Thanksgiving

November 27, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. (Canada celebrates it earlier.) Thanksgiving is one of Canada and the U.S.’ major holiday celebrations, characterized by copious amounts of food featuring seasonal recipes and lots of sweets. The traditional meat served at the feast is turkey.

The two-day holiday originates with the first permanent settlers to the New World, people who called themselves pilgrims fleeing England’s restrictive laws on religion and who arrived the northeast coast of America in between 1620 and 1621.

They faired poorly in the beginning until two local native Americans, Wampanoags of the Algonkian-speaking clans, both of whom spoke English (because one of them had previously traveled to England in 1605) befriended the settlers. The “Indians” taught the pilgrims how to farm and build homesteads, and the summer planting season was so successful that the pilgrims invited the Indians to a “Thanksgiving” harvest dinner in November, 1621.

Click here for much more information about the history and meaning of Thanksgiving by a native American school teacher, who dispels not only the myths about the “primitiveness” of native Americans, but also about the pilgrims’ history and beliefs.

You First, Dear Girl

November 25, 2014November 25, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

A growing number of women are becoming jihadists, especially in Africa. Why?

London’s Daily Telegraph claimed recently that one of every seven Britains who has traveled to troubled areas to join a jihadist cause is a woman.

Elizabeth Pearson of Kings College points out this is nothing new, although it appears to be growing substantially.

Ms. Pearson also points out that women are increasingly being used as suicide bombers.

Does this just provide a media advantage for jihadist groups, since media is more likely to report on terrorist acts if a woman is involved, as Ms. Pearson suggests?

The families of suicide bombers no matter their gender are often paid substantially, and jihadist leaders also perpetuate what I believe they believe is the myth that suicide in action assures martyrdom.

I actually think the main reason women are becoming more involved in jihadism is more simple. Gender abuse in America – and elsewhere in the western world – has been talked about for a very long time, but not really acted on in ways meaningful enough to reduce it.

If men want women to do something — anywhere in the world — they’re more likely able to persevere than the other way around.

Another more subtle reason may be linked to the definitely new global awareness that’s emerged recently to gender abuse. In this infant stage, this new awareness may have a polarizing effect especially upon many traditional male/female relationships.

The “put-up or shut-up” syndrome may be forcing some women — especially from less modern communities — to make a clear choice of being subservient or rebellious.

Whatever the underlying causes, it’s clear that the male/female “divide” is very easy to exploit by jihadists.

“Jihadist” is not synonymous with “Muslim” and Americans in particular don’t realize this, and this also contributes to why women are becoming increasingly involved in global terrorism.

Terrorism is successful when it clearly and completely divides its adversaries. There are good guys and bad guys, no moderate or indecisive or inconclusive guys.

America and much of the rest of the western world, especially Britain, are perfect places to overlay this ideology, because our societies have become so polarized. (Don’t think that Ted Cruz is anomalous to America. Britain, the Netherlands, France … they all have their Ted Cruz’.)

So-called modern women in Britain or the U.S. may still begin their outing in more traditional communities. Threatened and/or encouraged by liberation all around them, their communities force them into extreme choices: ostracism or submission.

Fleeing as a jihadist captures the rebellion of ostracism while still being entirely submissive. It is the ability to resist innate rights violations by, in fact, becoming a part of them.

Al Arabiya claims that British women are given the most important jihadist roles in Africa “because they [are seen as] the most committed of the foreign female fighters.”

Kamakazism and terrorism in all its forms from jihadists in the Mideast and Africa will not stop until America and its allies grow more circumspect about the real danger that exists from this jihadism.

Vilifying and exaggerating jihadist acts elevate their impact beyond reality then at the same time further divides modern societies into extreme opposites. No middle ground remains for the more traditional woman to find modern sanctuary.

Barbarism is hard to minimize. But until we acknowledge and fully embrace the fact that the barbarism of the terrorists in Nigeria is the same as the barbarism of an NFL player, we will continue encouraging the traditional woman to submit, whether that to be to abuse in an elevator or strapping herself with then detonating a gown of bombs.

Not Enough Eyes

November 24, 2014November 24, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Kenya’s an eye-for-an-eye policy against terrorists is doomed from the start and will only make matters worse.

This weekend poor Kenya suffered still another horrific terrorist attack in its far northeast near the Somalia border.

A commercial bus carrying about 60 people from the town of Mandera to Nairobi was hardly 30 miles from the Somalia border when terrorists apprehended it then murdered almost half those inside who were unable to demonstrate that they were Muslim.

Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility.

This makes 135 similar incidents (although most were far fewer fatalities) so far this year. Almost all of these have been in the very remote northeast corner of the country, although there have been a couple attacks in Nairobi’s Somali suburbs as well.

In my opinion security in the country is definitely improving, although it’s hard to demonstrate this after such an attack as this.

But particularly in Nairobi people are actually relaxing and feeling considerably safer.

“Al-Shabaab can no longer attack in cities like Nairobi because of enhanced security measures,” wrote a former high military official in Kenya’s main newspaper this weekend.

But that same expert went on to demand a change in current government policy and security strategy, arguing for a much tougher stand including very quick and immediate retribution.

