In a topsy-turvy world where rain is not good and war is fought in daylight as you sleep, the sum total of the world’s misery explodes, and you prepare for Thanksgiving.
Kenya’s invasion of Somalia will be long and self-destructive unless the west decides to increase its military involvement, or unless Kenya figures out a way to spin failure and go home. For the sake of Kenya, I hope the latter.
The BBC reported today that the Kenyan military chief has conceded that the operation is taking longer than expected. As we well know from our own adventures, this is soldier-talk that the original drawing board was pure fantasy. I said a week ago that we would know today whether the operation was going to achieve some success in a reasonable time or not.
Not.
All we can hope for now is that Kenya will study carefully the history of Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia five years ago and go home, and hopefully much more quickly than Ethiopia did.
But I doubt that, too. It isn’t just a matter of Kenyan national pride, now, but enough hard evidence emerged last week that we are now certain both France and the U.S. are pushing Kenya hard to do exactly what it’s doing, softening the enemy.
Whether either of those super powers, which are sending occasional missiles from off-shore and drones from secret bases in the area, has a threshold for greater involvement is hard to say. France is never shy about military involvement, but Obama’s reelection could be seriously jeopardized by more overt action.
Today, Kenya’s prime minister told a meeting of African leaders “not to blame foreigners, but ourselves” for the military involvement in Somalia. Hopefully, local Kenyans took that to mean “giving room to the West to intervene.”
The week started miserably when Kenya’s poorly trained air force bombed a refugee camp killing dozens of civilians. “Most of the victims were women and children,” the New York Times Josh Kron reports citing Doctors without Borders.
“Military action risks worsening the effects of famine on the Somali people, and pushing more people ‘beyond the reach of aid agencies’,” the international aid group, Oxfam said Friday.
And while the BBC reported today that good if not better than expected rains “have eased the drought“ that news isn’t welcomed. There are so many displaced persons, no crops that have been planted and no plants to hold the water, that the effect of the rain is erosion and disease.
And within Kenya a “Patriot Act,” similar to our own despicable human rights atrocity, is gaining momentum as Kenyans fear retribution is certain.
It is a very grim story to tell, today. I can’t help feeling that it’s our fault, and by “our” I don’t mean the Democrats and President Obama, I mean western society for a hundred a years of selfishness and greed. There is just so much wealth in the world, we can extract natural resources at just a certain rate. There is limited comfort as a result, and we have reached the point that to maintain a modicum of what we historically achieved, much of the world must squander in abject misery and war.
Yes, to use a favorite nonpartisan political phrase, we are blessed… to be here, rather than there.
From far, far away, Kenya is being sacrificed to quell the war on terror. A young and dynamic, growing country with a tremendous future has been thrown to the wolves.
The war in Somalia is not going well for Kenya. The army advance is bogged down, more aid workers and civilians have been kidnaped or killed and many more injured near the front and by two grenade attacks in Nairobi city. The shilling is tanking and local prices are skyrocketing.
But it may be going well for America. Depending on your point of view, of course.
“Several of the missiles fired at jihadist fighters … on the Somali side of the border seem to have been fired from American drones or submarines,” the respected magazine, the Economist reports.
I want to stop al-Qaeda’s terrorism, who doesn’t? But fighting these endless proxy wars is inhumane. Go ahead, fire the drones, but don’t make Kenya the sacrificial lamb.
From the Kenyan border to the stated objective, the coastal city of Kismayo, the path using existing roads and tracks is about 150 miles. After 40 miles, the Kenyan military got bogged down in mud following heavy rains.
Fighting to that point was minimal. Skirmishes by al-Shabaab supporters and guerillas resulted in random and rapid firing by Kenyan troops. At the crossroads of Bilis Qoqani, 45 rebels ambushed the convoy and in the ensuing battle, the first real encounter between Kenya and al-Shabaab, the militants were routed, 9 killed and several Kenyans wounded.
At that point it was learned that an unexpectedly well organized al-Shabaab force was digging in at the city of Afmadow. This is actually north of the planned assault and now means the Kenyans have to confront the militants there or risk being attacked from their flank if they proceed directly to Kismayo.
So while today they are only about 85 miles from their objective, it looks like they must head north for the great battle at Afmadow, first.
And back at home, things couldn’t be worse for the everyday Kenyan. The city’s main newspaper calls it a “Nightmare.”
The world is surprisingly learning that a significant portion of the prewar Kenyan economy was linked to the port at Kismayo that the Kenyan military is now trying to take over.
“Supplies such as sugar, rice, cooking fat and powdered milk” and “even electronic goods and vehicles” come from Kismayo, even though it is controlled by al-Shabaab. Sugar in Kenya’s northeast today costs four times more than two weeks ago.
In the center of the country in Nairobi, the concern is not so much with sugar as shillings. A year ago the shilling traded at about 65-70 for one U.S. dollar. Today it returned to just under 100 after peaking yesterday at 106.
The median interest on a business loan shot up to 20% today, after the government’s request for a $65 million loan from the IMF was answered with only $25 million.
Tourism is being decimated. If everything ends well and Kenya is the super hero, tourism will rebound rather quickly. But that doesn’t look likely to me. I think we’re in a very long period of declining tourism.
More and more Kenyans are beginning to question the war, as I believe they should. “Let Us Rethink Our Somali Intervention” was the lead editorial in today’s Nairobi Star newspaper.
We all want al-Qaeda’s ruthlessness to stop, most of all Kenyans who have lived with it day in and day out for much of their lives. But violent eradication of an entrenched fighting force is not something Kenya can accomplish. If we as Americans have accomplished it in Iraq (which is very uncertain) look at the effort it took. Kenya cannot undertake that.
Obama knows that. Hillary knows that. But their allegiance is to their home. The sacrificial lamb comes from far, far away.
Hardly had my business to show people big wild animals got off the ground when Peter Beard published his book, End of the Game. Now, I wonder, are there too many wild animals in Africa?
Yesterday we learned that the predictable “bamboo season” in Rwanda’s Parc de Volcan was bringing “as expected” many of the mountain gorillas out of their reserves into adjacent farmer fields. The battle between the cow and the gorilla, though, was not expected.
Researchers following the Urugamba silverback recorded him “charging a nearby cow” last week, although the expected bloody encounter was avoided when he unexpectedly stopped the chase. But cow-gorilla conflicts while troublesome are not what is principally bothering researchers.
Human-gorilla conflicts are escalating throughout the Virunga range, and give every indication that some biological threshold has been reached. The list is long but began horribly documented in 2007 when irate villagers stoned to death a gorilla that had entered their village.
An EWT client was one of the first ever tourists to visit habituated mountain gorillas back in 1979. Then, there were an estimated 280.
