Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?

Happy birthday, David Livingstone! Born 200 years ago, on March 19, 1813, in Blantyre, Lanarkshire, Scotland, David Livingstone greatly influenced the Western world’s attitudes toward the continent and people of Africa. He died May 1, 1873, in an area of Africa we now know as Zambia. 

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who penned, “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.” David Livingstone took that concept to an even higher level. When he was trying to find men to trek across the continent of Africa with him, his instructions were, “If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.”

By the time he was twenty years of age, he had resolved within himself to devote his entire life to the alleviation of human misery. He had been influenced by the writings of a medical missionary to China, and presumed he would spend his life there. China was embroiled in war at that time, however, and another notable Scottish missionary, Robert Moffat, persuaded Livingstone that Africa was the place he should serve. So, the Scottish missionary- surveyor- botanist- zoologist-explorer-medical doctor and anti-slavery campaigner, finished his medical, theological, and scientific courses, and sailed for Cape Town, arriving five days before his twenty-eighth birthday in 1841.

By the summer of 1842, he had already gone farther north than any other European into the difficult Kalahari country, and had familiarized himself with the local languages and cultures. Livingstone’s missionary and medical endeavors were always combined with his love and talents for exploration and scientific research. Early on, he was the first European to view and record information about Lake Ngami. Between 1852 and 1856, he was the first European to view, survey, and document information regarding the “mile wide” Zambezi River as it plunged over one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world. He named the geographic wonderVictoria Falls in honor of his magnificent British Queen. 

David Livingstone was the first to successfully make and document the transcontinental journey across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. Aided by the Royal Geographic Society of London, he explored systematically the entire Zambezi River basin searching for an inland waterway across the continent of Africa. He was the first to reach the large Lake Malawi in1862. Some of the other “firsts” for discovery, surveying, and documentation were Lake Mweru, Lake Bangweulu, the Lualaba River, and even though others had viewed the expansive Lake Tanganyika from one spot or another, Livingstone was the first to explore, survey, and fill in the missing details regarding the huge body of water. He was eventually awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London for his incredible work.

Livingstone was an unusually determined fellow. When sick, tired, hungry, or otherwise challenged he would say, “I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it be forward.” But, at one point in his pursuits, he was completely out of contact with the outside world for about six years. He was dangerously ill with malaria, dysentery, pneumonia, and ulcerated feet. He sent letters out with native runners. Only one of his forty-four letter dispatchers made it to Zanzibar. 

But until the end he would continue to write, “I determined never to stop until I had come to the end and achieved my purpose.” . . . “nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair.” Livingstone had admittedly wanted to discover and document the true source of the Nile River. He died without having successfully accomplished that. However, he more than achieved the grander, overarching dream of his life to devote his entire energies to the alleviation of human misery. “I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ.”

My nearly thirty years of travel throughout Africa allowed me to criss-cross the established paths of Dr. David Livingstone many times. I was able to travel in every country that he worked as a missionary, doctor, and explorer. I traveled by boat, train, airplane, and Land Cruiser. David Livingstone walked. In 1986, I visited Victoria Falls for the first time. On a later occasion, I was in Harare, Zimbabwe, needing to get to the city of Livingstone, near Victoria Falls. All the commercial airlines in that part of Africa were on strike. 

I was able to hitch a ride on a small, private plane from Harare to the city of Bulawayo. There, I was stuck. Fortunately, the next day there was a cancellation on the overnight train, and I was able to secure a ticket on the sleeper train for the twelve-hour ride to Livingstone. As the fiery sun began to rise over Mozambique and the Midlands of Zimbabwe, I lifted the blind on the sleeper car and peered out over the vast expanse of southern Africa, wondering how David Livingstone would respond to what had happened to his Africa over the past 200 years.

Before getting into a taxi at the Livingstone train station and crossing over the Zambezi River at the border into Zambia, I took time, again, to visit the large statue of David Livingstone near the thunderous roar and spray of Victoria Falls. All over that part of Africa, as far north as Tanzania and Zaire, it was not unusual to run across memorials or signs pointing to where Livingstone had performed his missionary work or had held his medical clinics.

While working in Africa, viewing the results of his influence, I was impressed that Livingstone must have faced some pretty serious alternatives before he was twenty years old, and had made some intuitive choices at that time that had set into motion far-reaching consequences. Those choices and consequences had influenced and guided his behavior throughout his life. He stayed committed and focused until he died. He seemed to judge the value of something by deciding how much of his own life he was willing to exchange for it. The price ended up being high, but the accomplishments were astounding.

I have tried to allow Livingstone’s life to influence me. I have tried to make some of those same far-reaching choices that would help me consciously exchange people’s applause or approval for long-haul accomplishments. I would hope that I could stop chasing prosperity in order to pursue purity, and choose righteousness over riches. That’s not necessarily the popular thing to do these days, but it might just be good, long-lasting advice to “Not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Happy Birthday, Dr. David Livingstone!

Look Alive, Son

Zig Ziglar was my friend and I miss him. He died last year on November 28, at the age of 86. Over the years, I had vociferously devoured his books and was especially fond of his motivational book, See You at the Top. I didn’t really become personal friends with Zig until about 1989, but his inspiration will go on influencing my life forever. He had become a top sales person in several organizations, and then turned his energies and efforts to becoming one of the greatest motivational speakers and trainers this culture has known.

Here I offer to you some of his best-known quotes. Each has the potential of changing your life: 
      · “If you can dream it, you can achieve it.”
      · “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”
      · “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” 
      · “If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re scarce. If you go out to be a            friend, you’ll find them everywhere.” 
      · “Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.” 
      · “People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” 
      · “There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.” 
     · “People often say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing-that’s why we recommend it daily.”    
      · “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.”   
      · “Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” 

One of the last things Zig Ziglar told me when we were together in Arizona was, “I’m not walking old, and I’m not talking old, and I’m not practicing up being dead.” I liked that, and latched on to it as one of my own personal attitudes of life. His emphasis was always on being fully alert and positive, and allowing the enthusiasm of life to be evident in every move he made and every attitude portrayed. “Let the whole world know that you are alive and happy to be there!”

Several months after that memorable meeting with Zig, I was in the African country of Cameroon, in a city called Mbingo. When I witnessed what was taking place in Mbingo, my mind went back to my last conversation with Zig. My humorous propensity toward life made me turn my head and chortle aloud, in spite of the solemnity of the setting.