And that seems to be exactly what happened Sunday.

In response to the 28 persons killed and single bus destroyed by al-Shabaab, Kenyan officials claimed a raid across the border into Somalia killed more than 100 terrorists, destroyed four vehicles and an armed camp.

Kenya invaded Somali in October, 2011, completing the liberation of most of the country’s main urban areas about a year ago. That has led to the first globally recognized Somali government since 1994, although the government remains very fragile. The capital city of Mogadishu, however, is definitely returning to a semblance of normalcy for the first time in a generation.

Thanks to American drones, many of the al-Shabaab leaders have been killed as well, although new ones appear immediately.

The Kenyan response of tit-for-tat isn’t going to work. It hasn’t worked since the Jewish rebels of Masada were massacred by the Romans in 1 B.C. It isn’t working for Israelis, today.

Tit-for-tat escalates violence; it absolutely has never subdued it. Advocates point to short moments in history, as many contemporary Israeli leaders have done, but five or ten years of tense peace is hardly a demonstration of efficacy.

Ethnic and religious conflict must be seen for what it really is: an easy reflection of more meaningful differences, like those of wealth and opportunity, education and health. Whether it is northern Ireland or the Basque country lazy thinkers want to explain the difficulties by ethnicity or religion.

That’s completely wrong, utterly superficial.

If it weren’t wrong, then it means these conflicts must continue until one side is obliterated altogether. And that’s what drives many of their fighters, this belief that it’s do-or-die and nothing in between.

The real remedy is far more complicated and lengthy to implement. Of course, meanwhile, anxious citizens on the periphery of the actual conflict want quicker resolution.

Unfortunately, there is no quicker resolution, and believing there is only makes matters worse.

New Yellow Fever Research

November 21, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

New research on yellow fever could lead to improved vaccines and quick cures.

Yellow fever is a mosquito born disease that is found throughout South America and sub-Saharan Africa. While the disease is actually more deadly than malaria, it has never been as widely a threat.

In part this is because the first stages are not as severe as malaria’s and it’s usually the secondary effects that lead to mortality. These secondary effects can be quite prolonged. As a result it’s possible that many deaths in sub-Saharan Africa are actually from a yellow fever infection while being diagnosed as something else.

Mostly, however, it’s because persons who recover from the disease acquire virtually complete immunity. This is completely unlike malaria. Persons can succomb to malaria multiple times and likely achieve no immunity against a future infection.

The new research is one of the first in-depth studies that carefully looks at how the disease works. It’s complicated and fascinating. Note that the research was done on macaques, although scientists are fairly confident that the dynamics would be the same in all primates.

The virus switches on and switches off a variety of genes while it resides in the liver.

Over time this leads to a variety of pathological events, including liver and other organ failure.

In the past in Africa mosquito-born diseases like malaria and yellow fever were thought to manifest mortality more quickly and more simply.

As most travelers know there is an effective yellow fever vaccine, although it loses significant effectiveness for very young children and older adults. Persons who obtain the inoculation in their young adult years are easily revaccinated every ten years for extremely good protection.

But the vaccine is expensive and has been difficult to disseminate throughout endemic areas. It is a fragile vaccine that requires refrigeration and is a live-virus based vaccine, which means that incorrect storage or administration can actually give the patient the disease rather than the protection.

By studying the genetic trail of the disease’s manifestations, scientists may be able to interrupt organ damage by neutralizing the proteins that switch certain genes on or off.

Travelers to East Africa are particularly sensitive to not just the pathology but the politics of the disease.

Because vaccination throughout sub-Saharan Africa combined with natural immunity has minimized the disease’s effects over the last half century, many areas of sub-Saharan Africa which have not experienced any yellow fever whatever are particularly susceptible should an outbreak occur.

Tanzania, especially, has reacted to yellow fever outbreaks in neighboring countries like Uganda and The Congo by suddenly – without very much if any notice – requiring incoming visitors to have the inoculation … even though Tanzania itself is yellow fever free.

This has put it from time to time at odds with national health authorities like the CDC that recommend against obtaining the vaccination except for visits to countries that actually have disease outbreaks.

Many other countries in Africa, such as South Africa, require evidence of the vaccination if the traveler has been in an effected country within the last six months.

Genetic science is advancing so quickly that doctors are discovering methods of interruption or curing of diseases that before were thought only capable of being prevented with a vaccine, and that may the route of current science towards the management of this curious and powerful disease.

Poached By The Rich

November 20, 2014November 20, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The escalating poaching of elephants and rhinos will not stop until the increasing gap between rich and poor is stopped.

There is mixed information right now about whether or not the poaching of elephants has slightly slowed, but even so it remains at relatively high levels.

But the poaching of rhino is escalating and is of most serious concern because there are far fewer rhino than elephant.

Indian rhino are a particularly endangered species, and rich Indian consumers are among the Asians who purchase rhino products as medicines.

Kaziranga National Park in India’s Assam is the center of the rhino war in India.

The irony is that until just the last few years the trouble in Assam was not with rhino poaching, but Muslim extremists. I regularly visited Kaziranga in the 1980s before it was often closed to tourists because of this political extremism.