Today, the estimates range between 685 to more than 700, approaching a three-fold increase during my lifetime. Similar numbers apply to many animals throughout Africa, including other headliners like elephant and wildebeest.
Researchers are currently painting the human-gorilla conflict as not necessarily something the gorilla needs, but rather something it wants. This is the “bamboo season” as new shoots grow quickly with the onset of the seasonal rains. Gorillas “love” bamboo shoots.
In PdV many of the best and newest bamboo shoots appear first outside the park. The report of the incident between the gorilla and the cow was concluded by the researcher, “There are sure to be many incidents in the coming weeks surrounding the highly anticipated bamboo season. Stay tuned!”
Interestingly, this is exactly opposite to what the researchers in the PdV’s sister and adjoining park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Virunga National Park, claim. There, researchers wait anxiously for the “moment bamboo shoots are available” when their gorillas end raiding farmers’ crops and return inside the park boundaries.
So it sounds to me that there is no particular reason that new bamboo shots are outside rather than inside a park, and probably, in both parks they’re in both places. The human-gorilla conflict is more serious than where new bamboo shoots occur.
The human-gorilla conflict has been seriously documented ever since 2009 when an interagency working group HUGO was formed to deal with it. The name of the group was changed to human-wildlife conflict, in part because as researchers got into the problem they realized the area’s residents while concerned with gorilla conflicts were equally concerned with other burgeoning wildlife in the park, like buffalo.
A foot-high stone barrier is being erected around almost the entire PdV, and this seems to have helped stopped human-buffalo encounters. Near very productive farms alongside Sabyinyo volcano a trench has been cut, which seems to have impeded human-elephant encounters.
But a successful technique to discourage gorillas has not been found. Several years ago the International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP) encouraged using drums to scare away the gorillas, but one researcher in 2009 said, “I’m told they enjoy the sound and allegedly start dancing when the drums appear.”
And then this year the DRC gorillas became so familiar at tourist camps and area farms, that researchers began using drums again.
They still don’t dance. But it still doesn’t work.
One of the things that gnaws equally at my conscience and nostalgia is that the growing human-wildlife conflict in Africa is a reflection that years ago the precarious state so much big game found itself was, in fact, a natural if precarious balance with man.
But when man discovered he could make money showing animals to other men, which bought time to deliver a growing compassion as well as a separate understanding that biodiversity is essential to man’s long-term survival, big game became nurtured … developed.
And so, surprise, it prospered.
And so did man.
So the conflicts that existed so long ago that nearly made extinct such animals as the mountain gorilla are only more severe, today. The conflict resolutions are becoming more high tech, more intense and understandably, much more expensive.
And in some cases, such as with gorillas, there don’t seem to be any good conflict resolutions.
Ultimately this growing human-wildlife conflict in Africa will reach a breaking point, and if scientists are unable to stop the rate of growth of these animal populations by benign means before this happens, human policy that understandably favors humans will. And it may not be very pretty, then.
Within a week we’ll know whether the Kenyan invasion of Somalia is the true beginning of the end of al-Qaeda or the start of increased instability and terrorism in Kenya. I’m pretty pessimistic and damn mad. But the outcome of the battle of Kismayo will tell all.
Kismayo is a city. A functioning, wealth-producing large coastal city with a proud university and clean streets. It’s the defacto capital of al-Qaeda in The Horn, the center for terrorist planning, administration and growth.
It’s the only true geopolitical epicenter of terrorists in the world. In Kismayo terrorism leaders don’t hide in caves. They go to work in offices. They collect taxes. They use big computers to concoct strategy, to build internet sites, to train young militants in actual schools, to organize and implement arms deals. This isn’t Wajiristan.
There is remarkable calm in Kenya. In fact, it’s absolutely ridiculous! The rest of the region and much of the world is overwhelmed by news from the front, including the first two Nairobi city bombings as al-Shabaab begins its guerilla war inside Kenya. But one reading the Kenyan newspapers today has a hard time finding any war reports at all!
The country is in denial. The diaspora is in denial. Even if the battle is successful, the effort is likely to bankrupt the country. Tourism is doomed for the forseeable future. Even political stability, so creatively accomplished for the last four years, shows the first stages of unraveling.
I hate making this prediction, and I really want to be proved wrong. But Operation “Linda Nchi” will fail. It will likely fail the same way Ethiopia failed five years ago when western powers propped up its invasion of Mogadishu the same way they are currently propping up Kenya’s of Kismayo.
Ethiopia – with a far more sophisticated army than Kenya’s – marched into Mogadishu and installed a very weak government then rapidly returned home leaving behind a mess that was supposed to be cleaned up by 8-9000 non-Ethiopian African Union soldiers in a few months. It’s been three years. It’s still a mess.
Even though Kenya’s military is far less sophisticated than Ethiopia’s, I think this is the likely outcome, because terrorists survive by running away, never by making a stand. Their success comes in suicide and car bombs, subway attacks and shoe bombers. They don’t do tanks well.
The west seems to think that we’ve got al-Qaeda on the run. It’s true that an arm’s length list of al-Qaeda leaders have been wiped out by American drones and stealth attacks by the Obama administration. The question is, is it enough that Operation “Linda Nchi” is the nail in the coffin, or just the positioning of another sacrificial lamb.
If the latter, Kenya will become rocked by terrorism for years and years. Unless it becomes the horribly ruthless, dictatorial regime of Ethiopia where you need permission to sneeze on the streets of Addis Ababa.
Kenya doesn’t understand — which America maybe finally does – that a ground war against terrorism won’t work.
Defense against terrorism is critical and can be successful. Diplomacy and sanctions against terrorists works. Stealth raids and maybe even drones to kill terrorists might even work, but war doesn’t work. Kenya was managing all of these things masterfully! Until last week.
My friends in tourism in Nairobi are near panic. Bookings are canceling in the droves. And no one in their right mind would suggest a foreign vacationer visit the country, now.
This is so damn sad. For so long Kenya tread the perfect balance with regards to its chaotic terrorist neighbor, Somalia. It refused to join African peacekeepers in Somalia. It tolerated but repelled incessant incursions into its Somalia border towns. And it quietly assisted the big guys by rounding up terrorists on its own soil.
But then the Somalia famine quadrupled the size of the refugee camp in Kenya at Dadaab to a third of a million people, in less than three months; the world economic collapse bludgeoned the shilling, and finally the spat of kidnapings was just too much for this until now adroit and up-and-coming new world to take.
Have you ever heard about that little kitty that was taken far, far away and dropped in a forest but found its way back home? What about an elephant?
Last week the Kenya Wildlife Service completed the first of several phases of relocating 200 jumbos as much as 100 miles from where they were picked up. The controversial and very expensive project is one more attempt to “save” elephants by removing them from angry farmers, school children and people walking to church.