After working in Africa for nearly thirty years I have come to honor and respect the cultural and behavioral differences throughout Africa. Many differences surround the occasion of death and the funerary traditions. Because of the animist influence on the African culture, many funerals are protracted over a week or more. The bereaved will take days off work to travel and to mourn. The African families are typically large, and the individuals customarily live on about a dollar a day.

The funerals and memorials often become extremely expensive for the involved family, because cattle, sheep, goats, and poultry may be purchased for the occasion and then consumed by the mourners. It takes a lot of time and money to prepare large amounts of food for the occasion. Usually, the endless stream of those paying their last respects pay for nothing else . . . they just pay their respects. But the mourners all expect to be fed and housed. That tends to make a bad financial situation even worse.

For family members, there is typically a funeral celebration with singing and dancing to honor the life of the deceased. Afterward, they hold a somber funeral procession and burial with intense displays of sorrow.

Almost no bodies are embalmed in West Africa. And, in contrast to India, rituals do not include the mandatory burning funeral pyres, known as the final samskar. In India, the five major elements of fire, water, earth, air, and space need to be satisfied by returning the body to the elements with minimal physical contact. So, after the cremation the ashes are poured into the sacred Ganges River.

While I was assessing the main hospital in Mbingo, Cameroon, the people began telling me about how unsafe and inconvenient the burial process could become, especially where they had no way to keep the corpse embalmed, cooled, or refrigerated in their morgues. It was mandatory that they move the body to the family home just as quickly as possible. Since there were no such things as ambulances or hearses, taxis were the only means of transporting the corpse. But taxi drivers charged three times as much to haul a dead body as a live passenger. Usually, as soon as the doctor at the hospital pronounced that there was no hope for the patient to live, the patient’s family would gather up his belongings and rush him out to a taxi and get him home before he gasped his last breath, thus saving two thirds of the cost of the taxi ride.

About the time my new friends were explaining all this to me, four men walked out the front entrance of the hospital. Two of the men had a third man between them with one arm draped over the shoulder and around the neck of each of the outside men. The fourth man was following behind carrying some personal belongings, and was trying to keep the hat from falling off the head of the middle man. Once outside, the fourth man darted ahead of the trio and hailed a taxi and was paying him to help get their “sick” friend home from the hospital. It was actually important to get their friend, who had already died, to his home without paying an amount three times higher than the fare charged for transporting a live passenger.

I’m sorry, and I don’t know why, but inside my head I could hear the articulate, southern voice of my dear friend Zig, still giving instructions, “I’m not walking old, and I’m not talking old, and I’m not practicing up being dead. Look alive, son, be fully alert and portray enthusiasm. Your very appearance will pay you great dividends and save you and your friends a lot of money! ”

I was able to stifle the laughter exploding inside me, but was unable to squelch the chortle. Zig Ziglar, we all knew you to be the greatest motivational speaker in our lifetime. But after my episode in Cameroon, Africa, I am ready to nominate you to the Cultural Economist’s Hall of Fame!

Relational Trust

In 2008, I experienced an unusual privilege and opportunity on the international scene. I was nominated by USNORTHCOM, NORAD, and HOMELAND SECURTIY, and selected by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to travel to the Koffi Anan International Peacekeeping and Training Center in Accra, Ghana. “Your selection is reflective of your dedication to global humanitarian programs and your specific expertise, as recognized by your peers internationally.” I was to represent the U.S., in conjunction with other international organizations, on a select five-member international panel commissioned to meet for two weeks in Ghana to begin establishing protocol and structures that would assist world nations and African partners in achieving a more stable environment through security cooperation, information sharing, and information management. 

Our venue at the Peace Center was set up with two moderators at the front and the five panel members seated at individual desks forming a semi-circle facing themoderators. At desks behind the panel members were about twenty advisors who served as subject matter experts from around Africa and the world at large. Behind the advisors were many observers who had been invited to be part of the meetings.

Our task was to develop a multi-stage, comprehensive model that encompassed pre crisis; event; crisis declaration; response; and immediate, mid-term, and long-term response. Incorporated into each of the stages were to be addressed the seven forms of capital: human, social, natural, built, political, cultural, and financial, and their influences on the crisis situation.

Having worked with various groups before, I was fully expecting the normal process that takes place with every group as it comes together and works toward some kind of productivity:


          · Groping—“Why are we here . . . really?” 
          · Griping—“Where’s my coffee? The computer on my desk is not working.” 
          · Grasping—“I’m beginning to understand the expectations. This is going to be good” 
          · Grouping—“I’m sensing a melding, bonding, and solidifying.” 
          · Group action—“This is what we are going to do.” 
 

But, this situation took me a little by surprise. Before we had much of a chance to move forward and accomplish anything, we hit a road bump . . . trust.

It was established that the model would place significant importance on information sharing (IS) and information management (IM) regarding cultural conflicts as well as pandemic disease outbreaks, epidemics, and health crises. An expectation was suggested that it was more important to share information than it was to protect it. That’s when the gloves came off. A number of the advisors, and even the observersfrom the African nations, weighed in on the discussion citing example after example where they had been deprived of the power of information in the past. A few even went back to colonial history, where “The colonial institutions had no interest or desire in fostering trust in the native populations, and misinformation was a frequent weapon used to keep the population in check.”

Another huge problem regarding trust dealt with the issue of corruption in certain areas throughout Africa. It was felt that the high levels of corruption reduced the types and amounts of information that could be shared (IS), and those conflicts often created crises themselves between the private and public sectors.

The moderators did a fine job of recognizing and discussing the issue of trust and getting us back on track. But, throughout the two weeks, the idea of trust kept sneaking its way back into the panel’s assignment. In the months since the meetings I attended at the Koffi Anan Peacekeeping Center, I have mulled around in my mind the idea of trust.

Steven Covey says that “Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” And even Abraham Lincoln said, “If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.”

Trust seems to be the reliance on the integrity of something to be true and sure. It becomes a confidence and assurance in the credence of a person or a situation. There also seems to be an element of risk or vulnerability that goes with the act of trusting, because the result of your trusting is out of your control. It is possible that you could be wrong. In a sense, we are paying the highest tribute to a person when we trust him or her to do right. In that regard, it may be an even higher compliment to be trusted than loved. So, trusting is difficult enough, but knowing whom to trust seems even harder. The sad thing is that trust takes years to build and seconds to shatter. Ernest Hemingway tried to keep it pretty simple by concluding, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

I can’t imagine that love could even exist at all without the element of trust. I agree that you run the risk of being deceived if you decide to trust too much. But, I believe you will probably live in torment if you don’t trust enough. Rick Warren, in his bookThe Purpose Driven Life, holds out the hope that a break in trust can be repaired: “Forgiveness must be immediate, whether or not a person asks for it. Trust must be rebuilt over time. Trust requires a track record.” It sounds to me that trusting in the restoration and healing of a broken trust would take another occurrence of trust itself!

