Young corruption fighters at the Global Youth Against Corruption forum in Brasilia

On the one hand, it was good to see that there is much openness from Transparency International etc. to support young peoples involvement. On the other hand, I think that getting the established institutions to integrate and support young people is not enough.

On my first day in Brasilia I had the chance to attend the last sessions of the Global Youth Against Corruption (GYAC) forum that was preceding the IACC. It was good to see that the task of turning GYAC into an independent, sustainable network of youth organisations and activists moves forward. I also realised that its closeness to the World Bank Institute, British Council etc. gives it a certain strength. So by now my conclusion is that GYAC is a good and important thing the way it is.

Intense discussion by GYAC members

It is not, however, the platform for idealism-driven global campaigns of young people I am looking for. Urban and I organised a conspirational IACC side-meeting with ca. 25 GYAC members to discuss how this could be possible. Two points came out of that intense discussion: The people who attended are supportive to the idea to organise this in a structure complementary to GYAC.
But to make this possible we have to find one clear, simple and focussed first campaign topic, around which young people can be mobilised. The network needs to grow around this first topic, and only if this topic inspires people to join in, there is a real chance for it to take off.

A third realization was for me personally: If I really want to see this happen, I will have to take a lead on this. That does not go well with myself being overloaded already with my responsibility for Fairnopoly, the social business we are setting up in Berlin. More importantly, I still think that this needs to be initiated by a broader coalition of people from many countries. But it seems that it rests with me to push for the creation of this coalition. I hope that this will work out quicker than thought.

One more event left me with a slight sense of disappointment. At the official IACC, there was a special plenary with young people on the panel and the ambitious name “The future of Anti-Corruption”. My expectations were high, since I knew there were at least two brilliant people on the panel, Dona and Emmanuel Sanyi. The panel was indeed very strong, and they made convincing points for the importance and capacities of young corruption fighters.

What I felt was missing in the discussion that followed was the really new vision for the future of anti-corruption. Strong points were made for issues already on the agenda of the anti-corruption community, in particular the use of ICT and the mobilisation and empowerment of “ordinary people”.

But I was hoping – and that is of course my personal strong opinion on this question – to hear something about really new approaches aiming to replace the structures that are constantly producing and encouraging corruption. I was hoping that young people would have the freedom of mind to challenge the established paradigms, which are so deeply anchored in our societies that some believe corruption is somehow part of our genes (what a strange concept of biology is that??).

Well, at least I have this place here to state my own bold guess on what could really be a new way of anti-corruption: Restructuring the way business works. Not by reviving the dusty and overstretched capitalism-socialism debate. But by reorganising our economies through the large-scale creation of co-operatives and similarly structured businesses, even at the multinational level.

Instead of trying to harness the socially unhealthy behaviour of businesses that by design are purely profit-driven, what about pushing for an economy made of actors that aim at providing real added value for society? Who do so not because they promise some moral commitment to “corporate social responsibility”, but because they are simply structured in this way?
Co-operatives are by design accountable to a wide group of people (ideally its staff and the users of its goods and services). And they have much less inbuilt incentives to turn our societies into consumption machines and our elites into narcissists craving for luxury goods. They can still compete in a well regulated market-economy, allowing for all the advantages of (quality-) competition. Add transparency, and there we go with a functioning anti-corruption economy.

Restructuring the driving actors seems to me a much more sustainable approach to anti-corruption than setting up huge oversight and accountability systems that require active engagement of the masses every day. Of course it would be hard to get there, but we have to reorganise our economic systems anyway, given that they have proven incapable of providing sustainable and healthy living conditions for the largest part of humanity.

In any case, I am happy to be involved in a project that goes this way. Which brings me to repeat my promise to soon write a post dedicated to Fairnopoly…

Over 1900 corruption fighters from all around the world

What I liked most was how much space was given to the topic of illicit financial flows. It made clear that corruption is a truly global problem – a global systemic problem that is as much rooted in the rich, western countries, as in the so called “developing” countries. No more North-South divide, we all are concerned.

The enormous scale of illicit financial flows and money hidden in secrecy jurisdictions indicates the outreach of the unholy coalition between the biggest western banks, multinational corporations and captured governments worldwide. The Tax Justice Network estimates that the amount of assets hidden in the offshore system sums up to the inconceivable number of 22 to 32 trillion $US, one third to one half of the whole world’s annual economic output. Global Financial Integrity estimates the annual illicit financial flows out of developing countries into rich countries around 1 trillion $US, corresponding to about one third of the size of Germany’s economy and around seven times the total annual amount of Official Development Aid.

