This afternoon I had a once in a lifetime chance encounter with the inspector general of an African country. I was sitting in a booth eating my lunch when this gentleman came up to me and asked if I would share my booth with him. Being as I was alone I welcomed him to sit down. Immediately I noticed his name badge from the police chief conference being held here in town which also had his title. Needless to say I was struck speechless. I didn't want to bother the guy, but at the same time I knew that this was a remarkable chance I would likely never have again.
I introduced myself and apologized for bothering him. I asked him how he was enjoying his trip and quickly found out that it was his first time outside of Africa. He was quick to mention how friendly and helpful everybody has been to him here in the US and how different that is from his own country.
My next question was about the email scams and why so many of them come from his country. He knew exactly what I was talking about and I got the impression that he was tired of talking about it. He basically said that there was nothing that could be done and that people just need to start using more common sense. He said that the internet allows anybody to directly contact you no matter where you are at in the world and you have a choice of whether to respond to that contact or not. If you do respond he said that its your responsibility to make sure that you know who you are talking to and said that if you send your account number across the internet to somebody and you lose money because of it, you are just as much at fault as the person who scammed you. I asked this question because its something that I always wondered about it, and here I was talking to one of the top law enforcement officers of the country that propogates most of this type of scam on the internet.
Wondering what else I could ask him I decided to ask his opinion on our election last week. Being a politician from an African nation I figured that he would have an interesting perspective. His first response was very telling. "Its remarkable that your country can have such a clean and fair election." He said that while he was sure it was not completely clean, it is nothing like the elections they have in Africa. He talked about the effects of tribalism in his country where there are hundreds of tribes, each with a unique history that is often handed down through song and story, and that grudges are often held for very long periods of time by successive generations.
What he said next though was what spurred me to share this with all of you. "The fact that America has elected an African-American as president shows to the whole world what type of people we are. That despite our history of slavery and racism a man can be judged not by the color of skin, his race, or his beliefs but rather his "quality" as a man and as a leader." He told me that in his country it is a struggle not between white or black or Christian and Muslim, but a struggle between hundreds of tribes that rarely see eye to eye. He said that our election was an example to the rest of the world what was possible. He told me of discussions with people in his own country where our election was used as an example of why working together for the common good is not only possible but can often be beneficial for everybody involved.
I asked if a lot of people were following the election in his country. He said that everybody was following it.
While many words have been written about the effects of the election around the world I think that this chance encounter opened my eyes to something rarely talked about. This man I talked to was the chief law enforcement official of his country and here he is telling me that not only was our election being followed closely by everybody in his country but also that it is being used as an example of what could be. In a place so plagued with problems (poltical wars, tribalism, resource wars, slavery, poverty, drugs, etc) our choice of a black man as a leader has shown people the world over that equality is possible and that there is hope for a better life. It may not come tomorrow but as long as that possibility exists, it is always worth fighting for.