Month: April 2010

Africa Powers the World?

Africa Powers the World?

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

One thirtieth of the Sahara Desert can power the whole world.
In 35 years Africa will be the principal source of power for the world, right?

Yes, according to a consortium of African and European governments with considerable capital funding from world companies like Siemens and classified technologies from the German Aerospace Center.

And several days ago, this “pipe dream” notion rocketed to credibility when an important German politician/businessman agreed to become its CEO. Max Schön is Germany’s Warren Buffet, entrepreneur and former President of the German Chapter of the Club of Rome. Tuesday, he agreed to take charge of the not-for-profit DESERTEC.

The secret is not photovoltaic cells, wind turbines, wave captures or nuclear energy, and of course not any new found deposits of fossil fuel.

The secret source of the world’s next generation of energy is CSP: Concentrating Thermal Power plants. Giant mirrors are placed in the deserts of Africa and capture heat to turn salt-water steam turbines. Not only does the world get energy, but Africa gets desalinated water.

European countries are considering an investment of one billion euros.

If for some reason a sand storm or freak cloud interrupts sunshine, the turbines switch over to using either or as a last resort fossil fuels to assure a constant, uninterrupted supply of power.

According to DESERTEC, while the costs are high compared to current power sources, they are much less than solar panels. So backers see this as the logical next step; not solar panels.

Siemens is deeply involved because this company builds the high voltage transmission lines needed to transport the energy from Africa to Europe. Siemens is right now building these special lines in China.

CSP plants aren’t a new idea. They’ve been used at Kramer Junction in California since 1985.

I’ve often remarked that Africa’s time will come when a new source of energy is found. Is this it?

Is CITES a Rich Man’s Treaty?

Is CITES a Rich Man’s Treaty?

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Must we choose between elephants and less traffic congestion?
The southern African countries are meeting today in Malawi to decide whether to withdraw from the CITES convention. They almost convinced me to support them, and then, they blew it.

The withdrawal from CITES (Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species) by part of the world where half the elephants live would throw the treaty into turmoil, even though that might not immediately threaten elephants.

I find myself slowly moving into the southern African camp after a life-time of supporting the East Africans. I have little doubt that relaxing the ban on ivory sales will increase poaching, and that will unequivocally negatively impact tourism in East Africa.

But I’ve seen more and more the destruction that elephants are doing, and the pitiful response of NGOs and governments alike to assist with the human sacrifice. More and more, CITES is looking like a Rich Man’s Treaty.

Yes, CITES protects Kenyan tourism. But what does that mean? Is it protecting revenue to develop the country and sustain its environment, or is it more just giving us rich westerners a better vacation?

The withdrawal from CITES was proposed by Botswana. The 15 nations in the trading and tourism organization Botswana is petitioning would be directed to urge their governments to take official action to withdraw, which will take a long time. But if that ultimately happened, CITES would be thrown into turmoil.

I doubt anything except hot air will come out of the convocation, but it makes us realize once again that just protecting elephant without protecting people begs fairness. Elephant protectors argue that the healthier environment and proper management of these jumbo forms of wildlife actually contributes to economic stability. Politicians, farmers and the poor feel significantly otherwise.

With as much coincidence and political adroitness as the Goldman Sachs hearing before a successful Democratic vote to move forward bank regulation in the U.S. Congress, Botswana and Zambian media last week were incessant in reporting about a family of elephant near Sesheke destroying crops and threatening farmers and villagers.

Sesheke is in the triangular border of Namibia, Botswana and Zambia just outside the famous Chobe National Park, which earns more tourism revenue for Botswana than any of its other protected wildernesses. Botswana argues that the human suffering in the area is simply not worth the tourism revenue, or that the tourism revenue won’t suffer that much if elephants are protected less, or both.

Botswana claims that it could earn up to $7 million annually by selling ivory that was simply harvested from naturally dead animals if it withdraws from CITES. Meanwhile, it spends $1 million annually just to manage the stockpile of collected ivory it can’t sell. These are significant amounts for a poor country.

But alas, the southern Africans aren’t doing their cause much justice this time around. The whole meeting grew farcical yesterday when it elected the Zimbabwean Ministry for Tourism its chairman. There hasn’t been any significant tourism in Zimbabwe for years, and nearly everything Zimbabwe does these days destroys tourism and its own development!

So the serious intellectual argument dissolves in farce. My wrenched little conscience starts laughing hysterically.

Ultimately, I just feel that the Africans have the preeminent position in determining not just the morality but the economy of this contentious debate, and I’m ready to give them the benefit of the doubt.

But if they make their spokesman and point man someone from a country with as destitute morality and economy as Zimbabwe, how on earth can I embrace their arguments?

Kenyan Church & Kenyan State

Kenyan Church & Kenyan State

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

The damn theologians are screwing it up, again. This time in Kenya.

Kenya’s only hope for a peaceful and prosperous future lies in passing the July referendum approving the new constitution. After months of wrangling and horse trading, Kenyan politicians whose differences are much greater than Pope Benedict’s and Joseph Smith’s, have finished the draft. It goes to the people for a YES or a NO in July.

Guess who says NO?
Here’s the list:

.

.
Failed Presidential Candidates;
Demagogues;
Terrorists;
Politicians who will soon be named by the criminal court in the Hague as fomenting the last round of violence in Kenya after the 2007 elections;
and..
.. Kenyan theologians. Why?

Church leaders oppose the fact the Constitution doesn’t outlaw abortion. (Knowing that hot-button issue is alone too flammable, they have also publically opposed the adoption of “kadhi” or local culturally defined magistrate courts that in certain locals have a religious tincture : i.e., Muslim. But their overwhelming gripe is that abortions aren’t outlawed.)

On my safaris I praise African church leaders as instrumental in bringing not only peace but sanity to the continent. I explain that while I’m not religious, without people like Desmond Tutu and much less well known theologians, Africa would be a sinking ship.

But like everywhere in the world, Kenyan theologians have become politicized. It’s truly amazing to me.

Today, there is little difference between Pope Benedict, Representative Stupak or Canon Peter Karanja in Kenya. They have lost their religious mission and are stinging their way into the political process with the vengeance of a scorpion.

What the hell has happened?

I don’t remember as a kid the extreme tension that exists in the world today between the “Church” and “The State.” As a kid, in fact, the only recollections I have were the arcane references to it by my 8th grade history teacher.

