The Road to Hell Read Online Free

die.” He drew a third, larger circle around the other two. “Goats and sheep can go several days without water, but as soon as the food is consumed for a two-day radius from the water, the goats and sheep will die.” He drew a fourth large circle around the other three. “And then there’s the camels. The camels can go days without drinking water, but soon the walk will be too great for them. And when the camels die, the people die.”
    This was not a hypothetical scenario, Clarke explained. It had happened, and was still happening. Aid organizations were coming in and giving water to nomads, the gift of life, and it was killing them.
    Then he asked me if I’d seen the windmill on the road to Moyale. I had. In northern Kenya just below the border with Ethiopia, beside a road, was a windmill tower crumpled like an aluminum can. The windmill apparatus lay on the ground. Clarke told me that some well-intentioned missionaries had ordered a top-of-the-line windmill apparatus from the United States and had hauled it to northern Kenya, where they proceeded to build the tower from local materials, held together with Kenyan-made bolts. Attracted by the water, a community gathered and prospered. After some time, the heavy-duty American apparatus began to weigh upon the flimsy Kenyan structure. The bolts sheared and the tower crumbled in the wind. The community disintegrated, and Clarke had heard that some members had died before they were able to find a place to relocate.
    â€œYou can put a water system in a community,” he warned me, “but then you’ll have to be there all the time as a policeman. You’ll have to make rules: People can drink from the wells but animals can’t. You won’t really be able to explain to the people why their cattle can’t drink from the water. For them, their herds are everything. A man’s wealth and status is dependent on the size of his herd. So he won’t understand why you’re standing between his cattle and the water. Is that really what you want to do? The water will make you responsible for the community. And that’s not why you came here.”
    Clarke had successfully soured my plans, but more important, he taught me to ask questions about so-called development projects. I still could have gone and drilled wells across the countryside. No one would have stopped me. I could even have gotten substantial grant money to do it. There was no one watchdogging the development business. There was no central authority curbing the ambitions of young people like myself. With my English degree and suburban upbringing and white skin, I could walkinto an African village and throw money and bags of food around. I could do anything I pleased. I had, admittedly, enjoyed the feeling of power. Suddenly it scared me.
    If my project created a disaster, no one outside of the village would ever hold me accountable. The missionaries who erected that windmill near Moyale, and other aid workers who bring destruction to communities, are probably still running around doing their “development” work in remote villages from where news of their failures will never emerge.
    Kenya was a wonderful place to work and it attracted thousands of aid workers. The place was crawling with them. Aid organizations competed with each other for grant money and projects. Kenya’s politicians loved it. They could give aid projects as gifts to their supporters. They weren’t about to start asking tough questions or demanding long-term environmental impact statements. No one questioned the idea of aid. It was as if the good intentions alone were sufficient to redeem even the most horrific of aid-generated disasters.
    T his book is about aid and charity—aid and charity as an industry, as religion, as a self-serving system that sacrifices its own practitioners and intended beneficiaries in order that it may survive and grow. Much of this book is centered in