One way - the only way

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They have told me that I should have anticipated what I came to see in Africa. I must have been very naive if I thought I could understand Africa and live like they do. I ought to have known that. A job for a Danish NGO in the third world can only be colonial. I know everything now and I always thought about every step I was to take, but coming to African was no anticipation.
I stepped into a place where I had no clues. I was in a different dimension walking on the moon. What I saw working for a Danish NGO was so much more extreme than I could ever have imagined.
We used to make fun of Greenland saying that people go there to make revolution after they didn't succeed at home. You will see the same in Africa.
White NGO's go to Africa to realise lost dreams of life using old fashion technologies that we in Europe consider to be graveyard trash. Before it was buildings and machines. Today it is organisational skills, social structures and falling down dreams that can never come true. We have always given Africa white trash.
No, I could not have anticipated what I saw because it was so much worse than my wildest nightmares.
They say that I have made it very hard for myself.
I went to Africa in the only way I could & I keep coming back out of force, not free will. Africa will never become a habit.
(rewrite of 2006)

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