I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos. Some of them are quite educational. I’ll share two of them with y’all today.
The first one is a Vice documentary about an excursion into Congo in search of a rare strain of marijuana. The businessmen (Franco Loja and Arjan Roskam) , who travel the world in search of such varieties, pay bribes to access the fields. They gain permission from each local chief prior to collecting samples. Once acquired, the real work begins. The samples must be transported back home and grown in special conditions. Several fields of expertise come into play. In the end, if he’s lucky, these businessmen can make millions of dollars.
Here’s what happens when the local Congolese find out how much money the visitors stand to make:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwciNb-BZIk?controls=0&start=680&w=560&h=315]
In another video, a documentary about the fate of a coffee plantation in Papua New Guinea after tribal war, we see a similar attitude from the natives. After buying a lease on the land, and working hard to establish his plantation, the natives (who sold him the land) became bitter that the owner was making more money than they were:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug_qx_zZlG0?controls=0&start=212&w=560&h=315]
It’s a recurring theme around the world: Entrepreneurs work hard, or use their creativity and initiative, to establish successful businesses – only to have the natives rise against them out of jealousy. We saw this in 1992 Los Angeles and in 2015 Baltimore.
Since it’s “racist” to criticize such attitudes among certain demographics, the masses are psychologically forced to justify such attitudes, eventually incorporating them into their own world-view. It doesn’t take much effort to align the “gibs-me-dat” attitudes of angry natives to socialism and communism. Many Bernie supporters would feel at home among the warring New Guineans, the angry Congolese, or the rioting blacks of Los Angeles and Baltimore.
On a lighter note, as stated, I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos – and many of them are excellent enough to share on this blog. I’ve been thinking about embedding my favorites, one by one, at the end of each post. Any objections?
the first video is blocked in South Africa!
Is marijuana still highly illegal there?
It is illegal but widespread. It is called dagga here, from a Khoekhoe or Bushman word. (The “gg” is pronounced like the “ch” in Loch Ness). One sometimes reads in the news about police raids netting kilograms of the stuff, I assume cultivated, but it grows wild everywhere. One sees wild hemp growing in backyards and even by the road sometimes.
In 40 Years Among the Zulus (recommended by HBD Chick) Josiah Tyler (Christian missionary 1849 to 1889) mentions that he couldn’t get the Zulu to stop smoking “wild hemp”.
In his journals in the 1870s James M. Grant of the FAMP (Frontier Armed and Mounted Police) mentions a diplomatic meeting with a tribal chief who was high on the stuff.
I think personal use is treated as a misdemeanor but I am too lazy to look into it. There’s a shop nearby with bong like things and posters of Bob Marley in the window. And of course where I stay is a surfers’ mecca so …
I was once in a Bushman village and smoked an eland horn water pipe. Whatever I smoked wasn’t tobacco or cannabis but I would not be surprised if this traditional pipe’s purpose was originally for getting high, since there was no tobacco until the Dutch arrived.
I wouldn’t know a hemp plant from a daffodil, but someone pointed out a wild plant and I picked a flower, crushed it, smelled it, and put it in my pocket to look at later. As indeed I did, two months later, when I arrived in North America with the same trousers, never washed, in my luggage. The sniffer dogs reminded me to launder my hiking clothes. Hahaha.
If it’s only a misdemeanor, then I wonder why the video is blocked in SA. Maybe some sort of copyright issue.
Have you read World on Fire by Amy Tan? It’s about how this situation plays out with economically dominant minorities around the world.
I haven’t actually read the book, Maybe I should…