The other day I was talking to my host Uncle at breakfast about the Columbine Shootings that took place in Colorado when I was in third grade. It seems like a strange thing to be talking about, but my Uncle knew exactly what happened because the news about this horrific event traveled around the world. He said he could never picture that happening in Sénégal and offhandedly commented, "Well that's development for you." As I walked to my internship after that short conversation I started thinking: in pushing blindly towards developing "third world countries" or the "global South" or whatever else you want to call them, are we thinking about what we want to achieve? Development has become an endeavor of the blind and corrupt leading the blind and corrupt. Sure, eliminating the electricity monopoly in Sénégal that leads to frequent and counterproductive power outages and increasing literacy rates is definitely something to strive for, but let's just make sure high school shootings and other first world country maladies don't come along in the package deal. Nobody has it all figured out, so maybe it isn't always the best idea for the countries "moving towards development" to look up to their big brothers and sisters and strive to be exactly like them. Maybe there is another model that nobody has figured out yet that would decrease wealth disparity, increase education, and eliminate diseases...
I sure hope school shootings aren't in Sénégal's future, they don't need that kind of development.
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