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Sunday, July 06, 2008

Apparently I have totally misunderstood the Koochee...

Before all the females reading this start to think "Great! maybe he now will understand me..." no, not at all. You are still a mystery.

What I did find out is that the local nomadic tribe, the Koochee, have a totally different thing going on than I had originally expected. Normally I would not have expected the people sleeping in the dirt, that don't have a wall to their name, and spend their life mostly outside the established society to be the local financial and social geniuses. Apparently they are the richest tribe around here.

I found someone that knew about them, speaks enough english, and was willing to talk about them.

"They come into Kabul, sell two sheep, and they make my entire month's salary..." From the conversation, It sounds like because the animals they tend are so valuable, they actually have the most "capital" of almost anyone in the country. A dude owns a few dozen sheep and goats, a few donkeys or camels, and basically he is finically independent for the rest of his life.

I hadn't thought about that. It pretty much comes down to the fact that they have stayed in control of their own means of livelihood. They come into town to sell a sheep or two and a bucket of yogurt, buy some food, put some minutes on their cell phone, and roll out again. They don't have rent or mortgages, almost no expenses, politics and law don't apply to them, everything they own is self propelled. Now that I think about it, they really have their shit together.

The more I think about it, the better the whole life seems. Now, if I could figure out how to milk a Buick, I would be most of the way there.

3 comments:

amateur.sophist said...

Milk a Buick?

Gosh, I'd say the pimps of this town have figured that out decades ago.. Now if you can only stay away from spending your cash on those sweat clothes.

kodjo said...

You don't need to milk your Buicks (or Fiats or Fords or Jeeps or Triumps...). They do that all on their own. I'm sure you can tell exactly what patch of pavement any of them have been parked on.

Notorious said...

I like to think of my cars as oil re-distribution systems for planet earth! They pump it out of the ground, then my cars sprinkle it across the surface of the earth. After a few years, they will be striking oil in the parking lots of everywhere I have lived or worked. My cars are good for the US economy too...