Time’s Up, Pat!

October 23, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

It’s funny, but it’s not. Yet is this a turning point? White, racist, evangelical attitudes especially towards Africans might really be changing.

For decades, now, we enlightened ones have snickered at the bad jokes and patently racist attitudes of The Right almost to exhaustion. When allies relented and began inviting “opposing viewpoints” onto pubic forums, many of us wondered if the schism was permanent.

The abhorrence of racism became the stuff of comic strips.

Tuesday night CNN’s Anderson Cooper extended comedy into sarcasm and lambasted racist tele-evangelist Pat Robertson like never before.

Robertson is the star of the Christian Broadcasting Network and he had just answered a question on the popular “700 Club” show about ebola. He warned would-be travelers to Africa against using towels there that will infect you with AIDS.

This isn’t a gaff, it’s a simple reflection of a quintessential racist belief that black is evil.

It was hardly Robertson’s first time at it. Last year he actually claimed that gays in San Francisco wear evil little pointed rings so that when you shake their hand they can infect you with AIDS, which he called “their stuff.”

Apparently the attention to the ebola controversy breaks the threshold of cartoon tolerance of racism. Robertson’s network apologized for this remark the next day, although he never has.

No apology was ever made for the gay ring remark.

What struck me as particularly important this time was how Africa reacted. Like many of us before, Africans tend to shrug off racist attitudes as something held by bumptious uncles. Inured to the point of frustration, the general viewpoint has been that most of these attitudes will die out with the current generation.

In fact Robertson’s remarks got little attention in the African media until Cooper flayed them.

Now, for the third straight day running, it’s the most popular story in the Kenyan media.

Take that link above and scroll down to the local comments. Here are a few of my favorites:

“You can contract the sometimes incurable disease of ignorance if you listen to the likes of 700 club.” – Melissa Wainaina

“Sorry, dear Kenyans, but that’s America (USA). They don’t know there anything about other countries.” – Hanna

“Can one get aids from Towels in America? … This is ignorance and racist mixed into a potent mix.” – cbertmann

The irony is that Pat Robertson probably has a larger following per capita in Kenya than in the U.S. “What is more sad is that this guy has a huge following in Kenya,’ Shazam3535 reminded readers.

That’s because Kenyans are far more religious than Americans. Kenyans are also, in my opinion, far more tribal and therefore actually more racist than Americans, although their racism is black-on-black more than black-on-white.

Racism is racism, though, and it’s heartening reading these comments to recognize what might be a new awareness that religious evangelism provokes if not causes racism.

Are the times really changing?

Ebola’s Surprising Effect

October 21, 2014October 21, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

This ebola epidemic has a surprising effect: Americans are wondering if Africans have it better.

Most Americans’ live styles are much better than their counterparts in Africa, but what about the change from year to year? Americans believe they aren’t getting better. Africans by a wide margin believe they are. Both are right.

It’s only a matter of time before Africans feel they are better off than Americans.

Nigeria and South Africa both had ebola patients come to them from the infected areas. One Nigerian ebola patient infected one of the hospital care givers in Nigeria. Both the patient and the care giver were cured. In South Africa no transmission to health care workers occurred. Both South African and Nigeria are today “ebola-free.”

Texas isn’t.

So why is the American future pessimistic compared to the African future, and why is ebola being better contained – outside the three-country infected area – in Africa than America?

I’ve got one answer: school field trips.

School field trips in Kenya are on a massive increase; trips in the U.S. way down.

According to Education Next, “Museums across the country report a steep drop in school tours… A survey by the American Association of School Administrators found that more than half of schools eliminated planned field trips in 2010–11.”

For example, the Field Museum in Chicago has lost a third of its annual school visitors, as has the Cincinnati arts organizations.

I’ve got another answer: declining infrastructure.

The title of the Council on Foreign Relation’s new report on American infrastructure, “Road to Nowhere,” says it all.

Infrastructure is booming throughout Africa. I can’t believe my eyes when I’m absent from Nairobi for more than a couple months: another highway, another factory, another rail line…

Here’s another answer: American protection of human rights is on the decline. While human rights is still on the whole better in America than in Africa, America is getting worse while some parts of developed Africa like South Africa are getting better.

The Human Rights Risk Atlas for 2014 lists America at 139 of 197 countries, or a “medium risk” of human rights abuse.

It’s possible to go on and on down the list of what governments are supposed to do: build roads, educate children, protect human rights. By so many metrics, even the simple metric of stopping the spread of ebola in a hospital, America isn’t doing so well.

While much of Africa is getting better.

But this should come as no surprise. Social investment in education, infrastructure, even the money we spend on courts and judges, is shrinking.

I once thought it impossible that in my life time any African country could achieve some kind of significant metric that bettered America.

I’m not so sure, anymore.

Zuma in Wonderland

October 20, 2014October 20, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

What do the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, a governor and numerous Congressmen have in common with Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa?

Like Zuma, they deny simple facts of science, in this case about ebola. Like Zuma, they should be sacked.

Rand Paul and Georgia Governor Zeal along with a host of other nuts in Congress are unfortunately just as astute politicians as Jacob Zuma, so I don’t expect they’ll be leaving the scene, soon.

But Martin Dempsey is a soldier, and the country’s top soldier, and Obama should immediately fire him.

