Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast

Perhaps I shouldn’t be sharing this online, but the voodoo dolls came with some really weird bugs – and I brought them with me when I returned to Canada from the Ivory Coast last December. I sprayed the dolls with insecticide and left them outside for weeks, hoping the African bugs would freeze to death in our Canadian winter (…which they did).

Frankly, I didn’t need bug infested voodoo dolls in my house, but I bought them to put money into the hands of some desperately poor souvenir vendors in Grand Bassam. This is the same Grand Bassam and even the same beach where six Al Qaeda terrorists mowed down and killed 16 tourists yesterday. With incidents like these it is very unlikely that tourists will return to Grand Bassam in the foreseeable future. The hardship caused by the attackers goes far beyond the physical and emotional pain felt by the shooting victims and their families. The attackers also destroy livelihoods of local citizens. The deaths of infidels come at a high price.

The hatred behind these attacks is fueled by the sentiment that western countries and their Christian religion want to destroy Islam. Of course, it is a misguided belief but many Muslims in the Middle East still consider modern wars launched by Christian powers into Islamic lands as extensions of the ancient crusades. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have reignited the power struggle between east vs west and Islam vs Christianity.

With his inflammatory rhetoric Donald Trump is adding fuel to the fire and justification to the hatred. It seems to me that he has no idea what forces he is about to unleash. The way Trump is conducting his campaign is stupid and irresponsible at best and fatalistic at its worst.

As a Canadian I will not have the opportunity to cast my vote against this man in November, but with this little post and my words I can still add my voice to the world-wide chorus of the millions of likeminded people who sense a profound danger in Trump’s message.

The bugs are gone and my voodoo dolls have moved inside, now. But every time I look at them, I will wonder about the fate of the young man who sold them to me at the very beach where 16 innocent people lost their lives to the same kind of hatred that permeates this year’s American presidential campaign.

~ RT