Zimbabwe Downdate

Zimbabwe Downdate

mugabefallsRobert Mugabe is like the feral cat that keeps showing up at the bird feeder.

It goes away for long periods of time and then appears daily, for long periods of time. It looks arthritic as it raises itself out of a pool of sunshine on one day, then pounces on a vole a meter away like a young bunny rabbit.

Whenever it acts the back yard trembles. It always catches something, and you can hear the bones crush as it eats the poor thing whole.

Robert Mugabe has been Zimbabwe’s leader for 35 years. For at least 25 of those he’s been an abject dictator. His main prey: white people, but that’s hardly all that fills his larder.

He’s eaten up virtually every living thing that has opposed him. In this power obsession he’s neglected one of the most beautiful and potentially rich countries on the continent.

Last week for the first time I can determine Zimbabwe media universally criticized his “State of the Union” address. He mumbled, fumbled, fell on the way to the podium, then misread his prepared remarks.

Mugabe’s leading mouthpiece media newspaper, for instance, the “New Zimbabwe,” dared to publish recently:

“While his handlers have insisted the Zanu PF leader is as fit as a fiddle, Mugabe’s body posture show a man very much being dragged to events with his body in evident protest as he struggles to walk.

“The veteran leader’s speeches are now slurred and he uncharacteristically says very little outside the prepared texts.”

Many of us have predicted his demise for years using events like this, or times that he’s shown up at the only modern hospital in the world that will take him (Singapore). A few weeks later he’s smiling at another opponent being cut down.

So summer is ending and another year passes with Robert Mugabe as leader of this beleaguered place. Another round of feisty politicians, hopeful politicians, progressive politicians have been swept out of power leaving little to hope for.

(Where do all these volunteer victims come from?)

The result is a politic totally unknown, a power vacuum or free-for-all looming in the wings.

One day this despicable old man will die. The political landscape he has fashioned is scorched, devoid of possibility. The land he has pillaged for four decades is tired and bleached of its nutrients.

I have been saying for years that little will change when the old man goes. It will take years to reignite the spirit of Zimbabwe in the people who remain there.

If any spirit at all is left.

The Lion Returns

The Lion Returns

Tuscany 28Forty years ago today the Lion of Judah disappeared in mystery yet as the fog of time clears, his legacy becomes the legacy of Africa.

When Haile Selassie “disappeared” on August 28, 1974, a new era of democracy and freedom exploded onto the continent. All of us were ecstatically hopeful.

What a mess.

It went not so badly for 10-15 years. I’m inclined to think the culprit is the Cold War. Global politics during the Cold War courted Africa at all costs, creating and magnifying corruption. Then the end of the Cold War triggered an abrupt end to all interest whatever in Africa!

The continent was dropped on its butt from the ivory tower of global democracy.

Fifteen years after the Emperor disappeared Africa was in shambles: wars, disease and pestilence, droughts, and possibly worse of all, increasing poverty.

The Africa Condition reached its nadir towards the end of the 1990s. By the middle of the last decade things were beginning to turn around, and today The Africa Condition is the best it’s ever been in my life time.

What’s happened? The Emperor has returned, and I’m not a Rastafarian.

Haile Selassie was the 77th Solomic emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to his death in 1974, but there were many emperors who preceded his 13th Century dynastic line, all the way back to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon in 3 BC.

Known by the ancients as the Land of Punt, and believed by early Christians to be the hallowed land of Prester John, the country is sealed by formidable geography. It’s the only country in Africa never to have been colonized.

The likelihood that an early Queen actually did visit Jerusalem and bring back with her legions of intellectuals and wise men is a reasonable presumption.

If her visit actually did occur in 3 BC, her initial dynasty kept contact with Jerusalem at least through the birth of Jesus Christ, because around 3 AD Ethiopia had founded much of its strength on a form of Christianity that has been retained to the present day.

But around 3 AD the last hints of openness to the world closed, again. The isolation of the society allowed the early seeds of civilization to blossom unencumbered by the wars that beset the cradle of civilization. Ethiopia grew inwards.

It blossomed with an unusual and rich language; a music with funny scales, chords and progressions; and food and drink totally unique not just to Africa but the entire world.

I very much believe that the principle engine of social change for any society comes from the outside. So while Ethiopia’s impenetrable geography ensured the country was protected from the outside world’s turmoils, it also simultaneously retarded all social development.

Nothing could come into Ethiopia. There was a millennium of peace and no social change. Emperors flourished.

The isolation grew difficult by the beginning of the 1970s. Flush with the youthful energy that ended the Vietnam Conflict and started the Civil Rights movement and fired the new technologies of communication, Addis began to shake.

What followed the Emperor’s disappearance is correctly called the “Red Terror.”

Anger had built for generations. For all practical purposes, it exploded into a horrible and brutal revolution.

We have this weird notion in America that revolution is always good, because our very, very distant past revolution heralded a good era.

Not so in more modern times, even not so in the French revolution which almost immediately followed the American revolution. Revolutions are more typically followed by terrible turmoil.

The revolution and the turmoil that followed the Emperor’s disappearance is coming to an end throughout Africa. From the ashes have emerged a couple truly democratic and free societies as in South Africa and Kenya.

But the majority is not like that: The majority is composed of Rwandas, Egypts and Zimbabwes, ruthless autocratic societies each with its own little emperor.

The Lion of Judah has returned.

Cecil & Swales

Cecil & Swales

bloodyface.lion.dena.435.skew.apr07The killing of Cecil the lion has now been followed by the killing of Swales the guide. Both tragedies are pathetic examples of horrifically poor safari management typical of Zimbabwe. Neither would have happened in Kenya, Tanzania or South Africa.

I haven’t written about Cecil until now, although canned hunting, which was the cause of Cecil’s murder, is a subject I’ve often blogged about.

The 2013 canned hunting scandal with cable start sportsperson Melissa Bachman rattled her employer, National Geographic, so much that they fired her.

