Germany Needs Developmental Assistance from Africa - AReport from Sudan, November 2015Sonja Andjelkovic

I stare out of my room, on the 12th floor in Hotel Corinthia in Khartoum. It is raining. That meansthere will be chaos on the streets, mud avalanches and congested bridges. People will be trying toget ahead at a snail's pace. Sometimes, it takes 2.5 hours to get from one district to the next undersuch weather conditions. My day was supposed to start when the participants of the training arrivedat 9, but hardly any of them were able to be punctual.

That gave me some free time to glance at the terrible news reports of that day online. As you canimagine, there was one subject that dominated the news: the refugee crisis.

My stomach dropped. I start to brood over the situation and I am beginning to feel distressed.The compassion I had in me for the challenges the refugees face, has become an unbearable mixtureof anger and frustration, so intense, that I can hardly escape its grasp. As I sit there waiting for themissing participants, my face marked by melancholia, I am hit by a wave of sudden inspiration.

I could ask the four participants that had already arrived – all of them well respected employees inthe Ministry of Education – what their opinions were on how the refugee crisis in Germany couldbe managed. I take a deep breath and ask them for help, for advice.

I explain, that we have problems because of the huge amount of refugees arriving, who we want andhave to integrate and, that I keep asking myself how we plan on doing that without workingourselves up into a social and political frenzy. I work up all my courage and mention how most ofthe refugees are Muslim (as are all the participants), which is an unfamiliar religion to us, and thatmany people worry about the kind of mindsets those Muslims – whom we might not get along with– will bring with them, and how those mindsets fit in with established German culture.

On the other hand, we are working on creating a welcoming culture, regardless of the fact that wehave no experience whatsoever in dealing the influx of so many people in such a short time span.I admit that there are xenophobic, chauvinistic and islamophobic movements in our society. I admitthat refugee accommodations are being set on fire. And that I am ashamed.

I realize, that I am worried about being rejected by my participants for going too far out on a limb. Irecognize that budding fear within, that my previous statements will prevent them fromacknowledging the position I have in Sudan – their trainer for communication.

But that is not what happened.

I was bombarded by questions: Do the refugees live in refugee camps? No. What do they get whenthey arrive? Food, clothes, a roof over their heads. Can the refugees work? No. Aha!!One of theparticipants exclaims. They are allowed to work here in Sudan as soon as they arrive. However, as

unqualified workers, they are paid very little, someone chimes in. And they only get the jobs thatSudanese do not want to do, another person adds. Yes, but it is slowly getting crowded, a femaleparticipant elaborates, because even the Sudanese are forced to accept jobs they do not like tosurvive.

Back to Germany: Your population is aging, you do not have enough people! One participantremarks, adding that Germany is currently welcoming the people that will support the society andalso help it develop. My curiosity is peaked, I lean in and listen closely.Why are people scared of Muslims? They ask, and I can see the confusion on their faces. Islam hasits roots in Salam – Peace, the Prophet had preached about the necessity of communication,compassion and living in harmony.

But would it not be a good idea, with regards to the current refugee situation, to offerinterdenominational religious lessons on a broad scale? One participant asks, while the others nodenthusiastically. What is there to be said against German children learning about Islam and Muslimchildren learning about Christianity and other religions? They want to know, if we have ever evenconsidered such a concept. My voice is barely above a whisper as I respond that we have ethicsclasses in Germany, realizing for the first time how sparse my knowledge of religion lessons inGermany really is.

That revelation makes me realize, that there are many people out there who feel the same, becausemany people really do not care about religion very much.

I do not say that though, because I anticipate an out-pour of indignation, followed by an awkwardsilence that culminates in a wave of pity as they voice their sorrow about how the Western culture isbecoming disconnected from the very core of what makes us human.I decide to change the topic to avoid having to justify myself. Otherwise I run the risk of stumblingacross a familiar rhetoric, that WE Christians are well within out rights to open up to Islam as it cancomplete our religion, and does not contradict what our God commands.But what did God command? I find such discussions particularly unpleasant, and I must admit thatthe bible in my opinion is about as interesting as a picture book without pictures.Our dark prejudices about Muslims do not rest on what our collective memory leads us to believe: aperceived conflict between Christians and Muslims.

In reality the things that fundamentally differentiate us from each other are the secular paradigm,the superiority of rationality over religious beliefs, the separation of our living environments andour obsession with technology as a substitution for spirituality.Basically, what it comes down to, is religious people vs. secular people.Did we survive the historical trauma of Turks at the gates of Vienna, only to use the next rumors toseal ourselves off from Muslims?How does this one sound: Muslims are retrogressive and still need to undergo a lot of reforms.What happens though, when an Arab person is not a Muslim.

It really does not make a difference, if a Syrian is a Christian or a Muslim. Culture remains the mostsignificant factor in both instances, influencing every aspect of their lives – particularly theirinnermost values.

This has been the experience I made in a lot of Arabic countries. The names were the only cues I

had to identify a person's religion – Elias for example, is obviously Christian. Ahmed – a Muslim,It was almost impossible to distinguish them relying only appearances and behavior.Despite the differences in social status these two religions hold in Islamic-dominated countries, bothreligions cherish values such as deference to elders, loyalty and solidarity.At this point the discussion takes on a practical note: Conflicts could be avoided by allocating livingspaces according to the refugees' natural cultural groups: Syrians living with Syrians, Somalis withSomalis and Iraqis with Iraqis...that way one could customize the measures to be taken in a way thatdoes not conflict with the respective cultures of the groups. As soon as the groups are ready, theycan leave their cultural environment and venture into German society.That is an interesting idea, I say, but how would that process be organized? Observing culturaldifferences and coming up with concepts, identifying which measures should be carried out andhow – there is no instruction for that. And everyone knows how much Germans love instructionsand monochromatic manuals..That would not end well in German culture.

