Beware you Whites

Yestereve I watched a docu on the tele here what was like an eye-opener... our garbage is dumpted in West Africa and locals there search for traces and finds with which they can fool us and scam us; Down here the review from a pro.

and in between.... I'd thought of making a Low POV for WideWed but am not pleased with what I got, so I tried another with my statuettes and today it's Homerus, the blinded bard who poses with the devil... I think they 2 match well with the story from docu reviewer Arjan in NRC newpaper; here his words on the documentary:



"Every man named Peter is stupid, really stupid." Knowledge about the world is the way to success and that knowledge is shared generously: "Illinois, Denver, Colorado - they pay well." But beware: never waste your time and never to men in Chicago. "They don't fall for scammers."

These master cheaters are Ghanaians who, partly thanks to data they pick from the heaps of discarded electronics that world capitalism dumps in their country, are aiming their arrows at men who long for sex, love or a mixture of the two online. They casually classify the westerners. They do not consider their customers to be pleasant folks. "Whites are disgusting nowadays."

The documentary Sakawa, broadcast by BNNVARA dutch television on Tuesday evening, begins as a riot novel. Director Ben Asamoah shows us a room full of Ghanaians chatting on old couches, each with a wornout laptop on their lap. Derek from Kernersville, North Carolina, hasn't got a clue about who is courting him.

They are scammers that appeal to ones imagination. Operating from the garbage dump where the West dumps its garbage, they give men in the richest part of the world a lesson in inventiveness. In between, they practice English with their young children. It's time to conquer the world.

In a shop they buy a "magic phone" that can transform a man's voice into a woman's sound. Relaxed while sitting on a wall near his house, a man from somewhere far away is chatted to up to a climax- and finally the heated and blinded customers must be tempted to transfer money. "With a good man you wait one week, maybe two. Then you ask 50 dollars. "

It is not the whole story - and not just because the white cheats are among the underdogs in their society. Because sometimes the men don't want to pay and then what? Then Baba brings a solution, a voodoo priest who offers help "if your white man is stubborn." He is visited by Ama, a young mother who has little talent for online seduction. At Baba there is a washing line on which pictures of white men are attached with colorful clothespins. He instructs his visit: "Put three eggs, seven cola nuts, menstrual blood and dried cow bones in this pot." Is Baba the Ottolenghi of the voodoo?

In our Dutch living rooms we saw a scammer surrender to another scammer, but the religious element is crucial in the film. The term "Sakawa" refers to the combination of internet scam with fetish rituals. It starts with the password that one of the men uses: "GOD", with capital letters. In the course of Sakawa we see more and more images in which modernity and tradition go together in a very curious way. One of the men has received a magic egg, which he warms up in a self-made incubator of six shelves, two lamps and some straw. Next to it he opens his computer.

The egg does not deliver on its promise. The last part of Sakawa is mainly about helplessness. There is nothing cheerful in the eyes of poor Ama when she is addressed about the kind of photos with which she can please her customers: "White men often want it slutty." Outside in the street a man shouts through a megaphone: " Money will not save your life, money does not save you from hell. ”

Ultimately, that is what Asamoah shows in his Sakawa filmed with great patience: how the globalized world is also held together by a web of illusions.