Car Troubles: A Summary

Here I am, back in Mozambique. Despite repeated transportation issues, we finally made it. As I reflected on the trouble we’ve encountered the last few weeks, I thought it might be educational to summarize how our original drive to Moz. became a three week stay in JoBerg and an extra $3000[i] in repair expenses. I hope this will help people in the west understand some of the issues you can run into when working in a foreign country on a limited budget.

Back in 2010, we were looking for transportation to get us around Mozambique. Given the states of many of the roads in the country, we knew we would need a 4-wheel drive truck with a good suspension system (some roads have potholes over a foot deep). We also knew this would be an expensive proposition, if we wanted a vehicle that would last. The difficulty in Moz. is that, while you can find vehicles that are relatively inexpensive, none of them really have any durability—that is, cheap cars are cheaply made. After looking around, we found we could get a decent 4-wheel drive vehicle for around $20,000-40,000 dollars, or an extremely cheap 4-wheel drive vehicle for around $4000 dollars. Given the terrain we would be dealing with, the choice was clear: we needed around $40,000 for a solid truck that could handle the environment with a minimum of long-term maintenance. A well-cared for Land Cruiser, for example, would be able to last for hundreds of thousands of kilometers without needing much more than routine maintenance. Unfortunately, this was difficult to communicate to our supporters, who, like many people in the west, suffered from two common misconceptions about Africa: 1) Africa is poor, so things are cheaper, and 2) all you need to handle rough terrain is a 4-wheel drive truck. Sadly, neither idea is true.

The result of these preconceptions, we were encouraged to buy the cheaper option – a 4-wheel drive car that was available for $4000. The car seemed to be in reasonable condition, although the suspension on the vehicle was not really up to what we needed for the roads. It was cheap, however, and that should save us money for other things, right? Plus, the economy back home was doing poorly, and a more economical vehicle should be a good buy, given the limited ability of our supporters to provide donations. We were running out of time—we needed transportation soon, so we made the decision to purchase the $4000 car ( I will refer to it as “Little T” from now on) in December of 2010.

As it turned out, however, saving money on the front end is not always a good savings for the long-term.  The difficulties with Little T turned out to be considerable:

• The car was a Japanese import, with no local production facilities. This means that every part used to fix the car either had to be scrounged up (for a fee), or imported (for a significant fee).
• Little T had some suspension issues initially. The Mozambican roads did not help substantially. While Moz. is working hard to improve their infrastructure, the current condition of many the roads ranges from poor to outright dangerous. Within a few months, our suspension system was completely shot, requiring us to replace the shock absorbers and struts—we only had money for the shocks, initially.
• By the time we were able to repair the struts, the shocks had gone out again – about a month or two later.
• After repairing the entire suspension, the car lasted another couple of months on the Mozambican roads until the entire system went out again.
• We took Little T to an off-road specialist shop in South Africa (CRD), and they were able to fix the suspension—by rebuilding part of the frame of the car to accommodate the degree of suspension necessary to survive the Mozambican roads.
• We haven’t been able to test the new suspension, however, since shortly after getting Little T out of the shop, the transmission went out. This was the most recent issue, and the reason we were stranded in JoBerg for three weeks.

While this list is not exhaustive, I believe it gives a good overview of the kinds of difficulties we have had with this vehicle. About the time we fix one thing, something else breaks.  Given the mileage on the car, it is likely the fuel injector will go next. Altogether, the repairs to the car (this most recent breakdown included) amount to over $20,000. Moreover, the car has spent months in the shop, hampering our efforts in Moz. and South Africa.

To summarize: the last 1.5 years, the car has ended up costing over $24000, and has disrupted months of work in Mozambique and South Africa.