And that was in Annie Camp Junior High School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, about as deep into the Bible Belt Belly Hole as you could get.

But the separation of Church & State was simply a given: a fundamental divide that was only mildly inconsistent with our opposition to the other guys in the Cold War.

“Having participated in three meetings with the government, we note with sadness that the greatest hindrance to a resolution of the contentious issues is not legal technicalities but rather the lack of political will,” said a statement read by Karanja, on behalf of 17 Kenyan denominations, yesterday.

He said that the draft consitution “faces a blanket rejection by Christians at the referendum.” And he urged all theologians in the country to preach as much to their parishoners.

If that happens the Church may have saved the sinners contemplating abortion, but they will have doomed the nation and culture of Kenya for decades. Every life they think they will have saved will be paid for handsomely by the mayhem that will wreck the country.

Tears of Rain as Camping Ends

Tears of Rain as Camping Ends

by Arusha ♥ 3 Comments

The ending of the recession and its accompanying surge in bookings are redefining the American safari travel market. One important change: luxury camping is OUT!

Yesterday I discussed how the market will evaluate permanent lodging, but it’s with some sadness that I conclude the era of camping might be over in East Africa.

And it might not be, altogether. What I know is falling in interest as fast as a baboon plummeting out of his tree at sunrise is so-called “luxury camping.”

In the old days when we first started comfortable mobile tented camping, we took the whole camp and staff with us along the itinerary. It took the guys at least a day to break camp, move and reset it, and on that moving day we’d go to a lodge.

That was the camping I really enjoyed. These were large tents, spring beds with comfortable 2- or 3″ foam mattresses with a bit of linen to make them look good, detached long-drop (toilet) tents and detached (hot-bucket) shower tents. There was then a mess tent, and it usually took a staff of at least 8-10 to work a small camp, and the staff/client ratio was about 1:1.

The reason for these camps in the first place was because there wasn’t an alternative! One of my favorite places to camp was Naabi Hill in the Serengeti with its sweeping views of the migration plains. The nearest lodge was at Ndutu, 30k away.

We loved it so much, we ultimately destroyed it. We oversold camping. We referred to the “real Africa” and experiencing the veld “like the first explorers.”

Right. Brochures are instruments of exaggeration, and in this case, inversely so. It’s TODAY that the camps are like the early explorers. Today, “camps” have clawfoot iron bathtubs and cellar wines served in Waterford crystal.

Here’s what happened and why the new American market now rejects camping.

The cost of camping was on a par with staying at a lodge in the early 1980s, right after the second major recession since I started my career redefined American market interests in East Africa. So price in the beginning wasn’t an issue. You had a choice: be a wimp and stay at a lodge, or be adventuresome like you expected you’d have to be when you first started thinking about going on safari!

And it was, truly, adventuresome. Gerbils would scurry under the plastic floor all night long like little tumblers rolling through the ground; scorpions had to be dumped out of your shoes in the morning; elephant would knock trees’ seeds onto your tent in the middle of the night, and hippo would be crunching grass right outside your matted window.

I remember a wonderful guy, Richard Lattis, then the curator of herpetology at the Bronx Zoo (later the director) waking me up rudely in the middle of the night as he lunged out of his spring bed onto mine (and me!) to watch the hippo on my side eating the grass just outside the tent.

I remember my son, Brad, insisting he was old enough to leave the mess tent at dinner in the dark (at about 7 years old) to go back alone to his tent to visit the long-drop. He came back remarkably quickly with a white face, stoically silent, and a disposition unable to use the long-drop for several days subsequently.

I found leopard tracks around his long-drop!

Or my great friend, Gregg Painter, expert birder, wandering to the edge of camp while the rest of us slept off the morning heat in our cots after our game drive, rescued in the nick of time by my driver, Winston, as he pulled his Landrover in between Gregg and the lioness with her cubs!

Those were the days.

And it was particularly nice that the same staff, same tents, same outstanding food, traveled with you from place to place.

And it became more and more popular, because it should have been! So guess what, the price went up… on two fronts. First, the normal supply/demand curve pointed every price upwards, and second, the government began charging special fees for camping.

Then, as the price mounted parity was always in jeopardy. Those of us outfitting the camps started to scratch our noggins wondering, “What the hell are clients paying so much for, when down the street there’s a real bathroom?!” We were always worried that the price threshold wouldn’t hold.

And then in the mid 1990s, the competition got fierce. The main company in Nairobi that made canvas tents went bonkers. Canvas – most of it pulled up from South Africa – doubled in price from 1995 to 1999. That led to even higher pricing.

And by the early 2000s government fees for camping within a game park reached $100 per person per night.

And there were now more lodges and more permanent tented camps, but the market demand was still substantial. All inclinations to hold prices down disappeared.

By 2000 the net cost for a person camping including fees was just under $300 per night. That would translate into a retail market price of $500-700 per night. The mean retail price of a safari using a permanent lodge was around $350 and a permanent camp, around $400.

The disparity was now enormous. How’d that happen?

Market demand, I think. We were too good at promoting the “real Africa.” The fantasy of an African safari was most closely reflected in a camping program. We learned that many travelers were in search of this fantasy and like Space Mountain or Bourbon Street, we gave it to them!

The successful formula attracted lots of new investors. Suddenly the national parks were creating new “special campsites” all over the place. Sometimes, they were in sight of a lodge!

So to earn your customer’s business, “improvements” began. Like… flush toilets and solar lighting?

Whoa! Sir and Lady Burton never used flush toilets!

Flush toilets and solar lighting takes a while to set up. The idea of a moveable camp was gone. So was the idea that camp was set up just for your safari. The only way any of this made sense was to set up “camp” for 5-6 months in one place, so you could bury electrical cable, create either a complicated septic system or make arrangements to dispose of all waste regularly, hire staff for extended periods, and figure out a long-term supply strategy.

By the early 2000s, “camp” … wasn’t.

It was semi-permanent and unmovable. The giant tent interiors included four-poster beds with beautiful covers, arm chairs and armoires, separate attached chambers with flush toilets and big showers and a separate bathroom sink area. When you settled into your queen-sized bed at night under the draped mosquito netting, book lights could be switch on until you drifted off to sleep.

Pathways were demarcated with colored rocks and kerosene lanterns, flutes were played by appropriately dressed Maasai askaris and pork loin was served with Pinot Noir.