Of course, this system was not created by one evil designer nor an explicit coalition of the evil. Rather, it is the outcome of the opportunistic behaviour of a wide range of independently working actors. But it seems to me that an evil designer could not have done much better in setting up a pervert system to promote corruption and distribute money from the poor to the rich.

The second highlight for me was Kumi Naidoo sitting on the main plenary and demanding of the anti-corruption community to call excessive but legal lobbying and dirty but legal banking what they are: corruption. Speaking of “corruptive laws” that allow and encourage corruption, he hit in my view the point when he claimed that widening the definition of the concept would raise the support for the cause of a much larger part of the worlds population.

A personal motivation-boost was a spontaneous side speech by the founder of Transpareny International, Peter Eigen: Sitting in the audience of a panel on the outlook for success of the fight against corruption, he was asked by a young participant how the fact that TI had been founded by “white men in grey suits” (in fact, not all co-founders were white, but probably all wore grey suits) compares to the much more diverse, much less elevated background of the larger part of today’s corruption fighters.

In an incredibly modest, but at the same time powerful answer he said that at the time he had wrongly viewed himself as a former World Bank regional director as best positioned to address corruption. And that he was happy to see that by today a much broader variety of people is leading the struggle. In particular, he stressed the need of enabling young people from all countries and backgrounds to carry on the cause further than he and his colleagues have could.

I admire sincere modesty very much. And I am happy that he has not the tiniest bit of the post-colonial arrogance that can still be found in the development industry. This encourages me as a fellow german citizen to join the struggle as just another world citizen, free of the false self-restraint that I was somehow less entitled to do so because I come from a “privileged” background.

There were also many good discussions about young people’s role in anti-corruption. But I will write about this and some other issues of these intense days in later posts.

Berlin to me has two major sides. Of course there is the side it is famous for, plenty of nice places, interesting people, something colourful happening all the time… I would recommend it for a visit without hesitation. But living here, it seems, can have some kind of paralysing effect on thoughtful persons. Of course it is unclear if thoughtfulness is so desirable at all. Certainly it is not very productive in terms of maximizing happiness. But I am not so sure if maximizing happiness is really the thing either. Definitely more convincing in my view than the artificial goals our social institutions seem to desperately focus on, like maximizing profit, maximizing GDP, maximizing reputation etc. But yet, I miss thoughtfulness, honest sadness, quiet dreaming instead of just swimming away in colourful rivers. I am sure this also exists in this city. It just always seems to escape when I get close…

Here the related audio to this text (you need to pass min. 2:50).

May 1st I

May 1st II

Carnival of cultures I

Carnival of cultures II

Carnival of cultures III

Even though I was there only for four days, Moscow left a strong impression on me.

The vast Boulevards and Buildings and the seemingly endless streets with another important looking place, palace or church at every other corner, it felt like the biggest city I’ve ever been. On the other hand, the streets were much more colourful and lively than my stereotypes had led me to expect. This seemed in particular true for the nightlife, of which I had a quite intense taste thanks to some nice people I met by chance.

On Friday, I met Ivan from Transparency Russia for lunch at the Higher School of Economics. This is one of the elite schools of Russia and corruption seems to be an openly and actively embraced topic there. TI Russia’s anti-corruption lab at the university looked like a professional press centre. The more I was delighted that Ivan expressed his interest and possible support for the FAIR Future Network.

For Saturday, a great demonstration against the fraud in the parliamentary elections was announced. I don’t know enough about Russian politics to have a clear opinion on this. But having read that in the autonomous region of Chechnya 99,4% had voted for the ruling party “United Russia”, it’s clear to me that some fraud has taken place. The Chechen people, who have suffered inconceivably under the brutal repression of their independence struggles by Putin’s government, are to my knowledge largely depoliticized by the rule through fear of the Kremlin-installed local dictator and infamous human rights violator Ramzan Kadyrov. Elections there certainly have nothing to do with free and fair elections, lest with democracy, and these results are with absolute certainty artificially created.

Big brother is leaning on you...

Yet, discussions with young Russians left me with the impression that while maybe appreciating the nobility of the protests, many still think that they won’t lead to much. “There is no real alternative anyway”, I heard quite often.

