Africa comes to Tokyo: The Hole in the Road

This is TICAD week--Tokyo International Conference on African Development. Coincidentally, I just read an essay by the late Polish newsman Ryszard Kapucinski on what he saw when he worked in Africa: thousands and thousands of capable people with absolutely nothing to do. No resources. No jobs. No homes. Refugees who lost everything except the very last treasure, life itself.

One day, he drove a few hundred miles to see a famed marketplace located outside a scruffy village. The miserable single-track road wound on forever, until it reached the village, where it had to squeeze between mud brick huts lining both sides of the road. He was almost in sight of the village, when traffic came to a halt. Carts, trucks, rickety buses, and cars stopped in the midday sun with no place to go. No way forward. No way to back up.

He got out of the car to see what was wrong.

Many, many cars ahead of him, he spied the problem. It was a gigantic hole. Smack in the middle of the road. Deep enough to swallow a car whole, and no way around it. The only way to move was forward, into the hole.

People gathered to watch. They had nothing else to do.

The first few cars could drive in and climb out again under their own power. Each car, however, made the hole a little deeper, a little more thrilling. To make a long story short, it reached the point where a car could plunge in, but there was no way its owner could drive it out.

That's when one of the male bystanders got a rope and offered to help. Before long, he had a thriving business. Several helpers, too.

Not to be left out, the women scrambled to put together some snacks, and sold them to the drivers waiting for their turn at the hole in the road. Kids carried water up and down the line of waiting cars. Vendors on their way to the official market stopped in their tracks and set up stalls near the head of the traffic jam where there was a little room at the side of the road.

By day's end, the scruffy nothing of a village had become a bustling profit center.

If people can make something out of nothing but a muddy hole in the road, imagine what they could do with real resources. Hopes are high for good results from the TICAD.