Monday, September 26, 2005

Entitlement

During my oil industry career I spent a lot of time in African countries. Senegal, on the west coast bordering the Sahara desert, was one of those places.

Part of my job was to oversee our onshore navigation stations. These were used for exact positioning of offshore seismic vessels. When I worked in Dakar (a city of 2 million) my driver would have to take me to those remote stations. Typically that would require a drive of 50-150 miles. The countryside was fascinating to see. We'd drive past small villages and towns. Places usually without petrol stations (gasoline stations to you Americans).
That meant that we would leave Dakar with a full tank of petrol. We'd also have bottled water and something to eat to take along.

We never took for granted that we would be able to purchase those commodities along the way. Water and food might be available somewhere. And it might not.

Not once did we run out of petrol or water to drink. If we had, I certainly would not have expected the government to pull up alongside and deliver those things to us. We were on our own and responsible for ourselves.

I'm just sayin' ...

3 comments:

Trudging said...

Yeah but, we are Americans...(-:

T. F. Stern said...

We better hope those Astros win every game or we are out of it. They should have swept the Cubs. Now we only have a 1 game lead over the Phillies. I think we have the harder games coming up with the Cardinals and the Cubs again. The Phillies play the Mets and the Nationals. I wish Bagwells ball had gone over the fence. Go Astros!!!!

We dodged a bullit with that hurricane. I am also grateful for that. I feel bad for those that got hit, but I'm glad that Houston was spared. Can you imagine what it would have done to a city as big as Houston? Yeks!!

Anonymous said...

Sorry, that last comment was from me. Lucy Stern