Patrick, the man who built and owns this lodge, is a great guy. He built this very impressive lodge by hand - from scratch - starting over ten years ago. Two sides of Patrick I saw today …
At sunset drinks: Hippos. We were having an informed discussion about business, life and eco-lodges when we heard this loud grunting. “Oh my goodness, it’s a hippo!” he cried, and immediately ran off with a lantern and torch.
I ran off to hide (like a man!). Hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal. I didn’t really want to join them. (The dead people, that is. Or, on that note, the hippos either.) Especially seeing I heard this hippo was angry.
During dinner: Hippocrates. We were talking an informed discussion about something informative (Vasco da Gama? In reality, probably, “how cool was that hippo?”) when Patrick revealed he had a degree in Philosophy, and had done an honours thesis on John Rawls (which has eventually led him to come to Africa in the first place) …
We then spent the next little while discussing John Rawls’ theory of poverty (“unless we do all we can to help people starving in Africa, we are moral monsters”) to the counter arguments (“if we gave away everything we had to the poor, we would have no means to keep giving … and giving aid may not be the best way to fight poverty anyway”) and we came to a fairly uneasy equilibrium (“we should give all we can without reducing our ability to earn money; and then give money in a way that’s solving poverty, not just making our consciences feel better …”) ...
Hmm … hard to argue against, even harder to do.
I'm finding that it’s much easier to act congruently with hippos (they’re lethal; therefore run!) than with moral philosophy on poverty …
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