It’s overload. As in America the earth-shaking news in Africa in 2018 came nearly daily, and it’s all quite similar to the earth-shaking news in America and the rest of the world.
So what’s striking more than the individual stories are the parallels. Tomorrow I’ll detail these for you. Friday I’ll tell you what it presages and what to do about it. Meanwhile, today:
Sudan is not crumbling and cracking, like the last precious monuments in its desert being pummeled to ash by global warming.
It’s shedding its skin like a snake. A new reptile will emerge.
The end of the year isn’t going so well. After the Institute for Economics and Peace reported that acts of most terrorism continue to decline dramatically, two young Scandinavian hikers were brutally murdered in Morocco, and an Islamic State signature video of their actual murder is circulating on social media.
Morocco is not a place known for terrorism. The last incident was in Marrakech in 2011. The country prides itself on a very sophisticated police and intelligence network that claims to have essentially obliterated terrorism. Until now.
Today I join thousands of other Americans in the “Christmas Bird Count.” (It’s time to change the name to something more secular).
Volunteers across the country survey their regions for what birds remain after the annual fall migration. Since Christmas Day 1900, the bird count has proceeded uninterrupted by wars or depressions.
Last week Rwanda, one of the smallest countries in the world, announced completion of Universal Health Care (UHC), and Kenya announced the start of UHC pilot projects across its country.
Since 2000 the U.S. has dropped from second to 19th of the world’s richest countries, in great part because it has refused to adopt UHC. When health care is private, the costs dominate economies and constantly escalate reflecting the richests’ capacity to purchase the best. Private health care is making us poorer and poorer and in the long run will destroy the country.
Good question. Where is that fellow in the picture? Well, he’s in a highland rain forest with a mountain gorilla. There’s only one highland rain forest in the world with mountain gorillas. But the country he’s in isn’t so clear: Rwanda, the DRC or Uganda?
And it really, really matters which one.
There are three countries in the world where you can sit down with a mountain gorilla (gorilla beringei beringei) for an hour of very unique animal viewing: Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. This is because this gorilla’s single habitat area overlays the point where these countries border one another.
But Rwanda is the only one that most travelers should consider visiting and tomorrow I’ll explain why. First, a primer on gorillas.
Another major war begins soon in Africa. It will begin shortly after the democratic mockery scheduled for December 23, when the powers in Kinshasa are “re-elected” and the heavily armed militias particularly in Kivu in the east try to secede.
Who cares? Well I know it’s been difficult to muster your attention for Yemen, but let me put it this way. Use a smartphone? Have an xBox? Then you’re directly responsible for this looming human calamity.
National Geographic has published its 2019 “Cool List” of recommended destinations for travelers. Ever since NatGeo began producing Alaska State Troopers in lieu of insightful earth documentaries I’ve relegated it to the Fox category. My opinion now is now only massively reenforced.
The Cool List is one of the worst travelers’ lists I’ve ever seen. I’ll critique the African entries.
A Florida woman canoeing down the Zambezi nearly lost her leg after being attacked by a hippo and undergoing hours of surgery in Johannesburg earlier this week.
Kristen and Ryan Yaldor were celebrating Kristen’s 37th birthday on one of my most favorite trips when I was younger. The guide noticed something unusual to the right, told the couple to paddle to the left, and moments later Kristen was in the mouth of an angry mother hippo.
Like many I found my forefinger wiping a tear from my cheek. President Buhari of Nigeria helped me to understand. The angst of the world today – in sorrow squeezed from our souls in grand cathedrals by military philharmonics – comes from our conflict about what the hell to do with our elite:
“President Buhari of Nigeria said of George Bush that “the late president’s love for his family and country” ensures that “his children take up leadership roles and are steadily breeding a new generation of great thinkers and leaders.”
Fertile elite, praised by African elite.
Jealousy, Loss and Anger. Bush was not as spectacular a leader as was his funeral.
Much was said about his excellence in foreign policy and the successes he achieved maintaining a world order post-Soviet collapse. That strikes me as grandiose, but I’m more certain that Bush’s foreign policy in Africa was among the most destructive in American history.
Deutsche Welle’s Isaac Mugabi confirms, “There [was] little reporting in Africa generally about [Bush’s] funeral, perhaps because of his failed foreign policy on the continent.”
Mugabi sums up the many mistakes in Africa that Bush made during his short four years in the single travesty, “Black Hawk Down.”
This incident epitomizes America’s many failures over the last century: Misplaced support for dictators and warlords in conflicts artificially diagnosed globally as East-vs-West, then pitifully restrained military action that fails, followed by an abrupt withdrawal that destroys the initial ally.
This couldn’t be more different from the accolades for Bush’s post-Soviet “global maintenance.”
That’s because in the 1990s Africa didn’t rank “global maintenance.” Its exclusion from the interest of the elite rulers of the world followed their maxim to pay less attention to people than GDPs.
Bush was a good, loyal and faithful family man. He was a steady, institutional conservative ruler. He was part of an elite dynasty that controlled the world.
He could afford to be good and compassionate and humorous, because he and his family were richly protected from the failures he actually suffered. I would love to have had such a life. Now it’s gone.
It’s gone because the power of the elite for the first time in human history is being rattled from pole to pole. Yellow vests and temple shootouts, opioid orgies and neo-fascism, neglected Puerto Ricos and 80 mph speed limits, Brexits and bitcoins – it’s all a massive, indistinct and unstoppable protest against the elite.
Trump and others like him emerge from this maelstrom because the elite still have enough power to exclude any viable alternatives to them. We have no choice.
They force on us the old nostalgia or the random, uncertain reign of the chaotic infidel. We have no other choice, and it’s infuriating. The nincompoop now over reigns the casket. In the moments of peaceful exhaustion this grows tearful.
A team of French and north African scientists make a plausible claim that East Africa may not, in fact, be the Cradle of Humankind.
Stone tools dating to 2.4 million years ago were discovered in a remote part of Algeria near the Sahara. Stone tools, not fossil bones, are the current basis for postulating where the “first man” arose.
A gigantic difference between places like the U.S. and Africa — between developed and developing counties — is the speed at which things are changing. Progress doesn’t always come with change, but the truth is that progress can’t occur without change.
America, in particular, is falling way behind the rest of the world in “change.” The developing world – Africa in particular – leads the world in change. And perhaps the single most contentious aspect to modern life changing in the developing world is… traffic.
Tanzania’s “bulldozer” dictator plowed into the agricultural arena yesterday slaying down corrupt officials and increasing and strengthening his partnership with China.
John Magufuli’s dictatorial actions should immediately benefit most Tanzanians: Agricultural production should rise, prices for commodities should rise and additional supply should keep consumer prices steady. There’s no way all this “good news” could have been created in such a short time democratically, and there is also no certainty that in the mid- or long-term it’s the right thing to do.
Once the darling of Africa, South African Airways is on the verge of collapse. Unless the South African government bails it out to the tune of 21 billion rand ($1½ billion) it will cease to exist within the next year.
Here’s why: