A world of villages -- living to the edge

Recently, I reconnected with Brian Schwartz in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Brian is probably the most intelligent person in his city.  He is one of only a few members of the Omega Society, which requires intelligence at the 99.999 percentile -- that's one in a million -- to qualify.

When we were both younger, we shared a tent in an 3.5 month overland journey through Africa.  I ended up, a couple of years later, living through the conclusion of the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe war as a sub-editor at the Bulawayo Chronicle.  Brian, meanwhile, went on to much more daring adventures through Africa and Asia.

When he returned to the U.S. in the mid-1980s, he wrote a couple of books.  One described how he got around China when the country had just opened to tourism.  The second reported on his human-level experiences in places few tourists would ever think of visiting, even today.  His A world of villages:  A six year journey through Africa and Asia, has been out of print for quite a while but you can easily purchase a copy through the used book market.

While our experiences directly correlate only for a few pages, I'm reminded in reading this book about the challenges, limits, and opportunities in our world, and the nature of risk-taking and intelligence in determining our fate.  Brian certainly elected to go into exceptionally dangerous places.  Notably he visited Uganda twice -- once to be jailed by Idi Amin's troops; the second to provide famine relief in a lawless part of the country after Amin's fall from power.  His ability to understand local practices, dialogues, and (most importantly) to think quickly on his feet, allowed him to escape some rather close calls.

I'm certainly nowhere near as intelligent as Brian, electing to take a safer route to human understanding and accomplishment.  Sure, I lived for 18 months in a country at war, but stayed in the city and avoided trouble.  Friends and family back home in Canada thought I had taken daring risks -- but I only pushed the limits on a few occasions in my African travels.  I learned much about the difference between perceived and real risk in these situations.

Time has passed.  Our lives are in different places.  I'm now write about construction marketing and publish regional and national publications for the architectural, engineering and construction community.  Brian, meanwhile, knows and reviews Tulsa's best restaurants.

Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to meet him again in the next few years; learning about the Oklahoma construction industry as he shows me the best places to eat in town.  Meanwhile, if you want to capture some of heart and soul of the third world, I recommend you read Brian's book.  It is moving and at times riveting.  He used his intelligence to go deeper into the world than most of us could even dream.

So you don't want to be a construction marketing guru, do you?

I've had it.

No one gives me a break.  Power is concentrated in the hands of the few, and I'm not one of the few (at least who really have any power).

I read, follow, and try to implement all the wonderful advice of marketing gurus, and what to I get -- a bit fat donut hole.  Nothing.  Nada.  It is hopeless.

I spend money on SEO, marketing consultants, books, tapes, seminars, and all that stuff, and it ends up simply lining the pockets of the marketing gurus, not helping me at all.

Why can't any of this stuff work, ever . . .

(and now you are expecting me to suggest an answer . . . so here it is. . .)

Get blasted drunk.

(Maybe in the middle of Africa.)

Roads less travelled -- finding your own way to construction marketing success

Mark Salter, one of my African newspaper colleagues

I bore my family with tales from my two youthful journeys to Africa.  In 1976, after graduating from university in Vancouver, B.C., instead of taking the standard post-graduate trip to Europe, I ended up on an overland truck tour through the Sahara, central Africa (the Congo) and ended up in Nairobi, Kenya.  Then I made one of those decisions that reshaped my life: I carried on, independently, to southern Africa, spending a month in Rhodesia before returning home from South Africa.

In Canada, I discovered a job on the Medicine Hat News in Alberta (the managing editor said he hired me because of my trip to Africa).  There, a year later, I made the decision to return to Africa -- this time with the intent to observe the conclusion of the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe war as a working journalist.

I contacted the foreign news service of the newspaper chain that had employed me, obviously saying I would be paying my own way but asking if they could use some freelance contributions while travelling.  Then I set off to Africa a second time.

The Africa correspondent for the Canadian newspaper organization told me that if I went into Rhodesia as a journalist, I would be put on the next plane out.  So I entered as a student.  Then, I realized I had a major problem -- I would run out of money before the story reached its conclusion.  So I sought work.

I ended up at the Rhodesia Herald in Salisbury seeing if they needed a copy-sub-editor (my job in Medicine Hat.)  I volunteered to work in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city (and a grimy and not terribly appealing place, at least to most outsiders.)  Soon, I had a job offer.  Then I went to the immigration department and told the officials there that I had been lucky to be offered a job as a trainee sub-editor.  Within three days (partly because my skin colour was "correct" under the then rules), I received a work permit with the occupation of "Journalist". 

This led to a rather amazing 18-month experience, where I indeed saw the conclusion of the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe war, discovered my personal identity and experienced some rather amazing moments in learning about how the world works.

Now, the roads I took then in many ways were unconventional, but in many ways (as has been my entire life) followed some basic rules.  Sure, most young people don't go to Africa, but nerdy guys wishing to show the world they are not that nerdy probably should do things like traverse the Sahara or observe the conclusion of an African civil war.  I also responded situationally, separating the fears that cause us to freeze up with rational caution and prudence.  For example, I stayed away from really dangerous places.  (One of the travellers I met along the way proposed a trip to Uganda -- after checking with Canadian consular officials in Nairobi, I decided to pass on that trip.  A few days later, I found myself at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi to report my fellow traveller's journey when media reports announced that then-dictator Idi Amin had decided to arrest all Americans.  Embassy officials quickly took me into a back room and told me that indeed he had been picked up but thankfully released.)

I also realized that adventure must be rationally associated with real values and that a lifetime of this type of journeying would be very empty, indeed. 

We should not be afraid to travel, to take risks, to explore and to learn about the world.  These experiences ultimately are helpful in defining our lives and our potential for success.