Revd Ian Gilmour - St Andrew's & St George's

In the Footsteps of Livingstone?
Jack Thompson writes from Malawi
apparently suffering from no worse than sunburn, made me
wonder, as I stood where David Livingstone had probably stood
a hundred and fifty years ago, whether the gap between
Africans and Europeans might not be wider now than it was
then.
Of course there are parts of African society and aspects of
African life which are extremely modern and sophisticated. In
the last few weeks I have twice been in the presence of
Malawian camera crews with equipment similar to that of the
BBC, filming events which were going out live on local
television. Modern African cities have high rise office blocks,
traffic jams, business men and women with their iPhones and
Blackberries: yet the majority of Malawians still live in rural
villages, many without electricity or mains water; many also
without a hospital within many miles.
I would be the last to argue that we should be pushing for a
„development‟ which aims at turning Africa into a new Europe.
David Livingstone didn‟t want that either! Nor would I wish to
ignore positive developments in Malawi. But when more than
half the population of Malawi live on less than $1 a day, when
under- five death rates are more than twenty times as high as in
Britain, where the average life expectancy is currently under
forty and where only a small proportion of the population have
the opportunity to attend secondary school, it is legitimate to
ask both Malawian and Scot „Where did we go wrong?‟ Or more
importantly, „How can we begin to put it right?‟ The children of
countless Malawian villages such as the one I visited yesterday
on the banks of the Shire River may not know how to formulate
such questions. But that doesn‟t mean that they don‟t deserve
answers. TJT 03/06/2011
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