Category: Culture

Lower Education

Lower Education

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StudFeeProtestFree higher education is becoming an explosive issue in Africa.

Until the turn of the millennium most higher education throughout Africa was completely free, as in much of Europe it still is. The model, in fact, for most African countries was Germany.

But today about a quarter of an African university student’s costs are borne by the student. In South Africa it just became more than a third.

South Africa’s most prominent university remains closed today after protests against fees that began Wednesday.

The University’s CEO, its Vice-Chancellor, raced back to Johannesburg to address today’s massive student demonstration morning and was followed on national TV by the country’s Minister of Education, but the students have not been placated and the protest continues.

You can follow this massive and explosive event on twitter at #WitsFeesMustFall.

The 10.5% increase in fees announced last week will push a university student’s contribution to just over half of all estimated costs.

The arguments on both sides are identical to arguments in the United States, Kenya or virtually anywhere in the world where higher education is not free:

“The government needs to invest significantly more … for public universities. This is the kind of expenditure that will pay for itself… Money given to universities is money that alleviates poverty, creates employment and drives cutting-edge research and innovation,” writes student leader, Saul Musker, in today’s Daily Maverick.

“Indeed, the actual social, political and economic costs of under-investing in higher education are far greater than the additional expenditure…. If the ultimate goal of the government is to create an equal and prosperous society… this is an obvious choice.”

From the university:

Contractual costs particularly salaries are increasing much faster than government subsidies for them; utilities and other operating costs are unexpectedly high, and unique to South Africa, the Rand has fallen by 22% against the dollar and much of the university’s costs are dollar based.

In fact, government subsidies have actually fallen, as they have throughout much of America.

So as in America we have an extraordinary situation where both the protesters and their targets are in agreement. The problem, of course, is the government that funds them both.

Governments ordinarily reduce their subsidies with additional loan mechanisms and “bursaries” or scholarships. But in many places like Kenya that’s proved self-defeating, because the loans can’t be recovered and the process of awarding scholarships is cumbersome and often corrupt.

The result is a spiraling downwards of government support, as forward budgets are often based on presumptions of recovering loans while funds for bursaries are often underused for getting tangled in confusing regulations.

Opposition politicians often clamor onto the bandwagon that there should be more government support, but once in power, they become hamstrung by budget necessities.

Governments are rarely so forward-thinking as to invest in a student whose productivity is many political cycles in the future. Mature, successful governments like Germany and the Scandinavian countries should be a model for us all, but in the U.S. archaic conservative forces hold us back, and in Africa, the critical capital mass capable of this policy just hasn’t yet been achieved.

So the gap between the haves and have-nots widens even further.

Only this time it’s not just a gap of wealth, it’s a gap of intelligence.

Death & Destruction

Death & Destruction

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EndofICCSouth Africa moved yesterday to begin withdrawing from the World Court (ICC), which would effectively destroy the institution.

Africans across the continent have been complaining for some time about The Court and serious threats to leave have come from such important countries as Kenya, Egypt and Nigeria.

If South Africa leaves it’s over and done.

I love the World Court and I’m in the American minority, again. All the European countries, Canada and almost all the African countries have signed on to The Court. Among the 70 or so countries that have refused to join The Court are the U.S., China and Israel.

To me the birth of The Court in 1998 was David conquering Goliath. For the first time in human history, there was an arbiter, a judge, with absolute power of law over the majority of countries in the world, including all of Europe.

Communists, capitalists, dictators, socialists, politicians and leaders of opposite stripes and convictions, they were all beholden to the court’s singularity: the only, and the ultimate adjudication of four grievous infractions of world order:

– crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.

Wow. Up yours Scalia.

It’s bound by the Security Council but has an irritating independence from it. It can develop prosecutions on its own, but so far prefers to “accept” cases transferred to it from sovereign nations or institutions like the UN.

Because the thresholds for evidence and of proof are so severe, far greater than in the United States or virtually any of its member states, the court has moved glacially, but it’s moved. It’s convicted perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, of the Blood Diamonds Wars and it’s in the thralls of trials about who caused the horrible Kenyan violence of 2007.

Hm. No cases in South America? Nothing from Asia? Currently there are 23 “cases” grouped into 9 “situations” being investigated by the World Court. They are all in Africa.

The drumbeat of imminent collapse until today was that the Court is prejudiced, perhaps racist. But with South Africa’s move today, that changed however subtly:

“There is a subculture in global politics that say some are equal but not equal to others, a ‘holy cow’ culture in which the US and other human rights violators are untouchable yet African nations are subjected to the rule of these ‘holy cows’,” writes South African businessman Bo Mbindwane in support of his country’s move to withdraw.

This, now, is the newer theme African proponents are making to leave the Court. No longer is it that the Court is racist, but that the creators of The Court — the U.S. principal among them — have refused to join and are therefore immune to its powers.

Yet America can still – and has – through its power on the Security Council referred cases to The Court, even though America cannot be prosecuted by The Court.

To me this is a much more powerful argument than that The Court is racist. The reason that Africa is exclusive to ICC prosecutions is in part because so many African countries were courageous joining. Other human rights violators like Mynamar, Syria and Laos didn’t join.

And that’s a terrible weakness of The Court: it can only go after its own, and its own are not necessarily the worst offenders.

Nascent institutions like this – even without the wholesale endorsement of all the world’s powers – may prosper when the world has a single focus on challenges likes 9/11 or the Great Recession.

Remove these overriding global horrors and space is created for more political introspection, and I think that’s what’s happening, now. Albeit that The Levant is an abject mess, worldwide the stresses of imminent hunger and economic collapse — or world war — are absent for the first time in nearly a generation.

