The Lower River, by Paul Theroux

 If you have read Paul Theroux's 2002 Dark Star Safari, you'll know that Theroux worked at Makerere University in Uganda in the 1960's, and made a return visit to Africa forty years later, when he traveled from Cairo to Cape Town by local transport, revisiting Uganda on the way. (Before his stint at Makerere, he had gone as a Peace Corps volunteer to Malawi - but he was thrown out because of his political activities there.)
Dark Star Safari irritated me because, although I enjoyed Theroux's descriptions of the scenery, the people, and his journey, I found his attitude really annoying. He seemed to think that he alone understood Africans and Africa, and that all the people he met along the way, apart from poverty-stricken Africans, were either idiots, or misguided, or self-serving and making a buck. He wrote off every NGO worker, missionary, and settler.

But he had an agenda apparently which goes towards explaining this: he was out to show that Aid was a bad thing, all the "help"given to Africa  had failed. He makes the case that the cities and towns of Africa he visited on his journey, had badly deteriorated rather than improved in the forty years since he was there before. Especially Makerere - which was a beautiful and organised campus in the 1960's. He found it not so much so in the 2000s. Well, having recently seen photographs myself of Kampala and Makerere in the 50s and 60s, I might be inclined to agree on that point. However I still find Theroux arrogant. It would be somehow different if he would be even a little bit sympathetic to the people who have come with good intentions, sincerely trying to "help," rather than drawing them all as a hopelessly naive and/or cynical bunch. (Which OK, some missionaries and aid workers are, but, not all.)

This book, The Lower River, written in 2012, reflects Theroux's belief that aid has basically ruined Africa. It is quite a shocking story. He writes about the Malawians harshly, but puts all the blame for the way they have become on the westerners who picked them up, used them and dropped them, in his telling of it.

The story is of a retired shop-owner who, with nothing left in his American life,  returns to the remote rural village in Malawi where he spent four happy years as a Peace Corps volunteer in his twenties, building up a school, loved and accepted by the people, living the simple African life. But the village he returned to, turned out to be nothing like the one he had left before. Only a few people knew him still, but they had aged far more than him and were all but unrecognisable. But he was welcomed as an honoured guest, and apart from his disappointment that his school was a fallen-down ruin and home of snakes, he was initially happy to be back. But slowly he realises that the people have changed. Independence has been a disappointment to the rural areas of Malawi; the hope of prosperity and development, which had given the people such a positive and determined attitude back in the 60s, has failed them, and they find themselves worse off than ever, with no hope at all. So they see the white man, who tells them he has come back to help, as a dupe, and they basically wheedle, flatter and manipulate all his money out of him until he is as poor and helpless and trapped as anyone there - if not more so. The story turns very dark.

Some of the scenes are very telling, such as one of food aid arriving in otherwise unreachable places by helicopter, being handed out by famous pop stars from the west in ridiculous skimpy outfits, their unknown songs blaring out as the helicopter descends, and the people gathering since the night before, rioting, grabbing the sacks to take away and sell or to feed their own families instead of the orphans it is intended for. Some of what Theroux portrays is true.

But it is, at least I hope, exaggerated, and made into a very gripping but hyperbolic story: actually, a morality tale of the dangers of dependency and aid.

I loved it for its descriptions of scenery, village life and culture before it had gone so badly wrong, and also for the perspective of the mzungu who only came to help - that one could relate to a little bit. But it is incredibly sad. And definitively negative about the effects of foreign aid. There is no sighting of a person who has actually helped, or been a good or positive influence. There are glimpses of "good" Africans, but they have been chased out of the village; they are powerless to help the situation and can only mourn it.

So, read it if you can stomach it.

I still gobble up any book set in Africa, even if it leaves a sour taste in the mouth like this one does. I did abandon one (called Hotel Juliet) after a couple of chapters because it was so badly written. This one is very well written, but, it is only telling one part of the story, a tragic one. If you read it, please tell me what you think...