Blue Collar State of Mind

So one thing that I did want to bring attention to with my new job is my inherent regression into ethnography.  I am working as a delivery boy.  This is of course not commensurate with my place in society - as an educated white man.  When I am out and about as a "white man" of seemingly respectable capacity, I am treated a certain way.  This became incredibly evident to me throughout my involvement with Occupy and the daily awareness of my place of power in the socio-economic system.  In those circles I am constantly reminded of it every day.  This is why it was so eye-opening - and dare I say refreshing - to be treated as just another blue collar worker once I donned my delivery apron and hat.

There are of course two aspects to this.  There is the way random people and the people you are delivering to treat you, and the way you are treated by other workers such as doormen.  No one really wants to be talked down to, or have assumptions made about them that aren't nice, but we all know this is bound to happen though.  The interesting thing for me is that knocking on doors as a delivery person immediately places you in a category that I am not in otherwise given the general demographic makeup of the delivery profession.  For example there was a woman the other day in a penthouse apartment that when I knocked on the door was very deliberately trying to not let me see in her apartment.  She came out and closed the door behind her, overtly showing an apprehension to me and what I might see on quick glimpse in corner penthouse apartment on the 40 something floor.  Now obviously there is a large amount of speculation here as to her motives.  But having been in the situation and reading it, I can only say that this was the way I felt and my interpretation given the visual and verbal cues I received, and coupled with my own place in society and thoughts.  Yet still, I felt that she did not want me to see in her apartment and also an apprehension towards me.  But hey, for all I know she had a cat in there or a naked man!  lol.

Anyway, my point is that if I was someone living in the building, or someone (eg. the person I am when I don't have my delivery hat on) that was not presumptively of lower income, but stereotypically of higher need/propensity to be "casing" the place, would she have acted to skeptically and with such reprehension?  My suspicion - however prejudiced it may be - is no she probably would not have.  Apprehensive of a stranger yes I'm sure, but if I came with a suit on and a handshake, versus an apron and an eye towards a tip, responses would be different.

Regardless though, this incident was not so much my main point as the way I am treated by other workers.  At pretty much every door thus far people have been friendly and good to me, offering both smiles and often enough tips.  But the big thing for me is the acceptance as a worker that I receive.  When I walk around my neighborhood - which is predominantly black - I am a white guy.  To the average person I am just another gentrifier.  I have to open my mouth and hope that my words sell me and allow me entry into "their club".  And my words do around here, hence my relationship with my bar and others.  However, always at first glimpse I am what I look like.

This is the same throughout the rest of my life.  When I walk into a high rise/rent building in midtown Manhattan when I'm not working, I look like I "should" live there (and yes, these people are pre-ju-dice). Door men treat me a certain way with lots of yes sirs.  And when I walk in to a upscale supermarket like where I now work I am treated the same, like just another wealthy enough white shopper.  But the minute I don that delivery apron and name tag, its like I am transformed into just another guy.  A guy that can be joked with, cursed with, and that other workers of similar stature can let their guard down with.

For me this is truly refreshing.  I do not feel comfortable in wealthier settings or with people of means and "proper" decor   I am much happier sitting around talking with people living real lives, with real struggles, that can just let themselves be free of some of those decorum things.  When I went to Binghamton and was sitting at a table of graduate students I had to be "educated", "intelligent", "on".  With "regular" people I can just be me.  I don't have to sell myself, I don't have to exude skill, competence  or confidence.  I can just relax.

The amazing thing about this is that as regular Tim Weldon I have to prove myself and work to get to this level of dialog with people, but as a delivery boy, I seem to innately already be there.  I can talk how I want, am talked to how they want, and talk about whatever any one of us wants.  There is also an inherent understanding and seeming bond through the unspoken struggle with power that is innately understood amongst "workers".  Statements about the people living there, the way they treat people, the way we are treated.  Mechanics, doormen, shop workers, janitors, whatever.  It is an ease of mentality and a welcome place of respite from the rest of the world that somehow thinks that because I am a white man that I should both be a certain way and be treated a certain way.  I like being a delivery boy, it lets me - if even just for a moment - be me with the people most like me.  

Individualizing Desperation

It is amazing how the human psyche works.  I am continually working and acting in cooperative and communal ways.  The work I do, the volunteer stuff, my Africa project, academically and intellectually, everything is team focused, egalitarian, and about working together.  But it is amazing how when times are tough and a longstanding at that, that your body and mind enter into a survival mode that is tough to work through sometimes.

My situation is well chronicled here on this website.  Lots of education and experience, a keen analytical capacity, hard working, whatever.. but no professional place to use it right now.  It is tough.  But beyond just the remorse of not being in the place I'd like to be, there is a desperation that comes with poverty and the basic human struggles for food and shelter.  What I'm referring to is a selfishness that comes about.  A selfishness that would drive the starving to snatch food out of a child's hand, or knock an old lady down to get to a loaf of bread.  Now obviously I am not there, and would like to think I could always overcome something like this.  But I can feel and see subtle moments of it seeping into my conscious awareness and attacking my subconscious on many levels.  The instinctive self medicating that so many of us do when we are hurting such as rushing to "comfort foods" (I ate a bunch of doughnuts yesterday, which I have no business eating with my allergies), or to liquor, or risky things, sports.  Things that make us feel rebellious  alive, viral, whatever.  We all do this stuff at some point.  Act out in individualistic ways that inject enzymes, adrenaline and such, into our world and brains that make us feel "better", if even for a moment.

What I am talking about right now though is an overlooking of others and even perhaps sometimes basic protocols of human interaction and attention based on immediate feelings of personal desperation.  Not taking the time to say thank you, somehow feeling it is implied, not responding to a call or text, not paying attention to someone else's efforts to help you with or care of their ideas and works in respect to what you are so desperately trying to do.  I am finding myself doing these things.  Just so desperately focused on trying to change my situation that I am pushing myself internally, working to market myself, survive myself, that I lose track of those surrounding me and the attention they deserve.

I have been speaking in "we" terms for years, and have really struggled focusing on the proverbial "I" - marketing myself.  But that is where I have to be right now.  My resume needs to make me sound like King Kong, my writing projects need to sound like I am the smartest thing ever, my PhD prospectus like I thought of all this shit myself.  At times I lose track of the care for others that has been the cornerstone of my adult existence   I've rescinded into home-life more and more, and am not paying attention to others in the way I am accustomed to.  Not saying thank you, not working with someone in a way that expresses a team effort....  sad.  I know I am better than this.  I know I will be back there some day.  But I am worried that some of these situations and ways of life may become bad habits.  Since I left Europe I have gone in the wrong direction.  I've been training myself in desperation ever since I got back to this country over three years ago.  I definitely don't like these desperation and individualistic habits I'm picking up here.  But what can you do?  I just want to get back to being stable - if such a thing ever existed.  

