Stop Elections

Stop Elections

stopelectionsSome may call it growing pains, but Kenyans are having second and third and fourth thoughts about their new constitution.

Invoking “Dream Week,” one of Kenya’s most read analysts wrote this week, “…many will also be thinking of a broken promise. The great new society we were to build has become mired in the same old, tired, dirty, backward politics driven by moneyed ethnic warlords with the support of stupid cheering and jeering masses.”

Amen, brother Macharia Gaitho.

We progressives are just incapable of understanding why everyone isn’t nice. So we build institutions and construct constitutions to promulgate niceness. We support regulations to prevent badness.

Our work is stellar, as is absolutely the case of the Kenyan constitution, and to be sure, the relatively new South African constitution.

Affirmative action is carved in stone until utopia can at least be imagined. Taxing is fabulously progressive. Housing is a guaranteed human right. (And need I mention health care?)

So what is everyone griping about?

“At present what we have is Senate not worth the name, one that would not be missed if it was abolished.”

Amen, Harry Reid.

“Arbitrarily plucking figures out of thin air will not properly address the issue of revenue sharing.”

Wasn’t it Rep. Bachman who claimed that 70% of food stamps funds goes to “salaries and pensions for the bureaucrats” when it is actually less than 5%?

And then her claim was rebroadcast by several Fox news commentators?

But despite the black and white nature of so many issues, today, “A quick and thoroughly unscientific survey tells me that the public right now is not that hungry for a political showdown,” Gaitho concludes.

As do I.

Especially when a new mideast war is right around the corner.

So “we are inured to betrayal, in fact we welcome it and revel in it going by the type of leaders we subject ourselves to.”

It’s a worldwide disease: voting against our self-interest then complaining with the result, either because we’ve been duped or we’re just too exhausted to figure it all out.

The comments to Gaitho’s analysis were charged. Many deduced from what he wrote that the problem was the ethnicity of Kenyan voters. (I’d make a parallel with the “ideology” of American voters.) In KenyaSpeak, today, it’s call the “tyranny of numbers.”

Kazora commented that the “Tyranny of numbers only works against poorly prepared candidates relying on court poets and jesters to bring in the numbers.”

Mkenyamoja13 summarized them all:
“Tyranny of numbers is another name for democracy. If you do not want tyranny of numbers, stop electing leaders.”

That’s the answer. Stop electing.

Black Holes Widening

Black Holes Widening

blackHoleEight-year olds – lots of them – are dying agonizing deaths in Tanzania as the government and world turn a blind eye to child gold-mining.

This morning Human Rights Watch issued its long anticipated report on child mining in Tanzania.

Not that we didn’t know there were “thousands” of children involved, that the Tanzanian government has consistently denied a problem, or that unacceptable levels of toxic wastes equal to biochemical weaponry cause the most grief.

I wrote myself about this less than two weeks ago.

I guess we just needed this respectable report to figure out what to do. So what do we do, now, we who are not Tanzanians but love Tanzania no less than children anywhere … what can we do?

Start a petition? Contact your tone-deaf congressmen? Divest yourself of multinationals in Tanzanian mining (see below)? Increase your black-hole tithing? Support NGOs working for better alternatives?

Or own up to the reality that nothing will stop this defamation of humanity except serious redistribution of wealth.

My reading of the 96-page report is a horrifying recognition that the increasing gap between rich and poor is the real cause of this calamity.

How the hell can you stop a child who is almost always sick with a cold and diarrhea who knows that a pill she can buy for a quarter will make her feel better, from sticking her hands into a plate of liquid mercury, when she knows that there’s a chance of 1 in 6 of pulling out $10?

She knows the mercury is bad. She knows that doing this enough times will make her unendingly sick. But she’s sick, now! She wants to get better!

What on earth will you tell a kid who has no father, whose mother is a prostitute for wealthier miners, who at best eats one meal of porridge a day?

Most of the child laborers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they used their earnings “for basic necessities such as food, rent, clothes, and school supplies such as exercise books, pens, and uniforms.”

The incredible horror stories in the report of children getting sick from chemicals and hard labor were compounded by many documented cases of sexual abuse, blackmailing and outright physical abuse including murder.

Tanzania has laws on the books against all of this. But … few Tanzanian laws of any kind are regularly enforced: Tanzania is a lawless land where social order is sewn together by bribes and sometimes the goodness of local officials.

Tanzania is now the 4th largest gold producer in the world. The $2.1 billion dollars earned annually contributes 3-5% to the entire GDP of the country.

Ninety percent of this is from large-scale, big-machine, high-tech commercial mining. Roughly three-quarters of the commercial mining in Tanzania is controlled by African Barrick Gold (ABG), a UK held multinational; and AngloGold Ashanti, a South African company. The remaining quarter to a third is held by smaller multinationals, the largest of which are the Australian mining company, Resolute Mining Limited, and the German Currie Rose Resources Inc.

Ten percent, though, comes from this off-the-books, theoretically illegal artisanal mining involving the children.

The artisanal mining is usually pursued on the periphery of the commercial mining in areas the big machines just haven’t gotten to yet, or in areas that the multinationals have determined isn’t rich enough for their interest.

Most of it is surface or near-surface mining, and that’s what lends itself to individual prospectors.

Like mining throughout the ages, there is little guarantee of striking it rich by anybody, but the allure is what keeps the miners going. But in Tanzania, “striking it rich” is phenomenally greater than it is for an Alaskan miner, today; or even those involved in the great western gold rush a century ago.

In Tanzania, a child who finds a gram of gold will be able to sell it, once processed through the toxic mercury process in his pan, for more than $40. In many of the regions in Tanzania where this now occurs, that’s enough to keep a family of five alive, well fed for a month, with some left over for used clothing.

When a child strikes out in the mines, there’s other horrific work. HRW documented children as young as ten earning up to $3 for crushing a pile of rocks, $1.23 for mixing the mercury and gold for another prospector, all of which compounded could earn a kid more than $12/day.

That is roughly what a well groomed doorman, janitor or telephone operator in a safari lodge in Tanzania makes.

The story created here is of a society struggling to be simply clean, healthy and not hungry, putting their lives on the line starting as children, day after day, to reach a goal – a level of existence – in economic terms that is around one one-hundred-thousandth (.001%) of the average earnings ($90,000 annually) of workers for African Barrick Gold living the U.K.

Or one-ten-thousandth (.01%) of the average cost of a gold bracelot. Or should I go down a bit? Do you have any gold earrings? OK. Maybe one-tenth percent of the average cost of your gold earrings? So a thousand chilren work-days in Tanzania equals your gold earrings?

That gap is the problem. Tanzania should be getting a much larger proportion of its gold wealth, and the citizens and children of Tanzanian should be getting a much, much larger proportion of the money its own government earns.

But we know that gap is not getting smaller; it’s getting bigger and bigger as the years drip by. And the children get less and less and sicker and sicker.

Was slavery better?

miningprocess

Necessity is the Mother of What?

Necessity is the Mother of What?

