A lot of my posts on Nigeria have been focused on the horrible experiences I had with the country, and of course they've been getting bad press from the attempted airline bombing... so, as I am currently working on our Nigeria assessment, I thought I'd share some facts that will provide some perspective.
Like many stereotypes, a few bad apples give the whole country a bad name. In reality, Nigeria is a huge country population-wise. There are about 160 million Nigerians, representing nearly 20% of the entire African population. The vast majority of Nigerians are not involved in international crime organizations, corruption, terrorist groups, etc. It is an incredibly poor country with serious issues that cannot be effectively addressed because of the chaos and lawlessness fostered by the inept government and corrupt ruling elite. The following paints a more accurate portrait of the average Nigerian.
About 80% of the people live in rural areas
The average annual income is $330 per year
Over 50% of the population is under the age of 15. Life expectancy is 47
Almost 50% of the population has no education whatsoever, formal or informal
Over 40% of people are farmers
Only 20% of households have water piped in
Nearly 90% of the population uses a pit latrine or the bush for a toilet... only 5% use a "water system"
Almost 60% of the population experiences severe food insecurity... another 20% experiences it mildly. Food insecurity is "living in hunger or fear of starvation"
Over 40% of children are stunted
Seventy percent of children under the age of five have malaria, which kills 300,000 of them a year
Only 15% of households own a refrigerator
By age 19, 40% of women have had at least one child or are pregnant
About one-third of marriages are polygamous
About 17% of children die before age five
A rather stark statistic highlighting the importance and broad impact of education - the under-five child mortality rate for mothers with no education is about 22%, versus under 9% for mothers possessing post-secondary education
But I cannot complete this without referencing what one of the Nigerian government officials said in response to the TSA adding Nigeria to the list of "enhanced" security procedures. The Nigerian Information Minister said the move was "discriminatory" and unfairly punished all Nigerians for the actions of a few.
A guy with a bomb in his underwear got on a plane in Nigeria. He also got on a plane in Amsterdam. Um, yes, it was discriminatory to put Nigeria on the list, just like it was discriminatory to require stepped-up inspections in Amsterdam.
When you're solving a problem, you discriminate against the source of it. Otherwise you're not solving it. You're just doing nothing. That's kind of the way it works. Maybe that's why the Nigerian government is doing nothing substanative to solve the myriad of problems they have.
After a long and badly needed holiday, I arrived back in Geneva this afternoon and will be here for a few weeks, wrapping up our assessments.
A recap of today:
The French Alps are beautiful in the winter (and look a lot like the Swiss Alps, but I'm staying in France this time around... unfortunately, Geneva's criminal inflation seems to have no respect for international borders)
My latest mental model for being overseas consisted of hot and sticky diesel fumes mixed with burning garbage and wood fires and streets packed with people, vehicles of all varieties, a wide range of feral farm animals, sewage, noise, and the need for constant vigilence. Desolate streets, virtually non-existant crime, and crisp Alpine air scented by wood-burning fireplaces was another reminder of the historical exceptionalism we take for granted in the West
Fun fact: Apparently cats can go for over nine hours without sleep and don't lose their voice. I know this because there was a cat sitting a few rows behind me meowing nonstop the entire way from Chicago to Zurich. I know that because I was unable to sleep thanks to said cat, despite noise cancelling headphones pumping out monastic chanting
If Switzerland is the world's most efficient country, the Geneva airport was left out of the survey. Having passed through it four times now, I can definitively say their baggage handling is slower and more inept than any of the developing nations I visited (and I'm not claiming the US is any better). They lost my bags once and the time it takes for offloading averages about thirty minutes. I never had a single baggage problem in Africa or South Asia
