Trip to Afghanistan
Fri Aug 20 2021 21:53:00 GMT+0800 (Malaysia Time)
Greetings from an unnaturally hot and sultry Spain.
It's August and since many people are on holiday, I hope you're enjoying it.
Last week I was telling you about the robbery, how a container from China was broken into on a layby on the A14 and a hundred or so cartons stolen.. about what would fit in a large transit van.
In last week's newsletter I listed the products - should you get offered then cheap you would know - you can read about it here..
A big thank you to the many people who wrote expressing sympathy and support!
The good news is the shipping company has accepted liability and is negotiating a settlement with us. The bad news is we will have to reorder that stock and won't be here for a few months..
We keep asking for sight of the tachograph reading, if there is any cab CCTV footage, and surely there are CCTV cameras on the A14 that can be accessed at that time. The crooks had offloaded a lot of stock before they found something high value they liked, a few boxes that remained had been opened, and the Aromatherapy candles were on the base of the truck, so it must have taken quite some-time to sort out what they wanted. Very suspicious.
I almost went to Afghanistan.. If you have time - I'll tell you the story.
Otherwise skip ahead to the deals below.
The stunning awful pictures and news from Kabul has shocked us all.
For hours I have watched the news unfold, and listened horrified at the pathetic disconnected rhetoric coming from our own government and the Americans. It all seems a big tragic mess.
I have always been absolutely fascinated by Afghanistan..
As a teenager one of the first travel books I read was: "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush" Book by Eric Newby - a madcap journey to the badlands and highlands of Afghanistan.. For sure it changed my life and instilled in me a desire to travel to far flung exotic places.
Since then I have soaked up any book I could find on this seemingly dangerous and fascinating country. Have you read Rory Stewart's book: "The Places In Between" where he walks on foot across the country? - The account is hairraising, honest and totally mad. But despite the bad and crazy guys he meets (and escapes from) you get the feeling there are many warm real humans there. He talks a lot about the kindness of strangers.
In the early days of AW (it was 2007) at a dinner party I met an Afghan guy called Sadiq who was working at Sheffield university. He had contacts in the tribal areas where Lapis is mined and showed me some impressive tribal jewellery made from local brass plate and gemstones including beautiful vibrant blue lapis gemstones.
The thought of being able to support a local business in such an area was so in line with our trading mission we were delighted at the opportunity and knew our customers would be supportive.
As you can imagine I was very excited to import it but as you can imagine it wasn't easy.. lots of issues but in the end we received about five pallets of stock.. I think it was about £20,000 of stock which was a decent investment at the time.
When we opened the cartons it was amazing, beautiful - exotic and fabulous. We also received a note from customs asking if the jewellery was nickel free.. as you know nickel can cause nasty reactions on caucasian skin. Yes it should be, our supplier had assured us it was.. and we sent off samples to the lab to check and you guessed it.. it wasn't brass plated, the metal part of the jewellery was far from nickel free. Basically, it was nickel so we couldn't sell it at all.
Sadiq was mortified and promised to resolve the issue but ultimately it was impossible.. he suggested we go to Afghanistan and meet the producers and find a solution.. and that seemed like a good idea to me..
Sadiq told me I would be safe with him, I would meet him in Peshawar in Pakistan where he would get me local clothes and we would drive over the border to Afghanistan.. It seemed like a grand exciting plan.
Of course, they way things developed, something bad happened and trouble escalated and I had to cancel the trip.
We had those pallets of tribal jewellery for years - didn't want to throw them out, couldn't sell them. In the end they burned in the fire at AW last year.
But I have a few samples in my house in Spain - at one time we were trying to find a way to re-electroplate them. I just found them in a bottom drawer..
Nice no?
Our trade - if we could have sorted it - could have given one village or family a decent income.. and maybe encouraged others to not rely on drugs or guns to provide a living.
It never happened because on 27 December 2007 the assassination of Benazir Bhutto took place, the former female PM of Pakistan - a leading liberal femanist whoes views you can imagine those extremist thugs didn't like.
So this is how violence is never the answer.
Trade of course is the only solution, when humans trade, they build relationships that overcome even bigoted religious attitudes and gradually good values and trust has to be built to prosper. Not trading with people you don't agree with on principle in some cases is the right thing to do to bring pressure to bear.. but mostly not, because what happens when you stop trading.. They just go and trade with other dodgy people who will reinforce their world view. It's a very complex problem, with a lot of grey areas..
Charles Hoskison the founder of the crypto currency Cardano.. is actually one of the clearest thinkers in the world today.
Check out his thoughts on Afghanistan here.
After all the ancient silk road carried more than silk, it spread culture, civilization and wealth along it's routes that changed the world mostly for the better.
But we live in difficult times, global warming and the pandemic are bad enough.. As I write, a big yellow seaplane swoops low over my house - it will scoop up sea water and then fly to a forest fire burning not far away.
Right now I should be in Indonesia working with any number of suppliers, but the pandemic put that on hold. If the world didn't have enough problems we have nationalism causing trade wars and things like Brexit. Enough.
But still, life goes on..
Our office is finally taking shape. One of the things we have in all our offices is a wall or two turned to a chalkboard.
Here's that board, some other pictures of the office in Sheffield and the values..
Take care
David
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