“If you bring two doctors who happen to have that specialty (Ebola) into a room, one will say, ‘No, it will never become airborne, but it could mutate so it would be harder to discover.’ Another doctor will say, ‘If it continues to mutate at the rate it’s mutating, and we go from 20,000 infected to 100,000, the population might allow it to mutate and become airborne, and then it will be a serious problem.’ I don’t know who is right,” Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN this weekend.

This is America’s top soldier. This is one reason we have so many failed wars led by a military that’s incapable of being controlled.

Jacob Zuma contends you can simply protect yourself from AIDS by taking a rigorous shower after unprotected sex.

How the world, the U.S. or Africa, has allowed leaders whose beliefs are so warped to survive is more terrifying than any possible 9/11 threat. Neither is really a leader. Both Zuma and Dempsey are followers of the frightened and ignorant masses on which they depend.

Where I grow so angry is that at least one of them, Dempsey, can be sacked. Right now. No questions asked. If Dempsey believes what he said, imagine what he might believe about the war against ISIS.

This weekend CNN in print finally did what CNN-US never could: criticize CNN-US:

“What’s more disturbing than Ebola? The outrageous commentary,” the CNN headline by Michael Martinez read.

I hope the link above works for you, because CNN has modified its story and changed its link several times since it first appeared early Saturday morning. Clearly Martinez’ fresh and honest approach to news is anathema to Wolf Blitzer’s America.

Before all is lost, here are a few other choice comments Martinez compiled in that story:

“If someone has Ebola at a cocktail party, they’re contagious and you can catch it from them.” — Sen. Rand Paul

“The most comforting thing that I heard from (Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health) was that water kills the Ebola virus.” – Georgia Governor Nathan Deal

“The U.S. must immediately stop all flights from EBOLA infected countries or the plague will start and spread inside our ‘borders.’ Act fast!” – Donald Trump

“Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning.” — Georgia Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey, a medical doctor

“I don’t know … But I think this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control.” — R&B star Chris Brown

Crazy rightest Michael Savage said President Barack Obama wants to infect America with Ebola: “There is not a sane reason to take three- or four-thousand troops and send them into a hot Ebola zone without expecting at least one of them to come back with Ebola, unless you want to infect the nation with Ebola.”

There’s more where these came from and in multitudes of other stories, and it’s a shame that CNN has been so dainty in modifying and adjusting Martinez’ first filing.

These people are influential, powerful Americans. We already know they could care less about Africa, much less any community outside of their own cocktail parties.

Their beliefs have traction in America because Americans are poorly educated and have an increasingly myopic view of themselves and their communities.

The most important fact to recognize on this day that the World Health Organization declared Nigeria “ebola-free” while America still isn’t (because of Texas), is that without much more help from the outside of the sort Obama is offering, the epidemic in Africa will get worse and worse.

It is, in fact, possible to imagine a scenario a few years down the line if people like Dempsey, Paul, Deal and others held sway, where futile attempts to isolate the current infected countries turned into a world epidemic.

That is exactly what these ignoramuses if they prevail will ultimately cause.

Donald Trump couldn’t survive a week without the government he decries, and we’ve been able to live with that contradiction for a long time. His influence on Americans is counterbalanced so far by enough of us sane people.

But his (and other’s) influence in calling for an isolations of West Africa is not so easy to contain in today’s troubled and frightened America.

If you are reading this… if you are not as troubled and ignorant as the characters above, say something, please. Just a sentence. Just a few words of truth to your neighbor.

It’s not just the survival of millions of west Africans that’s in play. It’s the sanctity of truth.

Perry’s Practicalities

October 17, 2014October 16, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

When tiny incidents like a few ebola cases in Dallas are properly scrutinized by the obsessed media, their exaggeration grows unbelievably large.

The media is obsessed, because the public is obsessed.

Every unnecessary harm should enrage us: including the 10,332 American deaths caused by drunk driving in 2012 (that’s 28+ per day, more than 1 per hour); or the 23,362 homicides that’s 64+ per day, almost 3 per hour).

But DUIs and homicides, much less war fatalities, poverty, infant mortality, industrial accidents and so forth, are not contagious. Is that the difference?

The obsessed public believes itself essentially so good and righteous that they would never be involved in unnecessary harm … unless they caught it?

Or: the obsessed public is so anti-social that nothing matters except individual responsibility? In other words, forget about John Doe or Jane Odhiambo, I shouldn’t get infected with something I didn’t stupidly expose myself to? And to hell with those who have?

I don’t know, but it’s a sad, sad commentary on our American society in general when the focus is so incredibly tiny.

There’s also the possibility that Americans just can’t telescope out. They’ve been so brain washed by the often useless concepts of individual responsibility and self-survival that they can’t think in macro terms.

Right now, folks, if you drive, you’re 10,000 times more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than by contracting ebola. And if you drive and aren’t a health care worker, the stat is mind-boggling: you’re millions of times more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than by contracting ebola.

Did you get a flu shot? If not, the chances you’re going to die of flu this year are in the hundreds of thousands more than that you’re going to get ebola. Even if you live in Dallas.

But people won’t get flu shots, and their Congresspersons (mostly Republican) are getting besieged by phone calls demanding that we stop all air traffic into the areas where ebola is an epidemic.

