St Jude's

I grew increasingly uneasy as I read this story by Gemma Sisia. She’s a good Catholic girl from country NSW who saw pictures of the starving Africans and made it her mission to go and save them. She went there, fell in love with an African man and married him (although her family was against her marrying a black man) and was given land by his family to build a school. Through Rotary, she’s raised thousands of dollars to set up this school for poor but intellectually gifted students in the area, and now hundreds of students have been, and continue to be educated.

Good for her, of course, and it’s great that hundreds of kiddies are now educated. That’s not all you learn, though; it’s all because of St Jude and his magical prayer that you pray nine times. Not the African people who provided the land, the idea and the labour for the school – no, apparently they’ve got no sense of honesty (there are several “amusing” stories about their lack of understanding about lying, money, possessions etc), have to be led by Westerners (every time Gemma leaves Australia, she returns to utter chaos), and are unable to care for their children (she tells us that a lot of poverty is because some people just don’t care for their children or possessions). When she starts to feel concerned that perhaps her efforts aren’t exactly saving Tanzania, someone tells her the fable of the starfish (you know, how the boy chucks a few starfish back in the ocean saying “it matters to that one” even though the others are dying).

Of course it matters to the individual – but it also matters to the individual who stays choking on the beach because your good intentions don’t include them. In this case, children who aren’t bright enough (there are entry exams), who don’t work hard enough (there’s a “probationary period” for the students – if they’re not smart enough, they get kicked out), whose parents aren’t good enough (they get inspected too), don’t deserve an education. She says she can’t help everyone – but what is she saying to the other hundreds of kids who don’t make it into her school? One thing alone I’ve learned from working overseas, and that’s that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Gemma is full of good intentions, but it would help if she had some insight, as well. This book is another in the long line of books about poor countries which are saved by a Wonderful Westerner, because, apparently, the hopeless locals just can’t do it themselves.