Maybe it just works that way. 

The panel, the advisers, and the observers finished the assignment given to us for the two weeks of meetings in Accra, Ghana, and the results were presented to the United Nations, the U.S. Pentagon, the World Health Organization, and other involved groups. I learned a lot about crisis management, possible pandemic outbreaks and epidemics, and global information management. But I also discovered a treasure trove of insights regarding the subject of trust. Perhaps, we should have just spent our time on the subject of Trust Management (TM).

Postponed Debt

As a cultural economist, I am very curious about the phenomenon of postponed debtthat I observe as I travel around the world. Cultural economics tries to deal with both sides of one coin: How do the people affect the economics of a culture? And: How do the economics of a culture affect the people? The issue of postponed debt has everything to do with economics and everything to do with culture . . . and also, it has everything to do with character.

In many of the Lesser Developed Countries (LDC) where I travel, if more money is needed to meet the economic demands and pay the bills, a very simple method is used. The dictator simply prints more currency. That method has an immediate impact on the value of the existing currency. With the same amount of goods in the market, but additional money in the system that was printed and spent, the prices for those remaining goods in the system go up. No one has to vote or agree for the price to go up, they just do. For example, if there were ten cherry pies and there were ten dollars in the money system, each cherry pie would cost you one dollar. But, if another ten dollars were to be created and put into the system, you would have twenty dollars chasing the ten cherry pies, and you would end up paying $2 to purchase your desired pie. The pie wasn’t really worth more, but the value of the money was worth less. 

In the U.S., our method is a bit different. When the Congress overspends, the Treasury is overdrawn. The Treasury creates and issues treasury bills and bonds and sells them at auction (IOUs), on the assumption that someone, some institution, or some foreign entity would rather have an interest-paying bond than a cherry pie. For the government to pay off the T-bills and bonds, it is necessary to either raise taxes on the citizens, sell off national assets, e.g. oil reserves, coal reserves, harbor and port rights, national forests, military armament, air space, etc., or allow the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve Bank to start calling in the IOUs and paying them off. What Method would they use to pay off those T-bills and bonds? You guessed it . . . more newly created money!

A bond dealer would receive the T-bills or bonds and make the appropriate payment to the holder. The Federal Reserve Bank would receive the T-bill or bond and issue a check to the bond dealer who, in turn, would deposit that check into his bank account. The check, when deposited, would be credited by the Federal Reserve Bank to that bank’s required fractional reserves and that bank would then be entitled to make loans against that new reserve, or exchange it for cash. Why did the Federal Reserve Bank have the right to issue the check? Because it was backed up by the U.S. Treasury IOU that it just purchased!

In essence, what happens in the transaction is that the federal debt, a liability, is transformed into an asset by the U.S. Treasury signing a note, and the notebecoming an asset of the Federal Reserve Bank. In other words, the debt of the government has been miraculously turned into spendable money. That is calledmonetizing the federal deficit! It gives an illusion and a false assurance that the government has a never ending source of money and store of wealth.

Those T-bills and bonds have an intended and expected postponement in being paid back. Some may be designed to not be paid back for up to thirty years. That postponed repayment defers the immediate impact on the monetary system. And when the debt instruments are paid back, they are nearly always paid back with money from more postponed debt, generated by the selling of more T-bills and bonds. The ultimate effect, however, is exactly the same as if the government did not issue the T-bills and bonds in the first place, but simply satisfied its debt with newly printed currency fresh from the presses.

The combination of postponement of the debt, and inflation, is the ultimate, subtle taxation. No one escapes the effects of inflation. When employing the method of inflation to settle overspending, there is no cost to the government for collecting taxes, no votes have to be taken for approval, and the government is the sole beneficiary. Those decisions come from the people who affect the economics of our culture. The activity ends up being a form of the old Ponzi scheme, where the early investor is hopefully repaid by the investment of a later investor. But I have never heard of any country in history whose traditional economic system could tolerate the monetizing of $26 trillion dollars into its system. Historically, a more likely result would include bankruptcy and civil conflict.

So, what is the psychological problem with the postponement of debt? How do the economics of a culture affect the individual people? William Shakespeare instructed us, "Defer no time; delays have dangerous ends." And, we might add that postponement is perhaps the deadliest form of denial, because the longer we wait, the more the sharp edge of urgency wears off. Our minds actually start telling us that the responsibility to keep the promise is not that important anyway. Something that can be done at any time will probably be done at no time. Postponement and the ignoring of accountability can become cultural suicide on the installment plan. Many of the leaders of foreign countries I visit really believe that the loans the U.S. has made to them should now just be forgiven and forgotten. They figured that they would repay “someday,” and then discovered that “someday” is not a day of the week.

I am sensing that the people of our culture have carefully observed our attitudes of looseness toward the integrity and responsibility regarding debt. The assumption seems to be that it makes no difference if we purchase homes we can’t afford, or lease cars without concern of the residual balance at the end of the contract. When one credit card is maxed out, just go get two more, stack up student loans depending on the political leaders to simply forgive the ballooned amounts before the next election, and make personal commitments and relational promises we have no intention of keeping. I think we have some serious problems that have resulted from a breakdown of integrity and accountability.

Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” And a culture can’t rationalize away what it has behaved itself into. The heart has reasons that reason does not always understand. We can be assured that where there is an intellectual disconnect from personal integrity, the reasoning and intellect will try to synthesize a substitute connection for justification. I think when it comes to integrity, in order to change the culture there has to be a change of heart. The economic practices of a culture will definitely affect the people. And the morals and integrity of the people involved will ultimately affect the economics of a culture.

Status Symbols

On the border of Ukraine and Romania, near the town of Gura Humorului, surrounded by orchards of peach, cherry, apple, and pear trees, is a large community of artistic “tinners.” While visiting the area, I discovered that the Ukrainian, Russian, and Romanian metal workers of that area historically possessed unique abilities to design and build ornate roofs of crafted sheet metal. Their homes, barns, gazebos, and even outhouses displayed roofs of stunning architecture and art form. The beautiful buildings were definitely influenced by the architecture of the old Orthodox churches, and each building delivered a pronounced message of the owner’s belief and support of the old Orthodox Christian institutions. They were eminent statements of status. 