I'm not trying to hate on Nigeria and it feels like piling it on, but per the recommendation of my good friend David Brooks, I started a phenomenal book today ("From Poverty to Prosperity") that academically catalogs some of the core impediments to development that we experienced first-hand (the biggest being cultural / education "shortcomings", combined with the West handing out trillions of dollars based on the ridiculous classical economic theory that development is a direct function of capital) and has some pretty shocking statistics (as much as I hate to use statistics coming from economists who try to model human behavior with equations) that quantify the problems. The most incredible analysis was looking at the inherent economic value of the average individual in each country, broken down by natural resources share (the total value of all natural resources divided by the number of people), produced capital share (the total return on all the capital in the county - like the outputs of factories and other investments - divided by the number of people), and the value of intangible capital represented by each person (the value of the skills, education, and other institutions in the country - like universities, the government - divided by the number of people). The US wealth per capita (all those things added together) is about $512k, with 3% being natural resources, 16% being produced capital, and 82% being intangible capital. For Nigeria, the wealth per capita is under $3k. This is the crazy part - of that number, 147% is natural resources (they have Africa's largest oil reserves), 24% is produced capital, and -71% (yes, it's negative) is intangible capital. That means that the application of the population's skills and education, combined with the activities of the government and other legal, non-commercial institutions actually destroys 71% of the country's wealth. So if the government, skilled (non-capital) workforce, underground economy, etc. just shut down and stopped tomorrow, the country's wealth would nearly double (I'm sure that's a ham-fisted explanation that an economist would correct with hundreds of caveats, but you get the idea). That reflects just how deeply entrenched the challenges are in too many countries. It will take generations of persistent effort from the world community to overcome these barriers, but it will be impossible without national will
I was floored to turn on the TV in France and find the Dolphins vs. Steelers game! And it was even on two channels ahead of the EuroSport professional dart tournament! Even more perplexing to me is the global infatuation with WWF wrestling. Literally every country we've been to, wrestling was on a major channel every single night... this is more vexing to me than any sanitation or nutrition challenge we've encountered
I'm not sure I have enough data points to draw a conclusion, but there seems to be a strange dichotomy on the Continent. Europe is indisputedly much more socialist than the US - they have some of the world's strongest social safety nets, regardless of the ideological lens through which you look at them. So, part of me would think that Europe would treat each other on the street better than we would in the US. If they care enough about society's most vulnerable to the point of supporting them via tax rates that would spark riots in the US, one would expect them to be extraordinarily conscientous and polite, right? My very tenuous and unscientific experience has been that people tend to be a bit more rude to strangers here than in the US, but are much more hospitable hosts (except in hotels... they're just plain rude). I suppose the converse logic is that in the US, our social structure is built more around individual rights rather than the more communal rights focus in Europe, so we have greater mutual respect for individual "space", as it is
I think I had my two favorite seat neighbors on my flights today. First was the over-caffeinated American girl who managed a full body fidget for the entire flight to Zurich. Even while she was sleeping she somehow managed to keep a limb constantly moving... it was like restless indiscriminate limb syndrome. Then on the flight to Geneva, I sat next to a French guy who carried on a conversation with the guy directly behind him for the majority of the flight, which necessitated leaning over and breathing on me, enabling me to conclude that he must smoke cigarettes backwards
I realized that the first thing you see when you land in Geneva is that running the full length of both sides of the runway is a flotilla (aerotilla?) of private jets... I'm assuming that's the most effective way of transporting large quantities of illicit cash and bullion
First, sorry for this being brief since this is a subject that deserves more explanation. I will have to do that later.
This morning we visited a Dhaka slum where the World Food Program is providing fortified cookies that deliver 67% of the key vitamins and minerals the kids need everyday. This is necessary because their only other source of food is the small amount of rice that their mother can afford to buy and cook every day. On really special occassions, they manage to round up some vegetable scraps and spring for a small sachet of spices to cook a "curry". Most countries refuse to allow NGOs to introduce nutrition vehicles like cookies because they fear sending the wrong message and building bad habits, e.g. eating "junk" foods. Bangladesh is so poor and the government is so weak and ineffective that they are thrilled to have the cookie program.
I was in the slum this morning, but I still can't believe that they exist. It was like being on a movie set... impossible to process as real. We were for the first time literally in the heart of the slum, walking through the tiny alleys, stepping over the cooking fires, having to politely decline residents' invitations to step into their homes (which were maybe 4ft x 4ft tin rooms with maybe a 6ft ceiling height and a mattress if they were lucky), etc..