From the few looks I could get at the demonstration on Saturday, I was left with three main impressions: First and most of all the impressive and scary show-off of state power, which the Russian government knew very well to stage. All big streets in the centre seemed to have been lined by broad-shouldered, hard looking policemen every two meters, making me think that at one quick order all passing people in the area could have been beaten up at the same time.

Secondly, the government seemed to have tried to capture the demonstration, advising people to dress warmly, organising logistics carefully, and providing public toilets and security scans for those who want to enter the place as if it was for a music concert. Also, some rather scary and well organised looking groups took part in the demonstrations…

But all this, and this is the impression I left with, did not succeed to undermine the protestors’ spirits. Friendly looking young and old people came to show their discontent, and their wish for a different political game. The visit made me looking forward that the Russians will join the global struggle for a world where the political and economic structure work for, not against, happy human co-existence :)

Thoughtful observers

Flying over Greenland

But in spite of the encouraging start, the first hours put me into disappointment and nearly anger.

What I saw were bright professionals from governmental or government sponsored organisations presenting their generosity, patting our heads, and telling us that we were the “young heroes who can change the world” – which sounded to me like “yes kids, go on working for us for free, just don’t mess with anything serious”.

Once more I thought, why is this summit not organised by young volunteers, why are the participating young volunteers even required to pay fees to finance the wages of all these generous professionals telling us what heroes we were? I remembered the frustration when realising that we had to leave behind our friend Ivan from Uganda (founder of the Africa Challenge Foundation), who was supposed to join Joseph and me in our three(now two)-continent-anti-corruption presentation. The only support the organisers offered were flight vouchers from American Airlines, which left open for Ivan to pay for his flight from Uganda to an European AA-airport, to organise and pay for three visas, not to speak of the conference fees (reduced for presenters), the travel from Bogota to Barranquilla, accommodation costs and general travel expenditures we all had to cover. I consider it a big and straight forward failure of the organisers, to leave most of the fundraising for the summit to the participants (and presenters), who had use their volunteer time for this, and thereby almost completely exclude people from poorer backgrounds on other continents from participating in the “World Summit”.

A summit of great people - although some were missing...

The first encouraging moment was the speech of Hugh Evans, the founder of the Global Poverty Project, who has dedicated his life to end absolute poverty. His impressive success at young age out of personal commitment and readiness to take sacrifices for his cause inspired most of the audience. When later deciding on the the most memorable quote of the summit, our working group chose his citation of a South African anti-apartheid struggler, who had survived eight months of solitary confinement in a 1sqm cell to forgive his punishers and come back to Robben Island and show visitors around: “There are more important issues than my own issues”.

Besides that Hugh Evans’ story nicely fits with my doctrine to favour self-organised, non-patronised action by young people, he also provided interesting input for thought: As the only plenary speaker, he went beyond the charity aspect of volunteerism, stressing that absolute poverty cannot be eradicated through charity, but through system change. In a smaller circle later he gave an interesting example of how the governance wing of his organisation supports a civil society hero in Zimbabwe, who tries to push through his legal right against the (illegal) claims of president Mugabe.

The volunteering event staff from Barranquilla

Hugh also provided interesting advice for anybody who wants to push for change: Look for mentors, and look for the right mentors for your cause. As sceptical as I am of the danger of being patronised, he did convince me that if one choses one’s mentors carefully and listens to them consciously, they can be an irreplaceable help to increase one’s own capacities and impact. I also appreciated his insistence on the importance of personal integrity, and in particular his main comment on corruption: “By far not enough people care about corruption, and those who do don’t really know what to do about it”. Great analysis of the problem – time to tackle it!

Joseph presenting Checkmyschool.org

The next two days there came quite a few further inspiring speakers, young people who spoke with impressive energy and clarity, showing once more that there is no need to depend on patronising professionals. For my taste though, there was too much repetition of what great heroes we are and how much we can change the world. At some point I wanted to put my hand up and say that I’m afraid we will not change the world. Not as long as we allow the structures to stay as they are, as long as we continue to play the game and let the impact of our volunteering efforts being undermined. Of course we argued this at our panel presentation. But I regret now that I did not raise this at the plenary sessions.