So they’ll take the same amount of time, maybe more, to ultimately kill more West Africans that would otherwise not die for an infinitesimally virtually nil insurance against they’re own getting ebola.

And then, they’ll be one of the 30,000 American deaths from flu this year. Like seniors voting to end social security, Americans just love to act against their own self-interest if only the media can tell them why.

When life-and-death becomes political, it gets dirty. Wars are dirty. Crime and punishment is dirty. And now the poor and needy have become dirty.

How utterly despicable.

When Night is Day

October 16, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Anecdotal evidence that global warming has caused a decline in African animals is slowly but surely being confirmed by field science.

No one argues that Africa abate its growth, and it comes as no surprise that this growth is directly linked to global warming. Industry is mostly fired by fossil fuels: CO2 heats the atmosphere while more wealth builds Africa.

The immediate benefits to Africans are indisputable. But the ecology of the continent is suffering greatly and more quickly than we ever imagined.

The World Wildlife Fund’s “Living Planet Report” contends that nearly half of the world’s animal species have been lost since 1970.

This is beyond astounding. My children’s children will have a planet with only an eighth of the animal species around when I was born.

One irony for African wilderness is that some of its better known areas, like East Africa with its great national parks like the Serengeti, show visibly improved biosystems. This, too, is directly linked to global warming.

The great East African wilderness lies on the equator. One of the effects of global warming has been increased rain as the melting of the poles increases ocean levels and precipitation worldwide. One result in part coupled with an early management approach to the Serengeti has been to nearly triple many of the larger animal species like wildebeest and zebra.

But move hardly 200 miles north or south of these equatorial wildernesses and the story dramatically changes.

Increased global precipitation is not falling equally across Africa or anywhere else but as torrents as extreme weather events even while global warming burns deserts into many other areas.

Global weather has become a nightmare, as the American Meteorological Society recently documented. The band along the equator seems to be handling this pretty fortuitously, but nowhere else.

Travel south and wildlife populations in places like Kruger National Park, the Okavango Delta and many private reserves are falling precipitously.

While elephant populations in East Africa are probably too large, in southern Africa they’re dangerously small. Buffalo and other large herding animals like eland are declining, and rarer antelope like nyala, sable and roan are also in decline.

Exact science on large animal decline is difficult, because much of it is human caused through poaching. But go down a notch to slightly smaller animals, and the science is becoming compelling.

An excellent indicator species is the anteater, or aardvark. A study recently concluded by scientists from Johannesburg’s prestigious Witwatersrand University claims that only animals whose behavior can accelerate adaptation will survive.

“Many species will not be able to evolve fast enough to adapt to the rapid rate of current climate change… most large mammals simply don’t reproduce quickly enough to allow for adaptive traits to be selected,” the report explains.

Aardvark are the focus of the study not just because of demonstrable changes in their own behavior, but because so many other endangered animals depend upon them.

The report found that aardvark are trying to adapt their behaviors to an increasingly hot and dry environment caused by global warming.

In one astounding finding, the scientists show that aardvark are now foraging in daylight hours as well as through the night as usual. It had previously been presumed that their eye physiology would not allow this, but as their food sources dwindle they’re forcing it.

The unstated implication is that this won’t work in the long term, and that eye physiology will stop any long term behavioral change.

Aardvark holes are used by scores of other animals and birds, and as the number of dens decline so will populations of anteater chats, porcupine, warthog, pole cat, meerkats and others.

The WWF report focuses heavily on human/animal conflict as probably the single greatest factor effecting the planet’s decreasing biodiversity. This is certainly, for example, the reason lions are declining so quickly continent wide.

But studies as those from The Wit on aardvark complement this understanding with recognition that as adaptive as world creatures are, behavioral adaptation will simply not be quick enough.

The WWF along with many other organizations believe there is a path out of this through management of global warming with the technologies like solar energy that we already possess.

I don’t see it. Frankly, I can imagine a future world adequately under control for human development. But I just can’t see a path that will retain our current magical biodiversity.

Delta Destruction

October 14, 2014October 14, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

The battle between fossil fuel mining and the environment has moved into Botswana’s main tourist attraction, the Okavango Delta.

The photo above of a painted frog was taken by EWT client, Melissa Michel, this year. The background of a mining waste dump is compliments of Rio Tinto.

Tourism in the Okavango Delta is the second largest source of Botswana’s GDP, after mining (which dwarfs it, by the way: 40% vs 12%).

Exact figures are hard to confirm, because the government has not defined how government and ancillary industries like educational training and direct contributions contribute to or diminish the tourism and mining sectors. But clearly mining is 3 to 5 times as important as tourism.

Historically most of this was with diamonds. Botswana is the world’s largest diamond producer, but several years ago the government recognized that “diamonds aren’t forever.”

This led to increased fossil fuel exploration and bingo, there’s a lot of it. Relative to diamonds, coals lasts forever.

The largest Botswana owned company, Tsodilo, listed on the Toronto stock exchange, recently announced plans to mine more than 440 million tons of iron ore, and with less fanfare, a rather sizeable amount of coal.

Botswana’s chief mining official said that Rio Tinto, the world’s largest mining company, would be the principal in coal extraction.