Several months later, I was traveling through the West African country of Cameroon. About 5:30 Saturday morning, I was able to negotiate for a small loaf of French bread, butter, and a cup of hot tea. My driver, Vincent, had been up early and had the Toyota SUV washed and filled with diesel for our eight-hour trip from the seaport city of Douala, north to the Mbingo hospital close to the border of Nigeria. 

We took the seaport route out of Douala, a bustling city of two and a half million people, and successfully dodged pot holes and unpredictable Saturday morning market traffic. We made our way through sleepy African towns of Limbe, N’Kongsamba, and Kunba. As we approached the city of Bafoussam, I noticed certain houses that had high-pitched metal roofs made of shiny sheet metal, usually with a design similar to a weather vane on top. Some compounds had several of the peaked roofs, and others had, maybe, only one or two, and some had no peaked metal roofs at all.

I was aware of the Muslim influence in that part of West Africa, and asked Vincent if the steep square roofs of metal had anything to do with Muslim culture? 

“No,” replied Vincent, “in this western region of Cameroon the culture only allows you to place one of those steep metal roofs on your buildings if you have reached a certain level of wealth. They are symbolic of castles or royalty. You must pass the wealth test, and then the other wealthy people of the area give you permission to build a steep roof. The more wealth you have the more steep roofs you are allowed to build. That is why some compounds have six or eight roofs and others only have one, and some have none. It is necessary for the real rich to constantly keep building outbuildings just to display more roofs as a status symbol of wealth. 

As we entered Bafoussam, I asked Vincent what he meant by wealth. “How wealthy are the people of Bafoussam in comparative value?” 

“The people of Bafoussam are everywhere in Cameroon, but their real homes are in this western region of the country.” He went on, “about all the buildings in Douala, and the capital city of Younde, are owned by the people of Bafoussam. Nearly all the construction companies are owned by them. They pretty much control the wealth of the country, and these peaked roofs send out that message.” 

A status symbol is a visible, external message of one's perceived social or economic position. 

What people employ as status symbols will differ between countries and cultures based on what is considered valuable to them. It is not unusual that status symbols even change over time. Anna Marie and I love to visit the historic homes and castles throughout the world. Before the invention of the printing press, owning a large collection of books was considered an impressive status symbol. With time, books became a less-recognized or rarefied status symbol. 

Possessions typically perceived as status symbols in our culture may include a large house or penthouse apartment, a second home or ski chalet, haute couture fashionable clothes, some number of luxury vehicles, a trophy wife, a sizable collection of high-priced artworks or antiques, a privately owned aircraft or a luxury boat that is moveable from one status location to another. Even a securely tenured position at a prestigious university or research institute can be flaunted as a mark of high status. 

Ancient Central American Mayan cultures artificially induced crosseyedness and flattened the foreheads of high-born infants as a permanent, lifetime sign of noble status. In the Middle East, and especially in the northern tier of African countries, the women use the application of henna on their bodies as status artwork. They like it because it does not wash off, but eventually disappears so that they can start over with new designs. However, they are some of the first persons to come to our free health clinics complaining of permanent liver problems. The blood that carries the henna designs away from the skin deposits the dye in the liver. That can be fatal. 

The employment of status symbols can be a very tricky activity, indeed. Many times an individual is capable of buying the status symbol solely to impress others, but does not possess the personal wealth that is implied by the symbol. Charles Spurgeon, the theologian of another era, warned the people of his day, “No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.” Robert Frank penned an article in the Wall Street Journal regarding our recent financial crisis: “If the financial crisis has a silver lining, it is the decline and fall of the overpriced, over-hyped status economy. You know, the one built on bling and Hummers and Louis Vuitton for the masses. The past decade may have had its excesses, but none was as stupefying as the $300,000 watch that doesn’t tell time.” 

Usually, status symbols will give insight into the value system of a culture or subculture. The symbols represent what most people in the culture or society can’t afford to own or indulge in … but wished they could. And, it is but of my own folksy observations, that status symbols wouldn’t even be effective were it not for our human capacities of envy, lust, and discontent. I rather like the advice of ancient Socrates: “If a rich man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.” 

“Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.” That quote was Albert Einstein’s view of wealth and symbols of status. I would say that’s some pretty intelligent advice from a pretty intelligent fellow.

Reconciliation

Nothing has traumatized my psyche and emotions over the past nearly forty years of international travel, like the real-time observations of genocide. I have seen with my own eyes the atrocities in the Bosnia-Kosovo-Herzegovina tragedy. I experienced the killing fields of Uganda, Burundi and two episodes in Congo. I was in Nagorno Karabakh and experienced the systematic killing of 80% of its male population with almost no media coverage at all. I stood where the Turks ravaged the population of the Armenians. I have visited Cambodia and diligently observed and studied how Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge diabolically murdered everyone who did not fit their envisioned model of agrarian communism. I have visited the Jewish holocaust museums in both America and Israel, and have concluded that evil is very real, cultures are very fragile, and genocide can happen anywhere.

Witnessing the occurrence of genocide being perpetrated by the Hutus upon the Tutsis in Rwanda still plays horror movies on the wide screen of my mind. After the genocide stopped, we drove in a Volkswagen van from Kampala, Uganda, to the heart of Kigali, Rwanda. There I encountered the scenes I cannot now erase. 

Out of a population of 7.3 million people—84% of whom were Hutu, 15% Tutsi and 1% Twa—the official figures published by the Rwandan government estimated the number of victims of the genocide to be 1,174,000 slaughtered in 100 days, between April 6 and mid-July. That figures out to be 10,000 Tutsis or moderate Hutus murdered every day by their own neighbors; 400 every hour, 7 every minute. It is estimated that about 300,000 Tutsi, who had escaped to neighboring countries, survived the genocide. Thousands of widows, many of whom were subjected to a planned strategy of rape and female mutilation, became HIV-Aids infected. There were about 400,000 kids left as orphans, and nearly 85,000 of them were forced to become heads of families. The killings, on the most part, were accomplished without the use of any guns, but by hand with the use of machetes that were issued to the Hutus by their leaders, or the victims were bludgeoned to death with common gardening hoes and shovels.

It is important to see, from a cultural economics standpoint, that genocide differs from war. War, historically, is fought for tribute to be paid by the vanquished to the victor. Or wars are fought over the possession of some disputed border-land geography. But genocide takes place where there is full intention of destroying and replacing a culture. In 1994, the Hutus in Rwanda wanted to completely destroy and remove all remnants of the Tutsi culture and civilization. Their intentions were to kill every man, woman, boy, and girl who was of Tutsi blood, and every trace of Tutsi traditions, institutions, family structure and legacy, as well as all living individuals.