Animals wouldn’t dare come anywhere near the place, anymore, but that was OK.

Now, all of that isn’t so bad until…

It rained.

No matter how “semi-permanent” it all was, it wasn’t a lodge or permanent camp, and nature ruled. It was one thing in the old days when it rained and got muddy in front of your tent. You just took off your shoes and let down the flaps. Didn’t matter if a few drops of water or mud followed you inside.

But good grief, imagine what mud does to a white fluff comforter!

In the old days, if we saw the path’s water rising, we’d quickly move the tent! Not possible with these new monstrosities. You just watched slowly as the water seeped onto your floor drenching the sheep mats. And my, what water can do to an electrical system!

And then …

When the toilet often didn’t flush right… or when the bed lights didn’t turn on .. Or when the shower spigot fell onto you… or when you found carpenter ants in your Sealy Posturpedic… the contrast between “camping” and “lodging” grew stark.

And you’re paying more for all of this than if you were in a nice, cozy lodge!

The days of camping – at least East Africa’s style of “luxury camping” – are ending with this current recession.

Substance over Fantasy. Luxury camping ruined the fantasy.

It remains to be seen if the old days of camping will make a come-back at a reasonable cost. It will be harder, because there are fewer places that don’t have permanent camps or lodges which justify a mobile camp.

And I wonder if the animals will ever again join humans trying to be as wild as them.

But whether the old days of camping return, the ridiculous days of “luxury camping” are over.

Ndutu Lodge IN; Crater Lodge OUT

Ndutu Lodge IN; Crater Lodge OUT

by Arusha ♥ 7 Comments

Which to choose for the same price: a week in the left bed or 1 night in the right bed?!!
Reliability and Substance over Fluff ‘n Fantasy. That’s the read from the surge in new travelers to East Africa.

‘Reliability over Fluff’ – This is one of the important redefinitions of the post-recession market in East Africa. It’s the reason that places like Ndutu Lodge will do well, and why places like Crater Lodge will now see a decline.

(Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the emergence of’ Substance over Fantasy.’ Why so-called luxury, mobile camping in East Africa is on its way out.)

The end of a recession is an exciting time for any industry, but particularly so for travel. The surge in bookings is the side-liners coming to the fore, the people who had planned to go but pulled back when the recession hit. We’re feeling that surge right now.

This burst of new travel was building continually throughout the recession. The fear that the recession wasn’t ending was the dam on the logjam. It kept building with people ready to go but who pulled back, afraid that the recession might continue. They waited until there was certainty things were getting better.

That’s happened, worldwide, and the net result is a bubble of healthy travelers bursting out at us. This group has a lot in common besides their financial endurance.

They are now redefining the next business cycle’s important parameters of price brackets and style.

It was the end of the 1973-75 recession that opened the gates of travel to East Africa. There wasn’t much to redefine, because there hadn’t been much before, but in the last half of the 1970’s decade travel to East Africa quadrupled from America.

Hardly ten years later, the end of the 1981-82 recession resulted in a massive redefinition of the American market to East Africa. That was when the first boutique safari camps appeared. The preceding decade had been one mainly of mass tourism, large groups staying in large lodges. The end of this recession marked the beginning of “style” (read: ‘luxury’) as an important component of American safaris.

It’s interesting to note that the single largest group of travelers to East Africa, the French, never really bought into this. French still remain the single largest nationality traveling on safari, but they never abandoned the big mass tourism lodges for the luxury lodges the way the Americans did.

That 1980s recession also redefined how people traveled, including the French. Suddenly there was a surge in couples and small groups, what the industry calls “FIT”s (Foreign Independent Travel). That was nearly unheard of only a few years preceding. That led to all sorts of revolutionary changes, like a whole bunch of new local airlines flying daily services to all the game parks.

While we had a recession in the 1990s, it was mild (GDP fell less than 2%) and didn’t cause any significant redefinition of that second big recession of 1980s. That may explain why there is going to be such a big realignment, now. This 2007 recession is only the third one since travel really took off to East Africa in the 1970s large enough (GDP falling more than 3%) to redefine the markets.

So for nearly twenty years we’ve had a linear growth in market parameters: mostly in style getting more and more lavish.

This time it looks pretty clear to me: out are the expensive and outlandish Fluff ‘n Fancy of places like Crater Lodge and so-called “luxury camping,” and in are reliable locations and services of places like Ndutu Lodge and Sanctuary camps.

This isn’t just a reflection of price. It’s also a reflection of the “New Efficiency” of the American traveler.

I think the American is becoming more European. I chuckle to myself now when I recall the many tourism conventions I’ve attended when around the bar we Americans would chastise our European counterparts for not “splurging” on the new styles available.

The irony, of course, is that at home the European lives a much more lavish lifestyle than the American. Our huge unused living spaces, poorly decorated reading rooms and bathrooms without bidets cast us with an unrelenting cowboy legacy.

American luxury and splurging is now going to be reserved — like with the European — for the backyard pond, the second home or refurbished kitchen. Home is going to be the focal point for luxury, not travel. A vacation – a safari – will have preeminent goals unique to its destination.

Like finding animals.

And it matters less and less that after finding the animals you fall into a feather bed. A nicely made up spring mattress will be just fine.

The depth, surprise and lasting impact of this latest recession will not fade from memory, soon. If you want to think of this “New Efficiency” dynamic as more related to the fear of another recession than just a maturation of where luxury is meaningful, be my guest. The net result is the same.

And here’s the beautiful ironic twist. Future safari travelers might even spend more than before, but it will be to lengthen their vacation rather than upgrade their accommodation. There will be new scrutiny of services. It won’t matter a hoot that you have sherry by a personal fireplace if there aren’t enough porters to get your bag into your room at the same time you arrive.

My personal experience in this last safari season traveling with this burst of new travelers really bears this out.

All properties have cut back. Chains and independents alike have reduced staff and overall services. But it was at Crater Lodge that we noticed it most. Crater Lodge had been the most talked about property in East Africa, an &Beyond extravaganza that guests fondly called funky. It’s lavish, and lavishly priced, currently $1500 per person per night in its highest season.

When you’re forking out that amount of money, even the tiniest decline in services stings. Of the four nights I spent there in the last six weeks, two nights experienced long periods of no electricity. Wake-up calls were routinely a half hour late. Dinner portions were smaller and smaller. Askari or “guards” were often found asleep rather than ready to escort guests.