While much of the world is suffering from religious extremism, and while it continues in Assam, rhino poaching is now a bigger issue, there.

Over the last few years efforts to curb both elephant and rhino poaching have been massive, and much of this has been successful. Why, then, does the problem continue?

“Rhino horn is worth more than gold,” explains Jeremy Hance writing for the ecological journal, Mongabay.

An average-sized rhino horn is now worth around $60,000.

The price of rhino horn has never gone down, but the fluctuations in the gold price have meant that there were times – about a decade ago when gold was at historic lows – that rhino horn was more expensive.

But in today’s world, with gold above $1600/ounce, it’s astounding that a natural-product medicine – which is what rhino horn is used for – would command a greater price.

Modern Asian’s use of animal product medicines is just like American’s use of natural products bought at health food stores. Of course there are fanatics, but most of us use them as supplements, not as principal treatments.

The analogy continues to the demographics in the market. Natural product health foods in American generally are used by an increasingly wealthy upper class.

The increasing spread between the rich and the poor gives the rich much more disposable income, and that will increasingly be spent on luxury goods and ancillary and tertiary products … like rhino horn and ivory.

A rich man’s fancies are a market man’s treasure, because the cost of a hobby or a fancy escalates far faster and higher than normal consumables in the market.

The dynamic is double-edged. As the rich get richer, they play more with their fancies and hobbies. At the same time the poor get poorer and more desperate and are willing to attempt risky business like poaching just to survive.

Of course the lack of today’s societies to distribute wealth fairly has much graver outcomes than the extinction of animals, but conservationists understanding of the route cause of their battle may at last force their politics to the fore.

Climate change, health care, a minimum wage and fair earnings – these are all issues that suffer when wealth is unfairly distributed to the powerful rich people of the world.

Add to that, now, the biodiversity of earth.

Can You Be Too Right?

November 18, 2014November 18, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

Wildebeest survive, but Maasai must move on.

As worldwide petitioners against a Loliondo Maasai eviction approached two million, an important meeting with government officials ended today without resolution.

Last May I blogged about this sad story in partial error, resulting in my concession that the blog had enough misleading information to be adjusted. The incomplete discussion of the problem remains a serious part of this story.

The controversy remains: the Tanzania government wants to evict 40,000 Maasai from traditional lands to increase a hunting concession for Dubai businessmen and princes.

The error so many of us participated in last May was reporting the controversy as an immediate crisis.

And that escalation of reportage has worsened. Respectable media reported today that the evictions have already begun. They haven’t.

We were led to our mistakes last May by the organizers of a very successful petition campaign on behalf of the Maasai, which has exceeded its wildest expectations by the way.

In May the organizers of the petition broadcast an urgent appeal for signatures based on an exaggerated claim that the government was imminently prepared to forcibly oust the Maasai.

Several of my readers pointed out to me this wasn’t true. The problem was real – and continues – but the immediacy was overstated and the government had set no deadline for forced eviction.

The situation is the same today.

Numerous legal maneuvers have been going on in Tanzania for some time, long before the petition campaign began. These continue today.

This past weekend, a report in London’s Guardian attributed to another report from Survival International elicited comments from the organizer of the petition which were exaggerated and went viral.

The story even emerged as a headliner in America’s normally very careful electronic media, Salon.

This is a complicated and serious story, and the media (including at first, me) just doesn’t seem to know how to handle it correctly.

Survival International, in fact, has a good time line of the real story. Click here.

The government’s policy came to the fore five years ago. There have been ups and downs, and based on today’s useless meeting in Dodoma, I’d say the government is losing the battle of waiting it out, and that’s good.

And it’s so good that many of my readers and others worldwide have signed the petition. But like a previously exaggerated social meeting campaign, Save the Serengeti, the movement starts to become more important than the issue.

Save the Serengeti absolutely contributed to stopping the building of the Serengeti highway (when it was in its first iteration, Stop the Serengeti Highway) but in no way alone despite its self-promoted appearances. Moreover, when building the highway was stopped, the campaign didn’t.

The real development of this Maasai story is simpler. Under increasing pressure to abandon once and for all the government’s policy to evict the Maasai from Loliondo, the government has offered a cash payment in compensation to 40,000 Maasai.

The offer is for approximately two-thirds of a million dollars or about $15 per person evicted, in addition to previous offers of new land that theoretically equals or exceeds the land that would be confiscated.

Today’s meeting in Dodoma was to discuss this new offer, and as expected, Maasai leaders rejected it.

Undoubtedly this new emergence of the controversy benefits the Maasai, and that’s good, too. It’s just not … well, exactly right to think of it as immediate to this prolonged problem.

Meetings occur all the time between government officials and Loliondo Maasai. Ridiculous moves like $15 per Maasai evicted should hardly be considered starting new or more serious confrontations.

Yet even in Arusha some thought so. Last night an arsonist started a terrible fire in Arusha that caused some to wonder if it was in protest of the Dodoma meeting about the Maasai eviction.