I am not relating this to blame anyone or to relate a sob story about how much trouble the car has caused. I relate this so that people can understand that road conditions and economic factors in African countries frequently require higher-cost, higher-quality vehicles to overcome. Had we initially invested $20,000-$40,000 in a vehicle, we would have substantially fewer repairs and, more importantly, far fewer delays in our work. The fact is, the weaker the infrastructure of a country, the more expensive everything is. I hope that by relaying this people can better understand this truth. I love what we are doing, and I want to be able to do it as effectively and efficiently as possible, but the simple truth is that good work requires good money, and this vehicle has not turned out to be a good use of money.

When the car is repaired this time, we will be taking it back to Moz. There, we will either relegate the car to local use, or simply sell the car to raise funds for a better vehicle. We cannot afford to let Little T’s breakdowns continue to interfere with our work.

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[i] All prices are in U.S. dollars

Mozambique: Taking Control

Yesterday, we got a letter from one of the Mozambican nationals that we know. We had wanted to work with him for some time, but the organization he was working with was being controlled by a western organization, preventing him from working with us as he would have liked. Here is a portion of the message we received:

“Now I was elected as a Chairman of [his organization]. I think we have to start the last conversation about the paternship between Safari Insight Mission (our old name) and [his organization]”

This is much bigger than the statement above would initially indicate. One of the problems we have encountered in Mozambique is the tendency of Mozambicans to simply do whatever the westerners tell them. This is a kind of cultural habit, put in place through centuries of domination and oppression. While many of the current western organizations in the country have no intention of dominating of oppressing the nationals, the fact that the Mozambicans won’t challenge them creates a system of dominance by default. Many westerners, not realizing that this cultural tendency is in place, assume that the Mozambicans are going along with their ideas because the nationals agree that their ideas are correct. In fact, it is often the case that the nationals disagree with the westerners, but feel as if they cannot challenge western authority. The statement above is a significant indicator that the Mozambicans are starting to take back control of their lives. Note that the author indicates he was elected—the process of taking back control does not need to be antagonistic or hostile, simply directed and firm. This is a great step for this particular organization, and for Mozambican nationals in general. One of our goals has been to empower nationals to take control of their own country and organizations, and it looks like that is beginning to happen.

My Enemy: The Internet?

When I started writing these blogs, I had the idea that they would account some of the more interesting parts of my adventures in working for Insight Resources (then Safari Insight Mission). Recently, the entries have been more along the lines of news shorts and not insights into what is going on. So here's a change back to my original idea - explaining why, despite evidence to the contrary, the Internet does NOT hate me.

The story begins when I received word that the donation buttons on our main website were not working. This caused slightly more concern than had I found out the website had crashed completely - after all, no donation buttons means no donations...something vital for our nonprofit organization. Our previous webmaster, Doug Berry, had just passed away, and he had asked for a memorial donation to be set up, so this was even worse than normal - lack of donations plus a PR mess, as there were many people who were visiting the site to donate.

I did some checking, and found that PayPal (who we use to handle our donations) had a very simple setup for installing donation buttons. The site had pre-generated code that would tweak itself based on our account information. Thus, all I had to do was copy the code and paste it into the appropriate part of our website - easy!

Or...not so easy, as it turned out. I copied the code as instructed, only to find that my administrative interface for the website would delete the newly-imported code as soon as I published the change to the internet. So I could copy the code all I wanted, and it would paste normally, but when I hit "save" part of the code disappeared, causing the buttons to malfunction. Clearly, I was doing something wrong - time to call the experts.

I contacted our web page provider, who also doubles as my impromptu tech support for all things internet. Amy, who helps us with our webpage troubles, politely explained that the solution was quite simple...and then walked me through the exact same series of actions I had been performing. I explained that I had tried this, so she tried it herself. It worked. After much consternation, discussion, and head-banging, we discovered that while I could not paste the needed code without it imploding, Amy could do so without trouble. Clearly, there was something in my interface (read, my Firefox browser) that was messing up the code. No problem - I could switch to another browser and make the changes that way, instead. So I switched to another browser and tried again...and failed.

