International Political Will

If you need a taxi to the Mumbai airport from the neighborhood of Vashi, Sonu is the driver you want.

A ride to the airport from my area can take hours (though it’s probably only about 20 miles) – there’s a toll bridge to cross, no highway (so single-lane city streets are the only route), and of course, there’s Mumbai’s infamous traffic.

But Sonu, a young Sikh with a shiny new black & yellow Suzuki cab can get there in 45 minutes. And he’ll do it while talking on the phone.

[...most taxis in Mumbai are old Fiats...]

As we approached the lines of vehicles at the bridge toll booths, Sonu didn’t slow down. Instead, he veered to the far left, where there were no booths, kept his foot on the accelerator, and then – at the last possible second – slipped ever-so-smoothly in front of a truck when the line moved, cutting in front of at least a dozen vehicles. It was like he had timed it and knew that spot would open up at that exact moment, putting us at the very front of the line.

“It’s okay,” Sonu says, assuring me that cutting is acceptable. “It’s India.”

Mumbai’s taxis and auto rickshaws are some of the most convenient and cheapest I’ve come across. Unlike New Delhi, where every ride requires a negotiation with a stubborn driver who insists the meter is broken, Mumbai’s taxi drivers almost always use the meter, and rarely try to rip you off. They also will take you pretty much anywhere, even if they don’t know where it is (they make regular stops in traffic to ask a pan-wallah on the side of the road for directions).

Although, if it’s raining hard, even Mumbai taxi drivers will sometimes try and negotiate a higher price. But let’s be honest: you’re standing in a drenching monsoon, they have a dry vehicle. It’s called leverage.

In Rwanda, there is no dry taxi ride in the rain. Guys in green vests line the street corners on fancy new motorcycles (known as boda-bodas): hop on back, throw on the extra green helmet, and for a few bucks, you can get most anywhere.

But if it’s raining, well…you picked the wrong time to take a taxi. And if it’s dry – hang on. Time is money in Rwanda, and those bikes go fast through the hills of Kigali.

Uganda has similar boda-bodas, but with no regulation (and no helmets). The Ugandan drivers will negotiate for the ride, and usually it’s quite reasonable. But be prepared to stop at a gas station first and fork over a portion of the expected fare. Ugandans notoriously leave as little gasoline in their tanks as possible to prevent thieves from getting very far should their vehicle be stolen.

While in a regular car taxi in Kampala, the driver was heading up a hill, and the gas must have sloshed back too far, because the car started jolting and sputtering.

My thought was we needed to pull into the gas station across the street and put a dollar in.

Nope. Instead, the driver put the car into neutral, and let it roll back down the hill for 50 yards through traffic. Then – bypassing the gas station – he took a different route to our destination that didn’t have such a steep incline, meaning the gas in the tank wouldn’t slosh around too much.

I stand corrected.

You can’t always trust taxi drivers, though. In Bangkok, I had the hotel call a taxi at 5 a.m. to take me to the airport. I stagger out of the hotel in the dark, half-asleep, and a man is standing there asking: “Taxi?”

I nod and follow him to his car: a beat up, rusty piece of crap. Most taxis in Bangkok are bright neon pink or green compacts, so I was suspicious.

I told the driver of the rust-bucket I was going to another taxi, which he didn’t like. As I started to walk away, he stood in my path and physically pushed me back toward his car while aggressively telling me to “get in.”

Yeah, now I’m gonna ride with you.

I think the safest I ever felt in a taxi was actually in Kabul. Sitting in the back seat was one of the few times I didn’t feel like a visible target.

I was just lost among the sea of people and traffic, instead of in a United Nations-marked SUV that advertises: “Kidnap me.” The drivers I met in Afghanistan were all quite friendly. And – contrary to popular belief – they were all excited to meet an American.

In Cambodia, we must have had the safest rickshaw driver in the entire town. The streets didn’t seem to have lanes – everyone just went every-which-way in some kind of controlled chaos. But our rickshaw driver waited patiently at intersections with his blinker on and an accompanying “beep-beep.”

Not that anyone ever yielded the right of way to him.