I’m sure that the surge of new travelers will refresh Crater Lodge’s revenue stream enough to remedy these failings. But their effects are more long-lasting.

We realized that if there weren’t 12-foot high ceilings with an 8-foot dropping rheostatic chandelier over the clawfoot bathtub set in a nearly 200 sq. foot room that maybe not so much electricity would have to be used in the first place! That if we just used our own alarm clocks, we wouldn’t have to be waken up by an underpaid, under slept porter.

What the travelers realized is that they had paid for Fluff. And what they really wanted was not to miss the dawn game drive.

In contrast, little Ndutu Lodge, retailing in its highest season at $170 per person per night ran as it always did like an efficient time piece. Since the generator has always gone off at 11:30p, no one missed it in the middle of the night. The food was as ordinary and generous as ever, and wake-up calls came right on the dot.

Both Crater Lodge and Ndutu Lodge share an important component of success: their location. Crater Lodge is perfectly placed on the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. Ndutu Lodge is in the southwest Serengeti, seasonally perfect for the great migration. On that, neither of them can err.

But since you can stay for more than a week at Ndutu Lodge for the cost of a single night at Crater Lodge, the contrast has just grown too stark. There are three other lodges on the crater rim, and Crater Lodge can no longer compete with them economically.

And the staff at Ndutu Lodge was much better than at Crater Lodge. Ndutu employees are loyal, courteous and know what they’re doing. That could be because Ndutu retains its workforce much better than Crater Lodge does. The rooms were really nice, the beds wonderfully comfortable, the bathrooms fully functional.

A night’s rest at Ndutu Lodge is less stressful and now more enduring than at Crater Lodge.

There was a time just a short while ago when the rose petals lining your bathroom floor to your hot clawfoot bath garnered your every dime. Just won’t any more. Reliability over Fluff.

Nairobi National Treasure

Nairobi National Treasure

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Big Game by a Big City.
Yesterday a leopard was photographed multiple times in Nairobi National Park. It’s been years since there has been such positive news about the wilderness park that lies immediately adjacent the mega-metropolis of Nairobi.

Is this positively Green, or is it just a temporary reflection of heavy rains?

This adds to the carnivore resurgence here. An estimated 35-40 lion have been found in the park recently.

The park is diligently surveyed by members of Richard Leakey’s Wildlife Direct organization.

These are environmental activists who live in Nairobi and have as much a stake in the health of the park as we do at home with our county reserves.

The actual park is pretty small, 46 sq. miles and is located only 4 miles from the city center! There are more than 100 species of mammals and 400 species of birds. But before you get too excited about reducing your time on safari, it’s often difficult to find much without a real park advocate/guide.

With little effort you’re likely to see buffalo, giraffe, hartebeest and impala. These are animals which don’t suffer from the bushmeat trade, because buffalo is too aggressive, giraffe is too hard to poach, people don’t like hartebeest, and impala is too quick and nimble and has a strong set of defensive horns.

The park is fenced on three sides and open to the Athi River wilderness, an area that still has a good number of pastoralists. Including this dispersal area, the animal numbers increase substantially and there is hope that one day they will be a regular attraction from the park tracks.

Rhinos are contained a patrolled and fenced area that you will see, and unfortunately, that’s how rhinos are viewed throughout East Africa today. (There are real efforts to nurture the few free-ranging ones in the Mara and the Serengeti, but that’s till an unfilled dream.)

The lion numbers have increased during this last period, first because of the drought and the fact that the wetlands and Langata Dam attracted herbivores. It’s uncertain this number will remain, but it’s a definite opportunity right now.

If you’re a birder, then the park is sure day trip winner. Patrick Lhoir and Brian Finch have been birding the park for years, and they report it better than ever!

I remember Kathleen and my first safari… in Nairobi National Park! I rented a car which promptly died about ten feet from a rhino. Up close and personal.

It is truly a phenomenon this park. The news is good, today. I hope it lasts.

Defense means Racism?

Defense means Racism?

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Paul Kagame, President, Hutu, Tutsi or Dictator?
It has been 15 years since the genocide in Rwanda, but tensions are building not lessening. The runup to the August elections doesn’t look good.

I was in next-door Zaire when the genocide began. I have friends whose lives were severely effected by the genocide. My daughter and I with a couple close friends were nearly kidnaped by powerful Hutus in Zaire (now The Congo) who took control of precious metal mines and established their own mini-states within the DRC.

But until this year all the possible bad news about Rwanda’s future was eclipsed by all the good news. That’s changed.

Wednesday the last of the promising Hutu political leaders in the country was arrested. There are no viable candidates left to challenge the current president in the August elections.

This followed Tuesday’s arrest of two prominent Tutsi generals, suggesting once again the machinations of this country’s diabolical ethnicity was gearing up for something bad.

It’s all in the runup to the August elections. The billions and billions of dollars that mostly France and the U.S. have injected into Rwandan society to build shopping malls and fine roads came with the price of “free and fair elections.”

Down payments were made. Hutus who had fled the country, like activist Victoire Inagbire were allowed to return (from The Netherlands), and disgruntled Tutsi who increasingly criticized the militarization of society, like Frank Habineza, were given a wide birth to criticize the government in the media.

But then things went south earlier this year, when the new educated class in Rwanda, much wealthier and more savvy than their parents, began to actually cross ethnic lines in support of social movements.

Anyone criticizing the government was suspect, and now most are in jail.

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have sounded alarms.

Habineza heads the Rwanda Green Party. True to its name, its agenda is mostly nonpolitical, but with time its membership grew with disgruntled Tutsi including many former military officers concerned with too many resources being used for guns rather than trees. Inagbire – fully educated in the west – started pointing out publicly that there were many Hutus who suffered in the genocide as well as Tutsi.

Her own brother was mistaken during the genocide for a Tutsi and killed.

And therein lies the quagmire of Rwanda. Tutsi and Hutu are linked by a common language and many, many intermarriages especially in Kigali. The old notion that the Tutsi is lean and tall and the Hutu short and stubby is especially not true, today, where the melting pot is bigger than the tradition.

Yet the animosity is intense, and since the 1994 genocide it has morphed into something political rather than ethnic.

The Hutus who fled and didn’t come back are now a powerful, onerous force in The Congo mostly known as The Interamwe. They are brutal, ruthless cowboys almost exclusively men controlling important Congolese mineral deposits by guns and terror. Read John Le Carre’s fabulous book, Mission Song.