Occupying Decency

Occupy!!!!!  So yesterday was wonderful!  Back in the occupied saddle.   It was lovely.  I saw so many friends and acquaintances that I have sweat with and stood ground next to, even bled with.  I was at Occupy town square for the anniversary festivities.  The first occupy town square was at washington sq park, and this one was much better and bigger!  Not that the first one wasn't great.  But this one seemed more magnanimous and had a whole crew of people from all over the world there.  A huge convergence for the Occupy S17 anniversary.  I guess all I can say is that it was so nice to be back around these people that are all working towards such great causes, and focusing on treating people with such dignity and respect.  I don't ever have to convince anyone down at occupy about world views or my contempt for the political system. The minute I step out of Occupy I run across people where I am always seemingly taking a "radical" stance.  I am the crazy guy tearing apart the system, raising issues that others don't see or don't maybe care much about

But this is where I came to yesterday: I don't care what you think about occupy or its methods, but if the world was full of people with Occupy's values we would have no problems.  Caring, loving, patient (or at least devoutly trying to be), they just fundamentally view the world in a way that respects everyone and everything in it.  Imagine a world where everyone respected everyone?  Everything?  No really, imagine if every person you came across today treated you with dignity and respect from the depths of their and your core?  Imagine if governments, businesses, services, everything was designed by and for people that fundamentally respected each and every person and thing in the world above all else? Black, white, brown, male, female, both, young, old, religion, ethnicity, whatever.  Imagine if EVERYONE was like this and had a world view that was like this.  The world would be a TREMENDOUSLY different place.... a much better place I think. So say what you will about Occupy, but they are good people, with great values.  We would all be so lucky to be surrounded by such good people. 

Guns

So I've got to weigh in on this gun debate given the rash of large scale shootings that seem to litter the news every other day now.   At what point are we going to stop saying that these are individual actors acting singularly and in isolation?  There is just too many of them:

"More than 32,000 people in the US die from gunshot wounds yearly—five times the number of US servicemen and women killed in over a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 70,000 or so are wounded by guns presenting the troubling statistic of an average of 280 Americans shot daily."

America has a societal problem, and it's of epidemic proportions. We have a society that is rotting from the inside, and practically handing out the lethal tools to act out our angers and aggressions.  But, this issue is so much deep than the economy or guns, its about a country and a society in decline.

Lets just take this most recent rash of incidents.  A doctoral student reportedly to have schizophrenia loses it and kills/wounds over sixty people trying to watch a movie.  Then a white supremest kills another six "dark people" while they're trying to exercise their religious freedom and go to the equivalent of church on a Sunday.  Today, a man starts firing indiscriminately when someone tries to show up to evict him from his home?  Doesn't take much to put together pieces of a decrepit puzzle together here.

I have a cousin with schizophrenia that lives in Colorado.  The care is atrociousness.  He just can't really get any.  He hasn't been able to get on disability, can't keep and income or a home, has gone after his mother with a knife, and was found naked in over a foot of snow having walked up a mountain in the Rockies.  He thinks he is Jesus Christ, King James, and himself all together as if time was nonlinear.  But even with all that, he can't get proper care.  He's tried going to Minnesota and California but still can't sort it out.  I wonder what kind of care the Aurora shooter was getting?  I also wonder how much student debt he had (or that his relatives now have as it can roll over with death).  What do you think his job prospects were for when he finished school?  Or those around him that he cared about?

Fast forward to Wisconsin and we find a white supremacist trained by the army to kill, and perhaps even trained in the army to kill "colored" people.  A whole army base becomes notorious for issues with basically breeding white supremacist communities in the nineties, yet has anything been done about it?  And what about his life now?  He lost his home not to long ago, foreclosed on of course (at least he didn't shoot the people that came to kick him out - they were probably white).  How did this happen?  He couldn't stick in the army long enough for a pension, reportedly due to his racist tendencies (but maybe due to spending cuts). So he's thrown out to the wolves, but he's trained to kill, he should be fine, right?  So he struggles to make ends meet as a truck driver, ends up down on his luck.  Hate fostered deep within him, a scapegoat right around the corner, and what it seems he must have thought was nothing to lose.

Now what about Texas today?  "You aren't gonna evict me from my house!"  I can just hear him yelling out the window.  How do you think he felt about his luck?  About his prospects for the future?  What do you think his socio-economic situation was?  I'm pretty willing to bet he wasn't so close to the 1% (despite apparently living on George Bush Blvd).

It's pretty obvious here people.  What we have is a society in decline and disrepair.  Disparity of incomes have sky rocketed over the last several decades, poverty is rampant - 15% of the population, almost 50 million people (most of which are children).  Unemployment nationally is above 15% when you include everyone not working that  wants to, but some places like California have unemployment rates over 20%.  All these numbers are pretty similar to the numbers of people that have no health care.  Sadly, these are not all the same people in each of these statistics.  House after house is being foreclosed upon, job after job is being shed, a drought stricken heartland is collapsing while the government subsidizes making fuel out of corn to feed our car addiction, our inner cities are seeing rising poverty levels, epidemic crimes statistics, brutal police repression, and overflowing prisons, while everywhere is seeing shrinking service programs for the needy and plummeting education budgets.  Yet our "leaders" go on vacation while their approval ratings have flirted with single digits.  And lets not even get started on 20% of our GDP going to servicing a national debt mostly owed to China and various middle eastern enclaves that we claim we need to defend ourselves from, or on the walls we are putting up around our boarders, or definitely on the rich sitting on their verandas buying political power.

This disaster is of course all happening while we are bombarded with useless distractions throughout our daily existence.  Billboards pollute our eyes with visions of uselessness, TV's fill our ears with aimless chatter of "real" world scenarios that none of us will ever live, medications "alleviate" joint pain only to cause, dry mouth, headaches, runny noses, occasional aches and pains, impotency, possible cardiac arrests, insanity, and in "a very small percentage of test cases" death.  Advertisements for giant manly trucks help dry up the Midwest, toys, clothes, bags, TV's, video games, cars, boats, whatever!  We don't need them all, but our whole lives have become about obtaining them all - consuming them.  The message is all sitting there directly in front of us.  Obtain everything, you need it.  It will help distract you from all the things that suck about the world we live in.

But we don't seem to be able to put two and two together.  To recognize that we have created a cycle of disrepair and disrepute.  This sordid society is eating itself from within, and giving itself the tools to do it more quickly - guns.

Personally, I think a gun is too much power for one person to hold in there hands at one time.  I don't want to have the power to so easily kill in my hands.  A simple twitch of a finger and you're dead.  Not for me.  But I also, who am I to tell others what to do and how to think?  I can only lead by example and express my views with little or no expectations.  So, I'm not going to tell you not to have your guns, but I am going to tell you that you must live with the repercussions of a society foundationally infused with them.  In a perfect world guns could exist, no one would use them.  But we don't live in utopia.  We live in the the real world, and that world is falling apart.  People are desperate, they want, they need, and they can't have - they just simply don't have the means, and it is becoming entrenched.  As a society we are no longer moving up the class ladder in ways we did in the past.  Real wages have been dropping for decades, yet we've learned to live with the expectations of a society built decades ago on different parameters and with different rules.  We have become full of desperate, hungry, angry, disenfranchised people and are having problems with it.  But you give all those people access to guns, and you've got a massacre.  Just like in Aurora, Wisconsin, Texas, and every major city in the US everyday. 
And this is the saddest thing about the society we've created.  There was on average 280 people shot today in America.  But we only heard about seven of them.  This shit happens EVERY day, all the time, yet we do nothing.  70,000 people a year don't act alone.  They are not isolated individuals.  They are a large part of a society that glorifies guns and criminality, and then gives people every reason and desperate desire to resort to crime, anger, and despair during the last desperate moments of their struggles.