I received several requests to write this blog. I’m extremely thankful for my readers’ sensitivities to this problem. I’m glad that we’re all “on the side” of those benefiting from the exaggeration of the problem.

But ultimately it’s the facts that matter. It’s the facts we need to be vigilant about, not the hysteria.

Right To The Core

November 17, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The whole damn world is turning conservative, but Kenyans are fighting back! The current battle is over miniskirts!

Last Wednesday while waiting for a bus at a stop in Nairobi, a woman was screamed at by passing matatu (private taxi cab) operators for wearing a miniskirt.

The protest grew rapidly and soon the woman was on the curb stripped naked. Kenyan authorities condemned the stripping and promised prosecution, but nothing’s happened so far.

Immediately Kenyan society cleaved in two.

#MyDressMyChoice versus #NudityIsNotMyChoice.

The good side, the left choice above as usual, is composed of virtually all Kenyan elites and most modern educated people, and that’s mainly because miniskirts have come back in fashion big time in Africa.

Young kids populate schools in them and old ladies wear them trying to look young. From Nigeria to South Africa, miniskirts are in.

Typical of the good side are the oft repeated arguments that men’s reactions to scantily dressed women are reflections of their misogyny, dress codes presumed necessary for women are never applied to men, and that the constitution protects however a woman wants to dress.

Typical of the bad side is the universal presumption that dressing scantily is an invitation if not outright challenge for sex, politely presented in its obverse:

“Cinderella didn’t need to take off her dress to get Prince Charming. Neither do you.”

As expected the clergy clusters in the right corner and politicians cluster in the left.

Here’s what I find so interesting and absolutely encouraging about the whole kerfuffle:

In Zimbabwe or Georgia, that poor woman wouldn’t just have been stripped naked but raped and killed and we would have heard nothing about it.

In all of Uganda and even for some high school cheerleaders in America, miniskirts are already banned by authorities, so there’s no debate.

Need I mention radical evangelists of the Christian and Muslim faiths who find common ground here?

Kenya is dealing with this in a transparent and public way, and the voices of the correct side, the left side, are not being suppressed nor are they growing. In such a situation, reason will ultimately prevail.

In many conservative communities in America, in many right-leaning American cities and certainly in spit drooling revivals among many American evangelists, the story isn’t so hopeful.

Seeing Is Believing

November 14, 2014November 14, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

GDP isn’t the only thing growing in Africa. Young Africans’ popculture is quickly overtaking America’s and Europe’s.

One of Nairobi’s most talented artists is Osborne Macharia. His K63 Studio is a sought after commercial enterprise by everything from chic weddings to fast cars.

I thought I’d leave you this week with some of his digitally enhanced photos, which evoke enormous reaction from me.

man-ipulation- Osborne Macharia — man-ipulation
– Osborne Macharia

The modern young progressive African guy is having trouble. His machoism is continually suppressed … by his peers, by his mentors and mostly, by himself.

Traditional African culture is as misogynistic as you can get. Polygamy doesn’t say it all, by a long shot. Whether a traditional family was rich or poor, the woman did all the work, and I’m not talking about house chores. She toiled the land, harvested the crops, sold the crops, distributed the crops … and raised the kids while submitting to the man’s every whim.

This generation of kids is several or more generations from that life style, but it’s still a much greater difference between their grandparents than ours, for example.

One of the residues of a progressive, educated man trying to fit into the modern world — or so it is widely believed — is that the man becomes too submissive and grows easily manipulated by every woman who gives him a glance!

Kwangare- Osborne Macharia — Kwangare
– Osborne Macharia

Income disparity in modern places like Nairobi is — I hate to admit it — greater than here at home. This is the real festering soul of Africa, not ebola or terrorism or even poverty per se — but the difference between men like Kwangare and those who cause Nairobi’s traffic jams wrecklessly driving their hundreds if not thousands of Mercedes every day.

I see it as a fundamental problem of successful capitalism overlaid rapidly developing cultures that are so out-of-control dynamic like in Kenya.

We’re in a state of affairs right now in places like Kenya where the disenfranchised and displaced are so suppressed that the country as a whole is just shrugging its shoulders and ignoring the inevitable. The poor sot who works all day for a dime then goes home to an 3-room apartment shared by his extended family, that in turn shares a bathroom with four other apartments … well, you get the picture.

Eventually resignation turns into desperation: exhaustion becomes revolution.

xNews- Osborne Macharia — xNews
– Osborne Macharia

Freedom of expression and freedom of the press in places like Kenya is being applied to an exaggerated fault, just like it is, here. The kids in Nairobi make fun of it all the time.

In America, today, we’re so inured to the ridiculous concept of objectivity that it no longer offends us that Anderson Cooper invites a “panel of experts” that includes a climate change denier … to be “fair and balanced.”

Well it happens too all the time in the Kenyan media, and Nairobi youth in particular see it as a caricature of substantive problem solving.

I can see in the bony neck and starved face of Osborne’s Gender Based Violence piece a continuation of the gender conundrums of the first piece above, Man-ipulation.

The woman in this picture is an amalgam of a peasant, a witch and a modern gal. Although the three reside in radically different places in Kenya’s rainbow culture, although their education differs widely, they are still equally suppressed and abused.