Well, we won’t know for a while. But … a couple don’t like their new diggs very well.
Two were killed in Kisii, a heavily populated city in exactly opposite direction from where they were relocated, and although they were “dispatched” by villagers before wildlife officials could identify them with certainty, there’s every indication they were from the relocated bunch.
Those ele would have walked about 50 miles through (human) enemy territory northwest having just been brought 50 miles southwest to the idyllic and peaceful human unpopulated Maasai Mara in the relocation effort. And frankly, whether they were from the relocated bunch or not, their journey from the nearest open reserve (the Mara) shows how capable they are of navigating human population centers.
And at the end of their journey you don’t hear cute little mews at your backdoor.
Pole pole I’m coming round to thinking ele must be culled. I’m not there yet, and I still viscerally resent the mostly southern African theory of “carrying capacity” and that anything that doesn’t meet the model should be eliminated.
(Not just ele, by the way, but Jacaranda trees, certain flies and spots on windows.)
But the situation in East Africa is growing intolerable, and intolerably expensive. KWS has moved the first 50 tuskers at an expense of about $3,000 per elephant.
That’s huge, especially by African standards.
All sorts of things are being desperately tried now to control this human/elephant conflict, from pepper spray, to scare crows, to moats and bullhorns.
The most effective way is already being used in southern Africa (where they don’t need it as much, because they kill their excess!). The seel-reenforced concrete spike barriers employed in Botswana around its national parks tourist camps work well. The problem is they are extremely expensive, too. Each roughly 4′ x 4′ block costs around $10.
That’s the cost in South Africa. First there would have to be a factory built to produce them in East Africa, or the additional cost of importing them to East Africa.
To surround the northern top cap of the Maasai Mara (the southern border sits on the Serengeti) you’d need more than a half million blocks and that doesn’t even take care of the many river boundaries where they wouldn’t work, the labor to do it, they maintenance and the possible environmental fallout of also impeding other wildlife.
And then, of course as the southern Africans would point out, what happens when the density of elephant is compressed to a level that starts to destroy the Mara ecosystem?
You see. The reason the ele are leaving their splendid protected reserves, is because there are too many of them already.
So any successful barrier or relocation effort could end up being counter-productive.
Three African despots down. Eleven to go. Here’s my list and predictions of when the last of the African dictators will fall.
Is it possible to think of a world without dictators? Can you imagine no Kim Jong Il, the “Stans” with free wifi elections, Hugo sent back to his banana farm or Ahmadinejad retired as a Fox News anchor?
I can’t speak about the rest of the world, but yes, I can imagine an Africa without ruthless despots, and Twevolution is knocking them down the continent from top to bottom. Only a few years ago I would have thought this impossible.
What’s happened in Africa started with this near obsessive demand for education, and over the years I was so critical of all sorts of different African forms of education for all sorts of different reasons. But that all seems so trivial, now. Whatever flawed system might have delivered it, delivered it it did. From Tanzania’s mandated free education in the early years of independence, to more sophisticated forms in Egypt, it worked.
I think I was too focused on what was being taught, the curriculum, rather than just the teaching itself. Teaching young kids – even when forced down their throats or teaching “incorrect” things – obviously instills curiosity.
In my life time, Africa has made the longest journey in education of any part of the world. When I began my career there in the early 1970s, there were vast portions of the continent that didn’t even know there was more to the universe than themselves.
My wife and I brought the first refrigerator into a remote part of western Kenya. Powered by natural gas, it nearly installed me as a local despot myself, or a shaman. When ice cubes were placed on the hands of children, they thought I was burning them to death.
How remarkably different that place in western Kenya is, today, with nascent global call centers and plans for a solar panel industry. What must grandma think?
The second critical component to today’s dramatic political change is the internet.
That’s twevolution. A young Kenyan woman started the whole social networking organization of civil disobedience when Kenya imploded after its last election. Ory Okolloh spearheaded the founding of Ushahidi and is now Google’s Policy Manager for Africa.
But while the internet may be the new “weapon” of revolutionary change, it had a much much greater impact much earlier. I remember before cheap cell phones and easy access to computers in Kenya the dozens and dozens of internet cafes in Nairobi.
And the kids were packed into them like sardines! What were they doing? Playing games? Looking for a job? Or, maybe, learning about the better things in the life… Or, maybe, about the gross injustices that divide the world’s privileged from those who serve the privileged?
There are still pretty bad guys in control of 11 of Africa’s 54 countries. I can imagine every one of them gone in the next decade.
They fall broadly into two categories: 7 zealots and 4 victims. The victims will fall last and perhaps not with more than a thud. But the zealots will tumble into al-Jazeera videos screaming.
The zealots are composed of widely different men whose path to tyranny was varied. But they now share a narcissistic certainty, a near divine belief, that they should rule no matter what. Their countries of Zimbabwe, Sudan, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Uganda are in various stages of abject servitude.
They are making themselves, their friends and families wealthy often with impunity at the expense of their citizens. They believe so much in their self-conceived right to rule that they often fail to hide their crimes, deluded that they can do no wrong, or perhaps that there are none remotely capable of challenging them.
How wrong Gadhafi was.
These guys go first.
The second batch I even find sympathy for, but they’re on the way out nonetheless. I call them victims because essentially they started as true liberators with extremely lofty ideals and plans, but they got ensnared in societies with the deepest ethnic divisions in the continent, and with a concomitant division of education.
Rwanda, Chad, Eritrea and Ethiopia are today headed by ruthless men who are nonetheless loved by a large segment of their population, the segment from which they were born.
They believe, quite possibly truthfully, that loosening the reigns of dictatorship will bring catastrophe on their entire country as it reverts to the chaos from which they long ago thought they liberated it. These victims at least ostensibly put “country” before “self.” The zealots don’t even have this as a pretense.
That’s Africa. Where education delivered the dreams and the internet facilitated revolutionary change. Will the rest of the world follow suit?
South African Richard Pithouse, Egyptian Gamal Nkrumah, Kenyan Rasna Warah, and Nigerian Rotimi FasanOccupy Wall Street is seen from Africa with a clarity we’re missing here at home. As Africa sees it, American youth’s frontal assault on unbridled capitalism is not going to end quietly.
The “unbridled” is an important distinction from the sister movement of the 1930s which gave rise to an unique version of South African communism that has continued as a political force, there, until today. Back then capitalism was going to fall lock, stock and wall safe. Not now.
South Africans, Nigerians, Egyptians and Kenyans in particular see capitalism as here to stay, but as something that needs to be hugely reigned in, and they see the OCWS as an indication it is really going to happen this time.
There have been only a few placards in Nairobi, and a greater but still smallish response in South Africa’s three main cities, but a massive amount of discussion in the media, there. I think one reason the demonstrations are smaller, is because relative unemployment has not spiked so high as it has here. The discontent relative to before is more intellectual than economic.