Bachman had proudly displayed a lion she had shot on a canned hunt … just like the dentist did with Cecil.

But Bachman was a celebrity. The dentist wasn’t until now, and there are literally hundreds of Americans each year who book canned hunts in southern Africa… and, by the way, in Texas.

A lion almost as famous and certainly as monitored as Cecil, named Nxaha, was responsible last week for killing the Zimbabwean safari guide, Quinn Swales.

The American media jumped on the incident as a way of recounting the interest in Cecil, but the fact is that the two incidents are quite different.

Cecil was a sanctioned, canned hunt. The bluster currently being shown by the Zimbabwean government, going so far as to “demand” the extradition of the dentist back to Zimbabwe to face trial, is absurd.

They did nothing illegal. In fact, hundreds of Americans every year sanction this kind of thing by purchasing it. It was the dentist’s poor experience as a hunter that led to the lengthy tracking of the wounded animal.

In the more recent case it was abject incompetence if not complete stupidity.

Swales was taking a small party on a walking safari, and he is clearly not the one to do so. He recognized the tracks of lion, including cubs. Multiple reports, including from his employer and Zimbabwe parks, confirm that he recognized cub tracks.

You don’t walk towards lion cubs.

But he did, and they saw him.

“We can confirm that Quinn did everything he could to successfully protect his guests and ensure their safety, and that no guests were injured in the incident,” the owners of the camp Swales was associated with said in a statement.

Well, that’s wonderful.

But the event should never have happened in the first place.

Walking safaris are increasingly risky in Africa as human populations engulf wilderness areas and the habitat for big game decreases. I no longer allow my clients to walk in East Africa under any circumstances.

Southern Africa is different, although I wouldn’t recommend that anyone do anything in Zimbabwe, frankly. The country is a mess, conservation is in ruins and its national parks are badly managed.

But in all cases, you do not walk towards lion cubs.

None of the reports indicated how old the cubs were, and that could make a difference. If they were 9 or 10 months or older, then the protective instincts of the parents would have waned. I’m presuming this was not the case. For one thing a 9-month old male cub is about the same size as his mother.

I’m glad none of the tourists were hurt. But their very presence in Zimbabwe is an indication of further incompetence.

Incompetence in the wild is unforgivable. Second chances are very rare.

Pork Pies

Pork Pies

farmsubsidiesPreparing for the first-ever WTO leadership meeting on African soil in December, Kenyans are coming out swinging.

Against western trade deals. Against western “communism.” They have a point.

Developing countries overriding responsibility is to feed their population. Many developing countries, like those in East Africa, have large amounts of agricultural land, relatively modern farming techniques and educated farmers.

Today they are even being supported by better infrastructure for getting their product to market.

They are entirely capable of not only feeding their own population, but growing an agricultural sector through global exports. Tanzania, in fact, has had multiple years in the last two decades of doing just this.

The problem is that their countries are not wealthy enough to subsidize their agricultural sectors while the world’s mega economies, including the U.S. and Europeans, do.

Advantage Big.

“The US … spends billions of dollars every year subsidizing its agricultural sector. These subsidies lead to over-production of commodities and dumping of surpluses on the global markets,” explains Pete Ondeng, director of the “Lead Africa Foundation.

The result is that it’s often cheaper for Africans to import American food than develop an agricultural industry that becomes self-sustainable.

This makes the African countries real economic vassals of the developing world. Its populations eat well when the developing world makes good decisions, but its people starve when the developed world does poorly or ignores them.

It’s also a characteristic of societies managed from the top, not by free markets. It’s a perfect example of communism, and Africans see this as the height of American hypocrisy.

Most of the U.S. disputes over its subsidies to farmers have been with non-African countries like Brazil (for cotton) and India (for meat). Last year, however, the African country of Burkina Faso blasted the U.S. for destroying its cotton industry with the billions of dollars of cotton subsidies paid U.S. farmers in the last decade.

This “buying” of the market would be a federal offense if the dynamic occurred wholly within the United States.

Kenyans believe that the World Trade Organization’s decision to hold its leadership conference in Nairobi this year is a signal that the organization will more aggressively advocate the interests of developing nations.

“The meeting presents a unique opportunity, not just for Kenya, but for all African countries to make their voices heard. Clearly, something new has to happen,” Mr. Ondeng says.

Western pandering to combat poverty in the developing world comes cleanly exposed when trade issues like this are put on the table.

But the political hold that farmers in the developed world hold on their countries’ socialist if not communist policies to artificially prop up their farming is so strong that even the most conservative developed world farmer does not see it as unfair.

I’ve always insisted that charity begins at home.

If westerners are truly interested in combating world poverty, this is where to begin: end agricultural subsidies.

And Crackerjack

And Crackerjack

ugandalittleleagueUgandan little leaguers are representing Africa better than expected in the Little League World Series.

Francis Alemo is the star pitcher, pitching faster and harder than virtually any other pitcher on the playoff roster. “Francis Alemo [is] virtually unhittable,” a sports broadcaster was quoted today on NPR.

The African little leaguers are here thanks mostly to a New Yorker engineer who has diligently worked for more than a decade to bring them up to speed, including raising the funds to educate and train young kids at a sports academy outside Kampala.

Not just boys, either. The Ugandan girls’ softball team played in the world series of softball a few weeks ago in Portland.

It’s been rough, though, getting through U.S. bureaucracy. I wrote several years ago how the U.S. embassy in Kampala refused visas to a 2011 team that qualified for the world series back then.

To a certain extent it’s understandable. Uganda’s political and social situation today is terrible, so terrible EWT will not broker trips there. Many younger Ugandans who get visas to leave the country … never return.

Not all the reporting, though, is as on target as Alemo’s pitching.

My wife and I lived for two years on the border of Uganda in an area of Kenya filled with Uganda’s second largest tribe, the same ethnic group from which Francis Alemo comes.

