Word: fikad
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...blacksmith shop in the busy market town of Keren, Fikad Ghoitom explains the national attitude: show me, don't tell me; ingenuity applied to example; homegrown know-how. Fikad's brother saw a wood-cutting machine in an English magazine and forged one out of scrap metal. Down in the artisans' suq in Asmara, men in blue overalls don masks cut from cardboard to weld new pots from old oil tins and cooking braziers from rusted rods. The clang, hammer, sizzle of makeshift industry are everywhere as boys flatten old iron bars for their brothers to beat into new shovels...
...corruption, virtually no crime. "We would not be so dishonorable," says Russon, an Asmara taxi driver. However poor they are, families share with the truly destitute. A fierce sense of personal rectitude makes thievery unthinkable. "It is not the police who prevent crime but the honor inside us," insists Fikad, the blacksmith. "The corruption is the lowest of any government I've ever worked for, including in Santa Rosa, Calif.," says Michael O'Neill, an American adviser to the Commercial Bank of Eritrea. "They will not tolerate it in any way, shape or form." During the war, the fighters were...
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