Where’s the Beef?

June 30, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

The Tanzanian government and safari companies appear to have embarked on suicide missions as they react to Brexit. Consumers beware : African companies raising prices in today’s climate are probably already deeply in debt.

The bottom is falling out of the Tanzanian safari market because the largest single component is the UK traveler. UK travelers are reacting to Brexit like Americans did to 9-11.

According to the British financial website, This is Money, more than 1 in 3 Brits now plans to cut back on planned holidays.

Brits book travel not quite as far in the future as Americans. Americans tend to do so about a year in advance. With Brits it’s about six months. This means that the very important end-of-year holiday season could be a disaster for Tanzania.

This follows several bad years because of ebola, terrorism, the persistent European recession and in the case of South Africa, the plummeting Rand.

One of the most horrible practices of any small business is to live on cash flow, and that’s legend among travel companies in particular. Now in Tanzania, those who have done so may be on the way out.

If you’re a consumer considering traveling to sub-Saharan Africa and Tanzania in particular, I really suggest you beware.

Hardly two days after Brexit, the panic began when the government of Tanzania decided to slap an 18% tax on many tourist products that had not previously carried it, such as transport and guided sightseeing. In Tanzania’s fairy world land, certain government officials claimed they were even slapping the V.A.T. tax on themselves, onto existing taxes!

However the math might eventually be done, government fees are rising and in some cases substantially. The cost for a vehicle headed into Ngorongoro Crater, for example, jumps 25% Friday.

V.A.T. is the value-added-tax of 18% theoretically applied across the board to anything sold in Tanzania. For many years, though, many tourist services have been exempt, an incentive of the sort many governments in the U.S. afford businesses for locating in their town.

Tanzania’s President, John Magufuli, has been crusading ever since being elected last year in a dark-horse contest, slipping incognito into ministries and firing sluggards on the spot. He reduced income taxes earlier this year for the “common man.”

He’s now trying to right the budget, which since time immemorial hasn’t really been one, rather just a siphon of foreign aid. It’s unclear that the huge V.A.T. announcement on tourism was entirely the result of Brexit, but clearly the rush to impose it – even unprecedented in Tanzania – suggests so.

Laudable as Magufuli’s efforts might be, it will have definite negative effects on Tanzanian tourism.

Healthy companies, I think, saw this coming. Particularly the old strongholds, the midmarket chain lodges like Sopa and Serena, have held prices steady or decreased them, trimmed staff without a noticeable trim in service, and moved towards dynamic website pricing.

Unhealthy companies, particularly some of the upmarket ones like Asilia, are doing just the reverse. In fact, they are using the current situation to raise prices higher than to just cover tax increases.

The upmarket could be the most effected under the current situation. Upmarket trends have been moderating or declining recently, stressing the health of those companies.

Three of Asilia’s main competitors in Tanzania, Nomads, Sanctuary Retreats and &Beyond, have either announced no increases or agreed to guarantee current rates on existing reservations for which deposits have been paid. Wannabe upmarketer, Elewana, has even announced new specials that essentially lowers its prices.

This will not be a fun year for a safari company working in Tanzania. But tricking the consumer goes too far. Consumers should exercise exceptional due diligence before planning to sip a gin and tonic on the veld at sunset.

Not So Hidden Wealth

June 28, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

At least 54 billion cubic feet of helium has been found in Tanzania. Add the country’s enormous gold reserves, large uranium deposits, massive coal, nickle and platinum reserves, Tanzania is now one of the richest countries in the world!

Or not.

Helium’s not as sexy as gold or uranium, but may actually be worth more. Engineers worldwide are celebrating the discovery as relieving the critical shortage of the gas which has stressed markets and high-tech companies for more than a decade. Helium is so important that the U.S. stockpiles it just like oil.

For nearly 25 years Tanzania’s natural resource deposits have just grown in leaps and bounds: More of the Great Rift Valley lies in Tanzania than any other country, and this is the reason it’s so resource rich. Yet the country remains poorer than 150 of the 185 countries ranked by the IMF in 2015.

The World Bank has lamented this situation for years: “Tanzania sits on about 15 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves, equivalent to approximately US$150 billion … or 6 times Tanzania’s current GDP,” the bank advised in 2012.

Four years since that announcement, no natural gas has been extracted. Do you know how popular natural gas is at the moment?

For more than two generations, Tanzania has been unable to benefit from its enormous natural wealth. I’ve often written about it.

There are several reasons. Corruption underlies all of them.

Mutinational mining companies like Rio Tinto — which has tried multiple times to work in Tanzania and recently announced plans to develop its coal after abandoning both gold and uranium contracts here — are no sweethearts to work with. Tinto’s North Mara gold fields were often criticized by human rights organizations for miner abuse, even of using children. That led to a number of worker revolts. Tanzanian mines are often closed.

Point here is that government regulationa exist against all such workplace practices, but officials choose not to enforce them. Why? I’ll let you guess.

While the government developed the cities and airports near the mines years ago, it has allowed maintenance to horribly lapse. Mines need electricity. Tanzania has almost as many blackouts as electricity. Mines need roads. Tanzania never builds roads; it lets foreign donors do that.

Current Tanzanian government contracts with the multinational mining companies concede some of the lowest royalties in the world. And worse, government budgets show less than half what the mining companies claim to pay. Where’s the difference?

