| The failure hasn't really been the idea of real aid but the misuse of that term. Clearly, if, in the famous phrase, you "teach a man to fish" you're probably helping him. 援助的失败不是他们的初衷，他们的错误在于没有正确体会帮助的实质。很明显，你如果能像一句老话说的那样，“给人送鱼，不如教给他打渔的方法”，那才能真正地帮助他。 But most aid hasn't been like that. Most of it has been "top-down" aid, money that's given to African governments (so they in return) do the political bidding of the aid givers. 但是援助并不是那样的。大部分援助都是组织严密的。他们给予非洲国家援助，非洲国家则按照他们的意图办事。 A good proportion of it has been creamed off by the recipient government's officials and another large chunk of it paid back to the so-called "donors" in consultancy fees, salaries-cars--houses-and-servants for aid officials, debt repayments and the purchasing of arms. 这些援助中的很大一部分都被非洲国家政府官员贪污了，还有一部分则是以各种各样的形式返回给那些捐助国，比如顾问费，给援助国官员的工资，给他们买房子买车雇佣人等。此外这些援助还用于还债以及购买武器。 During the Cold War, which only ended in the 1990s, most aid to Africa was never REALLY even supposed to help poor people. It was designed to reward client states for supporting or opposing one of the dominant ideologies. 九十年代才结束的冷战期间，给予非洲的援助从来就没有真正用于帮助穷人。这些钱都用于给予附庸国以支持或反对某种统治的意识形态。 This led to inappropriate and sometimes laughable results. There's an apocryphal tale that does the rounds, for example, of the former Soviet Union, in the 1970s, supplying SNOW PLOUGHS to tropical Guinea. 这就造成了一些不合适的，有时候甚至可笑的结果。有一个虚构的故事很能说明问题。七十年代，前苏联曾经向热带几内亚提供除雪机。 To be honest, I don't know if this story is true. But I do know of many cases where so-called food aid has destroyed markets for local farmers by driving down prices. 坦诚地说，我并不知道这件事是不是真的，但是我确实知道在很多地方，食品援助迫使农民降低他们的产品价格，这样就破坏了整个市场。 And yet, to say aid hasn't worked IN THE PAST is not the same thing as saying aid CAN'T work. 但是，给非洲国家的援助在过去的时间里没有起到作用并不等于说以后不会起作用。 Last week, I met some small-scale farmers in southern Zambia. They were skilled farmers, well-organised people who knew what they wanted. What they wanted was water. Their maize was stunted, their citrus fruits were shrivelled and their tobacco leaves were small -- all because of a lack of water. 上星期，我在赞比亚南部遇见了几个小型农场主。他们都是技艺高超，组织得力的农场主，他们知道他们需要的是什么。他们需要的就是水。他们的燕麦矮小，他们的柑橘萎缩，烟叶短小，这些都是因缺水。 I spent a whole day with these farmers and they showed me the various wells they had tried to dig on their land. Their lack of water was not for want of backbreaking work in trying to find the stuff. 我和这些农民在一起待了一整天，他们带我看了他们挖的很多井。缺水的原因不是他们没有付出足够的努力。 Their wells had either run dry, or not yielded anything at all, because the water table was falling. These were people trapped in poverty; and despite their efforts they didn't have enough resources to pull themselves out of the trap. 这些井不是干涸了，就是根本没有出过水，因为地下水位正在下降。他们都是穷人。尽管付出了很多，但是始终没有足够的资金来解除这个困境。 On the great scale of things, aid or more precisely the type of aid that's generally been given in the past few decades hasn't worked. 从总体上来说，在过去的几十年中给予非洲的援助——或者确切地说，那些援助没有起到作用。 But by the end of the day I spent with those Zambian farmers I was absolutely and totally convinced that a little of the right sort of aid, carefully directed and monitored, would be a lifeline for them. 但是我和赞比亚农民一起度过的那天的晚上，我完全相信了如果那些援助中的一小部分受到了认真的指导和监视，那就肯定会成为这些农民的救命钱。 A few thousand dollars spent on a borehole, a lifeline to the precious water deep underground, would transform those farmers' lives. 只要投资几千美元用于地上凿洞——能够得到一个宝贵的地下水的救生索，那么这将会改变那些农民的命运。 |