We lived at a boys boarding school. Among the joys I remember there more than 40 years ago was introducing softball to the school.

I managed to round up bats – most of them broken – from departing Peace Corpers. We had no duct tape back then, but lots of rubber chords, so we strapped most of them together with rubber. Even some of the balls were wrapped with twine.

According to the sports outlet Boston.com writing about the Ugandans competing this week in South Williamsport New Jersey, “Baseball was first brought to Uganda by missionaries in the early 90s.”

Below is my much prized letter of commendation from the Headmaster of the St. Paul’s Amukura Boys Boarding School. The most important paragraph is towards the end, commending me for introducing the boys to softball!
amukuraletter

Politics or People?

Politics or People?

Donald-TrumpYou probably have no idea what an illegal immigrant is.

You’ve heard of course of the hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners and North Africans sailing to Greece to get to Macedonia to get to Serbia to get ultimately and mostly to Germany.

You might even know of a nearly equal number from west and North Africa seeking asylum in France, because they’re native French-speakers.

You’ve probably given a slight ear to news reports about all the political fighting going on right now in Europe and especially Greece and Italy about what to do with the (yes) millions of immigrants who’ve besieged those countries in the last decade.

But do you know anything about these people? These individuals? Whether you want to call them refugees or illegals or desperados or whatever, do you have any idea what these people are really like?

You’d be surprised.

Check this out: an aggressive German journalist is right now traveling with a group of refugees from Aleppo trying to illegally get into Germany. Follow him on Twitter and Periscope by clicking here.

This is real-time journalism and here’s what you’ll find out about these refugees:

1. They’re rich.
2. They’re educated.
3. They’re young.
4. Most are professionals.

And that’s as true for a Libyan or Zimbabwean as a Syrian. There’s an incredible similarity between these fleeing peoples whether they are starving Guatemalans trying to enter the U.S. for a meal, or professionals fleeing bombs from war-torn Libya into France.

If you remove any one of the first three of those characteristics of a typical refugee listed above, they’d never make the journey.

It’s ridiculously expensive for a refugee. Many illegal immigrants from Central America pay upwards of $20,000 to get help sneaking into Texas.

It’s true all over the world.

Only an educated person who can read and speak multiple languages, navigate signs and maps and figure out the necessary deception and convincing to get past authorities has a chance of making it.

It’s strenuous. There’s a lot of walking, bushwacking, sleep deprivation … few but young people are capable of this.

But why professionals? Because in a stressed society, they suffer the most. They’ve made the greatest investment in their lives and are enjoying no return.

Richard Dowden of the Royal African Society has been writing about African refugees for years: “This is not a new problem. It is called globalisation,” he reminds us.

I’ve also written about refugees from northern Africa fleeing to South Africa. See that reference for my profile of Hemadet, shown in the picture above opposite Donald Trump. In fact in that blogpost several years ago I asked, “how soon will there be millions?”

Well, there are right now.

So rethink this refugee, illegal immigrant issue, please! These are not rapists, murders and criminals. A single one of them probably has greater personal character and life accomplishment than the entire bunch of politicians now quibbling over them.

And if borders were thrown wide open and all these people welcomed without question, they’d probably solve all our problems a lot quicker than we’ll ever be able to do ourselves.

In The Pink!

In The Pink!

oldesthandbonePaleontologists have some really new important bones from Olduvai Gorge, and they so perfectly fit into my collection of bones against paleontologists!

Olduvai is one of my favorite places in the world, a bit overrun these days by too many tourists but weathering it all well, and on every Tanzanian safari I lead we visit this magical place.

Few early man sites have been as productive as Olduvai in spite of its depth into prehistory capped by the 3-million year old lava of the super volcano Ngorongoro.

But since it was essentially “the first” real early man site, it’s probably been worked over more carefully than any other early man site in the world. I heard this year that Stanford scientists are testing a process to excavate into lava (have been unable to verify) but until recently at least Olduvai’s discoveries were limited to around 2½ million years ago.

So while the horse race among anthropologists to find the earliest hominin has had to move elsewhere (with great success, by the way), scientists who park themselves at Olduvai must be content with less sexy discoveries.

Like this year’s hand bone.

The “pinkie bone” as named by Discovery News, pushes back even earlier the date for contemporary human traits emerging in the fossil record.

Hands and their fingers are key components of modern humans and our most direct ancestors. Compared to skulls, jaws and teeth, we don’t have a lot of hands and fingers. In fact we have more feet and toes than hands and fingers.

Now this could be utterly coincidental, but I don’t think so. Paleontologists fall into that sexy class of scientists more likely to get on TV than microbiologists, and a good portion of them spend a good portion of their lives cultivating fame.

They are also much nastier to one another than other kinds of scientists but I suppose that’s governed by Nelson as well.

I think one plausible explanation for why we have fewer fossil hands and fingers is because scientists aren’t looking for them as earnestly as for skulls, jaws, teeth, toes and feet.

This is because skulls contain brains which we think are directly related to cognizance (except with Fox News presenters).

Jaws is one of the best markers towards common ancestry with apes. Teeth are marvelously durable and are a treasure box not just of the behavior and life history of the individual who had them, but of the mortality of that person’s race. Toes and feet contribute to understandings of bipedalism, which is generally considered the first indicator of hominin.

Hands and fingers … well, yes, they make tools. But there even seemed to be a greater desire for the discovery of fossil tools than the hands and fingers that had to make them.

Of course fingers especially are fragile things, made up of all sorts of tiny bones that are much less likely to become fossilized. But whether coincidence or subconscious intention, we haven’t had a lot of them.

What this current discovery does is push back to nearly 2 million years a creature with a modern-looking hand.

That’s considerably older than the other creatures whose hands we have found. In fact, it’s such a startling discovery that its scientists are suggesting it may represent still another species of early man.

Alas! My bone with paleontologists!

I’ve contended for some time that there are probably dozens of early men, dozens if not more than dozens of species of early hominin.