Yes, I AM for much stricter gun control, draconian control actually given the way our society is today.  And maybe it wouldn't always have to be like that.  Maybe someday we could live in a society without the desperation and hopelessness that we see more and more today.  A society that's taken the desire to kill away from people.  If the Aurora killer had proper medical care and didn't think he had to get an advanced degree he couldn't pay for to get a job he believed he had to have to be able to survive, would we still be in this place today?  Would I still be awake writing this crap?  Maybe, because we'd also have to stop creating killer after killer in the name of controlling oil wealth and mineral rights across the world with desperate "volunteers" from our failed education and economic systems.  These issues are so big, so intertwined and never ending.  What the biggest thing I'm for is a country that starts realizing that WE are the problem.  Yes, us, our country, our society, and our choices are creating the images and society we see in the news and the individuals that perpetrate this news.  Is individual choice and culture so different in England where they have 58 something gun murders a year?  Or what about in Germany where the police shoot 85 bullets PER YEAR IN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY!!?!  In America we can drop that on one "perp" in one night.

Our society is sick.  It is sick at it's core.  And just as it is rotting away from the inside, we must heal it from the inside.  We have to focus on the sick and gangrenous parts: the unemployed, the destitute, the impoverished, the uninsured, the indebted, the marginalized, the hopeless.  Because they are in fact our brightest asset, the part of America with the biggest up side, the most talent and aspiration left unfulfilled.  Now of course there are a lot of different philosophies on how to do this.  But I can assure you that if we don't start there with every ounce of our efforts, it doesn't mater what we do with taxes, marriage equality, abortion rights, or even guns, we'll go straight downhill no matter what - just like we are right now.  The problem that we're having within all this though, is that we're neither controlling our anger and despair, or what we do with that anger when we are consumed by it.  Until we can figure out how to support and provide for our entire society, we can't allow people the means to so easily take others with them to the deepest depths of their despair.

 

Oh, and that cop that got shot today, yeah, he had a gun on him - didn't help him much though did it?

Competing to Love

Why does helping people have to be competitive?  Why is it that I want to get a job helping people so badly, but can't?  I want to work on alleviating poverty, I want to work on breaking down ethnic, racial, and gender barriers, I want to work on providing sustainable ways for the nearly 1 billion undernourished people in the world to be able to have food.  I want to work towards every individual in the world being able to achieve  human security, dignity.  I want to work on real, true democracy, so that the masses of the world can have real say in their lives.  And I want to work on this 80-90 hours a week.  But I can't.  I mean not for real.  I can do things on the side, I can Occupy, I can volunteer, I can apply for jobs, I can try to network or meander my way into these industries, and hopefully one day get a job.  One day.  But then if I get that job, who doesn't get it?  It's just like all the other jobs I've applied for and haven't gotten.  One job, hundreds of applicants who all want to work in an industry or on a project that matters to them and the world that they believe in.  But only one gets it.  Only one person gets to legitimately help the world in that way on that day.  The rest of us are left trying to find ways to do things in our spare time, unprofessionally, until the next application goes unsuccessfully fulfilled between waitress shifts, nanny gigs, and temp jobs to pay rent.

Obviously, this is the job market.  It is the same job market for anything and any industry.  Whether it be finance, advertising, non-profit, academia, whatever, there is a competitive market centered around making money to support one's self.  But hey, I've done things to strengthen my chances.  I have skills, I have experience, I am intelligent; just like everyone else.  Yet, I don't seem to be able to win these job competitions.  (To bad we couldn't just have a race to see who gets a job, I'd be all set then!).  But they're not. They're based on a fine tooth comb of your life, but without the life.  More on what some person sitting behind a desk thinks about your life on one piece of paper, about their company's interests, and all of that filtered through the lens of their's and society's prejudices and presumptions.  Because I moved around a lot in my 20's does it mean I will now?  Gaps in employment must mean I was just slacking off rather than couldn't find work right?  And what is to say that those "non-traditional" life moments don't add to a person?  Or that I packed a bag and went to Sierra Leone to fill that time?  Oh, wait, that looks flippant, unstable.  Being able to do anything anywhere isn't as desirable as being able to sit and role over on demand.

But it is not just me, there are also of course issues about the organizations' funding, their priorities, and whether they've been able to dredge up enough capital from the netherworld to be able get shit done.  It doesn't matter whether I can do the job or not.  It doesn't even matter that we all can do the job, or that there are too many candidates and not enough jobs out there.  What matters is that we are competing against each other to be nice to each other.  People are trying to help people, trying to put in hard work, and they can't - not on a real level.  Not in a way that allows them to sustain their own lives.  Our society has taken being nice - an inherently cooperative emotion and action, perhaps the quintessentially positive human trait - and turned it into something aggressive, commodified, and surrounded by competitive negativity.     

This is frankly just a horrible way to structure society.  Skilled compassionate people with no real and sustainable outlet for that desire.  I have skills damn it!  We all have skills!  But they are not skills that somehow mesh with or fit into this system that requires things to be big money makers.  I don't want to compete to help you.  Why don't we do it together, or divide up our efforts and help more?  No.... let's make it competitive!  Here's a vision for you: what could be worse than sitting back and watching an old lady trying to cross the street and needing help.  Two people come up to offer help to her, yet rather than working together, they turn on each other and start fighting over who gets to help her.  They don't both to take one arm and work together, or have one stop traffic and the other take her arm, instead they compete against each other and end up fighting amongst themselves.  This is where our society is today in terms of humanitarianism; we're brawling in the street over who can help the old lady across while we ourselves become a spectacle, rolling around on the ground in a fit of flailing arms and legs.  Of course the elderly woman continues to cross on her own because she's got stuff to do, until:  Smack!!  A truck comes along (whose driver is working a double to make rent and hasn't taken a break).  The two people keep fighting of course, as if the train wreck next to them isn't happening.  So sad.  We shouldn't have to compete to help people.  Organizations shouldn't have to compete for money to help people.  Nor should people have to compete for jobs for it either.  Utopian yes, but we should just be able to to be nice to each other and sustain some semblance of a life around it. 


      

Transformation Within?

Written 4/3/2012

I really hope not!  So here I am. catching myself in this fundraising world starting to think in fundraising terms, staring to frame things in "whether people will give money or not":  "great conversation, they didn't know us yet and weren't ready, but they'll give in the future."  Sigh....  It feels like a dark day.

I've become that guy.  Or am capable of being that guy as I have to.  It is really interesting in thinking about it all in the context of time and the transformation of the self (or at least within one's self).  Here I am in the beginning of this job (read the recent  posts) complaining about and analyzing the position and the culture at this organization, and now here I am, becoming indoctrinated within the same framework.  Thinking about contributions, about getting donors.  I mean it would be virtually impossible not to.  My livelihood right now depends on it.  If I don't raise money, I am gone.  I was one day away this weekend from being done.  I have no choice but to fall within the lines (or confines) of this cultural paradigm.  It is truly sad.  But this is exactly what we as a society are required to do everyday, and in every job.  There are corporate cultures, certain ways of doing things, and requirements that we all must adhere to should we wish to maintain our places within the social order and the working world's order.  And it truly is sad.  Not that we become a part of a culture or a part of something semi-uniform.  That in many ways is positive and very inclusive.  It gives a sense of belonging to many people in many settings, even work.  

