Blood, Sweat and Nonsense from the BBC

This post has nothing to do with health (or maybe it does) and it has nothing to do with Sierra Leone but it does have a little to do with globalisation and development. I have put up with the constant crap that TV executives have been doling out to us over the past three years. Since Bob Geldof and his posse decided to 'make poverty history' there has been a mob of people making money out of the poverty of others in one way or other.
Last night recovering from a bout of poisoning (which I suspect was tuna-related), I settled to watch a couple of TV programmes which had been billed as educational. Firstly, there was Blood, Sweat and Takeaways a BBC documentary which claimed to expose how workers in developing countries are exploited so that Westerners can have their exotic meals. Six young Brits - four white and the two obligatory ethnic minorities were sent to Indonesia to work in a tuna factory. Olu, the black boy is expelled from the programme after a violent episode which involved breaking glass at the factory. I fully expected him to be thrown out mid-programme as production staff seem to have found a way to weed out the best young black people out of their programmes so that only the stereotypes remain. The rest of the programme continues without him and these young people proceed to catch, clean and can tuna for two days. I was hoping the education will come but it never did.
This programme failed to educate. What the programme did show us however, was how spoilt and ill-educated British youngsters are. It was sad to see that even the immigrant children had no cultural education, whatsoever. The programme left me with the feeling that I had just wasted one hour of my life which could have been better spent playing Solitaire.
Here goes BBC execs:
1. Poverty is everywhere.
2. Poor people are being exploited daily. You needn't have sent those young people to Indonesia to show that poor people are being exploited daily. All you needed to do was send them to a vegetable processing plant in the UK where illegal immigrants are employed and paid below the minimum wage because they cannot cry foul.
3. Having a toilet that flushes is not what makes you a human being. Some of what makes you human is overcoming adversities and learning to live with other people.
4. If you really want to make a programme about what it is like to live and work in a developing country, use the people of that country to show it. Unfortunately, sending 'white people' to a developing country to show injustice somehow feels like injustice.
5. Next time think about how you can help the viewer make a difference. Don't just tell her what you know that she knew already, tell her how she can make a difference in that situation.
By the way, I don't think I can be bothered to watch the episodes on producing rice and processing prawns. I'm bored already.
That's all folks. Next time, I will tell you a little about A Place in the Wild, the other programme I watched made by ITV. Another patronising pile of .....

Till then, Amiex

What Being a Sierra Leonean Really Means

This weekend you will find that there are Sierra Leone Independence Day Celebrations all around the world whereever you find a group of Sierra Leoneans. Sierra Leoneans like to party and don't really need an excuse to do so. 27 April 1961, Sierra Leone won its independence from British colonial rule. I can understand the celebrations in the first two years after we gained independence but what are we celebrating now? Before I lay into the waste of money that Independence day celebrations are, let me give you a brief look at the life of the average Sierra Leonean. Here are links of what Sierra Leoneans go through everyday. This article http://tiny.cc/Zbg2Z or this http://tiny.cc/SBWPe give you an idea of the state of healthcare in the country.
Then you have the statistics which are: Nearly 6 million people but only 168 doctors. Which means 1 doctor for nearly 50,000 people.
70% of adults can't read or write and the same number is unemployed. The average life expectancy of a Sierra Leonean is 42 years.
70% of people live on less than 50 pence a day (anyone living on less than 50p a day is classed as extremely poor by the World Bank). This means that 36% of people cannot meet their daily food needs and 60% of children are chronically malnourished
Not forgetting that Sierra Leone has the highest rate of children dying and pregnant women dying in the world. It is also ranked the poorest and most under-developed country in the world. So I ask you again. What are we celebrating? Would life under British rule be as bad as life is today? Would we have had the 11 year civil war?
Given the choice I wouldn't want to be under British colonial rule with its rascist policies and unfair actions. And perhaps that is what we celebrate - the freedom to make our own mistakes. Shame we can't seem to do anything else.

Better Antenatal Care for Sierra Leone

I have just come back home from looking after my friend's three children. She was in hospital for two weeks after having a baby. She developed complications during pregancy which meant that her baby had to be delievered by caesarean section and she spent a week in a High Dependency Unit. It made me think. Had she been in Sierra Leone where 1 in 8 pregnant women die during pregancy and childbirth, she certainly would have died. It is true that most pregnancies go without a hitch and only about 15% of women develop complications during pregnancy. But the problem is that in Sierra Leone not many women have proper antenatal care. So those women who are at risk of developing complications are missed and also because there is a critical shortage of trained/skilled birth attendants, many women are giving birth in dangerous situations. Of course we at HealthySalone do not just point out problems, we also plan to tackle them.
We are launching our Buy a Brick Campaign to raise £2 million to build a state of the art Women and Children's Centre in one of the biggest hospitals in the capital city. The centre will have an antenatal care unit, a fetal medicine unit, a delivery suite, post natal care suite, specialist care baby unit and a community midwife service. We will train needed maternity and paediatric staff. In fact this will be the first time in a long time that will Sierra Leone will have trained paediatric nurses.
The future is bright for healthcare in Sierra Leone. If you want to help us please go to www.healthysalone.org.uk or email kushe@healthysalone.org.uk for more information.
Together, we can change the future.