“The future of Botswana mining is going to be the coal and iron ore resources…,” he said before adding as an afterthought, “and of course diamonds.”

Botswana is already the 65th richest country in the world. This will likely push it up further.

Unfortunately, much of the iron ore discovered is underneath or close to the Okavango Delta.

Although Botswana has a variety of big game habitats, it is the Delta which is the draw. Unique on earth, it’s where a desert seasonally floods. This produces extremely unusual habitat as well as major deterrents to human settlement.

Over the eons vast numbers of endemic species have arisen in The Delta, many which remain to this area alone. These are mostly plants, amphibians and fish, but the area is also outstanding for more notable, rare and larger animals like sitatunga and wild dog. Many water fowl absolutely depend upon the Delta and many are extremely rare, like the Wattled Crane.

The world’s growing appetite for fossil fuels is as undisputed as the fact that most of them will come from Africa.

Why should Botswana be denied compromising its ecosystem for greater wealth, as Alaska and California did big time last century?

The answer is usually that the world’s just come too far. Time is not on their side, as it was with the Rockefellers and early gold diggers: The global warming apocalypse takes precedence.

That’s such a subjective argument it falls on deaf ears in Africa. South African environmentalists, however, are trying more clever answers.

Winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, Desmond D’Sa recently explained that the argument that mining will “create wealth for the people” was fallacious. “We’ve seen the mining industry in South Africa, hundreds of years, has created impoverishment and poverty… The majority, the 99 percent of us in the country, are poor, are living in abject, poor conditions.”

And that’s true and compelling … for the instant. But what happens if – as many of us hope – this changes and there is a real redistribution of wealth? Like in China?

Reversing the world’s poverty is going to take a lot of industry. Protecting the unique ecosystems under which that industry is fired will be no small task.

Columbus Day

October 13, 2014October 11, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Today is Columbus Day in the United States, a federal holiday.

“Columbus Day” for my African readers has always perplexed them. After all, we know that Columbus didn’t land in America, but in the West Indies. So it absolutely strikes non-Americans as a fickle holiday in a country that’s known to not have many.

This year, though, it has special meaning. We in America normally take long weekend breaks much deserved and anticipated around days like this. For those of us living in The North it’s always a beautiful time as the trees change color and the frost of winter appears on our morning windows.

But this year we aren’t relaxing a bit: Americans are glued to their TVs and radios anxiously wondering if they will contract ebola and if not that, end up in yet another war in the Levant.

All but a handful of states suspend many elective services, schools are closed, all banks in all states must be closed, and there’s no mail delivery. The holiday was proclaimed in 1937 on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus into the Americas. So this year, with so much of the federal government also closed, America is really chilling out.

Many large cities, including New York, have huge parades. Over the years the celebration has taken on an ethnic tone, celebrating Italian heritage.

Many of us would normally take short road trips to country house BnB’s and tiny towns further north to enjoy the fall colors.

But this year the only color we see is black. The country is worried, today.

Tired World Invites Strongmen

October 10, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Kenya’s battle with the World Court is the perfect example of how global institutions are losing relevancy in an increasingly conservative world.

Around the world and especially in Africa societies are becoming conservative and authoritarian. Oligarchies are consolidating power. Minorities are growing submissive. Particularly in Africa this means the Strongman reemerges.

Uhuru Kenyatta is such. Very much like his father, Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president for 15 years until his death, Uhuru has masterfully consolidated his power to the point that he is almost invincible.

Kenyatta isn’t quite yet the benevolent dictator like his father, but I imagine after the next election he will be. Afterwards, subsequent elections will be fairly meaningless or simple window dressing.

The reason this is happening is for the same reason it started this way at Independence. Turmoil is considered more expensive and damaging than the increased opportunity that might be unleashed by movements like the Arab Spring.

Kenya under the current Kenyatta has prospered by the geopolitical metrics of economy that seem to govern the world. The World Bank projects 4.7% growth this year, and increasing growth in the years ahead.

While this is down from a few years ago, it’s impressive when you consider the challenge of the Somali War. As that successfully fought war continues positively the literally hundreds of thousands of successful Somali businesspeople in Kenya return to Somali causing a drain on growth… for good reasons.

Kenya’s education and health care policies are among the most progressive in Africa. Womens rights are more progressive in Kenya than almost anywhere elsewhere in Africa except South Africa, and were it not for the highest people in the current administration (e.g., Uhuru Kenyatta) the LGBT community would likely be facing as horrific oppression as it does in neighboring countries like Uganda and Rwanda.

But Human Rights Watch, like me, equivocates Kenya’s appearance of progressiveness with its patent immoralities and lack of democratization.

The Kenyan government under Kenyatta has systematically undermined the World Court’s prosecution of Kenyatta and his Vice-President. The evidence that existed two years ago, collected by the World Court, was damning: Kenyatta was guilty of crimes against humanity. It was eventually how he came to power.

But since he’s been in power the dozen or so witnesses, many of them in witness protection programs in Europe, recanted or disappeared. Pressure on their families back home seems to have been the reason.

So now, there is no evidence. Without evidence, there’s no case.

Yesterday, Kenyatta returned jubilant from The Hague. It’s likely the last time he will go there.

