[ExI] chinese colonization of africa etc

[Kelly Anderson]

Responding to the whole thread here by sharing two very personal stories...

Back in the days before the great Haitian earthquake and the
subsequent rape of the nation by the Clintons and associates, when
some good things could be made to happen there, I went over for a week
to help build an orphanage. The project was run by native Hatians, so
it was about as good a project as you probably could realistically
manage. Haiti is essentially a small bit of Africa plopped into the
Caribbean, so it seems relevant. Anyway, the very first thing we did
was to build a tall strong cinder block fence topped with broken glass
to keep the local children from coming and stealing all the food from
the orphans. We knew it wouldn't keep resolved adults out.

I thought it was a pretty bad use of resources to do this first...
because I was young, naive and American. But I didn't fight it, I just
joined the circus and built the wall. It got done in the week we were
there, only because in the end we hired some Hatians that knew how to
do the work... silly Americans.

Because I had extra space in my suitcase and budget, I brought a
little $700 device that you could pump maybe 10,000 gallons of sewage
or rain water through and produce lovely clean drinking water. The
local people running the orphanage saw that this was the equivalent of
gold, and so they locked it in a closet and never used it to produce
clean water for any of the children. I had proposed that they would
reduce the chance of theft by also giving clean water to the
neighbors, but that didn't happen either. Anyway, eventually, someone,
probably a worker at the orphanage, stole the thing and likely sold it
to some rich bastard who's had clean water for the last 23 years. The
money did NOT go to the orphanage.

So that was my first endeavor in International charity. The main thing
it did was educate me on just how fucked up much of the third world
is. I'd spent a year in Brazil earlier, and it was NOTHING compared to
Haiti.

================================

Story 2

About 20 years ago, I was contacted by a young man in Uganda. Uganda
is landlocked, malaria infested and run by a despicable dictator, so
they really have no chance there. Anyway, this young fellow James, who
was 16 at the time, had the brilliant idea to sweep the floor of the
local Internet cafe all day in exchange for 15 minutes of online time.
Somehow he found me in one of his 15 minute slots, and asked me simply
to help him attend school. Of course, I initially thought it was a
scam, so I contacted the school, found it was likely legit and sent
money directly to the school. No way was I sending a 16 year old
starving kid money. He attended and graduated a few years later as
their top student. I became friends with the people who ran the school
for a while too.

Contrary to what Unicef says, you cannot feed and school kids for
pennies a day in a place like Uganda, so this entire endeavor was kind
of expensive. Once he graduated, he did a few programming things, and
got all entrepreneurial and such. Eventually, he created a company for
sending money around the world. Also, he opened a Bitcoin exchange,
the first in Kampala, and educated many of the government elites about
Bitcoin, including the finance minister of the whole country. While it
all ended pretty badly, at one point I actually did make a little
money myself off the Bitcoin exchange...

I am still helping James. He married and had 4 children, 3 surviving
(another sad story). He named his oldest son Kelly, which I thought
was pretty nice. He's taught the children enough English that I can
talk to them now. While this whole thing was a bit inefficient
compared to the NGOs who try to industrialize all of this, it worked
for him and for me, and I consider him my son, adopted over the
Internet. His dream is to come live in the USA... because he
recognizes that Uganda sucks. Right now, he can't find a job, so I'm
paying him to volunteer at a local school. They are benefitting from
his involvement quite a bit, and that's good enough for me at the
moment.

The power to change the world, one person at a time, I truly believe
is in the hands of every person. NGOs are often stupid and/or corrupt,
but they aren't the only way to make a real difference.

-Kelly