(I don't have time to post all the pictures on the blog yet, but for an unguided tour, check out http://picasaweb.google.com/ckurasek/CK361BSelectedPhotos and start with the picture of the tiny, black and white baby goat... that was when we arrived in the slum. Also a couple of brief videos at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCNBpZGxeOQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOcv6kV5SM)
But the kids were remarkable. They were happy, energetic, and full of hope, despite the fact that they quite literally were the poorest of the poor humans gracing the face of the Earth, packed into the world's most population dense country (the city states like Singapore are more dense, but they are generally more middle class and living in high-rises). When I asked what they want to be when they grow up, about 80% said doctors. A few said teachers, a few others scientists, and one boy a mechanic.
I asked one of the officials from the NGO that was running the informal schools in the slum (there are four covering 10%-15% of the kids in the slum... the WFP cookie program is funded through their emergency relief fund - triggered by the spike in commodity prices last year - and is set to expire in June of next year... if they can't find more funding, the kids will go back to being malnourished and spending their days working in the markets with their parents instead of attending school... providing food is one of the only ways to get families to send their kids to school in slums) what the realistic odds were of any of the kids making it to high school (grade 6+ in Bangladesh), much less making it into a profession, and she said, "Honestly, the odds are not a single one will make it."
One of the things that struck me though was the lucidity and intelligence of the kids, even those who were only in the equivalent of the second grade and received three hours of informal education a day. They were as sharp and vibrant as any kid in any school in the West, whereas the adults were much more in a stupor, much more difficult to communicate and interact with (through a Bengali translator, of course), and much more clueless about the world. I get the impression that their lens to the world is mysticism and most think that Westerners have magic powers (like the Kenyan cab driver who handed me his cell phone and said, "It's broken. Virus." Totally perplexed, I stared at the phone, looked at him, turned back to the phone and said, "Um. Ok. Yeah, it looks broken." "Press the buttons, the numbers don't come up." "Hm, yep, you're right." "Can you fix?" "Can I fix your phone??" The Kenyan consultant with us got mad - "He doesn't know how to fix your phone! Why would he know how to fix your phone?!" I figured he thought that all Westerners built their own computer chips or something).
For various reasons I've previously discussed, I am convinced the number one intervention that can have the biggest, broadest, most permanent impact on the lives of the billions suffering around the world is rudimentary education. If our brains are not shaped by the right stimulation, behaviors, experiences, and knowledge by say age five, an educated child and an uneducated child might as well be different species of animal. It seems like there's a point of no return whereby you can no longer have rational discussions based on the simple understandings of the world that we take for granted.
Things like sanitation - how can you convince a mother that the way to keep her kids from dying is to simply make sure she uses water from a "special" source, when she thinks you're crazy for trying to tell her that there are invisible bugs living in the well water that are trying to kill her family? How can you convince her to send her child to a room full of paper to sit around for three hours playing and drawing when that kid could be helping earn extra grains of rice by begging in the street?
The lack of basic education underlies virtually every problem faced in the developing world to some extent. This is particularly relevant given a proposed bill currently being debated in Uganda's Parliament that makes homosexuality and being infected with HIV crimes punishable by death.
CNN's coverage can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/12/08/uganda.anti.gay.bill/index.html
Maggie brought this to my attention, indignant and perplexed at how a modern government could even be considering something like this. Perhaps cynically, I was not as shocked - yes, they are putting in motion an egregious evil, but I don't think it stems from hate as much as it stems from ignorance. If they believe HIV is God's way of punishing the sinning homosexuals of the world, then in their minds, they are doing something holy.
But can we really expect to change their ways of thinking when one of their national newspapers publishes garbage like the following article? "How to tell if someone is gay"... consider this quote from one of Uganda's budding legal scholars: "I know what gay people are like. Controlling the issue of gays is hard because there are no stringent laws against it. So many high profile people including Pastors have been suspected but government never investigates." If someone had shown me this article printed out without any identifying text, I would have bet a lot of cash that it was from The Onion.
The full article can be found here: http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2773:how-to-tell-that-someone-is-gay&catid=40:street-talk&Itemid=73
Clearly there are tools at the disposal of the more human rights-oriented societies in the world, such as sanctions and other punitive measures (or war when all other options are exhausted), but these are only stopgap measures... they work only as long as someone is vigorously pursuing / enforcing them. I don't see how we ever put an end to cancerous ideologies like these unless we get to the minds of future generations before they're permanently molded into vessels capable of nurturing and propagating ignorant, dangerous, self-destructure belief systems and incapable of nuturing and propagating belief systems based on the branches of accumulated human wisdom that foster a more just, peaceful, propserous civilization.