While ICC prosecutors are arguing for various censures of the Kenyan government for its lack of cooperation, other Heads of State in Africa are rallying behind Kenyatta. If the ICC fails to relent, Africa as a whole might leave the ICC.

The many global institutions like the ICC which appeared last century to guarantee the human rights of all global citizens now seem almost irrelevant.

Within Kenya police power has exploded exponentially. Summary arrests and neglect of existing laws protecting the innocent like habeas corpus are routinely ignored. More and more there seems to be only a single authority: Uhuru Kenyatta.

And yet that seems to be what if we dare generalize the “Kenyan public” wants, even those who are theoretically in the opposition.

Stability, however unequal, rules the day.

I think it’s public fatigue. War fatigue, election fatigue, countless fatigues that were so promising only a few years ago but proved futile by today. The world, for whatever underlying reasons, is moving away from freedom in order to avoid conflict.

Of course it’s true here at home, too, as well as Kenya. By the way, yesterday China became the world’s largest economy.

Quarantine Texas

October 9, 2014October 9, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 12 Comments

The behavior of Americans is contributing to the spread of ebola in war-torn Africa. We’ve got to change.

Inbound airport screening is useless. Reactionary raising of funds “for ebola victims” in schools or churches is abject nonsense.

One of the world’s best virologists said today, “I know that President Obama has raised the whole issue about screening at the airport. It has not worked in the past. It has not worked with influenza, it’s not worked with SARS, MERS. You know, all you do is cause confusion and upset.”

These kinds of knee-jerk responses foil real efforts that could stop the epidemic in parts of West Africa.

First, it distracts real and necessary aid of the sort Obama has sent with our military, so that later an idiotic Congressman can vote against raising the deficit to build hospitals in Liberia because their home-town middle school is already doing something.

Second, it gives all those fear loving Americans a quick fix. Quick fixes don’t work. Even gorilla glue doesn’t live up to its reputation.

Quick fix mentality is why Americans are in such a horrible state, today, socially and morally. It’s why there’s jihadism in the Middle East, and so much poverty and disease in America compared to other industrialized nations.

We are the head of the snake that bites our own tail: Our own regular lives become disrupted by irrational fears.

This is squarely, and clearly, because of individual American reactionism. It all begins at home, not with your Congressperson, so don’t blame her. She’s just reflecting your own irrational fears:

The first warnings about AIDS, the nuclear air raid drills I undertook as a young teenager in remote northwest Arkansas, the police cars guarding the East Dubuque bridge after 9/11, the thousands of people certain that at midnight, December 31, 1999, either their whole world or at least their hard drive would stop.

It doesn’t even have to remind. Americans at this very instant are reacting against themselves: A majority want to bomb Syria and Iraq but that same majority doesn’t believe it will work.

There’s no doubt that irrational ebola fear can be found anywhere in the world where the media has sensationalized it, and that’s where it all begins. Americans, though, believe in their choice of media more than anywhere else in the world, despite their lavish protestations to the contrary.

We Americans tout ourselves for being so generous, but so much of “our giving” is senseless and ultimately useless. Is that really generosity?

It’s likely that now that every American knows that ebola is less of a threat to herself and his community than this year’s flu epidemic ready to begin. It’s likely right now that almost all Americans intellectually accept that their chances of getting ebola are nil.

That it is not very contagious. That it is pretty easily contained in a community with even a half efficient public health system.

Much more importantly, I think most Americans know that if we isolate those three countries in western Africa by stopping air service, for example, that we will not give ourselves more protection yet we will manifestly increase the misery there.

Yet: click here.

Or here.

Or here, of course:

It’s hard for me to not panic against the panic, but I’m trying. Take a deep breath as I’m doing. Let’s remove the exclamation points and get on with our lives. Send your kid to school. Let the airplanes fly to Liberia. Take that vacation as planned.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how you can do good. Let’s just start today by stopping doing bad.

Water Wars

October 7, 2014October 7, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

It was inevitable. Africa is coming to blows over water. It’s no joke that it could mean war.

Nine African countries depend upon The Nile. All of them are water deprived and all of them except Egypt are subject to devastating droughts. Only Egypt – which rarely experiences rain at any time – has matured without climate catastrophes.

But Egypt is the greatest user of the Nile waters, and the last of the nine countries on the chain from Lake Victoria and the headwaters of the Blue Nile. During colonial times Egypt was much more developed than the other nine countries, and Britain was the colonial master of them all.

So Britain produced a mid 1950s treaty that gave Egypt veto power over any of the other nine countries when deciding collectively how to use the Nile water.

Times have changed.

Fresh water is as precious a commodity among these countries as oil. In 1999 the nine countries agreed that parceling out the waters of the Nile was the most important issue among them. They formed the Nile Basin Initiative, and since the formation, nothing at all has happened except bitter name calling.

Meanwhile, parts of the shoreline of Lake Victoria have receded more than 150 feet, and the depth of the lake has dropped by nearly 30 feet.

To manage their increasingly vital resource, more than 25 dams are currently planned for different parts of the Nile. The largest dam in the world is currently being built in Ethiopia, and Egypt is furious with Ethiopia for building it.

Egypt depends upon a strong flow of water along the Nile to irrigate its enormous agricultural industry. There is every indication the Grand Renaissance Dam alone will deplete this flow.