Gender Based Violence-Osborne Macharia — Gender Based Violence
-Osborne Macharia

And like our own situation recently to the fore in the NFL, it’s deeply engrained and horribly facilitated by the so-called modern cultural kingpins.

This brilliant piece was commissioned by Oxfam, one of Europe’s largest aid organizations.

I would have liked Osborne to have moved even beyond Man-ipulation and Gender Based Violence and deal with the most egregious of all gender-based discrimination in Africa, that against the LGBT community.

Next door Uganda is ready to hang every gay, and very similar sentiments have been raised in Kenya’s own Parliament. There is a vibrant and courageous LGBT community in Nairobi. I’m sorry Osborne doesn’t see fit to represent them.

Hope in the Delta-Osborne Macharia — Hope in the Delta
-Osborne Macharia

Hope in The Delta could be from any of a multitude of different places in ecologically stressed Africa, from the Kalahari desert to the oil rich jungles of Nigeria.

In these places the aboriginal peoples are mostly ignored, as they have been since colonial times. Their development is compromised by a constant struggle between modern resource extraction and traditional life-ways.

And you can guess who wins that battle.

I think that Osborne by depicting an old lady who has somehow found contentment if even amusement as she stares over her pillaged land has captured both the patience and quiet self-confidence of Africa’s forgotten aboriginals.

It’s a melancholy that’s so easily taken advantage of, but at the same time it’s a spirit that’s remarkably enduring.

Shake Not Stirred-Osborne Macharia — Shaken Not Stirred
-Osborne Macharia

Nothing very deep about this beautiful piece created to promote one of Nairobi’s very popular and increasingly important fashion shows.

This one featured super models from Nigeria and China.

So that’s one Osborne Macharia. Young, fantastically talented and courageously outspoken!

Enjoy your weekend. I hope you’ll be thinking about Africa when you do!

You Can Take it With You

November 13, 2014November 13, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Why are air fares going up so fast? Because travelers are rich.

Air fares have been used by all of us in all areas of the travel industry as predictors or leading indicators of travel in general. That’s because they are bought more through reactive responses to instant offers than the considered thinking of some measure that usually goes into planning a vacation.

That type of reactionary buying reveals the nature of you, the consumer, better than anything.

“Air fares are high, because planes are full,” reports a frequent flying expert.

Fuel prices are at historic lows, but air fares are up 17% over last year according to the LA Times and there’s absolutely no indication they’re going to go down anytime soon.

Why? Didn’t you recently hear from your favorite media pundit that the “recovery” isn’t widespread? What about Europe’s “new recession?” Isn’t China in a muddle?

Yes to all the above, but planes are full, because flying is expensive, and the rich are doing just fine thank you.

This is capitalism at its sweetest. What it illustrates is a turf war between the bullies. American Airlines versus GE Capital. Cathy versus the Chinese Communist Party. There are a lot of very rich people in the world, and air travel and vacations are becoming their exclusive purvey.

The reaction is widespread in all the industries that make vacations. In the one I know the best, East African safaris, prices are going up after a ridiculous dip caused by the now widely accepted irrational fear of ebola.

Before the ebola scare our industry prices hit a new high. That wasn’t because there weren’t good deals, there were and still are. But just fewer of them. The excellent mid-market companies like Sopa and Serena in East Africa and the Drifters and Kwandos and lower end Sun Internationals and Proteas in the south are still offering excellent prices.

But there’s many fewer of those than there used to be. Fewer in capitalism means less capacity and less capacity in a balanced market means higher prices, but that isn’t happening to the lower ends of the travel market in Africa.

Rather, there are more and more luxury, high-end properties whose prices are moving upwards.

The low and midmarkets are struggling.

If you’re a budget consumer looking to go on safari, you better move fast, because your choices are diminishing and in the current climate might not even exist in a few years!

But if you’re one of those Etihad Airlines passengers who just spent $20,000 (one way) for a 3-room suite on a flight from London to Dubai … no worry. You really don’t have to know how to work your personal wide-screen TV or microwave: you get a butler, too.

Veteran’s Day

November 11, 2014November 11, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Today is a controversial American holiday. Many of us are reluctant to celebrate America’s wars. Yet we can’t ignore the life stories of those who have become conflated with them.

During my life time, which began just after World War II, America has fought far too many wars. I supported Obama to end some of them, but instead he’s ratcheting up the War in Iraq, again.

In my new novel, Chasm Gorge, I tell a story of an American president starting still another war.

For someone like myself it’s an intellectual challenge to praise the soldiers who fight America’s wars.

America’s armies, today, are radically different than when I was a boy.

Today America’s fighting forces are entirely voluntary (with the subtle distinction that “reserve” soldiers, those who have technically retired or enrolled mostly as home guards are now being routinely called upon as active troops).

This differs radically from WWII and before, when the bulk of our armies were conscripted from young men. It was a mandated responsibility for young men approaching their third decade to be prepared to serve in the military if called.

The transition to an all-volunteer force was accomplished fairly easily by raising soldier pay and benefits. As America became more of a war fighting country, the rich also become more powerful, the poor parts of society enlarged, and so becoming a soldier was actually a good job choice.

