It’s left me scratching my head. What distinguishes these two individuals from the hundreds of thousands pounding on our southern border with similar motivations and urgencies?
Read more
Author: Arusha
Scared To Death
It’s very hard to write in a public forum about anything other than the Ukrainian war. Referring to my own interests rooted deeply in Africa can’t assuage any of the guilt that we’re not doing enough to stop this monstrous conflict.
They say age increases paranoia: Thousands of memories of African dictators and gruesome conflicts sweep through my head, but nothing rises to the destruction in Ukraine. I don’t feel this way because Ukraine is a “white man’s war” or because Ukrainians seem to be more culturally and economically aligned with my own privileged ecosystem than the good citizens of Uganda fighting the LRA. That’s hogwash.
Read more
Covid IV
Covid – IV
Traveling with Covid
We traveled when colds spread in airline cabins. We traveled when flu was all around us. So now we’ll travel with Covid, too. Americans, though, have additional hurdles others won’t have to face. But if you’re an American, you’ve got to face them. Don’t walk away from distant travel, because America’s Achilles heel – and the disabling personal anxiety in our individual souls – is an unique cowboy loneliness that will take us down awfully quick. Travel is our antidote.
Read more
Covid III
Part III :
Do I get my money back?
I lost all the investment on a personal holiday to Paris to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary because my wife tested positive for Covid. The great if unusually satisfying irony is that a hundred or so travelers EWT has sent mostly to Africa since last fall had not a single Covid disruption. Just us, the owners.
No, we didn’t get our money back.
Read more
Covid II
Part II:
Is it safe to … ???
We want an answer, now. Right now. Is it safe? Is Covid gone, or under control enough. Replace “…” above with anything:
“Is it safe go back to Africa, now?” “Is it safe to restart my Yoga classes?” “Is it safe to go to school without masking?” “Is it safe to go to a movie?”
My answer to my question, “Is it safe to go to Africa?” is “Yes.” No matter what? No. As safe as before Covid? Depends on where and when you’re going.
Read more
Covid I
My four-day trip to Dublin last Saturday was as complicated and stressful as any in my life. All the unlikely pandemic warnings that I level at my clients came true for my wife and myself. Analyzed with the three African safaris which EWT completed in the last several months a grim landscape emerges that I can only hope is a mural of the past, not of the future.
Read more
Far Out
I was supposed to be in Paris with my wife celebrating our 50th anniversary. I’m in Dublin where I’ll be writing more about this interesting, unexpected journey due to Covid in later days. But today I just gotta write about Marriott!
Marriott is pleased as puddin pie that it’s opening a luxury camp in Kenya’s Mara. “The location and surrounding landscape will … create harmony with the natural world … drawing inspiration from the elements: earth, wind, fire and water.” Not sure about the fire.
Read more
Woke Makes Weak
Might makes Right.
How about adding, Woke makes Weak.
My wife’s sisters were born in South Africa and my wife was born in Canada because of World War II. Now stretch that out to my own life in Africa. Then let it snap back to the instant. My African spirits whisper, “World War III.”
Read more
Blanks
Try to imagine how a soldier deals with fear. I’m no soldier but I think I felt soldier’s fear standing under the elevated gun of a tank at the Goma/Gisenyi border in 1994 as it kept us from crossing the border as planned. I think it’s similar to the adrenalin high that Kathleen and I exchanged in our instant glances after hearing Amin’s gunfire in Kampala. Similar to the instant, complete weakness and rapid heart beating when I threw my hotel curtains open on the 13th floor of the Addis Hilton expecting to smile at dawn and instead looking straight down at 6 human heads impaled on the hotel’s flag posts. None of these compares with a 20-year old florist turned soldier in Mariupol thrown to the ground as half his city blows up.
Read more
Unregulated War
Last night EWT’s first large group since January 2020 arrived Nairobi on Air France. Quoting the leader, “It was a LONG DAY.” PCR testing, endless lines as health officials scrutinized and tested every entrant, and sudden new regs against the Yellow Fever outbreak… “Exhausting” he said. Then…
… two hours after they were tucked asleep in their Nairobi hotel, the Kenyan Government removed most restrictions regarding Covid as a result of the enormous decline in the virus locally. All you need now is a copy of your vaccination. How we want to celebrate! But we can’t because of Ukraine.
Read more
Simplicity
Six dollar-a-gallon is less painful than radiation burns. Devil in the details, of course, so celebration of America’s “ban of Russian oil” should be suspended until all the details are known. But my African friends think my ardent support for this is hypocritical. One of my favorite commentators, Joy Reid of MSNBC, last night echoed that sentiment. They’re all wrong.
Read more
GoodvBad
Africa, make no mistake: abstaining from morality is immoral. Serious moves afoot to boycott those African countries that abstained from demanding that Russia withdraw from Ukraine. This includes South Africa which by abstaining from this historic vote condemns its own courageous struggle for democracy.
The majority of African countries, as with the majority of countries worldwide, voted to demand that Russia cease hostilities and withdraw. It was a historic and brave moment for the world. The results demonstrate which African countries are weak and withering, and which are strong and prospering.
Read more
Time Out
At 10:05a Chicago time, 4:05p London, 6:05p Kyiv today, the air planes flying over much of the Northern hemisphere were exactly as shown in the picture above. The question is how much larger will the blank circle now positioned over Ukraine grow.
Don’t ask a travel agent. The Washington Post did yesterday and miracles of miracles you can’t believe how surprisingly safe and wonderful traveling to nearly any part of the world is! Better journalists at NBC asked consumers and travel investors, and there’s no question that the surge to travel has come to a near full stop because of the Ukrainian war.
Read more
African Cowardice
“We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.”
When Kenya’s Martin Kimani, ambassador to the UN, concluded his lambasting of Russia in the UN Security Council last Tuesday we waited for the rest of Africa to follow suit. They didn’t.
My surprise has turned to anger. A life of empathy with Africa’s condition riles my intellect. What the hell is wrong with Africa, the part of the world that has suffered more from foreign occupation than any other?
Read more
Unholy Alliance
South Africa’s repugnant refusal to condemn Russia is a dangerous over estimation of the importance of its BRICS trade alliance. As a leader of much of the African world, it’s cultish suicide.
Attempts to frame the Ukrainian invasion as just another dispute among us rich and powerful is shameful. The South African Rand plunged today. Apparently the Rand understands.
Read more