And African economies are much more regulated to begin with than ours.
Few Africans are in a better position to compare OCWS with the Arab Spring than Egyptian Gamal Nkrumah. The son of Africa’s first independent president (in Ghana), he married an Egyptian and has lived there permanently for a number of years. Recently Kkrumah asked about OCWS:
“Will this spontaneous outbreak of angst be hijacked and neutered or will it become, like the anger of Egyptians, the backbone of a new social contract?”
Nkrumah isn’t sure. He worries that the established financial system in America is just too hard to crack:
“The game of global finance is as dirty as hell… The international meltdown is a harsh indictment of the global financial system [but] bankers don’t seem to have a conscience and [all] the people [can do] is strike the fear of God into them.”
Nevertheless, my survey of African analysts suggests Nkrumah is in the minority. Although cautious and not suggesting our entire system is going to be revolutionized, most African analysts believe OCWS foreshadows significant change in America.
Everyone knows America with China at its heels controls the world economy. So what happens in America effects everyone, without exception. African’s interest is not simply academic. In fact what happens to the OCWS may have a more immediate effect on the everyday lives of Africans than it does on most Americans.
The very influential young thinktanker in South Africa, Richard Pithouse, has often written that the developing world has been consciously subordinated to us – the developed world – by a brute and unfair force called DEBT. Think about it. Where is most of the gold in the world? South Africa. Where is most of the oil?
But who controls the gold and the oil? Neither South Africans nor Nigerians, but Americans and Europeans.
“Debt,” Pithouse writes “became a key instrument through which the domination of the North was reasserted over the South.”
But that suffering has now come home to roost in America, according to Pithouse. The “servitude of the debtor is increasingly also the condition of [American] home-owners, students and others” who are being made to pay for the financial crisis created by their overlords, the bankers.
At last, Pithouse exclaims, OCWS in America is “a crucial realisation that for too long society has been subordinated to capital.”
“The prevailing capitalist economic system has clearly failed. It has deepened inequality between people and nations and caused much misery. Its excesses must be curbed,” writes , Kenyan analyst Rasna Warah in her article “Is the End of Global Capitalism Nigh?”
She answers her own question with a “Probably Not,” essentially what all the analysts in Africa concede. But she opines that as Africa emerges from the Arab Spring it will invent “a hybrid, more humane capitalist-cum-socialist system … where wealth will … be used to promote the greater good rather than individual and corporate interests.”
The Nigerian analyst and sometimes poet, Rotimi Fasan, compared Wall Street bankers to the worst of his own corrupt Nigerian autocrats. And like many, many writers throughout Africa he wonders if what is happening now “might be the beginning of the West’s version of … the Arab Spring.”
He refers to the west’s “crumbling economies” and cautions that “things may not take that shape immediately. But they might over time. Those who imagine that such eruptions could only happen in Africa of sit-tight leaders” do not fully understand what’s happening.
Which leads me to another dominant theme throughout all of Africa’s reflection on the protest:
Our media is minimizing the demonstrations.
“If these protests were occurring in any other part of the world, Western [media] would be describing them as an ‘American Spring’ that could topple a government,” Warah writes.
Warah and other Africans believe that the American media is part and parcel of the greater problem. “The large [American] media networks are part of the very corporate culture that the protesters are against,” Warah explains to her readers, so naturally they are minimizing the story.
Using last week’s celebrations of Martin Luther King, Pithouse claims that the famous statement that young blacks in the 1950s faced life “as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign” applies to all American youth, today.
The South African continues: “The time when each generation could expect to live better than their parents has passed. Poverty is rushing into the suburbs. Young people live with their parents into their thirties. Most cannot afford university. Most of the rest leave it with an intolerable debt burden.”
And what does this mean about America to an educated outsider?
“The borders that surround the enclaves of global privilege are shrinking in from the nation state to surround private wealth.”
Wow. Poetic but how insightful. I think Pithouse reflects many many intellectuals from abroad, especially from developing and emerging, youthful nations. They no longer look to America for direction, but for lessons as to why things went so wrong.
“When some people are living like pigs and others have land lying fallow, it is easy enough to see what must be done,” Pithouse says. “But when some people are stuck in a desolate corridor with no exits signs and others have billions in hedge funds, derivatives and all the rest, it … is more complicated. You can’t occupy a hedge fund.”
But OCWS protestors understand that “finance capital is … the collective wealth of humanity. The money controlled by Wall Street was not generated by the unique brilliance, commitment to labour and willingness to assume risk on the part of the financial elite. It was generated by the wars in the Congo and Iraq. It comes from the mines in Johannesburg, the long labour of the men who worked those mines and the equally long labour of the women that kept the homes of the miners in the villages of the Eastern Cape. It comes from the dispossession, exploitation, work and creativity of people around the world.
“That wealth, which has been captured and made private, needs to be made public.”
Pithouse concludes and warns us directly, “When a new politics, a new willingness to resist emerges from the chrysalis of obedience, it will, blinking in the sun, confront the world with no guarantees.”
Beware the thinkers of Africa. They bear the truth of experience.
Today Kenya invaded Somalia. The speed and size of the mission surprised me and I’m sure greatly pleased Leon Panetta. It’s hard to predict the outcome, but one thing strikes me as certain: this is not a time to take a Kenyan safari.
Most news sources reported the Kenyan military operation as a response to a spat of recent kidnapings, and I don’t doubt this has something to do with it. But it could also be a partial excuse for a more globally organized effort against what appears at the moment to be a successful rout of al-Shabaab from Somalia.
The size of the Kenyan excursion is secret, but there were enough eye witness reports on the ground to confirm a major operation. The BBC and AlJazeera (who has a reporter embedded with the Kenyan forces) reported “lines of Kenyan tanks and trucks” and multiple air strikes against an al-Shabaab base about 75 miles inside Somali territory.
Africa Union forces led by Ugandan soldiers in the last several weeks have routed al-Shabaab from the Somali capital of Mogadishu. The BBC reporter Will Ross said these forces were now working in tandem with the Kenyans, moving south from the capital towards the conflict area where the Kenyans are, headed to what could be a pincer action to rid a large portion of Somali of al-Shabaab.
Last week the Obama administration sent 100 Green Berets into Uganda for deployment further west into central Africa. The statement of deployment claimed a mission totally separate from this conflict, but last night on CBS Panetta said the operation was integrated with fighting terror in Africa.
With Obama’s long list of al-Qaeda captures and kills recently, we know that the al-Qaeda/al-Shabaab power has been significantly diminished. Is this their last hurrah? Might the Ugandans, Kenyans and Americans actually be getting rid of these terrorist organizations?
