It took so much work to get the last blog out that I didn't even want
to start writing the next one! That and it's been so busy that I
didn't have time to even think about writing a blog. This one ends up
pretty heavy. So read at your own risk. It also sounds very preachy
but in reality I think I'm talking to myself and trying to figure out
my own way… a therapy of a sort.

The stuff I've been doing since home from Ghana is largely detail
chasing. I got the house to rent as our office, ordered furniture, got
the bits and pieces I need for my lawyer to get our company
registered, met with a bunch of people, interviewed others, and
generally ran around doing errands like finding missing shipments,
buying parts and transporting staff around. I felt like I spent more
of my week sitting at my friend's bar than anywhere else and my butt
hurts from sitting in hard metal chairs. Sounds weird I know but it
really is the best place to conduct business, especially in absence of
an office, and I promise I was only ever drinking pop. I had so many
details in my head that I was having a hard time sleeping. I was so
tired by Friday that I couldn't get up and slept in til 10. I
definitely feel like I am earning my salary!

Everything about my job right now feels like a learning process. First
is all the stuff I needed to learn how to get the business up and
running, how things are done here in Burkina - commercial process,
labour laws etc. It was lots of trying to figure out who to contact
and what I needed to do. Thankfully I have a lot of friends here who
have helped me otherwise it could have been a lot harder! Not that I'm
done yet…

The second phase will be learn all the processes for quoting,
ordering, inventory, invoicing and accounting etc. and getting all
that in place in our office. The third phase is to learn all the
products. The fourth will be to learn all the clients, potential
clients and to run around selling the products.

On top of all that is the stuff I already know like hiring staff,
training them and well Steve and Pat seem to think that I will be able
to whip the lot of current staff into shape as well. And Steve wants
me to repeat the above process in Ivory Coast and Niger eventually.
And of course I'm still trying to improve my French and Moré and do
all the other daily things that need to go on, like eat, exercise,
spend time with Ben and Loren. Thank God I don't have to clean, do
laundry, groceries or cook!

It would be nice if it were as simple as all that, that I could learn
each phase in one chunk - but of course that is never possible. So for
the moment and well probably for the next few months, I will have a
perpetually full head.

I did get out yesterday, we went to a wedding, then last night to the
bar we go to for billyards. They had live music sort of… a guy with an
acoustic guitar singing, his friend rapping. They had a few acts in a
row like that. I bring this up only for the fact that a couple of them
sang songs about how terrible the whites are for bringing in the slave
trade. Loren and I had a conversation about this. It pisses both of us
off, whenever they want to go on about how terrible whites are, they
talk about the slave trade. If you want to hate whites, fine. But
first they need to remember that whites didn't start the slave trade -
they did. Whites bought the slaves but Africans had slaves to sell
(this is not like the prostitution trade here which IS driven by the
white population as Africans don't buy sex - they take it) - and
there were a number of great blacks that came out of the US/Canada
because their families were brought originally as slaves. Second,
whites were also the driver behind ending of the slave trade. And
third, there are so many other things to hate Westerners for, why
dwell on something that ended a century a go. I mean the exploitation,
rape and pillage, and corruption of Africa that goes on currently is
much worse than the slave trade ever was and is largely driven by
Western interests why not write songs about that? Too complicated and
no one really gets that they are being raped here.

Finally my biggest problem with Africans hating whites is that, if
they had the money and power that Westerners have, what would they do
with it? Exactly the same thing. The first thing they do with money is
not send it home to the village. They give power to their friends,
travel around, and they buy big cars, big houses and boob jobs for
their girlfriends.

Loren brought up an interesting point yesterday. He's very
pro-American, even pro-George W. if you can believe it (he has
American heritage, direct lineage to Abraham Lincoln apparently). He's
extremely Conservative (this is of course the source of a lot of
arguments between us me being the socialist and anti-GWB that I am).
He said not that the Americans have necessarily done a great job with
it BUT if you think about the power (political and weaponry) and the
money that the Americans have, can you think of another country in the
world that could have done better? Can you imagine that in the hands
of Canada with our baby pablum social policies? England? France?
Generally I think some of these countries that could do better don't
have that kind of power because they don't want it and don't give a
crap about anyone but themselves. For example Switzerland. They don't
even want to join the EU.

