Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (9-ｌ): Business Trip - Latin America & the Caribbean

昨日、久しぶりにRonさんと調布で飲み会、大変、お元気でした。

それにしても今から40年近く前に日本企業のために世界中を飛び回っていたとはすごい。

私はIBMの中でフラストレーションを貯めている時期でした。

さて、今週からはラテンアメリカとカリブ諸国の旅。

Latin America & the Caribbean

8週間の旅に
With the success throughout Southeast Asia and Turkey the word was starting to get around. As I mentioned earlier, Isuzu had a joint venture with General Motors to distribute to the smaller, non-assembly plant countries of the world IMODC (Isuzu Motors Overseas Distribution Corporation). In that company were three consultants from General Motors and one active member of its board. One consultant was to cover the Middle East and was stationed in Dubai, UAE, one to cover Africa and was stationed Abidjan, Ivory Coast and one covering Latin America in Puerto Rico.

Well, the General Motors consultant to Latin America got interested in all the training work I was doing and asked if I could set up training in Spanish for his region. That led to not only doing training in three of his countries (Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama) but one General Motor’s plant country (Venezuela) and one Isuzu territory (Puerto Rico). I was on the road for eight weeks, the longest business trip I ever took and ever will take. I was exhausted at the end of that trip.

The trip started in Puerto Rico where the liaison office was. We finished the Spanish training manual there, and I explained anything in the manual, which was difficult to translate. Then, the interpreter, the General Motors consultant and I set out to do the training. First was Guatemala, then Costa Rica and finally for IMODC was Panama.

農業国ガテマラ
I found all of the little countries very different. Guatemala has a very large local Indian population, about 75% of the people. It is an agricultural country with bananas and coffee. Also, there is tourism with famous Maya ruins and the Spanish city of Antiqua. Antiqua was a major Spanish city for the continent when Spain colonized the region. Unfortunately, Guatemala was a poor country with crime and political unrest. All in all though, the people are very warm and friendly.

< Guatemala, El Salvador, GM Latin America Managers >


< Guatemala Training >

Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (9-k): Business Trip - Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia

アフリカや中近東の旅はロンさんに強烈な印象を与えたようで、先週と言い、今週と言い、今までとは、文字数が異なりますね。

At the end of 1986, I was asked to give sales training in Jeddah and then Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Jeddah is the main business center of the country. It is also the gateway to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

My work there was quite uneventful except for one dinner I went to with one of the salesmen. After traveling to many developing countries I grew accustomed to taking care of my health regarding poor quality food, water and dangerous areas. This salesman was a Bedouin (Arab families that live in the dessert) from Yemen originally but then made his home in Jeddah. His English was poor, but I knew he wanted to take me out to dinner to a very traditional local restaurant.

時には食事も冒険！？
It was a lamb restaurant, but I was very worried about it being clean and the food fresh. He assured me the meat was very fresh and clean and many foreign people go there. As we approached the restaurant, I noticed a long line of barbeque pits in front. The salesmen took me through a hallway of the restaurant with the kitchen on the right and the dining rooms on the left to the back yard where there was a herd of sheep fenced in. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

Then, we went into one of the dining rooms. The room had no furniture at all, only wall-to-wall carpet. In various corners of the carpet people were sitting on the floor eating off of newspapers. We found a corner and sat on the floor, and the waiter laid down a newspaper in front of us and took our order. We ordered their popular barbequed lamb and soft drinks. Our drinks came quickly but he said it would take time for the lamb, as preparations were not ready yet. We did not mind; as my training seminar was finished, and all I had to do was go back to the hotel, pack for the next day’s travel to Riyadh.

お祈りの時間
As I relaxed chimes went off to signal that it was prayer time. I did not notice it, but my friend did. He excused himself and went over to a corner to do his prayers.

Shortly after he came back, we heard very loud animal screams. I asked what all the noise was about. He said they were preparing the lamb for cooking! Yes, they were slaughtering the lamb in the next room. He was right. It was fresh.