I guess safety is relative. Overall, the safest taxis actually would have to be in Japan. The seats are covered with white lace doilies and the windows sometimes even have curtains.

The drivers – who wear white gloves and keep both hands on the wheel – couldn’t be more professional as they use a special lever to open the door for you. But my God, they are expensive.

Dubai has equally expensive taxis – and even worse – they are impossible to find. The city has a severe shortage of taxis (and no public train).

In Al-Ain, about two hours outside of Dubai, we went to a camel souq, or market, with a jovial Pakistani driver who kept laughing at everything. When we arrived at the souq (which was 20 miles from nowhere in the desert), he offered to wait and take us back, laughing at the foreigners that wanted to see camels. His waiting taxi turned out to be a godsend when one of the guys selling a camel tried to get me to “feel the camels leg.”

I assured the vendor I was not there to buy a camel, and hence, did not need to “feel” the leg. Trying to escape the many men who weren’t going to let me leave without a purchasing a dromedary, I ran back to the portly Pakistani taxi driver who just laughed and said “all these men are crazy.”

Then we had him take us to a public garden several miles outside of town…which was closed for a holiday.

He laughed at that, too.

In light of Senator Harry Reid’s racist remarks about Obama (get it – in “light” of!), and Rush Limbaugh’s overt racist comments about Haiti, I bring you: “Racism: Bollywood Edition.”

When President Obama was elected, it was hailed in India as a sign of racial equality - as if it were some kind of achievement on a global scale. Indian pundits and writers opined that America had finally crossed the racial barrier the rest of the non-white world already had – and most Indian media implied that this was a non-existent barrier in India (because they aren’t white).

Oh, how wrong they are.

Meet one of India’s most popular products: fairness cream.

Really, when you think about it, the idea of putting lotion/cream/powder on your face to make you look white(r) goes beyond even the kind of racism America is dealing with 150 years after the end of slavery, and 30+ years after the end of Jim Crow. Say what you will about American racists – at least they don’t have the kind of power and persuasion that would make American people of color try to make themselves white (at least, not overtly).

The advertisements are everywhere – over bus stops, on giant billboards, interspersed throughout mainstream magazines, in stores, on TV…almost everyday I run across some Bollywood celebrity advertising some shit that is supposed to make you pasty.

It’s shameful. Sickening. And the actors (using that term loosely –if you’ve ever seen a Shahrukh Khan movie you understand) that endorse these products ought to feel ashamed and beg for the forgiveness of their fellow Indian citizens for insulting them.

The infatuation with light skin can’t be blamed on the British. There has always been a connection between skin color and caste in India, though overt displays of the caste system are less pronounced nowadays. In India today, caste usually is manifested more as class. Most upper-caste/class Indians are lighter skinned, and most darker Indians are lower class (though being light-skinned doesn’t automatically make one upper-class/caste).

Marriage proposals and personal ads consistently request a “fair” bride/groom. Almost all the actors in Bollywood are fair-skinned, and ALL advertisements use only fair-skinned Indians (I’ve been actively looking for any advertisement over the last 3 days that uses a dark-skinned Indian – who isn’t playing the role of someone’s servant/assistant/peon – haven’t found a single one).

[...it's worth noting that these products are cosmetic only - none actually contain any SPF protection...]

The actresses that get the most attention and enjoy the highest status seem to be those that can look the “whitest.” Going strictly by media, one might surmise that India is a country of light-skinned people – but my experience with the 20 million people in Mumbai everyday is that fair-colored Indians are a minority.

The worst part is what this social standard does to children. The young teenagers I work with twice a week aren’t exactly privileged. They have more than enough factors working against them in life – low income, a piss-poor public education, disease, malaria, malnutrition, stunted growth, some (not all) with abusive/negligent parents, and cultural norms that put the females at a disadvantage.

But to top it off, their favorite Bollywood stars are telling them that beauty and success is skin-deep.

[...note the use of the phrase "white perfect"...]

One of the girls in the class has said to me more than once that she “likes my skin” because it’s “so fair.” Another tells me she wants to go to America because “all the people have so fair skin.” Comments on the “nice” color of my skin are a regular occurrence (though I always disagree with them, pointing out that in the sun I burn quicker than a piece of toast, and that America is full of people of all colors).

