The banner announced a bread and cheese lunch for work in Africa. I wondered about the work.

I remember my first visit to Rwanda, ten years ago. Our small group of Europeans was being feted in the district as the bringers of all good things.  At every village there was something to be opened or dedicated and there were speeches and food.  Africans would stand back until the white people had been served; they would never be at the table first, never be the first in the queue.

We had recoiled at some of the sentiments expressed, depicting us as great benefactors.  Appeals that they should turn to the Bible and see that we were doing no more than our duty seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Richard Dowden’s, “Altered States, Ordinary Miracles” became my text book for dealing with such visits. Richard Dowden could have described the experiences that so troubled us without even being there.  He recounts his early years in Uganda and the wisdom of the headmaster under whom he taught, Mr Lule.

I found myself loved for the very reasons I despised. I was loved because I was white and rich, and from the rich world. I had come to bring its benefits to Africa, had I not? ‘So please Sir, Mista Richad, Masta, Teacha, My Lord, Your Majesty, help me for school fees, help me for medicine, give me clothez.’

‘No, that is not why I am here,’ my heart screamed. ‘I have come to protect innocent Africa from Europe’s greed and arrogance and make amends for slavery and imperialism. I want to preserve African values, stand in solidarity against Western materialism.’

But this was a point of view not easily understood by the children of African peasants. To them I was someone who had come to help kill off old Africa and replace it with European ways and Western goods. They despised the old Africa and wanted to be Western and ‘put on smart’. I had an image of two people running towards each other with arms outstretched, each thinking they were about to fall into the other’s arms, but instead looking beyond each other at a mirage and missing each other completely. ‘All they seem to have kept from the past is beer and drums,’ I wrote in my diary. ‘Africa is fleeing from itself as fast as it can go. If this is the revolution of rising expectations, I don’t want a part in it. But I am part of it. I am paid to feed it, to help it along its way.’

Africa wanted the trappings of Western wealth without understanding anything of the culture and values that created it or could sustain it. Instead of building on what they had and developing their assets and talents, they seemed to snatch at Western goods, turning themselves into beggars in a mad scramble to acquire symbols of Western wealth. ‘Masster help me for shart,’ they cried. ‘Aid me with medisin,’ ‘Give me clothez. Give me moneys.’ It makes you, as Paul Theroux has it, ‘a wallet on legs’. It is also a paradise for aid agencies and donors. They ask; you give. But Mr Lule was tough and told me not to give anything for nothing. ‘Whatever you do, do not let it be known you are giving out money. It will cause problems.’

A world with more Mr  Lules and less agencies with plush headquarters and shiny jeeps might have been a very different place. There may have been more development and less dependency.