Paleontologists, on the other hand, are a bunch of reductionists after the fact.

By that I mean that of course every unique early man fossil found is often initially presented as something entirely new and, dare we suggest so, a new hominin species.

But that doesn’t last long. The overall culture among paleontologists is to reduce the body of evidence into as few different hominin species as possible. That’s understandable since the alternative is so daunting.

But the alternative happens to be right, and this most recent find from one of my most favorite places in the world is pretty irrefutable evidence.

Polio Plus a lot More

Polio Plus a lot More

PolioPlusPolio may have been eliminated from Africa.

Although the context is Africa, this is an uniquely American story. It’s a hero’s tale of misplaced generosity: More than 30 years ago a generous group of American middle class business leaders decided they would eradicate polio.

Last week the Global Polio Eradication (GPE) Initiative announced that it had been one year since any new case of polio had been identified in Africa.

(Qualification: a handful of new cases caused by the vaccine itself persist in Nigeria and Madagascar, but these are not infectious.)

The GPE began in 1988 after a 1985 Rotary Club project inspired when a Rotarian visited the Philippines and was moved by efforts there to eradicate the disease.

Within three years individual Rotarians had donated almost $200 million dollars. (To date they have contributed more than $1.3 billion.)

Reluctantly United Nations organizations joined the effort. I say reluctantly because the science of public health was most developed within the United Nations community, and it was understood by them that “a few years” was not a realistic goal.

The UN and its agencies get beaten to death when they set goals they don’t achieve. But UNESCO (the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) agreed to partner in the effort when convinced by the less political World Health Organization (WHO), which also joined the effort in 1988 after America’s CDC came on board.

But none of these three public health organizations – attracted by the enormous amount of the Rotary contributions – wanted to be the lead organization.

It was understood that if public health organizations’ assessment of the enormous amount of time and money the project really needed were honestly conveyed to Rotarians the project might be abandoned. More puerilely, they might not get use of the funds. So the GPE was formed as an umbrella organization.

I was a Rotarian at the time, and I was extraordinarily humbled by my suburban club’s generosity towards projects I was developing in Africa. So I was roundly criticized as hypocritical and selfish when I opposed the polio campaign.

I knew the goals were unrealistic. Everyone was treating polio as if it were smallpox. The eradication of smallpox worldwide in 1978 (officially announced in 1980) still had enormous resonance in 1985 as a successful worldwide public health initiative.

WHO suggested, designed and led the effort to eradicate smallpox, a decade-long effort that began in 1958. The world – particularly America in 1958 – was considerably more socialistic than it is, today, and the successful eradication of smallpox in the U.S. and Europe inspired wonderful governmental generosity to take this know-how into the undeveloped world.

It was expensive, and it was paid for by increased taxes on westerners.

America’s psyche changed radically in the late 1970s and 1980s. Private initiative was displacing government initiatives.

Rotary is a private, capitalist club. To its lasting credit in this troubling period of change in America it was also developing thousands if not tens of thousands of small projects that were working better than the bluster of aid that was flowing for crony reasons during the Cold War.

It seemed to make sense. Private initiative. Less bureaucratic operations. Strictly altruistic.

But Rotary was not accountable to the body of science which governments and world political organizations were.

I knew that eradication of polio would take more than “a few years” and more importantly, that the quarter billion dollars raised for a few-year effort would have to become substantially more if the ultimate goal of the project was to be realized.

I knew because I had watched polio immunization in Africa fail, first-hand.

The problem is that a single immunization as was used to eradicate smallpox won’t work with polio. Polio eradication then required at least two immunizations per child and they needed to be spaced months apart.

That is a concept near impossible to convey to an illiterate peasant and particularly to skeptical ones. It’s also a regime that requires meticulous accounting and reporting. Who is immunized when is not an easy task to record when so many millions of young, undernourished and illiterate children are involved.

So it’s taken a little bit more than a “few years” and by the way, Rotary’s goal of worldwide eradication has not occurred. The infectious polio virus persists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It’s unclear how much has been spent to date. The New York Times reports the effort costs $1 billion/year.

Last February the Rotarian who inspired the program celebrated the 30-year effort by explaining why he felt the project could be done by Rotary:

“We didn’t need medical people, we could do it ourselves.”

Do it yourself is an American concept that is horribly immature. There is very little in the world today that can be successfully accomplished “by one’s self.”

Teams of very different kinds of people, spanning enormous disciplines and representing high science and lengthy specific experience, are required for almost everything even something as simple as counting children when the context is global.

What we need to do is tap into the incredible generosity of an individual Rotarian, which I can absolutely attest to. We need to develop that twinkling morality into a complete understanding that no Rotary – no homogenous organization – can work alone in a global context. Only massive efforts coordinated by governments can achieve global success.

And equally importantly, we must accept the facts, however daunting they may seem. Inspiration is great. Science is, too.

Rihandling Elephants

Rihandling Elephants

rihanaelephantHere’s a flash: elephants aren’t capable of human emotions. Neither are whales. Or your dog.

Despite whatever pretenses we might employ for our own happiness, animals don’t share our consciousness. That doesn’t mean they might not have “animal emotions,” but since we aren’t elephants, whales or dogs, we’ll never fully understand what “animal emotions” are.

We’re limited to explaining things with our own language, with our own consciousness. A great hazard develops when we attempt to portray animal behavior in human terms. Anthropomorphizing results in more destruction to the planet and its biodiversity than any other human enterprise.

Katy Payne is one of the most creative and perceptive animal researchers of my life time, and her principal studies have been with elephants and whales.

She discovered that the low rumblings of elephant that we can all hear represent only 10%, in fact, of the vocalizations that are occurring, and that 90% of the vocalization is below our decibel level of hearing.

This, in turn, led to remarkable discoveries about elephant communication.

But in an interview aired on public radio this weekend, Payne’s science was eclipsed by her religious or spiritual beliefs and that, in kind, diminished her science by a huge helping of anthropomorphization.