In the end the Chinese have cornered the Tanzanian mining market. Chinese dominate the gold and uranium mines, and I expect they will dominate the helium ones as well. That has been disastrous for the Tanzanian environment as Chinese mining practices are governed from afar by a home authority that looks sideways on its own expressed environmental concerns.

Tanzania’s problem is manifold, but in the end it all comes down to corruption. Often that corruption is started by the multinational. Understandably if yet distasteful, it’s hard for a lowly official who has not been paid by his government for three months to refuse a bribe.

That’s the core problem, really. It isn’t that people are evil. It’s that corruption is now systemic. The regulator’s income is paid by the company he regulates.

The current president, John Magufuli, is on a crusade to right the ship and end corruption. Just like every other president for the last 40 years.

What a Mess

June 27, 2016June 27, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Lest this be too technical for those unfamiliar with Africa, this morning is a mess.

“Chaos has been unleashed and we all will be poorer,” writes a commentator this morning in the respected journal, African Arguments.

Many former British colonies in Africa are forcing calm while quietly panicking about Brexit, especially South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

I can’t see this getting better. Even if the hoped for British pivot occurs and somehow Article 50 is never triggered, the genie is out of the bottle. Economies don’t pause for politicians to catch their breath.

The biggest single concern with South Africa and Kenya is the plummeting pound. Kenya is also worried that a new British executive will be less disposed to foreign aid. Nigeria’s concern is the increased dollar which puts downwards pressure on oil prices, Nigeria’s lifeblood. South Africa suffered a 1.2% retraction last quarter and Brexit is likely now to dump them into a full blown recession.

There is even widespread concern that money transfers will be more difficult, something that will effect all aspects of business and trade.

By 0730cdt this morning all the indicators were moving in terrible directions. Former African colonies’ currencies usually move with the pound. Although weaker currencies are often spun positively for manufactured exports, most former colonies import more than they export so their economies become stressed when their currency weakens.

Add to this a 10% drop in the price of oil (as of 0730 cdt) and Britain’s former colonies are in a terrible mess this morning.

“Politicians paint a very beautiful picture of a very bad idea just to ascend to power,” writes one Kenyan about Brexit, today. “They dupe [the electorate] into voting for them, knowing very well that whatever they are promising cannot work even under any circumstance. That is exactly what Cameron did.”

Most Americans have never traveled to Kenya or South Africa or Nigeria, much less even the UK. Our economy remains the largest on earth so likely the one that can be least hurt by any other. But we are not immune to the effects of Brexit, and I mean that as much politically as economically.

Every Britain should have known what a disaster this would be, but their politicians duped them, to use the Kenyan’s words. The Leave Campaigners promised all sorts of things that they are today retracting like yo-yos, essentially admitting lying.

But there were even double-dupes like Cameron bringing up the whole idea then trying to turn it back; and triple-dupes like Corbyn only half-heartedly campaigning against the Leave because he really wants it.

In the end the electorate was only given one choice: leave or not. I think what the electorate manifest was a protest vote, a No vote, a vote against politics, against the status quo, because like many of us around the world, that’s the only power we’ve been left by our hoarding, power hungry politicians.

The most terrifying lesson to learn from this mess is that Donald Trump might win.

Requiem for an Empire

June 24, 2016June 24, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Britain’s dominant tribe, the Conservatives, has been hoisted by its own petard. Long live the Queen.

As Shakespeare might say they’ve undone themselves. Kikuyu Kenyans, American Republicans, Le Pen Français and ANC South Africans better take a very hard look, because tribalism simply won’t work in today’s world.

British conservatives preached a stew of tribal policies like austerity, go-slow immigration, social services cutbacks, retraction from the EU and now they’ve eaten it. So they’re dying.

Tribalism is a cancerous phenomenon: once it takes hold it’s hard to stop. It grows much faster than other social phenomena like welfare or desegregation. It forces those around it to also become tribal, even against the better judgment.

Brexit likely means that Scotland will secede. Conservative movements throughout Europe get an enormous boost. This morning tribalism is all powerful.

One of the first western anthropologists to study tribalism was Margaret Mead, and one of her best current disciples is the Australian, Roger Sandall.

Sandall was intellectually marginalized by a now going-out-of-date notion that ethnic identity is preeminent in any social situation. He suffered unfair criticism that he’s racist.

But Sandall’s interpretation of Mead is perfect for what happened in Britain yesterday as well as the growing sentiment worldwide to retract into small social units and “go it alone.”

(Make America Great Again means building walls, voiding trade agreements and impeding immigration.)

Sandall wrote that Margaret Mead understood “culture [is] more valuable than its people… that the intellectual features of tribalism cannot be defended; that its moral code leaves much to be desired; that its economic assumptions obstruct and stultify.”

Tribalism is Africa’s greatest single plight, and I’m constantly inspired by how vigorously young Africans try to shake it but to date simply haven’t succeeded. The trend is there, however, and I’m convinced in another generation or two Africa will have become one of the least tribal areas on earth.

Then why this regression in our (theoretically more developed) world?

People are fed up. But they don’t yet understand – as the Brit does this morning – that the wealth, power and glory that they strived for all their lives is exactly why they’re in the state they’re in today. There just isn’t enough wealth, power and glory to go around satisfactorily. Everybody can’t have it.