So, upon relating to folks my first-hand experiences with the world's organizations and programs dedicated to development and the conclusions I am evolving that they are all utterly hopeless, set up to fail, and misguided, several people have asked me, "Ok, so then what are we supposed to do?" I'm not totally sure I have tactical recommendations at this point, and I do think we who have also have an obligation to help those who don't with their immediate needs, but a long-term, permanent solution has to start with universal education.
Until 95% of the world's 14 year-olds have the equivalent of at least a fifth grade, secular education, I really don't think we can realistically expect to conquer the seemingly simple, endemic problems at the root of humanity's worst ills - hunger when there is enough food out there; diseases when there are simple preventions and treatments; war based on silly, misunderstood anecdotes of history; hate based on ignorance and fear; etc.
I've probably built it up more than it warrants, but here's the story.
Everybody in South Africa and Kenya warned us to not use any sort of credit / debit / banking card of any kind with any establishment in Nigeria for any reason because within minutes of handing it over, there is a 95% chance you will have purchased a new home entertainment set and donated it to a needy Nigerian criminal syndicate.
Subsequently, my team member who managed to get a visa (by flying home to Belgium) settled her bill when moving hotels by wiring the funds directly to the hotel's account. As she was attempting to leave, the hotel informed her that she still owed them the money. She double-checked with her bank, they confirmed the money had been transferred, and they initiated an investigation to find out where they money went since it supposedly disappeared.
She left her business card and problem solved, right? Not in Nigeria.
The hotel manager got aggressive with her and had hotel staff surround her (her Accenture-provided armed guard hadn't arrived yet for the day). He informed her that if she didn't hand over a credit card or cash, they were going to kidnap her and hold her until she, her company, or her family coughed up for the "bill" / ransom. He even went so far as to call a (supposed) relative of his in Belgium, implying a threat to her family.
She kept her wits about her and managed to get out of the situation after convincing him that she wasn't leaving the country, just transferring to a different hotel within Lagos, just down the street. Given that he now knew where to find her, my first reaction upon hearing about this was to call the guy in charge of Accenture's security in Nigeria who went ballistic (or as ballistic as a reserved English security professional can get).
Turns out the security folks have great relationships with the local government and police force (I would love to know the details) and the guy laid down the law. The manager tucked his tail very quickly and even apologized, claiming there was no intent to "intimidate" her... because really, kidnapping in Nigeria is sooooo misunderstood these days.
One of our South Africa-based clients (originally from Ghana) told me about a similar situation he encountered in a Lagos hotel. He always prepays in cash for everything in Nigeria, but once was informed upon checkout that he owed a special "tax" on his bill. Recognizing it as a shakedown, he scoffed and attempted to leave, reminding the manager that he'd already paid for his stay upon checking in.
One of the bellhops physically yanked his backpack off his shoulder, ripped his luggage out of his hand, and told him he wasn't going anywhere. Knowing he really had no recourse that didn't invovle a high risk of bodily harm, he went ahead and paid the "tax" and got out of there.
I think he summed it up best when he said, "The Nigerians are my West African brothers and I love them. But they are crazy motherf***ers and I don't want anything to do with them."
Bangladesh is a trip... I really don't know where to start, so I will stick to a chronological approach, at least to start.
I was reminded upon boarding the flight to Dhaka of one of the few things I dislike about being in this part of the world - the incessant need for people to push / cut / dart to the front of lines. As we were walking down the jetway doing the usual boarding shuffle, guys kept blatantly cutting in front of me. I just chuckled, but I really wanted to ask them if they thought getting on the plane sooner would snag them a better seat or get them to their destination sooner.
Apparently the answer was yes, because when I got to my aisle bulkhead seat, there was a man sitting in it. I asked him if he was in 8G, to which I received a courtesy nod. I pointed to the "8G" printed on my ticket, and he pointed to the third seat in, next to his wife. So I pointed back at him, and then we had a non-hostile staring contest that I won.
One of the things I love about this part of the world is that everything is a free-for-all. As we're taxiing to the runway, people were getting up to grab things out of the overhead bins, people were talking to each other on their mobile phones, putting their bags in the aisles, etc.
