The Mountain Boy and the Foreign Aid Circus

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About the Author CLAUDE BOBILLIER was born in a modest family in the Swiss Alps in August 1939. Never having felt home in his native land, he left for New Zealand as a young adult. After years of struggle, he finally emerged with a doctorate and embarked on a career in development.

Twenty eight years working in thirty different countries in Asia and Africa advising corrupt and incompetent governments and arrogant western aid bureaucracies, have allowed him to witness firsthand the scandals and failures of western Foreign Aid.

Now retired and living on the French side of Lake Geneva, he's still trying to understand and make sense of the world.

Preface There's a saying "Many are called but few are chosen." It's cited usually to refer to those who are engaged in some worthy mission or other. It indicates that not everyone is up to worthy missions. That's exactly how many feel about the 'Foreign Aid Circus'. Graham Hancock wrote about the few who were chosen in 'Lords of Poverty' but was all too soon forgotten because he was 'teaching us and it lacked what I would call 'a requisite of passion.' Even before Hancock, authors had chosen to deal with the topic through satire, but that's long time ago. It needed a frank, frontal assault. This is probably that assault.

Dr. Bobillier, as they say in the crime stories, 'earns his bones' with this factual account of his work with foreign aid. He has had first-hand experience and not only with the scions of the helping classes but through his own life experiences and struggles from childhood in Switzerland to student hood and early life experiences in New Zealand. From his descriptions of his early years it is obvious that he was bound to have empathy with the disinherited of the earth. He could have remained in the boxed and defined environment of a conservative Swiss village. Needless to say he didn't, otherwise this book would have turned out quite differently.

Introduction The decision to write about the events and experiences related here was precipitated by the gentle but steady encouragement and prodding, over many years, of family and friends. And I write primarily to share with them the multitude of extraordinary experiences and lessons learned over the course of a long, rich, and unusual career as an educational sociologist, consultant, and adviser. These experiences - so numerous, and so suffused with joy and pain-have had a deep and lasting impact upon me, and even to this day I feel the tug of a strange longing as I look back upon the years spent working among people alien to the privileges and comforts of life in the West.

Having worked over several decades in many different climates, with people of many different cultures; having travelled constantly and faced multitudes of values and attitudes; having been bewildered by the strangeness of language and aliens ways of life; now back in the West, I find myself longing for the simplicity and conviviality of people who -despite having to face daily the challenges of living in extreme poverty and deprivation - have not lost the essential humanity that Western societies, in their rush for material comforts and superficial wealth, seem to be so out of touch with.

**Contents and Sample Pages**