Much of America’s armies, like ancient Rome’s and Persia’s, are opportunities for the oppressed and downtrodden to break out of an endless cycle of hopelessness. It’s therefore hard to criticize these young people for joining the American military.

The least advantaged are often those who their society takes the greatest advantage of. I morally condemn in the strongest sense most of America’s past and present wars. But my heart goes out to the vast majority of Americans who fought them, like my father.

ZimZam OldNew BlackWhite

November 10, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

This morning two countries just above South Africa are suddenly and surprisingly tense. There is potential for serious violence in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Other than that both countries begin with the letter “Z” there’s little else at first glance that seems similar about them beyond sharing the Zambezi river as a common border. But I think the sudden climate in each reflects a connection between them we didn’t realize before.

In a nutshell the problem in Zambia is the sudden death of its unusually popular president and the ensuing power struggle that includes the completely unexpected if remote possibility that a white man will come out on top.

In Zimbabwe nothing can be explained without Robert Mugabe, and the old and clearly sick dictator is being besieged from all sides: his party, an ever resurgent opposition and … even his wife.

Both situations have resulted in near lock-downs of their capitols. Clearly, violence is developing.

“Violence will never be the answer,” was the lead editorial in Zim’s ruling party newspaper Friday. Which, of course, means it will be.

In fact, the ruling party stoked the flames a few paragraphs later by stating, “…violence in crisis areas is not pushed by ideological pundits, but criminals hiding under a political or religious umbrella.”

Convoluted as usual by a lack of proper diction and reason in equal measure, it’s still quite clear that Zim’s ruling elite is getting a call to arms.

“Lusaka is in lockdown mode as most roads are closed today and tomorrow” ostensibly for the funeral of the recently dead president.

‘Who Cares?’ the first comment following that report today in one of Zambia’s main newspaper goes on to ask, pointing out that what really matters is “what is happening at the parliament gates,” i.e., the succession fight.

The sudden death of a popular and powerful leader in Zambia, and the apparent final demise of a decrepit and very sick old dictator right next door, are happening in tandem. Is this just all coincidence?

Well, probably, but I’ll tell you my imagination might not be completely to blame here. The current Acting President of Zambia is Guy Scott, a white man. Click here to read my first blog about his coming to power.

Like similar situations in democracies throughout the modern era, Scott as Vice President was a know-nothing, powerless figurehead who accompanied international missions mostly for needed amusement. George Bush refused to believe he was an official when a Zambian delegation visited the White House.

As Acting President he normally has no more power than an Acting Anything, which as we all well know in politics or business is a stand-in for the real thing expected sometime soon.

And so it seemed with Scott. Until last week. Here’s how that changed:

“… suddenly there was an announcement on national television that, Acting President, Guy Scott had dismissed PF Secretary General, Edgar Lungu from his position…[and]… replaced Lungu with Chipili Member of Parliament, Davies Mwila.

“The announcement was greeted with spontaneous riots and protests … and a thick nationwide atmosphere of disaffection.

“Diplomats quickly revised Zambia’s security rating from ‘peaceful transition to crisis.’”

The chess game that is always African politics is seen as some simply as Scott’s attempt to keep his opponents out of contention, the most important of which is the late president’s son.

But I think he’s setting himself up as a compromise candidate. He’s stoking the flames to become the hero who puts out the fire.

How does this parallel with Zimbabwe?

A once little known fact that has received wide attention recently is that Scott is actually a friend and vital supporter of the Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, who among all of his most vicious detractors was hated most by the white farmer he displaced.

Mugabe is clearly on the descent, certainly physically but I think at last politically. When your wife challenges you in public, beware.

But if Scott prevails, then so might Mugabe’s dreams for succession?

Would you ever have thought the survival of the black demon Mugabe depended upon a once little known white man next door?

Tanzania Tittering

November 7, 2014November 7, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Tanzania’s power cabal is pressing the lid tightly on a pot of boiling discontent, but young revolutionaries are up to bat. Game on.

Three issues are exploding: fraudulent mining contracts, authorities complicit with smuggled ivory, and the ramming through of a bad new constitution.

Tuesday, Dar police surprised the world much less Tanzanians by actually arresting the country’s two top gas and oil officials for failing to comply with a subpoena issued by young bloods in the Parliamentary opposition.

There had been a delay between the actual issuing of the subpoena and the ultimate arrests, and in Tanzania’s Shakespearean politics it’s hardly more than speculation as to why. Here’s my best take:

Serious pressure on Tanzania started in mid-October when the consortium of European Union donors suspended more than a half billion annual dollars of development aid.

This was no surprise. A year ago I suggested it would happen.

I believe foreign aid from the EU and the U.S. is often given for political reasons much more than for the development reasons championed, and huge amounts of cash for which there is no accounting is the reason there is so much corruption in Africa.

(That’s changing. It’s embarrassing that the U.S. has not yet joined the EU in the suspension of aid.)

We aren’t sure when the subpoena was issued, but the crusader who pushed it through Parliament is a powerful, young business educated progressive from the main city on Lake Tanganyika, Kigoma.