To make an already long story short, it turned out that every time Amy updated the code, it saved without trouble. Whenever I added the code, however, part of the code would delete. This persisted across multiple browsers and even multiple computers! Eventually, Amy just updated the page for me and we called it done, but the experience left me with an odd feeling...the feeling the Internet (or at least, my website) was out to get me.

I'm sure this is a pretty common occurrence for many of us - something bad happens, and some part of us gravitates toward the idea that, somehow, it is a conspiracy by something to cause us frustration. In our seminar, we address this issue as an example of a type of poor thinking.* Still, habits are what they are - even though I know that the internet is not alive, intelligent, or vindictively trying to make me look like an idiot, I still tend to think like it is. This led me to wonder why we do this...if I know the universe isn't out to get me, why do I sometimes want to think it does?

This is an important question for me, because I routinely interact with cultures whose belief systems do hold that personal forces in our universe are constantly guiding, manipulating, or even disrupting our lives. Note that I am not talking about God causing a miracle - I'm a Christian, I believe that can happen. Miracles are a disruption of the natural order, which otherwise functions in a predictable way (that's why we recognize them as miracles - they don't fit the pattern). What I am talking about is the idea that some kind of power - be it gods, demons, angels, or CIA conspiracies - exert control over everything we do. Because of this, we do not have any real control over our lives - we just spend our lives being manipulated by others. If I am going to claim that the universe is an understandable, predicable, controllable environment, it is not unreasonable to ask why we sometimes act as if it is a person (who is often out to get us).

I think the main reason for this feeling stems from two primary factors: 1) we are intelligent, thinking beings and 2) we all, to some degree, desire justice. Item 1 contributes to this phenomenon through the process of personification - attributing human characteristics (e.g. personhood) to non-human things. We do this all the time: we talk about our dogs, cars, computers, corporations, and other non-human things as if they were persons. We assign them personal thoughts and motives, because we ourselves have such thoughts and motives, and it helps us connect with them. Nevertheless, this is a mistake. Even in the case of animals, treating them as people is a mistake that can harm both the animals and ourselves (read some literature on animal psychology or just go listen to the Dog Whisperer talk to learn more). Most of the time, however, this is harmless - but it gets us into the habit of thinking of non-human things as personal, which contributes to my sense that the internet is out to get me (a personal goal), even though it really cannot have such a goal.

On to item 2. Now by "justice" I simply mean we want to see retribution for evil done - especially when that evil is done to us. We like to see the "bad guy" get "what's coming to him" in stories. We like it when criminals are caught and punished. I am not going to make any statement here about why we have this feeling or even if it is right - I only point out that we do, in fact, feel this way. Given that this is a fairly common desire, it makes sense that we would want to think of the universe as a person - people can do evil and be punished, where simple causal forces do not have any intent - evil or otherwise - and are not something we "punish." Punishment requires the person being punished understand they are being punished (otherwise it can never rise above cruelty). An impersonal reality cannot understand punishment (or anything else, for that matter). Thus, thinking of reality as personal helps us cope with trouble by giving us "someone" to blame and direct our desire for justice upon, even though we are really only dealing with natural cause-and-effect.**

These two factors together are enough, I think, to explain why we tend to personalize the universe - be it the universe in general, or specific items like computers or cars. One last note needs to be made here - I am not arguing against the existence of spiritual forces (as a Christian that would be a bit inconsistent), but simply noting that, under normal circumstances, the universe just is a place of cause-and-effect relationships unless something acts to interfere with that process (like God or us). In all cases, I believe that the first avenue of investigating any event is to check for natural causes, unless there is immediate evidence that the cause is personal (for example, if someone leaves a note). This does lead to a third reason that we may personalize impersonal things in the universe, however - if we believe that personal but invisible forces really do exist, then there is a question of possible intent even if there is no human responsible. For me, however, this is similar to the difference between knowing that the CIA exists, and believing that they are at the core of a global conspiracy that controls everything I do. Yes, the CIA can (and will) act in certain cases, but that does not mean everything that happens is an act of the CIA.***

I don't know if this has been helpful to anyone - it has probably enraged someone - but I thought I would actually start adding my observations to this blog, like I said I would some time ago. This was related to the work we are doing, so it seemed a good place to start.