“Egypt sees its Nile water share as a matter of national security,” strategic analyst Ahmed Abdel Halim explained. “To Ethiopia, the new dam is a source of national pride, and essential to its economic future.”

A year ago Egypt’s president Morsi said “all options are on the table” including “military responses to Ethiopia.”

Yesterday Kenya’s Natural Resource Cabinet Secretary ended another failed Nile Basin Initiative meeting. It failed principally because Egypt would not officially attend, although its ambassador to Kenya did show his face.

Nine of the countries less Egypt have agreed on an initiative agreement, but Egypt is balking. According to the 1999 accord, only 6 of the 9 countries need ratify the agreement for it to take effect. But Egypt is considered critical.

“That is the only way we can do this peacefully. Otherwise… we are going to be at war because of water,” Prof Judi Wakhungu, the Environment, Water and Natural Resources Cabinet Secretary told Kenya’s main newspaper yesterday after the meeting broke up.

Egypt without enough Nile water would be brought to its knees. It seems to me that much more powerful than the 1950s colonial shelf treaty is the fact that Egypt’s very existence for more than 7,000 years has depended upon The Nile. That’s quite a few grandfathers to be claused in.

I doubt there will actually be war, but not because Egypt doesn’t have the resolve if the waters stop flowing. Rather, I think Ethiopia is sensible enough to realize that turning off the spigot will cause war, so it won’t.

But there are many who disagree. Ethiopia is something of a maverick state, always has been. As the Grand Renaissance Dam starts to rise, the country’s leaders may also start basking in their increasing level of power.

The Curse of Apathy

October 6, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In an incredibly sycophantic move, South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma has denied the Dalai Lama a visa to attend a convention of living Nobel peace prize laureates in Cape Town.

The convention was supposed to begin a week from today, but Late last week the laureates announced they were suspending the October 13 get-together and relocating to a yet unnamed country.

Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille said her government “has embarrassed the country.”

The laureates decision not to go to Cape Town followed the South African government’s refusal to elaborate on why the Dalai Lama was not given a visa. Fourteen of the 21 laureates sent a letter to President Jacob Zuma asking him to reverse his decision.

The initial decision to hold the convention in Cape Town, which would have been the first time in Africa, was a coup for the wildly popular Desmond Tutu, himself a Nobel laureate, who was instrumental in ending apartheid.

The ending of apartheid was the reason that Nelson Mandela, and at that time the president of South Africa, Willem de Klerk, shared the 1995 prize.

“I am ashamed to call this lickspittle bunch my government,” Tutu said in a statement.

This is actually the third time that the Dalai Lama has been denied a visa. The last time was for Tutu’s 80th birthday celebration.

China and South Africa have a very close relationship, and interestingly, it is less because of aid and investment than trade. South Africa is China’s leading trade partner in Africa.

China has publicly promised to lobby for more power in the UN Security Council for Africa. Given the political turmoil in Africa’s other powerhouse countries, Egypt and Nigeria, any such aggrandizement would likely benefit South Africa.

China has often snubbed the world prize, as a number of prominent and usually dissident Chinese have been made laureates.

Most Chinese believe it is a political tool, and as such, South Africa’s president’s refusal to embrace it should be seen as strictly political, say the Chinese.

One might also bring up sour grapes. Jacob Zuma is one of the most corrupt and least loved of South Africa’s big man politicians. Many in the country wonder how he has managed to stay in power.

He’s received none of the multitude of accolades and awards that many of his comrades-in-arms against apartheid, like Mandela and Tutu, have.

What perplexes me is how younger South Africans don’t seem to care to the extent I thought they would. Their lives are getting better, however incrementally, but key economic indicators like the spread between the rich and the poor is growing.

I suppose like at home, war fatigue has spilled over into political fatigue. Your average Joe has become exhausted by being fed up.

And so long as things on a day-by-day basis don’t seem to get worse, major if immoral power policies leading to oligarchical control just don’t raise enough ire.

It’s called the curse of apathy.

When Wrong is Right

October 3, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Imagine Ray Rice walking into court followed by Eli and Peyton, Adrian Peterson, a few veterans like Mike Ditka and then a couple hundred high rolling NFL fans.

He’d be saying, “Some people think I did something wrong. Maybe I did. But I had to,” or maybe not ‘I had to’, rather “They understand why I did.”

And that understanding spans the gamut from being cuckoo to especially stressed. And in any case, it’s acceptable because, gdi, we need that guy playing the game!

And … he wouldn’t have done it, if he didn’t have to.

And since that “have to” spans the same gamut from being cuckoo to especially stressed, we get in a loop that we can’t get out of.

This is exactly what’s happening with the President of Kenya.

Next week President Uhuru Kenyatta will leave the Nairobi airport surrounded by probably hundreds if not thousands of cheering supporters for The Netherlands, where he’s on trial for crimes against humanity.

Whether World Court officials will allow his entourage to enter the vaulted halls of the ICC with him, he will be accompanied to the portals by at least four other Heads of State, maybe more, and by more than 100 elected Kenyan members of Parliament.

The facts in Kenyatta’s trial have come out in the press, mostly, since important witness after important witness has been so intimated that they’ve dropped out or disappeared. So now the spent prosecutors at the World Court have little facts left to present.