A young 14-year-old boy in the class wants to be an actor. Even if he were fair skinned, the chances of being an actor are ridiculously small. But I can’t help thinking that if he did get into some Bollywood producer’s office, they would only see his dark skin instead of his skills, engaging personality, deep voice, and intelligence.

It isn’t just the under-privileged children that have been indoctrinated with an inferiority complex over skin color. After a dinner with three upper-middle class Indians last week, we took a group picture – and I overheard the Indians remarking that “they look black next to us in the photos.”

So what? Why is that something to feel bad about?

America might be faced with serious issues regarding race, but make no mistake – the country offers more things for more different people than any other place in the world. Sen. Reid’s comment and Rush Limbaugh’s lunacy might be exceptions – but at least they are that – exceptions.

There is no decent market for fairness cream in America. Actors, celebrities, and people in advertisements are not limited to a lighter shade of pale. American children can dream of becoming anything they want when they grow up – regardless of skin color – and Obama’s election proved that to be true.

But if Indian media want to claim President Obama is proof of some kind of global “progress” in race-relations, they better realize one thing:

It was America’s progress – not anyone else’s.

And as long as influential Indians continue to endorse fairness cream, telling their fellow citizens that skin color matters, India won’t be making any similar progress.

When you hear “third world labor exploitation,” a few standard images come to mind: sweatshops full of hungry people making Nike tennis shoes 18 hours a day for pennies in Indonesia; young mothers sewing $25 T-shirts for The Gap in return for a few cents in Honduras; children chained to a loom making carpets in India or Pakistan.

But sometimes the exploitation is less multi-national, and more local. Sometimes it’s the developing country’s elite that are exploiting their own people, without the help of international corporations.

[...these bricks aren't being exported to developed countries...but used for local contractors...]

Mumbai is a city of poverty. More than half of the 19+ million inhabitants live in the slums. An equal number have no toilets. And while a good portion of the slum-dwellers likely live below the poverty line of less than $1.25, there are actually 1.2 million that lives on less than 50 cents a day.

So when the credit card company outsources their customer service to India, and the $1,200/month call-center jobs leave Michigan for Mumbai at $300/month, it may seem like Capital One or Dell Computers is exploiting Indians willing to work cheap.

But delve deeper. Call-center jobs in India go to semi-skilled English speakers. A motivated student in India can get these jobs often with just a 10th grade education. And $300 per month is a decent salary for someone living in a 30 sq. ft. corrugated metal shack.

Eventually, that call-center employee will have their own children, and their $300 a month salary will allow them to raise children with a slightly better education. They will be able to afford tutors (because the public school system in India is an absolute joke). Since they use English at work, the parents will use it at home with their children, raising more fluent speakers. Their children will find better jobs…and the cycle continues.

So where does the exploitation come in?

Consider the tale of two companies:

Company ABC is a successful English-oriented firm based in Mumbai, founded and owned by an Indian citizen. Their primary clients are affluent Japanese, handled over the Internet. Their revenue stream is received in Japanese yen, which makes for a good exchange rate into rupees. They have been around for about 10 years and are now growing exponentially as they gain a decent market share of Japanese educational institutions. Company ABC has about 200 employees, almost all of which have fluent English and the graduate degrees in science, engineering, and medicine that are necessary to perform their duties.

The average starting salary for a new employee (who has not just a university education, but a graduate degree) is about $300 per month. Again – not a bad salary considering India. But the $300 per month salary is also the same salary as many international call centers – places that don’t require such an extensive education. New employees are primarily fresh out of university, and because Company ABC assumes (as a matter of company policy) that employees still live at home with their parents, such a low salary is acceptable. So essentially, Company ABC is making their employees’ parents subsidize their profits.

Now consider the multi-national corporation:

Kentucky Fried Chicken opens up a store in a new plush mall in Mumbai. They hire primarily young people from the slums – people that have decent, but not great, English. They hire employees that maybe only finished the 10th grade. It’s not glorious work, it’s not clean work, and it’s not a career. But it has stability, the ability to move up into supervisor positions over time, and guaranteed incremental pay raises.

