Monday, April 09, 2007
Anachronism
The word, Anachronism, is one of the most fruitful words one can employ when describing life in Burkina Faso. The gleaming 2006 Toyota Four Runner anachronistically whizzed past throngs of subsistence farmers cultivating by hand. The anachronous presence of donkey carts in the parking lot of the modern medical facility was a strange sight to behold; Something out of time – a person, thing, idea or custom that seems to belong to another time in history. After living in Burkina Faso for a while, you see enough people who have never had the good fortune of proper dental care talking on cell phones to wonder whether; ‘Anachronism’ is not the perfect word to depict a society leaping forward several generations of technology yet standing still in many other ways.
Having grown up with this technology and the advertising that accompanies it, I sometimes view certain situations through the lens of a television commercial. In trying to relate the next story I will use this paradigm. I think that this approach will relate well most of the readers because as Americans we are surrounded by advertising – but I realize that some of the pop culture references might be lost on some people like…my dad. So, I apologize for obscure references in advance - though you should take comfort that they are inconsequential to the story.
To start… imagine this:
“ Alright, Alright – Put your body in motion” chants the singer as a some vaguely techno beats accompany a scene of some young twenty-somethings hopping into their new Volkswagon Jetta. The car rotates as if on a turntable and then heads off to the club or whatever trendy locale it is that fun, independent, intelligent and marginally unique Jetta Drivers go to. This add campaign makes driving a Volkswagon, cool. This is branding, it works and there powerful albeit ephemeral appeal that makes Me want to compute on a Mac and drive a Jetta.
I would now like to offer an ad campaign for Peugeot Trucks. Because I am unfamiliar with the particular model I will narrow it down to models that came out in the late 1980’s and had the misfortune of getting beaten up enough to finally land in the second poorest country in Africa:
From the opening second music is playing – something of the fun upbeat punk/pop variety. Start with a wide shot with the dilapidated truck sitting in the dusty gravel parking lot in the center of the frame. The car rotates first 45 degrees clockwise and then 405 degrees counter clockwise all in harmony to the beat of “Sum 41”.
As the song moves into the hook, you see “the crew” enter the frame, in a jaunty fashion, as if we are an excited group of friends getting ready to go on kayaking trip or something like that. Entering from the left we see the driver, wearing oversized obnoxious Oakley sunglasses and a Kangol hat. Also, entering from the left are a heavyset African mother dressed in traditional and ornate clothes and shaggy Peace Corps volunteer jeans, button down dress shirt and a backwards ball cap. Entering from the right we see the high commissioner dressed in a western style business suit with slight regal touches and a military security guard wearing a red beret, green fatigues, and strapped with an AK 47. Winks and nods are shot from one passenger to the other and the camera moves effortlessly to show the fun that this group of movers and shakers is going to have on there two hour joy ride over unpaved and ungovernable dirt.
The camera moves to the front of the car showing the broken headlights, cracked windshield and crumpled hood. The camera zooms closer, past the windshield and shows the expressions on the passengers faces - The smiling albeit toothless driver, the complacent and slightly drowsy high commissioner in the front seat checking his cell phone. In the back left the festively plum wife looks out the window. In the back right the stern military man looks straight ahead. Awkwardly squeezed in the middle is the white bearded guy. He has a slightly apprehensive expression on his face as he looks down the barrel of an AK 47 that is pointed in his direction as it rests insecurely between the security guards thighs.
(The music ends on a high note)
And off we go.
Trail of Dust in the air.