Once genocide has been accomplished, the aggressors assume undisputed right and sway over land (resources), labor (production), capital (business, currency, trade), education, religion, policy-making and enforcing, and the entrepreneurs are replaced by either a dictator or by a politburo.

Very little thought is given at the time of the genocide to the slaughter of the innocent civilians or any other hideous atrocities perpetrated. It is deemed imperative that the culture needs to be eradicated, and the eliminating of people is viewed as an incidental requirement. Therefore, it is impossible to enforce any standard rules or treaties of war.

The Commander and General of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi named Paul Kagame, brought a halt to the killings and gained control of the country by mid-July, 1994. By then, the facts had begun to percolate out from Kigali. The United Nations had failed miserably in fulfilling its peacekeeping assignments. The Clinton Administration and the UN actually eroded support and blocked any help from going into Rwanda to stop the aggression and genocide by the Hutus. Later, President Clinton in a Frontline television interview admitted that he regretted the decision, and later publicly stated that he believed that if he had sent 5,000 U.S. peacekeepers, more than 500,000 lives could have been saved. President Clinton has referred to the failure of the U.S. government to intervene in the genocide as one of his main foreign policy failings.

In 2000, the UN explicitly declared its reaction to Rwanda a "failure." Then Secretary General Kofi Annan said of the event, "The international community failed Rwanda, and that must leave us always with a sense of bitter regret."

So, following the occurrence of genocide, how does civilization reset its clock?

John Rucyahana, the Bishop of Rwanda, admitted, “I knew that to really minister to Rwanda's needs meant working toward reconciliation in the prisons, in the churches, and in the cities and villages throughout the country. It meant feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, caring for the young; but it also meant healing the wounded and forgiving the unforgivable.”

In July, 1994, Tutsi leader, General Paul Kagame, was chosen vice-president of a new unity government, and Hutu leader, Pasteur Bizimungu was chosen president so that the majority Hutus would still be highly represented in the government. Bizimungu resigned in March of 2000 in a dispute over the make-up of a new cabinet, and Kagame became president. Kagame subsequently won elections in 2003 and 2010.

During the genocide, most of the governmental institutions were destroyed, including the judicial courts. Most of the judges and prosecutors had been killed. Out of 750 judges, only fifty were left alive in the country. However, there were over 130,000 suspects who had been arrested and were being held in jails for crimes related to the genocide atrocities. Between 1996 and 2000, the courts could only process 3,343 cases. It was calculated that it would take over two hundred years to conduct the trials of the suspects in prison, not including the ones who remained at large.

The UN set up the International Criminal Tribunal to prosecute the high level officials, and Rwanda established the Gacaca Courts that traditionally dealt with local conflicts and adapted them to judge the cases of the lower level leaders and the local people. Neither of the systems proved to be satisfactory.

Reconciliation and restructuring peace is a very complicated phenomenon. It has to do with more than reparations and economic matters. It also requires changes of heart and spirit and requires employing symbolic as well as practical matters. In some ways Rwanda has experienced healing; in some ways it has not. In some ways President Kagame has been given an impossible task. The last time I visited Kigali, I listened to a couple of prominent Hutu leaders who were saying, “Nothing has changed, we still have the minority Tutsis as leaders. Next time we will complete the job.”

The cultural and spiritual clock cannot be reset, and complete healing cannot take place without a veritable miracle of reconciliation. That reconciliation requires massive doses of kindness, justice, and righteousness. Otherwise, it will not last. Otherwise, temporary repression will be experienced, and ultimately another outbreak of atrocity will be repeated.

I pray often for my Rwandan friends and for President Paul Kagame. Project C.U.R.E. has been involved in the country for many years, and I believe that true reconciliation of kindness, justice, and righteousness will serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding and violation that unduly separate human beings one from another. 

I Should Have Become a Watchmaker

Clocks have always intrigued me. For those of you who have visited our home, you know that we have at least one wind-up, pendulum clock in every room in our home, except the bathrooms and closets. The pendulum clock that hangs in our kitchen has been in our personal possession for over fifty years. I am fascinated by old clocks and captivated by the concept of time.

We have traveled to Greenwich, outside London, and viewed the Shepherd Gate Clock at the Royal Observatory. I have carefully lugged home interesting clocks from South America and Asia for my family, and have even visited the rare display of ancient clocks at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.

The clock is one of the oldest human inventions, and if I would have become a clockmaker and an official studier of time, I would have been called a “horologist.” Our word clock is derived from the Celtic words clagan and clocca, meaning “bell.” If the mechanism doesn’t have a bell or chime, it is simply a “timepiece” or “watch.” For the past 6,000 years, devices such as the sundial, the candle clocks, the hourglass, and the ancient water clocks have been different physical processes studied and used to consistently measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units of day, lunar month, and year. So, in layman’s language, clocks measure time and time is what keeps everything from happening all at once. That sounds simple enough . . . but wait. What is time? 

We all know that an hour can seem like an eternity, or pass in a flash, depending on what we are doing. You can’t see time or feel time, yet your car mechanic can charge a hundred dollars an hour for it without fixing a thing. And some wise guy can convince you that “Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.” I even had a sacrilegious bloke once ask me “What year did Jesus think it was?” Time was a serious enough issue that when Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland was on her death bed in 1603, she begged, “All my possessions for a moment of time.” 

Ancient philosophers and theologians have never been able to agree on the nature of time. St. Augustine handled the subject cleverly. He thought he could grasp the meaning of time, but admitted that when it came to explaining it he had a difficult time: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not." He ended up explaining it by calling it a distention of the mind, “by which we simultaneously grasp the past in memory, the present by attention, and the future by expectation.” 

The ancient Greek philosophers believed that the universe had an infinite past with no beginning. Medieval philosophers and theologians developed the concept of the universe having a finite past with a beginning. This view is shared by Abrahamic faiths, as they believe time started by creation, therefore, the only thing being infinite is God and everything else, including time, is finite. 

So, the one view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe—a dimension independent of events— in which events occur in sequence. The opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of "container" that events and objects "move through," nor to any entity that "flows," but that it is instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humans sequence and compare events. This second view holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is neither measurable, nor can it be traveled. 

When I get tired of reckoning with the dusty minds of the past, I resort to the real world and philosophy of Dr. Seuss to shed some insight on the subject of time: “How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?” Then he goes on and quips, “They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!”

