Introduction

As the winds of change moved across Sub-Saharan Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s, leading to the first wave of independence from former colonial masters, the breeze blew in a new wave of Europeans and (for the first time in substantial numbers) North Americans. These were not missionaries, nor were they administrative officials (although both of these did continue to follow the migratory patterns established from the mid-nineteenth century that increased engagement of Europe with Sub-Saharan Africa). They were a newly emerging set of actors, ones that would become an increasingly important part of the non-African presence in Africa: development workers. Some were professionals, salaries paid by the Bretton Woods institutions that were beginning to make their presence more fully felt in Africa, by now ex-colonial masters, or paid by the rising non-governmental sector. But many of this new breed of development worker were volunteers, motivated by feelings of solidarity and new understandings of global connectedness, wishing to ‘do their bit’ to help others, and hoping to experience new adventures and experiences.

Yet these international volunteers, drawn especially (but not exclusively) from North America, Europe and Australia, remain largely invisible in the archival sources, whether official, or those of the NGOs that supported them. They are (infrequently) referred to, mostly in passing, or else in the context of a problem that has emerged. While it is not possible to count the numbers involved with any exactitude, the silence imposed upon them by their absence in the archive belies their real and growing presence.

In 1962, an American NGO, Operation Crossroads Africa (OCA), proposed to the then Tanganyikan government that it send a team of volunteers to the country to assist work on a school construction project in Dar es Salaam. OCA would pay for the transport and upkeep of the (pre-University) volunteers, and requested from the Ministry of Education in Tanganyika accommodation for the volunteers, a lorry and driver, skilled technicians to advise on construction, and the building materials. In essence, this was to have been an early forerunner of the ‘gap-year’ experience that has become so common for pre-university school leavers in the UK in recent years: an experience designed to expand the horizons of those taking part through participation in relatively simple (if still worthwhile) projects, and to meet and engage with people from another culture.