Oh, and our donation buttons are working now - but you should go test them to make sure.

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* The seminar emphasizes the causal nature of our universe and our need to investigate causes for events, not simply jump to investigating persons who we think are responsible
** Note that this argument doesn't necessarily apply to animals, as they do seem to understand punishment in some sense - how and to what degree are a matter of debate, and not something I will get into here
*** Given the number of times I've used CIA, I can't shake the feeling that someone at the agency will eventually end up reading this...

WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT!

What do the following situations have in common:

1.      A business that cannot seem to “get it together” and follow through on its obligations

2.      A “culture of poverty” among communities in the inner-city

3.      A growing sense of apathy in many communities across the U.S.

4.      A high rate of “business churn” – local businesses that start and fail in a matter of months

The answer? Their way of thinking. All the situations above result from ways of thinking that lock their people into patterns which hinder social, economic, and spiritual development. In addition, these patterns are self-reinforcing causing each successive generation to become more and more entrenched in negative or contradictory lifestyles. These destructive ways of thinking are pervasive in all cultures and people around the world. The problems created by these destructive attitudes is immense, but there is a solution.

INSIGHT RESOURCES INTERNATIONAL INVITES YOU to their first official U.S. pilot of the Insight Workshop. This workshop is designed to break down negative and destructive ways of thinking and provide a new perspective on how to approach, understand, and take control of our lives. The principles found in this workshop have been successful in helping people break their self-destructive patterns both in the U.S. and in Africa. This is an basic two-day workshop that will discuss ways we can: develop a new perspective on the world, build critical thinking and problem solving skills, improve our time-management, take responsibility for our work and dreams, and work with others to accomplish our goals.

Location: Torrington, Wyoming in the Wyoming Room of Pinnacle Bank.

Date: Friday, April 20 6-9 pm and Saturday, April 21 9-4pm.

Admission: Preregistration $100 per person by April 16th, $120 per person at the door,

includes all necessary workshop materials and refreshments.

50% refund if canceled before April 16th.

Payment can be made to Insight Resources International

PO Box 1030

Torrington, Wy. 82240

For more information contact Jason Nichols.

Come join us for this first-of-its-kind workshop!

Incoming Workshop!

So I've been away a while again. Originally, we were planning on me being in South Africa by now en route to Mozambique. Unfortunately, a shortage of funds (airlines actually want you to PAY them to fly you places...crazy) demanded that I stay in the U.S. for another month. On the plus side, this provided an opportunity to conduce a pilot workshop here in Torrington, WY. One door closes, another door opens...

The workshop is designed to be a short "core principles" version of the full Insight Seminar we use as part of our work in Mozambique and elsewhere. The full seminar tends to run about 40 hours - a huge time investment for most people - and costs, at minimum, around $600 per person,* making it quite pricy. While I believe the seminar is worth both the time and cost, I have wanted to put together a simpler, more basic presentation to help people grasp some of the core ideas and raise awareness of the principles behind what we are doing. Thus we came up with the idea for the Insight Workshop - a 9-hour workshop which costs substantially less than the full workshop, but still helps people develop new ways of thinking about their lives that can help them live better. I will be posting our full "workshop notice" soon, so anyone who is interested can make reservations.

IN OTHER NEWS...

We are in the process of creating a new website! The new site will combine the old Safari Insight Mission website and the Insight International website into the Insight Resources International website! We're really excited about having a new site with updated information (and working links). I will post when it is up, so please get ready to check it out when it comes - look for the new site in about a month or so.

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*That's just to cover the cost of venue and materials. To generate any kind of revenue (or pay any of our staff), the seminar runs closer to $1200 per person.