LaborDayClearanceIn places like Africa inventors’ goals are often limited by poverty, but the outcomes may actually be more beneficial!

Perhaps the most complicated involvement that a client of mine preparing for safari must undertake is organizing their air arrangements, their travel.

The complexity grows every day. The plethora of mileage awards and the credit cards which are their principal fuel is confounding. The goal to obtain a “free ticket” has exceeded the ludicrous and become simply debilitating.

So why not build your own aircraft?

Onesmus Mwangi lives not far from Nairobi and works as a farm worker who earned $25/month until his boss learned of his fame recently and increased his monthly pay to $30.

Because his lodging and food is added to his compensation he was able to use almost all his earnings to fly away … or at least try to. So he built a helicopter for $570.

Mwangi’s “invention” unfortunately won’t travel far.

“I attempted to fly the chopper last week but it refused,” Mwangi said.
helicopter
But lots of people are traveling to Mwangi to see the thing. Travel has been produced to be sure.

“Lots of people,” Mwangi says come to see his dream, revving up their own.

The inventor is a primary school dropout. But the point, he says, is that he doesn’t want to learn reading, writing and arithmetic, which he’s mastered. He wants to learn calculus and metallurgy:

“If the government can educate me in engineering, I can come up with more innovations like a fast moving ship and more cohesive chopper than this one. Professionals should see whether they can improve on it.”

Among recent visitors was the governor of Mwangi’s state. Assistance has been promised!

Meet John Pohosoko who lives in Pilanesberg, South Africa. Bikes are used extensively throughout South Africa for obvious reasons, the most important one is that you don’t have to pump gas into them.

But so many bikes on so many streets with so many cars earns South Africa the questionable distinction of an extremely high bicycle accident rate.

John has the solution, a bike that is wrapped with discarded signs.

Designed to warn people of his coming, it’s becoming more and more difficult for John to go anywhere at all because of the weight of his bike. So he’s safe, now!

And then there’s this anonymous creation undoubtedly unclaimed because it gets such terrific mileage!

Yes, in a perfect world Mwangi would learn how to build a rocket ship, and John would have highways with safe bike lanes and anon would actually have a driver.

But in the world of Africa where you make-do, splendid outcomes still occur!
wrappedbike
(Thanks to the site, AfriGadget for first publishing these stunning creations!)

As Africa Sees The Dream

As Africa Sees The Dream

AsAfricaSeesTheDream“Tens of thousands” gathered in Washington, a fraction of the original march fifty years ago. In Africa it was hardly noticed. Why only a sputter, now?

The answer may be the same in Africa as here at home. National spirits have been whipped to death by the Great Global Recession and the Right’s successful control of its recovery.

King’s Legacy when compared to the struggles in Africa seems unfulfilled if now not outright desperate.

Obama’s first election in 2008 was a time when Martin Luther King was evoked almost daily in the African press. Even before Obama’s election, Africans began constructing King’s legacy as leading directly to Obama’s accession:

Kenyan scholar, Jerry Okungu writing on the 40th anniversary of King’s death as Obama’s elections were being excitedly anticipated, called King “first among equals” in civil rights movements for “Americans and indeed the world.

“Many Africans at the time got inspiration from King’s movement as freedom fighters in Africa,” Okungu continued.

But today?

Almost nothing. As Obama has seemed to sputter out, so has the King Legacy:

The more important fiftieth anniversary is being reported and analyzed only as republications of global news services reports.

Searches I made in major newspapers and journals throughout sub-Saharan Africa turned up little to nothing.

Only the Times of South Africa (Live edition) and South Africa’s main television network carried more than a single story.

But those two outlets do provide some explanation for the weak interest throughout Africa:

“Despite big gains politically and in education,” Times Live reports, “far more needs to be done to achieve the colour-blind society that King envisioned.”

In the second filing, Times Live explains that one of the great accomplishments of the 1963 March was the Voting Rights Act, and now, “The future of that law has been called into question [by] the US Supreme Court.”

That same story continues, “[Black American’s] 12.6% seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in July was double the national figure.”

South Africa’s state-owned and largest television network had a correspondent at the rally, and she reported, “Social and economic gaps between whites and African-Americans have only widened over the last five decades.”

She ended her single story filing: “nowhere is [the] commemoration felt more accurately than in Washington DC itself which is still a deeply segregated city.”

South Africa, in particular, is not even a generation from its significant revolution that ended apartheid and created a fabulous new constitution for the modern age.

America is seen as dragging its feet as it bumbles its way socially into the modern age. I don’t think there’s any disrespect at all for Dr. King, quite to the contrary.

But when seen through African eyes – particularly South African – the story of Martin Luther King, Jr., is one at best a tragically unfinished and stretched out story. One, in fact, that is being rolled backwards, not forwards.

Africans are extremely polite and remarkably restrained especially when it comes to criticizing good will that’s just not working.

That, in my opinion, is how enlightened Africans saw this weekend’s march. “A dream is a wish your heart makes” but that the body America can’t quite accomplish.

Just Give, Damnit!

Just Give, Damnit!

googlesearchfoodSometimes, a week can’t end better: a long-held belief, a life-long mission, an endless struggle to prove the obvious … it just all comes, together. And so it did, today, for me:

GiveDirectly proves in real time in Kenya why charity is usually so bad. (Thanks to NPR’s Morning Edition for finding this one.)

Every time I criticize charity I have to quickly qualify the remark as a vital generalization that, of course, has exceptions. And then equally quickly, however, I have to point out how few exceptions there are.

My experience with charity has been mostly in East Africa, where for much of my life I fostered lots of it. When I was younger I was flattered, chagrined, grateful and often very proud of the projects that I created and which were generously funded by lots of organizations, especially Rotary International.

But as I got even older and looked back, I realized how bad most charity is, including I dare say, my own.

I came full circle, so to speak:

Long before I had the experience or equity to muster anybody to do anything, several of my first jobs were with international organizations in Paris, including the OECD and UNESCO.

Barely into my third decade of life, I was no analyst. I began as a typist, but over my two years I was given more responsibilities, and above all I had the remarkable opportunity of (not just typing the words of) but meeting people like Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget.

These were the pioneer thinkers in world development, and from my point of view, they remain so, today. Their positions never changed. Mine have.

What I learned and discounted all too quickly back then was that to help the world, you had to first study Galileo.

You had to understand how big the world was, and how infinitesimally small any individual is.

That was a hard lesson for a young American in the early 1970s, particularly one who felt empowered by helping in a small but real way to end the Vietnam War.

And while the roster of thinkers in Paris at that time was overwhelming and diverse, I’d take a stab at summarizing an area of common ground: only governments can affect anything good and meaningful for societies to develop in the modern age.

Only governments. Not Rotary, or your church or your favorite foundation, or Toys for Tots. This doesn’t mean participation in those efforts is meaningless – not at all. The valuable fruit from the efforts of this type of charity is the possibility of creating a range of expertise.

(Theoretically, by the way, governments could also create this expertise if they had the latitude and unchecked funds to do so. But they don’t. In my radical older age I believe they should, and will, someday. But not yet.)