In any case, the real great value of the three days was meeting many great and nice people. I am looking forward to collaborate with many of them, both for Studies Without Borders as well as the FAIR Future Network. Our integrity vow cards also proved quite a success, people pro-actively encouraging us to scale them up to a proper campaign. So quite soon there will be more on this…

Not last, this summit was in Colombia, and so the dancing started as soon as music played. Amazing dancers all around, invited professional ones and hundreds spontaneous ones from the audience… No doubt, the summit was fun. Which compensated a bit for the little space for interesting content. We could only attend one panel presentation per day, otherwise we were put into workshops to contribute to a network the organisers wanted us to commit to. Thanks to the cool people the sessions were fun, but it did not really get clear what the purpose of this was (some cynics guessed the promotion of the organising organisation…).

Barranquilla's carneval queen with a participant

This brings me back to my main critique: Why was it impossible to support the travel, visa and accommodation costs of participants and presenters? Seeing the quite impressive list of sponsors, I could not help asking myself what they were actually sponsoring. Certainly not only the extraordinarily cheap catering at the lunch and coffee breaks. And the venue was provided by the Universidad del Norte, while the event staff were mostly student volunteers. Did the t-shirts (that advertise the said network of the organisers) and the nice looking cotton bags with a pen and a notebook justify 300-500$US conference fees? The technical equipment for stage and sound, and in particular the constant translation between Spanish and English via headphones certainly came at the positive side. Still, I’d be curious to see the complete budget of the summit…

Once again I am thinking, if I consider this event at least for me personally an success, than it was because of the other participants who made a personal effort to come, not because of the money spent on it.

PS: When approaching Dallas I was wondering why the farmers in Texas are cutting such strange shapes into their fields...

...then I thought that the forests must follow the fertile soil around meandering rivers, and the Texan farmers respect the forests...

Joseph in Cartagena

At around 9 pm I took a bus from beautiful Cartagena to Santa Marta, 3-4 hours away. I immediately fell asleep. It must have been after midnight when the bus driver woke me up and told me that I should drop off for Santa Marta. Outside it was dark, the bus was parked at a junction, and the only thing I could see was one taxi next to the bus. I also realised that I – the only gringo – was the only person to get off.

“For scenery and safety, only take bus rides during day-time” I remembered to have read in a guide book. I also remembered a Colombian friend from the summit repeatedly reminding me to be VERY cautious when traveling alone. I tried to ask the passengers who were awake if this was really the stop for Santa Marta. But the people who earlier had smiled at me friendly now just replied with a short “no se” (don’t know) and looked away. A woman indicated to the bus driver, who had already loaded my backpack into the taxi and now impatiently told me to get out of the bus.

I sat down next to the taxi-driver, a young man with a somehow scared expression, avoiding to look into my eyes. When I told him the name of the hostel I wanted to go to, he did not seem to recognize it. He said “Centro?” I said ok. He resisted my efforts to continue the conversation. We drove through dark streets, sporadically seeing men standing around or passing by. The driver received a phone call, which he replied to with short words. I meant to see his chin trembling

At this point the Dar es Salaam feeling came back. What kind of mafia game have I jumped into again? I thought. I decided to ask the driver to stop as soon as I saw any hotel, and if he would not, pull the hand break, if necessary fight, and jump off. My seatbelt was fastened whilst his was not, so he probably would not risk an accident. And if yes, I would be better off.

But for the next fifteen minutes we did not pass any hotel or better looking lighted area. Then we entered an area of narrow streets – and in one of them were forced to go at foot pace by a garbage collection car. Fifty metres ahead on the right I saw a hotel sign. I unfastened my seatbelt, ready to jump off if he would not stop at my demand.

But we stopped before I could say anything. We had reached the hostel.

More pics from Catagena

Whilst the delegates of the South-Eastern-European countries presented their food, traditions, and music with some enthusiasm and pride, we four members of the German delegation could not avoid an ironic connotation when presenting our country. I found this particularly interesting given that one of us is actually from China, one from Belarus and one has Turkish parents. And as much as I like the ironic self-image of young Germans, I realised once more my growing sympathy for the (non-arrogant) patriotism from the other countries. Each county has particularly likeable aspects, why not embracing them when you know them well? This seems to me no contradiction to the idea of world-citizenship, it is important to have self-respecting individuals in a group that is respecting all its members. In any case, nothing prevented us of having a good time together.

