Part 9 if I had been a normal tourist, I could have talked about glimmering bazars, glorious monuments and the wonderful beach in North Africa and I saw much misery in Europe as well but Europe has already reached the level of being able to hide her misery better, mostly with the help of the police and laws there in the mountains, there was no police and therefore, there was nobody to chase the poor people away x once on the market, I had just bought some beef when a man stepped towards me and asked something in his local language, which I couldn’t understand he was covered with pus on many parts of his uncovered hands, feet and face the seller first wanted to chase the man away, I begged him to translate the man was obviously ill and had asked me whether I would give him some of the meat’s waste like tendons and fat I told the seller to cut a piece of normal meat for him the seller was not a bad man but he was afraid of getting ill because of that ill man therefore, he didn’t give him the meat in his hands but threw the meat the meat fell out of the paper and onto the dirty, muddy ground the ill man picked it up, turned around and while walking away ate the meat raw, he probably had no place to cook it x I asked myself the question: Why is one country poor and the other rich? the present is a result of the past and the future will be a result of the present that sounds evident to us now but the idea of this is not so old as we might think (this came clear to me only much later) and where to look for the past? first, I began to read history books but they informed me only about kings, empires and battles if I were born some hundred or thousand years ago, I probably wouldn’t have been born as a king but a small person, just like today, I’m a small person there had to be other sources of knowledge founding of excavations inform us about very ancient times, the next step is legends, religious or holy books, then tales, after them there is literature and today, it’s the movies x from excavations, we only know about the rich because the houses of the poor were from wood or other material which does not survive time then, there are legends; these are only about heroes and kings again religious or holy books, even these don’t tell us anything about small people like myself and then, we come to tales; it’s getting interesting something must have happened to society at that time tales are mostly from the medieval ages which means that till that time, we, small people were just treated like garbage x during school, I did my first internship in a factory for challenged people (physically and mentally disabled). my second internship was at the red cross. Of course, I did not drive to serious accidents, but took part in patient transports very often old people had to be transported from the retirement home to the hospital now, Germany is a rich country and one should think that it can do a lot for her poor and ill people but at that time, 35 years ago, big institutes were built and poor, old and challenged people hidden there so that nobody should meet them in the streets the conditions in these institutes were mostly terrible, overcrowded and too few nursing staff x one of the patients, for example, whom we transported to the hospital if someone lies in one position in bed for too long, first a blue bruise forms in the kidney area, as if someone had hit them there after a while, the flesh begins to rot internally to prevent these kind of injuries, these old patients must be moved regularly but there was simply not enough nursery staff x I went back to Europe, like many of those African migrants it wasn’t a problem for me because I had a European passport. But what do all those African people do when they want to reach the European “paradise”? most people in Africa do not even have an identity card in general, a village chooses one man of their community, sells some cows and houses to buy a legal passport for this person, sells some more cows, goats or houses to buy a stamp for a visa to a European country and sends this person to Europe when this person then finally arrives in Europe, he quickly has to find work and send money back to his village after 3 month the visa expires and he must continue to work illegally if he succeeds, his family is held in high honours if he fails, his family is damned by the whole community Part 10 Back to list!