A Rich Story Ends: Services for Yadji Moussa 1955-2012

Services for Yadji Moussa will be held at Memorial Baptist Church in Middlebury Vermont, Friday July 6, 6:45-8:00 PM. Another ceremony will be held in Howell Michigan, at a date TBD. Thanks to Roy Buzzell, Amanda Sheppard, Colin Davis, Rachael Gosselin, Renee Babcock and Thomas Barr for your help.

Yadji Moussa was a man.  When I met him in Cameroon, he told me he had problems in the past, that he had been at "rock bottom", and described those tough times in detail, with humor, making me laugh.  During the 30 months I lived there, he only seemed to do better and better.  I could write, and have written, about some times that he was a hero in the town of Ngaoundal in Adamawa Province.

Yadji has worked with me for 12 years in Middlebury.  He continued to do better and better after I left Cameroon, and Renee, my peace corps volunteer replacement, agreed he was something special.   They married and had two kids, Innah and Adamou, and returned to the USA to live in Michigan, around 1989 or 1990 I think.

He revisited rock bottom a few times, and the marriage broke up in 2000.   I owed him a lot from my time in Cameroon, and brought him to Vermont to start a business with me.

Yadji drowned last week, while I was celebrating my twins birthdays in Arkansas.  We returned to Vermont and assist with the arrangements for Yadji, who for many years I described as my best friend, and for many times I was furious with, as only a brother can be.

This isn't really the time to write and rewrite whole chapters about him.  But this one tells how brave he was, and how he used our underestimation of him to get away from things (for better or worse).   When I met him, he had a debt to a cab driver because he'd tried to save the life of a man stabbed in Ngaoundal... there was no hospital there, the closest one was Meiganga or Tibati, in different directions.  He put the man on his lap and paid the cabbie to go to Tibati, where they found the doctor was gone on vacation.  They turned and drove three hours back, at top speed, to Meiganga, where Yadji was covered with blood and the man was dead.   Yadji came back and found the stabber had paid off the town cops.  So he wrote a simple letter to the Governor of Adamawa, and told me how he had written in a persona, polite and childlike, asking "but why isn't this man being arrested," sounding like Cindy Loo Who asking the Grinch about the Christmas tree.  Three days later, provincial troops were sent to the town, the town cops were barricaded in their police station, and the knife weilder was arrested.   Yadji said that the police chief knew he had taken the victim to the hospital, and confronted him angrily, saying he KNEW Yadji was behind the letter to the Governor.

Yadji told me he opened his eyes wide, shook his head, and said "Patron, but I don't know how to read or write..." And the cop believed him, stomped his foot and left.

Here is an interview with Yadji from 2008.  He speaks about his home village, Yenwa, one of the most "ancient" or primitive mountain areas of Cameroon, with no electricity or running water.  Yadji describes how people move from rural areas like Yenwa, to the cities.  And this is really a glimpse of the man, who speaks in a simple and disarming way... so you might forget that he knows 5 languages and could wrap you around a tree if you underestimate him.

He would have been in the African Spring.

Growth of cities in developing world

This is a fascinating little tool, showing overlays of the the growth charts of the largest cities in the world.

590 Cities Charted:  Impure Blog

As Yadji explained in his video, people are leaving the backwaters of the developing world and heading to the city.   I've been writing a lot this year on the "pixelization" of wealth distribution, and how clumsy the "rich vs. poor" country debate has become.

The changing world means that companies like Sony, RIM (Blackberry), HP/Compaq, and Dell are receding, just as RCA, Magnavox, and Polaroid disappeared over the past decades.   But when I read that the "electronics industry" is in decline, I laugh.   That's like saying "basketball is in decline" because Larry Bird or Michael Jordan are unable to compete on the court. 

BAN Farewell: It's About Giving them Cash

The NGO Basel Action Network just announced they want to cash out on their "Stewardship" program.  This is what I predicted.  When they started, I said they are going to have to come face to face with real recyclers making real decisions, real uncertainty, and they would be FORCED to confront their pollyana unicorn-promise responses.  They just announced a retirement plan.  Submit your proposals to see them off.

