Chronicles of a Fashion Buyer: The Mostly True Adventures of an International Fashion Buyer by Mercedes Gonzalez

Author:Mercedes Gonzalez
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780764356230
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
Published: 2018-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

IT TaKes us To

MaKe THe VIllaGe

That’s odd, I thought to myself. Was that pigeon trying to get into my

office? Was it actually knocking on my window? Was it trying to tell

me something? Now it was flapping its wings like a shoulder shrug

that says, “Hey man, let me in.” I cracked open the window, and it

plopped right on top of my desk. It was doing a little chicken dance,

like the ones they do at weddings. How bizarre is this, I thought to

myself? Wait a second, there was a note attached to its leg! The

pigeon stood perfectly still as I unwrapped the note. “let this be a

warning,” it said.

I certainly wish that really would have happened. It would have

prepared me for what was to come. It was the start of a new millennium,

but I was going to go back a thousand years in time.

The phone call was brief, with just a few questions to qualify me as

an expert in footwear manufacturing. It wasn’t the first time I had done

some work for the World Bank, so they had all my credentials on file.

“Have you ever been to a leather shoe manufacturing factory?”

“Yes, I have, many times in Mexico.”

“are you familiar with the different machinery needed to manufacture

shoes?”

“Yes, I am, they need leather cutting machines, stitching machines,

and different kinds of shoe lasts.” I knew the person I was talking to

was just clerical, going through a checklist of questions. If I gave

anything more than a yes or no answer, she would be lost entirely. I

tried to keep my answers simple.

recently, I’d wanted to apply for a consulting position with tribal

weavers in nepal. The forty-page questionnaire had many abstract

questions. For example, “How do you feel your experiences in working

— 127 —

— It Takes Us to Make the Village —

with indigenous people would impact the emotional well-being of any

person you might have interacted with?” Huh? I don’t know how I am

emotionally impacted myself half the time. I once applied to a us

government agency for a consultancy program in Haiti. The amount of

paperwork I would have been required to fill out on a daily basis would

have been more significant than the actual amount of work to be done.

The bureaucratic system, with all its checks and balances. has gotten

entirely out of control. The goals for the common good that you’re supposed

to be accomplishing get lost in the paperwork shuffle that is required.

The World Bank, despite all the sinister conspiracies you might

hear, actually gives a tremendous amount of grants and low-interest

loans to developing countries. They provide hundreds of millions of

dollars in healthcare grants so that these developing countries can

have a stable workforce. one outbreak of malaria can cause an economic

crisis on a grand scale. But with each Yin, there is a Yang. For example,

The World Bank was one of the driving forces behind the antipollution

laws in the Rio River in Brazil. Then they went and financed a very

toxic paper-producing mill that borders the rio in uruguay. It’s not

that I turn a blind eye—and I will use this term loosely—to the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.