I finally got around to reading The Lower River, by Paul Theraux, a fictional book about Malawi sent to me by my sister. The story revolves around Allis Hock, an American man, who in the aftermath of his divorce from his wife of three decades, decides to return to the beautiful country of his young, Peace Corps days: Malawi.
A story of a man allured by Malawi after decades away intrigued me, to say the least. I expected him to find a changed country, but with the same objects of love hidden beneath the surface. Instead, the story follows a man who finds himself trapped further and further within the interior of a country and culture rotted away by years of Western aid and corruption. His idealism is quickly dashed. He is begged and robbed into poverty and grows sicker and weaker by the day. The beautiful trees are cut away, and the waters flowing into the Zambezi are stagnant and polluted.
In her book, Dead Aid, Malawian-born and Harvard-educated author, Dambisa Moyo, makes the case the foreign aid has not only been unhelpful to Africa, but has largely destroyed it. Theraux's book is an unflinching, pessimistic, all-encompassing portrait of the same truth. Hock is treated by the people he comes to help as a walking ATM, shamelessly exploited by the desperate and greedy. The honorary treatment he sometimes receives is a thinly-veiled veneer for cynical and manipulative ploys to drain the very life from him. (Spoiler Alert) On the verge of being sold into slavery, he is rescued by an embassy official. The book closes with Allis leaving a trail of dust behind his escape vehicle, saved from the ravages of Africa.
As you might expect, the utterly depressing tale and finale is far from I expected and even further from my experiences in Malawi. My journeys throughout the interior have largely uncovered rural people who were genuinely kind and joyful, making me feel safer in pitch-black nights than I do at times in the States. Hospitality was not a pretense for financial exploitation. Villagers brought the firstfruits of their crops to the local churches--their symbolic way of saying that it was more important to them that the Bread of Life go forth rather than feed upon the meager bread of the land.
Did I experience some of the evils of the dependency culture? Certainly. In the cities, under the greatest Western influence, many kids grow up with "money" as the keystone of their meager English vocabulary. Some will accost you and hold their hand before you until you give them money. Others, especially the "mini-bus" drivers, will intentionally and outrageously overcharge Westerners. There is also a general expectation that all Westerners are rich, and in there is no room in that stereotype for the missionary who is serving due to the generosity of others.
All that said, there is (usually) a stark difference between the cities and their Western-crafted culture of dependency and the rural villages and their sense of pride and dignity in their work. There is (usually) a difference between those whose lives revolve around aid agencies and those who lives revolve around the Church. I don't think it's mere coincidence that the Church is hardly given mention in this book.
One of the few occasions is found near the close of the book, when Allis notes that of the many things to change in this remote, transformed village, there is no more church. Looming much larger is the tribal witch doctor with his vicious innoculations and remedies, and tribal superstitions and ceremonies that empower men with AIDS to rape female virgins to cure themselves.
This book, in a bizarre way, reaffirms my love for Malawi--at least the part of Malawi that has remained unspoiled by Western aid. It reaffirms my commitment to Joy to the World, an organization, led by a native Malawian, that offers everything--from a Bible to an innoculation--at a price (an affordable one). Freebies degrade their recipients, leaving them feeling like dependents and not equals. They degrade their providers, turning them into founts of money, not love and compassion. An implicit thesis of this book: Love and compassion recognizes equality. Material aid, apart from such qualities, creates dependency in one generation and hatred in the next.
(Spoiler Alert) As one final, stinging insult to modern African culture and the Western aid that warped it, the one person who Allis could trust and cared for him unconditionally, a precious and dignified sixteen year old girl, is brutally raped by an AIDS-infected man in her last-ditch quest to secure rescue for Allis. What an ugly and poignant analogy--an undefiled culture brutally raped and infected. Allis takes the young woman with him at the end, but the only hope that leaves the reader is one of escape from Africa, not recovery of Africa.
The hope for Africa, as well as America, is found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Life in Christ is one that does not recognize suffering and death as the greatest enemies, but sin. Ultimately, suffering and death as well as the sin at their root is conquered by Christ (1 Cor. 15). Likewise, money is not viewed as the cure for the misdiagnosed disease. If sin is the fundamental problem, then the perfect life and atoning death of Christ is the fundamental answer. Belonging to Christ imbues a sinner with dignity that cannot be bought or taken away with money.
Love is not a transaction made with money, it is the Spiritual overflow of the grateful life in Christ. The love of Christ will abound for the sinner saved by grace in life and death. And we await the day when it will spring forth from the eternal throne of Christ, from which the redeemed from every tribe and tongue will drink and be satisfied.