Zitto Kabwe set up a website in his name devoted to the fraudulent mining issue in July. The subpoena was probably issued sometime shortly thereafter.

That particular controversy – one of a dozen such fraudulent stories coming out of Tanzania’s incredible new-found wealth in gas and oil – was of a secret government agreement to cede more than two-thirds of all oil and gas revenue to the foreign investors.

That’s at least twice the norm and when compared, for example, with several contracts that neighboring Kenya has issued with foreign mining companies, almost three times the regional average.

Kabwe said his crusade opened up when a local blogger, Ben Taylor, discovered the fraudulent deals which had been held secret by the government.

Taylor’s account was immediately published in an excellent Africa wide media publication, African Arguments that got continent-wide attention.

Then, new reports of increased ivory smuggling facilitated by the same officials who engineered and profited from the fraudulent mining contracts hit the news this week.

The lid on the boiling pot of discontent might still be pressed tightly down, but it’s getting hotter. The gas and mining officials were hauled in this week. The kingpins will likely be out on bail by tomorrow.

“This scandal is too big. We are not ready to see all this money end up in the pockets of a few officials,” opposition politician David Kafulila told Deutsche Welle.

Add to all of this a growing controversy over Tanzania’s so-called new constitution. Widely opposed by the public because it really isn’t new, doing little more than enshrining the ruling party’s near autocratic power, the government has vowed to move ahead with the national referendum in April.

That controversy has spilled over into the streets and Sunday one of the principal architects was almost stoned and beaten in a forum held in Dar-es-Salaam to promote the government’s position.

The government doesn’t appear to be backing down. Today, the unpopular prime minister condemned the protesters, maverick legislators but mostly the EU for withholding aid, arguing it would hurt “the common man.”

We’ll see who it hurts sooner than you think.

Letter From America

November 6, 2014November 6, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 6 Comments

LETTER TO MY AFRICAN FRIENDS

Here’s what happened Tuesday in America:

An antiquated governing system flipped between two irreconcilable ideologies, because those ideologies are so far apart that compromise isn’t possible.

Many of you – I’m thinking particularly in Kenya – want to replicate America’s governing system. Don’t. It was great for the 19th and 20th century, but it doesn’t work in our high-tech, globalized 21st century.

Yesterday’s politicians and media analysts are absolutely right that “America is yearning for compromise” but they’re absolutely wrong that “now there’s hope the two sides will work together.” Our political structure has evolved to prevent compromise, so while we all want it, we’re not going to get it.

Since about a generation ago, “left” and “right” have moved too far apart from one another to be able to compromise within our system of government. This isn’t a failure of democracy, it’s a failure of the governing system to reflect democracy.

So gridlock will continue. Obama will stick to his positions and no substantive laws will be passed, or he will concede Republican positions. The two sides won’t each “give a little.” Neither side can: the positions are simply too far apart. So all legislative outcomes will simply be reflections of one side or the others ideology.

My ideologies and Ted Cruz’ are irreconcilable, but we are both gaining support. There is nothing left of the middle in America. I’m not sure this is in itself bad. The “middle” is often nothing more than a “muddle.” In many places in Europe widely divergent clearly opposing parties manage functional government through a parliamentary system. America is unable to.

Obama’s presidency is failing, because he still believes in legislative compromise. He still believes that he is the leader of everyone in America, and that idea means that he’s the leader of no one.

Whether it be on human rights, national security and wealth distribution, compromise isn’t possible: The difference in opinion is too great.

Today’s American elections are structured to achieve a knockout punch. Last night was a big Republican win. The Democrats will have their turn, again, and then the Republicans again, while America sinks further and further behind China and India and much of you in Africa.

“Sinks” in terms of economy, yes, but also in terms of culture, education and human rights.

The demons are three: an executive presidency, the rules of candidate campaigns and a little understood process called gerrymandering.

By the way, the American public as a whole is much more unified than our elections make it seem. In Tuesday’s election, “ballot initiatives” and “referendum” – policy questions put to the electorate as a whole – received massive support : redistributing wealth (“minimum wage”), protecting human rights (“anti-discrimination”), decriminalizing the poor (“legalizing marijuana”) among many others.

But under America’s system, today, these are rarely allowed to come before the voters and often then only as recommendations to their legislators rather than methods of creating law.

And under our broken system of government, the public’s will can’t be manifest well. So while the public passed those few referendum, at the very same time they elected powerful legislators who promised to oppose those exact same referendum.

So … nothing gets done. Gridlock or schizophrenia, doesn’t matter.

You in Africa have a unique opportunity to see how wonderful democracy has been for a long time in America. Use your fresh ideas to figure out a way to sustain it. We’re failing, here.

Election Day Night Whatever

November 4, 2014November 4, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Election Day in America is of no interest whatever in Africa, completely unlike the elections two years ago. Do Africans know something we do, too?

Two years ago the African press was filled with American election news. Yesterday and today I could hardly find a single story.

“A handful of toss-up US Senate races this week could hold the key to whether the stock market glides through the year-end in a typical post-midterm election rally,” from South Africa’s MoneyWeb on-line business service is typical of ‘that’s about it.’

