Unpublished August 07
There is precious little common ground between the different peoples of the world. The clipboard charity terrorist on Tottenham Court Road will tell you that starving poor people in Darfur laugh, love and cry just as we do - that they are our brothers and sisters - but the same beaded be-dreadlocked female do-gooder still probably wouldn't want to move in and have her clitoris proudly pickled on a mantlepiece in southern Sudan.
There is one institution that unites people of the world like no other. When the UN gets spooked and runs, when the World Bank grabs the cash and makes a dash, one enduring symbol of unity - the connecting fibre of civilisation - remains. Ladies and Gentleman, Ladyboys and Janjaweed are all free and equal at 'The Irish Bar'.
Stanley waded through the Congo for months, picking his way through dense undergrowth where no footprint had ever been imprinted, loosing over half his expedition to malaria, cholera, dysentry only to find Dr. Livingstone sipping Guiness whilst the Hutus riverdanced at Paddy O'Neill's, Bujumbura. Where seventy years ago a quarter of the world was coloured pink, now the little flecks of green are slowly joining up...
Only one other thing can manage to get to the places normal products just can't reach - the Lebanese. I - along with about five other honkies - managed to get a lift back to my hostel with one such gentleman from a miserable little beachside bar in Aberdeen, Freetown a few nights back.
The man drove through us through downtown Freetown - where electricity and lighting haven't paid a visit since the mid-eighties - without any headlights. He drove the car in a way I wouldn't even drive a dodgem. Sporadically, he would turn his attention from driving to take mammoth swigs from a can of Carlsberg. Neither the passengers, the steering wheel nor the accelerator were informed of these lapses in concentration. Whilst the steering wheel and the accelerator relished the new found freedom, the passengers did not.
The Lebanese man was kind enough to point out all the places he had crashed the previous week between sips. I can honestly say there have been few points in my life where I have feared for my life quite as much as that night.