Fun stories, but it's unfair using CAR and Bokassa stories. I served there for nearly 5 years (my choice), and it's just full of stories. Of people, of scrapes, and of snakes. Here's two:
My house was right on the Ubangui River, as were many of the diplomatic residences. Actually, most of them were originally built by French expatriates who arrived in the
sixties and seventies, when it was easy to skim early wealth from the gold and diamonds that were available in abundance (even when I was there in the early eighties). Our landlord stopped by one day for a chat, during the course of which he got to talking about the good old days, soon after he first arrived (and before independence.)
His specialty was placer gold -- you don't "mine" it, you wash a lot of gravel and find gold dust and nuggets in your pan. "I used to find a kilo of gold a day," he told me. "All by myself."
"You washed enough gravel to find a kilo of gold by yourself?"
"Yep. Just me. And the 20 or so natives who manned the pans."
There were a lot of snakes on the edge of the river. We seemed to have an abundance of something called the rhombic night adder, which existed mostly on large lizards and other snakes. I was unsure how dangerous they were to us, so I asked Alain L., Director of the local Pasteur Institute, if they were poisonus.
All the airplane stories remind me of one that I overheard from a random person, while sitting on an airplane. The guy behind me was talking to the guy next to him, and it went something like this:
Now, the San Diego airport is right on the edge of the water. Some of its runways even extend out into the bay. And this buddy of mine, he was out in the bay one time, just out there, him and his boat, for Labor Day weekend. Doing nothing and enjoying it for all he's worth, like you do on Labor Day weekend.
After a while, the sun's starting to go down, he needs to get home. But he finds that the boat's motor is dead. He tries three, four, five times and can't get the thing to turn over. So he gets on his radio and radios to shore, "someone help me, I'm stuck out here in the middle of the bay with a dead motor." But no one's answering.
What he didn't realize was that the speaker on his radio was dead, but the transmitter was working just fine. They could hear him, but he couldn't hear them. So after a few calls for help that he got no response to, he starts to feel a bit desperate. He goes and gets his flare gun, and fires an emergency round in the air...
...right into the path of an incoming jet liner. Which bursts against the cockpit window, dazzling the pilot. The guy pulls up in a big panic and radios to the tower, "help me, I'm under attack!"
So my buddy ended up getting "rescued," and detained, by a very unamused Coast Guard cutter whose crew were not happy about having their Labor Day celebrations cut short to deal with the idiot on the water who didn't know how to look before firing his flare gun.
Airport story: a former roommate was returning home to Tennessee from summer ROTC camp at Ft. Riley, KS in the 70's. He went to the airport at Manhattan (KS) and checked in with the agent, in those days at a desk by the boarding gate. When the departure time came, the agent looked up at the three or four passengers and said "Y'all ready?" He then reached under the desk for his hat, led them out to the puddle-jumper, and flew them to Kansas City.
I had the same experience once. I think it was in Kenya in 1984, and the plane was a DC-3. Coolest flying experience ever, with the possible exception of a helicopter around Mt. McKinley/Denali.
Bokassa was also the subject of persistent rumours of cannibalism. He not convicted of cannibalism during his 1987 trial, partly because cannibalism had been classified as a misdemeanor under Central African Republic law!
"All we could figure is that this system works in a situation of ongoing, repetitive transactions. If the customer is unduly stingy, she won’t invite him back again and, perhaps, she will spoil his reputation among her colleagues in town."
This is essentially a prisoner's dilemma problem. The Nash Equilibrium for a single iteration Prisoner's Dilemma game is for the two participants to try to rip each other off (I was going to say "screw each other," but that would be an infelicitous word choice in this case).
As you suggest, the prospect of future, mutually beneficial interactions makes both parties behave. Cooperation is encouraged by the specter of tit-for-tat reciprocity (either positive or negative). Robert Axelrod ("The Evolution of Cooperation") and Anatol Rapoport have provided some wonderful analyses and examples of this.
The Drachma/Deutschmark got an actual LOL out of me. Great stuff all around.