I started paying attention to the historic clocks as I traveled the world. I am totally rapt by Big Ben along the River Thames in London. The Salisbury Cathedral clock, built in 1386, is considered to be the world's oldest surviving mechanical clock that strikes the hours. I learned that Galileo first had the idea to use a swinging bob to regulate the accuracy of the clock, even though Christiaan Huygens was the fellow who figured out the mathematical formula that determined 39.13 inches was needed to be the length of the pendulum for the one second movement. He actually made the first pendulum-regulated clock in 1670.

Spring-driven clocks appeared during the 15th century. On November 17, 1797, Eli Terry received his first patent for a clock. Terry is known as the founder of the American clock-making industry. Starting in the U.S. in early decades of the 19th century, clocks were one of the first American items to be mass-produced and also to use interchangeable parts. About twenty years before the American Civil War, Alexander Bain, Scottish clockmaker, patented the electric clock. The development of electronics in the 20th century led to timepieces with no clockwork parts at all. Time in these cases is measured in several ways, such as by the vibration of a tuning fork, the behavior of quartz crystals, or the quantum vibrations of atoms. Currently, the international unit of time, the second, is defined in terms of radiation emitted by caesium atoms. 

Albert Einstein once said, "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking . . .the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." 

I believe that what Einstein was saying was that since this phenomenon called time seems to exist for the convenience of mankind, it certainly stands to reason that the most significance connected to it lies with the heart and behavior of individuals. Each person has exactly the same number of hours and minutes in every day. Wealthy people can’t buy more hours, and even the smartest scientist can’t invent more minutes. Try as you may, you can’t save time to spend it on another day. The dazzling concept of time reminds us to cherish all the individual moments, because they will never come again. If you don’t value yourself and those around you, you won’t value your time. Until you begin to value your time you will not fully maximize it.

            There’s a clock on the wall and it’s ticking down; the time you have left ‘til
            you’re dust in the ground. How you love the people with the time you’ve got
            determines if you are judged as worthy or not.


William Penn said, “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” Had I understood that fully, even at a younger age, I probably would have joined Albert Einstein: “If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

My Affair with Daffodils

 I wandered lonely as a cloud

                 That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

        When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

            Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

               Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Those are the opening lines from William Wordsworth’s famous poem about daffodils. I swear, I really didn’t mean to fall in love with daffodils. It just sort of happened. They are native to meadows and woods in Europe, North Africa, and West Asia, with a center of distribution in the Western Mediterranean. Wherever I would wander lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills, I, too, would catch a glimpse of the crowd, a host of golden daffodils. Over 140 varieties have gained recognition. But you don’t get to view them very long in one place. They are in bloom for about three weekends, then gone for another year.

The name "daffodil" started out as “affodell." The reason for the introduction of the initial "d" is not known, although a probable source is an etymological merging from the Dutch article "de," as in "De affodil." From at least the 16th century, folks have been fooling around with the name; Daffodowndilly has come to town in a yellow petticoat and a green gown.

In ancient China, a legend about a poor but good man holds he was brought many cups of gold and wealth by this flower. Since the flower blooms in early spring, it has also become a symbol of Chinese New Year. If the daffodils bloom on Chinese New Year, it is said to bring extra wealth and good fortune throughout the year. The Chinese also love and revere the flower because of its sweet fragrance.

In Persian literature, the daffodil in the spring garden is a symbol of beautiful eyes, together with other flowers that equal a beautiful face, such as roses for cheeks and violets for shining dark hair. In some countries the yellow daffodil is associated with Easter. The German for daffodil is Osterglocke, that is "Easter bell;" a house with daffodils in it is a house lit up, whether or not the sun be shining outside.

But the place where I fell in love with daffodils was not Germany, China, Persia, or Holland . . . it was in dear old London town. In my years of travel, I would be required to pass through London a half dozen to ten times a year. I looked forward to being in Great Britain in the spring. Many times I would be in London on my birthday, March 22nd. Even if I only had a few hours layover at Heathrow or Gatwick, I would grab my camera, put the rest of my bags in “left luggage” at the airport, get on the train, and head for Victoria station. From there, I could walk into a fantasy land of weaving and nodding gold. The daffodils would be in bloom in Green Park, Hyde Park, St. James Park, and all along the Pall Mall from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace. It was ecstasy. It was peace. It was a delight to the eye and a solace to this weary traveler’s soul.

One spring, I had been traveling in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was necessary for me to continue my travels through London and on to Ethiopia, Uganda, and Rwanda. It had been very cold in Pakistan and would be very hot in Africa. I needed a whole new set of clothes, but did not have time enough to go all the way back to Denver to exchange suit cases. Fortuitous enough for me, it was spring break at Anna Marie’s school and it was also going to be my birthday. She packed another suit case for me, jumped on a flight out of Denver, and we met in London. We walked through the parks and returned to our hotel near Westminster Abby. I was very exhausted from the travel and fell soundly to sleep in our room. I awoke to a room filled with fresh daffodils and roses. She had gone to the market and purchased flowers and fresh strawberries for tea and shortcake.

Two years ago, Anna Marie began to ask if there was any place special I would like to go for my birthday? My answer was, “No, I don’t believe so. I think I know already what is on the other side of most of the mountains on the map.” Then, I stopped and said, “Oh, there is one place I would love to go . . . let’s go to England and chase the daffodils.” We flew to London, and then caught the fast train to Carlisle. We met up with some friends and headed to the Lake District in the north. Our destination was the village of Grasmere, the old stomping grounds of William Wordsworth. We visited fields of daffodils, the ancient stone church and courtyard of dazzling yellow, and the gravesite and headstone of William Wordsworth.

To my surprise, there were bus loads of Japanese and Koreans there to honor Wordsworth and view the daffodils. In the traditional Japanese medicine of kampo, wounds were treated with the daffodil roots mixed with wheat flour paste. Also, daffodils, that just happen to be the national flower of Wales, are now grown commercially in Powys, Wales, to produce galantamine, a drug used to combat Alzheimer’s disease.

You see, most visitors travel to Great Britain after school is out and they just think that all the parks are always grass. Little do they know that under that carpet of green grass are tens of thousands of daffodil bulbs ready to cast aside winter and announce the beauty and vibrancy of yet another Spring. By the time the tourists arrive, the big lawnmowers have cleared away the transitional gold and have prepared the parks for yet another summer.

I can identify with William Wordsworth’s final stanza of his poem about daffodils:

   For oft, when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
   They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude;
   And then my heart with pleasure fills,
   And dances with the daffodils. 

