Friday, June 09, 2006
Bringing in the day’s catch in Senegal
By: Ali Ismail
0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)
One illegal migrant says that death is better than life in Senegal
During the 1990s I was involved with a library support group in the course of which I was deputed to stand at that institution’s front door inviting anyone from the age of three to 93 to join our “action group” and help to save the library from closure.
While doing that I met a former chartered accountant who had chucked up his profession to go and live in Senegal, living on the rental income of his house in London. “I am there for the music” he said and then presented a rosy account of the lifestyle. Apparently, according to him, Senegalese living was A-OK except for the rainy season when he found it sensible to return to Europe in order to escape the close attentions of bugs and other creepy crawlies.
Not very long after that, I discovered Lampdown, a Senegalese singer and songwriter who, again, presented a fair and favourable account of Senegal.
That being so, I was surprised and not a little dismayed to learn on CNN a few days ago that the Canary Islands are presently facing a major immigration crisis as boatloads of illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa – Senegal in particular – arrive on their beaches, asking and begging for chances to participate in the way of life of Western Europe. “It is better to die in an open boat on the ocean than to live in Senegal,” said one migrant to his Spanish hosts after arrival.
The above poses pertinent questions which should rightly engage the mind of every thinking reader of this organ. Why are the people of the non-Western world so apparently incapable of creating environments which are congenial and prosperous? Why are the third worlders always relying on richer and more powerful third parties to bail them out of almost every conceivable kind of jam? Why is the third world apparently incapable of creating wealth independently?
My argument is that, since it appears to be the case that most migration to the “advanced world” is motivated primarily by economic factors, it follows that before acceptance into North America or Western Europe the would be newcomer from the third world passes psychological aptitude tests relating to his ability, or lack thereof, to mix and merge into the culture.
“Money makes the world go round” the song goes; so let’s look at the money side. It seems that the average per capita gross domestic product (GDP) for the world stands at $9,500 (2005). The per capita GDP for Senegal is $1,800 (2005). That for Spain (which possesses the Canary Islands) is $25,500 (2005). The top of the tree is Luxembourg with $55,000 (2003). The bottom of the heap is East Timor at $500 (2001). The poorest European country is Albania with $4,500 (2003).
So, it seems that the variation between the two extreme points of economic performance, as measured by GDP, is in the order of a factor of 110. The statistics for gross national product may be even greater, for many of the technically advanced countries have all sorts of “invisible” earnings.
So what makes a Senegalese, or in former times a Vietnamese, want to travel on a leaky boat? The palpable answer is: to obtain wealth and a higher standard of living for himself and for his loved ones.
The apparent inability of the third world to generate wealth independently is probably the most acute problem facing humanity at this time. These days communal and tribal bonds based on race and land are under greater stress than ever before, going back to the early Stone Age.
The reason is based on technology. Previously, it was quite possible and acceptable to live a geographically restricted life, never travelling beyond the bounds of one’s home village or near neighbourhood. All of Mankind was like that. I remember that during my prep school days someone said that in previous centuries there were individuals who were born on London Bridge (there were houses and shops on the bridge), lived on London Bridge and died on London Bridge without ever having stepped off the bridge. At that time the English standard of living approximated to a typical third world country today.
Today, of course, global distances have become almost inconsequential. I can send e-mail to my relatives in News Zealand which gets opened 10 seconds after I press the “send” button. News from the other side of the world reaches all over the planet in mere instants after the news wires have passed it for public consumption.
However, and this is terribly important I submit, to benefit from all this marvellous technology there must be a psychological change which is equally profound. What I am putting about is that the old ethnocentric ways have to be binned and that a wider spectrum of loyalties has to be taken up.
Take the United Kingdom as a brilliant example. During the Dark Ages (the few centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire) the British Isles were a potpourri of myriads of quarrelling tribesmen. There were Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Latins, Celts, Scandinavians and the off-scourings of goodness knows where all living and fighting and hating each other on these islands. The gigantic process of consolidation of the peoples took hundreds of years of pillage and rapine.
Later, after the Act of Union (1707), the country became larger and the circle of loyalties widened greatly. Scotland was included. During the heyday of British power the kingdom consisted of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland (all of it), the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The Republic of Ireland has now split away and the Isle of Man claims to be an independent nation. British power has since given way to the USA which is itself a union of half a hundred states and several dependencies and protectorates all over the world. Size counts, as it says on the Godzilla movie posters.
Looking over the GDP statistics one can see that some of the countries with low relative production rates per capita are physically large – for example China, India, Sudan and Brazil.