I wish I felt the answer was a definitive yes, but frankly I think rather it’s a hopeful maybe. I’m no expert historian, but I just don’t see ridding any part of the world of anything, unless the people actually living there do it themselves.
And the Somalis haven’t. The parallels with Afghanistan and even Iraq are substantial. I don’t even believe that Iraq will be stable in ten years. And if I’m wrong and it is, then the question becomes was it worth the 20 years of war and investment we made to make it so?
That’s the greater, global question. But for those of us much closer to the situation, our lives and our businesses are immediately effected. Tourism must go on hold in Kenya, now, until we see what happens.
It’s been widely reported that al-Shabaab has now threatened Kenya. Last year al-Shabaab killed more than 70 people in two simultaneous bomb blasts in Kampala sports bars where patrons were watching the World Cup. They specifically threatened such before it happened because of Uganda’s lead role in the African Union forces in Mogadishu, and immediately then took responsibility. The parallel with Kenya can’t be starker.
I don’t think it will happen in Kenya. I think al-Shabaab is too much of a spent force and now too engaged outside Kenya. And Kenyan security is better than Uganda’s. So my visceral concern for my own Kenyan employees and friends is minimal.
But you don’t take a vacation where you have to keep looking over your shoulder. That’s not what a good safari is supposed to be. So while I’m not expecting trouble, the chance is more real than before, and equal if not better alternatives are available elsewhere, particularly in Tanzania.
Until the battles end and the dust settles, Kenya has become too troubled a place for tourists.
The Green Beret deployment last week in Uganda reflects an increasingly militaristic Obama policy that like all war endeavors ends up compromising other very important policies, like democracy. Is it working, and why now?
The Obama Administration went out of its way to emphasize that U.S. troops will not operate in Uganda but are simply using it as a staging area to catch the renegade militia leader, Joseph Kony.
Kony is probably in the Central African Republic (CAR).
Apparently there’s not the right airports or staging areas in the new South Sudan, and certainly not in The Congo or CAR to handle even a few (100) soldiers and their equipment. Possibly no easy political entry, either.
Nevertheless, many will think otherwise. Uganda, as I’ve written, is not the most stable place right now. And the bad guys are those in power who will obviously get a boost locally from the arrival of American troops, no matter where they’re supposed to go.
But Obama’s on a roll nailing al-Qaeda and its allies, and last week Uganda led the forces in Somalia which routed al-Shabaab from the capital, Mogadishu.
Kenya, this weekend, moved its troops across the border into Somalia, something I’m sure that America has been encouraging it to do for some time.
So as the saying goes, it’s payback time.
Al-Qaeda is of equal if not more interest to the U.S. than to many countries in East and Central Africa. Those countries’ biggest concern has always been the militias in the eastern Congo and South Sudan, including the old Interhamwe and the newer Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Like al-Qaeda, both those and other lesser militias are on the run. I see this as tit for tat. You (East Africa) help us wipe out al-Qaeda, and we’ll help you wipe out the LRA.
The LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) is a spent but still active guerilla force most famous for its abduction and enslavement of child soldiers. It wrecked havoc in northern Uganda/southern Sudan for nearly 15 years until it was forced out of the area almost ten years ago.
Oh, and by the way, there’s two interesting side stories to note as well.
The first I’m sure the Obama administration is sensitive to, but it’s remarkable so little has reached the world press:
The Obama Administration’s avowed explanation for entering deepest, dark Africa is to hunt down the LRA captain, Joseph Kony, just like they’ve been hunting down al-Qaeda leaders. Interestingly, Kony’s second-in-command was just ordered freed by a Uganda court after being apprehended and put on trial.
Thomas Kowyelo was apprehended by Ugandan military about a year ago. Two weeks ago, a Ugandan Appeals Court ordered his release upholding the agreements that offered amnesty signed in 2006 and 2007. (Kowyelo remains jailed pending a prosecution appeal to Uganda’s Supreme Court.)
Seven years ago a peace agreement was signed between what was left of the LRA and the Ugandan government. This agreement among many good things had a flawed section which awarded undefined “amnesty” to any LRA soldier.
Both Kony and Kowyelo have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity. This technically mandates any country that recognizes the ICC (most of Africa including Uganda) to arrest them and send them to The Hague for trial.
But so far Uganda’s courts have given priority to the peace agreement signed with the LRA over international treaties. Perhaps Obama is worried Uganda will actually catch Kony before he does.
The other side story is a bit more amusing.
I wrote Friday about Michele Bachman’s faith advisor having been deeply involved in clandestine organizing of African militias to kill Kony. He was even jailed in Uganda for illicit arms dealing and other mercenary charges.
A paid staffer for Michelle Bachmann was imprisoned in Uganda for terrorism and illicit arms deals with Congo rebels linked to the current serious turmoil in Uganda. Did you know about this?!
Last week Peter Waldron convened evangelical Iowa ministers in Des Moines to discuss political strategy to help Bachmann.
Five years ago, according to The Atlantic which broke the story on August 17, he was sent to Uganda’s Luriza Prison convicted of terrorism and illicit arms dealing. My Google pretags and all the media I read about Africa didn’t bring it to my attention.
I do read The Atlantic from time to time, but it took a casual look at a Ugandan’s blog, yesterday, for me to finally learn about it. Obviously I have serious interest in this, but shouldn’t the whole world have serious interest in this!?
There’s a lot more to this story. Fast forward to today: Waldron has tried to turn this normally terminating revelation to his profit. He’s making a movie about himself, and will portray his time in Ugandan prisons as a hero’s suffering for righteous causes.
Holy Smothering Smokes! This is absolutely incredible! I know it’s what the right does all the time, twists bad into good. But this is unbelievable:
Bachmann’s press secretary, Alice Stewart, replied in an email to The Atlantic: ‘We are fortunate to have him [Waldron] on our team and look forward to having him expanding his efforts in several states.’
He’s a mercenary! He’s an arms dealer! He’s a crook and about as bad a guy as you can get!
More. Here’s what the respected Ugandan blogger, Mark Jordahl, said about Waldron two days after the story appeared:
“I happen to know some people who … went to his apartment one evening. The table was covered with pornography, and there were a number of attractive young ladies hanging around. I’m sure he was just talking to them about the evils of pornography.”
And, oh by the way, he’s the Michele Bachmann campaign’s faith advisor. Paid. Still. Today.
Oh-oh, and by the way, after The Atlantic published the story, the website for his movie was shut down. Fortunately, The Atlantic had transcribed the trailer that was on YouTube (which was also taken down):
“Lebanon. Iraq. Syria. Afghanistan. Pakistan. Uganda. India. For over thirty years, his family never knew where he went — never knew what he did. Based on a true story, Dr. Peter Waldron was on a mission. Was he a businessman, a preacher, a spy? Tortured and facing a firing squad, he never broke his oath of silence. What secret was worth the ultimate price?”