But that qualification which defines what private charity is capable of doing, creating expertise, means that most charities don’t.

The mission of most charities is not to learn from what they do, but to teach what they know. And that’s when they become destructive.

To summarize a myriad of thoughts and ideas on this, suffice it to explain that most charity work contributes to a culture of dependency. It becomes self-perpetuating in a most terrible way.

And this isn’t because the will or spirit isn’t there to do otherwise. It’s simply that you can’t engineer today’s modern society with toothpicks. It requires giant cranes and tunnel blasters and gargantuan staffs of people. You can’t build a skyscraper with a class of high schoolers.

And even the most affluent of us, even the Bill Gates of the world, aren’t big enough.

I’ve elaborated on this in particular, recently, as we learned about awesome breakthroughs in preventing malaria, a cause celebre for the Gates Foundation. But these breakthroughs have all come from government institutions, not private organizations like the Gates.

The perfect charity for an individual is thus:

Moved by the moral unacceptability of homelessness, a high schooler from the Brooklyn Heights takes the subway to South Bronx and helps Habitat for Humanity build a house for someone. She works her tail off, and at the end of the weekend feels pretty good as she stands back and looks at the new abode. She then walks back to the subway past hundreds of homeless and realizes how pitiful her effort was. She then votes progressive and dedicates much of her new free time to human rights organizations lobbying government for more subsidized housing.

That’s not the story of most donors.

Most givers are motivated if not principally at least significantly by the belief that no one knows better than themself and their small community how to help others.

This egocentric-mania leads to decrying government as a bad idea, since government is the ultimate reverse of egocentrism, the “we”. I suppose it’s based on the mythical American dream, that fantasy created by super American optimism that chooses to remember only the good at the expense of recognizing the bad.

The world is far too complicated for any single one or small group of us, or even wisely led foundation for us, to develop must less manage. If we are moral people, we must allow ourselves to be subsumed by the society we define.

We must trust government even as we work tirelessly to make it good.

That calls for an extraordinary effort, life long. And the beautiful antithesis of that is GiveDirectly, as simple as its website. You don’t have to click around very much, and you don’t have to think about a damn thing.

Just give.

Frack in The Karoo

Frack in The Karoo

karoofrackAt a private party last night in my remote woody knoll in the Upper Midwest, I listened with fascination to an entrepreneurial engineer describe several devices that could create cheaper, quicker fertilizer for farmers, then totally separately, medical devices of the R2D2 kind.

Recently, the South African government strongly affirmed a controversial decision made last year that seriously impacts the potential for my friend’s successes.

Fracking must go on, the South African government declared, despite increasing opposition by environmental groups.

My friend’s inventions like thousands of others worldwide attracts investors motivated almost entirely by their presumptions of future energy costs.

There are scores of new inventions presuming much higher energy costs, like my friend’s microwave device to produce fertilizer.

But as with many biofuel processes, it’s only efficient if the costs of production are lower than traditional processes associated with increasing energy costs.

Today’s low-cost traditional energy seems to come from fracking, and the strengthened South African policy is an important global incentive for governments worldwide to pursue friendly fracking policies.

“South Africa has very strong environmental legislation and a very strong environmental provision in our constitution,” explains one of South Africa’s most prominent environmentalists, Jonathan Deal.

“Were South Africa to fall to shale gas mining, I believe that it would be a strategic blow to those opposing shale gas mining globally. It’s got the potential to be a strategic domino in a series of dominos.”

And last night I listened to this passionate inventor, who also considers himself an environmentalist, concede that the chance for his inventions to become reality could be linked to fracking successes.

The glut of natural gas fracking is producing has so lowered the cost of traditional fertilizer manufacturing that his models are now stressed. The chances of attracting investment – at least in the immediate term – are now diminished because of fracking.

Last year the South African government lifted a year-long moratorium on fracking, and the issue as in the U.S. is now headed to the courts.

Few on either side dispute the facts. Fracking is a particularly intrusive environmental mining technique that often pollutes ground water, the most immediate hazard that can shake public support.

As in the U.S. and elsewhere in the western world, governments’ replies attempt to assure the public that the situation will be diligently monitored, and fracking will be suspended if pollution is detected.

Governments are widely supported by government-subsidized science, including the U.S.’s widely cited EPA study that essentially gave a green light to fracking.

Of the entire developed world, only France has banned fracking. But that is likely because 80% of France’s energy comes from nuclear power plants.

Everything, today, is inextricably linked. My friend’s microwave invention for fertilizer, to neighbor’s solar panels, to Chinese employment of solar factories, to the safety of the water I drink.

Moreover, I think if the beneficiaries of our energy debates were truly public, and not measured as the profits of BP-Shell, the debates would be quicker and more accurate. I really see that as a major part of our energy dither, the inability to extract private enterprise from public good.

I’m no scientist, but ever since I met and lived with my wife in Paris, I’ve liked the French: Nuclear is the way to go.

That would empower not only South Africa, which already has nuclear energy, but my friends’ inventions as well.

But I haven’t yet passed this by my Japanese friends.

Blame Reigns

Blame Reigns

EscapeFromKenyaConfusion, (global) stupidity and pure intrigue surround three U.S. medical students who just escaped from a hotel in western Kenya that had imprisoned them. Where are they, now?

Logan Key, Brooke Weiser and Ilya Frid, students on a work-study project with the questionably reliable Medics to Africa program, had been locked inside the little Gilly Hotel in Migori, Kenya.

Kenya media reported that the kids refused to pay a hotel bill when presented to them at checkout. They told the hotel manager that they had paid Medics to Africa before coming to Kenya for all the services they had used, including the hotel accommodations.

So the hotel manager … locked them up!

The weekend brouhaha made national Kenyan news and prompted local police in western Kenya to arrest the Kenyan agent who had booked the kids’ program.

But – absolutely remarkably – the police refused to free the kids from the hotel!

It’s unbelievable. Client/hotel disputes are not uncommon throughout the world, and particularly when a middleman or agent is involved. I can’t remember, though, a single case where the dispute involved locking up the patrons.

Then, this morning NewsKenya reported that the students had escaped! Much of their luggage had been left behind in their room, and the news source reported that they had escaped over a fence while guards slept.

Normally, documentation presented by the client showing that payment has been made is sufficient for the hotel to send them off with a smile. The hotel may know from the getgo that they haven’t been paid, but the risk of bad PR from abroad is too compelling for them to start a fight.

The hotel is essentially accepting blame for having itself made a bad decision: extending credit to the agent that was supposed to pay.

Dozens of times I’ve been hired as a consultant by African tour companies to collect these bad debts from intermediaries. I’d say my success rate has been less than 20%, and then only after some serious negotiations that recovers far less than half that’s due.

And I’ve always approached these jobs with full disclosure of such, berating the African companies from the beginning for extending credit to questionable agents. And then continuing to extend credit when the account falls into arrears.