The more I work and the more I see, I realize that there is a larger
agenda on the table. You look at all the inequity in the world and yet
how much money there is and realize that things stay the same because
someone (or many people) who is/are holding a lot of the
power/money/political cards want to see it stay that way. They get
other people, like the leaders of underdeveloped countries to buy into
that, and they know that the average Westerner isn't going to argue
because the 1) can't see the link between their consumption and
problems like poverty, child slave labour, pollution and 2) they are
pretty much absorbed by their own lives as dictated by television (if
you don't believe that you should come here and see what it's like to
be around women who don't have low self esteem issues because they are
overweight). Like in Rwanda, the division between the Hutu and the
Tutsis was there from a long time before whites ever arrived but the
whites used it to further their position. This is a common ploy used
throughout colonial Africa, you can see it here in Burkina, in Ghana
and Ivory Coast. It's not new. It was done in North America as well
with some of the aboriginal groups.

It sounds very conspiracy theory I supposed but to me it just looks
like basic human characteristic really. Few people really understand
how someone or a few people could possible control that much. I
certainly don't but I see it as most of us don't understand it and
that is why we don't have that kind of money or power, were just not
wired to either want it or believe that we can have it. For those that
are wired that way, they are probably also wired in such a way that
they are less concerned about the welfare of others. I mean you have
to be pretty driven and laser focussed to get to those kind of
political levels so that would also presume that you are generally not
distracted by the side views and obstacles of poverty, social
injustice etc. Please this is a generalization, there are certainly
people with money who are concerned about these issues or at least
appear to be. I also personally cannot figure out what their
motivation is exactly (it's probably complicated) as I don't think
like that. I definitely do not have the focus or drive to be rich and
I have a hard time imagining what that would be like. (there is a
difference between wanting to be rich and being driven enough to
achieve it)

I'm also a little leery of people who try to simplify some of the more
complex issues (although that's exactly what I'm doing here). You get
some well-meaning volunteer who runs around collecting money for the
starving people in Africa - like for the Band-Aid concerts that are
supposed to raise awareness of the famine in Ethiopia etc (Ethiopia is
and was during the 1984 famine, one of the richest countries on the
planet and actually had a lots of food but it wasn't being
distributed). Most of these people have never been to Africa, or in a
village. I met a girl who was trying to raise money to buy food for an
area of Mali that was starving saying they had no food. In reality the
village had lots of food, stored in granaries. However, the men had
gone off to fight some local war, leaving only women and children in
the village… only women and children are not allowed into the
granaries to get and distribute food. So they were essentially dying
because they refused to break tradition, even to feed their families.

A side note: I'm sure all this sounds very negative but it's actually
born of a belief that once we all stop thinking that life was created
by Walt Disney, we can face reality, learn about the real agenda and
do something. It all starts from individual and consumer choice, and
to simplify things to something completely idealistic and useless that
once we stop thinking that happiness comes from filling our homes with
cheap, plastic crap from China, we can deal with real social issues.
But it comes at the price of leaving the soap opera and facing
something really difficult. I am equally guilty of this so am not
pointing anywhere in particular just being argumentative mostly! I
don't have any part of this figured out fully but I really think it's
a system so if you can drive a stake into part of it, the rest will
unravel. But it's also like trying to turn the Queen Mary, when
everyone is paddling in different directions. I also don't have this
sorted out in my own life but I think part of spewing all this into a
blog is trying to figure out how to do just that.

Part of this thinking was driven by a letter I saw that was written by
someone who had been working as a cooperant in Rwanda. He was
apparently asked to leave because he was trying to push a social
agenda which was contrary to that of the foundation he was working
for. When I read this, I wasn't surprised. That sort of thing happens
everywhere. I saw it happen to a guy working for CIDA when I was here
in Burkina in 1998. I've seen it even at home, in the government of
Canada where someone with certain outspoken ways that were contrary to
the government's position, was shuffled out to a quiet post - made to
look like a promotion but definitely a demotion in terms of power.
Most of us will never understand the backroom handshakes but I think
we can all be clear that generally it is money or power that drives
any of the dealings including development and aid money. No one gives
something for nothing.

You hear of stories like USAid "helping" the poor cacao farmers of
Costa Rica with development money but the only ones who really
profited from the process was Hershey's who got cheap single source
cacao out of the deal. Like in Ghana where it is cheaper to buy rice
from the US than from local farmers because of the subsidies, also
Ghana isn't allowed to tax certain things from the US because of
development money given. These are US examples but Canada and other
Western countries do the same thing. Nothing is given for free.

Ok, stepping off soap box now. Next topic will be on salvation… just kidding.