“Whales, like people, are composers,” Ms. Payne told Krista Tippet on the Sunday NPR show OnBeing.

Fifteen years ago, in a passionate oped in the Washington Post in which Ms. Payne argued for increased protection of elephants, she wrote:

“Elephants’ experiences are, in short, collective, and the collectiveness of their experience colors their responses to everything. The collectiveness escalates and multiplies the trauma associated with losses, and in long-lived animals with long memories, such losses are not soon overcome. Elephants that survive poaching and culling may never fully recover from the repeated loss of what they once identified with and held dear.”

Whales are not human composers. Elephants do not experience human trauma.

I found the Sunday interview extremely enlightening, because it confirmed a long held belief that anthropomorphizing is a very religious or spiritual phenomenon, and that when science is mixed with religion or spiritual contemplation, things get messy.

That messiness is one of our highest challenges. Science is critical to our survival, but so is a spiritual orientation to our existence. Science can go just so far, at least so far. So for the time being anyway a spiritual foundation is critical in bridging the gap between science and what we don’t [yet?] know.

Ms. Payne deals with that challenge in one fell swoop by considering elephants as people. That shortcut is dangerous.

It’s particularly dangerous for elephants, because in the diminishing resources of our planet we have begun the painful exercise of deciding who gets what. If elephants are people, I can assure you that the honorable citizens of Texas, the aggrieved displaced persons of Kenya, and the young geniuses of the Mumbai slums will outrank the pachyderms exponentially.

But it’s also dangerous for people.

If our emotions are in some way limited – if only to the length of our waking lives – and if those emotions are consumed with empathizing with elephants rather than babies with malaria, more human babies will die.

This is no zero sum game. Our universe has categories of value, and they range from sea stones to lonely hearts. In my view they are all inextricably linked, but are not of equal value.

Understanding the linkage provides us with the necessary orientation for best conducting our survival. That begins with the understanding that our consciousness is primary. Humans are tops. Nothing in existence exceeds our human consciousness, including elephants, whales and your dog.

Yet our premiership may indeed be dependent upon sea stones, elephants, whales and the fantasies we have about Rover because, at least for now, we’re still molecular. I believe so.

Everything that exists is sacred. But not everything is human. Only we are human.

I appreciate all the work Ms. Payne has done to increase our understanding of elephants, but I worry that her conclusions which render the animal in human terms undermines her important work and endangers elephant survival.

Crossing in the Night

Crossing in the Night

SalCapeVerdeThirty-five years ago I regularly stood abreast a Cuban or Russian in Sal, Cape Verde. We stared blankly at one another trying but unable to smile or offer a handshake.

That paradox – during South African sanctions and the height of the Cold War – defined U.S. global relations that finally today may be changing.

He (it was never a “she”) was headed southwest or northeast, to Havana or Moscow. I and my fellow passengers (with a remarkably few “she’s”) were traveling northwest or southeast to the U.S. or South Africa.

We crossed because our 1981 flights ran out of gas in Cape Verde.

We westerners were ushered down the staircase of our South African Airways 747SP, which we fondly called the “stubby” and for all the world looks like a child’s drawing of a jumbo jet. The Russians and Cubans took just a few fewer steps down their slightly lower staircase of the Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-86.

I always felt the Cape Verdeans, pawns in this international loophole, intentionally then directed us into the “transit arrivals hall” in two distinct lines, side by side, pushing us awfully close to one another as we slipped through the narrow railings entering the hall.

Normally when big planes land at an airport there’s all sorts of action: luggage carts pulling up, yellow lights flashing, cargo holds belching. When you step onto an active airport tarmac there’s an annoyingly loud distinctive din, a mixture of a buzz and ting that pervades everything.

Not in Sal.

When I stepped onto the tarmac I heard the screams of nightjars penetrating the chorus of crickets. I could actually hear my steps as I walked on the tarmac.

On any other stopover during which you can leave the aircraft, you’re told to remove all your belongings. Not in Sal. We were ordered to leave everything in our seats, even our hats and handbags.

In those days I carried bundles of cash to pay for services in Africa and it was always in my locked leather briefcase. I had to leave it in the luggage hatch.

I carried books, left on my seat. An attendant even told me to remove my precious notepad stuck in my front shirt pocket and return it to my seat. When the passengers behind me didn’t want to give way, she smiled and offered to safeguard it for me, removing it herself from my pocket.

I marched off the plane feeling naked.

The only ambient light seemed to come from the landing guides on the runway we’d left behind and the poor illumination inside the “arrivals hall” we were headed to. Nobody and nothing was getting off or on at Sal. We were all just in transit.

There is terror in the vacancy of expected action, but the smell of jet1 fuel permeating the air and old croaking dark trucks carrying tons of fuel slithering into the darkness on the opposite side of the aircraft gave us some confidence.

A couple partially bearded and seemingly curious Africans in jumpsuits displaying the South African Airways logo sat expressionlessly on the low concrete wall around the arrivals hall. I don’t know what they were supposed to do: luggage carriers? Often I tried to engage them with a smile, but it was too dark at a distance and up closer we were not allowed to slow our march.

The arrivals hall was a cubicle warehouse in which there was no shadow. I’m not sure how they did it. Either the light was just too dim and I’m not remembering well, or clever Cold War spies were surveilling the place and agreed on mutual background lighting, but it was an annoying almost amber light that filled every nook and cranny of that boxed room.

There were no chairs. The heavily shellacked wooden floor was painted with three dull red lines, as if demarcating a sports court of some sort, but it actually demarcated the lines the passengers were supposed to walk between.

The vast center of the room remained empty throughout.

The Cubans and Russians walked in the opposite direction from the westerners. Nobody told us to do this. There were no minders, no announcements, we just did it. We had 45 minutes to exercise before our interminable journeys continued.

