Easter on Easter Island, Part 1

The diverse geographical assets of the sliver-shaped country of Chile make for a place of outrageous and extravagant beauty. Warm sandy beaches, frozen tundra, rugged mountain passes, tropical plateaus, old volcanoes, generous fishing waters . . . Chile has it all!

I had been in the cities of Conception and Santiago in January. The political officials had insisted that I return in April and visit the Chilean province of Easter Island to evaluate their health care system. Anna Marie joined me on the trip, and we arrived back in Santiago on the Wednesday before Easter.

I remembered first hearing of Easter Island during my childhood as I listened to the reports of World War II on the radio. Then, Easter Island hit the news once more during the heady days of NASA’s space program. The U.S. had negotiated for the use of a sizable portion of the island in order to build a large landing strip in case any of the space machines got into trouble out in the vast, empty waters of the Pacific Ocean. The Easter Island tracking station became a household buzzword during those many space flights.

Easter Island is the world's most isolated inhabited island. It is also one of the most mystifying and mysterious places on Earth. The original settlers were Polynesian islanders who somehow paddled their canoes for weeks, maybe months, through open waters of the Pacific Ocean and discovered the island in the middle of “nowhere.” They named the island Rapa Nui and were isolated for centuries from the outside world.

The people of Rapa Nui developed their own distinctive culture, a culture perhaps best symbolized by the huge moai figures. There are hundreds of the large monolithic stone sculptures that were carved from volcanic rock and mysteriously situated along the coastline, facing the settlements with their backs toward the spirit world of the vast sea. 

The first recorded European contact with the island was on April 5 (Easter Sunday), 1722, when a Dutch navigator visited the island for a week and estimated a population of 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants. But why on earth would the skinny country of Chili have any interest in owning little Easter Island today that sits 2,500 miles from its coast—that is farther than from New York to Los Angeles—out in the middle of nowhere? As an economist, let me suggest the answer . . . follow the money!

A country’s territorial water rights extend out to three miles past its borders. By being able to claim that Easter Island is an integral part of its sovereign country, Chile’s international coastline was not three miles out from Santiago, but a convenient 2,500 plus three miles out to the west of Easter Island. That gave Chile an incredible puddle of ocean water to claim as their undisputed fishing territory. There is no doubt about it, skinny Chile needs Easter Island!

The Chilean airline only flies once a week to Easter Island, and then on to Tahiti. As guests of honor, we were personally met at the Rapa Nui airport with beautiful floral leis and eager smiles. The governor of Easter Island, Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoz and his wife would be our hosts. We were additionally hosted by Hernan Felipe Errazuriz, a prominent attorney in Santiago, who had served as Chili’s foreign minister and also the Chilean ambassador to the United States. The third dignitary to host us was Christian Labbe Galilea, the present mayor of the city of Santiago, and his wife.

Since we were confined to the Island for at least a week, Friday and Saturday were designated as our days to explore Easter Island. Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoz was the perfect person to be our island tour guide. He was the undisputed official of the Island. He was the keeper of the legends. He knew all the history, all the folklore, and certainly all the people. As we traveled to the legendary spots throughout the island, Pedro told us many stories and related lots of facts about the kings who first came to the island and their exploits and Polynesian culture:

  • The 820 hand carved Moai stone statues weighed from 90 to 150 tons each and all came from one rock-quarry located in the northern part of the island. Each statue represented a king, tribal leader, or very important man of island history. Legend has it that the stones were moved into place by mental and spiritual powers of levitation
  •  A Moai usually sat atop an Ahu that was a sacred formation of stacked stones close to the sea that housed the bones of the dead island ancestors.
  •  There were no bad words in the Rapa Nui language. If you wanted to say something bad to or about someone you had to borrow a Spanish, French, or English phrase.
  • Likewise, there were no words of gratitude like “thank you” in their language. If someone did something nice for you, you would simply accept it.
  • Neither was there any concept of forgiveness in the culture.
  • The only, and ultimate, sign of disapproval or displeasure when someone had crossed over the behavior line was to stick out your tongue at the offender. That meant “death to you.”
  • You didn’t just kill someone who had done wrong; you made him stop breathing, ate his flesh, and then pounded each bone into dust. Then, he could never be honored or return again.

As we drove to every historic site on the island, the governor continued sharing with us the unusual history and culture of the Easter Island people. On Friday afternoon I received one of the greatest stories I had ever heard regarding the power of information brokering.

