“You come here with your laptop computers, malaria medicine, hand sanitizer and think you can make a difference?”
-Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from Blood Diamond
One thing I’ve been realizing here is that Africa needs bigger change than what we can bring. Obviously I believe in the World Race and what we do. We can make a difference. Prayer is powerful. Interacting with our community and reaching the unreached is amazing and influential. I knew that AIM and the World Race weren’t going to fix everything, but it’s frustrating to see that we can only do so much. It needs a huge structural change. Even though Mozambique is just a small sample of Africa, there are similar patterns reflected throughout the continent. We’ve heard and experienced that Africans keep doing the same thing every day and then expect different results. There’s so much corruption, poverty, and lack of education in Africa, Mozambique included. Everyone including the police want bribes. Nothing is going to improve if things don’t drastically change. The government infrastructure needs to be transformed. Even countries like the U.S can’t fix it by sending money. I always joke to my teammate, who is a nurse, that her degree is so practical and mine is not. What am I going to do on the World Race with a political science degree? Point out some countries on a map? Write a paper about political theories? It’s actually way more practical post race than I would have ever thought. I would love to be able to help or do something radical with my future law degree to restructure Africa’s government so it could get out of this vicious cycle and bring long-term change to third world nations like Mozambique. Let me know if you have any ideas. Until then, keep praying to a God who is bigger than Africa and a culture of corruption.