My issue with it all is that this is what American culture has seemingly become about: work.  We work as many hours as any country out there and our jobs have become how we mostly define ourselves.  What is the standard question most people ask when they first meet someone?  "So what do you do?"  Who is proud to say, "I'm unemployed?", "I'm in between jobs?", "I just got out of school and am still looking for work?"  Fact of the matter is that we for the most part have started to define ourselves by what we are professionally.  Not what we do when we are at home or out in our free time.  We are our jobs.  If that isn't the case, next time someone asks you what you do, say: "I run and hike when I'm not reading ancient Chinese philosophy."  See, you can't say you're a runner, because then people think you're doing it professionally, and if you said I'm a reader of ancient Chinese philosophy they'll likely ask, "wow, how do you get paid to do that?  Are you a professor?"

Fact is our minds gravitate to work and jobs.  It is how our society has taught us to define ourselves in so many ways.  So that is my dilemma.  Am I now becoming a fundraiser?  Not an occupier, not a runner, not and academic?  Just an organizer, or more aptly a fundraiser?  I'd like to think of myself as a lot of other things and perhaps lastly as a fundraiser - and in fact do.  But it seems that my thoughts are perhaps starting at times to betray me.  When you start seeing people you speak to on the phone as per their capacity to give money, you are a fundraiser, even if just in that singular moment.  Funny how we transform as human beings: with the ebbs and flows of our lives and our social scenarios.  This shows how fickle culture can be on a daily basis.  Whether it is the horizontalism in Occupy, hierarchical fundraising in a political party, or the profit maximizing push of a corporate entity; all are reasons why we need to change our whole social and economic structure.  The world we are currently living is completely corporatized and privatized.  We have to change how we view our worlds, and our lives within them.  We need different motivations, different pathways, and different outcomes to strive for.  We have to change the system.  It is the only way to change our reliance and adherence to these disingenuous social norms, to change our reliance on believing that this is the only way life can be.  Another world is possible. 

Occupying

So I feel like it is time for this blog to actually get used again.  But the Africa stuff has been going so slowly that I think it is time to just jump in and do some writing about life, its peculiarities, and revolution.  During the last five months I have been Occupying.  Frankly, this post is not where I really want to get into the whole of the last five months.  Rather I'm thinking I'll pick up as life is today, and fill in the holes as it all goes.

I'll pick up where I sit right now.  I am in Brooklyn, Bedford-Stuyvesant.  I just had an incredibly interesting evening chatting with a slightly staggered African American gentleman I met at the liquor store.  He was talking to the shop keeper about love, how it existed and why he had it for all people.  This is of course a conversation I had no trouble running headlong into!!  Got my cheap bottle of rum and took the conversation outside - stop and frisk, race relations, whatever.  I love the neighborhood.  I'm not really living there per say.  My girlfriend does.  I'm still wholly about occupation it seems, and I occupy three different places at any given day of the week.  Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, Glenwood Queens, or the West Village in Manhattan.  The park is gone, no more sleeping there for me.  Now its about surviving in whatever way we can on our own.

I've just started a job.  This is where I've decided I really needed to start writing here again.  I am working for a relatively obscure political party that focuses on progressive issues and campaigns topush legislation through on these issues (raising the minimum wage, campaign finance reform, over turning corporate personhood, anti-fracking, etc).  The shock and awe of life back in the "real world" has been amazing.  But not how you'd think it would be.  One of the beauties of Occupy has been its horizontal structure.  Everyone has an equal voice.  Conversation is dignified and egalitarian (for the most part).  People wait their turn, use non verbal communication to engage in the conversation while still not being intrusive.  On the whole, everyone is equal.

Now though, I work in the "real world", where corporate structures and hierarchical forms of doing things reign.  It is truly eye opening.  To think that this was the way that things seemed normal to me 6 months ago.   To have a boss, a chain of command, a pecking order, egos fixated on seniority, and a staff of "arms lengths" type.  I feel like I'm in a reverse culture shock like when I came back to the US for the first time after living in Prague for two years.  It's like everything that seemed so innately normal has suddenly been flipped upside down.  That world seems so ridiculous now.  To think that we have these structures in society that completely and purposely segregate us.  Completely make some voices so much more important than others.  We sit there and act as if this is about merit, about hard work; but there are so many factors - history, education, socio-economics, etc - that dictate these relationships in a way that occupy has completely flipped on its head.  I mean, why is it that everyone does not have an equal voice in a corporate structure?  Why is it that I - even as a white male - feel even more emboldened to speak i this setting?  I don't so much at Occupy, where I feel less emboldened to speak as I try to "step back" at times, in an effort for every gender, ethnicity, race, creed, socio-economic and education level to have more of a voice.  In the context of this conversation though, and having more voices involved and heard, I feel like more people should be speaking, more voices heard.   

At Occupy, everyone in theory (and even in attempt I feel), is on the same footing: the millionaire and the homeless, the black and the white, the male and the female, the employer and the employee.  Now granted, it does not always work smoothly.  People still feel innately ostracized at times, but at least at Occupy it is more about history and the effects of growing up in our current society, rather than the current day's fixed institutionalized structures and social patterns that reinforce those same old power dynamics so daily.

This is the work world we live in, fully hierarchical, wholly marginalizing, completely disheartening.  I miss Occupy already.  Not that I am gone, but at even the first taste of that "real world", I am still yearning for that other life.  A new occupation.  What an amazing culture shock.  I wish everyone could feel the empowerment of actually having a voice, only to have it suppressed again.

Forever and a day....

So it actually sees like it has been about that long since the last time I posted, and it has been a tough road to get here.  I ended up taking that job, but went through a lot of unpleasantries before and throughout the transition process.  I've moved, had some family issues, got a car, took the job, spent some time living in the woods, lost a few friends, and on the whole have caved in to some of the realities of the life that one seems to have to live to exist in America.  I must say that I have found a decent amount of difficulty living here in the area that I am - I just plainly do not fit in.  It is tough to spend pretty much a third of your life (almost the whole of the adult part) abroad, living in different cultures, seeing different ways of life.  Simply changing as a person.  I seem now to be half American and half alien. 

There are so many things done well and exemplary here in America, but also so many things that I do differently from people here.  My priorities are quite different as well.  I don't just want to get a job and settle into a life here.  I want to make a difference, I want the life I settle in to too mean something outside my little sphere.  I want to make people in the far reaching corners of the world's lives more fulfilling, give them more options.  Yes, there are of course people here interested in this type of stuff, but the contextualization of it all is so different.  And I will say this as well; living in America is taking away some of my principles, waning on my idealistic motives.  You can't survive living the life of an idealist here.  People on the whole will truly respect your passion, the things you want to do in life, the changes you want to make and people you want to help, but American society is so individualized and focused on the local self that there really is little place for the idealist.  Yes, NGO's, non-profits, etc, but I'm in one now and it is so systemically neutered that there is no way to truly bring about change, and certainly not on a large scale.

American culture is to me very limited, very closed.  I suppose this is culture anywhere though, it sees through its own eyes, colored by its own past, its own social context.  But American culture places American ideals, ways of life, and standards of living as the preeminent ones in the world.  An arrogance that only seems to be found in other current or former world powers.  If we are the best, why change?  Maybe tweak things, but why truly change?  The way I live my life, the goals I aspire to, they run against American cultural streams, and change itself runs against every cultural stream.