Another Rich Story Ends: Yadji Moussa

Yadji Moussa was a man I met in Cameroon.  He became my most trusted friend there.  We spent many mornings speaking philosophy, over a cup of sugared tea into which I'd dip the fresh local bread. I trusted him to give it to me straight if I wanted to know the "African Street".  He kept me under his wing.


He told me he had problems in the past, that he had been at "rock bottom", and described those tough times in detail, with humor, making me laugh.  


During the 30 months I lived there, he only seemed to do better and better.  I have written about times that he was a hero in the town of Ngaoundal in Adamawa Province.  He had a way of being covertly confrontational, leaving friends and authorities to puzzle whether he was religiously passive, or feigning self-effacement, or ready to cut to the chase with a direct challenge.

He continued to do better and better after I left Cameroon, and Renee, my peace corps volunteer replacement, agreed he was something special.   They married and had two kids, Innah and Adamou, and returned to the USA to live in Michigan, around 1989 or 1990 I think.


He revisited rock bottom a few times, and the marriage broke up in 2000.   I owed him a lot from my time in Cameroon, and brought him to Vermont to start a business with me.  Yadji worked with me for 12 years in Middlebury.  

Yadji drowned June 21, while I was celebrating my twins birthdays in Arkansas.  I got a lot of calls in the spotty coverage of the Ozarks.  I wrote most of the blog while sitting in my parents living room in Searcy County, trying to decide whether to take my kids canoeing on the Buffalo River.  We decided to return and assist with the arrangements for Yadji, who for many years I described as my best friend, and for many times I was furious with, as only a brother can be.  I've decided to give this rewrite, to give the record another shot, because Yadji Moussa deserves the best.

Second New "bad recycling" Practice: Plastic Recycling?

Recycling plastic by hand?

We know there are groups which would ban or prohibit a practice done well by 85% of people but abused by 15%.   Marijuana, alcohol, electronics exports...  And so we know that it's very risky to publish information about a recycling practice we all do which is 85% nasty.


The second "Bad Boy" trick, practiced by everyone, is a mind-bender ... plastics recycling.  Selling the plastic back to China to be remelted and remolded is classified by Stewards, R2, and free-market exporters alike as a "commodity".  Both Alan Hershkowitz of NRDC and a speaker at ElectronicsRecyclingExpo made the same point - it's different to take an ink cartridge and recycle the plastic than it is to refill it for reuse.


Now, inside our recycling industry, everyone knows that "the perfect should not be the enemy of the good".  We know that the worst shipbreaking and recycling is better than the best mining, pound per pound, of the same material.  We don't like to see ships sunk into the ocean as "reefs" when we know that somewhere else in the world, someone is investing in ocean floor mining (gee, I'm sure that will go splendidly for the environment)....

removing sticky labels BY HAND

They both made the point that the reuse and refilling is done by a brown person.  This seemed enough to imply that the shredding of the ink cartridge (ink is non-toxic in the OEM MSDS)... The problems with this logic are both obvious and subtle.  The subtle one - the problem with plastics recycling - is something that deserves its own post, in Part 2.

I've heard from very reliable sources that plastic recycling in China is the recycling industry which most needs to be cleaned up.   The question is, do we clean it up by boycotting China?  Or if most of the plastic recycled in China anyway comes from within China, are rich nations the only possible source of material for the best Chinese companies who must otherwise compete at pennies per pound with lower common denominator competitors?

The solution is to find the top 10% of best plastics recyclers in China and demand less money from them, to encourage other plastic recyclers to improve.  Banning exports of plastic to be recycled in China is NOT the solution.  This "plastic recycling" export is something all e-waste companies are doing, Steward and R2 and Free market, so perhaps it's the "new big issue", and perhaps Fair Trade Recycling can be the leader.