Thursday I leave for seven weeks of guiding safaris in Kenya and Tanzania. Stay tuned! I try to post as often as I can!
Elephant Woes
The Botswana elephant story is out of hand. Elephants Without Borders (EWB) has gone bazonkers, the Botswana government is unnecessarily defensive, October elections are driving false emotions, and exaggerated claims on all sides have damaged elephant conservation for years to come.
Animal rights activists were always easily ticked off by any poaching, but the current tense global situation has managed to raise their decibel level to unheard levels. Usually good media like the BBC aren’t telling enough of the story, thereby just making things worse.
PeekABoo
Hours ago a Botswana government report was released recommending that the ban on elephant hunting and culling be revoked, because there are too many elephants.
“Too many” is, of course, a subjective determination. I argue vigorously that the vast majority of deer culling in the United States is wrong including most hunting, but I agree with the Botswana government that there are too many elephants. Culling might be the only answer. Hunting is not.
Awfully Thin Slice
A 19-year old who beheads an older man, then freely confesses to having done so, strikes me as less evil than desperate or dangerously manipulable. It’s a sign of our times.
The situation happened last week in Tanzania’s Tarangire national park, not far from the upmarket Swala camp. The area is at the edge of the park immediately outside of which is an agricultural village suffering climate change challenges. The boy was in a poaching gang and the village elder he beheaded allegedly had reported him to game rangers.
Fangirls to the Rescue
Facebook’s under a lot of negative scrutiny right now, but organized by Sudanese women it may be the weapon which finally ousts the current Sudanese dictator, Omar al-Bashir.
King Trump
There are so many African dictators in part because of America. Today is America’s Presidents’ Day Holiday. It celebrates the office as much as the individuals who held it. It celebrates the closest thing a democracy can be to remaining a monarchy.
VAW Video
Halting abusive and dangerous behavior may take nothing more than showing that behavior to the abuser.
An Uganda NGO claims a 5% reduction in abuse of women in the home when the man watches a public service video about female spousal abuse. The key? The video tells a story rather than moralizes or conveys policy. The story – the reality – seems all that’s necessary.
Discovery Deal
White man once again plucks discovery from black people’s commonplace. Didn’t colonialism end last century? What about slavery? There are many to blame, but once again, NatGeo’s at the forefront.
Two days ago the magazine reported in headline, “Black leopard confirmed in Africa for first time in 100 years.” (I expect they will be taking this down but I’ve got a screen capture.) They’re racistly wrong. A Kenyan photographer published photos of the same leopard five years ago and Kenyans today are livid.
Little Cheering
“Now,” a taxi driver in Lagos told the New York Times yesterday, “we just look at them. No one cares.” He was referring to the candidates for president in this weekend’s election.
Follow me: What’s happening in Africa, in Nigeria now, South Africa last year and elsewhere, proves that right now no one will beat Trump in 2020.
Culture Controls
Women are having a disproportionately powerful effect on sub-Saharan African governments and politics. It provides insight to what’s happening in the whole world.
Patent Predation
Predatory and patently unjust aspects of capitalism might have received a boost from President Trump’s State of the Union Tuesday, but fortunately the “socialist” Dutch judiciary was reigning it in: Ethiopia won back its ownership of its native wheat.
What’s that?
Shedding Tears
Often children do better in stressful situations than adults. Children take greater risks, shedding the additional stress adults acquire from repeated failure. When stories embodying this are set in Africa and the child succeeds, big tears are shed.
Netflix announced March 1 will be the debut for The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind, the first major film ever made in Malawi. Directed by Chiwetal Ejiofor who received Academy and Golden Globe awards for his star performance in 12 Years A Slave, it’s not as politically correct as it seems.
Nevertheless, big tears will be shed. Do I sound a wee bit cynical?
Compassion Collapses
The saddest thing to watch as the world’s political systems deteriorate is the barbaric resurgence of child labor in Africa.
There are many causes, but the single-most critical one is that America no longer regulates how multinational corporations get the precious rare earths mined in the eastern DRC.
Recent reports by both Foreign Policy Magazine and the New York Times reveal that like a lightning-fast barracuda who waits patiently in its cave until just the right time, Erik Prince of Blackwater has begun the strike.
Scorpio Salutations
Why does a miniature scorpion in Samburu remind me of one of the world’s greatest paleontologists?
When Richard Leakey published The Sixth Extinction nearly a quarter century ago, many disparaged what they contended was just another publicity stunt in the then ongoing personal wars between paleontologists who were finally getting their air time with Oprah.
RaRaRa Boom
Do you wonder – as I do all the time – what happens after Trump? Wonder no longer. What’s happening right this instant in South Africa tells us, and it’s exactly what you’d expect when your mind finally overcomes your emotions: Trump won’t just disappear.