The Idealist

by Nina Munk

  By nature, however, Sachs is an optimist. If the G8 wouldn’t deliver on its promises, he’d look elsewhere; to China, for example. Suddenly, from Angola to Zambia, the Chinese were all over sub-Saharan Africa. They were “cutting deals at a dizzying pace,” Richard Behar wrote in a cover story for Fast Company, “securing supplies of oil, copper, timber, natural gas, zinc, cobalt, iron, you name it.”

  Of course, China’s interest in Africa was exploitative. The Chinese were ruthless: they backed Africa’s most corrupt strongmen, disregarded human rights, and hoarded African resources. Then again, maybe development was development, no matter the moral and ethical cost. The Chinese weren’t only extracting Africa’s raw materials; they were also building bridges, dams, pipelines, hospitals, football stadiums, and telephone networks. Trade between China and Africa was now approaching $100 billion a year. China was lending more money to Africa than even the World Bank, it was said.

  The Chinese approach to development seemed to work in China—hundreds of millions of Chinese had been lifted out of poverty—so why couldn’t it work in Africa? Sachs was willing to give China the benefit of the doubt. “They’re not jaundiced, fatigued, or in a mind-set of endless treadmills, but they actually want to do something,” he told me. “So when China says that they’ll do ten billion dollars in cheap credit to Africa over three years, I’m ready to bet they’ll do ten billion over three years. When the G8 says they’re going to do twenty billion dollars over three years, I don’t know whether that’s going to be one billion, two billion, five billion, eight billion, twelve billion, or even by some chance twenty billion.”

  After all, when it came to making the investments needed to end extreme poverty, what difference did it really make where the money came from? “The amounts required are very small,” Sachs continued. “So if it ends up coming through companies, if it ends up coming through China, if it ends up coming through individual contributions, if it ends up coming through social movements, if it ends up coming through consumer activism, if it ends up coming through Millennium Villages’ branded products, if it ends up coming through official development assistance—that is not really the main point. The main point is that it happens.”

  As for his own immediate needs, in the best case Sachs hoped to raise $100 million for phase two of his project. He was willing to make do with less—$50 million or $60 million would be acceptable. So far, however, including $2 million that the fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger had just agreed to donate to Ruhiira, he’d received commitments for approximately $10 million from various foundations and individuals. Perhaps China would help out. Maybe Soros would throw in more money. The Islamic Development Bank was a possible donor. Sachs was working every angle. In the meantime, however, the staff in all the Millennium villages was nervous: What if Sachs couldn’t find more money?

  In Dertu, there was another problem: Ahmed had overrun his budget. To pay Dertu’s mounting bills, he’d requested one advance after another from New York, with the result that his remaining balance was precariously low. In the village, rumors were circulating that Ahmed had been overcharged by unscrupulous contractors. He was naïve or too trusting, some people said. He’d spent 2 million Ksh for a new fence that should have cost just 400,000 Ksh, someone claimed. Others reported that hundreds of thousands of shillings had vanished without a trace. Receipts could not be found. Microfinance loans had not been repaid. Supplies purchased by the project were never delivered. There was talk of questionable bookkeeping—something about low-level staff members being ordered to acknowledge receipt of petty cash they’d never received.

  Ahmed dismissed these accusations as “misinformation and politics.” He was deeply hurt by the rumors. Why would the community try to undermine him? Why would people speak ill of him? It made no sense. Look at how much he had done for Dertu! For the past four years, he had devoted his life to this village; he’d given everything he could to the Millennium project. With a resigned shrug, he concluded that envy must be fueling the rumors. “Some people are not happy that Ahmed is close to Jeff Sachs,” he said, when I reached him by phone. “Because of Ahmed’s sincerity, because of Ahmed’s hard work, some people are resentful.”

  He resolved not to be dragged down by pettiness. “We don’t succumb to those nonsenses,” he said. “We stay above that.” He was on his way to Nairobi to deliver a lecture and was busy preparing for an upcoming meeting in Addis Ababa. So much was happening. Had I seen the new brochure he’d made about Dertu? Did I know about the French ambassador’s visit to Dertu? A British filmmaker was coming to Dertu to make a documentary about the African drylands. His job was no longer just about Dertu; it was far bigger than that.

