The Africa Dummy

In political science, when we try to explain simple things like development or war, we like to account for the fact that some regions of the world tend to experience these things just by virtue of being what they are. In a statistical regression, we call this the regional dummy: it answers questions like "ok so we see a civil war here... is that because we're in Africa?" Including this regional dummy in a statistical regression prevents any one particular region from driving the entire relationship we're analyzing. If, say, we are trying to explain economic growth and, say, Africa always tends to experience low growth while Asia always tends to experience high growth, we might want to account for those regional particularities in order to move beyond them and pin down what factors systematically explain growth across time and space. Hence the regional dummy.

The Africa dummy, by the way, is pretty much always a significant and negative factor when it comes to pleasant things like growth or peace or social harmony. Go figure.

But lately I have gotten a taste of what the Africa dummy feels like on the ground. The Africa dummy has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That stupid line they use in Blood Diamond, TIA (This Is Africa), which usually comes out just before old friends start shooting at each other or stealing from each other, is an actual mentality here. TIA appears to explain anything and everything. Forget all the other acronyms we like to use in our discipline - GDP, HDI, ELF... It's all about TIA.

I have become acquainted with two types of TIAs over the past nine months:

There's the angry, almost hostile TIA that is thrown at me by either (1) young men I ignored in Lagos, or (2) immigration and visa officials who enjoyed their temporary position of power over me a little too much. This one is supposed to scare me away, warn me that I am not in Kansas anymore and that all bets are off.

And then there's the apologist but also self-deprecating TIA, most commonly used to explain long waits for no apparent reason, ubiquitous tardiness, or differing concepts of honesty and truthfulness. This one takes cultural relativism to a whole new level.

I resent the Africa dummy. It may be the kind of rhetoric I'd expect from some Texan politicians, but it's not the kind I expect from Africans themselves. It creates and reflects a resignation that only perpetuates the lines that never move because there's only one person who can help and he's off to lunch, the meetings that never happen because people don't bother showing up, the time everybody wastes on flattery and deference in order to get anything from anybody.

But most importantly it is simply not true. It is a shell of an excuse. The immigration officials in Cotonou may be bastards who like to ignore your questions when they don't have your passport and visa ready for you after the 48 hours they said it would take, but the officials at the Niger embassy are kind, professional and efficient. Our first landlord may have been a crook who evicted us after reneging on our agreement but our second one offered us a wonderful apartment for an honest price. Some transport companies may be incompetent liers who claim the truck that is carrying your fancy solar electrification equipment is on its way out of Cotonou while it is still stuck in the Port (and then, when caught red-handed, claim that what they said did not technically constitute a lie), but others provide the service you expect for the price you agreed upon. The Africa dummy is much worse than a significant variable in a statistical regression - it's become an entire mentality, the most over-rated and exasperating excuse, the worst kind of apology.

When i went to the immigration office in Cotonou to extend my visa and the officials decided to keep my passport without reason for a few extra days, a man standing in line next to me thought he was doing me a favor by suggesting I offer them some money because "this isn't Europe after all." He then leaned toward the window and smiled at the official on the other side, the single most unpleasant individual I have ever met, saying "it's ok, I understand, I am African too." He was from Lybia.

I don't know if his method worked but I payed no more than the appropriate fee and eventually got my passport and my visa extension. If I survived the Nigerian border without paying a dash, I thought, there was no way I was going to pay my first bribe in a country where Nick Kristof thinks we should all buy real estate.

The TIA crowd is like the cool kids in high school who do bad things like smoking and cheating on tests. It's cool to know when to offer a dash, and it's cool to expect that things don't function otherwise. Instead I'm the white girl who believes what the signs advertize and calls people on their crap as they smirk back at me. It's nothing new, really. I never was a part of the cool crowd in high school after all.

A Mix CD for the Secretary-General of the Nigerian Community Union in Cotonou

Last week, if you’d asked us about difficult tasks we’ve faced this year, we might have said single-handed survey enumeration in the slums, or project coordination a million miles from anywhere without any modern communications technologies. But that would have been last week.

This week, thanks in part to the money he’s making helping CLA, Chief Olujobi bought his first CD player. Now he wants a representative mix of American music. He likes reggae and, as he put it, “sentimental stuff.”