Large they may be but in each and every one of the low performance GDP nations it seems clear to me that the all-embracing attitude to the world is more apparent than real. India is a mass of mutually hostile communities who resent each other and desperately seek to filch land and resources from each other with religious rivalries as an additional fuel. Think of the Ayodha mosque crisis.
So, the problem seems to be that there are huge numbers of people, the majority of mankind, who live in a highly technical age and possess the intelligence to master all of that but do not have the emotional width that necessarily goes with it.
Thus, the typical third world software engineer with a stupendous knowledge of programming, operating systems and hardware technicalities may well be horrified to discover that one of his children is thinking of marrying into a family which does fit exactly into his racial, religious and caste/class grouping.
This may be one potent reason why our young people study and study and, in later life, work their fingers to the bone and (sometimes) benefit themselves but the societies they live in do not benefit greatly, if at all, from their extraordinary efforts.
Thus it was, I submit, that Spain’s entry into international greatness arrived with the union of Castile and Aragon with a concomitant widening of mental horizons. In a short space of time Spaniards were exploring the world from the Andes to the Philippines and leaving their genetic traces within and without the institution of marriage. Switzerland used to be a poor country until the “my valley” thinking ways were ditched.
By way of contrast, Senegal was described by a study conducted by Lewis & Clark College, Oregon, USA as: “In July 1995, the population was estimated at nine millions and is composed of numerous ethnic groups as well as various nationalities.”
Specifically, the aforesaid nine millions are broken down into: the Wolof tribe 36%, the Serer tribe 17%, the Peul peoples 17%(which is further broken down into the Peuls of Walo, the Fulakunda, the Fulas, the Laobes and the Toucouleurs), the Diola tribe 9%, the Madduka 9% and yet other groupings such as: the Lebou, the Soninke, the Bassari, the Manijacks, the Mankagnes, the Balantes and the Pepels.
My educated guess is that although there is at present no civil war in Senegal that multitude of tribal groupings all under one government has to result in people living in close spatial proximity who have relatively weak empathy for members of out-groups who are nominally fellow citizens. This can only result in small economies of scale (because business enterprises recruit only from the proprietors’ tribal groups and the customers are drawn exclusively from the same), highly localised planning systems and, of course, the hallmark of third world life – genetic inbreeding.
So, it seems to me that to qualify for life in a socially and technically advanced society, the applicant (or supplicant) should be able to produce evidence via hard and fast aptitude tests that he can think, feel and conduct himself in a wide context.
THE END
During the 1990s I was involved with a library support group in the course of which I was deputed to stand at that institution’s front door inviting anyone from the age of three to 93 to join our “action group” and help to save the library from closure.
While doing that I met a former chartered accountant who had chucked up his profession to go and live in Senegal, living on the rental income of his house in London. “I am there for the music” he said and then presented a rosy account of the lifestyle. Apparently, according to him, Senegalese living was A-OK except for the rainy season when he found it sensible to return to Europe in order to escape the close attentions of bugs and other creepy crawlies.
Not very long after that, I discovered Lampdown, a Senegalese singer and songwriter who, again, presented a fair and favourable account of Senegal.
That being so, I was surprised and not a little dismayed to learn on CNN a few days ago that the Canary Islands are presently facing a major immigration crisis as boatloads of illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa – Senegal in particular – arrive on their beaches, asking and begging for chances to participate in the way of life of Western Europe. “It is better to die in an open boat on the ocean than to live in Senegal,” said one migrant to his Spanish hosts after arrival.
The above poses pertinent questions which should rightly engage the mind of every thinking reader of this organ. Why are the people of the non-Western world so apparently incapable of creating environments which are congenial and prosperous? Why are the third worlders always relying on richer and more powerful third parties to bail them out of almost every conceivable kind of jam? Why is the third world apparently incapable of creating wealth independently?
My argument is that, since it appears to be the case that most migration to the “advanced world” is motivated primarily by economic factors, it follows that before acceptance into North America or Western Europe the would be newcomer from the third world passes psychological aptitude tests relating to his ability, or lack thereof, to mix and merge into the culture.
“Money makes the world go round” the song goes; so let’s look at the money side. It seems that the average per capita gross domestic product (GDP) for the world stands at $9,500 (2005). The per capita GDP for Senegal is $1,800 (2005). That for Spain (which possesses the Canary Islands) is $25,500 (2005). The top of the tree is Luxembourg with $55,000 (2003). The bottom of the heap is East Timor at $500 (2001). The poorest European country is Albania with $4,500 (2003).
So, it seems that the variation between the two extreme points of economic performance, as measured by GDP, is in the order of a factor of 110. The statistics for gross national product may be even greater, for many of the technically advanced countries have all sorts of “invisible” earnings.