So when some Joe gets his hands on it, he has to do everything possible to keep it from the rest of us.

One of Joe’s most successful ways of doing this is to flaunt his wealth, power and glory, to convince us nincompoops that we can all be like him if we just do what he says.

And what he says in clever ways secures his wealth, power and glory at the expense of us ever being able to achieve it. He convinces us to act, to vote, against our own self interest.

That’s lying. That leads to a whole new set of techniques to make us think it isn’t lying, or that lying doesn’t matter.

So against simple commonsense, straight-forward grammar and very complex economic data, the poor British sot just chose to make his life infinitely worse.

That’s too bad. But it could be good for Kikuyu Kenyans, American Republicans, Le Pen Français and ANC South Africans. If the pound tumbles quickly enough there might be time enough to witness the British sot getting sotter before these others start to destroy themselves, too.

Ultimately tribalism won’t work. Mead and Sandall are correct. The requiem for British conservatism is now our formal example. American Republicans might be the next.

Goose Steps in Nigeria

June 23, 2016June 23, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Democracy’s principle flaw allows the right to choose something that’s wrong. Mature societies seem to handle this OK. Young and troubled societies are twisted apart.

For the last decade Nigeria’s GDP has been the highest in Africa exceeding $1 trillion in just the last few years. It has more than half as many people as the U.S. but an area only about a tenth as big.

Nigeria’s history since independence from Britain in 1960 has been a dosey-doe between democracy and military rule. Today a former general is the president of a democracy, but the rumors are growing that won’t last much longer.

“We are constrained to let the cat out of the bag,” a top military commander said today in the typical African way of saying something you shouldn’t. “Some military men are making moves to remove [President Buhari].”

The current President, Muhammadu Buhari, understands this better than most. Although he was freely elected last year as President, he had also been the Head of State for two years in the 1980s after leading a coup against the then democratic regime.

Yes, that’s what I said. The man who forcefully toppled democracy on New Year’s Eve, 1983, was freely elected its democratic President on May 31, 2015.

Well, a lot can change in 32 years, no?

The longest and most damaging civil war in modern Africa was the Biafran civil war in Nigeria from 1967-1970. Only 15 years into independence, Cold War headaches were disrupting Nigeria’s polity, famine appeared in 1968, and the better educated and democratic Biafran was feeling increasingly oppressed by the growing non-secular, autocratic government that favored the Islamic north.

That was almost a half century ago. It’s happening all over, again.

The Nigerian economy is in a free fall with the price of oil, its soul fuel. The world Battle Against Terrorism is playing out in its northeast. Climate change is decimating its agriculture, and the better educated and democratic Biafran is feeling increasingly oppressed by the growing non-secular, autocratic government that favors Buhari’s Islamic north.

In a partially televised official dinner last night, President Buhari reminded his nation that two million mostly Biafrans died in that civil war:

“We were quarrelling with our brothers, we were not fighting an enemy… Somebody is saying that once again: he wants Biafra. I think this is because he wasn’t [yet] born” and doesn’t remember the horror of the war.

Agreeing with British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent statement that “Nigeria is fantastically corrupt,” one of the leaders of the modern Biafran secessionist movement said yesterday:

“”Nigerians … have blood in their hands. They are ethnic bigots, unrepentant dictators, religious fundamentalists and arch genocidists. They are arch supporters of terrorism. They circumvent the electoral laws… They do not understand the basic tenets of democracy… These are men whose only mission is to annihilate their perceived enemies.”

This deputy leader of the Biafran secessionist movement is too young to have experienced his last civil war, but he’s certainly hell bent on another one.

As we know all too well here in the United States, democracy gives you the right to lie. Many of these lies are believed by the electorate without due diligence. An absolute lie becomes an unmitigated truth, and the resultant battle has clearly drawn borders: Right-vs-Wrong.

But real democracy rarely creates thoughtful policy that is neither wholly right or wholly wrong, and that reality flies in the face of the easiness and sanctity of believing something is truthful or a lie.

The gun replaces the vote. Some strongman takes over, and at least in the beginning of his reign he brings with him something all people pine for: peace.

Goose steps replace strolling.

History repeats itself.

Refugee or Reprobate?

June 21, 2016June 20, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

My first job after the anti-war movement was in Paris with UNESCO. Diplomats were aghast back in 1971 that before the end of that year there could be one million refugees under the responsibility of the United Nations.

Yesterday the UN announced it was handling 65,300,000 refugees.

That is one out of every 113 people who live on planet earth.

Two years later Kathleen and I were working for the Kenyan government on the border with troubled Uganda under the ruthless dictator Idi Amin. We traveled into that dangerous country and saw first-hand the devastation that gives rise to a refugee.

We saw children scraping roadways for food. We saw people dying. We saw educated people hiding for fear they would be killed for no reason other than they were educated.

We saw people who made the incredible decision to leave home.

I don’t think most Americans understand refugee-ism. In our current politicized environment, in fact, it seems to boil down to believing most foreigners are on-the-take, people making somewhat casual decisions to increase their opportunities.

Most refugees have no idea where they’re going once they pack up to leave.

Imagine that. Imagine deciding that your situation is so dire that you have to leave, no matter where you go or what might happen to you. “Chance” which obviously might include something worse is better than sitting still.