This is more than a task; it’s a mission. With one 2-volume mix of Americana, we want to present a broad musical cross-section, correct the notion that the US is all white people, introduce the concept of the independent woman, and more generally eliminate all the “-isms” and “-phobias” in the world.

We need your help.

Disc 1

1. Talkin’ Bout A Revolution – Tracy Chapman (Nothing like a little Tracy to make you want to take to the streets and protest some flawed election.)
2. These Are The Days – 10,000 Maniacs (Here’s to hoping Olujobi will remember those days of surveying the hot and dirty Tokpa market fondly.)
3. Tiny Dancer – Elton John (America hearts Elton. So should Nigeria.)
4. Video – India.Arie (Women can be strong.)
5. Jack and Diane – John Cougar Mellencamp (Cougar? Silly Americans!)
6. Imagine – John Lennon (Ok so not American, but also probably the most American of them all.)
7. Everything is Everything – Lauryn Hill (You can be a young mother of three and a rock star in America.)
8. Daydream Believer – The Monkeys (We’re hoping we won’t have to explain the whole concept of “homecoming queen”…because we don’t get it either.)
9. Somebody More Like You – Nickel Creek (Bluegrass represent!)
10. I Got You Babe – Sonny & Cher (We’re betting he’ll know – and love – all the lyrics by next week.)
11. Cecilia – Simon & Garfunkel (Ditto.)
12. Santeria – Sublime (We are in Voodoo Land after all.)
13. Unpretty – TLC (Insert obvious message here.)
14. With or Without You – U2 (Bono hearts Africa.)
15. Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison (Women can be free spirits.)
16. Dust in the Wind – Kansas (Place-name bands have to be represented on the Americana mix.)
17. Didn’t We Almost Have It All – Whitney Houston (He wanted sentimental…)


Disc 2

1. With a Little Help From My Friends – Joe Cocker (Better friends means greater trust means more economic development and less civil war.)
2. Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen (He’s called The Boss for a reason, Chief.)
3. Angry Any More – Ani DiFranco (We had to… and it’s one of the tamer ones…or, vraiment, the only one.)
4. D’Yer Mak’er – Led Zeppelin (The obvious choice for Classic Rock meets Reggae.)
5. I Can’t Wait to Meetchu – Macy Gray (Sounds like an SMS I got the other day.)
6. (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay – Otis Redding (Classic… and it’s kinda what he does all day, sitting on a bench in Jonquet, waiting for the Mercedes to roll by to change Euros and Dollars on the marche noir.)
7. De Doo Doo, De Da Da – The Police (The song in our iTunes library that most resembles Pidgin English.)
8. You Don’t Know How it Feels – Tom Petty (We’re hoping he won’t catch that part about rolling another joint…)
9. Every Rose Has its Thorn – Poison (The monster ballad must be represented on the Americana mix.)
10. Father and Son – Cat Stevens (Olujobi never went to Jewish summer camp but we did and this, too, is part of us… even if he doesn’t know it.)
11. You Can’t Hurry Love – Diana Ross (But maybe with three or four wives you don’t HAVE to wait.)
12. I Say a Little Prayer – Aretha Franklin (He’d LOVE her.)
13. Breathe – Unknown (to us) Artist (Hey, all those songs that sound the same by young American-Idol-type girls are also Americana.)
14. For Once in my Life – Stevie Wonder (It’s better than I Just Called to Say I Love You.)
15. The Zephyr Song – RHCP (The obvious choice for Alternative/Punk meets Reggae.)
16. Least Complicated – Indigo Girls (This song has a deep message that can be applied to many situations.)
17. Fat Bottomed Girls – Queen (‘Nuf said.)

Lest you think we gave this little to no thought, we do have a short list of “instantly-rejected” selections:

Sk8er Boi – Avril Lavigne
Million Voices – Wyclef Jean
Add it Up - Violent Femmes
Bootylicious, Milkshake, Blow Your Mind, etc… – Destiny’s Child, Kelis, Eve feat. Gwen Stefani, etc…
Personal Jesus – Depeche Mode
Anything by The Cure
Anything by Fiona Apple
Anything by Sleater-Kinney
She’s Like The Wind – Patrick Swayze
Cold Beer and Remote Control – Indigo Girls

Oh yeah – we almost forgot. Say hello to Chief Olujobi.