When you tell people you want to change a world they feel comfortable with, they can easily become cross with you, especially if you are unapologetic about your views/reasons and assertive - two things I tend to be.  Not that we are all the same in America, and that everyone is included in this, but a social system is just that, a system with main streams and separate outliers.  I am an outlier.  The last several months have shown this to me in even more vibrant colors than ever before.

So now I just put my head down, do my job, and hope/work towards another day when I can do what I believe we all should be doing; working towards true systemic change.  The world is neutering me, but I will not allow it to be permanent.  I will not allow it to take away my dreams or my goals.   

Moving...

Ahh...  where to begin.  I guess I can start by saying a lot of running around while struggling to find time to write it all down.  Since my last post I have done a wealth of things, including start writing several posts without finishing them up.  Thinking its better to just stick to the broader strokes. 

So I've had a number of meetings.  I won't get into them all, but Thursday I met with the Gateway to Entrepreneurial Tomorrows (GET).  GET's goal is to "help minorities and low income families in the Mid-Hudson Valley start their own businesses, thus giving impulse to the general economic growth of the region."  The meeting was both informative/helpful and also pretty annoying and frustrating.  They were very pesimistic.  I really almost got the impression that they would just simply be happy to have me not come back through their door, less work.  All they could see was what can't be done, why it wouldn't work.  And not in a constructive way, but in a nothing works way.  They also don't have the best reputation on the street...  That being said though, I started being a bit assertive about things and got past the cloudy exterior to some solid advice.

On Friday I met with the Director of Development for Putnam ARC a NGO located in Brewster, NY that works with people with disabilities.  This meeting was fabulous.  The perfect type of person to speak with, and interestingly, a Newburgh resident (Town of, not City) who had some really good thoughts everything.  She really helped formulate some solid directional ideas.

I met with some other community members, as well as government, religious, and business leaders.  There are some really great people out there, doing really great work.  There is also a lot of judgement and pessimism.  I find it very interesting to fell the differences when I - a respectably dressed white guy - walk into a room in Newburgh versus in Sierra Leone.  In Sierra Leone I stick out like the sun in a perfect blue sky, but not in a racially charged or prejudicial way, but more pragmatic.  In Newburgh, there is so much judgement.  Most everyone seems to size you up before you ever get in the door.  They seem to assume everything they need to know about you.  I mean, must come from a well to do upbringing?  I probably never struggled right?  I have no way of knowing or understanding what life is like there right? I must fit into a category no?  My how interesting it is the way people think.  But no matter... people can think what they want.  I know where I come from and what I want to do.  Some people will be supportive and others not!!

This stretch finished with going to a City Council meeting in Newburgh last night.  They are working on a new plan for real estate development.  I won't get into much now, it would deserve its own post.  The regular meeting seemed quite civil by local government standards.  The big event was the approval to auction 50 city owned properties off in April.  Very interesting to think about that on many levels.  I also met some more people there of course, and am quite happy with the network I am getting in to.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath ones feet..."     

Local Development

So on Wednesday night I met for nearly two hours with Ed Lynch the city of Newburgh's Director of Planning and Development.  It was quite a good conversation.  He is a former Peace Corps volunteer that has done a decent amount of work in South America (which immediately put us on the right page).  He most recently spent 17 years in a similar position in New Rochelle and seems to have turned that city in a positive direction in terms of crime, quality of life, and economics - this includes a 40 story Trump tower there.  When I was growing up, New Rochelle did not have a good reputation, yet it seems to now.  So if blanketed results are the measure of "success", he seems to have been successful in "New Ro".  I am not sure of the specifics of how it was done, and who flourished and/or was marginalized in the process, but he has a record of change. 

While Ed did have some very interesting thoughts and ideas regarding my work in Africa, we spent most of the time on Newburgh.  Just to put a few things out there, the city had a 25% tax increase in 2010, and will have anywhere from a 61-74% tax increase this year.  The city had to borrow millions of dollars from New York State just to pay the salaries for its workers for the end of 2010.  Also (and I heard this elsewhere), there is also discussion of dissolving the City of Newburgh entirely.  Yes, just shutting the whole thing down.  It would then have to be absorbed into the Town of Newburgh - which doesn't seem to be very interested in taking over this disaster.  There has been previous mismanagement of state and federal money's due to lack of manpower and maybe even incompetence to the point that some of this money may have to be given back.  Ten's of thousands of dollars of money being wasted on national searches for individual positions, and then local behind the scenes hirings from the old-boy network.  Corruption or the implication of it, seems to be either a common perception or an assumed undercurrent in everything.  There is no supermarket, there is no pharmacy, public transport is minuscule, the streets are dilapidated, the underground economy is rampant, yesterday saw 31 gang members indicted - including three on separate murder charges, and there is no money to do anything about any of it, never mind hope.  Suffice it to say, "Newburgh" gets worse every day...  I can't even fathom how a city like this can provide virtually no services to its citizens.  It is amazing.  

Maybe we should set up a plywood factory? :(

So what next?  The city has brought in new blood to try to right the ship.  Ed is among many new faces.  He claims that 60-70% of the department heads are new and they are trying to change both the culture of the administration and a gross history of financial mismanagement.  They mostly seem to be coming from successful areas in the lower Hudson Valley.  Ed, seems to me to be a person that has a good head on his shoulders and some quality experience to lean on.  Word on the streets about him though is quite skeptical (but then again, pretty much all the words on the street in Newburgh are skeptical).  He has been in office for seven months and it is claimed by some that the stances he seems to be taking don't necessarily back up some of my initial perceptions of him.  But everyone has a point and an agenda, and Ed's position is one of trying to balance all of these.  There are inherently going to be people that don't agree with what is done.  He is part of an institution, a bureaucratic and deeply ingrained developmental institution that resonates throughout the entire US and world socio-economic system.  I for one, as most readers here know, am interested in alternative ideas and new ways of thinking.  

As with anything, I am not going to jump in and use other's interpretations to run with. Time on the ground and local interaction is the only true to way to come to independent conclusion.  There is always a million ways to do things, and within them there is never a "right" answer.  So Newburgh, I will continue to learn all I can about you, your people, and your culture...  It is going to be a fun ride. 
 

The Heart of the Dilemma

I guess what it really all comes down to is that I am up against a seious dilemma. I came here to spend three months walking through the country learning, and looking for opportunities to help facilitate what people here want. I also wanted to raise awareness of life here in Sierra Leone and Africa in general. The last part I feel I have completely done at least for the people reading this.

As for the first part, I havn't walked anywhere. I havn't even taken my hammock out or set up my stove yet. This was going to be my way of meeting people and learning. If I don't get some of this in I will feel as though I would be coming home defeated, or somehow having not having fulfilled my purpose. As for the identifying opportunities, I have identified more than could possibly be feasible to work on now. So in this sense the trip is a smashing success.

The issue that makes all this a dilemma is that I have realized that there is little I can do from here under these current conditions. I have no funding, I have no resources to pull from, I do not have an established team here, and I do not have functional connectivity here to the information that could help me circumvent most of these issues. I am prepared to walk, not to make a business run and excel. My partners here think I should go back to the US early and set things up there, including funding. I see exactly where they are coming from. I have wanted to stay here and get things here set up. But realistically this could take months of unpredictabilty that I am both not prepared for and not so certain I would last through. The machines "should" come in January, right when I should leave.