Happy springtime to all of you . . . and why not experience an affair with the daffodils?

The Heaviest Stone

In October 1999, super-cyclones struck the eastern part of India in the region of Orissa, leaving more than 10,000 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. In January 2001, massive earthquakes hit India’s western region of Gujarat. The quake registered a horrific 7.7 on the Richter scale and immediately left more than 30,000 people dead, more than 165,000 injured, and almost one million people without homes or economic support. When the earthquakes and the super-cyclones hit India, Project C.U.R.E. immediately became involved. 

From our Project C.U.R.E. warehouse in Rochester, England, Project C.U.R.E. UK sent emergency medical goods to the earthquake victims, and from our warehouse in Phoenix, Arizona, Project C.U.R.E. sent goods to Orissa. But the real need proved to be in the long-term reconstruction of destroyed medical facilities in both venues. Requests for help began pouring into our Denver headquarters, and the pressure was on us to get to the locations and perform the needs assessment studies so that we could begin to ship the much-needed containers of donated medical supplies and pieces of equipment into the crippled areas. 

Additionally, we had been getting pressure to perform a needs assessment trip into Katmandu, Nepal. I had decided to see if we could combine both assessment assignments into one trip. Throughout the history of Project C.U.R.E., it had not been out of the ordinary for me to travel into some pretty precarious situations. We never wanted to do anything foolish or presumptuous, but neither did we shy away from traveling into the “hot spots” of the world. 

In India’s grievous history, the Babri Masjid Hindu temple had stood on holy ground near a place called Ayodhya, not far from the major western city of Ahmadabad in the State of Gujarat. Previous conflicts between the militant Muslims and the radical Hindu sects had resulted in the Muslims desecrating the holy site by destroying the Hindu shrine and building in its place, on the very spot, a Muslim mosque. 

In 1992, the Hindu radicals had attacked the mosque and had torn it down piece by piece and burned it. Riots broke out across India where thousands of people were either killed or injured and surrounding properties were burned or looted. The Hindus made a declaration that they would rebuild their temple and reconsecrate the holy ground. They had declared that on the 15th of March, 2002, they would march to the holy site with a sacred stone called a “Shila daan stone” that would commemorate the official beginning of the temple construction. The Shila daan stone consisted of two heavy carved slabs of stone carried from Mount Govardhan to be used in the construction of the foundation of the new temple. Earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled that the Hindu temple should not be rebuilt, and the government purchased the surrounding property in order to block the building. But none of that was going to stop the Hindus from delivering the heavy stones and reclaiming the lost honor of their gods, which had suffered for such a long time under the Muslims. Hindu pilgrims began taking the public trains to Ayodhya to support the move to rebuild the Hindu temple. 

On Wednesday, February 27, 2002, the Indian trains were packed with passengers headed to Ahmadabad. The Sabarmati Express had just pulled into the Godhra station. Muslims were at the station shouting anti-Hindu slogans. The train pulled out of the station only a short distance when someone pulled the emergency stop handle. Immediately, the stopped train was attacked by rock-throwing Muslims, who began smashing out the windows of the railcars. 

The frightened passengers in a second-class sleeping car pulled down the shades and locked the coach doors. Soon burning rags, Molotov cocktails, and bottles of acid landed inside the train car while the attackers doused the outside of the coach with gasoline and kerosene. Almost immediately, sleeper car S-6 and the adjoining coaches were on fire. There was absolutely no escape for the passengers inside who were burned alive.

Of the fifty-eight people who burned in S-6, twenty-six were women and sixteen were children. An additional fifty or more were injured in the burning ambush. Then rumors quickly spread that in order to teach the Hindu pilgrims a lesson, the Muslims had also kidnapped and raped Hindu women. 

Riots broke out all over India. Hundreds of people were being killed, and properties were being torched in Bombay, Ahmadabad, and Hyderabad, and as far away as New Delhi and Calcutta. Everyone figured that the violence was only a precursor to what might happen on March 15th when the Hindus marched to Ayodhya with the heavy Shila daan stone. 

Our trip was scheduled to put us into India on March 12. From Bombay, we were to travel by train—the same Sabarmati Express train—to Surat, in the state of Gujarat, right through the city of Ahmadabad. That was where the train cars had been stoned and burned, and all the people killed. That was where the worst of the riots were taking place. Our airplane landed in Bombay at 2:00 a.m. Messages were waiting for us at the front desk to not take the train and to not travel north to Gujarat state. By breakfast, two of our hosts met us at the hotel and insisted we travel with them south to Hyderabad, where Anna Marie and I would be safe for a few days. Eventually, calm was restored across India and we were able to perform all of our needs assessment studies in the flooded areas of eastern India. We also flew into a military airport in Gujarat state and determined where Project C.U.R.E.’s help would be targeted in the tragically decimated earthquake areas. 

As we were hop-scotching across India, avoiding the rioting, I had some time to reflect. Just months before the India episode, Rudolph Giuliani had responded to the terrorism of 9/11in New York by saying, “We can't accommodate terrorism. When someone uses the slaughter of innocent people to advance a so-called political cause, at that point the political cause becomes immoral and unjust and they should be eliminated from any serious discussion, any serious debate.” Terrorism is carried out in a calculated fashion. The terrorist supposedly fights to remedy wrongs. But for righting the wrongs, his only solution is the destruction of the structure of the society or culture. 

To complicate the India encounter, this grudge between the Muslims and Hindus had been going on for a long time. The grudge had simmered and simmered and began to boil in 1992 with the destruction of the Babri Masjid. Another layer of complication existed because it had to do with a religious conviction. Paschal once stated that, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” And it certainly is not a new thing for people to use God to justify the unjustifiable. 

Hate and bigotry seem to be learned responses. I don’t think people are born to hate other people or cultures or religions. They learn that characteristic through being taught. And if they can learn to hate and carry long-time grudges, then it seems to follow that they can be taught to experience and embrace love. In fact, I have come to believe that love comes a little more readily to the human heart than does bigotry. As Martin Luther King, Jr. used to say, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” 

There was one more thing that impressed me about the Shila daan stone situation and the massacre of all the people in India, beginning with the burning of the loaded railroad cars. Life is too short and the alternatives too dangerous, and too expensive, to carry a grudge. 