  Ahmed had taken to heart the Great Professor’s goal of expanding the Millennium Villages Project all across Africa. “Jeff Sachs is a great man,” he said, solemnly. “Because of him, I am dreaming of having a string of eighteen Millennium villages through North Eastern Kenya,” he added, echoing Sachs’s vision of transforming all of North Eastern Province into one huge Millennium district. “If we succeed, the impact can radiate through other parts of Kenya, across the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, across the whole Sahel. Imagine the contribution to the whole region!”

  With Ahmed gone for months at a time, his deputy, Idris, now controlled the flow of information and resources in Dertu. He took easily to his new position of authority. As a member of the same Aulihan subclan as the majority of Dertu’s inhabitants, he claimed that he was better able to control the villagers than Ahmed, who belonged to a different subclan. Subtly, he let the rest of the Millennium staff know that as an Aulihan, he alone had the community’s trust.

  One morning during Ramadan, reclining on a prayer mat in the Millennium project’s tented compound, his head propped on a pillow, Idris acknowledged one visitor after another, supplicants begging for his favor and goodwill. Wearing a loose-fitting djellaba and a white kufi, he nodded, calling on the first of his visitors to speak. Two members of the Subcommittee of Hay Distributors stepped forward.

  Ahmed had managed to convince the people of Dertu to cut the long grass after all; now that the benefits of hay were understood, however, there wasn’t enough of it to last through the long dry season. The Subcommittee of Hay Distributors needed to know: Would only the poorest households receive the hay, or should smaller amounts be given out equally to all households? Quickly, Idris settled the matter.

  An old man with a creased face, his beard dyed orange with henna in the style of Somali elders, spoke next. He demanded a job as night watchman for the health clinic. While the old man was speaking, Idris cleaned his fingernails with the blunt end of a matchstick. The old man was begging Idris to take pity on him. Unmoved, Idris shook his head: the job was already taken. Now the chairman of the Millennium Villages Committee stepped forward. The community had accused him of stealing money—10,000 Ksh were missing from the community’s bank account, and he was being blamed. He wanted Idris to come to his defense.

  Someone else wanted help paying his son’s school fees. Someone else wanted Idris to send the project’s pickup truck to find his lost camel. Another man pleaded to have water trucked to Bahuri, a settlement just south of Dertu, where the one reservoir of rainwater had been dry for the past twenty-nine days. “You have pack animals,” replied Idris. “Why do you not go and fetch water with these pack animals?” A herder whose camel had been attacked by a lion needed help from a veterinary health care worker.

  Still more people approached Idris. There had been a dispute between a shopkeeper and a Kenyan soldier, someone explained, and the soldier was threatening to arrest the shopkeeper. To sort things out, Idris was needed immediately in the village center. “I am sorry,” he sighed from his mat. “I cannot go. I am too tired and thirsty.”

  It was just past noon, with the temperature hovering around one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. There would be nothing to eat or drink until sunset, after the fourth prayer of the day. Idris stood up, dusted off his djellaba
, and with a wave of his hand, ordered everyone to leave him. He needed to rest. “Come back later,” he commanded, “after Iftar.”

  While Idris was asleep, a man approached Fatuma Shide, the Millennium project’s health coordinator for Dertu, imploring her to send the project’s truck to fetch his sick wife. Fatuma refused. The man raised his voice. The vehicle is just sitting there, unused, he insisted. Fatuma pointed to a donkey cart. “Use that,” she said. The man started to shout, Was Fatuma aware of his cousin’s status? He was a member of the Millennium Villages Committee! Fatuma stood her ground, and the man stormed off. “You are misusing the project,” Fatuma yelled after him. “We are not here to change your lifestyle! That vehicle will be gone the moment we leave!”