That’s the main problem. I remember, in fact, tracking down an Ohio zoo group at Ngorongoro Crater and telling them that the vehicles they were using wouldn’t continue on if my client, an African tour company, weren’t immediately paid.

Of course, I was bluffing somewhat, but I was furious. And we gathered enough credit cards that I managed to recover about 30% of what was due.

I was furious at everyone, as I am with this story. Of course I was furious with the zoo officials who had not completed due diligence with their American operator (the real culprit who had collected the individuals’ money and bagged it away), but I was equally furious with my African client for having driven them out of Arusha to Ngorongoro without having been paid!

I can’t stand incompetence, but I explode at fraud. And I go bonkers at abject stupidity.

In this case it’s so clear what happened: Medics to Africa, despite one of the kids claiming to the Kenyan media that it was recommended by the American Embassy, which is not true, is not a reputable company.

The owner is currently in jail for having absconded with a far greater amount of money than these three kids’ hotel bill. When you drill down beneath the so-called testimonials shown on its brilliant website, and make all but a few calls to Kenya, you’ll discover that the man is a crook and known to be throughout the community of Migori.

The naivete of believing a website is absolutely incredible.

But the owner of the Gilly Hotel is equally incredible. Under Kenyan law, he is kidnaping. Under Kenyan law, if he felt the kids were ripping him off, he could get an arrest warrant from the local police.

But wait! In this case, even that would be going too far. The hotel owner claims that Medics to Africa had a huge unpaid bill. So why did he even check the kids in without getting at least their payment? He could have refused accommodation when they tried to check-in… that would have been legal.

But wait, wait! Why did the police not free the kids?

My goodness, this story is incomplete, and I’ll try to run it down for you as the ending unfolds. Meanwhile, help these naive kids learn their lesson.

Be careful when you travel. Just like your third grader, crooks know how to make pretty websites, too.

Code 8 To The Rescue!

Code 8 To The Rescue!

TeamCode8Risking at least irony four male university students in Kampala just won the inaugural Women’s Empowerment Award in St. Petersburg for an innovative device to easily and rapidly detect malaria.

Any notion that’s it more than ironic is lost immediately when you realize that pregnant mothers in Africa harbor a greater fear of having malaria than any other group.

This is not only because malaria can quickly end a pregnancy but because the treatment can harm the fetus and in cases where the mother is less than perfectly healthy, cause miscarriage.

The four Makere university students engineered the device which is plugged into a smartphone, and created the app software that analyzes it.

The best test for malaria is a blood test. But the test will often come back negative when in fact the patient has malaria. What? This is because the best symptom of malaria is altered red blood cells, which explode in the body during a malaria attack but then are methodically excreted. A malaria attack rarely lasts longer than an hour, but the interval before the next attack can be as long as twelve hours.

So by the time the patient gets to the clinic and waits for her test, her symptoms may have subsided. And since reading the microscopic results of a swab is a human endeavor, mistakes happen and more often when the sensitivity of a pregnant mother is considered.

My wife suffered the same incorrect diagnosis here in the U.S. after returning from a safari and contracting malaria.

We called our doctor while she was having the attack; we knew it was malaria. But by the time she felt good enough to get in the car (after the attack subsides), travel to the hospital, wait for the test, 3-4 hours had transpired and the diagnosis she received was negative.

(Aggressive protestations sufficed for us to get the right therapy, and she was cured, and a subsequent visit with a test closer to a subsequent attack before the medication began to take hold proved we were correct: she had malaria.)

The four Uganda computer science students created a simple red-light device which they call a “matiscope.” Similar, in fact, to the types of devices that read fingerprints, the red light sensor detects red blood cells without any skin piercing.

Blood cells ooze to the surface of the skin normally all the time, but are so few they aren’t noticeable. And the skin itself is porous. The light penetrates several micro layers reaching even more red blood cells.

The sensor detects a blood cell altered by a malaria attack instantly.

The four students were guests of Microsoft for the company’s annual “Imagine Cup” competition for students, this year held in St. Petersburg. While there they won the inaugural Women’s Empowerment Award organized by an UN agency.

Brian Gitta, Joshua Businge, Simon Lubambo and Josiah Kavuma call themselves “Team Code 8″ after laboring through eight different computer code designs before hitting on the one that worked.

Team leader, Gitta, told an audience he was motivated to invent the device because of his “fear of needles” and being “pricked to death” as a child who constantly contracted malaria.

But, in fact, simply reducing the time between the attack and detection is the genius of the invention. And Team Code 8’s matiscope and the software they developed to detect the altered red blood cells isn’t sophisticated enough yet to determine the specific type of malaria (there are four types) or exactly how bad the infection is, often necessary for determining proper treatment.

So it’s a first but very important step, and for millions of people who might be infected, it might be all that’s needed. Normally otherwise healthy adults who contract malaria can be prescribed rather standard levels of medication to wipe it out, without knowing specifically the malaria type or level of infection.

What it means for pregnant mothers, though, is that the doctors have to hospitalize the mother and make sure that the blood test is taken immediately as the next attack begins.

The practicality of the device, though, allows for self diagnoses very much as similar devices are being manufactured today for pregnancy and HIV AIDS.

The app for the smartphone, of course, is cheap. But right now the plug-in device is fairly cost prohibitive for most individual rural Africans, but could prove cost beneficial for remote health clinics, companies and institutions which provide on-site medical care, and of course, hospitals.

But the Team is contacting entrepreneurs around the world who with mass production could greatly reduce the cost.

Leave it to the kids, eh?

Memory Track

Memory Track

MemoryTrackSafari travelers thirty years ago paid only a little bit less for air fare but only about a fifth as much for their safari!

Recently my good friend, the Cleveland Zoo Director Emeritus, Steve Taylor, sent me a copy of the brochure for the safari that my company, EWT, operated for him when he was director of the Sacramento Zoo thirty years ago!

The 15-day Kenyan safari roundtrip Sacramento in July, 1984, cost $2935 per person and from what I can tell there was no supplement for traveling as a single. Back then people were afraid to travel as singles! I remember that one of the services our zoos and other not-for-profit associations provided was teaming up single bookings.

The itinerary was similiar to what a 15-day land program would do, today, although today the average time travelers take on safaris is only 11 days.

And back then there was no flying … it was all driving. And the driving wasn’t so bad, really, because the roads were OK and the traffic was minimal.

Today, travel for example between the Mara and Nairobi is more often by air than road.

To book the safari you had to make a deposit of $300, about the same percentage as you would today. But the deposit was refundable! For this program, which began on July 10, 1984, you could cancel up to May 12 for only a $35 penalty!

Holy Smokes! That would kill us tour companies, today! For one thing back then we held the deposit in the U.S. We rarely paid our African vendors until shortly before arrival, and sometimes not even then. As our reputations grew more reliable, we would be invoiced after the trip for the costs.

So we could extend that refundability advantage to our customers. Today most safari vendors in Africa require up-front payments which are nonrefundable.

