I watched the movie the Constant Gardener. I noticed a few things that relate to what we have discussed in class. The first most obvious one that stuck out to me was the bribery the African government wanted the main character to use to pay them off. Justin was really confused about what they wanted because where he is from they don’t use bribery. Later on in the movie Justin thought bribery was acceptable he tried to pay the plane pilot to get a child on the plane but then it wasn’t acceptable.
The second issue that related to our class was how Tessa was ignorant to the African society when it is related to business. An example of this is when there was a party Tessa confronted a businessman in front of everybody expecting an answer.
The whole movie was about the issue of a drug company from Britain using Africans for testing. This relates to the class because instead of staying in Britain and using some other form of testing, they went to Africa where the “labor” was cheap and could get away with it.
I feel like there wasn’t much success on Justin or Tessa’s part because they ignored a lot of the ways the Africans do business. They were close with the villages but the villages weren’t who they needed to be concerned about. They needed to be concerned with who ran the area which was the government. I think that is why Justin and Tessa both ended up dead.
I had forgotten about the bribery! You made a good observation about the different attitudes in countries concerning bribery. Even though bribery was acceptable in one setting in Kenya, the pilot was insulted when Justin offered him a bribe.
I agree with you that one of the most obvious things is the bribery that went on in this movie. It was very clear that it changed and was acceptable and not acceptable in different places. I talked about the bribery a little bit in my own post. I didn’t even think about Tressa calling that one business person out at that point in time but, after reading it in your blog it is very true.
I think they ended up dead because they were endangering the ability of the company to make money.
I am agree with you~ I think they do not understand how to use bribery in African.