In this qualitative and relative calm of finally surviving, the grievances of inequalities grow clearer, whether that be inequality of income, gender or … World Court jurisdiction. It’s no longer a matter of just grasping to survive, but demanding to be equal.

It’s not a done deal, yet. The call to leave The Court has come from the ANC not the government of South Africa, but as you can tell I fear this time the drumbeat means war.

Putin Power

Putin Power

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refugeesOne of South Africa’s most prominent businessmen has called on President Obama to align with Russia and Iran to end the Syrian conflict.

Kalim Rajab told Obama this weekend to “dance with the devil” and compared the current situation in Syria to that of World War II.

Rajib is Director of the New National Assurance Company, South Africa’s first entirely black owned insurer, and one of the country’s largest.

The refugee crisis caused by the Syrian conflict is troubling every part of the world. Immigration is an issue that caused a series of violent outbursts earlier this year in South Africa, where dozens were killed.

Like Germany, South Africa had an open-door immigration policy since the end of apartheid, and the country is the clear beacon of hope for many in sub-Saharan Africa.

But since the violence in May, South Africa has deported more than 15,000 people it considered “illegal immigrants,” although the country’s laws are unclear about exactly who is considered a refugee and who is an illegal migrant.

Every stable country in the world has some sort of migrant problem. Who would have thought only a year ago that one of the EU’s most troubled countries, Hungary, would become the focus of this problem?

Kenya has twice tried to close the massive nearly million-person refugee camp of Dadaab located on its border with troubled Somali. Only pressure from the U.S. and Britain has stopped them.

Social media has widened the opportunities for those who wish to flee an unstable place, and greatly increased their chances of making safe haven.

Rajib views the refugee crisis in a similar vein to the Nazi’s methodical and ever increasing assumption of territory in Europe prior to the outbreak of World War II.

“The irony of Churchill’s finest hour is that in opposing two ideologies he abhorred – Nazism and its twin, fascism – he had to temporarily reconcile himself with another ideology he abhorred – communism.

“How appalling it must have been to Churchill to find common cause with the butcher of the Ukraine,” Rajib concludes referencing Stalin and Obama’s need to discount Russia’s current occupation of Crimea in order to forge an alliance to if not end massively diminish the Syrian conflict.

I’m not so sure.

Isolationism has never had a good rap, and I’m not one to fully embrace it. But in this case I worry about anything that America might do.

It seems in my life time that we’ve never done the right thing in international conflicts and that all we’re capable of doing is escalating them.

So I disagree with Rajib, not because the alignment with Russia might not result in a better outcome than we currently have, but because such an alignment should occur first with Europe, not with the U.S.

We must defer. Deference to those who are actually feeling the problem far more than we are I feel is essential to any future policy we embrace. Europe is moving with the speed of a glacier, encumbered by a new global nature that morally is exciting and encouraging.

It’s a tricky time for Europe. There’s no need for America to muddy the waters.

Prayers Are Not Enough

Prayers Are Not Enough

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prayers“Is it safe?” is the question I get most often from travelers considering visiting Africa.

Today is the anniversary of the ebola outbreak in West Africa. What has transpired since then?

11,331 deaths from ebola. Around 30,000 gun deaths in the U.S., of which nearly the same number of ebola deaths were homicides including about 300 mass shootings. What else?

The most amazing panic by Americans, especially conservatives, that ebola was doomsday. Billions of dollars of unnecessary and unworkable precautions were spent. The “ebola threat” consumed the American psyche. Travel to Africa stopped.

When a potential vacationer asks me if “it’s safe” that person means much more than those few words, and it’s hard for me to answer.

Statistically, it’s safer than driving on the interstate, but that’s trivial because the questioner feels confident driving the interstate … whether she should or not. He believes “the chances” of his being in an accident are small, because he practices safe driving, knows the way, and maintains his vehicle.

In that sense what he’s asking me: Does the vacation you envision for me carry little risk vis-a-vis all the vacations out there; do you undertake due diligence in protecting your clients; and do you have experience and knowledge?

It still doesn’t matter that I can convince her the answer is “Yes.”

Americans’ perceptions, I believe, more than any other culture’s are formed by the media they watch, the spiritual leaders they trust, and the politicians they hate.

We are truly as impressionable as we believe we are free.

There is evil in the world and there’s a lot of money to be made with evil-ness. The manufacturers of weapons, the owners of cable, the paymasters of our politicians are all heavily invested in evil.

There’s no better market for them than us.

Papal Productivity

Papal Productivity

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popewithblackcardinalsPersons who consider themselves religious are declining in the world and Africa. But did you know that for the first time there are now more Catholics in East Africa than Protestants. Why do you think?

Catholics now make up approximately 18.0% of East Africa’s 194 million people, while Protestants have declined to 16.4%. This is the first survey ever where East African Protestants numbered fewer than Catholics.

Otherwise, there isn’t much good news for Christianity in Africa. Christianity continent-wide is declining significantly relative to Islam.

(The raw numbers of Catholics, Protestants and of course Muslims is all on the increase, and that’s usually what you hear from them. But relative to an even faster growing overall population, only Muslims are increasing.)

I think Pope Francis helps us understand why Catholics are now ‘outpercentaging’ Protestants: He’s an Hispanic of Italian immigrants, progressive politically, and socially and scientifically aware; and this mirrors many young Africans.

A increasingly large portion of Africans are not born where there parents and grandparents were. The massive dislocations of African populations are due mostly to a huge migration into urban areas from rural ones, although a small yet significant portion is a growing number of political refugees.

