About a month back many sub-Saharan African tourist companies announced with great fanfare plans to restart. No one came to the party. The only tourism that exists today in sub-Saharan Africa is local, and even that’s pitifully little.
Corvid covids
Could a virus like Covid-19 be killing Botswana’s elephants?
The Botswana government just received the first test results from a sampling of more than 350 mysterious elephant deaths. More mysterious, it refuses to release the results. The government argues they shouldn’t be made public until they’re confirmed by an independent lab in South Africa, which could take a week.
Corona Compared
Kenya began reopening today, and Kenya had one of the strictest lockdowns in Africa if not the world. Kenya’s lockdown made New York’s lockdown look frivolous.
“You MUST become your brother’s keeper,” the Kenyan president declared in his order, today before listing all the mandates still required and warning that he would “claw back” everything should the virus reemerge.
“Civic responsibility is not a demand that can be enforced. It is a duty you pay to your fellow country-men for coexisting with them.”
Covid Celebration
The fireworks came early and are sputtering out. “He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”
Achebe’s famous quotation is apt but simplistic. We have fallen apart, worldwide. We didn’t collapse on our own. Wedges were thrust into us. But Trump or Bolsonaro or Johnson or Putin – or for that matter, anyone – as the “He” misses the mark.
It’s all of us. We knifed ourselves. And now in America this weekend, we celebrate it all.
I found two things to keep me sane this 4th of July. The European Union’s great CDC site is the first and foremost. It even has better stats and analysis on America than America. Read it if you want to know what’s really happening.
Second.
Listen as I always do to NPR’s reading of the Declaration of Independence. This is an anchor in these quasar queer times, a guide for humanity and remarkable for its age. Yes you’ve got to have the courage to step out of our collective narcissism to recognize that the late 18th century didn’t have wifi. And that “timeless” might not be without context but has a dynamic and meaningful compass in it.
The framers of our original America were not perfect men as we aren’t. But my goodness how beautifully they expressed the ideals that all of us, today in today’s age, should embrace. When you do, the fog clears and the faith that we can make things better shines brighter than ever.
august Surprise
Is your cable bill paid up? Are you ready to confront the week of August 23 as the most surprising yet of America’s last four years? Then all you need is this little blog, a little prep on the story of how John Magufuli became the president of Tanzania, crushing the certain hopes and futures of millions.
Corona Competition
Americans need to take off the blinders that they will get the vaccine, first. This notion is dangerous and woven inextricably into the November election. “It’s risky [to Americans]… and not ethically right,” WHO’s chief scientist told a Nigerian newspaper, yesterday.
Pediatrician Paul Offit who wrote the book about the kids who got polio from a bad initial vaccine warned Americans in Science Magazine that Trump’s “October Surprise” could be the announcement of a vaccine that won’t work.
Covid Chicanery
Reopening is a contentious topic. Loosening the rules for dining out, for example, is an explosive issue as much in New York as Nairobi. Not just personal freedom and sanity, but for the large part of the economy on which dining is based.
But get real folks, not for vacation travel.
Covid Community
“White population(s) used political power and security forces to maintain slavery, segregation, racism, and marginalisation,” all over the world writes Abdi I Samatar in today’s South Africa Daily Maverick.
When the Black Lives Matter demonstrations took off the beginning of this month it wasn’t long before disruptive but peaceful protests occurred in Kenya and South Africa. While they have mostly died away, the buzz continues.
Corona Cover
Some tunnels of empathy lead to condescension. An event this week in South Africa triggered my epiphany that I’m among the guilty.
Corona Cascade
Shifting alliances is an African political art, something we all need to study in the era America is racing through right now.
More than 1500 people were brutally killed in the several-month Kenyan civil war of 2008, thousands more tortured or maimed and nearly 200,000 displaced. Yet less than four years later the widows and widowers, orphaned children and homeless thousands elected as their leader the man who tried to kill them and their families.
Corona Crests
This blog is about travel prospects to sub-Saharan Africa, but in preparing it my jaw dropped.
South Africa has a sixth the population of the United States but has tested a million of its people. Comparatively that’s two to three times better than the U.S.
The U.S. handling of the pandemic is a chaotic mess. South Africa and other countries know this, and it’s why the prospects for Americans traveling to Africa is getting worse and worse.
Corona Contest
Planning totally unconventional. Nevertheless an MOP was established over the years that I used religiously.
Whenever the date for an African national election was announced, I pulled out a pile of yellow pads and started figuring out how to keep my clients from being there when it happened.
Powers of Memory
Young, excited, thrilled to be a “guide” showing much older and inquisitive fellow Americans the African veld, a memory was born that I’ll never forget. It was 1980. February. Just south of Kenya’s exquisite tea highlands on the long, straight and wild road into The Mara.
Outside Logic
How often have I winced angrily when an African leader decries his out-of-control society for being manipulated by “outside agitators.”
I’ve been in conflicts in Ethiopia, the Congo, Rwanda and Kenya, and virtually every time – 100% without fail – the leaders blame the unrest on outsiders. It becomes laughable. Until you realize that it’s the best way to make things worse. After all, we’re all outsiders.
Corona Conflict
A refreshing optimism is leading to an unspeakable heartbreak.
The “opening up” of almost every part of the world irrespective of its virus case situation brings much hope to those out of work. This is most clear in my trade in Africa. “Out of work” is bad even for the car company executive, but on an individual level what may happen in Africa is exponentially more terrifying than here at home.