It wasn’t long before the lines started to dissolve. Older people slowed down and were overtaken by the few fit, and sometimes even turned around. Nobody stopped them. By the end of the 45 minutes the lines had lost definition.

It was then, in those last few minutes before reboarding, that people actually milled about. Silly and bold as I’ve always been, I’d wander into a pod of easterners. Sometimes they were very young Cubans, many wearing medical outfits like blue or green orderly scrubs.

They were probably younger than I was, and I was pretty young, but virtually always they moved away from me.

The Russians were a different matter. I guess we both knew there was much less likelihood of being able to speak to one another than with the Cubans, so twinkling eyes and surprised expressions and even smiles often greeted my approach.

But then it stalled after a few embarrassed body movements of kindness.

I don’t know what went through their minds, but mine became overwhelmed with missiles and Hungary and mushroom clouds. I’ve since shaken that umbrella over my psyche, but I was young, then. We all were.

Thirty-five years is an awfully long time to wait for a door to open. But I’ll always think of Africa as the place where American and Russian and Cuban anxieties and hostilities began to diminish.

In the arrivals hall. Sal, Cape Verde. The middle of some night too long ago.

Smiling Terrorists

Smiling Terrorists

mamoutdouadIf you’re an American, you probably don’t understand terrorism. Your egoism’s unique fears cloud your rational analysis. Two excellent examples of this, today:

The first is simple. On a not-very-left but not-right morning TV show, today, Morning Joe, a quick mention of the ISIS beheading of a Croatian oil worker who was kidnapped in Cairo elicited the following conclusion : “…shows the increasing reach of ISIS.”

The correct take on what happened is exactly the opposite. Terrorist groups that are failing at normal warfare, as ISIS is in the Levant, break up into individuial guerillas undertaking easier, simpler acts.

It’s a clear demonstration they are becoming weaker.

It’s equally true of the other major terrorist organization in Africa: al-Shabaab. Both BH & Shabaab were large-scale military organizations that have been routed leaving no well organized terrorist armies left in Africa.

BH’s long time leader, Abubakar Shekau, who at one point controlled nearly a fifth of Nigeria, has apparently been killed or exiled and replaced by Mahamat Daoud who the Chadian leader said yesterday wants to negotiate peace.

There’s no reason to negotiate with Boko Haram, now. There’s little of it left.

According to Reuters, BH now controls hardly anything in Nigeria except a small, remote forest.

Mahamat Daoud smiles. Find me another picture of a major terrorist smiling.

The remarkable turnaround in Nigeria this year is linked to several factors. First, the newly elected president is a former general who has successfully consolidated Nigeria’s civil administration with its military, not seen before.

Like former times in several South American countries, the military and civilian sects of society never got along. Civilian rule was corrupt and inefficient. Frequent military coups returned stability to the country but also resulted in massive human rights violations.

Nigeria’s current president, former general Muhammadu Buhari, who won the March presidential election seems to have changed this … at least so far.

The other factor is widespread presumption of massive U.S. military aid. In fact the sudden and productive delivery of U.S. weapons to Nigeria seems to have become an issue locally.

The Christian Science Monitor reported last week that Buhari is himself concerned that defeating BH depended upon outside military support, and has called for the creation of a Nigerian military-industrial complex so the country can produce its own weaponry.

(A topic of its own, of course. Whatever else can be said of ‘supporting your allies’ it becomes undeniable that the world becomes further militarized.)

The new conciliatory face of BH is quite unlike what happened to Shabaab. Shabaab splintered and fled in face of Kenyan troops and U.S. special services on the ground in East Africa. Shabaab never offered to negotiate.

In Kenya and Uganda it devolved into guerilla attacks such as the Westgate Mall. That now has all but ended as what’s left of Shabaab evaporates outside of Somalia. Within Somalia the remaining militants are struggling to retain small areas of control.

For good reasons or bad ones, whether the current state of affairs will be lasting or short-lived, terrorism in Africa is way down.

Many American’s problem is that they demand 100% of everything. Something that’s bad, like terrorism or back problems or faulty car brakes, gnaws at them virtually until there is no problem left at all.

And that rarely happens.

So their ability to calmly consider the problem and enthusiastically work towards a best if partial solution is compromised by their fear that that itty-bitty 1% not taken care of, will take care of them.

Only in movies is this a meaningful way of life.

Strongmen Clapping

Strongmen Clapping

Barack ObamaObama’s speech to African Heads of State in Addis Ababa several weeks ago was both naive and inspiring and made me realize how weak a President but how strong a role model he is.

Obama minced no words when calling out African leaders for corruption, misuse of power and insensitivity to human rights. It was no diplomat speaking when he repeated his oft-stated opprobrium about the continent:

“Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.”

What was singularly remarkable was that this line was followed by wild applause, clapping from the strongmen.

It was the case throughout this most remarkable address. Many lines in Obama’s speech were more than sufficient to jail him in many of the countries whose Heads of State wildly cheered those remarks.

“In many places across Africa, it’s still too hard to start a venture,” he said, alluding to powerful nepotism and biased regulations that favor the wealthy classes. “Here in Africa corruption drains billions of dollars from economies that can’t afford to lose billions of dollars.”

He boldly claimed that many basic human and democratic rights “are denied… many Africans. When journalists are put behind bars for doing their jobs, or activists are threatened as governments crack down on civil society — (applause) — then you may have democracy in name, but not in substance. (Loud applause.)”

He nuked all diplomatic etiquette when charging three sitting African leaders with crimes against humanity: in the South Sudan, Burundi and Central African Republic. Strong supporters of these regimes … clapped.

“I have to also say that Africa’s democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end. (Applause.) Now, let me be honest with you — I do not understand this. (Laughter.)”

The chairman of the AU, the forum at which he was speaking, is Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, a “president-for-life” who is as ruthless as they come. He did not clap. But the representatives from South Africa at his side, who have diligently supported him year after year, did clap.