Young Africans are politically progressive, as demonstrated by the growingly powerful youth political movements in places like Kenya and South Africa, and they likely understand and embrace climate change, evolution, and even such arcane science as stem cell research.

This positions them as a society much like Pope Francis. Of course this begs the larger question, why? As a nonreligious person, I feel confident in suggesting an objective answer:
catholicsinafrica
Redistribution of wealth, stability, and a sense of pride (which I concede is not generally considered religious) I think are the three driving factors. Catholics do much better than Protestants with these, and Muslims do much better than Christians.

I’m not suggesting these are the banner ideals for a perfect society. Indeed, freedom vies constantly with stability in Africa, and freedom does not seem to be a religious virtue but it is definitely one of mine. But in societies so terribly ravaged by war and strife for so long, stability often trumps freedom.

The modern Christian religions of Africa were determined in the mid 19th Century when European leaders eked out the continent not just for political control, but also religious control.

At that time Protestants got the biggest piece of the pie, particularly in East Africa where august men like David Livingstone gained not just the respect of the world, but of the local populations.

When independence came to Africa, many cities, towns and street names were changed back to African names from Leopoldville, Elizabeth Lane, Kaiserstrasse. But not changed were streets and towns named “Livingstone.”

Things began to shift shortly after independence swept the continent in the 1960s.

Protestantism is distinctly conservative relative to Catholicism, and even without any tenants associated to the meaning of “independence,” European Protestants warned against awarding independence to the colonies while European Catholics welcomed it.

That rather set the stage, and the Cold War accelerated protestants’ decline even more. The end of the Cold War also was another significant point, when western nations in a moment withdrew their support for much of Africa. Alas, Muslims stepped in and have never stepped out.

From my point of view, Catholic and Muslim charity does more good than protestant charity. This is simply because Catholic and Muslim charity is centrally organized while most protestant charity is composed of a multitude of small, independent projects from independent church communities abroad.

As readers of this blog know, I find it hard to embrace most charity in Africa, believing very strongly that only government-to-government assistance will ever succeed.

And that’s also why Muslim and Catholic charities are better viewed in Africa than protestant ones. Nearly two-thirds of the funds distributed by Catholic charities come from government grants. Protestant charities are reluctant, often adamantly opposed to government funding.

Government funding is much larger and comes with many more strings attached than individual church donations, and as a result, is coordinated throughout the entire spectrum of foreign aid. That makes Catholic charity far more efficacious than Protestant.

Even countries that are exceptionally protestant, like South Africa, have followed the current pope’s progressive actions with admiration. There is no single protestant leader in the world, nor really any single Muslim leader.

Personally I remain worried and skeptical of organized religion. But like many Africans, I follow Pope Francis with enormous admiration.

Undeniably Ugandan

Undeniably Ugandan

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bestbrideshereMarriage is now … ‘nonrefundable’ in Uganda. This brings a whole new perspective to trophy wives.

The irony here is that Ugandan womens’ rights groups celebrated this Ugandan Supreme Court Decision, once again proving that Uganda is a mirror universe of the modern day.

Mifumi is a much needed Ugandan NGO that works principally against domestic violence. SALVE international reports that 68% of Ugandan women 15-49 years old suffer serious domestic violence.

This is roughly twice the continent’s average.

The litigation Mifumi brought to the Ugandan Supreme Court was actually to make bride price illegal, essentially ending it. Instead the Supreme Court made the practice nonrefundable. In Uganda and other similar socially transitional societies, if the woman divorces her husband the bride price is refunded.

It’s hard for me to understand how Mifumi thinks this ruling is a victory, as it is anything but. It further institutionalizes a primitive custom in modern garb.

Paying the women’s parents a certain sum in order to marry their daughter is rooted in the folkways of almost all traditional peoples. But the foundation of these folkways is the institutionalized inferiority of women to men. Bride price is simply a component of this larger perception.

Now the court is telling its citizens to look twice before acting, because the act is so important it can’t be undone.

In more modern cultures like ours the man proposing, the man giving the ring, the man standing by the religious leader waiting for his bride to be presented to him … all are vestiges of these early discriminations against women, and Uganda has begun canonizing them in modern terms.

Uganda is one of the saddest stories in Africa, a once vibrant and intelligent nation that was in large part shepherded into a land of super conservatism by American republican leaders.

Click here to begin reading that lengthy story which among other bad outcomes led to the “Kill the Gay” laws that have made the country so infamous.

But like Donald Trump playing to his constituencies’ fears and immoralities, the Ugandan president has navigated his stay in power by playing to the primitive side of his countrymen.

The Ugandan Supreme Court, like all institutions in the country, is a sham controlled by the president. Its August decision on bride price reflects Museveni’s beliefs exactly.

Museveni’s victory is greater than he expected. Now even the primary womens advocacy NGO is in his camp.

Automatic Settings

Automatic Settings

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Lion KillDrones and robots are revolutionizing wildlife photography. But will the Serengeti authorities allow BeetleCam?

Drone photography in Tanzania’s national parks has been going on for at least five years, but until now only professional shoots could afford the devices.

Now devices like BeetleCam will soon be available for purchase at prices competitive with good SLR cameras. Much less sophisticated camera/drones are also available for much less money.

More and more are showing up on safari, and this has led the Tanzanian authorities to catch up with the trend.

At the end of last year, TANAPA advised the public that in general drones and robot cameras were prohibited in the national parks.

But that didn’t stop the public, and the message did not get out well. Moreover, TANAPA has given many professional filmmakers the right to use drones.

One of the first organizations to use them for photography was NatGeo as referenced in the first link above.

And now NatGeo is finding itself increasingly on the defensive. Recent articles in the magazine are promoting the importance of using drones in conservation.