I’ve watched Americans mature in my life time as they inch towards the realization that they are not just Americans, but human beings, members of the same race on the same planet, brothers and sisters no matter what.

How can we tolerate such displacement of our fellow human beings?

The Brookings Institute says it’s because Americans have been brainwashed into being afraid of refugees. “Brain-washed” are my words.

The hardness, the callous disregard of our fellow human beings is about the most disgusting, low and immoral position any other human being can take. The “plasticity of public sentiment” – which is how Brookings sugar-coats brain-washing – among Americans is so damn embarrassing. For the first time in my life, when I find myself in a foreign environment unable to fully explain my country, I find myself ashamed of being an American.

We have to look inwards and understand that nobody is trying to minimize our anger – or our fear, for that matter. But directing our worries upon unknown fellow human beings and presuming totally absurd things about them — particularly when those refugees are among the most honest, courageous and loyal of all in our shared species – is nothing short of social and intellectual blasphemy.

It reeks of an egocentrism and selfishness that belongs exclusively to The Dark Side.

I have written about refugees, I have worked with refugees, I have housed refugees in my home, and I have worked for refugees.

Not one of the dozens that come to mind ranks one baby step in moral or intellectual stature below myself, my mayor, my governor or senator or religious guide, my mentors or my favorite people. To a person they have demonstrated the best of a human being.

It’s one thing to sling invective at opponents for ideological reasons. It’s another to condemn your own species.

Of Tea & Vultures

June 20, 2016December 8, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

So maybe our tea is OK, but Carbofuran is still for sale over the counter in Kenya: Lions are being poisoned with it, vultures picking on the carcasses are going extinct, and so human diseases are spreading and there’s an epidemic of rabies among the growing population of feral dogs.

Nature’s complicated.

No Longer a Trophy

June 17, 2016June 17, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Sports hunting impedes conservation and may contribute to species extinction.

The Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee says so in a press release issued a few days ago about their 25-page report, “Missing the Mark.”

The report infers that the killing of Cecil, the lion, was an inflexion point in U.S. legislators’ positions on sports hunting and concludes that “trophy hunting” as currently regulated threatens big game and derails conservation.

Lawmakers won’t dare say this yet about wolves or bobcats, and they can’t say it about deer or wild turkeys, and of course it wouldn’t apply to “canned hunts” of so-called wild pheasant or cats on private reserves. But the reasoning is sound, and the reasoning is easily applied to the hunting of all living animals.

It’s reasoning that I came to slowly over a number of years of working in Africa. I believed for most of my life that big-game hunting contributed to African conservation.

Completely protected areas (like national parks) were surrounded by hunting reserves which seemed to create a “buffer” against poaching in the completely protected area. Revenue from hunting was significant and notably greater than those assessed tourists.

Both those dynamics changed in the last 15 years. Big-game countries like Tanzania began hither-and-yon designations of where hunting could occur and made it even more complex by giving some authority over hunting to several different local authorities which often competed with federal laws for the same turf.

The anti-poaching buffer no longer exists.

Although the costs of big game hunting declined with the massive increase in demand – especially from America and Russia – government revenues from it were eclipsed by new taxes on tourism. Sports hunting is no longer considered a significant contributor to the government treasury while non-hunting tourism is.

There are many excellent scientific studies to this effect, some of which are quite old, but not until now are they getting the look they deserve.

I have to admit somewhat sheepishly that it was these two phenomena – the collapse of anti-poaching zone buffers and the diminution in government revenues from trophy fees – that led me away from my benign support of big-game hunting for so many years. Once released, though, I honestly recognized that I’d been pushing the moral argument into the deep background.

Isn’t that often the case? The questionable morality of something becomes revealed over time, when enough experience proves it true?

Last December the Obama administration listed lions on America’s Endangered Species Act and this has began a worldwide movement to do so on CITES’ list as well. Since December, any American who goes to Africa to hunt a lion could be in violation of federal law, and even those careful hunters who follow now difficult regulations paint themselves as anti-conservationists.

Frankly, I now embrace the notion that hunting almost anything can’t contribute to conservation and in our current fragile world is actually contributing to wide-scale species decline. Let me explain.

Hunting wolves and bobcats is lunacy, a political allowance that should be immediately stopped. There’s too much science to prove this.

Hunting deer (and waterfowl) now carries the stigma of immorality, but may be unstoppable. Deer populations have been managed for sports hunting for so many years in the United States that hunting may now be, unfortunately, linked to the animals lifestyle and likely, survival.

Canned hunts of lion in private reserves here and in Africa, or such canned hunting as for pheasants, has always struck me as immoral and pointless.

We have a lot of problems on planet earth and many wonderful organizations working to remedy or mitigate them. It’s time that more people like me come out of the closet and admit that sports hunting does not contribute to conservation and that it actually hastens that species decline.

It’s no great leap from that to conceding that sports hunting is immoral.

Soweto Anniversary

June 16, 2016June 16, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Today perfectly demonstrates how America helps lead Africa out of the ignominy of racism and bigotry.

Africa often moves with about a ten to fifteen year lock-step delay to America’s own progress on cultural rights. Today is the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising that began the last great offensive against apartheid. Twelve years earlier America adopted the powerful Civil Rights Act after a decade of protests.