The two big slabs of carved rock that comprised the Shila daan stone were heavy. The folks who carried those stones put forth great effort and paid a tremendous physical price to humanly transport those stones to the temple site in Ayodhya. But even though the Shila daan stones were heavy, they were, in truth, not the heaviest stones in the story. The heaviest stone you can carry is not a Shila daan stone . . . the heaviest and most dangerous stone you can carry is a grudge stone. If you are carrying a heavy grudge stone today, let me encourage you to take a deep breath and just let it fall to the ground. The whole world will be better off!

Skullduggery in Somalia

It is imperative that integrity be the cornerstone of any endeavor where everyone is expected to be better off. Napoleon Hill declares, “I fully realize that no wealth or position can long endure unless built upon truth and justice; therefore, I will engage in no transaction which does not benefit all whom it affects.”

I agree with Warren Buffet’s curt advice about employing people: "In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you." Integrity is a precious commodity, and when it is compromised or put up for sale in the market place of life, the result is always moral and cultural bankruptcy.

Integrity has to do with consistent behavior stemming from a core group of values or virtues. When we speak of someone’s integrity, we often use descriptors like, honesty, principles, truthfulness, strength of character, or incorruptibility. Probably, the most common descriptor used for the lack of integrity is hypocrisy, because there is an observable disconnect between the projected expectation and the actual behavior.

While working in Somalia in 2001, I was shocked by two glaring examples of the loss of integrity that impacted the culture of that historic nation. The first had to do with the presumption of the citizens that the new president possessed integrity, intelligence, and energy. In the early days of his regime, Siad Barre had dreams of unifying the twelve major tribes of Somalia and developing a strong economy by emphasizing national loyalty and pride instead of clan individualities.

He realized he needed outside help, and readily fell into the trap of accepting “help” from the Soviet Union. He swallowed the Marxist-Leninist ideals of communism and controlled markets. Those concepts and practices were an irritant to the independence and more entrepreneurial tribal clans of Somalia.

The Russians, along with thousands of Cuban troops, came creeping in, wrapping their tentacles around every life-giving artery of Somalia. Trying to rid himself of the Soviet entrapment, Siad Barre began endearing himself to the United States. He played the Soviets against the U.S. in order to get his best deal. The U.S. wanted to stop the Soviet aggression in Ethiopia as well, and the Russian’s expansion throughout Africa, so they agreed with Siad Barre to pump millions of dollars of aid money into Somalia and arm Siad Barre with the latest and most sophisticated war weaponry to protect himself from the Russians.

When the Soviets began pulling out, economic growth began taking place. Siad Barre became enamored with his own greatness and power, and his regime assumed a cultist personality intolerant of any challenge or criticism. The people of the different tribes resented the elitist cruelty. Barre abandoned all thought of unity and resorted to control by pitting the twelve tribes against each other, and the clan warlords began plotting the assassination of the leader. All of that chaos became the setting for the TV coverage of Somalia we received in the U.S. and for the “Blackhawk Down” episode in Mogadishu. Wherever there were pockets of discontent, he would send his trusted troops in to machinegun down all the livestock herds and throw into prison anyone who might speak out against him. He even sent his men into the northern area to poison the water wells of his own people. Eventually, he utilized his military arsenal of bombs, tanks, airplanes, rifles, mortars, and other weapons that had been supplied to him by both the Russians and the U.S., and employed them to murder his own people.

He visited the northern seaport city of Hargeisa (population of a half million people) and declared he would punish them for their disloyalty. He loaded the bombers given to him by the Soviets and U.S., deployed them from Hargeisa’s own international airport, and had them destroy the buildings, water systems, industries, and homes in an effort to ethnically cleanse the disloyal people of the north. Very seldom in history can you find anything as sinister or evil as what President Barre perpetrated upon Somalia. He also strafed and bombed his own cities, like Berbera and Burao, and eventually, Mogadishu. The entire country of Somalia was left in shambles.

After twenty-one years of murder, deceit, and skullduggery, Siad Barre foiled an assassination plot and escaped with his money to Kenya, then to Zimbabwe, and finally he died in Nigeria. He possessed intelligence and energy, but lacked integrity.


My second glaring example of perfidy and treachery in Somalia included the United Nations.

During the genocide, Somali citizens were desperately trying to escape as refugees and appealed to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees for help. Somehow, the rampant lack of integrity flooding over Somalia likewise washed over the U.N. The incident took place while I was in Somalia and became a textbook case of “mess up” and disgrace. The United Nations’ employees who were in charge of filling certain refugee quotas into countries such as Great Britain, Canada, and the United States were charging the refugees anywhere between $3,500 and in some cases, in excess of $5,000 U.S. money to process their application and place them into the country. That money went straight into the pockets of the individual U.N. employees. They would make the penniless refugees pay fifty shillings just to get inside the waiting room to talk to a U.N. individual. It was discovered that the U.N. employees would actually sell false documentation, phony identification papers, and bogus case histories to allow people who were not even refugees to be able to be “resettled” in the United States. The U.N. admitted that four staff members were suspected of soliciting money from the displaced persons they were paid handsomely to assist.

The U.N. officials came to the defense of their workers by building the case that the U.N. workers were really the “victims” in the situation. The U.N. had been informed for the previous two years of the employees’ scam, but claimed that the employees were placed in very difficult and stressful positions. Outside people just couldn’t understand the terrible and unbearable position of pressure and temptations the employees had been subjected to when there were nearly a quarter of a million people seeking to be placed into developed countries, and only 8,000 to 11,000 immigration spots had been made available by the well-off countries.

Finally, the United Nations directors gave the U.N. workers new assignments elsewhere, where the pressure would not be so unbearable. But they made that decision only when some refugees, who had paid their $5,000 and still never got selected to go to the United States, threatened to kill the extortionists. The U.N. had to then make a move to protect their poor, victimized representatives. No one had been brought to task or punished for the bribery scam. The U.N. employees had intelligence and energy, but did not possess integrity.

It really was not safe to go into Somalia when I did. There was no central government, no rule of law, no infrastructure, no civilized politics or security. But, the Somali community of Denver had literally begged Project C.U.R.E. to go there with one of their members and assess the medical needs of Somaliland, since the entire healthcare delivery system of the country was tragically broken, and all of the medical facilities had been sacked of supplies. We felt that Project C.U.R.E. could significantly alter the healthcare delivery system and greatly influence the everyday life of its people for many years to come.

I was astounded at the absence of integrity characterized by the Somalia mess, and was reminded of an old Rwandan proverb I had learned in Kigali: You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you.

I believe that sometimes we are commissioned to go into dark situations with the match of goodness to rekindle the flame and fan the fire of lost and compromised integrity.