Similarly, as soon as we landed, people popped up and started getting their things down. The flight attendants tried a couple of times to get people back in their seats, but quickly recognized the futility. Naturally, as we were standing waiting to deplane, people were literally shoving their way up the aisle. I suppose at the point they could make the argument that they will get home earlier, but really?
As we stepped off the plane, I found it strangely comforting to smell the warm, humid wood fire + diesel perfume that marks the developing world. Back in the cultural chaos of South Asia, my level of happiness snapped up from the "Miserable Africa" notch to "Happy and Content". (I think the nation I most want to visit is Myanmar / Burma... I just may go sneak across the border to pull a stunt like this guy and shop my story to the highest bidder... though I may want to wait until Tiger's women stop coming out of the woodwork.)
Since I'd just received my emergency passport, I didn't have a business visa to enter Bangladesh. Luckily, Bangladesh will let Americans apply for arrival visas under a limited set of conditions, including if you are coming from a country that doesn't have a Bangladesh diplomatic mission. Nigeria (the godforesaken country) is on that list, and since I was supposed to be there prior to Bangladesh, I had my letter of invitation and all the other paperwork necessary for the arrival visa, fully prepared for a laborious explanation of my situation. Turns out I just had to pay the guy 100 takas (Bengali currency, about $1.50 USD) for a 15-day landing permit, no questions asked.
There are some advantages to being in the world's 39th most corrupt country (tied with Pakistan, the Philippines, and Belarus).
The first thing I see once I clear immigration:
Bangladesh is a Muslim country, but I didn't think it was THAT observant. Turns out it's not - those were pilgrims returning from the Hajj in Mecca.
I also found humorous the luggage of choice here. Also telling was the section of baggage dedicated to jugs of water. Apparently when Bengalis travel, they bring big containers of clean water with them (I forgot to take a picture, but will try when I fly out). I have yet to fully understand what the deal is, but I will find out.
My first impression of Bangladesh was that it's a more crowded (earlier I'd posted India's population density of about 1,000 people per square mile compared to about 85 in the US... Bangladesh is about 2,900, squeezing 160M people into a country slightly smaller than Iowa), dirtier, poorer version of India. For good reason - like Pakistan, Bangladesh used to be part of British India, and even further back they share cultural and ethnic heritage.
When the British granted independence in 1947, modern day Bangladesh and Pakistan decided to join together as a single Muslim state comprised of West Pakistan and East Pakistan, despite being physically seperated by about 1,000 miles of India. West Pakistan was effectively in charge, and proceeded to exploit East Pakistan's resources (not just natural resources but also all of the industrial outputs from the British-built factories) and treat those in the East as second-class citizens.
When West Pakistan decided to declare Urdu as the official language of the country (most people in East Pakistan only spoke Bengali and English), that appears to have been the last straw, and Bangladesh launched a successful nine-month war for independence (given it was a war with modern Pakistan, India naturally helped out the Bengalis). Today Bangladesh straddles the fence, maintaining amicable relations with both India and Pakistan.
However, that doesn't mean it's a stable country. The first president and "Father of the Country" was assassinated in 1975 when army tanks rolled into the presidential compound and assassinated him, his family, and his staff. Two of his daughters were in West Germany at the time and survived, and today the eldest is the current prime minister. After the coup, the officers leading it changed the constitution to give themselves immunity from prosecution... the Supreme Court just recently got around to ruling on the case and invalidated that amendment and sentenced the officers to death.
One of the risks we have to take into account is the risk of a coup / major political upheaval. The current prime minister has supposedly survived something like 27 attempts on her life. I cannot confirm it, but I was told the 2008 elections were the first in the history of the country without some sort of post-election strife.
Clearly Bangladesh has a lot of problems and a difficult road to developed nation status. Among other things, Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 162 out of the 194 countries listed on the CIA's Factbook, with a per capita GDP of about $1,500 (compared to about $2,900 for India, $6,000 for China, and $47,000 for the US).
As if they didn't have enough challenges with overpopulation, malnutrition, dismal literacy and education rates, pollution, malaria, water tables poisoned with naturally-occurring arsenic, etc., about one-third of Bangladesh floods on an annual basis during the monsoon season. As you can see in the following map, most of Bangladesh is a river delta.
