I was told this story second hand but both party seem ok. The dealer close by me they are closed now but they had been around a long time i live in the center of the USA witch makes me wonder more about this story . They sold a Grader to a group of people in Africa and it was delivered. The guy from here was to go over there and show them how to operate it but when he got there they had a war with there neighbors and every one was gone. Stranger things have happen but i wonder if this story is true.
Sounds plausible. If you knew when the guy went over and where, you could easily confirm if it had any "instability" during that time. The stories I've heard out of Africa, Middle East or South America would go along with that story. I know some other members here lived it at times. Think I remember even Scrubpuller did some time in Paupau New Guinea.
I don't doubt it. Would be interesting to talk to those people involved. Historic stories like this get lost as time goes by and participants die off. In our World it's hard to imagine a war removing the locals. But it's common in parts of the World. Especially on the African Continent. Genocide is ongoing there.
To me that story sounds improbable for a whole host of reasons, not least that anybody with half a brain would send a person halfway across the world to a region where a war was going on - unless they were fully cognizant of that fact beforehand and were being appropriately paid for the risk they were taking on. People do work in war zones but generally they know the risk before they leave home. I think it's BS.
Six months ago I would have thought southern Peru was a perfectly safe place to travel, but might not go there now. I can see any number of African conflicts that have blown up fast over the last 60 years. It could have been as simple as the guy got to the airport where ever, and nobody answered their phones due to the disturbance, so he took the next plane home and they had to figure it out on their own.
You could apply that comment to anywhere in Peru IMHO, and TBH it's been the same for at least the last 25 years. It flares up and dies down in cycles depending on how much notice the international press pay to it. In Peru and Bolivia it is quite common for people to be throwing sticks of dynamite (with lit fuses) during street protests, it's been that way since long before I first went down there in the late 90's.
I have little doubt the story is likely to be true, and I'll wager a lot worse has happened in many African countries. I have friends from Zimbabwe and they have told me stories of abandoned equipment numbered by the hundreds - even Cats in good condition - when the totally corrupt Zimbabwe Govt forced white settlers off their farms, with no monetary compensation, and no ability to sell anything, as the Govt handed their farms over to warlike black African peasants - which peasants had no farming skills, and even less interest in operating the formerly highly productive white farms. In many cases, the farms were handed directly to the black Zimbabwe "war veterans" who fought the whites, and who drove them out. As a result, the Zimbabwe economy is a basket case, and has been for over 30 years. The waste, corruption, and incompetence in Africa is breathtaking - much of it due to corrupt leaders unjustly enriching themselves, and the rest simply by economic incompetence, theft, and destruction by fighting, wholesale murders, and revolts. Life is cheap in these countries. In Cameroon, in 2011, President Biya announced a huge revitalisation of the agricultural economy by opening a new tractor factory at a place called Ebolowa. The project was to assemble Indian Sonalika farm tractors for the locals to use on local food production. However, thanks to total mismanagement, corruption, strikes, and a lack of electrical power from a Cameroonian Hydro project that has never generated a single kilowatt of power - the end result of the tractor building deal is 750 new Sonalika tractors all rusting away in the grass, as no-one ever acquired them, or used them. The factory is abandoned, and I would guess vast amounts of the manufacturing equipment has simply been stolen. https://www.facebook.com/6525850948...er-the-2011-agric-showin-20/2282262075220164/
I suspect this behavior has been happening on that Continent since beginning times of humans. For some it's been tolerated. Is it so brutal that no country wants to offend it? I always thought it odd that my country imported slaves from the African Continent. Why didn't those societies rise up against it. Why did they simply allow their neighbors to be exported? I've never understood that.
Very few Europeans made trips into Africa to abduct, capture, or steal slaves, it was far easier to buy them from their neighboring tribe that had already captured them. Just like no Conquistador rode into the new world and conquered an empire with just his own army, they were welcomed by the tribes where they landed, do to the recent conquest of those tribes by the far off empire, and therefore being required to send their sons and daughters, and other taxes to the empire. Even within my own ancestry, the French fought the Germans for centuries back and forth, the Irish fought the British. Peru had some troubles in certain regions, and a lot of good years. Chile similar to Peru. People I've known from Bolivia at the time would keep their money in dollars, better investment than anything available inside the country at the time, there would be a coup d'etat nearly every week for years, mostly no bloodshed though.
Was it in Rwanda? They had a genocide back in 1994 or so. One half the population just decided to whack the other half, and almost wiped them out, sadly.
It was business. I found it odd that you could be minding your own business in a pub in a port town in merry olde England, and the press gangs would come in, round up a bunch of you and then you are on a ship heading for the new world as enslaved crew members. Civilized England allowed that too. ?? Some of those crew went round the world and then went to trial and got hanged for mutiny too. Honey I'm stepping out for a beer.............
They didn't object because they did it too. There was an awful lot of inter-African slavery, besides endless blood-letting. The strongest tribe rules. The Foreigners were just the stronger tribe when they showed up