写真があれば良かったのに
After about a half an hour, the waiter came in with a bowl of rice, which he poured on the newspaper. Then, a dish of the lamb came. It was laid on top of the rice. Sitting around the newspaper with the food on it, we ate with our hands. Our hands got so oily that we were afraid to touch anything except the food until the meal was finished. Then we washed our hand.

That is the life of a Saudi Bedouin family on the weekend. They go out into the dessert in the evening with their family and the sheep tagging along. They pitch tents, start a barbeque, have a meal, camp for the night and return to the city the next day before it gets too hot.

From Jeddah I went to Riyadh, the capital of the country. It is right in the middle of nowhere. The main business center in the country is Jeddah on the Red Sea. Jeddah is the gateway to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and that region is overrun with Muslim people on pilgrimage every year coming from all over the world. That is not the case in Riyadh. In terms of wealth, Saudi Arabia is the big boy in the Middle East. It has massive resources of oil and natural gas and a very low population to support.


A camel trail outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (9-j): Business Trip - Tanzania

Tanzania

Ronさん、ついにアフリカへ。実際にビジネスをしているのはインド人、パキスタン人などだそうです。
In 1986, I was asked to give a sales seminar by the general manager of the dealership in Tanzania. Like most of Eastern Africa, people from the sub-continent, like India, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea or Sri Lanka administer the businesses in the country and many services. The general manager at that time was a Sikh from Bombay. He was on contract to work there and asked me if I could help him develop the sales staff. I traveled around the country visiting their sales and service branches as well as toured one of their game parks.

Training in Tanzania


Most people are on foot in Tanzania



Along with India and Indonesia, Tanzania is one of the poorest countries I have ever been to. It does have a few export products, and there is tourism with their game parks, but Tanzania has nowhere the quality of the game parks as Kenya to their north or South Africa do. They literally cannot buy anything outside of their country without getting financial assistants or AID. The country has no real social infrastructure, and subsistence living is the norm.

Mikumi National Park, Tanzania, October 1986




Throughout the country most of the people live in the cities, but there is a famous nomadic tribe that still is active in the countryside and travels to where there is water and moves with the seasons. They live off the blood of their goats. On a rare occasion, they will kill a goat and have a feast. With their ability to live off their animals without killing them, they have become quite wealthy and in recent times some have moved into cities and become very successful. Other than those few, the Masai are wild and uncivilized. I took a picture of three of them going down the road in the car at high speeds. Who knows, they might have thrown one of their spears at me.
槍は当たらなかったみたいですね。

Elephants in the game park


The Masai nomadic people in Tanzania, Kenya & Ethiopia

Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (9-i): Business Trip - West Malaysia

West Malaysia Sales Management

In July 1986, I gave my first sales management seminar. The dealership sales manager is the head of the sales department. His function is to build the entire sales force in the dealership. He hires, trains and supervises his sales staff’s daily activities. I have found this seminar my most enjoyable, and I will talk about it later. Like Turkey, Malaysia is a country that was one of my greatest success stories, and I traveled there repeatedly over the years.

West Malaysia (ACM)

Ron McFarlandの Personal Journey (9-h): Business Trip - Stopover in Germany

Stopover in Germany

本当かな？でも、こういうこともなくちゃね。
From Turkey, I was to go to West Malaysia, but they did not want me to come too soon. So, believe it or not, for six days I just goofed around in Germany where I was to transfer planes.

I took a boat tour down the Rein River looking at castles and viewing the wine country of Germany. On the boat I met a German man who spent most of his life living in Colorado in the United States and two Japanese girls who could not speak English.

So, linguistically we were set for the day. The German man spoke German and English, and I speak English and Japanese, so the four of us could communicate on about anything, as we toured along.

Our day started in the morning and went right into the night. As the evening set in the German man decided he wanted to make a pass at one of the Japanese girls, and I was the interpreter. I had a hell of a time explaining that one.

All in all it was one of my most memorable trips. On top of that, I was paid full time for staying in a 5-star hotel the whole time.

In the evening on one of those six nights, I went to the bar and watch the final of the soccer World Cup. It was between Germany and Argentina. As you can imagine, I could hardly root for Argentina, sitting in the middle of the German Heartland. It was a wonderful experience.

< On the German Rein River touring castle and the wine country >