So what do I do? The cost of an early trip home is a lot, hundreds of dollars that I would have to put on a credit card. And I still want to get some hiking in. I have to at least get up Mount Bintumani - the tallest mountain in West Africa. I also have the possibility of a grad student from UCONN that has been contemplating coming in mid December to join me on the hike - which at this point would be a very welcomed scenario. I am realizing that this would be a better excursoon with a partner to hike with. But the social scientist in me just liked the methodology of the single hiker walking into a village!! Reality.

So again, what do I do? If I leave early I will feel like I've cut myself and my trip short in some way. Almost like I've given up. But at the other end, I've learned so much, and actually can probably do more in the long run if I head back to the states and make some things happen there that will benefit things here. There also is the frustration deep down inside that I feel this was getting the best of me. Logic can make you feel like you're making a good decision, but the heart and the soul don't lie. What if I'm just trying to find a way out of this scenario right now?

I feel that I have made such a sacrafice to come here, even to the point of accepting in the back of my head that I may not come back. I have given a piece of me to be here to try to help people that say they want help and opportunities. But at the same time they do not seem willing to make simple changes or alterations, nevermind sacrifices, in their daily lives. I don't mean to sound like a martyr, but as David (a Brit expat that works here in a cushy position) came out of nowhere and said to Lindsay and I yesterday that he would NEVER do what we were doing here. Wouldn't even think about it for a second, NOT ONE (his emphasis). Yet I am here doing it, on my own, with just some cash in my pocket. Most people wouldn't do this, and I'm not doing it for myself, but for other people. I guess I'm just frustrated that these "other people" don't seem to appreciate it. I know, different cultures. But don't tell me you want help if you're not willing to partake.

Case in point: I said to myself this morning, I will ask them to get prices on the other bricks in the market and what we could charge for our bricks. I was very adament about the need for this and about the urgency I thought it had. I made a mental note, if they come back they are serious, if they don't then I should start thinking in different directions. It is 9 o'clock at night here, Kaps just got in. I asked him how his day was. He answered about random other things. Then I asked what he'd heard about brick prices. He gave me some blah blah story that didn't add up and kept changing. He'd talked to someone, but then was on the internet. He said something about talking to the machine company. No then it was the brick company he talked to, but he would find out more tomorrow. Oh, so you spoke with someone? So how much did they sell bricks for? Oh, well I blah blah blah... He didn't REALLY call anyone. And Yapo said he would call me later and let me know. I spoke to him at 12, and nothing since. Their entire tone and demeanor has changed since yesterday. Like they realized this was going to be hard. Why should I spend my day fighting with a computer virus, and all the other things life here is for an opotu, when the people here are not willing to change their daily agenda enough to help their helper? If I do all the work, how am I "helping". And if I'm not helping, what am I doing but telling?

So do I stay and see unpredictable projects through? Do I leave and go on my hike? Do I get an earlier flight and hit Mount Bintumani while I wait? No matter what happens I'll feel defeated unless I stay the whole time I'm supposed to. But sometimes it is in defeat that we find our path to victory...

"Rather than advance an inch it is better to retreat a yard... ...when to great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield." - Lao Zi

Why?

So yeah, it's amazing at how quickly things can turn. How just a few hours can be so completely educational and change the context and perception of things so quickly. The last two days have done that. I find myself right now asking the question: in a place where - to their credit - people can find happiness and contentment in any situation, is it really worth working to help them redefine their happiness? And ESPECIALLY if you're making sacrifices that they seem unwilling to make? Unmotivated to make? Or if you seem to be working harder for them than they are for themselves?

I so truly admire people here for their culture, they live a lifestyle I could only dream of living. The ease with which they go through their days, their perseverance in the face of conditions that we in the West have no concept of or interest in learning. They are good people with broad smiles and a friendliness that I have never seen. Why is it that I want to change that? What is it that I want to develop within them? I come here, I try to get them to work a certain way, I try to set things up in a way that may be more efficient to us, but that they are not comfortable with. Yes, it makes sense to me/us, but at what cost, and why? They want education, but - and forgive me for saying this - but is it just that they want education so that (in addition to feeding an unquenchable thirst for knowledge) they can get paid more for doing little? I guess I shouldn't apologize for saying that, because I admire a culture that truly appreciates a simpler life. We work so hard in the West, in fact putting it before living. They want nice things, and material items, but society goes deeper than that, it seems to value status more than these "things".

To come here as a business man is difficult. To come here as an aid worker I think must be easier on the head. I want to find a way to make people happier, but what if they already are? Building that track is really the one thing here that is deeply in my heart. Education is important, and I want to work on it and jobs, but only if people want it. The day that those 15 kids came to my house here and said hello, expressing their gratitude for my interest in building a track, was a day I'll never forget. So much hope mixed with so much humility. They just want to run, they want to enjoy it. I picture myself in the Garrison Union Free School gym in second grade, I couldn't read, but I could run around more cones than anyone. All the kids in my 1st and 2nd grade class could read. But not me. I could have shrunk into a corner, but I was the fastest kid in class. I gained my self worth from my ability as an athlete. It can never be substituted, not by a good grade, not even if I ever get a PhD. I learned to read on Spiderman comic books, and I learned the value of self through my legs. These kids, what else do they have?

When I first got here I was on a mission, asking everyone what they and people here wanted as they saw it. Jobs, and education. This is what they need as we see it. But the only reason they need those things is so that they can become more like us, and less like themselves. This desire is something that we have exported to them and which they would never know to even want, if we hadn't made them think it was all there was to live for. I wish I could live a simpler life like their's. One without having to know about computers, TV remotes, cars, and planes. One where I didn't have to spend decades in school just to hope to be competitive in a job search. There is no rat race here. The culture is completely different. No one will step all over everyone to get things. They will do what they need to to survive, they will do as little as they need to to have a higher status, they will thirst for knowledge and learning like nowhere else. It is so complicated and of no logical sense to our way of thinking. It could never possibly be summed up here. But it is a way of life that I COMPLETELY envy and would love to have, but one that given the life that I come from, I have no hope of ever having and can't ever really even hope to assimilate into...

Different world

So I wanted to touch on a few things from yesterday's meeting that illuminate business here. Obviously it was difficult to carry on a meeting with one person, and the oldest most senior one, sleeping. More important though were the differences in his business ideology and that of the others as well.

Firstly, there was a lot of respect for the laborers - hard work. Obviously in Western business culture education, experience, and management are valued more wage wise. Kevin showed a lot of respect for diggers, and brick carriers, and Kaps didn't think a supervisor should be paid more than the machine operator. This is refreshing to see as we in the West seem to have lost sight of the value of manual labor in our lives. Kaps actually didn't even really see the value of a supervisor. "Why should you pay someone to just stand around and watch everyone?" There is a logical sense to that statement. But it was as if the concept of a site supervisor made no sense. I had to spend a good 10 minutes explaining why a supervisor would be needed. There would be 17 workers to supervise on site with only one machine running, and this would increase with more machines. Digging, sieving, mixing, moving, operating the machine, dealing with supplies, curing bricks, loading/unloading, shipping, a cook for lunch, etc. It is not a simple process, and someone needs to know how to do it all, they need to know all about bricks, they need to be able to organize it all in their head, and to motivate people to work at a high level. Every minute we would not be producing is 4 bricks missed. A lag here, a lag there, mixed soil isn't ready, whatever, and production would be way down. It all has to run fluidly. But having a person to make all this function smoothly didn't make a whole lot of sense to him.

