Africans going Dutch: Part 33 - "Poor like us"

Sitting in a trishaw in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I ask the driver to take me to the Sea Fish Restaurant, one of the restaurants recommended by my Lonely Planet guidebook. Mohammed looks at me, smiles and drives off, but inquires why I want to dine at a restaurant frequented mostly by white people.
By Alice Mapenzi Kubo
“You are African and poor like us,” he says. “I recommend a Chinese restaurant that offers fresh, good seafood at prices that even local Sri Lanka people can afford.” His remark sounds all too familiar. In the Netherlands, too, most people think that Africans are poor. It hurts, because we know not all Africans are.
Having been one of the oldest students in my classes in the Netherlands, I knew I couldn’t afford to fail. This was my last chance to make a better future for myself. I fully focused on my studies and rarely joined fellow students in their weekly drinking sessions, which mostly took place on Thursday and Friday nights.
Melina, a Dutch student, once warned me that if I continued that way, I would never complete my studies and would end up in a mental hospital. She offered to buy me a drink, saying that life is short, and one must try to have fun before it is too late. But my parents taught me that if you work hard, it always pays off.
Melina did not know my background or the struggles my parents had to face to pay for my education. As for myself, at age 12, I even did farm labour so I could afford a pair of shoes. But I would never call my family 'poor' because all my brothers and sisters went to secondary schools. Nor do I recall a day that there was no food on the table, not even during the famine of the 1980s, when in some parts of Kenya people were really starving.
Many African parents struggle and even sell assets to pay school fees and such. It is a form of investment. If children excel in school and get good jobs later, they will in turn look after their old and frail parents. The money transfer counters of Western Union all around the world are frequented by Africans who regularly send money to their relatives back home. Research shows that the sum of these remittances exceeds the amount of official aid Africa receives from the developed world.
I forgive Mohammed and others for believing that Africans are poor; Sri Lankans know very little about Africa. But the Dutch should know better! They travel a lot, are well educated and can watch many TV programmes about the developing world.
Or is this stereotype they believe in a form of racism? I don’t know, but what I do know is that there are many positive things to be said about the Netherlands. If only Africa had the same pension schemes as the Netherlands...Western Union would lose many an African customer.[related-articles]