A month after being imprisoned for up to life, Waldron was deported from Uganda. According to Waldron, he was freed “thanks to the Bush Administration.”
Now there’s an awful lot to this story we don’t know, and I think it would make a fascinating investigation for some serious journalist. Who were those others arrested, charged and imprisoned with him? All we know so far is that they were Africans involved in the civil war in The Congo. When Waldron was deported, so were they.
Why was he in Uganda in the first place?
One of Waldron’s friends, Dave Racer, told the Uganda Monitor that Waldron “was a friend” of Uganda President Yoweri Museveni.
A friend of the rising dictator, Yoweri Museveni, is just the kind of person who would be whisked out of the country before the opposition got their hands on him and revelations would pour to earth.
But what revelations?
The Atlantic reported local allegations that he was working with Congolese rebel militia members to capture a warlord, Joseph Kony, in order to claim a $1.7 million bounty offered by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Here’s my fundamental lesson from all of this. There is a fact or two no one can dispute. Peter Waldron was imprisoned in Uganda for alleged terrorism. Police confiscated lots of money and serious weapons from his home. He was arrested with a group of known foreign (Congolese) rebels. Then, suddenly and in violation of Ugandan law, he was deported.
He tried to champion this and other episodes of his life in a movie the forward publicity of which was then removed from public view when this story broke.
He works for the Michele Bachmann campaign as a faith advisor.
The rest is here say, although I put a lot of personal credibility in my friend and blogger, Mark Jordahl, who reports through another level of here say that Waldron didn’t appear to evening visitors at his home to be that upstanding a guy.
Forget about the here say. Let him tie up all the loose ends of his mysterious tale, or let the woman who professes such high and mighty morality dump him from her campaign.
And presuming neither will happen, the lesson ultimately we learn is that at least in Republican politics nothing matters anymore but pure fantasy.
Good. Lesson learned. But why did this take such effort? Why did The Atlantic story not gain traction in the greater media? Why is Waldron still a Bachmann staffer?
Because Uganda doesn’t mean diddly squat to Americans? Because arms dealing and bounty hunting is good experience for “faith advisers”?
No! Because there aren't any!NPR’s Namibia stories this week distort the overall complexities of human-animal conflicts in Africa as whole. The reporting by Christopher Joyce was an admirable portrayal of one very unusual country’s struggle with wildlife, but when he generalized he was quite wrong.
I hope you listened to the two reports, one on Monday and the other on Tuesday. Read this, then listen to them, again.
Many issues regarding wildlife, hunting and social responsibilities of any country are universal. How to make use in a profitable and sustainable way of these natural resources is an ongoing struggle that I feel is being successfully addressed throughout most of Africa.
But not necessarily the ways Namibia is trying. How Namibia approaches this diminutive national resource is very much different from the rest of “Big Game” Africa. Namibia is a very, very unusual place.
The thrust of Christopher Joyce’s reporting for NPR was that the only way that wildlife can be preserved is by privatizing it. Maybe for Namibia, but dead wrong for Africa and the vast majority of the rest of the world.
A little bit bigger than Alaska, the country is mostly uninhabitable. Nearly half (the western regions that border the Atlantic Ocean) is so dry that some fishermen grow up never seeing rain. Much of this area is the Namib Desert, which is pure sand, and some of the most spectacular dunes on earth are found here.
There is very, very, very little wildlife compared to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, compared to practically any other random part of the world. I can’t emphasize this enough, because Namibia is where many outstanding wildlife research projects have occurred recently. Some have even led to major discoveries (about elephant verbalization, for instance). But this may be the case, indeed because the wildlife here is so scarce.
The NPR report itself confirmed there might be 125 lion in the entire country. That is about the same number of lion for this massive 325000 sq. miles as found in tiny 100 sq. mile Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. For a similar area in East Africa the size of Namibia there is likely upwards of 50 times as many lion.
And that metric applies pretty well for any other wildlife comparison between Namibia and the main wildlife viewing countries of Africa. The exception could be oryx and springbok, two antelope species which do exceedingly well in very dry environments. But except for these two antelope, Namibia is not a place to go to see wildlife.
The most famous wildlife park in Namibia is Etosha Pan, which is about 7% of the entire country’s land mass (22,000 sq. miles). It’s hard to find an animal census for the park, probably because it’s not very good. The Namibian government claims there are 2500 elephant (dubious) and makes the grandiose claim that, “It is well known that Etosha has the single-largest population of black rhinos in the world, but the actual count is kept secret so that this fact – and the population of rhinos it defines – is never threatened.”
Such unsubstantiated remarks need to be taken with a lot of grains of salt, of which Etosha has a vast supply. Moreover I’m absolutely sure there are many more black rhinos in places like Lewa Downs in Kenya as well as in a number of South African private reserves.
Namibia’s richest wildlife area is the eastern Caprivi Strip, the area squeezed between Botswana and Angola which is hardly 300 sq. miles large. This is where many of the private wildlife reserves Christopher Joyce discussed in his radio reports are located. Interestingly, though, it was not where Christopher Joyce of NPR spent most of his time.
The reserves Joyce reported from may have the least amount of wildlife of any of the collection of private reserves in Namibia, which does make it a compelling story as to how they are trying to exploit the little they have. But I am concerned that at no time did he explain this serious difference between Namibia and the more popular areas for wildlife viewing in Africa: i.e., there is hardly any wildlife in Namibia.
(Joyce spent most of his time on the few reserves on arid, near desert terrains where the provocative topic of hunting was raised. I thought he did a decent job with this topic although he might have considered interviewing the equally if not larger segment of the population in Namibia that opposes hunting. Nevertheless, this is a topic universal to privatization of wildlife reserves throughout the continent.)
The Caprivi is a beautiful, wooded and riverine area with a varied biomass, and what to do with it is a critical issue but keep in mind how small an area this is. It may contain up to three-quarters of all Namibia’s non-desert wildlife, but it is one one-hundredth of the country in size, only one quarter the size of Yosemite National Park.
I hope you see where I’m going with this. To call Namibia an African wildlife destination is really rather stretching it. It has some extraordinarily unusual wildlife, because of its extraordinary desert ecologies, well worth a zoologist’s interest. But to consider it a viable tourist destination for wildlife is a ruse.
Namibia’s attractions are grand, but they do not include wildlife.
And it’s probably precisely this reason that the government wants to develop the little that remains as best they can. Fair enough. And it may, indeed, be true as Joyce suggests that privatization of such a minimal resource is the only way to sustain it…in Namibia.