Today the LGBT community in Kenya lost their first high court battle against the country’s anti-gay laws, yet the very fact it reached the court indicates that LGBT community’s growing influence. Consider how fast the LGBT movement’s successes have occurred here.

In fact cultural changes throughout much of Africa are happening with even greater speed than they did in America, because much of emerging modern Africa is hardly a few generations into self-governance.

It’s Youth Day in South Africa. The moniker honors the mostly primary and secondary school students who 40 years ago marched in protest to new apartheid laws and got massacred by South African police.

The horror of the mass slaughter of hundreds of children was immediately transmitted around the world with the photo taken by photojournalist Sam Nzima showing the dying student child, Hector Pieterson, being carried from the protests.

Each time I take a group to South Africa we visit the incredibly moving Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto. As in the Apartheid Museum many displays are mostly black-and-white, such an appropriate adjective for the times and the struggles which ended them.

The Soweto protests attacked an apartheid regulation requiring non-white South Africans to be taught in Afrikaans rather than English or any of the native languages.

Many protested – as so well documented in the Hector Pieterson Museum – for very practical reasons: Soon to graduate students had spent their lives being taught in English but were suddenly confronted with final exams in Afrikaans.

Today quite a few South Africans are remarking on this Youth Day that it is the youth, again, who are integral in the country’s current protests, this time like 40 years ago, fired by controversies over the language of public education.

Most of the horrible apartheid laws were passed in the 1950s to virtually no opposition from the outside world. The end of World War II gave Afrikaans leaders sufficient cover to legislate a horribly repressive regime.

But as the anti-apartheid movement grew within South Africa, there was a wicked resurgence of new laws and regulations that greatly tightened the noose around South Africa’s majority non-white population.

Yet even by 1976 South Africa remained under the public radar of most of the world. The western world was in the depths of the Cold War and South Africa was considered the lone and essential partner in a continent increasingly socialistic.

But the Soweto protests began the galvanization process worldwide. European sanctions came not too long afterwards, and President Reagan suffered a humiliating defeat when Congress overrode his veto of American sanctions against the apartheid regime.

So it was the Soweto protests more than any previous event that moved the anti-apartheid forward.

Equality irrespective of race is a human value that because of our Civil War probably has more currency in American society than any other. The battle never ends, of course. The racist backlash in our current political discourse is proof enough of that, and the current student protests in South Africa are as well.

But for as long as we uphold and protect these civil rights, the unthinkable murder of Hector Pieterson will not have been in vain.

Wildly Good News

June 14, 2016June 14, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Wild dogs are on the rise throughout sub-Saharan Africa and there is probably no better marker species for the overall health of the wilderness. Hey. This is a very good news story!

Together with a number of wildlife organizations reporting significant decreases in poaching, I think it’s fair to say the African wilderness has taken a great turn for the better.

Wildlife organizations began acknowledging the comeback of the dogs since the beginning of 2015, but many of us guides noticed it several years earlier.

Check out my “OnSafari” blogs for the last 4-5 years and you’ll see an amazing account of wild dog sightings. Dogs are “definitely back” and maybe even better than they historically were.

Wow! So what does that mean. Well if it’s true, it could be that dogs are filling in the gaps being left by the definite and serious decline in lions. Filling such an important gap at the top of the food chain would be a critical need of the overall wilderness.

The story of the dogs’ comeback also gives us a good indication of what methods for conserving the wilderness work best.

Last week a sixth pack of wild dogs was released in the northwest Serengeti to great fanfare. This is in such marked contrast to only a decade ago when wildlife organizations had to keep secret their work in saving the dogs, because local farmers and businessmen so hated them.

So that’s the first big change: people in the area no longer express such animus to dogs as they showed only a short time ago. That doesn’t mean that ranchers don’t get awfully mad when a dog kills domestic stock. With government and wildlife organization funds to fairly compensate ranchers that have lost stock to dogs, though, many fewer ranchers are retaliating.

To mitigate the problem of more well educated Africans and not enough jobs, a number of “wildlife” organizations have dedicated serious resources to the social plight of Africans. Wildlife Works created 85 jobs in an area with a fragile peace between people and game.

“The key to preserving wildlife here is human relationships,” explains Wildlife Works’ Amy Lee in an op-ed published in the New York Times last week. Her organization is now the third largest employer in Kenya’s wild Rukinga district, and Amy credits this fact with saving the wilderness and wild dog in particular.

But there is also a real sense that the dogs are taking less domestic stock. The dog take less domestic stock because there’s more wild stock for them. Again this could be a reflection of the serious decline in lion, dog’s most aggressive competitor. But there is also a healthy increase in hyaena, and the total increase in dog and hyaena seems greater than just filling a gap left by lion.

That means the entire ecosystem must be improving. The persistence of organizations like the Frankfurt Zoological Society to continue reintroducing dogs over the last 30 years has finally paid off.

Finally a number of subtle social/wildlife collaborations all around the Serengeti have proved enormously beneficial.

A group of American zoos led by Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo continues an aggressive campaign to freely inoculate Maasai pet dogs against common diseases that surround the Serengeti. I’ve written before about this highly successful program.

Wild dogs, being more inbred than pet dogs, easily succumb to common dog diseases. This program has the added benefit of pleasing the people who surround the wilderness.

