America, wake up.
“There is no shortage of lab tests [for coronavirus] in Africa,” Rosanna Peeling, chair of diagnostics research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told South Africa’s Fin24 a few hours ago. Stated, yet still hard to believe.
But because of this perception together with the widely exposed negligence of America managing the virus, Americans have been banned from South Africa and Kenya as of last night.
I’m not a scientist or a medical doctor. I’m a safari guide entrusted not just with the safety and enjoyment of my clients, but with the integrity of their prepaid travel. What do I do?
This isn’t hypothetical. I have a safari scheduled for next week to Tanzania. Because the African vendors there will share the financial miseries, I’ve postponed the trip. Why?
Coronavirus is creeping into Africa but at a much slower rate than some expect given the high levels of transport exchange between Africa, China and even Italy.
South Africa reported a seventh case, prompting a school closure in a suburb of Johannesburg.
Twenty-two passengers who arrived Uganda yesterday from China, Korea and Italy were given the option of two weeks self-funded self-quarantine or to turn around and go back. They all went back.
The news about coronavirus is overwhelming, dominating all the major media and social media in sub-Saharan Africa. Several important points, especially for travelers planning to visit Africa, soon.
Africa so far presents a “puzzle” to health officials wondering why there isn’t a greater outbreak there, because travel exchange in Africa with China is among the highest in the world, and as a continent Africa has the least developed public health systems in the world. (Notable exception is the country of South Africa.)
Suspend your belief. I found an African charity that doesn’t boil my blood.
The human/wild animal conflict in Africa is almost as politically volatile as climate change throughout much of – especially rural Africa. Elephants in particular are the problem and a tour company has done something admirable about it.
America, your weak, lilly-white specious religious and facetious democracy with its high faluting quasi morality is in complete meltdown. Wide-eyed Africans watch in disbelief. The “trust” and “transparency” and “morality” of the self-styled always-correct America that kept them at bay are evaporating into thin air like the last drops of water in a burning world.
I can find only one – not two – pardons given by any African chief executive in the last century that comes a mile close to what Trump did yesterday. But guess what. They’ll be rolling off the equatorial alabasters, now.
No coronavirus cases have been confirmed in sub-Saharan Africa, but they’re expected. The two main airlines from Africa to China, Ethiopian and Kenya Airways, have suspended many of their flights and Ethiopian is quarantining all incoming passengers from China.
What does this mean for upcoming safari travel?
Dear Trumpers, Wildmen, Militias and you famous Deplorables. This blog’s for you.
A couple days ago Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi died. I watched a lot of people like Moi in my 50 years in Africa. As an outsider I can tell you something about them. Just like as a nonTrumper I can tell you something about Trump. You might want to read this.
You’re probably reading this on Facebook. Well if so, buckle up. Time’s are a changin’.
I can tell from the stirrings on the African continent, grossed up by European sentiment first started in Ireland, that serious social media regulation is on the way.
Walifundisha sisi na macho yet yamefungwa. Tulipowafungua, walikuwa na ardhi na tulikuwa na Biblia.
Moments of human greatness often come in speeches. They lose a little each time they’re replayed or recounted from one person to another or translated through languages, because each language has a unique tonality, syntax and onomatopoeia – an unique style for their own unique talk.
Climate change is a silent slow motion video that with a touch on your remote bursts out of your TV with the cacophony of earthquakes and volcanic thunder. You reach for the remote. Mute the volume again. Change the channel.
Half of Zimbabwe’s population is starving. Today. Right now. Kenya’s oil that had been saving its government from default has come to an abrupt halt. “Unprecedented numbers” are starving and sick in southern Africa.
Empowered by their greater morality, three of Africa’s most important countries are giving America the finger.
Last year was different as small and developing countries in particular seemed to kowtow to Trump’s self-styled Mother Superior attitude towards them. But the killing of Solemaini seems to have broken that spell.
Something bad is happening and Africa is the bellwether. A couple specific events that I’ve chosen to discuss below in Kenya and Nigeria suggest security is failing or at least being so stressed it’s not working well.
And these events are but a drop in the ocean of what must be happening throughout Africa, likely the world. Something bad is happening.
Not so long ago I was lazily swinging in a hammock in Manda Bay. My son and his girlfriend were blithely watching the sunset over the island from their open verandah above me. Yesterday, terrorists blew up that place, now an American air base.
Readers of my blog won’t be surprised there’s an American air base in Kenya, since I’ve been writing critically about American troops in the area for nearly a decade. But what happened Sunday is a perfect example of American policy unweaving all over the place. We’re unscrewing the lid on terrorism.
The contentious struggle about what to do about lion has heated up. Two UN agencies, including CITES, are teaming up to categorize lion as endangered as rhino.
That would end most lion hunting as well as pave the way for local governments to seriously criminalize interfering with lion. There is an awful lot to unbundle from this.