But this strategy is absolutely not an evidently good one for more normal environments elsewhere in Africa, where the wildlife is more naturally abundant. In fact, it’s a major and often contentious issue in areas that have naturally abundant game. Personally I’m in the camp of folks who do not believe that privatization of important national resources like wildlife is good.
And when Joyce ended his final episode by claiming the people “from all over the world and Africa” were coming to Namibia to learn from their privatization projects, I started to laugh then became rather irritated.
It’s like suggesting farmers are traveling to New York see how to grow corn. There is some corn grown on Long Island, and probably in very creative and interesting ways, but it’s sure no general model.
Private wildlife reserves are flourishing all over Africa, hundreds more than in Namibia, because they have much more wildlife to show off. Now it could be that the particular model for Namibia’s privatization is better, say, than Tanzania’s WMA (Wildlife Management Areas) or South Africa’s private wildlife zoning ordinances, with regards to fairness to the local population or to the wildlife or whatever. But Joyce didn’t explore this.
Namibia’s future is not with wildlife. Its tourism development must — and has, actually, at least until now — feature many other wonderful things before wildlife. Wildlife could be the icing on the cake of a fabulous Skeleton Coast safari, but the cake is substantively without animals.
Moreover, Namibia’s broader economic and social development is not with wildlife. It is squarely with how to divide the special wealth from its rich deposits of uranium, diamonds and a few other minerals; and with the growing conflicts with its rapidly developing indigenous populations like the Ovahimba.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all be fascinated by the story Joyce told. Just put it in perspective, which he should have done but didn’t.
Gibson guitars and an African dictator, a major conservation group, U.S. Fish & Wildlife, and yes you guessed it, the T-Party, are banging out country and western lyrics headed for the Grammys. Dissonance par excellence.
I own (I think, my son took it about 10 years ago) a beautiful Gibson guitar which I played badly for years. Like most pseudo-musicians, my signature sound was volume. And despite repeated attempts to destroy the guitar, it remains in tact. Why? Because of its extraordinary craftsmanship and precious rainforest wood.
True musicians can hear the difference between a guitar they play using rosewood or ebony, and less rare versions of wood like binga.
He says it’s all a matter of the way the wood handles humidity. Obviously wood from high humidity places like … well, say, Madagascar rainforests … handles humidity a lot better than wood grown in Canada.
Turn on your speakers and click here for the sound of a rosewood guitar. Billy D & The Hoodoos, a Portland group, are among many who claim they are worried now about traveling with their instruments over international boundaries.
As they should be. We can’t have it both ways, folks. (Although, read further down, it seems like everyone is trying to on this one.) If you believe that elephant ivory should be confiscated and traders across borders prosecuted, then the same should be true for Madagascar rosewood.
Rosewood (Leguminosae Fabaceae) and elephant (Loxodonta africana) are both found on Appendix I in the CITES treaty. Which means you cannot take those products across international borders.
CITES is that near perfectly functioning, marvelous world treaty that protects endangered species.
The reason is so simple it defies criminality. Wherever those things exist (elephants in Africa; rosewood in Madagascar) they are dying out, or will die out if not protected from commercial harvesting. So … leave it be.
The reason I want you to watch this video is because it was made in 2007 by a respectable conservation organization regarding their project to protect 10 million acres of Madagascar rainforest by 2010.
They failed. In fact, they failed miserably. About the same amount was logged, instead. They failed, because the Madagascar government was taken over by a hipster strongman who prior to siccing military on demonstrators was a young, popular Tana DJ who scratched vinyl with little regards for the tonality of sound. He has approached his current job in the same way.
Madagascar is, ergo, a mess. Mostly a decimated mess of scorched earth.
But it takes two to tango. Somebody’s got to buy the wood. Gibson knowingly violated the law. Why? For two reasons: (1) because rosewood makes such a pretty sound, and (2) they figured they could get away with it. So far they’re right on both counts.
Whether you believe in the whole morality of the CITES convention (as I do), certainly the issue of law is universally compelling. Right now, it’s against the law (worldwide) to buy Madagascar rosewood. And so, let it be. Or, change the law. Or, opt out of the treaty.
So although I have enough music still lingering somewhere deep inside and can definitely tell the difference between Pavarotti and Domingo, and probably even appreciate Billy D’s rosewood grace, if I’m a law abiding citizen, I’ll lobby Billy D not to take his rosewood guitar when he performs in Vancouver.
Gibson broke the law.
But… guess what. Gibson is not being prosecuted. U.S. Fish & Wildlife, which is responsible for preparing the prosecution for any violation of CITES, hasn’t acted on a judge’s instruction in the case, effectively putting the whole case on hold. It’s Fish & Wildlife’s move, and they don’t seem very anxious to do so.
And desperately in search of a political win, the T-Party has now “rallied” to Gibson’s side. I didn’t know Nashville extremists went further than murdering mothers-in-law.
Gibson is not being prosecuted.
Music is a dangerous stage on which to fight politics. But when CITES was adopted by the U.S. under the Reagan administration, Fish & Wildlife actually steamed off ivory keys from priceless pianos sent in or out of the country. Pianists have come to accept this.
Gibson has pursued raw materials with the same abandon as many of its pea-brained singers. Not just Madagascar rosewood, but also Fiji ebony. Both places are run by dictators intent on little more than making a buck for their families, who care not diddly squat about their fragile island ecologies which are ready to disappear.
Both appreciate Gibson’s business. It would make a very good country and western lyric.
After Fish & Wildlife revealed the investigation was taking place of Gibson’s interests in Madagascar, Gibson terminated its relationship with the Fiji devils. But it intends to fight the ban on Madagascar rosewood.
How? On what basis?
Well one successful strategy has been to buy out an otherwise established conservation organization. Yeah, that seems to be working. The Rainforest Alliance has certified Gibson as producing “sustainable products.” This is nonsense. CITES knows better than the Rainforest Alliance, but guess what? Guess who recently gave tens of thousands of dollars to the Rainforest Alliance? Not Hank Williams.
And then another strategy that seems to be working: Get T-Party-ers to scream veiled obscenities at Obama and be covered by FOX. And that fight seems to be working, too. Obama, as the old country and western tune opines, might just be that sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Today is Columbus Day in the United States, a federal holiday.
All but a handful of states suspend many elective services, schools are closed, all banks in all states must be closed, and there’s no mail delivery. The holiday was proclaimed in 1937 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus into the Americas.
Many large cities, including New York, have huge parades. Over the years the celebration has taken on an ethnic tone, celebrating Italian heritage.
From Spring 2012 Fashion Shows in New York and Nairobi.I’m so tired of the incessant charges some of my less appreciative readers make of my understanding of the facts that today I’ll tackle one of my most solid areas of understanding: men’s fashion. In Kenya and the U.S. On safari or off.
