A tale of two cities

Photo taken in rural Swaziland. I waited for this sunset and did not regret it :)

I am in Swaziland carrying out HIV research. I have been here for a week now. Due to confidentiality reasons i cannot reveal the names of the organisations i am working with. One is an international organisation and the other is a local organisation here in Swaziland.  I’ve been in the international organisation for a week now and today, I had to come to the local organisation because I’m also collaborating with them. Now bear in mind that what these two organisations do are very useful and do contribute a lot to antiretroviral access and treatment.  The only difference is one has tons of funds and the other doesn’t.

The international organisation as you can imagine has lovely offices.  Floor to ceiling windows, comfortable office chairs, fully fitted kitchen with two fridges filled with food and drinks. The cupboards had all types of tea and biscuits, white or brown sugar, semi skimmed, skimmed or full cream milk and all types of other goodies. Now coming from England this is what i am used to. This is how the offices in England are, except this was in Swaziland.  i felt very comfortable at the office until i saw a Swazi lady cleaning the toilet and washing the dishes people used to drink tea and eat their lunches. That was where the comfort disappeared.  I see Black women doing the cleaning in England, especially on the London Underground but there was something about this particular situation that really made my heart sink. Why was i affected so much by this? Afterall this isn’t new right?  Wrong!

This is my first time of working in the African continent. I have never worked in any African country before. I felt very uncomfortable because a fellow black person was doing the cleaning for a bunch of white expatriates.  That’s what made me feel uneasy but i had to get past it especially as i couldn’t do anything about it. People might say ‘’ at least she has some form of employment’’, but i see it differently.  Doing the cleaning in a foreign land to me is different from doing the cleaning in your own land. I can’t get past the fact that its reminiscent of slavery.  I can’t, bite me!

Then i went to work in the local organisation and the reality was different. The offices were cramped, little ventilation, the kitchen was not really nice and they had no fridge.  They had an old kettle which didn’t seem to work properly. There was an empty tin of milk in the cupboard with very little tea in a tin.  Generally, the kitchen was empty.

Immediately i thought to myself, the empty kitchen cupboard and little kitchen equipment in the local organisation together with the fully fitted kitchen, stocked up fridge and cupboard with a very lush office represented the current situation of science research.  Africans are not able to do so much not only because they may not have the expertise to do so, but also because they don’t have the funds available to them.  A Lack of funds limits Africans who have particular expertise to also engage in proper research.  There is a wide gap that needs to be filled. However, expatriates have flow of funds and are able to do about anything feasible. This of course funds their extremely comfortable lifestyles in Africa which is better than what they get in Europe/America. This is one of the reasons they never leave, they hop from country to country doing research simply because they can and have the funds to back them up. What do we have?

Sitting in this local organisation writing this piece, i feel connected with the problems here in Swaziland because i have liaised with the local public health researchers who obviously know more about their issues than any foreigner would. When i was in the international office, there was definitely a disconnection and rightfully so. Expatriates can and will not understand Africa’s issues more than we Africans. A Solution can only be achieved once the problem is well understood.  With expatriate researchers not immersing themselves properly into the system can they truly have a grasp of the real issues?  The truth is a lot don’t know what it means to live in Africa because when they live here, their reality is very different from the local reality. So i ask, when will Africans truly take over their own problems?