Besides, there is bound to be an outrage: Ghettofication! Who knows what the newspapers wouldwrite if that happened, what parallels they would draw to German history and how the outspokencritics of refugee integration would misuse the situation – for their benefit. That suggestion is hardlyviable.

The participants begin to discuss with even more emotions, while always coming back to the hottopics in their country, the refugees from Somalia and Eritrea, the conflict in Darfur, the civil war inthe South. Some of them try to make light of the situation at the expense of the refugees,particularly since one of the somewhat controversial participants is from Darfur. The people hereare not exactly what you would call shy and the looks on some of their faces are almost as dark asthe past days have been.

Education has to be the foundation of it all – that is the general consensus. The first step should beidentifying all the teachers among the refugees and immediately employ them formally, so they cancontinue teaching the refugee children their usual subjects. Afterwards they would need toparticipate in German classes, so they can all be enrolled in school. Everyone who came with nocertifications but had a job should be given the opportunity to take a test through which thespecified job skills can be verified. The next step is to close the gap in their qualification, bybringing it up to standards that are the norm in Germany. Then they are ready to enter the labormarket. If this strategy is implemented, one would not have to worry about the German labormarket being hollowed out or the qualification standards being lowered. I am astonished at howclear-cut and coherent this strategy is. Why is Arabic not taught in schools as the second foreignlanguage? The only way real relationships can grow is by communicating with one another, it is theonly way we learn to understand each other better. It is not easy to achieve, but it is doable.

As I sit there listening to everything that is being said, I begin to wonder: Why do we not haveconsultants from Africa? Why do we not bring Sudanese, Syrian and Somali experts to Germanyand glean new perspectives out of discussions with them? Listen to their advice? Ask them forcultural know-how? Why do we have to solve everything on our own or only in the company of ourEuropean interior ministers?

Anyone familiar with the meetings of our political representatives will know that people negotiatepositions there very adamantly and that the genuine interests of those affected are hardly taken into

consideration. Creativity and interdisciplinary thinking have also been neglected.Despite crisis looming on the horizon, the meetings keep taking place in a ritualized fashion, thatonly serves to demonstrate and underscore the status quo of power relations. Those who win arethose that were most canny in interpreting the law.

And the clock is ticking. The situation changes every day. We need flexible, fast approaches.

Einstein once said that problems can not be solved with the same mindset that created them. Yet werefuse to adhere to this notion. It has been obvious for a while now that the institutionalization ofour society and unbridled capitalism are not in the position to solve our current problems. We claimthat representatives (whom we allegedly elected, an assertion, of which the validity remains hotlydebated) of governments will solve the “refugee problem.” This is an obsolete, post-war philosophy.

In light of the gigantic wave of desperation we are currently facing, the question arises why we arestill terrified of applying a 360° vision to finding solutions, opting instead to delve deeper intomathematical approaches such as quotas for 200.000 refugees?Why are we still wasting time on the symptoms instead of realizing, that the cause of the currentglobal situation is multi-faceted and that 1 million refugees are merely the tip of the iceberg?We need different approaches, different partnerships, or as Gerd Müller the German Minster ofEconomic Cooperation and Development said, our partnership with Africa has to be one of twocountries on eye-level, we need to pay fair prices for the resources we extract which enables ourwealth in developed countries.

That could definitely be the first step, I realize. Moreover, we need to initiate a crisis managementunit composed of African representatives of the civil society, politics and business. They couldassist us in formulating a strategy to tackle the roots of our problems. We need more cooperation ona larger scale to revive the labor market both in African countries and domestically, to redistributewealth by playing tributes on the net turnover of companies, using that to support development inAfrican countries. Furthermore, we need bilateral partnerships, student – and apprenticeshipexchange programmes and technical and vocational training.

We need to re-learn how to improvise and instead of insisting on rules and order long overdue for arevision, we should follow our intuition instead of belittling it or using it to market products and weshould envision new rules, namely, that exceptions do occur. We need to become more flexible,learn to let go and change or risk falling into a permanent rut.We need a new way to deal with fear. Or else it will devour our souls. And: We need to unlearnwhat we have learned. We must get rid of the constant desire in us for everything to stay the same,we must unlearn prioritizing ourselves as individuals above our community, we must unlearn theassumption that an accumulation of material wealth will result in happiness, these are all things wehave to unlearn if we plan on dealing with the ongoing crisis. The change needs to start in everysingle one of us.

As this train of thought keeps evolving in my mind, the training participants have become silent,after all we spent the past hour discussing the challenges Germany faces. The energy we wouldneed to carry on the discussion has dissipated. Someone says: It is not easy, no, it is not easy.And then – the others finally arrive. They come in panting, quickly taking their seats, wiping off amixture of perspiration and rainfall off their foreheads. After the long journey to our training

location, I am worried about what mood they will be in. However a few moments later, they aresmiling, clapping their hands and making fun of the condition the streets are in and laughing abouttheir muddy trouser legs. Off we go! It is remarkable how fast the Sudanese recover from negativesituations and how hard they work, when they really want to achieve a goal.At the end of a successful training day, I return to my hotel room. Deeply impressed by the order ofevents during today's training, I begin to reflect on the feedback that I was given towards the end:They were able to internalize that communication opens hearts, that we as humans are constantlychanging and need to evolve, to be able to live with others. They understood that listening,compassion and understanding can create and help maintain social peace. Above all they understoodthat they would need to begin implementing the insights they gained immediately. As I watch therain pour down my window in long, liquid strings, the greyish-brown view outside my windowtransforms into an impressionistic picture and I realize:

Germany needs development assistance. Development assistance from Africa.