The Tooth

Last summer, toward the end of my six-week stay in Kenya, I bought a lion’s tooth necklace from the chief of a Masai village. I immediately put it on and knotted it, with no intention of taking it off. I let it hang from my neck as a reminder of the time I had spent teaching HIV prevention in the western part of the country.

For me, a retired literature major and professional leisure-reader, it transcended souvenir-dom and became a symbol.

It stood for poverty, misinformation, corruption. It made me remember the HIV-positive-only hospital wards, the malaria-induced funeral of a five-year-old boy, the street children in Kibera. But it also inspired me, gave me hope, grounded me upon my return to Durham where my biggest problems were B+s and lost DukeCards. In it were the faces and voices of my fellow volunteers: future doctors, social workers, teachers and policy makers bent on changing the world.

But the day before I left for Malawi, The Tooth--as it was affectionately dubbed by one of my favorite people--broke off from its leather string. Freed, it tumbled down into my suitcase as I was packing and burrowed into my clothes, readying itself for a return trip to Africa.

Not wanting to see it damaged or sacrificed to the gods of lost luggage, I packed it safely away in a drawer, subjecting it only to the Phoenix summer heat.

And there I stood in my room, left to ponder the significance of The Tooth’s Great Escape.

And it’s only now that I’ve spent a toothless week in Lilongwe that I’ve found a satisfactory answer--thanks to the ex-pats.

You see, in rural Kabula, Kenya, I had no interaction between anyone but Kenyans and my fellow volunteers—about ten in number. At the time, it seemed as though a whole new world was unfolding itself in front of my eyes, as though my understanding of the HIV epidemic was expanding beyond measure, as though I was now part a proud and united front of international altruists working to eradicate HIV and poverty in Africa.

But having conversations with foreigners aid workers and expatriates, I have realized that my scope was limited, my experience narrow. Rural Kenya is not urban Malawi. Nor is it Zimbabwe, Niger or Botswana. HIV and poverty--and all the other problems that piggyback onto those--affect each country--and each region of each country--differently. What I haven’t realized until now though is that, just as the effects are different, so should the responses be customized.

And there is rarely, if ever, agreement in the political arguments that always seem to proceed taking any kind of action. All you need to do is sit quietly and listen in any pub or at any hostel; you’ll hear the ex-pats, the travelers, the University students from around the world exploding with a fiery emotion, bemoaning dirty politics, greedy pharmaceutical companies and global apathy. You’ll be tempted to give up and lose hope because you'll be convinced that NGOs, grassroots volunteer-based activists and governments don’t work together as well as they could. For that reason, the solutions to Africa’s most dire problems are not simple, but unavoidably complex.

I myself, the child of 1970s activists, fellow at one of the leading nonprofit international public health organizations and representative of a rich, American university, don’t really know what I think about the Zambian government’s economic policies when my newfound Bolivian-born American ex-pat friend starts ranting to me about them. Although I’m inclined to believe her theories, I tuck them away for later consideration.

But I do draw one important conclusion from my conversation with her and discussions with a dozen others: governments, corporations and humanitarian organizations need to do more to get this continent on its feet, but the institutionalization of aid relief will never come before or without hands-on activism from individuals bent on making a difference--however small.

So I think I’ll need to find a new souvenir. I’ll need to keep it close to me, because I’ve already decided what it should stand for. It will remind me that although humanitarian work in Africa can seem too daunting a challenge, it desperately needs all the communities that I am apart of--a liberal family, an excessively intelligent group of peers, a wealthy nation, a vibrant Lilongwe--to finally stand up and face the greatest humanitarian disaster this world has witnessed.

I only wish I could buy a souvenir for everyone I know.