But the wildlife community is quite divided on the value of using drones.

Last month PBS reported a study in Current Biology indicating that drones were stressing out bears.

NatGeo has become increasingly self-serving over the last decade, but the legitimate argument is rising to the top of most wildlife organization agendas.

As it does the possibility of using drones for photography – even professional photography – diminishes.

I’ve often felt that too many visitors to Africa’s wilderness spend too much time with their photography.

The obsession that has followed many tourists for my entire career ends up reducing the fullness of their memories, from my point of view. If you’ve got to worry about the settings and absolutely correct click moment, you’ll more than likely miss the grand picture of everything happening around that single image.

I chuckle when remembering the old days of the first public video cameras, those huge rectangular boxes that everyone brought on safari:

We were following three cheetah on a hunt in the Mara. I warned everyone that when they sprinted, it was ridiculously short and fast.

But a good number of my clients kept their faces plastered to their video eyepiece, and sure enough, when the hunt and takedown occurred, they were still filming – and seeing – an empty veld!

And Crackerjack

And Crackerjack

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ugandalittleleagueUgandan little leaguers are representing Africa better than expected in the Little League World Series.

Francis Alemo is the star pitcher, pitching faster and harder than virtually any other pitcher on the playoff roster. “Francis Alemo [is] virtually unhittable,” a sports broadcaster was quoted today on NPR.

The African little leaguers are here thanks mostly to a New Yorker engineer who has diligently worked for more than a decade to bring them up to speed, including raising the funds to educate and train young kids at a sports academy outside Kampala.

Not just boys, either. The Ugandan girls’ softball team played in the world series of softball a few weeks ago in Portland.

It’s been rough, though, getting through U.S. bureaucracy. I wrote several years ago how the U.S. embassy in Kampala refused visas to a 2011 team that qualified for the world series back then.

To a certain extent it’s understandable. Uganda’s political and social situation today is terrible, so terrible EWT will not broker trips there. Many younger Ugandans who get visas to leave the country … never return.

Not all the reporting, though, is as on target as Alemo’s pitching.

My wife and I lived for two years on the border of Uganda in an area of Kenya filled with Uganda’s second largest tribe, the same ethnic group from which Francis Alemo comes.

We lived at a boys boarding school. Among the joys I remember there more than 40 years ago was introducing softball to the school.

I managed to round up bats – most of them broken – from departing Peace Corpers. We had no duct tape back then, but lots of rubber chords, so we strapped most of them together with rubber. Even some of the balls were wrapped with twine.

According to the sports outlet Boston.com writing about the Ugandans competing this week in South Williamsport New Jersey, “Baseball was first brought to Uganda by missionaries in the early 90s.”

Below is my much prized letter of commendation from the Headmaster of the St. Paul’s Amukura Boys Boarding School. The most important paragraph is towards the end, commending me for introducing the boys to softball!
amukuraletter

Polio Plus a lot More

Polio Plus a lot More

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PolioPlusPolio may have been eliminated from Africa.

Although the context is Africa, this is an uniquely American story. It’s a hero’s tale of misplaced generosity: More than 30 years ago a generous group of American middle class business leaders decided they would eradicate polio.

Last week the Global Polio Eradication (GPE) Initiative announced that it had been one year since any new case of polio had been identified in Africa.

(Qualification: a handful of new cases caused by the vaccine itself persist in Nigeria and Madagascar, but these are not infectious.)

The GPE began in 1988 after a 1985 Rotary Club project inspired when a Rotarian visited the Philippines and was moved by efforts there to eradicate the disease.

Within three years individual Rotarians had donated almost $200 million dollars. (To date they have contributed more than $1.3 billion.)

Reluctantly United Nations organizations joined the effort. I say reluctantly because the science of public health was most developed within the United Nations community, and it was understood by them that “a few years” was not a realistic goal.

The UN and its agencies get beaten to death when they set goals they don’t achieve. But UNESCO (the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) agreed to partner in the effort when convinced by the less political World Health Organization (WHO), which also joined the effort in 1988 after America’s CDC came on board.

But none of these three public health organizations – attracted by the enormous amount of the Rotary contributions – wanted to be the lead organization.

It was understood that if public health organizations’ assessment of the enormous amount of time and money the project really needed were honestly conveyed to Rotarians the project might be abandoned. More puerilely, they might not get use of the funds. So the GPE was formed as an umbrella organization.

I was a Rotarian at the time, and I was extraordinarily humbled by my suburban club’s generosity towards projects I was developing in Africa. So I was roundly criticized as hypocritical and selfish when I opposed the polio campaign.

I knew the goals were unrealistic. Everyone was treating polio as if it were smallpox. The eradication of smallpox worldwide in 1978 (officially announced in 1980) still had enormous resonance in 1985 as a successful worldwide public health initiative.

WHO suggested, designed and led the effort to eradicate smallpox, a decade-long effort that began in 1958. The world – particularly America in 1958 – was considerably more socialistic than it is, today, and the successful eradication of smallpox in the U.S. and Europe inspired wonderful governmental generosity to take this know-how into the undeveloped world.

It was expensive, and it was paid for by increased taxes on westerners.

America’s psyche changed radically in the late 1970s and 1980s. Private initiative was displacing government initiatives.

Rotary is a private, capitalist club. To its lasting credit in this troubling period of change in America it was also developing thousands if not tens of thousands of small projects that were working better than the bluster of aid that was flowing for crony reasons during the Cold War.

It seemed to make sense. Private initiative. Less bureaucratic operations. Strictly altruistic.

But Rotary was not accountable to the body of science which governments and world political organizations were.

