Sunday reflections

Over the past few years, I have contemplated my reason for being. Surely amongst these many many human flesh there is a reason why we in particular are what we are and born to a particular family and dare I say so to a country. It cannot be random draw of cards and/or just mere family allocation. I was allocated to an interesting mix of people, an engineer, a marketer, a soul soother (an aspiring social worker) who brings smiles into our lives every day regardless of the weather, a still to be discovered soul etc and without skipping a beat. I cannot of course forget the people that were the channel for bringing us into this world — my mum and my dad. So different are the two channels that I am amazed as to how the Universe brought them together to have us and yet here we are — well adjusted off springs with a mother who could win every mother category if ever there were real mother awards and a dad who mellows out his wife’s mood that it has allowed us to function as human beings through his unquestionable love for life, for us and his love more so for his wife, his life partner.

I am seated here, in a cafe in Paris, feeling so at home that I am questioning why people over the years have made reference to my European side etc without me realising that perhaps I relate more to being here then being back home.

What is sad though, is, as I sit here today, I have to take the side of the craziest politician alive — Donald Trump, I also until today called him crazy — having spend my formative years in East Germany the former GDR, I think ultimately I remain a communist at heart :) a communist who recognises that economic transformation from this …..

To something different requires a market shift and a market led solution.

As I sit here in an environment I am very comfortable with, I am terrified of accepting the reason I was born to a different set of circumstances, exposed to the harshness of life in a refugee camp but also exposed to the hardest working human being I have come across — my mum who to this day every weekend would send us a cooked meal and eggs for our pantry, forget the fact she is a retiree who lives som 800 KMs from us and who has never asked on any occassion for money from us but would send on a weekly bases to her grand children data money and petrol and bread money to her working children.

I am sitting and contemplating what is different about the world I was allocated to? And the fact that I am more at home in Europe with the exception of my home town in Stassfurt that I am yet to visit after I left late in the early 1990s’.

What is the main differences?

• Could it be freedom? — cannot possibly be, I feel free at home in Windhoek, Namibia, as I feel here, I can safely go out, until the odd hours of the morning by myself and feel very safe. This past weekend I have witness a great democracy at work, the almighty Swapo party (a party I was born into) using the constitution as the tool to vote in party people and sticking to the words and intentions of the constitution without favours. Albeit voting people that have learned that democracy does not mean skill but those who understand the system.
• It is whiteness? Cannot be as, I have received the most respect since arriving at the airport and being picked up by my so humble white driver for the week and have been treated with respect since I arrived here.
• Is it lack of mosquitos — ouch I have just been bitten by one and I am in central Paris and as the cafe staff puts citronella candles on my table — I know that its not these summer pests that make up for the difference

In his weird way, Trump is right in every way in the protection that is required in every market to not only protect markets but to grow local consumption and to grow the local manufacturing base. As I sit in central Paris and observing my surroundings, I am surprised to note that for the time that I have been here, I am yet to see any other make of car other than a Mercedes, BMWs, Audis, Renaults, Peugeots, Fiat etc and the occasional Toyota.

As reality sets in, I am dismayed that perhaps economics dynamics are not really very well understood and less so damaging local policies that focus on the foreign investor as the savior of our economies instead of focusing on local manufacturers and local investors.

Adding to the dismay is the fact that in addition to noting the local content consumption in this economy as a food grower I have just paid €19.70 for a salad made up of a bit of beef, carrots and sprouts and when I deliver a world quality standard produce item into the value chain my average price is €0.31, taking into accounts transport and storage; reaching the differentially at 100grams of 6304.33% in price is unheard of.

Although I feel at home here, I cannot wait for the next 7 days to pass so that I can contribute in a more meaningful way to the home of my parents, it may not be my home or the home of my children but I am now clear about my role in the allocation to the family of the hardest working human being I know and the most loving person I know.

Salute to economic growth