Wednesday 27 March 2013

to clarify several things and a little bit more.


Brothers and sisters!!


Due to the fact that i have received several private complains (they weren´t really hard though...), I will try to explain couple of things: Bankia, which it is a conglomerate of several small banks, became famous because has millions of euros in debt. So i am not pleased either, that Silo Gambasse (the NGO) has the bank account there. However, i thinks it is just a inheritance of the past, of having an account in one of the little banks i mentioned above. Therefore, i propose other options: you can transfer it to my account of the coop bank (more ethic than bankia surely!); you can transfer it via Western Union (which is the most commonly used way to make money transfer in Africa i think; or i coul create a bank account in Guinea Bissau for the NGO and there receive the money. I know that any of them are ideal, but what can i do...

I forgot to tell the story of the Conacryan breadmaker: close to where i sleep in Gambasse, Abulay, a guy from Guinea COnacry, bakes bread everynight. He works really hard, actually, harder than the average men here. It is really handy to have the freshly baked bread just in your doorstep! Anyway, one day y went to buy some bread at 6pm and he told me that it was sold out. then i asked why he does not bake more bread (people still buys it at 10pm...), and he answered that he did not have money to buy the flour. So i offered him to lend him some money to produce more bread and to pay me back in 2 weeks or so. he agreed and now he produces 400 breadloads, instead of 300.
he came to me the day before my departure to senegal, and he wanted to give me 6000FCFA instead of the 5000 i lended to him. I became a bank and the meanfullness flooded my mind!! but within a second it was all gone. I returned him the 1000 and i understood how i want to promote or push the development here: not giving for nothing, promoting, helping, pushing up the development instead. That´ll be my policy from now on.

these days in Kolda, I´ve been sleeping chez Pisco (my french is going better!!). He hosted me without knowing me at all, just with the reference of a french guy from couchsurfing. Pisco paints, makes sculptures, designs furniture,... and he does it well! but to give food to his family, he works in a grocery shop, apart from making the people happier in his neighbourhood with his jokes and so! The other french lad, who came by boat-stop (boat hitchhike) from the Canary islands, Pisco and other 8 people, are trying to start up a self suficiency project here in Kolda (agricultural, energetic and financial self suficiency), and I am giving them a hand with some stuff, specially providing design modification of the eurobon pump for the extraction the water from the river instead of from the well. I am sure it will work.










couple of weeks ago, i confirmed a passed experience, which i thought in middle february that it was a perception ilussion, a mirage: when i was cyling towards Kolda, i saw just in front of me a 1m diamenter little tornado crossing the road. I was petrified. I didn´t know that this phenomens exists. So i stopped, i let it go. and i continued wondering if that was common at all. It seems it is around here.


the day before yesterday, speaking with the french lad, it seemed that we agreed in one thing: there is a lack of initiative and self-confidence here, maybe because the inheritance  of the esclavism, colonialism, etc, ... but it is unbelieveable the dependency they have towards the "white" in terms of entrepreneurship and other aspects. Probably the way the NGOs have been operating here it is also a good reason of that. I just seems part of the neocolonialism, making them believe that they are not able to charge and to enhance their live quality just by themselves and that they need external aid to achieve that aim. I may be exagerating a bit, we´ll see what do i think next month.

when i asked the nephews of pisco today why they did not go to school they told me that it was holiday for them. Easter. what!? in a country with 95% of muslims? something is wrong here.... it might be the time to break the chain that hooks them to france... i don´t know...

Several people asked me if i was an artist. It seems that around here, the people that have dreadlocks are either artists or gangs. And if they asked if i was a bandit and I answered yes, i wouldn´t be doing well in my carreer as a white-gang in Africa!

in my way to give up smoking, a slow way i have to say, i haven´t smoked a cigarrete in 2 weeks. however, i am smoking the tobacco leaves in a pipe. it is cheaper, more natural, and the money doesn´t go to philip morris... In the other hand, the youngsters call me old-man cause just the elderly people smokes in pipe. What can i do... I will try to give it up by using a wood stick as they use here as a toothbrush. Inshala!! but won´t be easy!!

the next one it´ll be from Guinea Bissau, the country of the drunken militars... or that was the scotland? ;-)) whatever....


see you!!!

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