It is not unusual for people to utilize exclusive information to manipulate other folks who do not have access to the same information. The Egyptians used to call it “the King’s secret” when he could control the information of the past to bend the outcome of a present situation. He alone possessed the information that was locked safe in the forbidding walls of his political position. He alone could rule in safety through the secret invention, destruction, or alteration of past documents or information.

  • One of the past kings of the island divided the island into territories, one territory for each tribe. The king kept complete control, and his position was safe from an uprising or from someone killing him because only the king could read the ancient language carved in wood, which told of the compete history of each tribe and individuals of the specific tribes. Each year he traveled to the different territories reciting the sacred history to the tribes. He counted on the fact that knowledge was powerful, and in holding information there was safety. The king knew that no one would even think of killing him, since to kill him would be to kill the history of the individuals and each tribe. If they killed him they would really kill themselves and their posterity. The king lived a long and happy life.

I was reminded that knowledge is power, information is power. The secreting, hoarding, or manipulating of information may simply be an act of tyranny camouflaged as public service. I was becoming intrigued by the economics and culture of Rapa Nui and Easter Island.

                                       (Easter on Easter Island to be continued) 

Jars or Cracked Pots?

Ancient Demosthenes summed it up by saying, “As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not; so men are proved by their speeches whether they be wise or foolish.” Others have implied that the empty vessel makes the loudest sound. I have observed, however, that genius and mystery are sometimes discovered in the cracked pot. 

I first heard of the Plain of Jars during the US-Vietnam conflict in the 1960s and 70s. The U.S. had showered Laos with more missiles than it had dumped on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. The Xieng Khouang province was one of the most heavily bombed targets in history with about four billion pounds of bombs dropped during the Pathet Lao offensive to try to cut off the Ho Chi Minh movement of the advancing North Vietnamese. Many of the bombs did not explode and still present a problem. Sightseeing on the Plain of Jars can be done only on cleared and marked pathways. 

Never did I dream that one day I would actually get to visit the Plain of Jars, located on the high plateaus of the mountains of Laos. I had been asked to perform needs assessments for several Laotian hospitals in the area that had requested donated medical goods from Project C.U.R.E. Just outside the city of Xieng Khouang was located one of the ancient sites where the mysterious hand carved stone vessels still remained. The jars were huge, up to nine feet tall, the largest weighing fourteen tons. Most were carved of sandstone, others of granite. Some were round, others angular, and most were hand chiseled between 500 B.C. and 900 A.D., and then, somehow, they were transported from a distant rock quarry to the present sites. 

It reminded me a lot of standing out in the countryside in England and trying to figure out why the massive rocks of Stonehenge were balanced as they were. How were these massive jars transported? Who carved them? How were they used? What civilization placed them here? What happened to some of the lids that used to cover them? Did they bury people in them? Did they store water in them? There were thousands of the megalithic vessels around the Xieng Khouang area. 

Traditional Lao stories and legends explain that a race of giants ruled by a king called Khum Cheung fought long and valiantly and eventually beat their enemy. He supposedly then created the jars to brew and store huge amounts of rice wine in the vessels to celebrate his victory. Another local tradition states the jars were molded, using natural materials such as clay, sand, sugar, and animal products, in a type of stone mix. They believed that a nearby cave was actually a kiln, and that the huge jars were fired there and were not actually hewn of stone. 

Some legends claim that the jars were used to collect rainwater for caravan travelers along their journey at times when water was not available. The rainwater would then be boiled for safe use. 

Initial research of the Plain of Jars in the early 1930s claimed that the stone jars were associated with prehistoric burial practices. Excavation by Lao and Japanese archaeologists in the intervening years has supported this interpretation with the discovery of human remains, burial goods, and ceramics around the stone jars. 

The nearby cave is a natural limestone cave with an opening on one side and two man-made holes at the top of the cave. The holes could have been used as chimneys of a crematorium. Some archaeologists excavated inside the cave in the early 1930 and found material to support a centralized crematorium theory. 

The Plain of Jars could have been a burial site. Inside some of the jars have been found glass beads, burnt teeth and bone fragments, pottery fragments, iron and bronze objects. The stone jars initially may have been used to distil the dead bodies. In contemporary funerary practices connected to Thai, Cambodian, and Laotian royalty, the corpse of the deceased during the early stages of the funeral rites is placed into an urn, where the deceased undergoes gradual transformation from the earthly to the spiritual world. The ritual decomposition is followed by cremation and secondary burial. 

While exploring the megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos, I kept wondering what I could learn about empty jars and cracked pots. One thing I did know was that there certainly was a lot of confusion about the mission and message of the ancient traditions and practices. It was muddled and hidden enough that no one could really be certain now, even though it was incredibly important to the folks involved back then. 

