French ties

Vietnam’s Viettel invests in rebuilding Haiti’s telecom infrastructure

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/43111.php

After all, they can communicate in French during the project.

Just like New Orleans and Hanoi, both have French architect resemblance.

When I was in Cote D’Ivoire, I was struck at how similar it was to Saigon (the police post at the intersection, boulevard with tree lines,

colonial admin buildings, and of course, la language.)

This time, those with former French ties ended up helping each other out.

Viettel has expanded to neighboring Cambodia and Laos, both were under French Indochina’s banner.

So it will be Viettel’s repeat performance, even though it’s continent’s away.

The geography of culture will be similar, at least, less wide than let’s say, Chinese laborers exploring for oil in Africa.

That would be E1 and E3 cultural divide.

Good luck with the island. There will be a lot of coordination with the many NGO’s in the island.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/05/25/financial/f080837D09.DTL&type=business

Viettel workers are no strangers to disaster relief. They ventured to Cambodia during the war there and some must have seen the worst of Pol Pot.

It is said somewhere that people of misfortune can help one another more readily than those who are worlds apart.

In academic circle, we term this proximity of suffering. It’s easier for E1 to empathize with E2 (Spain and Argentina) than let’s say Germany and Greece.

Iceland will be a class of its own: banking collapse and volcano eruption.  Some country just seems to get it all in one place. Haiti is included and well deserved

our help and attention. In this case, a telecom deal with Viettel. Bonne chance.