Diary

  • Team Afarid bei Mob e.V. Strassenfeger mit Guido Fahrenholz

Tuesday, 4th of June, Berlin

The meaning of the word „Croudfunding“ first became clear to me when I started working on DOCTOR AFARID. In German it could be translated as “ Schwarmfinanzierung” ( swarm-financing). The initial idea behind this is that a big number of friends and sympathizers can contribute to the project by donating small or large amounts of money. Some of the projects of course are only financed by “swarms” consisting of as little as parents, grandparents, the occasional uncle and perhaps one or two friends.

This Tuesday rotates around the absurd hunt for 75 “fans” and “likes”, that will enable me to start the campaign the next day.

The main priority for this day lies not only in collecting “likes” but in tracking down doctors with a history of migration.

Waiting at the reception is costing precious minutes. I am racing the clock and I am losing. There are just too many foreign doctors here and I only manage to look up half of them.

The Berlin commuters don’t seem to be very hospitable or tolerant. Their reaction towards our speeding Doctor-Afarid-mobile manly consists of aggressive sounding of the signal horn and a lot of swearing and shouting. Perhaps it’s because of our Swabian number plates. Explaining our experience in Berlin might be done best using the words of a committed editor: “Berlin is aggressive, dirty and very brutal, when it comes to traffic,”… we fully agree.

We were well advised in blessing the vehicle with holy water from the Saint-Nikolaus cathedral here in Stuttgart before setting out on our journey. I barely escape collateral damage on a few occasions, whilst using my mobile and driving the car at the same time, in the quest of motivating friends and team-colleagues to “like” our project on facebook, to enable the “crowd-funding-campaign” to start.

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