I concluded that the genius to be discovered was that compassion is not a megalithic jar to be filled, but a fire to be ignited. When that fire is ignited, and its energy and warmth is focused on a needy place like Laos or Cambodia, the white-hot flame will be extended not just into the years ahead, but into eternity. Project C.U.R.E. volunteers who spend their energies passionately collecting, sorting, warehousing, and distributing health and hope around the world are indeed messengers. They are human vessels with a message that will not be forgotten. The collective vessel is filled with the pulsing heartbeat of over fifteen thousand individuals who compassionately love and care for others. 

Hope can do exceeding good to the vessel in which it is stored, and multiply thereby the goodness onto which it is freely poured.

Acceptance and Receiving

The key to life is to be found not only in exercising and dispensing kindness, justice, and righteousness, but also in graciously accepting occasions of kindness, justice, and righteousness. Once people stop doing this, they cease to live. 

George Orwell once wrote, “Happiness can exist only in acceptance.” You may dream of being happy, you may sincerely wish you were happy, but until you allow yourself to open up and embrace happiness, it won’t be yours to experience . . . or as Woody Guthrie used to say, “Take it easy, but take it,”

I vividly recall an experience in the country of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, where I was taught well that receiving the goodness coming my way depended upon my willingness to accept it.

I had at one time or another visited all of the individual republics of the old Soviet Union. The history was rich and colorful and included such eccentrics as Genghis Kahn, Timor Tourmaline, and Alexander the Great. Ancient tales of adventures along the Old Silk Road were still retold around Uzbek and Afghanistan firesides.

But over the years new sailing routes replaced the long camel caravans that plodded through the shifting sands of Central Asia, and upstart eccentrics like Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev exerted their dirty games of civil manipulation on the more recent political chessboard.

Several official applications for medical assistance had been received at our Project C.U.R.E. headquarters from ministers of health, hospitals, and clinics located in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. My schedule would allow me to travel only to Central Asia at that time during the first two weeks in February. My travel itinerary had me flying from the U.S. to Germany, and eventually to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and then to Bishkek and Osh Kyrgyzstan. An epic winter storm, however, changed all my travel plans. I arrived, eventually, at Kara Kulja, Kyrgyzstan, by automobile. The storm was so severe that the entire region had run out of natural gas and electricity. The local hotels had nothing to offer, but I was invited to stay at a local Kyrgyz farm home. 

Traditional homes were built on a compound format with several separate buildings joined together by a fifteen-foot-high wall and a large metal entry gate for protection. One building served as a bath house, another building housed the cooking facility, another was for sleeping, and yet another building for eating. We were served dinner on a frayed carpet, and we all sat on the floor and leaned against pillows as we ate. Because of the cold, we all wore our coats during the meal. The hot food, that had been brought in from the cooking building, plus our body heat, served to take some of the chill off the small eating building.

After we finished dinner, the old patriarch of the family invited me to join them as they slept in the kitchen building around the open cooking fire. There was no other heat. I glanced around the small building where we were eating. It was tolerably warm, so I told them that I would be alright staying there if they had some blankets I could use to make a bed on the floor. I didn’t want to impose on them in the kitchen or intrude into their privacy. That was such a stupid choice, but they respected my decision and did not argue with me. They brought in a quilt and some leather horse hides to be used as covers.

During the night the temperature dropped dramatically, and the blizzard moved in with full gale force. The snow began to blow through the chinking of the ancient log walls and covered the floor and my bed. I rummaged through the contents of my suitcase in the darkness of the old room. I was so cold that I had tried to put my head under the blankets. But that had not worked at all. The old horsehide blankets still smelled terribly like the barnyard, and I could count the time duration of my head being under the covers in nanoseconds.

Finally, I pulled from my suitcase all my clothes to either put on or use as covers. I even took a couple of pre-worn undershirts and promptly wrapped my head with them, turban style, in order to stay warm. I actually worried about the possibility of freezing. I kept thinking about the open fire in the cookhouse. Why wasn’t I there?

As the condensation from my breathing turned to ice around my face, the crazy thought from somewhere flitted through my brain: “If you can’t be content with what you have received, be thankful for what you have escaped.” I was going to be thankful for making it through the night.

I could have experienced warmth and comfort only through the acceptance of the hospitality that had been offered. I might have dreamed of being warm. I might have sincerely wished for snuggly comfort, but because I had forfeited the offer to open up and embrace the warmth of the kitchen fire, comfort would not be my experience that wintry night. 