Here's to prove to you that Sierra Leone is a beaut!

That's the Atlantic you can see Sunset on Lumley Beach
That strip of yellow you can see between the blue and the green is Mama Beach. Did I hear you say unspoilt, deserted....

I think Lakka Beach (shown here) is the best beach in Sierra Leone and possibly West Africa. I know about River No. 2 and all that but I won't change my mind. Lakka doesn't have quick sand, so I am sticking to it.

Life Gets in the Way

If you read this blog and were waiting for something to happening last year, I am sorry. Life happened and then I didn't have time to write so much. Well maybe I did have time to write but I didn't have the strength to do so.
Anyway, I intend to make an effort this year to post something every week. Here's this week's post.......
Well this time last year, I was busy working on my African food products, finding markets, looking at packaging etc. when I was rudely interrupted by life. First I was in a little car that was hit by a London taxi (and those are really heavy!!!), I had chest pains for a mighty long time and couldn't really work. Then my father was diagnosed with lung cancer (well that wasn't a surprise because he was a very heavy smoker for most of my and his life, but had quit though) and then he died. That was a surprise. Firstly, I didn't think he would die so soon and secondly, I never thought my father would die. I had never thought about my parents dying, never. Anyway, my father's death took me back to Sierra Leone. That is when my life changed. I saw people and places that broke my heart.
Thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio and his friends, everyone knows about Sierra Leone. And before you ask, the war ended in 2002 and no I haven't seen it. I won't bother telling you about Sierra Leone about how beautiful it is and how warm the people are. Suffice it to say that war destroyed most of the country and now we struggle with electricity, water, health care, everything that you probably take for granted. Sierra Leone is positioned 177 on the UN Development index...oh, alright then...we are last. Worse than Iraq and Afghanistan and Congo who still have ongoing wars. Which means that we are regressing and we are one of a few countries actually called underdeveloped. Hospitals don't work, there are not enough doctors or nurses and here we have my interruption. I felt like I had to do something.
So here we are, I have taken a sabbatical from business and I am now working full-time for HealthySalone, a charity organisation that I set up to change the face of health care in Sierra Leone. Our aim is simple - to reduce the number of Sierra Leoneans dying from treatable and preventable diseases. If you would like to support us, you can go to www.healthysalone.org.uk and you will find all the details there. If you want to volunteer, yippee!! come join us. We are working to change one hospital at a time. If you are a Sierra Leonean health care worker who lives abroad, watch out for the official launch of our Desperately Seeking Talent Programme.
I will continue to update this blog but you won't hear about Simply African for a little while. Sorry.

Amiex

Willie Walsh and His Missing £700K

British Airways announced pre-tax profits last week that were up 45%. This after the fiasco at Terminal 5, and the fiasco with passengers bags and the fiasco with the unions...anyway after a number of rotten things that happened with the airline in the past year. The profits of nearly £900 million means that there is £35 million to be shared amongst the staff. Everyone of the 42,000 or so employees will get some money...except Mr Walsh. Infact even shareholders who have had no returns from BA in 7 years will receive dividends.
Mr Walsh decided to forgo his £700,000 in bonus because of the T5 fiasco. What a shame! If anyone deserves that money it is Willie Walsh. Why? Because that man and his team are so focused on their strategy that nothing not even something as big as what happened in T5 or the quarrel with different unions or any thing for that matter has stopped him from making BA profitable. I am, however, disappointed that he would let the media dictate whether or not he accepts his bonus. I feel that he chose not to accept the bonus because of what he perceived to be a media fallout if he did.
Mr Walsh, you are a leader but not a true leader if you let outsiders determine how you run your life or company.

The Importance of Diversity

I am back to The Apprentice today. After seeing the show a couple of weeks ago, I thought I could catch up with BBC iPlayer. Wonderful invention by the way and it's free! Last night's episode was a good example of why companies need diversity, why people should be forced to learn other languages in school and also why people should be taught about cultural diversity.
The candidates were taken to Marrakesh in Morocco, a mostly Arabic and French-speaking Muslim country. Firstly, most of them had no knowledge of Morocco, not an iota of French or Arabic and there were a number of them swearing their way around the city. What I was amazed by was that some didn't even know the difference between kosher and halal. And one of them claims to be Jewish! (When pressed by Sir Alan who is Jewish, Michael suddenly became half-Jewish). It is crazy that these are supposed to be a few of the best people in corporate Britain.
Lee had the best team for this task because he had the most culturally diverse team. Raef and Sara knew how to deal with traders in the souks because of their backgrounds. Consider how many companies would do better if they would only take advantage of the diversity of cultures and people in this country. Britain is in a better position than any other country to take advantage of the human resources it has but many companies fail to take advantage of that. There are companies who employ the bare minimum of ethnic minorities because the law says they should. Even when they employ ethnic minorities they prefer to treat them like the plague. Imagine a lance corporal in the British Army being allowed to call another soldier 'a black bastard' or 'nigger' without any consequences. How desperate, how sad.
Until Britain starts to make full use of its culturally diverse workforce and companies stop employing people based on the colour of their skin or which school they went to or because they see certain people as cheap labour, Britain will continue to lose out in this global economy.