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Published: November 9th 2010
“Why is the black man at the bottom of the world?
Whoa right? This is the question I was asked independently from two of our local helpers. It was really sudden for me too. I would need to walk to a certain spot on our survey grid to set up or fix a measuring station so I ask one of the guys to come along and help. Then it’s just the two of us walking the trail through the grass. We would introduce ourselves to the other, ask “where do you live?” then they’d follow up with “Why is the black man poorer than all others.”
They seemed to expect a short and quick answer and we didn’t have much time so I managed to come up with something. One guy remained unconvinced and the other thought that my idea was a gift from God (Ghana is a mostly Christian country by the way). I had a lot of trouble framing my answer and did poorly in one case. I had never really considered poverty along racial lines before. It is interesting that they would both ask this question in the same way. They must believe or been taught
that their poverty is somehow related to being black. I’ve always thought that a nation’s prosperity was a reflection of a nation’s geography, culture, history, and plain old luck. I think a lot of it has to do with positive feedback loops as well; a society reaches a certain level of prosperity and suddenly its economic development speeds up. I never took any world geography or economics classes while at University so maybe I’m off base. Maybe Africa is experiencing neo-mercantilism driven by “evil” multinational corporations. Maybe foreign powers are inciting conflict to make African governments desperate for foreign investment, like the war between Iran and Iraq in the eighties. What do YOU think?
Cell phones, everyone here has cell phones, it's amazing. We were talking with a poor farmer in the country and asking permission to leave some equipment on his field collecting data and he gave us his cell number. Both of them. He had no toilet or electricity but two cell phones. He also had two wives and seven kids. He was a pretty nice guy actually, we paid him to watch our gear. While I was in his field I saw coca plants for the
first time. I was pretty tempted to taste it, it looked ripe. He was watching pretty closely though so I think he might have been upset if I started damaging his crops. Whoops, did I say coca, I meant cocoa, I always get those two mixed up.
Okay this entry was pretty heavy; the next one will be lighter and with more pictures. Ask me any questions and I’ll try to write a little about it.
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Your posts sets a very interesting question that in my opinion should be left open! As for me dividing people by the color of their skin is to some extent connected with the attitude to these people and maybe this attitude has mainly historical roots! Why should we ignore someone just because he/she is black or yellow or white? That is not so important and I have always asked myself why we lose our time paying too much attention to something like that??