Over my many years as a guide, friends and family alike have remarked on one thing I always got right: how to dress for safari. (Admittedly I tend to keep things longer than perhaps I should. I have a blue sweater my mom knitted for me in 1984 that I wear constantly on safari.)
Fashion, particularly for safari, like a safari, is timeless. Safari fashion has not changed much over the years. It’s distinguished by one overriding characteristic reflecting the excitement and magic of safari traveling: it’s expensive.
But of course it must be useful, because a little slip here or there, one two few pockets on your vest, and poof, you’re dust! That’s the greater point: appropriateness costs more:
“Pack fashionable safari style clothing such as bikinis,” Safari Clothing Wear tells us, “because this may be the kind of weather they may probably find at any safari.”
It was so clever of Herb to wear his bikini on that walk with Maasai that we did several years ago. Herb’s confidence in his attire allowed him to actually lead the walk. He strut out ahead of Elai, the Maasai guide, qho was particularly envious, because his shuka was too loose and risked constantly falling off.
Ricky’s two-piece attracted more animals than we normally see in the Aberdares, and everyone was grateful for that!
What’s particularly interesting is that safari style clothing is directed more often to men than to women, and in my opinion, it’s about time. It was back in the 1990s when “being a dork” was about the most horrendous opprobrium anyone dare give you. That was when I decided that I should begin studying safari attire.
It was also when clothiers began concentrating most on men’s safari wear rather than women’s. The Marlboro Man was on his way back!
“The fashion of casual clothing is actually a more important issue for guys,” says SingleGuyAdvisor.com. “Think about it, when was the last time you thought, ‘That purse is ugly.’ But women look at men everyday and think, ‘He looks like a dork. I hope he doesn’t talk to me.’ And that dork might be you.”
Our information manual gives clear recommendations on what to wear on safari, and believe me, you won’t look like a dork!
Colors are very important on safari. Our manual explains how animals are often distracted by brightness coefficients that are too high. One of the problems we have in writing our information manual is that readers often aren’t intelligent enough to know what a brightness coefficient is.
Fortunately, this season is taken care of, because according to AskMen peach and pink are the colors of the season, both of which usually have a low brightness coefficient:
“Peach and pink project calming characteristics, as well as good health.”
And that’s what we need on safari above all, calmness and health.
What is most satisfying about “getting it right” when you, as a man, dress properly for safari, is that you are communing not just with nature, but with the long history of African peoples.
“Some popular types of earrings worn by men are studs and hoops made with metals like gold, platinum, copper, steel and silver,” writes the men’s fashion blogger Anamika S.
Go native.
“There are several references in the Bible also concerning earrings,” she continues. “Wearing earrings in one ear (on the right lobe) is considered as a mark of homosexuality. But this is just a misconception. There are also criminals using this misconception to misguide people. Some parents also think that wearing an earring means that person is becoming a hippie.”
We have banned both hippies and criminals from safari ever since 1983.
So as you can see, a man’s enjoyment on safari is linked part and parcel to his wardrobe. Above all don’t forget the two Bs you’ll need, dude: Binoculars and Bikinis. As usual only Gary Larson tells the truth.
Years ago I guided teachers, bankers, students, lawyers and plumbers on safari. Now, I guide bankers, lawyers and brokers. What’s happened? It’s simple. Like so much in life, safaris have become too expensive for the average Joe.
Now to be fair, it was never as easy for a teacher to go on safari as a banker. And unfortunately we never saved the actual demographic data. But I can assure you I really did guide lots of teachers and as a percentage of overall clients they’ve decreased substantially.
It isn’t just the current economic downturn. It’s a trend, and I decided to find what “in life” has increased as much as a safari’ cost. Answer? Lexus.
Here’s the data for the chart:
1997: US household income, $37005; Lexus: $50000; safari: $320/day
2007: US income, $50150; Lexus: $100000; safari: $600/day
2010: US income, $49550; Lexus: $112000; safari: $660/day
Costs have increased for all sorts of regular reasons like the price of fuel and food. They haven’t increased because salaries of workers have increased, and therein lies the schism. Household income hasn’t increased. There’s less for anything but just getting by.
Now as we all know, that’s not true of the richest of us. The rich are absolutely getting richer, even though as a percentage of the population they’re growing smaller. So our pool of safari travelers, just as the pool of potential Lexus buyers, is decreasing.
The latest proof of this is a white paper being circulated among Kenyan officials that would ban minibuses in national parks.
Minibuses save about 50% of the transport costs over 4-wheel drive vehicles like Landcruisers, and they have been the mainstay of the lower markets. A new minibus is actually a more comfortable ride than a Landcruiser. It lacks the power, of course, and that means it can’t travel as remotely as a Landcruiser, but in parks like Kenya’s Mara that’s not necessary.
But Kenya’s tourism minister, Najib Balala, told a Kenyan newspaper that “Using mini-buses is cheap” and that Kenya had to portray a more upmarket image.
I can’t blame Balala. For years the costs of safari have increased far faster than median income from any of the safari markets. In the last 20 years, American median income has risen hardly at all, whereas the cost of a safari has tripled.
Game Park fees have quadrupled. Lodging costs have doubled. Transport costs have tripled.
But the salaries of drivers, customer relations staff and even managers and hoteliers has hardly moved. Like median income from source markets, those graphs are flat.
So ultimately, who gets these enormous increases?
Well, the government fees for national park entrances are clearly an increased revenue source for those governments. And in places like Kenya and Tanzania, for instance, this piles up directly into the general revenue fund.
But the lodging and transport hikes derived from fuel and construction costs are going to the providers of those things, the owners and stock holders of oil companies, potash mines and manufacturing companies.
And it isn’t just safaris, of course, that I lament. In my life time I’ve watched natural and cultural attractions like national parks, city zoos and opera houses become more and more reserved for the rich and powerful. And the rich and powerful are becoming richer and more powerful even as they become a smaller segment of our society.
My own safaris cost has skyrocketed and I’ll be the first to tell you I’m not the principal one to profit. I’ve watched the cost of good, solid albeit mass tourism lodges like Sopa’s Ngorongoro property in Tanzania increase from $140 per room in 1994 to over $450 per room today. And believe me, the radiators still don’t work!
Yet I can’t consul Sopa or anyone else to do anything differently. The thresholds we have to look at today aren’t the top thresholds but the bottom ones. What?!
That’s right. Balala is exactly right. Prices that look “cheap” detract from selling. If even the product is truly cheap, its chance for selling is greater if it’s priced higher. We are appealing to the rich, no one else anymore.
I’m not blaming anyone. It was probably inevitable in our global economic system. But it’s sad.
In a topsy-turvy world where rain is not good and war is fought in daylight as you sleep, the sum total of the world’s misery explodes, and you prepare for Thanksgiving.