It’s always hard to tell a conservation success story: We worry that it will lower our vigilance. We know how fleeting it can be and with climate change how unpredictable now the tools that we’ve developed for monitoring and improving are becoming.

But at least for the moment, give yourself a pat on the back!

Gimme a break!

June 13, 2016June 13, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

When asked if going on safari was safe my rejoinder has been, “Well of course it’s not as safe as Disneyland.”

Everything’s perfectly arranged: an angry son of an Afghan immigrant who most psychotherapists think is a closeted gay man; high-powered weaponry you can buy online; an obese anti-terror bureaucracy incapable of stopping carnage; wildly dancing happy go-luckies under a strobe deemed sexual deviants by local evangelists; and the icing on the cake: hated presidential candidates who know beyond doubt that their opponent is the cause.

Did you watch the Tonys last night? Not even close.

And everything that needs to be said already has, so all we can do is repeat:

Terrorism, or the probable hurt or disruption from terrorism is greater in America than anywhere in Africa. Some blanket generalization that you might employ to not travel to Africa because “it’s not safe” couldn’t seem more ludicrous than on this terrible Monday morning.

Your belief that terrorism is worse “somewhere else” is one of the reasons it’s getting worse. Terrorism grows on itself. It’s the cancer you’ll never have. Your denial is its chief accomplishment.

Terrorism is an incredibly daunting phenomenon. It’s not easy to understand why someone becomes a kamikaze. It’s similar to trying to understand why someone commits suicide. So we grasp for shortcut explanations, and that just short circuits our need to explore and understand its complexities.

The most published news story in Africa about Orlando was by Agence France Presse: “With many victims of the carnage yet to be identified… Trump wasted no time in harnessing the assault to his political advantage.”

How does Trump “harness the assault?” With shortcuts like “Radical Islam”, “Political Correctness”,“Muslims”,“Weak Response:” buzz words that seem to relieve us of any responsibility to figure it out.

It’s so easy to exploit things which are difficult to understand like terrorism for political advantage.

A South African was killed in Pulse. Plenty of Americans have been killed by terrorists since 9/11 but the vast, vast majority have been killed in the U.S.

“Americans have … willingly surrendered their civil rights because they are frightened,” writes a Kenyan today.

Don’t we fight ISIS because they deny human rights? So we fight ISIS by giving up our rights? Doesn’t that mean ISIS has already won?

It’s easier for someone to get a high-powered weapon than food, Pope Francis told a convocation today.

These are very complicated issues that can undoubtedly help us understand and prevent terrorism. But you’re not going to get quick explanations at a political rally or on Meet the Press.

When deciding what world press agency would give the most balanced report about Orlando, the South African moderate newspaper, The Cape Times, chose the Chinese press agency Xinhau.

So the stage is set. The worst terrorism on earth at Disneyworld. Tickets now on sale.

The Largest Panda of All

June 10, 2016June 10, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

People with deep faith in the good work that they do sometimes develop blinders that become destructive. This may be happening today with the world’s largest and most revered wildlife organization.

We all know – or think we do – the World Wildlife Fund. In fact it’s actual name isn’t the World Wildlife Fund, but the “World Fund for Nature.” The name morphed over time and when the organization adopted its URL, worldwildlife.org.

It’is the largest wildlife conservation organization in the world, with a balance sheet of just under a half billion dollars. Remarkably its liquid assets of $337 million are derived by less than 10% through fund raising, reflecting an “organization” that is mostly an endowment and grant sponge.

Too big too fail comes to mind.

WWF has enormous power throughout the world. In the Cameroon it implemented without much oversight what looked like good ecological programs mostly to protect the forests of the Congo Basin, but with little oversight by the Cameroon government the WWF programs may in fact be destroying the indigenous pygmies, the Baka people who live there.

In February a competing NGO, Survival International, filed a formal complaint against WWF with the OECD in Paris. According to the Guardian newspaper, “The complaint contains eye-witness accounts of alleged brutality, video testimonies, and reports from the Cameroonian press accusing the eco guards of violent actions against the pygmy groups.”

I was skeptical. Accusation is not evidence. But the evidence is now coming in, and it’s damning.

WWF’s strategy to protect the Congo Basin forests is deeply mired in partnerships with commercial enterprises like logging companies. At first this doesn’t seem so unusual: private/public partnerships is the tagline for much progressive public policy today.

The idea, of course, is that good public advocates will curtail the otherwise ungoverned exploitation of commercial interest, and that if well done, sustainable commerce can be achieved.

In logging, for example, historical partnerships between logging companies and government and private conservation entities have actually created long-term renewable forests in the U.S.

But in pursuing its private/public partnership in the Cameroon WWF embraced a French logging company, Rougier that had a long and troubled history with indigenous forest peoples. WWF had little choice who to partner with as it was the Cameroon government’s choice.

But there are now credible reports that Rougier has displaced Baka pygmies – who have claimed the forest as their home for millennia – without compensation and in violation of its own agreement with the Cameroon government.

There are even reports that many Baka have been tortured, and further claims that WWF trained anti-poaching units have been involved.

WWF portrays it otherwise insisting the issue is one of poaching, not displacement. Too many videos and eye-witness accounts have proved WWF’s defense is empty of reality.

Moreover, WWF has done everything to keep this out of the English media.