If you thought New Orleans had a rough time during Katrina, on more than one occassion over 100,000 Bengalis have been killed by typhoons (about 500,000 was the worst in 1970). Bengladesh is one of the first and worst places being hit with rising seas and changing weather patterns (irrespective of to what you attribute the underlying cause, things are a changin' here).
Things aren't all doom and gloom here. Like India, the people are extremely nice (though Bengalis seem to be a little bit less warm than Indians... not totally sure yet what I'm picking up there) and the place feels like it's alive.
One of my favorite encounters so far was in a meeting today with CARE, a US NGO focused on fighting poverty. In the middle of the meeting, our Bengali consultant got on his cell phone and was working on scheduling additional meetings - full volume, sitting at the table, not making any effort to be discreet. I literally burst out laughing when the guy from CARE answered his own ringing phone a few minutes later, leaving me and the other Accenture consultant sitting there exchanging smirks while they wrapped up their calls. I was reassured that sort of thing happens all the time.
Also like India, mid to high-ranking officials in both government and the private sector always have little remote controls they keep on their desk. When they need something, they press the button (which they do about 5-10 times in any given meeting), a chime / bell rings, and one of their minions scampers in to see what the boss wants (coffee, a file, an adjustment to the A/C which is always turned on as a courtesy to us Westerners, etc.)
The following are just some photos from today. The first is one of the kids hustling on the street - unlike beggars, he was actually working to sell popcorn and got angry at me when I took his picture and didn't buy anything. I felt badly, but really, should I be supporting third world child labor? Probably, since there aren't many other options for him, but I'm rationalizing to myself.
These pictures were taken outside Dhaka's wholesale produce market. It looks like mud churned up on the street, but it's really crushed / decomposing lettuce / generic roughage. No, it didn't smell that great.
Here is a view of the same market from CARE's offices. You can see how massive, crowded, and chaotic it is (not to mention polluted).
As we were leaving, I had to jump out of the way of this car backing down what I naively thought was a sidewalk... you know, not being paved, people were walking on it, etc.
This piece of utility artwork is for the Bagel... China has nothing on this place.
Some of the Bengali scenery.
This guy was singing Qur'anic verses for money... thought it was kind of cool. Like an idiot, I used my photo camera to take the video instead of the HD Flip camera. I am going to for sure get a lot of HD video here though... it's hard to appreciate the energy, vitality, and chaos here from the pictures.
I had a meeting in the morning, so I was in the client's office for a few hours, then headed back to my hotel room to pack. In the course of doing so, I couldn't remember where I'd hidden all the Christmas presents I'd picked up as I've been hopping around. After tearing the room apart, I concluded they were either stolen, or I left them in the room safe at the last hotel I was in, which was two weeks ago... so pretty much the options were stolen or stolen.
Frantic, I went back to the hotel where they told me they didn't have anything. Ready to jump from a high building (if there were any around) / call the police, they realized they spelled my name wrong on the reservation. Using the right name, something did come up in the computer, though I wasn't sure what... the staffer had to go check the safe. Ten minutes later she calls me at the front desk to describe what I had left. My initial relief that she'd found my stuff started evaporating as I sat there for another ten minutes, only to finally see her walking back with a manager, both empty-handed.
The manager told me they did find something and it was logged as being in the safe, but it wasn't in the safe, so he was checking the other safe in the front office. Needless to say, it wasn't there either.
The net is that after another 15 minutes of torment, he finally came back with the bag of my stuff, and everything was there. From the bribery coaching I'd received, I knew South Africans love getting their hands on greenbacks... I was told that in the event of being pulled over by the police, just hand them a $1 USD bill and they will let you go, even though that is not a lot of money there (the equivalent of maybe $5 in the US, taking exchange rates and relative prices?). Given that it's near the holidays and they literally saved me from excruciating self-torment, I whipped out a $20 bill and asked him to share it with everyone who was involved with finding and safe-keeping the presents.