He also wanted to cut out workers. The company that makes these machines has a specific tried and tested method for producing the maximum number of bricks. They work in over 50 countries, and have a brand to uphold. They WANT anyone producing there products to be giving them a good name. Kaps had little interest in their well tested staffing, he wanted to just cut down workers. Hire less pay more. I started to get feelings of hierarchical thinking, jealousy perhaps at the wages. There are no salaries yet for board members, only workers... He just didn't seem to like anything he was hearing. He thought we were going to pay to much. He wanted to pay 5000 Leone a day - $1.25. According to Yapo, minimum wage is 15000. Now I know everyone isn't paying that, and there does seem to be a lot of variance in "minimum wage" concepts here, but I want to do things legally. I also wanted to pay taxes, and into workers social security funds, etc. This saw apprehension from him for the most part.

He also struggled with the concept and way of running a business. He wanted to be able to give away, or sell bricks below cost. I said, we can't do that, we can only give from excess revenues (profits). We can use our donations in terms of bricks if we wish, but we can't be a brick charity. It was as if the entire concept of running a business to make more than we spend - and to do it meticulously - was a completely foreign concept.

This is going to be a tricky situation, we have to be able to be sustainable. And our costs after this exercise may not even make the project feasible. I will have to crunch the numbers today if a computer is functional. But Kaps didn't think we could charge for each brick what we would need to cover our costs of production. That is partially because he seemed to value these specialty bricks little more than hand made clay bricks. Yapo saw it completely differently and thought we could charge a premium. But it is a struggle amongst them.

The result today though is that we will have to stall signing any kind of agreement and look much more directly into the numbers and what the market will bear. I knew it!! But I just couldn't get them all to see the value of making a list and sitting down and going through every number. For two and a half weeks I have been trying to get the list I gave them filled out with costs, and to all sit down, but nothing. In today's meeting, we started to talk about the equipment and still had no figures. Yapo made one call, left for maybe 15-20 minutes, and came back with a list!?!? Over two weeks of telling me it was done, was being done, some things weren't here in Makeni, blah, blah, blah, and then in 20 minutes they get one done. This is the way it is here, this is what we're up against... :-/

Ugh

What a day. So after two weeks of trying (and the day before we should go back to the council and probably sign the MOU) we finally all got together for a costing meeting. Not what I had hoped for. 9am start was 10, not a problem at all... But the palm wine came out right away and Kaps was head down asleep by 10:45. I was very disappointed.

We have an opportunity here for a serious endeavor to help a lot of people and it just flat out didn't seem to be of much interest to him. Fair enough if it was at 2pm but barely 45 minutes into it?! And not just that part, he was in and out in general, there was a disconnect there.

I of course want/need to take a step back and think culturally about how it was handled and how I lead it all. I went into business manager mode and was trying to hash out decisions - but decisions amongst us all, not by me but them telling me the best way forward. I felt like the disconnect was more between old school Kaps and new school Yapo, who I tended to side with.

I've made mistakes with cultural scenarios before. I know what they look like. But there were four people there, Yapo was completely game, and Kevin soldiered on giving good input. Kaps just didn't seem to like where it was going, or maybe that he was not the man in charge. Even if he didn't like where it was, he was asleep at the table before we got anywhere. And even once we did, he was half obstructionist, half confrontational, half in and out of sleep. I know things are different here, life functions differently, and I like that part of it all. But you could see desire in the others.

After about two and a half hours they were all lower in their chairs, tired of talking about the cost of a trowel and a laborer's wage. This seemed more than what they are used to, a full on planning meeting of this type, 100% on, no long introductions, no real pleasantries in the beginning, just down to work, 100% focused. Like I said though Yapo and Kevin managed, Kaps... not so much.

The meeting itself was very helpful though. All along they have been costing in their heads and telling me about it, and despite knowing better, I listened to it. But with it on paper there is no faking it. A wise man I know regularly says: liars figure, but figures never lie!! And our figures are not ideal at this point. I have to recheck the concrete needed, but the cost of it as we have it written now, may be debilitating. We would have to charge a lot for these bricks.

You know, I knew better than to go along with it all, especially when the chairman said he couldn't get for profit companies to come in and do it. I knew right then... Why not? Why wouldn't they do it? But I listened and I figured it all in. Maybe it can work, but not as they've been telling me.

There was more to it all, more on a cultural level with the meeting, but enough for now. Gonna close the chapter on the day. Start again tomorrow... Disappointed that Africa makes more sense to me now...

Back to Work - Africa style

So today got a late start due to rain, seems they use it a bit like a snow delay in the US (or so the fable goes). It certainly seemed to work today. I've been trying to get some concrete answers. Actually, I'm trying to get some concrete output. That's where Africa style is still waiting to meet up with me. I keep hearing wonderful things, but I need results. The chairman (Eric) is having us write the memorandum of understanding (mou), which is great. We define the written agreement.

There seem to be structural issues with the productivity of the council though. Eric is an elected official and in charge, but the administrators and the head admin are employees who apparently have no thoughts of either working or being let go. They are rarely at the office, nevermind working. The head admin has been suspended once already. Not that the top helps; to meet with Eric himself today we had to go to his house after waiting an hour at the office (12:30-1:30).

This is not to take anything away from Eric, he is very much in tune with things and has a very good mind for development. One of my favorite quotations though is "it is not the consciousness of men that creates their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." How can one function outside of the only world they know? My pathway must lie in trying to navigate both his and my worlds...

We talked about some other very good ideas. And my crew here came up with some other one's following the meeting. More on that in time. But the goal is to get the MOU and copies of the proposals for the the brick machines and diaspora donation network asap. From there we can take these documents to possible donors here and in the US. We are looking to approach other NGOs and the Ministry of Finance here for support. It would be great to get the bricks up and running on funds from here. We will see.

I want to give this process two weeks. Then I aim to get out onto the trails, delegate the ground work to the team here, and get back to learning. I'll always be within just a few hours of Makeni if need be, and I need to get the trip back to where it intended to be. The more I see, the more ideas we'll all have to work with!!

Making a list and checking it twice

So this past week I have been working to set up a basic costing sheet for this brick making endeavor. This is coupled with the one for the track that I asked for two weeks ago. Nothing is materializing.

Business is done here in one's head. They aren't using excel or computer based programs to calculate things. There are no physical lists. Paper is a luxury of sorts, and the concept of planning past today seems a foreign concept. Most people simply live day to day. Sustenance, something to do, etc, and it seems business is; build it and figure out what else you need while you build it. And this works for them, they know how to build the typical things here that they need and use without much planning.

I was trying to explain the concept of a business protocol. A systemic way to plan and cost out a possible or existing project. Maybe just a sheet that had to be filled in for each plan or month of work. It seemed tough to grasp in that conversation. I have three people that should have filled in the list I gave them. And I received nothing from them.

It seems that this is going to have to be a point of emphasis here, to teach basic business practices. There is so much to be done here. So much training that is needed. Add general business practices training to the list!! "How to organize, plan, and carryout a business project."

Tolerance

I find it amazing here how tolerant people are of others. I'm sure the majority of the world doesn't think they can learn much from Africa, but I tell you one thing they can definitely learn from Sierra Leone: how to get along with other religions. I don't have a full grasp of it all yet as language and an overly protectively family keep a bit of a shelter over me. But to see Muslims and Christians living in such harmony is amazing. America and its ground zero debate should pay attention.