As the dust dissipates, words emerge: Peugeot: The Only Choice
…
This is how I started writing this entry several moths ago. Since then I have hit a bit of a writers block. The cause of this impasse was my inability to reconcile humorous creative prose with real life morbidity. Of course, this is not such an inherently difficult or new problem to solve. It is this combination of creative and comedic story telling combined with tragic events that is at the heart of many of my favorite dark comedies. So it is not that I am incapable of emulating this type of story telling, it is just that whenever I tried to recreate the tone – it felt false. The scenario in question is as follows and it seems too serious to be played for laughs:
After the “off we go” and “the trail of dust in the air”, we drive for nearly two straight hours. All the while, we listen to French Pop songs from the 1960’s. An hour and a half into it I see 50 plus vultures congregating around something. As we pass by the town’s center at 30mph, I am hit with a series of revelations. These revelations are lightning quick: That something is a man, we should do something, we are not stopping, nobody is doing anything about it, I’m in the car with community leaders, the fact we are doing nothing is not an accident, in some way they have chosen for this scenario to play out as it does, oh my god a man was shot and left for the vultures. When I say lightning quick, I mean all pieces of the puzzle were put together in under one second.
The remaining 30 minutes of the car ride were strange: me, sitting squeezed between a the AK 47 and the well fed wife trying unsuccessfully to tune out the laughter and discussion about how that bandit got what he deserved, while I keep repeating in my head, “Ashen black heal, and a blue jumpsuit, covered by vultures, Ashy black heal, blue jumpsuit covered by vultures, ashy heal, his ashy heal, indifference, laughter, we continue, his ashy heal. The image though seen for only several moments as we passed going 30mph is seared into my memory.
It is a morbid and tragic scene. I don’t know any of the specifics of the case and I don’t mean to suggest that anyone in the car was involved directly or indirectly. All I mean to say is that two radically different worlds exist over here. There is the developing world of new cell phones, internet, cars, new schools, better medicine etc., and then there is the world where, although 99% unnecessary, I am exercising a bit of self censorship on account of how things can work in the judicial system. A world where it can be acceptable to execute a man and leave his corps in the town square as a warning for others without so much as a trial. This world and the myriad of organization, structural, judicial shortcomings that produce it are more reminiscent of the wild west than the 21st Century. In Burkina Faso the modern day conveniences clash uncompromisingly with the context in which we Americans use them. What seems like an anachronism to me is all too often the reality here.
I don’t know that there is any grand take away point from all this. Perhaps it is overblown and quixotic to think that there is some universal idea or principle to be learned. I think it is most likely the case, that it is simply a hard slog to be truly developed. But if I were to indulge myself I would say that as we look outward on the roughly 70 percent of the world that is developing it is a mistake to underestimate the markers that are hard to gage. No matter how much foreign direct investment; or how large the GNP, true development is predicated upon certain institutions and systems or governance that can not be obtained with economic development alone.
Having grown up with this technology and the advertising that accompanies it, I sometimes view certain situations through the lens of a television commercial. In trying to relate the next story I will use this paradigm. I think that this approach will relate well most of the readers because as Americans we are surrounded by advertising – but I realize that some of the pop culture references might be lost on some people like…my dad. So, I apologize for obscure references in advance - though you should take comfort that they are inconsequential to the story.
To start… imagine this:
“ Alright, Alright – Put your body in motion” chants the singer as a some vaguely techno beats accompany a scene of some young twenty-somethings hopping into their new Volkswagon Jetta. The car rotates as if on a turntable and then heads off to the club or whatever trendy locale it is that fun, independent, intelligent and marginally unique Jetta Drivers go to. This add campaign makes driving a Volkswagon, cool. This is branding, it works and there powerful albeit ephemeral appeal that makes Me want to compute on a Mac and drive a Jetta.
I would now like to offer an ad campaign for Peugeot Trucks. Because I am unfamiliar with the particular model I will narrow it down to models that came out in the late 1980’s and had the misfortune of getting beaten up enough to finally land in the second poorest country in Africa:
From the opening second music is playing – something of the fun upbeat punk/pop variety. Start with a wide shot with the dilapidated truck sitting in the dusty gravel parking lot in the center of the frame. The car rotates first 45 degrees clockwise and then 405 degrees counter clockwise all in harmony to the beat of “Sum 41”.