I knew that eradication of polio would take more than “a few years” and more importantly, that the quarter billion dollars raised for a few-year effort would have to become substantially more if the ultimate goal of the project was to be realized.

I knew because I had watched polio immunization in Africa fail, first-hand.

The problem is that a single immunization as was used to eradicate smallpox won’t work with polio. Polio eradication then required at least two immunizations per child and they needed to be spaced months apart.

That is a concept near impossible to convey to an illiterate peasant and particularly to skeptical ones. It’s also a regime that requires meticulous accounting and reporting. Who is immunized when is not an easy task to record when so many millions of young, undernourished and illiterate children are involved.

So it’s taken a little bit more than a “few years” and by the way, Rotary’s goal of worldwide eradication has not occurred. The infectious polio virus persists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It’s unclear how much has been spent to date. The New York Times reports the effort costs $1 billion/year.

Last February the Rotarian who inspired the program celebrated the 30-year effort by explaining why he felt the project could be done by Rotary:

“We didn’t need medical people, we could do it ourselves.”

Do it yourself is an American concept that is horribly immature. There is very little in the world today that can be successfully accomplished “by one’s self.”

Teams of very different kinds of people, spanning enormous disciplines and representing high science and lengthy specific experience, are required for almost everything even something as simple as counting children when the context is global.

What we need to do is tap into the incredible generosity of an individual Rotarian, which I can absolutely attest to. We need to develop that twinkling morality into a complete understanding that no Rotary – no homogenous organization – can work alone in a global context. Only massive efforts coordinated by governments can achieve global success.

And equally importantly, we must accept the facts, however daunting they may seem. Inspiration is great. Science is, too.

Rihandling Elephants

Rihandling Elephants

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rihanaelephantHere’s a flash: elephants aren’t capable of human emotions. Neither are whales. Or your dog.

Despite whatever pretenses we might employ for our own happiness, animals don’t share our consciousness. That doesn’t mean they might not have “animal emotions,” but since we aren’t elephants, whales or dogs, we’ll never fully understand what “animal emotions” are.

We’re limited to explaining things with our own language, with our own consciousness. A great hazard develops when we attempt to portray animal behavior in human terms. Anthropomorphizing results in more destruction to the planet and its biodiversity than any other human enterprise.

Katy Payne is one of the most creative and perceptive animal researchers of my life time, and her principal studies have been with elephants and whales.

She discovered that the low rumblings of elephant that we can all hear represent only 10%, in fact, of the vocalizations that are occurring, and that 90% of the vocalization is below our decibel level of hearing.

This, in turn, led to remarkable discoveries about elephant communication.

But in an interview aired on public radio this weekend, Payne’s science was eclipsed by her religious or spiritual beliefs and that, in kind, diminished her science by a huge helping of anthropomorphization.

“Whales, like people, are composers,” Ms. Payne told Krista Tippet on the Sunday NPR show OnBeing.

Fifteen years ago, in a passionate oped in the Washington Post in which Ms. Payne argued for increased protection of elephants, she wrote:

“Elephants’ experiences are, in short, collective, and the collectiveness of their experience colors their responses to everything. The collectiveness escalates and multiplies the trauma associated with losses, and in long-lived animals with long memories, such losses are not soon overcome. Elephants that survive poaching and culling may never fully recover from the repeated loss of what they once identified with and held dear.”

Whales are not human composers. Elephants do not experience human trauma.

I found the Sunday interview extremely enlightening, because it confirmed a long held belief that anthropomorphizing is a very religious or spiritual phenomenon, and that when science is mixed with religion or spiritual contemplation, things get messy.

That messiness is one of our highest challenges. Science is critical to our survival, but so is a spiritual orientation to our existence. Science can go just so far, at least so far. So for the time being anyway a spiritual foundation is critical in bridging the gap between science and what we don’t [yet?] know.

Ms. Payne deals with that challenge in one fell swoop by considering elephants as people. That shortcut is dangerous.

It’s particularly dangerous for elephants, because in the diminishing resources of our planet we have begun the painful exercise of deciding who gets what. If elephants are people, I can assure you that the honorable citizens of Texas, the aggrieved displaced persons of Kenya, and the young geniuses of the Mumbai slums will outrank the pachyderms exponentially.

But it’s also dangerous for people.

If our emotions are in some way limited – if only to the length of our waking lives – and if those emotions are consumed with empathizing with elephants rather than babies with malaria, more human babies will die.

This is no zero sum game. Our universe has categories of value, and they range from sea stones to lonely hearts. In my view they are all inextricably linked, but are not of equal value.

Understanding the linkage provides us with the necessary orientation for best conducting our survival. That begins with the understanding that our consciousness is primary. Humans are tops. Nothing in existence exceeds our human consciousness, including elephants, whales and your dog.

Yet our premiership may indeed be dependent upon sea stones, elephants, whales and the fantasies we have about Rover because, at least for now, we’re still molecular. I believe so.

Everything that exists is sacred. But not everything is human. Only we are human.

I appreciate all the work Ms. Payne has done to increase our understanding of elephants, but I worry that her conclusions which render the animal in human terms undermines her important work and endangers elephant survival.

Strongmen Clapping

Strongmen Clapping

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Barack ObamaObama’s speech to African Heads of State in Addis Ababa several weeks ago was both naive and inspiring and made me realize how weak a President but how strong a role model he is.

Obama minced no words when calling out African leaders for corruption, misuse of power and insensitivity to human rights. It was no diplomat speaking when he repeated his oft-stated opprobrium about the continent:

“Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.”

What was singularly remarkable was that this line was followed by wild applause, clapping from the strongmen.