The Interamwe has beat back Rwandan, Ugandan and even UN forces trying to suppress them. In the long time since the genocide this movement has attracted a number of eastern Congolese movements, some of them actually Tutsi. So this Hutu ethnic movement has become a renegade but powerful political source sitting on tons of titanium that buys arsenals of weapons.

And within Rwanda, Paul Kagame, President, has controlled Rwanda since he liberated it from the Hutu massacre in 1994. There has actually been a growing number of Hutus integrated into his government, and in the last several years, even into Rwanda’s Army, which is the real force in the country.

And so this “Tutsi” government has morphed, too, into an iron-handed government that many now call a dictatorship. Kagame says government policy is necessary as a defense against the huge Interamwe threat on his border.

Trouble is, as always happens, contemporary political motives erupt into old feuds. Our Arizona’s legislature’s honest interest in stemming illegal immigration seems to me fast transforming into a birther and racist movement.

And so will it in Rwanda if anything blows. Strong government against external threats will once again become Tutsi versus Hutu.

Eles for Bluefins

Eles for Bluefins

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Bluefin reception eats last tuna.
The whole damned world is becoming politicized. It isn’t just us, and it’s not good for animals.

The quintessential world treaty, CITES, which has done so much good since its inception in the 1980s to protect endangered species became totally politicized at the March meeting in Doha.

Horse trading ruled the day. Sorry, elephant trading.

The convention resoundingly defeated any attempt to relax elephants’ listings as endangered. There will not even be any one-off sales of stockpiled ivory, as requested by Tanzania and Zambia and supported by most of the southern African countries.

Elephants won, but at the expense of bluefin tuna; many corals; hammerhead, oceanic whitetip and spiny dogfish sharks; and polar bears. The scientific reports tabled at the convention overwhelmingly supported at least some restrictions on these rapidly dwindling species.

But while in the past science ruled mitigated by a harsh but important consideration for local economies, this convention was ruled by politics.

And it was crass.

After eles won, the big fight was over bluefin tuna. There is wide consensus that the population is in catastrophic decline but also wide recognition of its economic importance, not just in Japan, but also in Europe. There is even an organization created by world powers just to regulate this single species: the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

It’s a very practical commission: the mandate – unlike CITES – is not to protect the biodiversity of planet earth, but its economies. Economists recognized that without regulation the bluefin will disappear, so that regulation that prolongs the species’ existence is a good economic move.

But ICCAT was politicized last year when the European Union made an end-run on the commission’s authority by claiming that Europe as a whole – rather than just the European countries’ that consume bluefin – must be regulated.

By the formulaic process that economists – as opposed to environmentalists – work, that allowed France, Portugal, Spain and Britain to harvest a disproportionate amount of bluefin compared to the population of Japan, since their consumption was numerically diminished by nonconsuming eastern European nations.

So it left Japan out in the cold … sorry, out in the sea.

Japan responded at CITES by flying in the trade and fishery ministers of more than two dozen African countries where Japan is the champion of free-world non-military foreign aid. These senior government officials trumped the scientists which used to be the sole delegates and voters at the convention.

Then, to celebrate before victory, Japan hosted a huge reception where it served blue-fin tuna. Martha Stewart would call that Bad Form.

And the polar bear trading didn’t stop there. Why did Senegal, who supported the ban on elephants, vote against listing polar bears? Supposedly because there was an Inuit delegation that successfully argued it was their livelihood (even though CITES could clearly not regulate indigenous hunting of species). I think rather it was tit for tat. Sorry, eles for bears.

What does it all mean, that the natural history of earth is now being won or lost by the best politicians?

What does it mean that national health is being won or lost by the best politicians?

The complex answer is the same. It means that science and practical sense loses to forces more immediate: and that usually means the pocket-books of the rich and powerful. Sorry, rich is powerful. (And vv.)

I wrote earlier about the slow response America had to all of this. Well, to some extent, America came through at the last moment. The Kenyans take credit for probably instructing the Americans on what was happening, and in all the battles, the Americans came out on the side of a green earth.

But it took them a while, and they had no good response to the blue-fin tuna dinner. There’s so much on the table at the moment for America’s new administration, that I guess they just didn’t see the fish.

Americans Crazy with Fear

Americans Crazy with Fear

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

Daily Nation cartoon by GADO.
Al-Qaeda is failing; Iran and North Korea are still threats, but not as imminently so, yet Americans are addicted to fear. So we’re turning inwards, dangerously so. We should take a lesson from Africa.

Sunday al-Qaeda militants crashed the Kenyan border at Liboi in the middle of the night, trashed the Ali-arif and Abdi-adoon hotels, and left a bomb that didn’t go off before retreating to Somalia. Not a single mention of it in the Kenyan press.

Was this an oversight? Was it poor judgment by the news editors in East Africa who instead were talking about the ash cloud over Iceland and the new constitution in Kenya? Or the horrible trash collections in Dar? Or the ongoing corruption in Tanzanian road building? Or more failures searching for oil?

No, because all of those issues were more important than the border crashing Al-Qaeda thugs in Liboi. Their bomb didn’t work! They posed no more of a threat to Kenya or the world than some errant middle schooler in Hamburg who can get his internet fingers on the design of a nuclear weapon.

But can you imagine how the growing group of American righties might think of this?

We thrive on paranoia. I just came back from six weeks in Africa to a culture of unbelievable accusations by the American fringe. Only one was new, but the old charges that Obama is taking away our liberties (and guns), that the new health care legislation will kill us, that bank regulation is bank bailout I had managed to forget. Once away from America, they seem impossible to believe.

But there they were, again. Palins, Bachmans, crazies crowding the media. Unbelievable. We trade in reasoning so that we can stay on edge: be afraid.

Here’s a great contrast between Africa and America, and the best example I can find for Americans to scale it down and learn from Africans.

Kenyans’ take on the Icelandic volcano is shown in the cartoon, above. A decrepit Osama bin-Laden trying to resurrect himself by taking credit for the volcanic eruption.

Fringe Americans’ take on the Icelandic volcano:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzVZ6UxN9qs

Which is more realistic? Which contributes better to our handling of terror, much less our handling of ourselves and our truly imminent responsibilities.

Woe, America. Watch out. Have you ever heard of the kite spider?

