kipling kind of guy. As he wrote in 1899, at
the peak of Britain's imperial responsibilities, this
Africa thing was no trivial pursuit:
- Take
up the White Man's Burden--
- Send
forth the best ye breed--
- Go,
bind your sons to exile,
- To
serve your captives' need;
- To
wait in heavy harness
- On
fluttered folk and wild--
- Your
new-caught sullen peoples,
- Half
devil and half child.
*****
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