Happy Macedonians (including one belge macedonian by heart)

German multi-culti representatives

Another Macedonian patriot

But now to media manipulation. I applied for this training in hope for input for both major projects I am trying to push for at the moment. We need qualified and engaged volunteers for ESF International (the international framework organisation of Studies Without Borders). And it’s going to be a great challenge to mobilize young people from around the world to join the collective campaigns of the FAIR Future Network (more very soon…).

So what were the major insights on this? Besides learning about the strongly politicised and manipulated media in Macedonia (“it might soon turn into a de facto one-party state”), besides many small usefull ideas, tipps and feedback, I really appreciated the tips on campaigning and working with traditional media. Make your message as clear and simple as possible – the media will make many versions out of it anyway. Communicate it in the first 30 seconds of radio and TV interviews – this is as long as people will listen to your contents. This seems quite obvious, but still get this explicitly clear.

Café in Ohrid

One of 365 old churches around lake Ohrid

So people- and contentwise I liked the training. But another point kept coming up to my mind: There seems to be a silent consensus that manipulative techniques are justified when it comes to the promotion of volunteering for a “good” cause. Given that we are competing with advertisement campaigns of profit seeking companies this may be valid to some extent. But I wonder if we do not actually abuse the attractiveness and “morality” of our causes to drag people all the more into the manipulation-susceptible, self-presenting mindset that the omnipresence of (social) media brings with it. Is it really more important to attract than to provide well-founded content? After all, KISS – keep it short and simple – may also mean “don’t explain and don’t reflect too much…”

In mid July I came to Sipi Falls in hope for another couple of quite days to think and write in a beautiful place. Surely I found a beautiful place, but the thought of climbing Mount Elgon, or Mountain Elgon, as many locals call it respectfully, wouldn’t stop circulating in my mind.

The 100m water fall in Sipi

When I heard that it was possible to climb the peak from the village of Budariri and walk back to Sipi in three days, I decided to go.

The next day I took a matatu to the district capital Mbale. My new friend Julius, who had guided me to the waterfalls in Sipi, lent me his hiking boots for the mountain (real boots, not the ones on the photo).

But when I arrived at the Mount Elgon National Park office in Mbale, I was told that it was impossible to do it in three days is and that the park fees just had risen from 50$ to 90$ per day(!). Disappointed I spent the night in Mbale and treated myself to the most luxurious dinner since long in a nice Indian restaurant. The next morning I woke up early. In the spirit of early morning enthusiasm I told myself that I had wasted money on less valuable things before, went to buy food and made the last preparations. Although the fees were far beyond my non-existing budget, I wanted to climb the peak from Budariri and walk the same way back, which I they had said is possible in three days.

When traveling alone for a long time people start doing strange things like taking self-assuring self-portaits in the hotel bathroom. At least I do.

By the time I reached Budariri it was midday – too late to start the climb to the base camp, the park officer told me. On my insistence, he called the ranger guide, who said that I should start right now and as an exception sleep at the rangers’ patrol hut four kilometres before the base camp – provided I was ready to get started before sunrise the next day and climb from the hut at 3300m to the 4300m of Wagagai Peak. And so Wycliff, the porter, and I started of. To climb Mount Elgon one is obliged to go with an armed ranger-guide, whose pay is included in the park fees (a non-significant percentage of them, as I learned). It is also expected to take for 5$ a day a porter who carries one’s tent, food and water, and I knew from Julius about the great competition for these jobs among the young men in the area.

"Is it not hard to carry all the stuff on your head on these trails?" Wycliff: "Sometimes I carry the bag on my shoulders"

As soon we started walking, I realised what a good decision this has been. We soon left the villages behind and dove into the forest. Wycliff told me about his plans to start a coffee field with some friends, and I told him about our plans to set up a network of young anti-corruption activists. We soon decided to keep in touch and support each others projects. When we reached the ring of bamboo forest, we bumped into Alex, the ranger-guide. His smile made even his Kalashinkov look friendly. In good mood we moved on. It was long dark before we reached the hut and all rangers were asleep.

The next morning we started off before sunrise. Not long and we reached the base camp, where we left Wycliff and most of our luggage. When the path got steeper, Alex slowed down to a felt one step per minute. I told him that I could handle a faster pace. He smiled and said, you’ll see… An hour later already I knew what he meant. After an otherworldly journey through a strange landscape appearing and vanishing in the mist we reached Wagagai Peak. Only on the last meters the clouds opened up enough to give a view on the huge crater of Mt. Elgon. I failed to capture its wideness on the photos.