And the salary?

$300 per month.

So who is doing the exploiting?

A man with a university degree in education is living in a 75 sq. ft. shack in the slums and works 6-days a week at the bank. Why? Because the bank pays more than teaching – but it’s still not enough to move his family out of the slums. So his education goes to waste. He will never have the chance to become a teacher and create a better educated generation for the future. His own government has basically told him they value him more for his ability to file paperwork than his skill to educate children.

Another young man with an education, fluent English, and work experience in the United Kingdom is splashing concrete on a wall and laying tile as he waits for the moment when he can leave India again and get a job in something other than manual labor. His international experience means nothing, but an Indian contractor is willing to exploit his labor.

A young woman with a graduate degree quits her job teaching at a small college in Mumbai because it only paid $100 per month. She can earn $300 per month at an Indian-owned company teaching affluent Japanese citizens over the Internet. Essentially, she has been told indirectly by her country that it’s not worth educating her own fellow citizens.

All these situations point to one tragic fact – India does not value education.

The more I see, the more I have come to believe that multi-national corporate employers might actually be the best hope for countries like India. Over the past 30 years, international agreements have established guidelines, rules, and standards for corporations that seek to operate across borders. If KFC or Pizza Hut wants to open a store in India, there are independent organizations observing and monitoring, and they publicize any exploitation to consumers in the countries where the corporation originated.

But if the company is Indian – operating in their own country – then the only body that can regulate them is India itself.

Given the chance, the elite Indians that control the power and wealth in the country will only continue exploiting their fellow citizens. They avoid global standards because they see it as hindering their competitive advantage in the global marketplace. But they must understand the impact global standards can have on overall development.

India needs to move away from the old days of exploiting their own cheap labor and realize a new competitive advantage – education. Showing your citizens that employers value education – by compensating workers fairly – will fuel the drive for people to go to school. More education means better jobs, less disease, slower population growth, higher standards of living, female empowerment, more informed voters, better governance, and stronger communities.

If a university education doesn’t mean a better salary than working at KFC, what motivation is there to go to school?

When a country allows religious extremists to export their dangerous ideology of hate and intolerance – Nigerian airline bombers coming from Yemen, CIA-assassinating Jordanian double-agents in Afghanistan, or anti-American clerics in Pakistan – it’s a problem.

But the origin and strain of religion sometimes affects the response.

At a press conference last October in Kampala, President Museveni of Uganda said:

“If you rape a woman in Uganda, you will face the firing squad. Or if you rape a man, you will face the firing squad. Of course, [men getting raped] is mostly a problem in Europe – we don’t have this problem in Uganda.”

Hmm. I liked the whole “rape = firing squad” thing. But the rest smacks of the kind of denial that Ahmedinejad made famous during his speech at Columbia University when he said Iran “doesn’t have this [homosexual] phenomenon” like we do in America.

And Museveni’s remarks come at a time when a proposed law in Uganda is aimed at making homosexuality illegal. The bill (supported by Museveni) would, among other things:

• Give a minimum life sentence to gay men and women convicted of having sex.
• Sentence anyone to prison who is aware of homosexual activity and does not report it to the government (including parents, siblings, neighbors, pastors, teachers, doctors, etc. who might be aware of “gay” activity).
• Execute people convicted of having homosexual sex with a minor (Actually, I have no problem with this if they would make it ANY kind of sex with a minor).

This law wouldn’t be anything new in the world: there are many other countries that still have draconian laws on the books. Most gays arrested in Saudi Arabia escape the death penalty and receive “only” a whipping. Iran has executed more than 100 alleged homosexuals since 1979. India last year finally took British-era laws off the books, opening the door for possible civil unions or marriage.

But Uganda’s proposed law is different in two ways:

It’s new.

It’s Christian.

This isn’t some colonial-era, throwback, sodomy law like they have in Alabama that has been around for a hundred years. It’s new legislation that, if it took effect, would be enforced by a democracy in the modern era.

At least 85% of Uganda is Christian – including Museveni – and this opens the country up for American experiments in fundamentalism that have profound effects on society and development.