It was the case throughout this most remarkable address. Many lines in Obama’s speech were more than sufficient to jail him in many of the countries whose Heads of State wildly cheered those remarks.

“In many places across Africa, it’s still too hard to start a venture,” he said, alluding to powerful nepotism and biased regulations that favor the wealthy classes. “Here in Africa corruption drains billions of dollars from economies that can’t afford to lose billions of dollars.”

He boldly claimed that many basic human and democratic rights “are denied… many Africans. When journalists are put behind bars for doing their jobs, or activists are threatened as governments crack down on civil society — (applause) — then you may have democracy in name, but not in substance. (Loud applause.)”

He nuked all diplomatic etiquette when charging three sitting African leaders with crimes against humanity: in the South Sudan, Burundi and Central African Republic. Strong supporters of these regimes … clapped.

“I have to also say that Africa’s democratic progress is also at risk when leaders refuse to step aside when their terms end. (Applause.) Now, let me be honest with you — I do not understand this. (Laughter.)”

The chairman of the AU, the forum at which he was speaking, is Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, a “president-for-life” who is as ruthless as they come. He did not clap. But the representatives from South Africa at his side, who have diligently supported him year after year, did clap.

“The bottom line is that when citizens cannot exercise their rights, the world has a responsibility to speak out. And America will, even if it’s sometimes uncomfortable — (applause)”

At this point many commentators in Africa began to wonder if African leaders understood English well enough to know what they were applauding. That, they do.

“In Africa this was a revolutionary speech,” wrote Richard Dowden of the Royal African Society.

Let me tell why this shouldn’t baffle you, but indeed makes sense.

Africa’s leaders fall into two categories: good guys who can’t get much done, and bad guys who spend their public lives denying their own prevarications.

Right now almost all of the 54 African presidents fit into one or the other of those two categories.

Category One Guys applauded enthusiastically, hoping beyond hope that Obama’s force will infiltrate the networks and institutions that constantly obstruct them.

Category Two Guys applauded because they’re in denial … at least public if not personal denial. (It takes a Freud or Landers to determine which.)

So I’m not baffled, and I don’t think this speech is revolutionary. Obama was giving all of them just what they wanted.

For me the speech focused my growing understanding of exactly who Obama is.

I see Obama as a weak leader. He’s a professor, a role model, a stellar person. He believes like all good wise mentors that the spoken word can be as powerful as the clever act.

In that, especially in Africa, he is oh so wrong.

Oil & People

Oil & People

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

DeepInamazonAs I wait here in Arusha for my clients to arrive tomorrow, I’m haunted by my visit to the Amazon a few weeks ago.

It wasn’t just the goose bumps and occasional terror produced by the massive, towering jungle with its chaotic screaming sounds. I was profoundly moved by the local people who hosted us and who are demonstrating remarkable courage refusing the wealth of oil that sits below them.

Ecuador’s Amazon is one of the richest biomass areas in South America and includes Yasuni National Park, which the Wildlife Conservation Society says is “one of the most biologically diverse forests in the world.”

The area is also the home of several clans of Huaorani people who continue to forcibly resist development, violently opposing all efforts to contact and civilize them.

But controversy with oil companies dominates the area. The first discoveries of huge reserves in the 1960s led to a mini oil boom that was eventually stopped when several massive spills galvanized local opposition. An increasingly leftist government in Quito became incensed by the significant ecological destruction of their Amazon.

One of the tribes in the area, in fact, the Achuar Kapawi, successfully obtained a large judgement against Occidental Petroleum after a persistent six years of expensive litigation in New York (spearheaded by EarthRights International).

But even more significant reserves were discovered in the late 1990s and so the pressure on the Quito regime grew substantially. The Correa administration asked the United Nations to calculate its reasonable return over ten years if it allowed the oil to be developed. The UN came up with a figure of $7.2 billion.

President Rafael Correa then addressed the opening session of the United Nations in 2007 and asked the assembly to create a trust fund that if if subscribed by half that amount, $3.6 billion, would be used by his administration as an alternative to developing the oil in the Amazon.

Correa challenged us global conservationists to put up, or shut up.

Several years later only $110 million had been pledged and less than $13 million actually paid into the trust. So in 2011 Correa struck a deal with a consortium of multinationals for a federal royalty of $17.06/barrel and invited the companies to negotiate final deals with the various owners of the Amazon land where the reserves were located.

Nineteen of the 26 indigenous communities in the Yasuni National Park area have so far struck deals with the oil companies. The Sani-Isla community, which owns about a half million acres including a small portion actually inside the national park, has repeatedly refused deals.

Multiple times oil company representatives have requested and received an audience with Orlando, the 70-year old, democratically elected Sani-Isla leader, who is also a shaman, and who also worked for the oil companies for 20 years in the 1960s to 1980s.

Orlando’s first job with an oil company was as the most menial of laborers, the poor bloke who has to climb inside a giant oil barrel and swab it clean. By the time he left more than 20 years later he was a foreman on an oil rig.

Orlando grew increasingly horrified by the drugs, alcoholism and prostitution that always seems to beset an oiltropolis. He pleaded with management multiple times for rules and regulations to curb the errant behavior so alien to his way of life, but to no avail.

So he led his 600 Sani-Isla people to vote no to oil. Instead, they built a tourist lodge with Orlando’s savings. It’s always hazardous to critique a place you’ve been so soon after leaving it, but my initial impression is that my 7th Amazon visit, this time to Sani Lodge, was the best I’ve ever had in a jungle.

The earnings from Sani Lodge have funded a school, but it’s small and basic and has no bathrooms. They’ve also built a health clinic but it’s very rudimentary, dependent upon infrequent nurse volunteers.