He literally turned around and booked it while the two women at the front desk, having seen me pull out US currency, had on saucer plate-sized eyes and reacted like he was absconding with their first-borns and started yelling at him to come back with the money (this is a four star hotel, so the staff was otherwise very professional with a stiff sense of decorum). I didn't want to get involved, so I just ran out to get to US Consulate, where I had an appointment to get an emergency passport (since the Nigerians still have yet to respond to any of my messages and continue to hold my passport hostage... Side note: On the flight from Jo'burg to Dubai, I watched District 9 - the sci-fi film about aliens being interred in Johannesburg ghettos, an allegory to the camps / ghettos set up during apartheid... the only humans living in the ghetto are Nigerians, who are there to steal / scam the aliens out of their weaponry so they can use it in their global criminal gangs... The Nigerians seem to be in general very bitter, saying the whole world discriminates against them and treats them all like criminals... the more I learn, the more it seems like the stereotype is broadly supported with fact, but I will have more on that when I post the near-kidnapping experience our team had there).
Before I could head to the consulate, I had to fill up the rental car with gas. I stopped at a Shell station where the attendant (all stations are full service in SA) told me I couldn't use a credit card, but I could use a debit card. I handed him my debit card, which he informed me was not an actual debit card, despite Citibank clearly labeling it as such. Apparently "real" debit cards don't have raised numbers like credit cards. I surmised this was not a case of incompatible technology, but rather a case in which the management didn't want to pay the fees associated with routing transactions through Visa / MC / Amex networks.
I drove down to the next station where the attendant informed me my debit card would work... until the tank was full. At that point, he decided my card actually would not work because again, it had the "raised numbers". Having reached my hustling saturation point, I turned indignant and told him that he was going to have to use the card, which I knew would work, because I didn't have any cash and was about to leave the country. He actually turned out to be an honest guy and confirmed that it would work, his boss just wouldn't let him run it. So I asked to speak to the boss, who was sitting under an umbrella next to the car wash with 4-5 other employees, watching some workers dig a ditch. Surprisingly, the attendant even introduced me by saying he had made a mistake and told me the card would work.
The boss informed me that their computer systems wouldn't take a debit card with raised numbers. I asked if we could just try it, and he said sure, but it won't work. So I said, "Great, let's do that," and started walking back towards the store. He again said we could try, but it would just be a waste of time, so I should just take cash out of the ATM.
So for about five minutes I kept shuffling us towards the store while we cycled through a refrain of "I understand it won't work, but just humor me... it will take two seconds, and if it doesn't work, I'll take the cash out and no problem," and a response along the lines of "Yes, we could try it, but I'm not going to because it won't work / it will screw up the computers / it will waste our time / etc."
There was a police officer there sitting in his truck, so finally I pointed to him and said, "Ok, so you're saying if I go ask him about this, he will tell me you can't take my 'debit' card?" His response was something along the lines of, "He's not working here... he's from another district...." ????
That quickly led to, "If you want to talk to the owner of the station, he's the fat white guy right there."
So I talk to the fat white guy who levels with me and says, "Yeah, that will work, but I don't want to pay the bank fees." After informing him that I was just a poor American who didn't have any cash, etc., he agreed to let me use it.
The card was returned as "void" from the cashier, so I asked to see the printout showing the bank's message. I explained to them that "void" wouldn't be the response from the bank, it would be something like "declined". At that point though, after a good 20 minutes playing this game and running out of time until my consulate appointment, I completely lost my patience, just took the cash out, and stormed out of there.
I pulled out of the gas station and turned onto the highway on-ramp, only to slam on the brakes to avoid a mixed line of cars reversing and fully driving the wrong way. There was an accident that had completely clogged the highway, and in Africa the direction of traffic is a democratic decision. So there was another 5-10 minutes of fun, trying to reverse / turn around without being hit by cars turning onto the on ramp, cars driving the wrong way, and reversing cars. Though I did watch a pissed-off guy back in to a big BMW that was trying to turn around with complete disregard for any sort of right-of-way (if there is such a concept in such a situation).
Somehow I managed to find my way around the accident on side roads and reached my exit with 10 minutes to go until my appointment. When I finally came around the last bend and saw Old Glory flapping in the breeze, I swear I could hear the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing in the car. Despite having to negotiate with security for five minutes to let me park in the compound and avoid parking half a mile away (the State Department website malfunctioned when I was trying to print out my appointment confirmation / parking pass), I don't think I'd ever been so relieved to be on American soil with other Americans. The consular staff got a kick out of my story about the Nigerians holding my passport hostage... they said that was a new one for them, but they weren't too surprised.