1984 was a critical year, as I remember. It was the year that airline deregulation started to be implemented, so when airlines began to become more competitive. But it hadn’t translated into prices, yet. That wouldn’t happen until around 1986 when prices began to drop steeply.

And as those of you who regularly read me, I don’t think that was a good thing. As Steve and many other veteran travelers will tell you, airline travel back then was a dream. Bigger seats, easy check-in, all the luggage you could muster, fantastic attendants, excellent food and wine … not today.

So airline services are reduced so much, today, that they’re almost intolerable … but the price is the same. Safari services, on the other hand, have grown better and better … and it costs you five times as much.

There are, in fact, still some downmarket tented camps that look like the best we had in 1984, but their prices are about twice as much as what we paid for the only (and then, best) accommodation in 1984. And the best accommodation is astronomically higher today than then.

Because .. not only does everyone have flush toilets, today, but in the better camps both an indoor and outdoor shower. Hot water is available 24 hours, not just a few hours during the day. Tents are giant size compared to before, with beautiful furniture and rugs and wonderful, massive beds. There’s electricity! Not just kerosene lanterns. And the food today at the better camps rivals any good restaurant in a big American city. Quite different from our beans and rice and occasional stick of boiled chicken of days gone bye.

And the animals? Well, actually, there are more of them today than in 1984 with the notable exceptions of the lion and a group of smaller animals like duikers that have been sacrificed to the felling of so many forests. But all the animals that thrive on the plains are in greater numbers today, than in 1984.

Which I’ve often written about poses one of the greatest challenges to East African development. If you’re a student or venture capitalist in Nairobi, you don’t want a lion disrupting your morning commute or an elephant traipsing through your garden, and if you’re a farmer – believe me – you’re not going to like tourism.
84JulSMFzoosafari001
But there were definitely things back thirty years that made a safari more wonderful than today: the many fewer vehicles, to begin with. Friendly and safe “little” Nairobi and Mombasa. “Safe” and “secure” weren’t even terms we applied to anything other than wild animals.

And call it nostalgia if you will, but the “wildness” of those endless plains thirty years ago was a thrill hard to recreate, today. At least in the same way. No cell phones. No internet. No Flying Doctors. No way of “checking in” back home meant that you were really stepping onto a landscape where no one but your fellow travelers would know where you were.

And people were willing and anxious to do that back then. Today the safari traveler is infinitely more cautious and I think less inspired by the potential differentness of Africa to alternate vacation spots. It’s one of the reasons prices have gone through the roof even while the average income of a middle class traveler hasn’t.

The ecologically correct shampoo, feather bed and pillows, well delivered ginger snaps with early morning tea and of course a charging station for your smartphone are now essentials.

Times have changed.

Must Be Something Better

Must Be Something Better

APTOPIX Mideast EgyptThe western world is in denial about Egypt as pundits and politicians alike desperately try to boost the failing image of democracy. It’s time to throw in the towel.

President Obama’s remarks this morning fall short of what I, the New York Times and Washington Post among hordes of others believe should be done: cut off aid. We all hope Obama’s dances of concession and moderation work better with Egypt than with Congress.

Remarkably, the facts are pretty well understood by everyone. Politico has summarized them best.

(1) The Arab Awakening was mostly brave, progressive movements started by intellectuals who believed authoritarian regimes (which had essentially nurtured their own development) were no longer needed and were, in fact, inhibiting better economic growth and social progress.

(2) The success of the Egyptian awakening enfranchised millions previously suppressed.

(3) A truly democratic election in Egypt brought extremists to power. The Egyptian election removed power from secularists and gave it to non-secularists.

(4) Almost a year into the new regime and the original revolutionaries began to experience similar repression to what those now in power had experienced for decades previously.

(5) The original revolutionaries demonstrated through really remarkably large peaceful protests that they wanted to replace the current regime.

(6) The Egyptian Army, equally educated, privileged and intellectualized as the original revolutionaries, agreed and staged a coup.

Democracy by the ballot died in Egypt.

Today is cleanup of hundreds killed and thousands more hurt. Tomorrow, prayer day, could be worse.

So … if the ballot box doesn’t work, use guns? The Egyptian army has a lot more guns than any other faction in Egypt, so ergo, the Egyptian army runs the country.

What if the Egyptian army supported the salafists? Like the Iranian army supports the ayatollahs? Would this globalize the situation sufficiently, so that someone with more guns, like NATO, could prevail?

What is an acceptable justification for undoing the workings of democracy? Promotion of “Human Rights”?

Yes, but who defines these rights? Who determines the limits of eminent domain, conscription, voter registration, and all sorts of other civic responsibilities?

What we are being forced to understand is that there is no such practical thing as democracy. Africa – Egypt in particular – has revealed that to the world.

A wonderfully thoughtful Lebanese explains it best:

Democracy is a goal that will never be attained. Eyad Abu Shakra explains that the times “requires us to be both realistic and honest.”

“Honest” that we don’t care the regime came to power legitmately; it must be replaced. “Realistic” that democracy caused this mess in the first place.

His understandings of so-called democracy will shake western politicians to their core, and so they should: There’s no quick trick to best government and democracy is no better a way than communism or authoritarianism. There’s much fallacious in the concept of democracy:

“History is rife with examples of authoritarian regimes that … came to government through the ballot box. In the U.S., four presidents have been able to enter the White House despite securing less overall votes than their electoral opponents.”

No society – not even the U.S. – operates anything near real democracy. While illiteracy undermines most democratic initiatives in Africa, money does in the U.S.

Shakra believes the Egyptian example is the best example in history to prove how bad democracy can be. In the first round of elections Morsi received less than a quarter of the votes. But by the rules of democracy he was cast in a second round contest with an opponent equally unpopular.

It was an election for most Egyptians of “the lesser of two evils.”

How often have we heard that? Does that kind of situation lead to best government? Of course not. Does it at least give us adequate government? Apparently not in Egypt.

Or throughout the entire Levant, according to Shakra, which “is inclined to intolerance, extremism, exclusion, and trading accusations of apostasy.”

Shakra fails, though, when he cites “true democracy” (which I don’t believe possible), “as incompatible with extremism” which is perhaps true enough.

It’s all summed up, Shakra explains, with Winston Churchill’s witticism:

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

Great. Democracy isn’t very good.

Now, what? Might democracy itself be the “lesser of other evil” forms of government? Not in Egypt. Or in Russia. Or in a superpower that devastated the Middle East with a ten-year war, powered by the democratic convictions of its population and leaders that there were WMD.

There must be something better.

Rest in Chaos

Rest in Chaos

stabilityKeita’s victory in Mali, the dozen high-profile arrests for corruption in Ethiopia, Mugabe’s final reign – all African news of yesterday, and much more suggests a return to the past.

I’ve always believed that economy drives politics worldwide. Since America is the largest and most modern economy, what happens here is now mirrored in some fashion every where else in the world.

In America the response to the economic catastrophe was Barack Obama. I’m not out of sync, here. Obama’s ascendency began well before Lehman Brothers, but looking back I’m convinced that his message of “great change” was a prescient notice of imminent economic collapse.