On all sides of the Sani’s half million acres of Amazon, oil rigs are churning. Those communities with negotiated deals have modern schools and health clinics. Some have running water. Some even have sanitation systems. Many of their smarter children are getting scholarships to U.S. schools.

Sani Isla’s children are just as smart as any, and ironically the oil boom trusts created in the 1960s actually provided scholarships for some of the San Isla children.

Javier Gualangi is the principal guide at Sani Lodge and one of Orlando’s chief supporters. He spent three years studying biology at a college in Portland, Oregon, and he traveled across the States, visiting wilderness sites from California to Minnesota to the Everglades, in part on oil company tabs.

It was in the Everglades that his longing for the Amazon grew acute.

“That was when I knew I must come home,” he told me.

At 27-years old he has yet to start a family. He gently refused his parents’ arranged marriage, and he insists that Orlando has the correct vision for his people.

“Before we began our conservation efforts with the lodge,” he told me, “there were hardly any capuchin monkeys left.” This is the case throughout much of the Amazon, by the way. “Today they’re all over!”

We saw many. Javier’s enthusiasm for the wild is almost unbelievable, especially because he expresses it so elegantly in excellent English. What is such a remarkable person doing here? I asked myself, when the modern world is at his fingertips?

Javier showed me more stuff in the Amazon, I think, than I saw in all my combined previous six visits. He found at night the treasured paca. (See this Flickr link for pictures.) He showed us the Great Potoo, many many-banded aracari, lots of caimans, wooly and howler monkeys.

He knew the scientific names of … well, everything: plants, bugs, animals. He explained how trees walk across the ground, how mushrooms invade moths, how eels electrify our imaginations!

Two professional birders who were with us at the lodge said they came here specifically because there are more species of bird than anywhere else in Ecuador’s Amazon.

But – as I cautioned Javier – Sani Lodge as good as it is will never achieve the revenue stream of oil. Was there not a way to negotiate with the companies to protect the community’s social and cultural values?

Javier’s radiant face always seemed to smile knowingly. He said nothing at first, then pointed to a black bird deep in a bush near our canoe that was singing a most haunting Amazon tune.

“That,” he said with pride, “is the plumbeous antbird. You can’t see it anywhere else but here! It’s disappeared from the other communities.”

I listened to the hauntingde-escalating warble, a quintessential Amazon bird song echoed even louder as it sallied through the dense jungle around us. Then suddenly, the great forest fell surprisingly silent for all of a second. My tummy thundered. You could hear albeit from ten miles away the distant low rumbles of an oil rig in the next community downstream.

Freedoms Crumbling

Freedoms Crumbling

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

VaderPilatoNo wonder that stability may trump Africa’s expanding democracies. Just look at Mosul or the Boko Haram held areas of Nigeria.

Today a popular rap singer was arraigned by a Lusaka magistrate for “defaming the president” of Zambia even though such a specific law doesn’t exist.

Pilato’s rap depicts the president as an oaf who spends much of his time drinking.

Pilato is very popular, very political and shows a definite sophistication of complex issues. This rap, for example, berates a political merger between two previously antagonistic political parties.

But the hook which gave his rap such a wide audience was the accusation of drunkenness. Drunken old men in rural Africa are the bane of their families, a condition closely associated with dementia.

It’s understood that age and dementia are not willful situations but nonetheless divine the good old men from the bad old men: prosecutor, judge and jury be damned.

So prosecutor, judge and jury respond, waging their own powers in equally questionable ways. A judge arraigned Pilato, today, but who knows for what. A prosecutor will now have to trump up charges, and a jury may assert its legitimacy by adjudicating violations of nonexistent laws.

From my untrained ears, Pilato doesn’t seem to be a specially powerful artist. Acting as if he’s a threat to society, makes him one and only because of that.

Last week at the inauguration of the new president in Nigeria, local journalists so accosted President Mugabe of Zimbabwe that his office later called them Boko Haram.

The video of the SaharaReporters’ encounter is particularly illustrative.

In my view, the so-called journalists were offensive. I’m hardly a supporter of Mugabe, who I consider one of the most devilish leaders Africa has ever seen.

I believe there are times when journalism should work with politics. I remain a devotee of Angela Davis and Herbert Marcuse. But this incident in Nigeria is not one of them.

These reporters had little interest beyond making headlines of themselves. “There is no democracy in Zimbabwe!” the woman journalist yells after persistently being unable to get Mugabe to answer her question, “Is there democracy in Zimbabwe?”

So with Pilato, no there’s not “too much” freedom of speech. But with the Nigerian journalists, yes they exercised “too much” freedom of speech.

There are ignorant rich, and there are ignorant poor, and technology is thrusting them backwards into the age old irresolvable battles between religions and tribes.

Neither side understands the facts, yet the IT technologies of iPads and iPhones present them constantly with situations requiring immediate reactions.

There is a reason that ISIS bans most technology. It wants to control the culture and the first step in controlling anything is to neutralize or pacify it. Many in Mosul as in the Boko Haram areas of Nigeria actually prefer such pacification to confrontation. My father did.

Democracy doesn’t exist without confrontation. Open societies need it. But when it reaches the level that technology brings it to, today, it’s like fusion. It expands under its own power and becomes uncontrollable and unpredictable.

When confrontation is such that it provokes a yearning for less freedom than more, when stability becomes society’s first priority, Darth Vader arises again.

Sick Kids in Dirty Smelly Homes

Sick Kids in Dirty Smelly Homes

by Arusha ♥ 1 Comment

indigenuousTourists who want to see a “primitive village” are people who know dangerously little about the outside world.