So what makes a Senegalese, or in former times a Vietnamese, want to travel on a leaky boat? The palpable answer is: to obtain wealth and a higher standard of living for himself and for his loved ones.
The apparent inability of the third world to generate wealth independently is probably the most acute problem facing humanity at this time. These days communal and tribal bonds based on race and land are under greater stress than ever before, going back to the early Stone Age.
The reason is based on technology. Previously, it was quite possible and acceptable to live a geographically restricted life, never travelling beyond the bounds of one’s home village or near neighbourhood. All of Mankind was like that. I remember that during my prep school days someone said that in previous centuries there were individuals who were born on London Bridge (there were houses and shops on the bridge), lived on London Bridge and died on London Bridge without ever having stepped off the bridge. At that time the English standard of living approximated to a typical third world country today.
Today, of course, global distances have become almost inconsequential. I can send e-mail to my relatives in News Zealand which gets opened 10 seconds after I press the “send” button. News from the other side of the world reaches all over the planet in mere instants after the news wires have passed it for public consumption.
However, and this is terribly important I submit, to benefit from all this marvellous technology there must be a psychological change which is equally profound. What I am putting about is that the old ethnocentric ways have to be binned and that a wider spectrum of loyalties has to be taken up.
Take the United Kingdom as a brilliant example. During the Dark Ages (the few centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire) the British Isles were a potpourri of myriads of quarrelling tribesmen. There were Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Latins, Celts, Scandinavians and the off-scourings of goodness knows where all living and fighting and hating each other on these islands. The gigantic process of consolidation of the peoples took hundreds of years of pillage and rapine.
Later, after the Act of Union (1707), the country became larger and the circle of loyalties widened greatly. Scotland was included. During the heyday of British power the kingdom consisted of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland (all of it), the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The Republic of Ireland has now split away and the Isle of Man claims to be an independent nation. British power has since given way to the USA which is itself a union of half a hundred states and several dependencies and protectorates all over the world. Size counts, as it says on the Godzilla movie posters.
Looking over the GDP statistics one can see that some of the countries with low relative production rates per capita are physically large – for example China, India, Sudan and Brazil.
Large they may be but in each and every one of the low performance GDP nations it seems clear to me that the all-embracing attitude to the world is more apparent than real. India is a mass of mutually hostile communities who resent each other and desperately seek to filch land and resources from each other with religious rivalries as an additional fuel. Think of the Ayodha mosque crisis.
So, the problem seems to be that there are huge numbers of people, the majority of mankind, who live in a highly technical age and possess the intelligence to master all of that but do not have the emotional width that necessarily goes with it.
Thus, the typical third world software engineer with a stupendous knowledge of programming, operating systems and hardware technicalities may well be horrified to discover that one of his children is thinking of marrying into a family which does fit exactly into his racial, religious and caste/class grouping.
This may be one potent reason why our young people study and study and, in later life, work their fingers to the bone and (sometimes) benefit themselves but the societies they live in do not benefit greatly, if at all, from their extraordinary efforts.
Thus it was, I submit, that Spain’s entry into international greatness arrived with the union of Castile and Aragon with a concomitant widening of mental horizons. In a short space of time Spaniards were exploring the world from the Andes to the Philippines and leaving their genetic traces within and without the institution of marriage. Switzerland used to be a poor country until the “my valley” thinking ways were ditched.
By way of contrast, Senegal was described by a study conducted by Lewis & Clark College, Oregon, USA as: “In July 1995, the population was estimated at nine millions and is composed of numerous ethnic groups as well as various nationalities.”
Specifically, the aforesaid nine millions are broken down into: the Wolof tribe 36%, the Serer tribe 17%, the Peul peoples 17%(which is further broken down into the Peuls of Walo, the Fulakunda, the Fulas, the Laobes and the Toucouleurs), the Diola tribe 9%, the Madduka 9% and yet other groupings such as: the Lebou, the Soninke, the Bassari, the Manijacks, the Mankagnes, the Balantes and the Pepels.
My educated guess is that although there is at present no civil war in Senegal that multitude of tribal groupings all under one government has to result in people living in close spatial proximity who have relatively weak empathy for members of out-groups who are nominally fellow citizens. This can only result in small economies of scale (because business enterprises recruit only from the proprietors’ tribal groups and the customers are drawn exclusively from the same), highly localised planning systems and, of course, the hallmark of third world life – genetic inbreeding.
So, it seems to me that to qualify for life in a socially and technically advanced society, the applicant (or supplicant) should be able to produce evidence via hard and fast aptitude tests that he can think, feel and conduct himself in a wide context.
THE END
This article was published in the Bangla Mirror, the first English language weekly for the United Kingdom's Bangladeshis - read all over the world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
