A Bit of Commerce

Last night, I finally had a long-anticipated coffee with JV. (We have talked about having coffee for months, made plans, but one of us always had to cancel.) She’s buying something off eBay (‘be an enzyme!’) and wanted me to use my having-a-credit-card-that-bills-to-the-US privilege (which I never thought of as a privilege before) to send the money for her via PayPal. [Bangladesh is in the PayPal network, but Serbia isn’t…what does that mean?]

So my streak of eBay avoidance is coming to an end… does it still count if I am only using the site to help out a friend?

Anyway, at one point in the conversation, she was telling me how local activists frequently copy the actions of western activists without thinking about the local context. An example of this was her involvement in organizing a Buy Nothing Day in Serbia 10 years ago.

“But 10 years ago, Serbia was under international sanctions. Wasn’t every day a Buy Nothing Day?”

“It was,” she sheepishly admitted.

This Buy Nothing Day: Serbian Edition has to be one of the most ridiculous things that I have heard about recently.

Just thinking about it makes me giggle.