One of the most successful cocktail table books to ever be published that includes much from Africa is Jimmy Nelson’s Before They Pass Away. I’ve had the book since it’s been published and its value just increases daily.

But criticism of the book and its exponential earnings curve has reached a crescendo. Indigenous people around the world are growing more and more incensed the more popular and famous the book becomes.

The unending appearances by Nelson with his original prints, which are routinely now auctioning for more than $150,000, now regularly include indigenous people protesting outside the galleries and bookshops hosting the exhibitions.

The protest campaign is being led by Steven Cory of Survival International. The organization publishes a running critique by indigenous leaders around the world of Nelson’s book.

Cory calls the book “hokum” and “hubristic baloney.” Cory points out that the so-called “primitive people” who still exist are hardly going to “pass away” and in fact are becoming more and more politically powerful.

“If his images look like they come from the 19th century, it’s because they do,” Cory concludes. None of the peoples exist today the way Nelson portrays them: Cory documents that Nelson’s photo shoots are all carefully staged, rearranging reality to what rich westerners want to think about people in remote parts of the world.

The people who make Nelson’s book so valuable, and my clients who insist on seeing Maasai villages, are not by any means bad people. There’s a good motivation and a bad motivation resident in most of these folks’ desires.

The good motivation comes from a self-recognition, an admission if you like, of their global myopia. It’s extremely encouraging that travelers go somewhere blind, worried possibly at how little they know but hungry to know more.

The bad motivation is a deeply set racism. The tourist thinks of herself as so much more intellectual, skilled, trained and educated, than the so-called “primitive person.” She wants to see this “with her own eyes” precisely to validate this lofty presumption about herself.

Unfortunately tourism’s response is so out of whack that the initial, well-meaning desire by good folks is cast aside to the more marketable validation of primitiveness.

So there are hundreds of “villages” that charge excessively high rates that tourists dole out without a blink so that they can see sick kids in smelly, dirty homes. It’s absolutely incredible how fooled tourists can be.

It’s infinitely easier to show a tourist in a half hour a sick kid in a smelly, dirty home, than convey to them how the Maasai Environmental Resource Coalition (MERC) is saving the ecosystem for the whole world or how Twaweza is providing better education to all children in East Africa.

What I’m saying is that there would be many, many fewer sick kids in smelly, dirty homes if there weren’t so many tourists paying to see them.

Or if there weren’t so many people paying so much for Jimmy Nelson’s book.

What if we end Malaria?

What if we end Malaria?

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

toobigtosucceedThe fight against malaria is going well, but American attitudes will have to change to achieve ultimate success.

Malaria threatens much of the world because there’s no vaccine and its threat increases proportionately with poverty.

But a successful vaccine or other efforts like bednets could actually increase poverty and disease overall.

Malaria was eradicated in most of the western world when sanitation and potable water became government responsibilities. Sanitation and the delivery of potable water reflect less poverty.

Less trash and better managed water reduces mosquitos, which transmit malaria.

The circular relationships of water and trash to malaria means that malaria will be automatically reduced – even eradicated – when better water and trash collection arrive poor communities.

A critical part of the Obama administration’s initiative to reduce malaria understands this, but it is somewhat buried in its presentation to Congress in order to avoid the expected criticism that there is too much government in such initiatives:

“The President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) works to reduce the burden of malaria while at the same time strengthening host country health systems and workforces,” in my estimation is the key ingredient, but you have to read quite deeply into the report to get to this section. The front of the report is all about nets, spraying and diagnosing, things that Congresspersons can grasp.

“You can’t fight malaria without health care workers,” the somewhat buried part of the President’s plan understands well, because these workers don’t simply instruct people on how to fight malaria, they work on social services like potable water and trash collection.

The American Congress – indeed, the American people – don’t accept the huge efforts required by government to build social institutions like public sanitation. Whenever such efforts are suggested, naysayers point to corruption and lack of private enterprise involvement.

That’s why efforts like the President’s Malaria Initiative have to fool Congress into thinking that American money is not being spent on such grand goals, but on things like nets and spray.

In America all criticism of large scale government involvement finally devolves to the insane belief that government is the problem, not the solution, and this mantra has been insidiously instilled in the American psyche ever since President Reagan said it nearly 35 years ago.

The largest private organization fighting malaria is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. While their efforts are noble, they haven’t achieved a fraction of what government-to-government aid, like the President’s Initiative, has:

Two researchers at Duke University recently concluded that “impressive progress in the fight against malaria” occurs exactly because of a “substantial increase in [government-to-government] funding,” specifically the President’s Initiative.

Private NGOs focus on possible cures like vaccines and inexpensive solutions like bednets because it’s a lot cheaper than developing public health systems.

Yet as they approach success a horrible catastrophe looms: What if the Bill Gates Foundation finds a malaria vaccine? What if enough bednets are distributed to basically reduce malaria substantially?

Many more children will live. And so without improved public health systems many more children will also die. A host of other diseases are on an alarming increase in Africa, like a huge range of gastro-intestinal diarrheas and tuberculosis.

Without delivery of potable water, none of these “children saved from malaria” will be healthy. So while malaria might be reduced substantially, overall public health will decline.

It’s simply a matter of money. Government-to-government aid for reducing malaria last year was $3 billion. Private NGO totals, including the Gates Foundation, was less than half that.

The Duke researchers suggest that $6 billion annually is necessary.

Six billion isn’t very much in western world budgets, but unless it’s used to buy bednets or underwrite specific vaccine developments, legislatures like the American Congress refuse to act, ignoring grander goals like developing public health systems.

Yet that was exactly how malaria was eradicated from the U.S.!

Until the attitude promulgated in America that government is less effective than private initiative changes, the world will not.