  Walking away from the Millennium compound, Fatuma and I headed toward the center of town. “These men are idle,” she said bitterly. “And the Millennium project, we are making it worse—we are spoon-feeding them. They were using the donkey carts, but now that we have a vehicle they demand we use it to transport them. We must be strong. We are supposed to be the change agents.”

  Ever since the launch of the Millennium project, Fatuma had been empathetic and patient with the people of Dertu. She’d visited them in their aqals, listened to their concerns, and occasionally brought them small gifts from Garissa. She’d made many close friends. Now, disenchanted with the project, she talked openly about finding another job.

  Idris had positioned himself as the village’s “rainmaker,” she complained; she’d been excluded from all decision making. She was sure that her higher-ups in Nairobi and New York did not know about the problems in Dertu. Ahmed was nowhere to be found these days. Jeffrey Sachs had visited Dertu twice, each time for no longer than two or three hours. His deputy, John McArthur, had not yet made it as far as Dertu.

  Fatuma passed a group of men loafing under an acacia tree in the village center. “You see,” she cried, pointing to the men. “I ask them, ‘What are you doing?’ They tell me, ‘Fatuma, we are planning.’ Planning, they say! But they are doing nothing, only rumor mongering.” While the men stood idly under a shade tree, their wives gathered wood, fetched water, milked camels, cooked, swept, cared for children, and tended the sick. “At the age of thirty-five,” Fatuma went on, “the women they look the age of sixty.”

  Gathering the bottom of her long jibab, Fatuma marched across the hot sand to the health clinic. “Look here,” she said, arriving at the half-built maternity ward where three Bantu Kenyans, members of the Kamba tribe, were laying floor tiles. “Look at this!” The men had been recruited from another province to do the kind of manual labor that Dertu’s Somalis wouldn’t or couldn’t perform for one reason or another. The Millennium project was paying the laborers 500 Ksh, about $6.50, a day. Why would anyone import labor to Dertu? “Because Somali men are lazy!” pronounced Fatuma.

  Idris had awakened from his nap. Adjusting the pillow under his head, he swatted some flies circling overhead. The sun came through the straw tent, and everything was streaked with light. “Somali men are not lazy,” he protested. “We are very proud people. We are descendents of Abraham, and if you descend from Abraham, you don’t do manual labor. We don’t cook. We don’t make tea. We don’t clean or sweep. We don’t do construction or garbage collection. Our only business is animal herding.”

  Perhaps I was witnessing the “formidable pride of the Somali nomad,” as described by the British scholar Ioan Lewis in his classic study of 1961, A Pastoral Democracy. Lewis wrote about the Somali nomad’s “extraordinary sense of superiority” and “his firm conviction that he is sole master of his actions and subject to no authority except that of God.”

  Idris went on: “Once I met a man who was Irish—he didn’t even know his great-grandfather! We look at you Europeans, and we can’t imagine how you do not know who your great-grandfather is. Abraham is eighty-five generations removed from me—I can count every one of my fathers up to Abraham. Every good Somali can count his ancestors back to Abraham.”

  Every Somali child is taught to recite not only the Koran but also the names of every one of his ancestors. A well-trained memory is part of the culture’s ancient oral tradition. Somalis who can demonstrate “lineal purity,” direct descent from Abraham, are noblemen; the rest are commoners or infidels, though not all commoners are equal. To a Somali, the lowest commoners are Bantu Africans. Brought to Somalia two centuries ago by Arab slave traders, the Bantu are still marginalized in the Horn of Africa. They are known as jareer, an ethnic slur whose etymology is the Somali word for “hard,” as in the “hard” hair of blacks (as opposed to the softer, finer hair of ethnic Somalis and Arabs). The jareer were brought in to do manual labor in Dertu, to lay the floor tiles at the health clinic for 500 Ksh a day, while the local Somali men stood around the acacia tree in the village, chewing khat.

  Sundown finally arrived, and with it Iftar. In a flash, the sun dropped off the horizon without a trace. The people of Dertu broke their fast. Idris drank a jug of water and ate handfuls of dates. Then, facing Mecca, he knelt down on a mat to pray. When he was finished, he settled back on his pillow, accepted the plate of ugali and boiled goat that was brought to him, and began receiving visitors.