The facts as most of us believe them but which have not been able to justly be presented in court are pretty simple. The national election of 2007 was close. The current head of Kenya’s opposition from its second largest tribe, Raila Odinga, was neck and neck with the then president of Kenya running for reelection, Mwai Kibaki. Kibaki was a Kikuyu, the largest tribe and the tribe of Kenyatta.

Kibaki was old, Kenyatta was young. Kenyatta’s father, Jomo Kenyatta, is the “Father of Kenya” and its first president.

Widespread violence followed the election and the country was brought to its knees. Almost 1500 people were killed in horrific violence and a quarter million displaced, of which dozens of thousands remain so today.

There were absolute differences in ideology clashing, but the violence was tribal.

The settlement forced on Kenya by Britain and the United States was brilliant. Kibaki and Odinga shared power for almost five years. During that time a new and fabulous constitution was adopted.

The settlement required Kenya to determine the cause of the violence and prosecute those responsible. The settlement went further: Kenya had a certain window of time to attain this justice, and if it failed, then the World Court in The Hague would step in to do the task.

Kenya failed. Parliament tried several times to create courts and procedures for this most important attempt at national justice in its history, but at the end of the day, an invitation was sent to the World Court.

The World Court did not really want to do this. No indictment for crimes against humanity had been issued before the court was invited by Kenyans to start searching. Normally, the court issues indictments, as it did in Liberia for example, in response to individual petitioners. There were no individual petitioners with individual grievances from Kenya. The Kenyan Parliament invited The Court to take over, and it said, OK.

When it finished its several years of investigations, fully supported on the ground in Kenya by Kenyans, indictments were issued.

One was against the country’s current Vice President. The other was against Uhuru Kenyatta.

We know from leaked testimony and tapes that Uhuru Kenyatta, then a powerful political leader and Member of Parliament, organized and managed partisans in widespread murder and thuggery of the rival tribe.

This is against the law. It’s a crime against humanity.

But Kenya is doing pretty well, right now. Like all the rest of the world, the happiness and prosperity is happening mostly at the top, but the social fabric is peaceful. An unexpected war in Somalia, thrust upon it mostly by British, French and American interests, is not easy, but Kenya is handling it pretty well.

Skyscrapers are popping up all over. Roads are being built faster and better than in the U.S. Business was booming and is now humming along pretty well.

Even President Obama sat with Uhuru in the White House.

Like Rice, maybe he did do it. But take Rice or Uhuru out of the spotlight, out of their circles of power, and what happens? The team loses, and we just can’t afford that.

How Can I Help You?

October 2, 2014October 2, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Ready for someone at the Help Desk to really help you, maybe even in English? It may happen, and you’ll have South Africa to thank!

Huge grants from Microsoft and the Rockefeller Foundation among others are working their way through the South African system to help its worldwide call centers grow quickly enough to meet demand.

South African call centers are the Dyson vacuum cleaner in the consumer help desk market. Their quality is unrivaled, but their expense is high and as a result for years their growth has been anemic compared to major rivals like India.

The reason is pretty simple: The South African per capita income is nearly three times that of India ($11,500 compared to $4,000 according to the World Factbook.)

The metric is useful because it translates almost exactly into what a call center in one country costs versus on in a different country, including the largest single component of cost, salaries.

But in the last few years, American companies in particular have begun to react to bad reviews of their call centers.

“Consumers are fundamentally unhappy with the state of customer service,” a widely cited April survey of call centers concluded.

You knew that! Purdue University discovered this more than a decade ago: Poor call centers more than halve an otherwise expected product repurchase rate by a consumer (78% vs 32%).

Nevertheless, the cost savings of a distant land’s call center for the last decade were actually considered more important. And since virtually all of your competitors were doing the same, the sting was spread around and diluted.

That was the case … until a few years ago. The consumer public simply started to get fed up. Competitors emerged from the Great Recession with cash reserves, and better call centers seemed a promising sales point.

In walked South Africa.

South Africa has had a vibrant call center industry for more than twenty years. But it’s never been large, because it’s been expensive. Roughly 30,000 individuals have been employed rather steadily in these centers.

Suddenly, demand exploded.

“We have [lately] had to focus more on skills development than on marketing,” a leading spokesman for the industry recently told South Africa’s Financial Mail.

In other words, not enough employees available to work.

The pace at which global companies are now requiring better service from their call centers surprised the South African industry. Demand for South African centers now requires nearly 60,000 employees, or twice as many who are currently trained.

As a result, the industry is now poaching employees from the hospitality industry. Pay as a consumer visible employee in areas like hotels has never been high in South Africa, so the fit seems good.

And helping out are the American companies who prefer the South African worker to the Indian worker. Microsoft’s huge grant may be self-serving, but the Rockefeller grant is more general.

The half million dollar grant from the RockefellerFoundation is specified strictly for the training of disadvantaged youth.

And call centers are actually coming back to the U.S. In a perfect example of a capitalistic world that for once seems to be working, a major Indian call center company recently announced opening up a call center in Dallas that will employ 1,000 people.

Of course while the U.S. per capita is more than three times South Africa’s (which as stated is more than three times India’s), the per capita income of Texas’ working poor isn’t impressive. Another way of looking at it is that Texas is as “profoundly” rich as India. That’s why India is coming to Dallas and not to San Francisco.