After ten minutes rest on the peak, the first thunder rumbled through the crater. We quickly started our way down. Every child knows that neither a peak nor a treeless ridge are really the places to be in a thunderstorm. A minute later it started hailing nails into our faces and the thunder seemed below and above, right and left of us. After 30 minutes I started getting easier since the plants that looked like huge dried flowers started being higher then us.

Then somebody took a photograph from above. In the very moment an enormous thunder took us both of our feet. Never before it has happened to me to see flash and hear thunder at the same time. I asked myself if the trembling I felt in my body was from the shock or from electric tension. We arrived the base camp completely soaked, and cherished the fire Wycliff had prepared in the small hut.

Another reason why one shouldn't carry a weapon: It breaks your rain cape

Before we went to bed, Alex said that we could try to walk to the Sipi exit of the park in one day tomorrow. But he had not done this before, and we would have to make two day tours in one, which would make it a 52 kilometres walk, crossing a 3900m ridge. We decided to give it a try and start early again.

As painful as it was and although at least half of the day it was raining, this hiking day left a deep impression on me. We walked through a variety of landscapes, from the scarce vegetation of the crater through green valleys with waterfalls and vast savannahs dotted with red flowers into the light bamboo forest ring, before we reached the thick rainforest in the lower parts. Even blindly walking in the rain-clouds was of fascinating intensity. Whenever the clouds cleared a little, they gave way to amazing views and fast moving veils of mist.

Still, the way was long and we had almost no time for rest. There were many hours of just walking foot for foot, in particular the ascents left me little space for thoughts between the breath. But I discovered another advantage of positive thinking: The blister on my right Achilles tendon stopped hurting when walking down, and my knee stopped hurting when walking up! :)

The last 20 kilometres were mainly walking down through rainforest. How wonderful is rainforest that in too high altitude for mosquitoes! Nevertheless it fully deserved its name, being dropping wet.

I always thought that slipping on a muddy path makes you and your clothes dirty, but is not a serious problem. But here, a good part of the trail serves huge ants as their major trading routes. And these ants bite as soon as they see a piece of flesh. Only after the third or fourth bite I realized that I had picked up a whole bunch of them at my last slide. By then they had entered into my backpack, my jacket, under my shirt, and into my trousers. I doubt that as a practicing Buddhist I’d have the patience to respect the precept of killing no living creature with biting ants in my trousers. What would you do? Strip naked and turn your trousers inside-out? In that time a whole army of ants would have climbed up your legs. As for me, I rubbed my legs as merciless as I could. But even if you are willing to kill the attackers, it is not so easy to get rid of them on a narrow muddy path. In particular, removing the ants at the same time from your backpack, your jacket and your shirt, while constantly lifting your feet to avoid new intruders, requires some sophisticated break-dance moves. Or you stay as cool as Alex, who came to my help and whose rubber boots the ants respectfully ignored.

An hour after the ant-fight we came to a huge cave with a waterfall as its curtain. The prickling shower compensated me for all strains of the day and we went into the last couple of hours with new energy.

In the midst of thoughtful walking through the fresh aired forest, we suddenly heard a bang. Alex increased his pace and fifty meters on we found a pile of wooden boards that looked like cut with a professional machine. “There are people doing illegal activities. They saw me before I saw them.” With a smile lifted three of the boards up on his head. As punishment he took them to the park office, which by then was only a good hour away. On the last two kilometres, night was already falling, heaven celebrated our arrival with rainfalls that gave the notion of slippery a new dimension. No problem for Alex, who balanced the weighty boards on his head whilst navigating through the mud in his profile-less rubber boots.

Unfortunately no photos, the assembly was a Skype conference...

Can’t hold it back anymore: On Sunday we held the constitutional assembly for ESF International (International Framework for Studies Without Borders). The registration process in Paris is still under way, but we voted on a statute and elected an “international executive committee” (which I have the privilege to chair)!

There are many challenges ahead, but there is also much making me looking forward: The new Zimbabwean group participated in the assembly, and the Kenyan group is about to register, our website is about to be (re-)launched, and I think the existing chapters feel that there is new energy coming…

But already at the border we got a taste of how much of the established practices need to change, if this young country wants to live up to its hopes. To obtain a visa, we were sent from one office to the next – to finally get a handwritten note, on which the impressively slow writing border official wouldn’t even bother to spell our names right, and which without a look landed in a box under the table in the next office that tellingly reminded of a dust bin.