Obama’s message from the getgo was for a more transparent government, a rebirthing of the middle class, regauging the tax structure (taxing the rich), pulling seriously back from military adventures, enfranchising many of the forgotten and certainly wrapping this altogether was the inevitable redistribution of wealth to some degree.

There was nothing obvious in any of that at the time to suggest global economic collapse was on the way, but hindsight is striking. Nor am I suggesting Obama – or any of us – knew he would be the first U.S. president to be nominated by his party when the economy was raging hot and inaugurated as president when the economy was in free fall.

But he was. And now it seems all so clear. We call it a bubble, now. And I firmly believe the tension of that stretching bubble is what facilitated Obama to win the elections.

And mired in an economic collapse he never imagined, Obama’s revolution collapsed before it began.

Progressive redress of the old regimes replaced the blame game. (I guess we get more polite with time.) So instead of jailing Timothy Geitner we made him Treasury Secretary and had him lead the charge to reform the banks. Briefly, society moved forward with passage of things like Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank Act.

Then, it came to a thunderous stop. In America it was the 2010 elections. In Africa it was a year or two later. Whether America foreshadowed or produced the end to change in Africa, I’m not sure. But the “Arab Spring” or “Africa Awakening” or “Twevolution” or whatever you want to call it is coming to its own thunderous stop.

Old faces are reemerging as saviors of their own old ways:

Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of the founder of independent Kenya, is now president there. Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, a politician nearly as old as the tombs of Timbuktu, became president of troubled Mali yesterday. Robert Mugabe has been entombed as president of Zimbabwe. General Sissi again runs Egypt.

And in more socialist regimes modeled after China in The Sudan and Ethiopia, the inevitable pogroms have begun, the cleansing of the less than completely loyal.

Read any of the comments in any African newspaper’s OpEd page and you’ll see why:

Peace or chaos. I chose the peace because after all … everyone is tired, history, that we never learn from, has it that we will again sit together for the peace that we now take for granted. By the way, that is why when one dies we say Rest In Peace. Not Rest in Chaos.”

This is all a flashback to the 1980s. It is happening in the U.S. and in Africa for the very simple reason that following the horrible trauma of 2007/2008, we all now want stability.

At any cost. At home and abroad in Africa. Spurts of real progressive moments drowned in economic failures that turn the societal direction back around on itself.

History repeats itself, but does it circle always slightly moving on? Like a ring of waves of a skipping stone?

Or do we just sink in the vortex of the maelstrom?

Hail to the Victor Valient

Hail to the Victor Valient

goodgovtWe’re getting oh so close to both a vaccine and simple cure for malaria! And both the journey and the ultimate victory will confirm that only governments, not charity or private enterprise, are capable of attaining such success.

Last week the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it had successfully completed preliminary trials of PfSPZ, what it still calls an “investigational” malaria vaccine that was found to be “safe, generate an immune system response, and to offer protection against malaria infection in healthy adults.”

The discovery was published in the August 8 journal, Science.

This isn’t quite New York Times front page material just yet, because the study group of 57 adults between 18 and 45 years old was very small and localized, and the vaccine success depends upon large intravenous injections. But the result was 100% protection, which is unheard of in such early trials.

This comes on the heels of the discovery of another drug a few months ago that is a simple preventative and cure, which I wrote about in an earlier blog.

AND that was announced just before Africa’s first-ever drug was discovered to cure malaria by an institute associated with the University of Cape Town: “MMV390048″ is awaiting a common name but is a completely innovative malaria drug attacking the parasite at the blood stage.

The key ingredient in these three major break-through discoveries is … government funding. The latter two breakthroughs had private help (the Switzerland-based Medicines for Malaria, and the Gates Foundation.) But in both cases it’s likely they would have been developed without this private help.

But the most important discovery, the vaccine, is strictly a collaboration of three U.S. government institutions: the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, Md., and the Naval Medical Research Center, Bethesda, Md.

I have grown increasingly skeptical over the years of private charity in Africa, and more widely, in general. There is no question that the battle to defeat malaria has benefited enormously from private charity, and specifically from the Gates Foundation.

Just as there’s been a lot of very good charity in all avenues of life throughout Africa with many successes.

But when push comes to shove not even Bill Gates’ billions is enough. Precisely because billions is not always the answer, but rather as shown by PfSPZ, years and years of expertise and experience from a variety of large government research institutions that work together.

Actually, that’s the key to the key: working together. Well meaning charity groups tend to be provincial and often secretive of their research, and I know this is particularly true of wildlife and conservation groups within Africa.

And it’s intrinsically true of private enterprise: Glaxo Smith Kline is probably the pharmaceutical that has spent the most money on malaria research. In 2009 they announced their best success yet, a vaccine that has proved about 30% effective in babies aged five to 17 months.

That’s nothing compared to the above three break-throughs.

At this point in the malaria battle it’s almost impossible to claim that any one group, including the government, has any total monopoly on research and development:

The battle against malaria has been energetically pursued by private enterprise and charity for my entire life in Africa, and before that and since the earliest development in colonial Africa, by government agencies.

So the body of research and experience regarding malaria is huge and very intermingled. Still, as demonstrated this week by the U.S. government health institutes, ultimately it is only massive and massively interconnected government agencies which can achieve the ultimate breakthrough.

And this is no less true of the battle against malaria than the battle against poverty or illiteracy or any social problem. And what’s more, when private success is achieved, it’s often only after much earlier public involvement.

Breakthrough drugs in general is the perfect example. Most drugs’ history begins in government funded public institutions, like university labs.

The irony, of course, is that Glaxo Smith Kline will likely be the principal commercial benefactor of the U.S. discovered malaria cure, as our archaic system won’t allow the U.S. government to manufacture and distribute the drug (except to our troops and civil servants).

Which, of course, is wrong. The drug would then be cheaper, and any profits could be plowed into something else … like say education or housing, instead of acid reflux disorder.

What we are learning in this fascinating journey towards eradicating malaria isn’t that there might not be a place for personal initiative or enterprise, but that the world is too large, complicated and interconnected today to achieve real social success except when governments work well.

And true, many, many don’t. But when on balance they do, like our own United States of America’s institutes of health, then yes, Virginia, happiness can be achieved.

Remembrance of Things Past

Remembrance of Things Past

rouletteterrorismFifteen years to the day is a coincidence hard to accept. If yesterday’s massive fire in the Nairobi airport was not botched terrorism, it’s time to hit the roulette tables.

Fifteen years ago the nascent global al-Qaeda bombed the American embassy in Nairobi because it was an easy target. Kenya was one of the most open African countries at the time, moving towards an opportunity for real democracy.

“Unlike today, by the end of the 1990s human rights activism was the biggest thing and many African governments with dodgy records were finding themselves diplomatically isolated,” writes Kenyan analyst Charles Onyango-Obobo in today’s Daily Nation.

Obo – like many Africans – believes that changed abruptly and the War on Terror began not with 9/11 but with the American embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam on August 7, 1998.