So for the time being, the entre is open to South Africa. And frankly, with the highest child poverty rate in America in Dallas, I think I’d rather opt for a South African kid from Port Elizabeth telling me how to reboot my system than a roper from Ft. Worth.

African is Better? Really?

September 30, 2014September 30, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Here are some wild South Africa inventions, useful and artistic, which in many senses reflect a creativity we often lack in the U.S.

It’s been a long time since foreigners thought of South Africa as a Tarzan abode. The country was prominent and controversial in both world wars, stubborn then creative in subduing its nuclear technology to world treaties and rocketed to fame when the first heart transplant was performed.

Today’s South Africa creativeness is still high tech but there’s a wonderful peasant component that’s emerging as millions of Africans begin to emerge from abject poverty.

The purely South African invented “WonderBag” has proved so popular worldwide it is now available from Amazon – US.

This is a slow cooker for everywhere! Its unique design and astro-fabric produces a heat retention that hasn’t been cheaply available before. Essentially this is a tea cozy for your stew pot, and it works!

The cooking process starts normally in the pot. But rather than continuing the process on the stove or in a slow cooker once the stew or beans or potatoes have reached a boil, the pot is firmly sealed then tugged into the WonderBag and slow cooking begins.

With typical sour grapes, some American product reviewers have claimed the WonderBag is dangerous. It isn’t.

Claims that the bag’s temperature retention is poor are totally unsubstantiated and anecdotal and ignore the fact that you’ve got to boil your stew for a few minutes before promptly sealing it in the pot before bagging. If done to instruction, bacteria are doomed and slow cooking sweetness guaranteed.

So successful it’s now been enhanced and globally marketed by a British company, the very South African Encore Player was originally designed just as a portable radio but has become a recorder and phone charger in its global iteration.

But the genius of the device lies in charging itself by an extendable solar panel! The panel is brilliant enough to charge the device so that it can then charge your phone!

I left the best for last: what may be the world’s most useful 3D Printer.

Precise to 100 microns, the RoboBeast is an entirely South African creation that brings 3D printing to affordable levels with enormous precision.

The 3dprint.com review site calls RoboBeast “Toughest Printer By Far.” It’s also among the very cheapest, available for around $2500.

These and bunch of other great recent inventions can be found at the South African blogsite, sa-venues.com.

Thanks, South Africa, for putting a smile on life’s curiosities fulfilled!

Hands Off is Hands Dirty

September 29, 2014 by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

You’d never guess which respectful country in the developed world contributes to ISIS’ ability to fund itself through oil revenues.

It’s been an interesting week in the War on Terror and of all the bad news playing out another Groundhog Day movie history came one new glimmer of hope: the global conversation turned a bit towards financially starving the adversary rather than bombing it to smithereens.

From 2011 to 2013 African oil producing countries earned $250 billion from their oil sales, a staggering 56% of their entire national revenues, 2.3 billion barrels of oil.

But nobody is quite sure where all that oil went, or who exactly got paid for it.

That total lack of transparency in the global oil market is exactly why ISIS can sell oil, and probably salt and peanuts, to fund its nefarious world.

“The sale of crude oil by governments and their national oil companies is one of the least scrutinized aspects of oil sector governance,” wrote AfricaFocus in a special report published several weeks ago.

The report documented as far as it could 1500 major oil transactions from African countries in the 2-year period starting in 2011.

The initial findings that record keeping was intentionally poor in order to blur bribes, and that the worst part of record keeping was that the destination of the oil sales was rarely known were not surprising given the level of corruption in the developing world.

What was surprising is what country facilitated this lack of transparency more than any other.

Switzerland.

“Of the 1,500 individual sales we identified, Switzerland-based companies purchased a quarter of the volumes sold by African NOCs, buying over 500 million barrels worth around $55 billion.”

These are not well known companies: Arcadia, Glencore, Trafigura and Vitol are among the most often mentioned. Reuters called these company’s transactions “shadowy.”

They are not companies with super tankers or refineries or thousands of employees. The largest, Arcadia, doesn’t even have a website. They are usually single billionaires trading in commodities and using Switzerland’s lack of regulation and transparency laws to buy with bribes and sell in darkness.

We often think of Switzerland as a placid meadow where everyone respects everyone else and minds their own business and so doesn’t need much governance.

Wrong.

In this case the shy Swiss are extraordinarily evil. And I’m not saying the individual billionaires running the unseen commodity trades are the evil ones. They’re just the players.

The evil is in the system, a system that says, ‘Hey, do what you want! Just don’t break any laws!’ particularly when there are no laws to break.

The funding of ISIS is wrong, but so is the fact that a handful of Swiss fund a huge percentage of Africa without any strings attached. This foments corruption, and in fact, it actually invites corruption.

It’s says I don’t care how you got your money to pay, just pay.

And Ronald Reagan should have applied his trickling down theories here, because trickling down is the corruption, deceit, and ultimately the heinous and cold-handed transactions that fund wars while causing starvation.

It may look like a placid meadow in the Alps. But it’s where The Joker hangs out.

Africa Answerman

Sharing the beauty of African life today. Adventurer. Conservationist. Owner of Explorers World Travel.