I went to the cinema. Great experience for only 1 pound 50! The movie was Wall Street, pretty good despites some terrible acting. I enjoyed the movie because the recession really affected me and it was nice to be reminded of that period in a more theatrical way. However, it felt weird thinking about it and how it nearly got me on my knees in the middle of one of the poorest country in the world.
Here I was, seated in this very small cinema, just after an advert for sponsoring children to allow them to go to school and another one on the water improvement: imagine most families now do not have to walk more than 7 kilometres to find “drinkable” water! Suddenly, the idea that the recession started with the subprime market, I should say the idea that a subprime market even exists, that people, in an other world can actually borrow money they don’t have, need to buy house and a second car, and that life is about making more money is just ridiculous.
Most people don’t own anything at all here: my Amharic teacher is dreaming about buying a car in may be 2 or 3 years, a colleague of Ben has been drawn at the lottery to buy a condo in the other side of Addis where there is still no electricity, a microfinance organisation is encouraging groups of woman to save ½ a birr (2,2cents of a pound) a week, etc.
What is the impact of recession here? Nearly none because people have no saving to invest in stock market, there is no housing bubble here and even if I am sure it affected their import/export balance, most Ethiopian would laugh if you talked about the impact on their job market (employment was high, is still high and will stay this way for a while) or inflation. I could imagine talking to my staff about a banker loosing 5 billion euros, or even some families loosing 50,000 pounds, graduates struggling to find a first job already paid £35,000pa.
It just makes you think that reality is different depending on where you live, and some relativity often opens yours eyes to what is really going on.
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