When pressed by a Belgian advocacy group for Cameroon, WWF responded (in French) that its partnership was sound and ethical, that Rougier was acting in accordance with ecological agreements, and that the logging was mostly taking place in an area soon to be flooded by a dam.

WWF aggressively defended its partnership with Rougier until April, 2015.

March and April, 2015, was when Stephen Cory, Survival International’s Director, demanded documents from WWF-International’s director, Marco Lambertini, regarding the accusations.

Shortly thereafter WWF stopped issuing press reports or field science monographs in English from the area. WWF assigned the Head of its “Issues Management” department, Phil Dickie, to respond. Dickie took several months, finally sending an email to Survival that read in part:

“Apologies for the delays… This is a personal note…. I would prefer to operate on the basis that our organisations both have the interests of the Baka and other indigenous people at heart….If you want to explore the possibilities, let me know.”
12 May 2015 15:37

It strikes me that WWF is in deep do-do, holding hands with a French logging company whose behavior is probably criminal. Like the leaders of our own Republican Party, WWF may have lost control but finds itself unable to extract itself into any original moral position nor to unentangle itself from its own perhaps unintentional involvement in displacing indigenous people.

It’s the disease of the Too Big, Too Powerful. In my view organizations and institutions this large can only function in a moral way when they are accountable to the people who support them and who they serve.

10% fund raising doesn’t reach that level.

Don’t Go? Just Do It!

June 9, 2016June 9, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

So what do you do? Play cribbage? Watch Re-Runs?

This week the U.S. said there was credible evidence that a terror attack is imminent in South Africa, France, Poland and … the U.S.: In fact, basically all over the whole damn world.

Britain and Australia issued similar warnings.

This sounds like a spoof. Is there some actuary out there who can give me the odds of dying watching the Tour de France vs. walking across my street? There probably is, actually, and I imagine it’s worse trying to walk across my street so that means DON’T GO OUT!

The explanation for this incredible blanket of warnings – really unprecedented – is that ISIS and other Islamic militant groups are on the run, it’s Ramadan (started June 5) so crazies are likely to lash out.

Crazed mullahs who warp Islam the way freaky tele-evangelists warp Christianity tell suicide bombers that they get more virgins if they blow themselves up during Ramadan.

Particular warnings were issued for the European Soccer Championship, the Tour de France (bicycle competition) this summer in France, the Catholic Church’s World Youth convention in Poland in July, and malls in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

The warnings won’t expire until August 31, the end of the vacation season. To many sensible people, this security-speak means, “Don’t Go.”

Look, whatever inclinations you as a traveler, father or mother, teacher or tour guide might have … don’t you see what’s happening? Without even pulling the suicide rip cord, the terrorists have won!

They’ve stopped life as we know it, the care-free personal will that takes us to the movies on a whim or motivates Dad to shell out a couple thousand to take junior to watch bikes race up the Alps! Bamm! Stop!

Our governments have fallen for this lock, stock and security screen! We’ve spent how much of our national treasures, how much good will, how much time and energy to prevent a single “credible” threat from happening?

Here’s a thought.

What if we just stopped all this nonsense? Well, we’d probably have a lot more bombings and suicide attacks because god knows how many crazies there are out there.

But let’s say that with all those recovered resources: money, time, good will, energy, we flew big planes over troubled areas of the earth and dropped millions – billions of dollar bills, might the crazies decide to alter their travel arrangements and go get an ice cream?

It would be no more insane a world than it is right now.

Ludicrousness aside, take your chances kid. Alter your lifestyle and the terrorists win and it doesn’t matter then if you’re dead or not, you aren’t you.

Listen and be careful, to be sure. Play the odds.

Your kid was so thrilled to be a delegate to the World Convention, don’t stop her from going but maybe don’t let him go the whole time. The last thing on your bucket list was to visit Cape Town, so do it. Go browsing for your curios for the time being online rather than in the mall but for christ’s sake don’t hesitate going to the mall to pick up a quick hamburger.

You’re on your way to the college bicycle team, so watch those guys in France for sure! If you learn something valuable, it’s worth the risk of being blown to smithereens! Just like you risk being demolished by some drunk kid texting in his Mom’s Benz after prom on the highway!

Life’s a bunch of risks and chances and it’s always been this way. So there may be a greater risk today that a crazy will stand next to you at Walmart and blow you up, but there’s a much lower risk that you’re going to die of measles.

Life goes on, just make sure you’re on board and not in some air raid shelter! Everything balances out, and in the end it’s all the same. Just don’t give in to the Dark Side. You’re going to die someday. Just make sure it was worth it.

Poaching Politics

June 7, 2016June 6, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Richard Leakey’s conservation organization just announced that “poaching rates [in Kenya] have decreased dramatically” and that “Kenya’s elephant populations are now on the rise.”

This is, of course, good news but the May 25 press release was bereft of references or statistics. “Dramatically” needs to be substantiated, and frankly what I intuit here is that wildlife organizations are resyncing to reality: e.g., poaching was never as “dramatic” as had been suggested.

The group, Wildlife Direct, is one of the most respected in Africa. Leakey’s involvement goes way back to when he was the Wildlife Czar for the country in 1989 when poaching really was out of control. More than almost any other individual in Africa, he was instrumental in stopping that horrendous decimation of elephant.

He was integrally involved in Kenya’s collaboration with the U.S. prior to that which created the CITES treaty, which remains the mechanism worldwide for regulating the conservation of endangered species.