In Nairobi 212 people killed and an estimated 4,000 wounded. In Dar es Salaam 11 people were killed and about 85 wounded.

I was leaving a late breakfast at the Norfolk Hotel. I had only a few chores left to prepare for a family safari I was guiding that was arriving the next evening from Europe.

Normally back then I was up before dawn swimming in the Norfolk’s pool, then hitting the buffet table as it opened at 630a. But preparations for the safari had gone unexpectedly well. There wasn’t a lot left to do but enjoy the lovely August day in Nairobi.

I had just gotten back into my room, one of the old (since removed) cottages at the edge of the Norfolk gardens when I heard a loud blast. It was 1030a. The sky had been completely clear as is the custom in August; the day fresh and breezes light.

Soon I found myself with many others who had also left their rooms as we gathered in the central garden of the hotel. There wasn’t any serious fear at that time. Likely a gas main exploded or something like that.

The Norfolk is about 2 miles from where the blast took down the American embassy. It was about ten minutes after the single blast, as we were all milling about in the garden speculating on some typical African lack of infrastructure, when the sky seemed to grow pregnant with debris.

A small, child’s size pair of broken glasses fell on my right shoe, then came the bits of torn clothing, and lastly, paper and other lightweight things like flowers or grass. Everyone stood motionless. It was hard immediately to put it all together. The falling debris ended almost as soon as it began.

A few minutes later my trusted Nairobi manager walked unusually fast up to me in the garden. Without any of the normal and very polite morning introductions about how you slept and did you enjoy your breakfast, etc., etc., Peter immediately insisted that a bank building had been blown up by the government that was trying to divert attention from a strike by bankers and teachers that was quickly going national.

It seemed plausible but everyone including us returned to our rooms to turn on CNN. It was hardly 11 a.m. CNN had live pictures from Nairobi, and was reporting that the Dar-es-Salaam embassy had just been blown up as well.

Peter left immediately without saying a word. We had another safari out in the bush. He didn’t need to explain what he had to do. I went to the phone and tried calling home, but the lines were jammed.

My personal driver showed up shortly thereafter. Our lives were now defined by sitting around the TV watching CNN. In those days I had a Grundig short wave, and not even the BBC was reporting as quickly and completely as television’s CNN. Local Nairobi radio stations were doing little more than reporting CNN.

As the extent of the blast was becoming understood, a palpable fear developed among foreigners. It struck me then as now how irrational that is. The event was over, and yet the effective terrorism is so surprising that what people are really reacting to is the immediacy of surprise, and the sense of having to flee to avoid another surprise is overwhelming.

In the lobby my driver, James, and I literally pushed ourselves through guests that were simultaneously trying to checkout, get cabs, contact home and airlines, and get the hell out of dodge.

I thought we were going to James’ rover, but he explained that was pointless since the city was being shut down, so we switched direction and headed down University Avenue directly towards the center city.

Remember that it was still a brilliant, crisp and cool August morning. This is the middle of the long dry season and everything sort of cracks under your feet. Suddenly, I realized that the normal buzz of Nairobi traffic was missing. There were sirens, not many, but the loud chocking diesel trucks and horns of the impatient were dead silent.

University Avenue goes right down the middle of Nairobi University, but most of the students were gone on holiday. Those who remained and many staff were outside milling about aimlessly, looking at James and me I thought suspiciously as we walked faster and faster towards the center city.

And that’s when I finally started to get control of my thoughts, again. What was I doing? Was this just ambulance chasing? Then, of course, I realized James wasn’t at all like that. Older, much wiser than me, he knew we had a responsibility to figure out for ourselves what was happening. We had two families with children scheduled to arrive tomorrow and another 12 people somewhere in Samburu.

But the university students eyed us as weirdos, though I noticed more fear than sarcasm in their staring at us. And then as we reached the end of University Avenue, the smells that had replaced the typical morning noise confirmed that something horrible had happened.

We crossed the normally very busy University Way Avenue as if it were a Sunday morning and continued right onto Muindi-Mbingu street. Normally I would do a little fearful dance from pothole to pothole to skip across this very busy street. Now, only a single tiny car sped just in front of us, then the street was empty.

I looked up and saw the black mushroom cloud. I looked down Muindi-Mbingu street where we were headed and it was empty. How did so many people and cars leave so quickly? We walked right past our office at the corner of University Way and Muindi-Mbingu then down towards the market. There were some people, like the students, lining the street as we passed, standing sort of aimlessly not even looking at the black mushroom cloud.

Outside the normally congested market there was much more activity, but it was also remarkably calm. I realized the people who hadn’t fled the city were now simply waiting for news.

We got as far as Kenyatta Avenue before we were stopped. Here along Nairobi’s main street and promenade were lots of people, certainly not the tens of thousands that would normally be in Nairobi working on a Friday morning, but enough to create several lines of spectators obediently standing quietly behind police lines.

I remember one big policeman facing us, looking incredibly dire but forceful, his eyes locking with mine long enough to make some judgment then moving on to the next person who interested him, his expression never changing.

Unable to move across Kenyatta Avenue, we started to walk down the police lines towards Kimathi Street. Kenyatta had been cleared for emergency vehicles, but of course there weren’t many, so the street was basically empty. It was as if people were waiting for a parade.

At Kimathi the entire street was blocked by official vehicles. We started to cross but a policeman stopped us, and grabbing James’ arm and pulling him out of the crowds around us towards me, I shouted to the policeman, “I’m staying at the Hilton! I need to get to my room!”

The Hilton was hardly five blocks from the embassy and in the dead center of the city. The poor policeman looked worried then let us go. In fact, many people at this juncture were managing “to go.” Non official people seemed to be moving in every which direction. We were inside the police lines and headed to the Hilton and suddenly the streets were crowded.

Hundreds of people flooded into the streets that would normally be congested with cars. As we wove among groups of people standing calmly and silently on the street towards the Hilton I saw how big the black fire cloud was. It looked like something out of a movie. It didn’t seem to move, to blow away or reconfigure. It just hung there.

And the smells were changing. It wasn’t diesel becoming charcoal becoming burnt wood. It was worse. It was petrochemicals like acrid plastic burning, and even worse than that, and I wiped my eyes.

We pushed our way down Kimathi Street, past the New Stanley and across Mama Ngina street purposefully towards the Hilton. We couldn’t get further. The streets were jammed with people, with officials trying to open corridors for emergency vehicles. Outside the front of the Hilton, where many of its own residents had emptied into the street, I heard my first real wailing.

I saw a woman weaving back and forth holding her profusely bleeding head. A bystander perhaps was trying to navigate her out of the crowds, and the crowd opened wide as she and her tender walked towards the hotel. I remember she was wearing a long red dress and had coiffed black hair and I remember particularly that nothing seemed burned or ripped on her.

James had stopped walking and was staring hopelessly at the ground at his feet. People were bumping us helter-skelter. I realized we couldn’t go on. We turned around and tried pushing our way through the hordes towards the Hilton’s front entrance.

