"Chinese engineers build new highway to 'lost' Kenya"
Chinese engineers are building a highway in Kenya. They are investing time and resources to lay a swath of asphalt connecting small villages in a country that is not their own.
It seems an unlikely combination; why would China care about the road quality in remote Kenyan countryside? They cite a boost in tourism, bolstering local economies, and exploring resource potential. The usual stuff. In the Reuters article, China is described as a benefactor: "where Britain and post-independence Kenyan governments failed, China is leading the way: helping to build a major trade route that will open up the northern half of Kenya, a region that has been effectively sealed off for 100 years."
But what's it to them if Kenya stays "lost" or not? What is "lost" anyway?
When did simply living a life become no longer enough: that if we don't belong to the global economy, we're lost? To me, the lost places have retained a part of our humanity that the industrialized world has left behind. They're the places where people continue to live the same way year after year, surviving; where change is slow and technology hasn't outstripped the ethical ability of people to control it. They are our cultural wildernesses. And like natural wilderness, I want to know they exist, whether I ever visit them or not. I want to imagine that there might be a place on this earth that Coca-Cola has not yet reached; that is free of televisions, riding lawnmowers, automatic breadmakers, strip malls, subdivisions, superhighways, and matched luggage.
Maybe Lost Kenya is such a place. The author describes desolate scenic beauty, donkey trains wending through mountains and volcanic rock in shimmery heat. Little connection with the outside world.
And maybe it's not. Maybe the Lost Kenyans already yearn for the material goods of the Western world (brought this time, ironically, from the Orient), the creature comforts of running water and electric lights. Maybe they are filled with gratitude for the jobs and tourists this road will bring. Maybe their eyes will glaze with visions of automobiles and Ritz crackers, and they won't realize until it's too late that the Chinese don't really have their best interest in mind.
A change has started in the world. Just like colonial Britain, China has been reaching out tentacles to the rest of the world, securing a hold on the things its citizens want. With a population of 1.3 billion people and rising, where will those desires end? As with all its other world-dominating forebears, the force of China's wants will be exercised in the small places. Slowly, the donkey trains will become less frequent, and Lost Kenya will stop being a blank spot on the map. But as more and more places become "found," what have we really lost?
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