Not even blogs, exploding about the American election two years ago, were interested.

To virtually every African, of whatever politics or economic class, the outcome of today’s election in the United States means virtually nothing.

The only relevant if annoying interest is whether there will be a clear outcome, and that muddy situation seems of interest only to high-end investors in Africa:

Reminding readers of the situation with George Bush and the uncertain election then, MoneyWeb worries that an uncertain outcome in the Senate will make the markets volatile.

Uh-huh.

Kenyans’ election commission leaders will actually be on hand in the U.S. to witness the election.

“There is a lot to learn from this election. As you know, America has very advanced electoral institutions that can be very helpful to us in our quest to improve the way we conduct our elections,” the commission’s chairman said today in Washington.

So one must ask: to what avail?

Democracy isn’t what it used to be, in my opinion. My views, your views, figure less than ever in what is happening in our country or community.

My reasons for this are probably yours, too: if it isn’t that I’m being swayed or fooled, lied to or tricked by fancy ads and robo calls and well groomed former leaders under lights, I’m just too darn fed up with the whole thing.

Nothing seems to change. Not for my way or your way. The old guys are still in power.

Hillary vs Bush? Wow, now that’s a fresh of breath air, ain’t it?

Finding 2 Million

November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

The great wildebeest migration is the greatest wildlife spectacle left on earth and the main reason that visitors come to East Africa. Things are changing.

“The wild beest migration is unexpectedly … back around Central Serengeti,” Tanzania Adventure Safaris newsletter reported a few days ago.

“As there have been good rains this year… the herds [are] moving all the way down to the short grass plains … when they would not be expected.”

The migration occurs in the Ngorongoro/Serengeti/Mara ecosystem, roughly a 200-mile vertical oval east of Lake Victoria. About 3/4 of this area is in Tanzania, and the remainder in Kenya as the Mara.

There are now numerous wildebeest migration watcher sites, such as “Herdtracker,” all of which I’ve found biased, incomplete or irregular at some point when I checked. Geared mostly to the particular camps or companies with which the site is associated, a snippet of where the migration is, is generally truthfully reported, but the overall picture is never explained.

With two million animals involved, there really isn’t a focal point for the migration. Moreover, at various times during the annual year’s migration, the great herds may be cleaved into halves or quarters traveling sometimes in nearly opposite directions.

Predicting where and when a safari can intersect the great migration was never an exact science but always a pretty good bet. The two million migrating herbivores involved eat virtually nothing but grass and grass grows when it rains and rain cycles were quite predictable.

In the north, in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, it rains almost every day of the year except in October and the beginning of November. The grass, though, in the higher elevations of the Mara isn’t quite as nutritious as the grass in the far south of the Serengeti. So even though grass is growing almost all the time in the Mara, if there is better grass to the south, that’s where the herds will go.

The circle of rain is like a big hula hoop with Lake Victoria as its center. The great herds move with the edge of that circle as it contracts into Lake Victoria until finally they get diverted to the last place in the area where it’s raining, the north of the ecosystem, Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

Sounds simple, eh? All you have to do is predict when the rains will stop. The herds then move north, sometimes frantically depending upon how quickly the rain turns off down south.

So a really safe bet was to visit Tanzania’s Serengeti really any time in the first half of the year (although February and March were always a sure bet), and Kenya’s Maasai Mara in July – October (although August and September were considered the best).

Didn’t happen this year.

This October much of the central and southern Serengeti received up to four inches of rain. Normally there would be no rain at all.

Two things are happening:

First, rains are much heavier than normal during the historically normal rainy season. You can see that from the NOA chart to the right. Green is a 100% increase over normal, so twice as much as usual.

Second, the rainy season itself is growing. You can see that from the second NOA chart just below the first. Green is a 50% increase over normal. Blue, which shows through much of the equatorial region, is a 100% increase.

More rain and a longer season is going to keep the wildebeest for a longer time in Tanzania’s Serengeti and delay their arrival and hasten their departure from Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

Is this a trend, or just something unusual for these past few years?

According to the Stockholm Environment Institute (weADAPT), one of the few professional meteorological organizations to study East African climate:

“…there has been an increase in the number of reported hydrometeorological disasters in the region, from an average of less than 3 events per year in the 1980s to … 10 events per year from 2000 to 2006, with a particular increase in floods.”

weADAPT and most organizations are concerned mostly by how this effects people, and the news in that regards isn’t good. Malaria, for one thing, will increase with increased temperatures and precipitation.

But the wildebeest and zebra love it. Their numbers are increasing, more and more grass is growing, and with time they’ll be spending more and more of their time in Tanzania rather than Kenya.

But at the same time as the rains increase there will be less of a need “to herd.” The animals may just start wandering, because wherever they wander, there will be food to eat.

The hard-wired aspect of wildebeest migrating — which we normally see as files of running animals — isn’t going to change or adapt as fast as global warming. We’ll always see them running, and it’s a magnificent sight!

But as it rains more and more, they might not have to.

Africa Answerman

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

Month: November 2014