Tanzanian Saints on the March!

Tanzanian Saints on the March!

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

While the political focus in East Africa has been on Kenya’s very public troubles, a much more sinister situation is actually emerging in Tanzania.

Wednesday morning Tanzanian special police arrested Christopher Mtikila, a conservative Christian theologian, very public human rights activist, and unfortunately, a real righty politician who until now had little viable support.

Reverand Politican arrested in Dar.
Last year the Tanzanian government legitimized his political movement, the Democratic Party of Tanzania (DPT), by registering it as an official opposition that could stand for national elections this fall.

I guess they had second thoughts… twice. “Special police” arrived at Mtikila’s house at 7am Wednesday, and knocked politely at the door. His wife wouldn’t let them in, so they left. A little bit more than an hour later they returned with vengeance.

For three hours they ransacked his apartment, finally leaving with his computer. The affair has transformed a fringe politician into a national hero.

Trapped in the same dynamic that indecisive and oppressive regimes from Nixon to Mao found themselves in, the Tanzanians in power have now elevated a fringe movement to substantial prominence that risks shaking the country to its core.

From a distance Tanzanian politics has looked honky-dory. It’s one of the few countries in Africa where the country’s presidents (following the first, Julius Nyerere) never served more than two publicly elected terms. The transitions have always been peaceful.

But beneath this veneer of peaceful democracy is strict one-party control. Nyerere established the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) as the single political entity in the country. After the political collapse of the Cold War, CCM relented somewhat allowing ineffective opposition parties that never garnered much public support, but CCM always was — and still is — in complete charge.

Public presidents are beholding to retired presidents sitting quietly in the “presidium.” Like in China, age is power.

I’ve often wondered if savvy Americans like Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright really understood all this, and just didn’t let on. I’ve often wondered myself if this kind of top-down, near oppressive control is what emerging African democracies need. To a certain extent, it’s the (public) argument now going on in Kenya regarding their new constitution.

But it’s all coming apart now in Tanzania. The last thing Tanzania needs is a Newt Gingrich hero, but that’s what the indecisive Tanzanians-in-power have created with Rev. Christopher Mtikila.

Mtikila has been around for a very long time, sort of the Mike Huckabee of Tanzania. Born again apostolic, he’s campaigned tirelessly against the “unchristian” ways of the closely-held Tanzanian government. His views are not comfortable to most moderates. He’d like gays hanged and Sunday made a non-workday public holiday. He calls non-Christians “traitors.” Jailed more than two dozen times since the early 1970s.

Why on earth did the current Tanzanian regime suddenly legitimize him?

Times are changing. And for the better. I think the answer lies in Kenya, where real democracy is exploding through the streets. The internet, cell phones, blogs – you name it – young East Africans are on the march for greater transparency and democracy.

Kenya is handling it well. Tanzania has a lot to learn. And if it doesn’t soon, it may find that it’s oppressive politics flip from one heavy hand to another just as heavy, and maybe even less rational.

World Cup Travails

World Cup Travails

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

SA strikes grow violent

In a live sequel to Invictus South Africa’s dreams and aspirations were to be featured as it hosts the greatest sporting event in the non-American world, the World Cup. It’s not going well.

The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) has been striking since July, and the protests are growing and the violence is escalating.

Rubber bullets were used Wednesday following massive national street marches, Monday. In many parts of the country basic services like sweeping, garbage collection and public bus services have stopped. All is reminiscent of last year’s massive violent strikes that clogged city streets with burning trash and tires.

The decision to award the World Cup to South Africa was a long and tortured one, with opponents of the world body running the event claiming the country wouldn’t be able to refurbish or build new stadiums in time, and wouldn’t be able to provide good enough security.

That’s been compounded by poorer ticket sales than expected, poorer media contracts, and criticisms from virtually every sector of the paranoid western world that there aren’t enough hospitals or grocery stores!

London’s notorious Daily Star has even claimed that a devastating earthquake will occur during the games!

Building has been slow but now seems like it will be completed in time. Thousands of additional police and undercover security personnel have been trained by a government with a serious budget shortfall.

But no one expected the new stadium workers or trained police might just not show up for work.

“Workers want to see matters resolved speedily,” Samwu Secretary General Mthandeki Nhlapo said yesterday of the open-ended strike. “But there will be no compromise from our side.”

It’s not really a South African problem, as I see it. Imagine if the venue chosen had been Athens instead of Joburg. The problem is the world economic crisis.

Imagine if Obama had allocated a few extra billions to host the event in New Orleans.

To hire the thousands more police and build the great new stadiums, while trying to accomplish its many promises in the post-apartheid world in a depressed economy, South Africa is in the same pinch every country in the world finds itself.

The protests represent a very open, democratic society. Are we going to subscribe to every athletic event being hosted by Beijing?

Don’t change your plans to go to the World Cup. I’ll be very surprised if things don’t settle down weeks before the June 1 exhibition match in Johannesburg between Denmark and Australia.

Climbing KILI

Climbing KILI

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from [email protected]:

Q. I have a friend who told me that he was thinking about trying to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. (I had mentioned that you are the travel sensei of central eastern Africa.) I’m not sure how serious he was, but I told him I’d find out some information. How much would it cost for EVERYTHING to go to Tanzania and climb Mt. K? (Please include return flight cost this time.) Also, how long would the whole trip take? What kind of dangers are there?

Much appreciated,
Peter

A. This year we expect around 14,000 people to try to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro – this is down from the high point in 2006 when more than 22,000 people tried. Needless to say, it’s hard to imagine even 14,000 people (roughly 40 people per day).

The vast majority of these are budget climbers and they travel the “Marangu Route” which is nick-named the “Coca-cola” route. The Tanzanian government has built three dormitory-styled lodges on the route, with rooms that have 4 to 8 bunks with shared toilets. The Marangu Route is only one of 7 routes up the mountain, but it is the quickest (some argue, therefore, the most difficult) and the least expensive. Three days up. Two days down. Climbers can actually arrive without any prior reservations at the park gate with their backpack and gear, hire a porter/cook (which is mandatory, but you must supply the food), pay fees and begin climbing. This completely self-catered climb will cost around $700, most of it government fees.