When it came to pay the 50$ visa fees, my American travel companion received for his 100$ note a balance of the equivalent of 35$ in Sudanese Pounds. I told him the rate and he asked for the rest. The official replied there is a 5$ fee for the form and turned to the next client – who paid 120 Sudanese Pounds (ca. 40$) and of course nothing for the form. I went out to change my dollars…

Village on the 5km strip between the borders of Uganda and South Sudan

After a good hour I had made it to the queue for getting the final stamp. The client before me, apparently a frequent traveller on the route, was asked to provide his visa document. He hesitated. “Then you can’t enter, next please”, said the lady behind the desk. He put a ten Pound note on the desk. No reaction from her side. He put another one. Still no reaction. He put a third note. Within ten seconds and without a look at him, she took the notes, stamped his paper, handed it over and turned to me.

South Sudanese policeman

On my arrival in Juba I was looking for a cheap room. I had been warned that in the NGO- and UN-invaded city there was no hotel room to have for less than 100$ per night. But I found a taxi driver who brought me to what he called a “black hotel” (i.e. a hotel where normally African businessmen stay, not well-paid “international community” people…). This place was at the same time a bar, and charged 50 South Sudanese Pounds per night (ca. 15$). Still a lot for the 5sqm room that was very, very, very hot, with a tin roof directly under the sun and the door and only window facing a tin-roofed corridor. Juba itself is a very hot place, in my perception much hotter even than Kindu in the Congo basin. The rains in the afternoon provided the only “cold” hours of the day.

I soon found out that the Padan Hotel mainly serves as a drinking bar and a kind of brothel where some men bring their prostitutes. At 8am the first soldiers were sitting in the bar for their morning beer and from 11am it was quite crowded with drinkers. Most of them were open and friendly, often inviting me to their table and offering me drinks. The bar area is optimized for advanced drinking, with plastic chairs and tables and an earthen floor, where spoiled drinks and spit directly sink into the ground.

Unfortunately, it was also in the Padan Hotel where I could tick off another point on my list of personal crime experiences on this trip, so far consisting of armed robbery in Cape Town, high jacking in Dar es Salaam, pick-pocketing in Nakuru in Kenya (haven’t written about it, a young guy at the bus station opened the top pocket of my backpack and ran away with a little German-Swaheli dictionary and a rubber ring that I hoped to use for forearm training to preserve at least a little bit of my climbing strength…):

One morning at around seven I did not lock my door during a one minute visit to the toilet. Later I discovered that my wallet was gone and with it ca. 50 Euro in Sudanese Pounds. Somebody must have observed that I left the the room unlocked and very quickly sneaked in. Soon after I informed the hotel staff, the place was crowded with discussing hotel guests. Some took me to the side to accuse others, including the hotel staff. At first, I wanted to call the police to search the place. But the inspector who arrived convinced me that it would be useless hassle to search all rooms, as the robber certainly would have brought the wallet outside. Later I regretted this decision when the hotel manager told me that I should have insisted also to preserve their reputation. Given my tight financial situation this left me in quite a restricted condition for the next two days in Juba, but the loss was somehow compensated by the fact that at almost every occasion when I wanted to buy something to eat someone spontaneously invited me.

The last and most lasting regret was at the border back to Uganda. On leaving the immigration office, I saw a maybe ten years old street boy, half of whose face was an open wound. The wound was in large part covered by some mould-like greyish hair. Later in the bus I regretted that I did not give him the fifty emergency dollars I still had with me, which might have been enough to allow him to go to a doctor for treatment.

I normally stick to the strict principle of never giving to beggars, since eight years ago a Romanian woman convinced me that if one want to improve the life of begging people, one should rather donate to a  local charity. Giving to beggars, she argued, means at best encouraging them to keep on begging and at worst financing ruthless begging mafias, who sometimes cripple their “workers” to make them more profitable.

But in this case, what were the fifty dollars to me in comparison to the use they could have had for the boy? Is it really right to suppress inclinations to help an individual with the justification that one tries to aim for structural, long-term change? Is it not better to do something concrete at times, given that all efforts to change structures may prove completely futile after all? Of course, these questions were the result of the shocking sight of the boy, not of any abstract ethical reasoning. Anyway, I still regret that in this case I let principle win over instant reaction.