“The bottom line is that when citizens cannot exercise their rights, the world has a responsibility to speak out. And America will, even if it’s sometimes uncomfortable — (applause)”

At this point many commentators in Africa began to wonder if African leaders understood English well enough to know what they were applauding. That, they do.

“In Africa this was a revolutionary speech,” wrote Richard Dowden of the Royal African Society.

Let me tell why this shouldn’t baffle you, but indeed makes sense.

Africa’s leaders fall into two categories: good guys who can’t get much done, and bad guys who spend their public lives denying their own prevarications.

Right now almost all of the 54 African presidents fit into one or the other of those two categories.

Category One Guys applauded enthusiastically, hoping beyond hope that Obama’s force will infiltrate the networks and institutions that constantly obstruct them.

Category Two Guys applauded because they’re in denial … at least public if not personal denial. (It takes a Freud or Landers to determine which.)

So I’m not baffled, and I don’t think this speech is revolutionary. Obama was giving all of them just what they wanted.

For me the speech focused my growing understanding of exactly who Obama is.

I see Obama as a weak leader. He’s a professor, a role model, a stellar person. He believes like all good wise mentors that the spoken word can be as powerful as the clever act.

In that, especially in Africa, he is oh so wrong.

Disappointment follows Delay

Disappointment follows Delay

americanstravelagainIf you’re planning a vacation next year, you better get your reservations now. Americans are back on the road!

The number of Americans traveling overseas has finally exceeded the peak in 2006 before the Great Recession. And it did so with a bang in 2014, with 10% more foreign vacations taken by Americans than in 2013.

The Great Recession clobbered foreign travel to certain destinations like Africa, but it didn’t clobber overall foreign travel. What seems to have happened is that individuals and families that would normally have taken an exotic vacation scaled back, perhaps to Europe or the Caribbean, but they didn’t stop vacationing outright.
20150729_US_International_Destinations_IncreasedNotable was that there were no new travelers entering the market. Although there were millions of new wage earners from 2006 to 2013, very few of those actually took vacations.

Last year that changed with a bang.

Here are the destinations that grew the most: the ones that really require you to now book early if you don’t want to be disappointed:

Mexico. By far! Increasing almost 22% per year, with more than 25 million Americans traveling there last year, one in three Americans who travels abroad now travels to Mexico.

You’ll be surprised at Number 2: The Middle East. 1.8 million Americans traveled there last year, an annual increase of nearly 13%.

This doesn’t mean vacations in Syria, to be sure. Even Israel had a slowdown. What it indicates is the growing travel through major Middle East hubs like Dubai and Qatar, plus the significant increase in vacation travel to Egypt.

Number 3 is the Caribbean and Number 4 is Central America.

There were palsy increases to exotic destinations like Africa (only 1.7%), but nonetheless increases for the first time following a number of years of decreases.

Places like Africa will continue to struggle until Europe gets out of its recession. Africa’s largest market has always been from Europe. Were it not for a steady and sizable increase in Asian and eastern Europeans vacationers to Africa over the last 5 years, the tourism situation there would be dire.

If Europe rebounds, Africa could be in a very tight booking situation. Chinese, South American and eastern Europeans are increasing their travel to Africa substantially.

Europe rebounding depends upon how quickly the European movement to embrace stimulus is successful. Austerity has not worked, stimulus has worked in the U.S. and China, and a growing number of European politicians now recognize their error.

I’d give it three years.

But for you Americans who’ve enjoyed booking anything you want at the last minute, beware. Disappointment follows delay!

Which to Visit? Kenya or Tanzania?

Which to Visit? Kenya or Tanzania?

KenyaOrTanzaniaMy five months in Africa ended this week. If you’re trying to decide between visiting Tanzania or Kenya, I’ve got the answer.

My answer, if you’ve got the cash and time, is both. But if you’re watching your vacation dollars and have limited time, the answer is Kenya.

Here’s why.

First of all why does it take more time and money to visit both countries? The two countries share almost a 500 mile-long border with quite a few border posts, and much of the border actually goes right through abundant game controlled areas.

This isn’t just an issue of the additional costs of visas or shots.

The answer is because the two countries have intentionally made it difficult for tourists to visit them both on the same trip. Both countries believe if they force you into an all-or-nothing situation, they’ll be better off.

Since 1979 the border posts that fall in game controlled areas have been closed to tourist traffic. So, for example, the most important one, the border between Kenya’s Maasai Mara and Tanzania’s Serengeti, isn’t just closed, it’s now grown over with jungle.

The Sand River bridge which used to deliver tourists between the two countries is ready to collapse. I wouldn’t use if I could. (Click here for my blog that explains why this happened in 1979 and has never changed since.)

So to travel from one game park in one country to another game park in the other country, you have to go back to a border post which allows tourist crossings, and this usually means traveling backwards a lot.

The cost, for example, to travel from a camp on the southern bank of the Sand River in Tanzania, to one you can see across that same river in Kenya, is about $600 per person and at least 8 hours if you fly the whole way.

It will take at least the entire day, and that often doesn’t make sense, because if you try to do it in a day, you’ll have to leave at the break of dawn and won’t arrive in the other country until late in the afternoon/early evening, yet you’ll be paying full game viewing fees (twice!) for each country on a day that you won’t have any time to do game viewing!

So die-hards wanting to see both countries recognize that it’s better to do something else in between, breaking up the long circuitous journey, if that’s nothing more than just seeing a city like Nairobi. And that’s where the concept of needing more time starts.

And then you get into the problem of having to whittle away principal attractions in each of the countries to make enough time to see them both, or if accepting only the very prime attractions in each country, you’re looking at a safari of more than two weeks.

Add to this that “open-jawing” your international air fare (flying into one country but returning from another) is considerably more expensive than simply roundtripping one.

As a general rule, you’ll need 20-25% more time and money for the same amount of sightseeing and game viewing if you visit both countries instead of only one.

Both Kenya and Tanzania have a superb list of incredible attractions, game viewing and otherwise. If they opened their borders a tourist could approach them both as a single country, East Africa.