In the future, I needed to do a better job of learning a necessary lesson. In order to receive a kind or helpful gesture, I would have to graciously consent to the offer, and then take into my possession that which had been offered. The offer to sleep by the fire did not become mine, because I did not take the offer . . . so, I nearly froze.

Since that cold night in Kyrgyzstan on the plains of Central Asia, I have wondered just how many other occasions during my lifetime I have failed to benefit from some good thing or good experience because, for one reason or another, I did not engage and actually accept and receive what was intended to make my situation better off? 

In these days, I am trying to be a lot more sensitive!

Creative Thinking

Harvey Firestone believed, “If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life. Ideas are any man’s greatest asset.” All of my life I have been intrigued, and have studied diligently, about the phenomenon of creative thought. I have tried to explore imagination, curiosity, invention, innovation, idea generation, and even reasoning by metaphor and analogy.

At my present age, I must confess that I am no closer to saying confidently that I understand how God engineered, designed, appropriated, and infused into the head and soul of mankind a function that would allow a person to rightly comprehend a need, and then hatch a creative thought to meet that need.

I can get my head around the neurons, dendrites, electrical currents, and storage aspects, but from whence cometh the ethereal composition of creative, and unprecedented thoughts? From a practical standpoint, I have learned that the challenging needs of our lives must not become the overwhelming component. It is, rather, the utilizing and appropriating of that creative process of overcoming the challenges that becomes the important and enduring aspect. Never underestimate the need that is challenging you. And never underestimate the creative resources you have available to meet that challenge

I love observing the creative mind functions of the people of India. Computer programming would certainly not be what it is in the world today were it not for the folks from India. In the southern part of India around the area of Salem, they were experiencing a huge problem with people being bitten by poisonous snakes and dying from the venom. The area was well known for the chicken farms and for egg production. The chickens and eggs attracted large numbers of vipers that also fed off the chicken and egg production. When the workers would reach their hands into the nests to gather the eggs, the vipers would strike.

I was performing a needs assessment study at the large regional hospital that served a population of over twenty million people. I was walking down a corridor with the director of the hospital and one of the department heads. Most of the beds had wooden boards instead of mattresses. The emergency gurneys were made out of old bicycle parts with two bicycle wheels instead of the usual four small gurney wheels. The delivery beds for the birthing mothers were made out of 4’X 8’ sheets of corrugated metal with a hole cut in the middle and a bucket beneath to catch the afterbirth. It was all quite sad and pathetic.

As we walked down the corridor, however, I passed a small ward where there was a machine sitting along one wall. I abruptly stopped and remarked to the director, “I didn’t realize that you had kidney dialysis capabilities at your hospital.” “We don’t,” he replied. “But,” I protested, “that machine is a kidney dialysis machine. We just finished donating to Ukraine a complete dialysis set-up including the reverse osmosis water purifying machine and all! The machine against the wall is a dialysis machine.”

“Oh, that machine . . . no, we found that machine and it is busy almost all the time to take care of the many people who come here with poisonous snake bites. We run their blood through it and it filters out the venom and they don’t die.” “How very brilliant,” I remarked. They had encountered a need and had latched onto a creative and unorthodox idea to meet that need. But how in the world could the human mind ever even come up with a concept like dialysis?

We usually don’t start cutting our wisdom teeth until we are faced with a bite bigger than we can chew. Necessity is often the mother of creative thinking. The necessity of a solution and the challenge of the pressing situations usually prod us into utilizing the creative advantages that we have available to us. And I personally think it is time to stand and cheer for the creative thinkers, the ones who face the challenges and set their hearts and minds to the business of creating solutions to our most complex needs. After all, what is this thing we call genius if it isn’t the opening up of one’s potential to God’s unfathomable wisdom?

Generally speaking, our culture teaches us compliance and the seeking of positions of security and safety. But the very fact of being alive must include the courage to seek the creativity that is available to us. It has to go beyond forbearance of the problem to the area of creative solutions. While in Africa, I was introduced to an old coastal adage: “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” Adversity has the effect of eliciting and stirring our talents that otherwise, in calm times, would have lain hidden.

When faced with adversity, Henry Ford used to say, “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” My attitude of life has always been that if I am pushed to the very brink by adversity, I can count on being shown the creative way to proceed on the ground, or else be taught how to fly.

“The struggle of life is one of the greatest blessings,” insisted Helen Keller. “It makes us be patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” I believe that overcoming is accomplished through the generous gift of wisdom and creative thought that is made available to us. If we will cultivate that gift and encourage those creative ideas, then our lives will be characterized by design, order, and accomplishment. Creative thinking is a powerful asset. 

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.