There is no animosity between them, they exist together, happily. Christian kids go to Islamic funded schools and vice versa. They all follow state curriculum which gives the basics, but then allows for one religious studies class. This takes many forms. But you can have schools with Arabic, and Islamic based religious studies, just as Christian ones, and ones that take a more middle ground. I've been told by more than one person of a family member changing religion, and there is no animosity, parents bless it - sighting individual choice.

And it is not like religion is not big here. It is EVERYTHING!! The mosque calls to prayer every morning at 5. The whole household here is up at 6 reciting prayers together. They do this every night before going to sleep as well. I am a bit disappointed that I haven't spent as much time with an Islamic family, but then again everything is open and not really labeled, I talk to Muslims everyday. It is a nice feeling to see two groups of people with such a larger history of hate and contention not only getting along, but being best friends, family members, whatever.

I wish more people would come and see it. Where are my academic friends?! Send your research assistants!! Have them learn how to teach us in the West and the Middle East what tolerance is!!

Watch out for the duck!

So much less productive day in terms of school visits, but productive in life learning!! So up and out, on the bikes, but almost to first school... Flat tire. Got to there and then Lindsay and the local coordinator left and headed to the next school (where she was again the first white person). JMK, the director went to go fix the tire, and I sat there - random white guy sitting on a wooden chair in front of the school with class and lunch breaks going on around. I sat there writing in my journal about feeling like an exhibit at the museum...

Tire haunted us as we tried to move on, but ended up back in Samaya and spent two hours as the whole village fixed the flat. It was so sureal. There sit Lindsay and I, with women and children all around, half watching us and half watching the group of men/boys working on the tire. They wouldn't let us help, so we sat... half there, half untouchable. Seemed quite odd indeed. Ended up it took too long to change, so we aborted the school hopping and headed back to Makeni with a brief stop back in Kamakwie for a few things. The few things of course were about 250 pounds of rice, a couple chairs, a table, some wood, three goats just stuffed in the back, and four chickens with their legs all tied together... Both Lindsay and I were terrified at the animal scenario. But animals here are not treated with a great deal of compassion, different world...

Then on the way back we hit a goat... and I learned it is all far more complex than that!! The goat was already hurt, broken leg of some sort. So as the other's moved it didn't. We tried to stop but got it somewhere - I couldn't tell how, but it was still alive. JMK and the owner exchanged contact info and on we went.

So here is the system: if you hit and kill a goat it is 100,000 Le for the driver to pay ($25). That is a lot of money here - 20 days pay for the average worker. The driver is always seen as at fault rather than the animal. But there are of course different values for different animals. The hurt goat would be about 70k. A sheep is more than the goat as it has better meat and some intriguing superstitious value . A chicken is worth about 50. A dog is worth nothing, nor is a cat - no food value. But the most important one of all not to hit is a duck! Yes, I've been wondering why Kap's family has a duck in the back yard (with no water), and that I see ducks all over here.  Intriguing!! Lol.  The duck as the most sacred animal....

First White Men Ever...

Four people, two motorcycles, four chickens, a goat, 6 schools (if they could qualify as that), over twenty villages, and a whole lot of smiles...

So we started the day in Kamakwie. Its the second largest city/town in Bombali District. I am tagging along with the aid group Street child/hanci. This part of their program is to bring proper schools to the remotest of remotest places in Sierra Leone. And when I say remote, I mean remote. Firstly, we made the 55 mile journey from Makeni in 3 hours yesterday by 4x4. Today we got up and out at 8.30. We jumped on a couple of Honda enduro motorcycles and got after it. Probably 45 minutes later we came to a river with no bridge, and the ferry was out. So we put the two bikes and the four of us in a wooden canoe (plus an oarsmen) and went on upsteam and then across and back down. Yes, not the safest or sturdiest way to cross a river.

Then we proceeded to get back on the bikes and spent the next 6 hours driving through villages and stopping at schools. Of course, a school in these areas is nothing of the sort. An open thatched hut with benches (if they're lucky) and a blackboard. Actually, one school was just benches under a tree.

It was really sad to see. The kids want to learn, the teachers volunteer time in exchange for food, and there are no books or supplies, but they show up and they try to learn things. But then what?? The secondary school is ten miles away via mere paths through the woods. No one has transportation, no one has a job. How do they enter into modern society with no money? How do they get money living in an unconnected society where the only profession is subsistence farming? There is then no education really, and no way to make money to get out even if they wanted to. I was at a loss. I have no logical/practical solution, or possibility.

It was an incredible day though. In two villages Lindsay (the Scottish aid worker I'm tagging along with) and I were the FIRST white people to be in that village, EVER!!! Possibly other villages as well, but those told us that we were. We were in and around Samaya, isolated... It is also custom here to give a gift of appreciation when strangers or important people come to the village. Of the six schools we visited we were given four chickens and A GOAT!! Imagine the look of intrigued surprise that developed on my face when the head master sent all the boys running. My first thought was of the track and that a couple had good form!! Then I realized they were all chasing a goat, and I knew it right then they were going to give it to us. Amazing. Luckily we didn't have to get it back on our bikes. I can't say the same for the chickens. They tied the legs together and just hung them upside down - alive - on the handle bars... and off we went!!

So hear I am, on the back of an enduro motorcycle, flying down an overgrown path in the ruralist of ruralist areas of Africa with a chicken on the side of each handle bar!! Lol. Priceless.

Anyway, very educational day, but also VERY tiring. Problem is that one day is now going to be two as we're headed back out tomorrow. Yapo has set up a meeting with the regional people from the Ministry of Finance for Saturday about funding our little venture here. Huge deal, and we need to have literature for them. I NEED Friday to put it together, but if we now come back Friday morning... :-/ Could be tough...

Anyway, rewarding day... Again tomorrow!!

Culture Clash

So picture this.. Me.. Eating canned celery salad with pasta and drinking orange soda!! So this is part of what I had for dinner tonight. Not everyone, just myself and the other opotu (whitey). You see in Sierra Leone, eating local foods cooked in local ways is not putting out your best. Where we put out our finest china and cook something nice, they break out the canned goods. After all, they are much more difficult to get than rice and cassava. They are imported, they cost more, and you must have more money or a higher status to have them. And of course it is rude not to eat and drink it. So here I am - allergy boy - trying to stave of malaria and other tropical beasts through eastern medicinal meditation, exercise, a healthy fresh diet, and strengthening my immune system eating away!! Fanta and canned food, because that's how we do!! Lol.

I just find it amusing how things go as they do. Rituals and customs make both sides do things they may not want to do, and without ever even asking about whether it is desired. Culture!! Oh, and they put on the generator as well.. In all seriousness, we humans are all they same. We all want to show ourselves in a good light and deep down inside we all want to be nice to people, to make them happy and feel welcome... Thanks, it worked tonight!!

Ok, one other tid bit... We spent three hours to drive 55 miles this afternoon. That is less distance than driving from suburbia Poughkeepsie to NYC. Imagine if that commute to work took 3 hours bouncing around in a 4x4. And this road is THE MAIN ROAD from Makeni north to Guinei. An international road!! 87 miles from Makeni to Guinei takes 6 hours. !?!? How does an economy flourish if people can't sell their goods 30 miles away and companies can't export with ease? Somehow... we've gotta get a real road built here... ;-/