But they haven’t, and they won’t in my opinion. So I’m beginning to think that most travelers conscious of their travel budget and holiday time ought to choose one or the other and might do so realizing they’ll return another year to see the other one!

The same strategy that most Americans apply now to Europe’s many diverse nations ought to be applied to East Africa.

So if you’re contemplating a “first time safari” for next year – which country should it be?

Kenya.

Here’s why.

1. Kenya is growing more stable than Tanzania.
Safety, and even more importantly, the perception of safety is probably the single-most important factor when people choose an exotic destination to visit.

Last month, President Obama visited Kenya. Last month, the British government removed its travel warnings from Kenya’s most vulnerable area to Islamic terrorists, the beautiful Indian ocean coast.

2. Travel is cheaper and easier to Kenya than Tanzania.
Nairobi’s new airport is astoundingly modern and efficient. You’ll think you’re in Europe. Tanzania’s two airports, Kilimanjaro and Dar-es-Salaam, are losing not only service from Europe and beyond, but they’re losing electricity!

In my many visits in the last five months to Kilimanjaro airport, there were no less than a dozen power outages as I waited for my clients to arrive!

There is much more service to choose from flying into Kenya than Tanzania, and it looks now like Delta will be flying directly to Nairobi starting early next year.

3. Tanzania’s October election could be troublesome.
On the negative side and as I’ve written several times in the last few weeks, Tanzanian politics are heating up. It could be very good for the country, and there are many reasons to think that Tanzania will not go through the troublesome period of political change that Kenya did about ten years ago.

But there are also many reasons to think otherwise. A very contentious national election is scheduled for October 24, and I worry that the main candidates in both factions are talking less about the issues than “keeping the election peaceful.”

Even China — normally an aggressive side liner that never interferes with foreign elections – cautioned Tanzanians Wednesday about violence in the October elections.

4. Kenya is more aggressively conservationist than Tanzania.
Then there are gnawing conservation issues becoming toxic in Tanzania, beginning with the lax enforcement of ivory poaching, the relocation of Maasai just outside the northeastern Serengeti to increase a private Arab hunting reserve, and totally rebuffing conservationists’ attempts to slow down the planned dam and mine in The Selous.

None of these is serious enough for you to cancel a Tanzanian safari, but Kenya in contrast has high positive points on all of these named measures, and so if having to choose one over the other, I think it’s now a slam dunk.

Remember who’s writing this. The Serengeti remains my favorite place in the world, and that’s in Tanzania. My great migration experience these last 8 months in both countries convinces me it’s best in Tanzania.

But the time … money … and safety perception components of creating a great safari are now all tilting towards Kenya.

Vigilance in Tanzania

Vigilance in Tanzania

GoodNewsBNLowassaVigilance in Tanzania, folks. A surprising political situation has developed which might bring enormous benefit to the country or … might cast it into turmoil.

For 50 years the Tanzanian government has been ruled by a single party, the CCM [Chama Cha Mapinduzi]. Although certified by western powers as democratic, it never really has been.

In the early days there was no pretense. For the first 20 years, Tanzania proudly declared itself a socialist nearly communist country. At the end of the Cold War it changed its tune and western powers like the U.S. warmed to their new found reticence.

Be that as it may, it’s always been a core group of central leaders who have chosen the president. In the last 15 years the process has opened up enough to allow for truly opposition members of parliament, but none of them attained any real power in governance.

That may be changing with the announcement a week ago Tuesday that a controversial and very famous politician, former Prime Minister Edward Lowassa, had defected from the CCM to lead the opposition.

That wouldn’t have meant much a year ago, because there are so many fractured opposition parties. One of the strategies of a strong single party state flirting with democracy is to foment so much opposition that alliances between often small regions become impossible.

For example in Tanzania, the ZUF, or principal party of Zanzibar, has never allied itself with any other political group. Considering itself extremely unique, aggressively Muslim and very committed to succession, no other mainland political organization would join forces with it.

That’s changed with Lowassa’s defection, and many in Tanzania see it as a miracle. The heavily Catholic Chadma party, CCM’s principal nemesis, has forged a country-wide alliance with virtually all the opposition parties, including the ZUF.

Lowassa seems to have brought them altogether, agreed that he is the one man in the country that for the first time ever in Tanzania’s history could destroy the single party state.

So what’s wrong with this?

Edward Lowassa until yesterday had retreated from politics after being charged as the kingpin in a terrible 2007/2008 scandal when he was prime minister. More than $120 million dollars was paid to a Richmond Electricity Company in Texas to deliver electrical generators that would massively increase the country’s power.

The company, according to Transparency International, appears to be a shell corporation and no generators were ever delivered. The scandal nearly brought down the then new Kikwete government, which ultimately said Lowassa was principally to blame.

Lowassa until now has only softly denied the charges while disappearing out of public life. Tuesday he claimed he tried multiple times as prime minister to vacate the contract, but that “higher authorities” disallowed him from doing so.

He then claimed he was made the fall guy when the details of the contract leaked.

Anything else? If this scandal can be swept under the rug, what’s concerning about Lowassa forging a real opposition that can actually challenge the one party state?

Technically, nothing. But ghosts of Kenya Past haunt the process.

More or less the same thing happened in 2006 when Kenyan opposition leader, Raila Odinga brought together all of the opposition against the ruling party which had controlled Kenya since its Independence.

He won. At least that’s my take on the situation, but the election judges all from the main KANU party ruled otherwise. The result was incredible civil disturbance which resulted in more than 1300 deaths and 120,000 displaced persons.

It took five years to fix, and fix it well the Kenyans have. The change which seems now to be settling on Kenya strikes me as well and good and extremely promising. But it came about, literally, through revolution not the ballot box.

The Kenyan ballot box instigated the revolution that followed. The parallels with Tanzania are exceptional.

The Tanzanian election is the end of October. Stay tuned.