Fun stories, but it's unfair using CAR and Bokassa stories. I served there for nearly 5 years (my choice), and it's just full of stories. Of people, of scrapes, and of snakes. Here's two:
My house was right on the Ubangui River, as were many of the diplomatic residences. Actually, most of them were originally built by French expatriates who arrived in the
sixties and seventies, when it was easy to skim early wealth from the gold and diamonds that were available in abundance (even when I was there in the early eighties). Our landlord stopped by one day for a chat, during the course of which he got to talking about the good old days, soon after he first arrived (and before independence.)
His specialty was placer gold -- you don't "mine" it, you wash a lot of gravel and find gold dust and nuggets in your pan. "I used to find a kilo of gold a day," he told me. "All by myself."
"You washed enough gravel to find a kilo of gold by yourself?"
"Yep. Just me. And the 20 or so natives who manned the pans."
There were a lot of snakes on the edge of the river. We seemed to have an abundance of something called the rhombic night adder, which existed mostly on large lizards and other snakes. I was unsure how dangerous they were to us, so I asked Alain L., Director of the local Pasteur Institute, if they were poisonus.
"Moyennement." More or less. I was not reassured.
"Yep. Just me. And the 20 or so natives who manned the pans."
Little House on the Prairie...Laura Ingalls wrote that the character “Pa” wanted to go where “there were no people. Only Indians lived there.”
Robert, I think you must be about my age. Your memory for details is impressive. Thanks for the memories. 😊
These are great stories. No matter the great fiction you can read in books, real life has more surprises. Humans are funny creatures.
All the airplane stories remind me of one that I overheard from a random person, while sitting on an airplane. The guy behind me was talking to the guy next to him, and it went something like this:
Now, the San Diego airport is right on the edge of the water. Some of its runways even extend out into the bay. And this buddy of mine, he was out in the bay one time, just out there, him and his boat, for Labor Day weekend. Doing nothing and enjoying it for all he's worth, like you do on Labor Day weekend.
After a while, the sun's starting to go down, he needs to get home. But he finds that the boat's motor is dead. He tries three, four, five times and can't get the thing to turn over. So he gets on his radio and radios to shore, "someone help me, I'm stuck out here in the middle of the bay with a dead motor." But no one's answering.
What he didn't realize was that the speaker on his radio was dead, but the transmitter was working just fine. They could hear him, but he couldn't hear them. So after a few calls for help that he got no response to, he starts to feel a bit desperate. He goes and gets his flare gun, and fires an emergency round in the air...
...right into the path of an incoming jet liner. Which bursts against the cockpit window, dazzling the pilot. The guy pulls up in a big panic and radios to the tower, "help me, I'm under attack!"
So my buddy ended up getting "rescued," and detained, by a very unamused Coast Guard cutter whose crew were not happy about having their Labor Day celebrations cut short to deal with the idiot on the water who didn't know how to look before firing his flare gun.
Oh yes, I can just imagine this. I never liked using that airport.
Airport story: a former roommate was returning home to Tennessee from summer ROTC camp at Ft. Riley, KS in the 70's. He went to the airport at Manhattan (KS) and checked in with the agent, in those days at a desk by the boarding gate. When the departure time came, the agent looked up at the three or four passengers and said "Y'all ready?" He then reached under the desk for his hat, led them out to the puddle-jumper, and flew them to Kansas City.
I had the same experience once. I think it was in Kenya in 1984, and the plane was a DC-3. Coolest flying experience ever, with the possible exception of a helicopter around Mt. McKinley/Denali.
Wow, that's a fun and wild set of stories; thank you.
You bet! I had as much fun producing the graphics as I did writing out the stories.
Bokassa was also the subject of persistent rumours of cannibalism. He not convicted of cannibalism during his 1987 trial, partly because cannibalism had been classified as a misdemeanor under Central African Republic law!
"All we could figure is that this system works in a situation of ongoing, repetitive transactions. If the customer is unduly stingy, she won’t invite him back again and, perhaps, she will spoil his reputation among her colleagues in town."
This is essentially a prisoner's dilemma problem. The Nash Equilibrium for a single iteration Prisoner's Dilemma game is for the two participants to try to rip each other off (I was going to say "screw each other," but that would be an infelicitous word choice in this case).
As you suggest, the prospect of future, mutually beneficial interactions makes both parties behave. Cooperation is encouraged by the specter of tit-for-tat reciprocity (either positive or negative). Robert Axelrod ("The Evolution of Cooperation") and Anatol Rapoport have provided some wonderful analyses and examples of this.