The recent Wildlife Direct report that monitored the creation, passage and implementation of wildlife laws in Kenya gives very positive ratings to the system in Kenya now used to prevent poaching.

It points out that many more persons are being prosecuted, including major black marketeer distributors, and that many more have gone to jail and that these represent “significant improvements.”

The group actually credits itself as well, claiming that its courtroom monitoring team is the principal motivation (for the courts, anyway) to implement the laws and put poachers behind bars.

But the battle’s not over, the group points out:

“The team of lawyers also warn that endemic delays and corruption mean that too many criminals are still walking free from the courts… The undermining of wildlife trials by corruption is the elephant in the room.

“Numerous cases are failing due to … the loss of evidence, witnesses fatigue, loss of files, wrong charges, wrongful conclusions, and illegal penalties. What’s worse is that there are no consequences for those involved in undermining these cases.”

Those criticisms apply to almost everything prosecuted in the Kenyan courts. Anyone remember why the President and Vice President of Kenya were let off their International Criminal Court prosecution for crimes against humanity? Loss of evidence, loss even of witnesses.

Wildlife Direct’s actions continue the long and uninterrupted integrity of Leakey’s involvement in all aspects of his native country, and bravo to that.

But when the stats arrive as they must, and as they trickle in from elsewhere in Africa, I think we’ll learn a couple very important things:

First, poaching in the last few years – as horrible as it is – was never as bad as we were told. I wonder how many media groups are publishing this current finding, that things are improving, compared to a couple years ago when anecdotal statistics were used to suggest an apocalyptic decline in elephants.

Second, as the individual stories of poachers get reported — as journalists study those who are prosecuted and jailed — I think we’ll learn that most poachers are ad hoc individuals just trying to survive: Criminals, if you will, forced almost against their will into illegal activity simply to get food and provide for their families.

Poaching is not cut-and-dried, and now we’re learning, it’s not even well documented.

Yipes! No, Yelp!

June 6, 2016June 6, 2016 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

How do we get rid of bribing? We get rid of tipping. Use your cell phone!

Bribing is a universal, world-wide phenomenon … sometimes called tipping. Africans have been unfairly cited by westerners all my life for bribing while it’s actually they who bribe ten times more each day than an African ever could.

We sugarcoat a lot by calling it tipping: Journeymen’s gifts at Christmas, an apple for the teacher, flowers on Secretary’s Day, or how about those popcorn baskets to truculent vendors at the end of the year or Godiva candies to past clients?

“Expressing our thanks,” replaces decent pay and benefits, or put another way, ensures there isn’t decent pay or benefits.

Social media powered by cell phones is getting rid of bribery … and tipping … in two ways. In Nairobi as in New York, Uber and Yelp and a dozen other media sites are bringing sanity back into service, while mass demonstrations are sealing the deal.

Big tippers get cabs in Manhattan. I spoke to a cabbie recently in Brooklyn who said he can spot a big tipper across the Hudson. Their jacket is unbuttoned. They’re looking uptown even if they want to cut a hard right just ahead and go downtown. They step out into the traffic lanes. He said sometimes they even wave dollar bills in the air.

Same in Dar-es-Salaam or Lusaka. Look rich, ooze currency, and you’ll get a better deal in the end. At least until … Uber.

No charade. No cash? To comply with the reality that a lot of Africans don’t own credit cards, Uber now takes cash there! But… no tip! Often, no wait.

Big restaurant tippers tend to be loyal customers. Tipping levels often were the best rating restaurants had … at least as far as the owners were concerned. No more. TripAdvisor be damned. Looking for the best grub in Joburg? Go to yelp.

In Kenya they’re falling all over themselves to get the Yelp franchise… stay tuned.

There is no question that this is grass roots change and that the cell phone facilitates it. You can’t really optimize either Uber or Yelp without a cell phone at the time you need their advice and service.

But cell phones are working from the top, too.

Kenyan truckers are among the best paid, best educated and roughest individuals on earth. They often speak softly but could crush you with their thumb. They have to be this way in order to bring food into war zones or plastic pipe into a desert without gas stations for 300 miles.

It’s not a happy life, though. One of my top guys in Nairobi started as a trucker. It’s how he got his capital to buy his first vehicles. But he hesitates speaking about those days the same way a cousin I have who was a PT boat captain in Vietnam hesitates speaking about the war.

About the only thing that can disrupt a Kenyan trucker is … Kenyan police.

Kenyan police are generally fatter and less muscular, so in a brawl they’d lose. But they have power and saw horses that stop traffic. Ostensibly this is to check the safety of the vehicles: the tires, mufflers, etc. In reality it’s the way they get paid.

Truckers call these “road-block” taxes.

So to start the week in Kenya, today, thanks to Kenyans’ massive mobile phone networks, the entire country is coming to a halt as truckers turn off the engine on major highways.

The actual demonstration was prompted not by police bribes, but by the deaths of 37 truckers carrying cargo into troubled South Sudan. Truckers want Kenyan military escorts.

But they also want the end of road-block taxes.

So happy start of the week, Kenya! Make sure your phone is charged!

Africa Answerman

Sharing the beauty of African life today. Adventurer. Conservationist. Owner of Explorers World Travel.

Month: June 2016