I've been living in the developing world uninterruptedly for five years now. I've long been aware of the corruption endemic to many, if not most, developing countries. The bribes necessary to jog the sluggish bureaucracy in India, the open sales of visas in China, the on-the-spot payment of "fines" for traffic violations in Kenya - none of it surprised me.
I was an innocent.
I had managed to maintain my naive outlook through five years of living, working and traveling in developing countries because - up until the past few weeks - I'd never attempted . . . to use a library. For insight into real corruption in the developing world, try accessing publicly available documents.
I am currently researching WWI in Kenya, to which end, I paid a visit to the Kenya National Museum archives. The illiterate archivist who was "assisting" me by blowing his acrid smoke-breath in my face collected 1,000 shillings from me as a "research fee." The fee was listed on a price schedule for the museum archives, and - even if I doubted the fee's necessity - I wouldn't begrudge the museum $13 for pulling records from the archives for me. (Ideally the money would go towards preservation.) What I objected to was the request for a bribe that came from the archivist's boss after I'd finished looking through the documents. Given that I'd established that the museum's archives didn't have what I needed (and even if they had), I was hard-pressed to understand why I should "buy the office lunch."
Hoping for better luck at the University of Nairobi library, I submitted a written request for access to the stacks. I was elated when the request was granted, but I was promptly disappointed when I learned that the access I'd gained didn't include borrowing privileges. Given my full-time job, I couldn't make much use of the opportunity to read books in the library. I appealed to the librarian who had granted me access to the stacks. A big, middle-aged man, he responded to my request for borrowing privileges by saying, "I wish I was your neighbor, so I could come over sometimes."
So much for the library. The information I needed, I decided, was at the National Archives. I had a contact name at the Archives, and I sent him an e-mail describing the information I was seeking and asking if the Archives contained relevant documents. He replied, offering to find the necessary information in the Archives for 50,000 shillings. Taking a friend who is a reporter for Kenya's Daily Nation with me, I went to the Archives to meet this entrepreneurial researcher. At the Archives, I learned that I could buy an annual permit to use the Archives for 200 shillings. When I raised this point with the archivist, he said that I wouldn't be able to find what I needed without his help. A reasonable point, to be sure - considering that the Archives' computerized index listed nothing under the topic "WWI" - but since his salary was paid by the Kenyan government for the express purpose of providing help to researchers, I was unconvinced that I would be getting value for my money.
With all the sympathy in the world for the hard-working, underpaid men and women of Kenya's public information industries, I remain nonetheless scandalized by the apparent absence of respect for transparency, circulation of information, ease of public access, and the sanctity of the quest for knowledge as an endeavor in life. Call me the jackass I undoubtedly am, but I'd somehow believed that librarians and archivists were somehow different from the border guards, policemen, politicians, etc., who have put the lie to the signs proclaiming "Corruption Free Zone" that I see everywhere in Nairobi.
Say what you will about the Google Books settlement; it at least has the benefit of lessening the scope for corruption of the sort that's stymied my work in Nairobi thus far.
I was an innocent.
I had managed to maintain my naive outlook through five years of living, working and traveling in developing countries because - up until the past few weeks - I'd never attempted . . . to use a library. For insight into real corruption in the developing world, try accessing publicly available documents.
I am currently researching WWI in Kenya, to which end, I paid a visit to the Kenya National Museum archives. The illiterate archivist who was "assisting" me by blowing his acrid smoke-breath in my face collected 1,000 shillings from me as a "research fee." The fee was listed on a price schedule for the museum archives, and - even if I doubted the fee's necessity - I wouldn't begrudge the museum $13 for pulling records from the archives for me. (Ideally the money would go towards preservation.) What I objected to was the request for a bribe that came from the archivist's boss after I'd finished looking through the documents. Given that I'd established that the museum's archives didn't have what I needed (and even if they had), I was hard-pressed to understand why I should "buy the office lunch."
Hoping for better luck at the University of Nairobi library, I submitted a written request for access to the stacks. I was elated when the request was granted, but I was promptly disappointed when I learned that the access I'd gained didn't include borrowing privileges. Given my full-time job, I couldn't make much use of the opportunity to read books in the library. I appealed to the librarian who had granted me access to the stacks. A big, middle-aged man, he responded to my request for borrowing privileges by saying, "I wish I was your neighbor, so I could come over sometimes."
So much for the library. The information I needed, I decided, was at the National Archives. I had a contact name at the Archives, and I sent him an e-mail describing the information I was seeking and asking if the Archives contained relevant documents. He replied, offering to find the necessary information in the Archives for 50,000 shillings. Taking a friend who is a reporter for Kenya's Daily Nation with me, I went to the Archives to meet this entrepreneurial researcher. At the Archives, I learned that I could buy an annual permit to use the Archives for 200 shillings. When I raised this point with the archivist, he said that I wouldn't be able to find what I needed without his help. A reasonable point, to be sure - considering that the Archives' computerized index listed nothing under the topic "WWI" - but since his salary was paid by the Kenyan government for the express purpose of providing help to researchers, I was unconvinced that I would be getting value for my money.
With all the sympathy in the world for the hard-working, underpaid men and women of Kenya's public information industries, I remain nonetheless scandalized by the apparent absence of respect for transparency, circulation of information, ease of public access, and the sanctity of the quest for knowledge as an endeavor in life. Call me the jackass I undoubtedly am, but I'd somehow believed that librarians and archivists were somehow different from the border guards, policemen, politicians, etc., who have put the lie to the signs proclaiming "Corruption Free Zone" that I see everywhere in Nairobi.
Say what you will about the Google Books settlement; it at least has the benefit of lessening the scope for corruption of the sort that's stymied my work in Nairobi thus far.
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