The next travail came when trying to pass through immigration (unless you count having to pay $250 in excess baggage fees). Apparently the officer I drew was not familiar with the concept of an emergency passport. He kept asking me how I got into the country without having "any stamps or anything" in my passport. Determined that I had illegally snuck into the country and was subsequently attempting a legal exit / that I was a spy, he got angry and yelled over to his boss, a big hairy white guy named Peach (Africans have some great first naming conventions... like Dudu from the hotel staff and Justice from the airline).
Peach apparently was familiar with emergency passports and / or sympathetic to the CIA and quickly cleared me (I'm not looking forward to the interrogation I'm going to get in the US - "Um, so I was in South Africa, Dubai, and Bangladesh, and the Nigerians took my passport hostage.")
Then, after playing musical chairs with a large family with screaming kids (I've learned that's the price of getting bulkhead seats on international flights), I ended up sitting next to a Nepalese Imam who teaches at a Madrassa in South Africa who was determined to convert me to Islam. He actually was a very nice guy and he asked for my business card so he could "keep in touch" with me. I'm actually very much looking forward to hearing from him and adding him to my list of friends in the Muslim world,
And now I'm about to shut down and board my flight to Bangladesh... very interesting country and I'll have a lot to post once I get there.
The government's reputation for incompetence is so deeply ingrained within us that it's become cliche. My recent experience with the Nigerian government serves as a stark reminder of how good we really have it.
As I've previously complained, I am currently stuck in South Africa after overnighting my passport to the Nigerian embassy in Washington about two weeks ago for an "expedited" business visa. Since then, the embassy hasn't even answered their phone, much less the series of messages I've left for them.
This came after the experience with the Nigerian consulate here in Johannesburg. After our connection there told us he would be able to secure us a visa, we arrive, wait for over an hour for someone to help us ("business hours" are apparently rough approximations for when they will be working), are told we will receive the visas that day, then are told we have to apply in our home countries, it is implied a "special circumstances" payment will grease the wheels ("if we want to discuss this matter further, we have to do it in my office upstairs"), then our negotiator is told the official is insulted because as a senior official, he doesn't take bribes (aka. we didn't have enough cash).
So, off to Washington goes my passport, along with an "expedite" fee, both of which remain in Washington, as far as anyone can tell.
After a week of beating our respective heads against the Nigerian wall, I decided to start raising hell with the Nigerian immigration service and see if the US State Department could do anything to help me. At this point I am ready to just skip the Nigerian assessment and go straight to Bangladesh. (I made sure to inform the Nigerians that the purpose of my trip was to assess whether or not my client should make a nearly $10M investment in their country.)
Surprisingly, the Nigerians have yet to respond.
However, the State Department responded to my enquiry literally within hours, despite it being submitted on a federal holiday. They informed me that there are policies in place for precisely these sorts of situations - if another government is causing an "undue delay" to travel plans because of excessive processing times for things like visas, the local Consulate will issue me a second passport that is valid for two years.
(Another situation covered is that in which certain governments will not allow entry to a person who has in their passport a visa from certain blacklisted countries. For example, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon - also known as Syria Lite - will not allow you to enter their country if you have a visa / entry stamp from Israel in your passport.)
I talked to the Consulate this morning to find out how long it would take to have a second passport issued, fully expecting it to take two to three days.
Me: "So how long would it take to get the new passport."
Consulate: "About 45 minutes."
"For what?"
"The passport."
"You mean the application?"
"Yeah. It might take an hour."
"And when would the passport be ready?"
"Forty five minutes to an hour. We print it right here."
"Are you serious? I come in and will have a new passport in an hour??"
"Yes, just go online and make an appointment."
So, the moral of the story is that at least compared to highly-corrupt, third-world governments, ours is pretty awesome.
(Fun fact: Uncle Sam was actually a real guy named Samuel Wilson from New York. During the War of 1812, he supplied the US Army with dried meat in barrels stamped with "US", which obviously stood for United States, but soldiers called it meat from "Uncle Sam", a dual reference to the army and Sam, which eventually became synonymous with the US government. Thankfully, "Brother Jonathan" and "Columbia" never really caught on. The character Uncle Sam was partly inspired by John Bull, the personification of Britain.)
Three continents, six countries, creating sustainable food fortification business models and public policies to help reach 1 billion of the world's malnourished.
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