Most of the people who try it that way don’t make it. Fitness is not the principle concern, since Kili is basically a walk to the top. Most failures to reach the summit are caused by inappropriate responses to high altitude, and it effects most people around 12,000′. (Kili’s summit is 19,349′) By adding only a couple hundred dollars to the basic cost, you can make professional arrangements with basic outfitters like the Marangu Hotel. These better trained and chosen porters and guides, with proper food, could double your success potential. Nevertheless, the Marangu Route is a tough one because it’s so fast, and it’s the least scenic way up the mountain.

EWT and a number of other companies outfit the more scenic climbs, and these can be as long as ten days with huge staffs carrying tents, showers, toilets, food, etc. Perhaps the most scenic route is the Machame Route. The most challenging is the Umbwe Route. There is a vast variety of costs for these 5 to 10-day climbs, ranging anywhere from $2000 to $6000 per person, depending upon the time of year, level of outfitting and required skill of the guides.

As to the safety, about a dozen people a year die trying to climb the mountain, but these are usually nonclimbing fatalities such as heart attacks and undiagnosed pulmonary edema, which in most cases could have been avoided had the climber been better outfitted or had better guiding. However, in November, 2008, a serious avalanche killed 5 people, and represented the increasing effect of global warming on the mountain. Another reason to choose a good outfitter who will know what parts of the mountain are safe, and which aren’t.

Properly outfitted, the danger is minimal and almost exclusively a matter of how your body reacts to high altitudes. EWT has outfitted U.S. Olympic medalists in track and field who didn’t make it to the top! And we outfitted a 70-year old man with one lung who did!

No matter what level of outfitting you choose, it’s always recommended that you give yourself some time in Tanzania before actually starting the climb, to shake jetlag and adjust to higher altitudes. You can do this by just hanging out in Moshi town under the mountain (at 8000′) or by some rigorous hiking in spectacular national parks.

As for air fare, it changes so much it would be worthless to quote until you really know the dates you’re going to go. In the course of 2009, roundtrip air fares from New York varied from $1350 to $2480 roundtrip.

Request EWT’s “Kilimanjaro Reference Guide” for more comprehensive information.

African Capitals Are Worlds Unto Themselves

African Capitals Are Worlds Unto Themselves

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

By Conor Godfrey

This weeks’ New Yorker featured a special on the last days of the Guinean Junta entitled The End of A West African Dictatorship.

I felt as if author John Lee Anderson used the dark surrealism of Heart of Darkness with the edgy absurdity of Clockwork Orange a l’ African to capture the disintegration of Captain Dadis Camara’s grip on power.

In Anderson’s account, Junta leaders conspiratorially vie for power inside the labyrinth of the Alpha Yaya military compound in Conakry, while brown-brown (½ cocaine ½ gun-powder) snorting soldiers patrol the streets in flat-beds fitted with 50. Caliber machine guns.

Implausible images of Junta leader Dadis Camara on horseback adorn this Orwellian landscape like a Guinean big brother modeled on a victorious Roman general.

Reading this nightmarish tale reminded me of the yawning disconnect between Conakry and Guinea, and more generally, between some African capitals and the countries they purport to represent.

How do you reconcile the tranquil Guinean interior with the horrors Anderson describes?

You cannot. They belong to totally different worlds.

Any villager arriving in Conakry, or Dakar, or Bamako, (the three West African capitals in which I’ve spent significant time) would notice certain differences between the capital and the interior immediately:

The prevalence of French, the partial electricity, the traffic, the multitudes of young people, the police and military presence, and the cell phone coverage would all make the capital a strange place for the average West African.

But the differences that create the deeper disconnect between rural and urban require a more discerning eye.

Capital Cities tend to contain large numbers of politicized young people.

These young people are often unemployed, more educated then their peers, and in constant contact with the outside world through the radio, television, and in contact with foreign NGO workers or tourists.

The presence of the State also becomes more noticeable and meddlesome.

Soldiers set up roadblocks, the haphazard enforcement of the rule of law burdens most while leaving the well-connected untouched, and state policies which are routinely ignored up country must be heeded for better or worse in the capital.

In The Berlin Conference Continues to Plague Africa 125 Years After the Fact, I talked about the artificiality of the African political map.

In the interior people, deal with this by ignoring rules issued from the capital, or the state government adapts to fit local realities.
(e.g. In my village, 90% of office holders came from families that held political power before the French colonial government nominally extended its writ to the sleepy village of Fataco.

Now those families have “official titles”, but nothing really changed.)

However in capital cities, the colonial powers grew deeper roots. Now their imposed system awkwardly competes for influence with more traditional levers of power like family, ethnic group, faith, etc…

I think these dynamics isolate capitals and those who live in them from the interior.

John Lee Anderson’s article describes a Guinea that most Guineans do not know or care exists; I wonder if the same is true for villagers in other parts of the continent.

Please feel free to comment!

Remarkable Season

Remarkable Season

by Arusha ♥ 4 Comments
All around the hill, from horizon to horizon, was wall-to-wall wildebeest.
How can I estimate this? Was it a half, or a third, of the 1.65 million gnu?

A quarter to a third of hotel/lodge employees have been fired: Food and service are suffering. Maintenance and new building has halted. There’s less air service. And the weather is the weirdest in years. This was one of the best safari seasons in my career!

(I don’t want my glib rejoinder to suggest the situation for Kenyans and Tanzanians doesn’t merit serious concern from those of us better off. It was literally a daily chore for me to listen to plaintive if polite cries for help.

Usually each night after dinner – when all my clients thought I, too, had gone to bed – a former employee or friend of a friend would ask me to sit with him/her for an “evening tea.” That was an euphemism for “I’m really in trouble; dozens of family depend upon me; can you give me work or know where I can get it?”

There’s no social safety net for tourism workers in East Africa. If things get bad, you just pick up your bag and go away. No unemployment insurance, no pension, no severance.)

But if we have any hope for the future, we have to build on the positive, and the positive outcomes of this safari season were nearly unbelievable.

Start with the fact that my Great Migration Safari began at The Ark with a take-down (kill) of a bushbuck by a hyaena, literally ten feet below those of us looking over the water hole.

Take-downs are rare; I haven’t seen one for five years. Almost all kill attempts end in failures. With lions the failure rate is above 80%. Failed attempts are often linked to too many tourists watching, botching up the plan!

Well, we don’t have too may tourists, right now. The Ark can serve 125 people; counting us 10, there were only 27. Less noise, less disturbance, less intrusion on the wild nature of things.

I make it a point to avoid the crowds on my guided programs, but I can’t remember when I’ve had it so easy.