With each second the smells got worse. It seemed that something sudden, like a new siren or a child’s scream or someone shouting would always be followed by an interval of silence filled by some awful smell. It was probably mostly rubber and plastic, but it was terrifying to realize it was something much worse, too.

“It is therefore … time to examine how the fight against ‘international terrorism’, which broke out in earnest after those August 7, 1998 bombings, has impacted our societies and politics,” Obo writes 15 years later to the day.

We couldn’t get into the Hilton. There were too many people, and the Headman was Crixus incarnate keeping anyone without a hotel key from getting past him. We slowly maneuvered back Kimathi Street, back up Kenyatta Avenue, back finally to our office where we pow-wowed with Peter.

There were four of us, and we were each entrusted with a certain important message … to the folks on safari, to the folks coming, to my home office in Chicago, and charged with finding some phone somewhere that would work. We all left hurriedly.

Two hours later having each completed our task, we were to meet back at the office, but we couldn’t. We were blocked by Israelis with dogs as they extended the perimeter around the now locked-down city.

But wise James knew an alley the Israelis didn’t, and he motioned me to quickly follow him. We had a brief few minutes inside the perimeter just as night was falling.

I had become more and more worried that the Kenyans would start to blame Americans; that Islamic terrorists, now claiming responsibility for the bombing, would have the support of the local population. I’d said as much to my staff.

But James took me only a few blocks and we peaked out of the alley onto Kigali Road. I stood, speechless, watching the city’s main mosque burn to the ground.

The response from the local population was just the opposite that I had feared: At least for those few hours of August 7, 1998, the prosecution and jury weren’t needed. Kenyans were burning the temple of the Islamists.

As night fell and I was now sequestered inside the Norfolk, which was just outside the perimeter of the city, a bunch of British soldiers marched down University Avenue in front of the hotel. Everyone raced to the bar to watch them in silence.

The sirens ebbed. Night covered the black cloud. The FBI arrived the next morning in stereotypical black suits and narrow black ties and for the life of me I was not going to give up my cottage to one of them: they were late. The Israelis, their dogs and British had it all under control. The men in black suits were tardy, again.

And that night of the day after the bombing I greeted my family safari arriving at the airport. We had of course contacted them in Europe and given them the option of not coming. But they were rational about the whole thing. Lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice.

Or something like that. That was when our phrases about terrorism began. When our tolerance of such massive evil was forced on us. And when we would begin to make many mistakes trying to figure out how to respond.

Obo is right. It wasn’t 9/11 in New York where the War on Terror began. It was August 7, 1998, in Nairobi.

Yesterday was no coincidence.

Nairobi Fire – Is It Terrorism?

Nairobi Fire – Is It Terrorism?

IsNBOfireterrorismIs this terrorism? What should stranded passengers do?

An incredibly massive and fast moving fire destroyed Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta’s international arrivals area early this morning.

Stranded passengers should contact their airline; there’s no alternative. If you’re on the ground in East Africa your ground operator will assist you.

Passengers planning to travel soon to East Africa via Nairobi might consider quickly rebooking to another airport. My best guess is that near normal international traffic into Nairobi will begin in about a week.

Then, from a week to two weeks out, it’s likely some flights will be canceled to reduce the load, it’s likely that some flights will be diverted as they were last night to (first) Mombasa, (second) Kilimanjaro and (third) Entebbe. Nevertheless, your ground operator will easily work around this alteration of arrival.

After 15 days or so, normal traffic will resume, although the airport arrival and departure procedures in Nairobi will likely be delayed. For this reason if you hold a short connecting time connection in Nairobi, consider rebooking now for at least the next several months.

TERRORISM?

There are frightening signs that this is terrorism. First, today is the 15th anniversary of the Nairobi embassy bombing. Second, had the suddenly erupting fire been 2 hours later, the terminals would have been full of arriving passengers.

Jomo Kenyatta Airport is one of the least secure airports in the world. Passengers often notice multiple secure checks, because the individual airlines don’t trust the government personnel, so they follow the normal airport security with their own.

Monday’s short airport closure, we were told, was because of a sudden loss of jet fuel. That’s incredibly suspicious. Major airports do not run out of gas.

If – and this is a very big IF – this is the reason the western world went into lockdown this last week, then we have another example of botched terrorism. That doesn’t mean it’s not scarey, just that if this is the best they can do, thank goodness.

Africa Finally Covered

Africa Finally Covered

telecommunicationbreahthroughWifi and cell phone frustration in Africa is set to ease soon when the gigantic, new Alphasat telecommunications satellite comes on line.

The frustration with broadband in Africa is just an accentuation of broadband frustrations worldwide: reliability. And it’s pretty reliable, really, at least by my own experience in sub-Sahara Africa.

There’s hardly a place on safari where I don’t have cell phone reception. The exceptions are large parts of northern Botswana and much of Uganda, but in total I’m amazed at how extensive the coverage is.

And like the millions of users, I become used to it. So when it goes down, which seems like often and likely isn’t, I’m not prepared. Someone’s waiting for an answer. The blog has to publish. Should-haves smother me in guilt, like why didn’t I confirm the charter flight yesterday instead of waiting to the last minute?

Because, obviously, that’s what instant communication allows us to do: wait until the last minute. We simply discount its reliability as something to worry about.

But, in fact, Africa has been at a disadvantage compared to other parts of the world. There are today 23 communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which means they are dedicated to principally commercial communications. (The number of military and non-private satellites is probably much greater, and they stealthily move all over the place.)

Of those 23, there is a very small one for Egypt, another small one for Nigeria and a European operated one that covers some of Africa. Not much, and it’s the reason all African telecommunications has been developed so far using underwater cable.

Now, that will change with the deployment of Europe’s largest ever telecommunications satellite that will operate with the world’s fastest and most advanced technologies.

Alphasat was launched last month and opened its wings this week. Everything so far has been flawless, and tests are continuing. Deployment onto the commercial world will likely begin next month.

The satellite will be operated by the British telecommunications company, Inmarsat.

Until now the London-based operator’s customers were big broadcasters like the BBC, shipping concerns, oil and gas multinationals, airlines and various militaries. The fact this current satellite will be dedicated mostly to Africa means it will be dedicated mostly to cell phones and internet traffic.

That’s an enormous statement on the economic importance of Africa’s use of the internet and cell phones. Both on a unit basis are trivial in economic terms, and it’s an affirmation that shear quantity of use will produce a viable business.

In fact Alphasat’s technology is among the first that can handle an individual cell’s communication, rather than as massive bundles. This type of capacity requires multiple motherboards, so to speak, each that operate at 22 gigabytes per second. That ought to burn your head.

Like economies in general, a single big communications satellite over Africa, when there are 5 over Israel and 20 over the U.S., doesn’t seem impressive. But for those of us who live in Africa and rely on modern communications, it’s a huge boost.

And it’s kind of nice to note that this grand increase in capacity is for texting irrelevant information about the weather and talking endlessly with your girlfriend, as opposed to aiming a nuclear arsenal at a town in Syria.