Archive for June, 2011
No Room at The Inn
Posted by jimheck in Foreign Aid, Terrorism, War on June 30, 2011
The Kenyan refugee camp at Dadaab, the largest in the world, is full. 1300 new arrivals daily from an increasing conflict in Somali are being refused services, because there’s simply no more room, no more food, no more medicines… the money has run out. Dadaab became the largest refugee camp in the world several years [...]
CordaWhatta in my Tutta?
This dark circular tale starts with a motive of greed so pure that death doesn’t matter, and it ends in a dither of hypocrisies that if not so morbid would be laughable. Yes, we are proud that the EPA is once again doing its job to protect us … but at what cost? At the [...]
SERENGETI WATCH OUT OF SYNC
Posted by jimheck in Great Migration, Politics, Serengeti on June 27, 2011
Contrary to Serengeti Watch’s weekend retraction that the Serengeti Highway had been scrapped, it has been scrapped. SW now needs to be as clear as it’s demanding the Tanzanian government be. Friday I joined the world, including SW in announcing the Serengeti highway had been scrapped. It has been, but a retraction by SW with [...]
Victory in the Serengeti!
Posted by jimheck in Economy, Foreign Aid, Great Migration, Serengeti on June 24, 2011
As I’ve been suggesting for a year, the “Serengeti Highway” will not be built through the park, but will be built right up to the eastern edge, and the goal of reaching the Lake Victoria port of Mwanza will be pursued as a new southern road from Arusha. Wednesday, the Tanzanian government released a letter [...]
Genocide in Sudan
Even as muscled optimism sweeps across Africa and the MiddleEast, I worry that dark history is repeating itself, that the 1994 world-ignored genocide in Rwanda is occurring right now – this very moment – in The Sudan. The racist North Sudanese government has started a military ethnic cleansing of Nubian peoples in the North Sudan [...]
China Builds & West Saves Africa
Posted by jimheck in "Modern" Africa, Culture, Economy, Politics, Urban Planning on June 21, 2011
NPR’s fabulous story this morning about Kenya and China begs repeating what I’ve been saying for so long: watch China carefully and learn without embarrassment. The world may do better, then. Frank Langfitt’s reporting on Morning Edition was superb. (And so much better than NPR’s former African correspondent, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, who has been reduced to [...]
Ele Kills Zimbabwe Guide
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks, Zimbabwe on June 20, 2011
Last week a bull elephant killed an employee within a hundred meters of a popular Victoria Falls hotel, further proof that Zimbabwe is not a safe place to travel. There have been about a dozen tourists killed by elephant every year in Africa since tourism began in the 1960s, and reporting a single incident is [...]
Twevolution has come to Uganda
Posted by jimheck in Twevolution, Uganda on June 17, 2011
Absolutely nothing can stop Uganda’s slide into the pile of Zimbabwes except the President resigning. The country is mobilizing. The protests need help. Stopgap measures by the government aren’t working; strikes, closures and demonstrations are increasing faster than I thought they would and my caution about tourists going there is heightened, now. Today school administrators [...]
Religious Horror
Posted by jimheck in "Modern" Africa, African Films, Politics on June 16, 2011
To a young apolitical Iranian woman, America is an army of helicopters ruling purgatory, patrolling the vast, lawless space between the disorganized and deceitful now and the desperately sought paradise. This wondrous insight comes to us thanks to the Zanzibar Film Festival which opens this weekend. (For a broader summary of the festival, please read [...]
African Doors to the World
Posted by jimheck in African Films, Politics, Twevolution on June 14, 2011
Who will spearhead the social unrest in China? Are women being mentally beaten to death in Iran? These and similar cutting edge issues find their window to the world Thursday, at the Zanzibar Film Festival. The world’s great film festivals have become institutionalized, perfected as I suppose they should be in celebrating independent and often [...]
East Africa’s Dots of Terrorism
The death of Abdulla Mohamed Fazul last week in Somali was as important to Kenyans as the death of bin Laden himself. It confirms that the Obama administration knows what’s it doing, that Kenya knows what’s it doing, and that Tanzania doesn’t. Fazul was the avowed mastermind of the 1998 Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings. [...]
Which One-in-Three are Dying?
Posted by jimheck in Economy, Environment, Weather on June 10, 2011
Global warming is slamming East Africa faster than expected even as One-in-Three Americans insist it doesn’t exist. Never mind that Romney, a likely Republican presidential candidate, agrees that global warming is a man-made phenomenon. Never mind that Americans are asked to pay more and more for food aid in East Africa. Never mind that in [...]
America Blows the World Away
American mostly and some European stimulus in 2009 kept the world going and Africa, in fact, soaring. It’s over, now, and screams of pain begin. In Kenya which had roared to a near 9% GDP growth, the country’s economy is tumbling. Starvation is on the increase, again. Many diseases like AIDS and TB which had [...]
Buggiest Place in the Universe!
Posted by jimheck in Animal Attacks on June 7, 2011
I have been in some of the most uncomfortable, dastardly places on earth. But I just returned from the buggiest place in the universe. Try to guess where this unbelievable, inhumane place is. Of of the four top worst buggiest places I’ve ever been in, none are in eastern or southern Africa where I spend [...]
Student Do-Gooders Beware
Posted by jimheck in Charity, Planning Travel on June 6, 2011
Summer is coming and throngs of young people are getting ready to screw up the world. That’s the effect of most volunteer tourism. Here’s why, along with a few stellar exceptions. During the last fifty years of America’s descent into conservative misery, America’s philanthropy has increased substantially. There’s a good reason for this, and a [...]