I was in the bush with clients for 24 days. The only time – the only time – one of our game drives encountered significant periods of other vehicles was in the crater. Otherwise, we were alone. In fact for almost all the time we were in the Serengeti, in Shaba and in the Aberdare, we were totally alone.

My first safari with the Gustafson’s from Georgia left Olduvai Gorge around 10:30a and traveled through the Serengeti pulling into Ndutu Lodge around 5 pm, having never seen another vehicle.

I can’t remember when the bush was so vacant of tourists. And while this is no scientific study, the list of email “special offers” I returned to suggests it is definitely true.

At what has become my favorite boutique camp in East Africa, Swala Lodge, we were the only ones there! The manager team, Steve and Maryann, the waiting staff, the cleaning staff, the kitchen staff, outnumbered us 2 to 1!

Phil Haney of the Gustafson Safari was within an arm’s width of being touched by an elephant’s trunk! We approach all eles carefully, and when they seem friendly, I coach my clients to be absolutely quiet. Phil was, and the old bull was apparently getting nostalgic about the loss of tourists!

The weather everywhere was unusual, especially to the north in Kenya. The rains approached El Nino intensity and the temperatures across the board were ten degrees F warmer than normal. That meant the tse-tse were bit more feisty than usual.

Conditions were therefore a bit uncomfortable compared to a normal year, we did gut stuck a bit more than usual, but of course the animals loved it! Colin McConnell at Ndutu Lodge confirmed my own observation that there have never been so many baby wildebeest as right now! It’s truly incredible. It’s almost as if every single female has a calve.

Painted snipe, Ovambo Sparrowhawks, Abdims and Open-Bills, and blue-cheeked and even carmine bee-eaters! Birds that either should have already left or not yet arrived!

My last morning on safari was Friday. The ten of us set up breakfast on Mesa Hill in the Kesio Valley in the southern grassland plains of the Serengeti. The flat-topped hill stands about 200 meters above the plains that surround it: Mti-ti and Lakes Masek and Ndutu barely visible to the east, Olduvai Gorge just below the hill, the endless Kusini flat plains stretching to our north, and Ngorongoro like the massive godhead it is taking up most of the southern horizon.

It was breezy, sunny, cool and fresh, with wisps of cloud foretelling the afternoon storms. The yellow bidens flowers dominated the veld, but there were also beautiful blood red flowers, both white and red glover, and as we raced over in our Landcruisers fabulous whiffs of wild sage.

But what dominated the scene at breakfast was the most massive, concentrated wildebeest migration in my memory. All around the hill, from horizon to horizon, was wall-to-wall wildebeest. How can I estimate this? Was it a half, or a third, of the 1.65 million gnu?

I knew it wasn’t all of them, because on our full day traveling from Olduvai to Ndutu – seven hours of driving – we never left the herds, and that was in a completely different part of the Serengeti!

I twirled around the hill with my binoculars peering out over Eden. Not a single other car. Maybe five or six hundred square miles. My heart ached for Balthazar, one of the best camp managers I’ve ever known, fired after 20 years service and no insurance to treat his gout; Mercy, a promising school-leaver with a degree in hotel management who could replace Desire Rogers in an instant, hawking newspapers in Nairobi traffic; or 48-year old Grace, my close driver/guide’s eldest daughter, appointed as a vice president to a new university that now won’t open, picking oranges on her uncle’s farm.

And my heart lept for joy as I saw the faces of my awestruck clients, breathless as they too looked out over the great migration.

Forget the math. Forget the social science for just a second. Africa’s experience is an infinite one, made even richer by its painful ironies. That last scene from Mesa Hill Friday morning is my lasting memory of this season, as inexplicably joyous as wildebeest numbers are inestimable.

The Sound of Somalia

The Sound of Somalia

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Who Represents Somalia?

By Conor Godfrey

On April 3rd, Hizbul-Islam gave Somali radio stations 10 days to stop playing music—or else.

The latest bit of absurdity was most likely an effort to prove that they are as resolutely against culture as their erstwhile partners-cum rivals al-Shabaab.

Of course al-Shabaab would most likely agree with this ban if they were not too busy using the radio stations in question to preach jihad against Westerners and the transitional government.

If music goes against the grain of Hizbul-Islam’s draconian interpretation of Islam, that only shows how out of touch Hizbul-Islam is with Somali culture.

Music played a celebrated role in Somali culture before the arrival of Islam and has continued to do so ever since.

My introduction to modern Somali music came through K’naan , the Somali born rapper from Toronto.

Singing mostly in English, but weaving in words from Somali, Arabic, and even the odd word in Swahili, his lyrical prowess puts him in the same league as American rappers like Lupe Fiasco and Mos Def.

On his second album “Troubadour,” K’naan splits his time between telling stories from his childhood in “Fatima” and “People Like Me”, talking about his aspirations for Somalia and Africa in “Wavin’ Flag” and “Somalia”, and cranking out fast paced dance hits like “Dreamer” and “I Come Prepared”.

K’naan is hardly alone.

Somali-Jazz phenom Maryam Mursal walked across the horn of African with five small children in tow to escape the civil war only to become a world-music mega star on Peter Gabriel’s Real World music label.

I just listened to her album “Journey” all the way through and almost felt moved to thank HIzbul-Islam for giving me the excuse to discover her

To the uninitiated (like me) her rhythms sound vaguely Arab, but the driving beat gives her music a trance-like quality that makes for a truly heightened listening experience.

Sample some of her music here.

Before the war shattered the professional music scene, the Somali National Theatre supported groups like Waaberi.

This traditional music super-group in turn launched the careers of several prominent Somali musicians including Abdullahi Qarshe, Hasan Adan Samatar, and of course Maryam Mursal.

Listen to Waaberi’s sound.

Today, a modern Somali pop music dominates the scene, along with foreign music from the Somali diaspora, America and the Middle East.

However, traditional musicians continue to play at ceremonies and other important events.

In exile, the diaspora continues to pump out music, of which K’naan is merely the most commercially successful example.

Websites like somalioz.com and others help musicians and their music reach compatriots at home.

I hate the thought that Hizbul-Islam and al-Shabaab might represent Somalia.

Next time the extremists steal the headlines I hope you listen to Maryam Mursal and let her sound, the sound of Somalia, drown out the drivel coming from Hizbul-Islam.