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback and Representative Joe Pitts, both openly committed fundamentalists, saw an opening and helped President Bush shift HIV/AIDS prevention and birth control funding in Africa to ineffective “abstinence” programs.

Enter Rick Warren – he of the “Purpose Driven” fame.

Warren had already implemented his “Purpose Driven Nation” plan in Rwanda with the help of President Paul Kagame. The idea, using the acronym PEACE (Plant churches/changed to Promote reconciliation, Equip leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick, Educate the next generation) is to create countries that reflect the Christian ethic.

Noble goals – but what about methodology? By its very definition (Equip leaders) and its involvement with Rwanda’s president, Warren’s plan is political in nature.

After getting settled in Rwanda, Warren set his sights on Uganda as the next stop on the “Purpose Driven Nation” tour.

When Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill was proposed, Warren was strangely quiet. He did cut ties in late 2009 with Martin Ssempa, a Ugandan pastor that started organizing anti-gay rallies (Ssempa took “abstinence” programs to a new level by sponsoring condom-burnings – which at the time Warren apparently didn’t think conflicted with the “Educate” part of his PEACE plan).

But when asked to comment on the law, Warren initially refused, stating that:

“It is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.”

Uh, Rick – you already have interfered. Setting up your purpose-driven churches throughout Rwanda and Uganda…pumping money into these countries for “abstinence programs” in place of real HIV/AIDS prevention measures and birth control…Equipping leaders…

Warren finally was forced to issue a Christmas video message to Ugandans on his website. He urged Uganda pastors to not support the bill – but before giving his five reasons for doing so, first offered a disclaimer of sorts:

“While we can never deny or water down what God’s Word clearly teaches about sexuality, at the same time the church must stand to protect the dignity of all individuals — as Jesus did and commanded all of us to do.

…Jesus reaffirmed what Moses wrote that marriage is intended to be between one man and one woman committed to each other for life.”

Warren then made a case that Jesus would not have wished homosexuals dead. But the preface to his reasons diluted his message – kind of like telling someone: “Beating a child is wrong – unless they deserved it.”

I wonder if President Museveni received Warren’s mixed message. Museveni’s up for reelection again next year (he’s been in power since 1986), and – as America’s conservatives have shown – there’s no better way to distract a public and rally them for an election than grabbing the pitchforks and finding the nearest queer.

The influence of fundamentalist Christianity in Africa extends beyond social policy and into development.

Religious prohibitions on birth control not only inhibit any attempt at female empowerment, but add to population pressures in some of the densest regions on Earth. At a Congo refugee camp on the Rwandan border, families have lived for 13 years in a one-room, UN-donated hut- yet try to raise 8 and 9 young children on UN rations.

If they were Muslim, the NGOs and media would use it as proof that Islam is misogynistic and incompatible with modernity. But since the Congo refugees are all Seventh Day Adventist Christians…no one says shit.

And since Uganda and their anti-gay law is Christian…we all just look the other way. We ignore the extremists in America who can’t implement biblical law at home that have now taken their fight overseas.

Religious foreign policy – sponsored and supervised by fundamentalists.

Warren made a last-minute New Year’s Eve plea for $900,000 in donations to his Saddleback Church – and received $2.4 million. He now has plenty of money to keep exporting his brand of religious fundamentalism across the globe in 2010.

Spreading religious fundamentalism that inspires hate and intolerance.

Isn’t that what we bombed Yemen for, even before the Christmas Day underwear fiasco?

We had a noon meeting the next day in Kigali, but we were in Fort Portal, Uganda. The woman who sold us the 6:00 a.m. bus tickets said it was only a six-hour ride to the Uganda/Rwanda border. No problem.

Except we found out that a good portion of the trip was on a dirt road (complete with locals digging potholes so that when it rained, they could conveniently show up and help push people’s cars and buses out of the mud – for a small fee, of course).

And then around 2 p.m. (already 2 hours late), the radiator broke. Not to fear – two guys showed up (I’m not sure from where…) and yanked the huge metal part out from underneath the bus. They then flagged down the next passing motorcyclist and jumped on – three men and one huge radiator on a motorcycle. Off they went.