  A little after ten p.m., two men came rushing toward the Millennium compound and past the night watchman. Help was urgently needed, they informed Idris. An old man somewhere in the bush, about ten miles away, was convulsing and vomiting blood. He had to be brought to the health clinic right away.

  “It will have to wait until tomorrow,” Idris replied. “There is no light in the sky, and he is far in the bush. If the vehicle’s tire is punctured, what will we do?”

  “It is an emergency,” one of the men insisted.

  Idris shook his head. “All day we were here—why didn’t you come earlier to make this request?”

  Voices were raised. Back and forth in Somali. The old man had tuberculosis, it was explained. “He will die!” shouted the second man.

  Idris didn’t move. He was snacking on fried kac kac now. “Enough!” he said, dismissing the elders. “I can do nothing tonight. We will collect him early in the morning.”

  Chapter 20

  A Version of Progress

  In May 2009 the government of Kenya promoted Dertu from a “location” to a “division,” an administrative region one step down from a district. According to a posting on the Millennium Villages blog, Dertu’s new administrative status was “marked with jovial celebrations”; it was a testament to the project’s success:

  When the project started in 2006, there were less than ten houses with iron sheets yet today there are well over 200 houses. The once poorly equipped clinic … is today the most vibrant in the region, treating and immunizing five times as many cases per month as before the project started. In terms of water, Dertu’s borehole is the most reliable water source within the region and Dertu Primary school is today housing almost three times more pupils than in 2006.… Based on the above and many more development advantages that the Millennium Villages project and partners brought, Dertu clinched the top position and was consequently selected as the newest division within Lagdera District.

  Indeed, there were signs of progress in Dertu—more congestion, for one thing. Nomadic pastoralists, immigrants from other parts of North Eastern Province, squatters, and refugees from the war in Somalia continued to settle in Dertu with their families, attracted by the village’s relative wealth. In an unending “sea of poverty,” every Millennium village represents an island of prosperity.

  In the town center, men were dragging wooden carts loaded high with branches; a Bantu Kenyan had set up a shoeshine stand; traveling salesmen hawked bedsheets, Bic pens, machetes, flip-flops, and bags of cornmeal and yellow split peas diverted from the World Food Program. “From the American People: Not to be Sold or Exchanged,” read a warning printed on the bags.

  Coca-Cola was now available in Dertu. A small pharmacy (“Al-Aqsa Drug-Store”) and a hardware store had opened.
There was even a “lodge,” a dormitory of sorts with six beds, each available for between fifty cents and four dollars a night (depending, it seems, on whether you were a local or a mzungu). For breakfast, guests of the lodge were offered freshly fried mandazi, a kind of East African doughnut. Whereas it had once been difficult to find anything to eat in Dertu, there were now three restaurants in town.

  The grandest restaurant was an open-air hut with a tin roof and cracked plastic lawn chairs. It belonged to the village chief of Dertu, Jelle Dolal Bulle, whose wife and seven daughters served a tasty meal of boiled goat with rice, French-fried potatoes, and a tomato and red onion salad. Jelle’s competitive advantage was having the only refrigerator in the town. He kept it on display in the middle of the restaurant, where it was powered by a very big, very noisy generator. At the same time, he had a side business recharging cell phones. Outside his restaurant a shortwave radio was playing American pop classics: Kool & the Gang, Peter Frampton, the Backstreet Boys.

  For all that, Dertu still had no running water or electricity or paved roads. It had no industries or long-term jobs or anything that appeared likely to last once the Millennium project folded its tents and left town. It was startling to see how quickly Dertu’s wide-open, pastoral landscape had been turned into something resembling a shantytown. Most people lived in squalor, their aqals jammed together, patched with black or green polyurethane bags, and covered in cardboard, burlap bags, and plastic tarps. Slow streams of slops made their way along the narrow footpaths between the aqals.