Archive for January, 2012
What Price is Too High?
Posted by jimheck in Culture, Economy, Environment, Mountain Gorilla on January 31, 2012
More than a million and a half viewers have watched the mountain gorilla YouTube. Is this the reason Rwanda has raised the permit price to $750? I’m absolutely infuriated by this hike. The added revenue is not going to gorilla research, and the bulk of it is not going back into any kind of conservation [...]
Giants of Gender Equality
Posted by jimheck in "Modern" Africa, Culture, Women's Rights in Africa on January 30, 2012
Did you hear about women’s boxing coming to the Olympics? Did you hear about women businesspeople becoming village elders in Kenya? Issues today are global, and it’s fascinating to see their actual quantitative positions relative to the developed and developing world. Wealth inequality, for example, seems to be gaining much greater traction in the developed [...]
Democracy Without Votes
Posted by jimheck in Corruption, Politics on January 27, 2012
So who’s more primitive? Yesterday Kenya announced modern, near-instant voter registration processes even while 14 American States are implementing new laws making voter registration now the hardest in the world. With a nearly $10 million infusion by world bodies like World Bank, Kenya’s election monitoring board proudly adopted such instant high-tech registration techniques as retina [...]
Our War for Their Peace
Posted by jimheck in Twevolution, War on January 26, 2012
This week of violent anniversaries leads me to wonder if The West has exported its militarism to Africa. The West – and I don’t just mean the U.S., for France is a monster military force in Africa – has ratcheted down its military, pulled back from conflicts around the world, even as I watch Africa [...]
Way South of Scott Pelley
Posted by jimheck in Arts and Culture, Environment, Great Migration, Mara, Serengeti on January 24, 2012
Sixty Minutes rebroadcast of “Into the Wild” Sunday night caused many of us experts serious angst. Basically three wonderfully short thumbnails of things wild in East Africa were riveted with inaccuracy. I’m sure that when a professor of dentistry speeds past a billboard for toothpaste he winces. Nothing wrong really with telling people they need [...]
Justice Over Politics
Posted by jimheck in History, Politics, Twevolution on January 23, 2012
Not just free trade, but free justice! Africa once again leads the world into a new age. Today, major Kenyan politicians seem to have submitted to the World Court to face charges of crimes against humanity. They include Kenya’s Deputy Prime Minister, Uhuru Kenyatta, and son of the founder of the country. Also included is [...]
The #1 … Place To Get Hurt
Posted by jimheck in Corruption, Politics, Twevolution, Uganda on January 20, 2012
We all know print media is on the decline, but no better example than the once stellar Lonely Planet naming one of the worst countries in the world #1 in its Top Ten Destination List. Lonely Planet named Uganda #1 explaining, “It’s taken nasty dictatorships and a brutal civil war to keep Uganda off the [...]
Field of Nightmares
Young Uganda school boys amazingly won the all-African baseball championship and thereby an invitation to the U.S. for the Little League World Series in Williamsport this past summer. But they didn’t come. The American consulate in Kampala denied them visas. So the day before yesterday, the Canadian little league winners who were scheduled to play [...]
Public Auction To Murder Rhino
Posted by jimheck in Big Game, Big Game Hunting, Poaching, South Africa, Wildlife Management on January 17, 2012
If you believe in culling, does that mean it’s OK to invite casual sportsmen into national parks to hunt big animals for a fee? I don’t think so, but South African officials do. There are two related but very different stories here: the first is the growing number of scandals in the South African government; [...]
King, Racism & Obama
EWT is closed today but most businesses are open. Many African friends believe this is racism. Is it? Martin Luther King Day is one of ten federal holidays, but in the United States it’s quite possible to have a near normal workday even on a federal holiday. The stock market, the post office and banks [...]
Which Witch Wins Winston?
A Nigerian witch is coming to America to save us! Not sure she’ll make it in time for the conservative bigwig meeting this weekend in Texas, but that’s where she’s headed! Yesterday, 14 people were rounded up outside Durban, South Africa, and charged with cold blooded murder of a 60-year grandmother who the gang claimed [...]
Keep Hiding, Matilda!
Posted by jimheck in Economy, Environment, Wildlife Management on January 12, 2012
A great scientific discovery in Tanzania made two years ago, announced yesterday, remains cloaked in secrecy because Americans are likely to kill it! The Wildlife Conservation Society’s super field guy, Tim Davenport, has discovered an extremely beautiful, unusual and genetically important venomous bush viper, which he found somewhere in southern Tanzania and he won’t tell [...]
Broken like Most Everything at VicFalls
Posted by jimheck in Planning Travel, Safety, Zimbabwe on January 10, 2012
A young Australian tourist who miraculously survived her bungi chord snapping over Victoria Falls New Year’s Eve is back in a hospital in South Africa. Her traveling companion took a video of the failed jump and it’s going viral on YouTube. Her survival is miraculous. Remember, your feet are bound when taking the plunge, and [...]
Pets, For the Love of Money!
I can’t think of a single animal in Africa, not one, that someone didn’t make a pet out of. And some were extremely dangerous, and many ended up killing “master.” So why are we so obsessed with taming the wild? I think there are two completely different reasons. The first I’m sure comes to mind [...]
Accept, or Die. Nigeria, today.
Nigeria is blowing up. There’s martial law in four of its 36 states, bombings and other violence is escalating, and religious war threatens to inflame shaky Chad, Niger and even Mali. Economic instability always, always produces political instability, and Nigeria as one of the leading world oil producers has economic graphs with low and high [...]