By 4 p.m., we were back on the road with a fixed radiator. But we were running too late to cross the border before dark. Crossing borders and getting a taxi from an airport are two of the most bewildering things you can do when traveling – you inevitably get screwed. Either you don’t know where to go, get a bad exchange rate, pay too much for a taxi, stand in the wrong line, or get taken to the wrong hotel, etc. Crossing a border at night just compounds all those difficulties.

So we stayed the night in a Ugandan border town. We would leave first thing in the morning.

Unfortunately, we were assuming that there would be frequent transportation on the Rwanda side of the border onward to Kigali. There wasn’t. Public transportation in Africa usually doesn’t depart until all the seats are filled. We sat for maybe 30 minutes without another passenger coming along, and realized we couldn’t wait any longer.

We decided that in order to make our meeting, we needed to buy the other two seats in the taxi so we could depart right away. We found an English translator, who told the big, burly driver of the sedan in their native Kinya-rwanda language that we would buy the two other seats if he could leave right away.

The driver replied with an “Aaay” – just like the Fonz on Happy Days – then jumped in and we were off to Kigali. I discovered that the “Fonz response” was the typical Rwandan equivalent of “OK.” I became quite enamored with the reply – it felt both familiar and reassuring, convincing you to trust the person. And when you’re crossing borders and paying for “taxi” rides in dubious vehicles, trust goes a long way.

Some of the white vans used for public transportation in Uganda were certainly dubious. On one trip, while going at least 60 mph on a dirt road, we came up on a sharp right turn. The driver hit the brakes too late, putting us into a 180-degree fishtail. I’m amazed we didn’t flip over. Instead, we just got out somewhat nonchalantly, pushed the van out of the ditch, and we back on our merry way.

Apparently the driver was unfazed. Just ten minutes later – again going 60 mph on a dirt road – he passed an oncoming van so close that it obliterated the driver’s side-view mirror.

[...this is the passenger side of the van - after the mirror obliteration, I wouldn't be hanging my hand out the window...]

It must be a regular thing, because we didn’t even slow down – the driver just continued like nothing had happened.

Having said that, the region is spectacular. The people are genuinely warm and friendly, it’s very safe, the food is good (if you like fried chicken and chips), and the weather is perfect.

Anyway, it’s Friday morning and I’m all out of anything intelligent to say for the week, so here’s 11 random observations from East Africa:

1)    Hippos are fat. Especially when grazing at night outside of the tent just two feet from your head.

…

2)    There’s something about coming across a half-eaten zebra leg that makes me think I’m not really all that safe on a bicycle.

…

3)    East African beer is far superior to Indian beer (left to right: Ugandan, Kenyan, Rwandan).

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4)    African elephants make Indian elephants look like babies.

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5)    Nobody likes the French – even people who speak the language. This sign was at a genocide memorial in Rwanda. In 1994, French troops set up a base to protect Hutus perpetrators (who were hoping to escape revenge killings since the Tutsis had finally stopped the genocide). The French used the same spot that, just weeks earlier, the Hutus had used to slaughter 50,000 people.

You can read the sign in the front. The sign in the back says “Mass grave of victims.”

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6)    Beautiful hiking in the Rwandan rainforest near the border with Congo.

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7)    Helpful guide, Isaiah, pointing out some pink flowers on the trail. It would have helped more if he would have pointed out the nest of millions of ants before they attacked us. I’ve never seen ants move so fast – past my shoes and up my pants in less than 10 seconds.

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8)    The Murchison Falls on the Nile River in Uganda. No real observation here – just a beautiful spot.

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9)    On the right is the president of Zambia, Rupiah Banda. On the left is his bodyguard that followed him around everywhere. One day, I want to be president of a country and have a bodyguard like that guy. He just exudes intimidation.

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10)    You wouldn’t think a pig would be scary, but I swear that guy with the tusks is sizing me up for a charge. He’s probably already recruited the zebras for the attack.

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11)    Robert Mugabe is an ass. He fucks up his own country so bad that Zimbabweans can’t flee the economic and political chaos fast enough. And then he shows up and signs a treaty claiming he will protect the rights of refugees and displaced people. What hypocrisy.