As the song moves into the hook, you see “the crew” enter the frame, in a jaunty fashion, as if we are an excited group of friends getting ready to go on kayaking trip or something like that. Entering from the left we see the driver, wearing oversized obnoxious Oakley sunglasses and a Kangol hat. Also, entering from the left are a heavyset African mother dressed in traditional and ornate clothes and shaggy Peace Corps volunteer jeans, button down dress shirt and a backwards ball cap. Entering from the right we see the high commissioner dressed in a western style business suit with slight regal touches and a military security guard wearing a red beret, green fatigues, and strapped with an AK 47. Winks and nods are shot from one passenger to the other and the camera moves effortlessly to show the fun that this group of movers and shakers is going to have on there two hour joy ride over unpaved and ungovernable dirt.
The camera moves to the front of the car showing the broken headlights, cracked windshield and crumpled hood. The camera zooms closer, past the windshield and shows the expressions on the passengers faces - The smiling albeit toothless driver, the complacent and slightly drowsy high commissioner in the front seat checking his cell phone. In the back left the festively plum wife looks out the window. In the back right the stern military man looks straight ahead. Awkwardly squeezed in the middle is the white bearded guy. He has a slightly apprehensive expression on his face as he looks down the barrel of an AK 47 that is pointed in his direction as it rests insecurely between the security guards thighs.
(The music ends on a high note)
And off we go.
Trail of Dust in the air.
As the dust dissipates, words emerge: Peugeot: The Only Choice
…
This is how I started writing this entry several moths ago. Since then I have hit a bit of a writers block. The cause of this impasse was my inability to reconcile humorous creative prose with real life morbidity. Of course, this is not such an inherently difficult or new problem to solve. It is this combination of creative and comedic story telling combined with tragic events that is at the heart of many of my favorite dark comedies. So it is not that I am incapable of emulating this type of story telling, it is just that whenever I tried to recreate the tone – it felt false. The scenario in question is as follows and it seems too serious to be played for laughs:
After the “off we go” and “the trail of dust in the air”, we drive for nearly two straight hours. All the while, we listen to French Pop songs from the 1960’s. An hour and a half into it I see 50 plus vultures congregating around something. As we pass by the town’s center at 30mph, I am hit with a series of revelations. These revelations are lightning quick: That something is a man, we should do something, we are not stopping, nobody is doing anything about it, I’m in the car with community leaders, the fact we are doing nothing is not an accident, in some way they have chosen for this scenario to play out as it does, oh my god a man was shot and left for the vultures. When I say lightning quick, I mean all pieces of the puzzle were put together in under one second.
The remaining 30 minutes of the car ride were strange: me, sitting squeezed between a the AK 47 and the well fed wife trying unsuccessfully to tune out the laughter and discussion about how that bandit got what he deserved, while I keep repeating in my head, “Ashen black heal, and a blue jumpsuit, covered by vultures, Ashy black heal, blue jumpsuit covered by vultures, ashy heal, his ashy heal, indifference, laughter, we continue, his ashy heal. The image though seen for only several moments as we passed going 30mph is seared into my memory.
It is a morbid and tragic scene. I don’t know any of the specifics of the case and I don’t mean to suggest that anyone in the car was involved directly or indirectly. All I mean to say is that two radically different worlds exist over here. There is the developing world of new cell phones, internet, cars, new schools, better medicine etc., and then there is the world where, although 99% unnecessary, I am exercising a bit of self censorship on account of how things can work in the judicial system. A world where it can be acceptable to execute a man and leave his corps in the town square as a warning for others without so much as a trial. This world and the myriad of organization, structural, judicial shortcomings that produce it are more reminiscent of the wild west than the 21st Century. In Burkina Faso the modern day conveniences clash uncompromisingly with the context in which we Americans use them. What seems like an anachronism to me is all too often the reality here.
I don’t know that there is any grand take away point from all this. Perhaps it is overblown and quixotic to think that there is some universal idea or principle to be learned. I think it is most likely the case, that it is simply a hard slog to be truly developed. But if I were to indulge myself I would say that as we look outward on the roughly 70 percent of the world that is developing it is a mistake to underestimate the markers that are hard to gage. No matter how much foreign direct investment; or how large the GNP, true development is predicated upon certain institutions and systems or governance that can not be obtained with economic development alone.
