End Of The Road

Wow, I hadn’t realized that last post had actually gone up until that comment – I had broken it up into two because it was so big. So, here’s the last of it, the rest of the journey – A Road-Side View:

Bahati and Selwyn - On the road to Siteki, Swaziland. A beautiful place and an incredible experience with the McFadden family.

And Botswana - Asanti on the road

Another mini-bus station - in Gabarone

Great shot of Gabs - The Big Village

In Zimbabwe, on the road with Terry and a bus that broke down twice and was pulled over five times...all for a four-hour drive, and we had to transfer to another bus to complete the journey.

Intercape had a toilet, but Executive had style.

Sunrise on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border

The Dar - Arusha road

Rest stop

Arriving in Kampala

Adam waiting on a mini-bus in Kampala

Pete - Sunset in Eldoret

Eldoret to Nairobi

View from a mini-bus in Addis

Mini-bus above Addis - waiting for the rain

The Paris of East Africa

From the road in rural Ethiopia

Bole-tele' Road in Addis.

So Long.

Blog By Bus - A Picture Log

I guess it's been a while. This post has taken some time though. I admit, I've been A. Lazy and B. Distracted. I'm now in Boston, Massachusetts and have begun a masters program in International Relations. Between that and continuing work for bridges(.org), I've had some excuses. Also, blogger is so buggy, the picture post I've been wanting to do took quite a bit of work:

I went from attempting the post with direct photo uploads, was tempted to fire-bomb Mountain View, California (or wherever Google's headquarters are) and decided to import everything to Wordpress instead, that proved fruitless (anyone ever pulled this off?), so then I created a photobucket.com page for many of my pictures so that I could upload using Urls. To cut through that mumbo-jumbo: I've been copying and pasting pictures for a month...and it looks like I'll still have to post this in segments, probably by country.

I really wanted a picture post to end this blog though, because it really was a blog that was posted from a bus in a sense. My bus: slightly isolated, a bit alienating, yet still providing access to some people and some events, a good view of the road, a narrow perspective, but a life-altering one nonetheless.

Also, many of my posts were about mis-conceptions of Africa, and these pictures 'from the road' function well in that context. So, this will be the last post related to my trip. Now that I'm settled down and am at least planning to blog a lot more, this blog will transition into a new conception of crookednecks; one focused on a second-look at Africa, a look at how we receive Africa through the media in the North, a critique of that view, and a space to promote bloggers from Africa. I also have some other blog-projects in the making and will be returning to the Old Dirty Blog for a personnal space for general rants and communications. So check back soon.

Ok, from the road:

A leisurely tour of the thames

High-Speed into Soweto

The Mini-Bus Station: no place fascinated me more

A great view of Newtown in Jo'burg

The Nelson Mandela Bridge - spanning the traintracks that divide the city

The Vineyards - nearing Capetown

Lion's Head Peak - above Capetown

Table Mounain, Captown - at the trailhead

Got a train-ride in too - End of the line in Simonstown

Intercape Bus Lines - In retrospect, I can't believe I complained about this - one of my first - bus being a half-hour late. I mean, not only did the seats recline, but it had a toilet. These were the salad days.

Saving My Neck

Another long absence and I can't use poor connectivity as an excuse this time. I think I had gotten acclimated to such a slow internet connection because even the 36 MBS at my parents' house seems like lightning.

Have basically been catching up on what I use to call life. Being away from bills and paperwork and the general speed of things in the US only makes it that much harder to be a part of it all again. Not really much in the way of culture shock though, except Glenn Beck on CNN - are the serious with that shit?

Wanted to take this opportunity to thank a lot of people who helped me on my trip though. Without many of them and the nights in their homes they provided me, I would probably have been broke before I reached Ethiopia. More importantly, without all of their advice and assistance and friendship I would be a worse human being and probably a lot less content with the trip:

Charlie in Johannesburg
Jeannie in Johannesburg
Sagie and his family in Johannesburg
Franzi in Port Elizabeth
Pat and her entire family in Siteki
Kele and Asante in Gaborone
Luke in Gaborone
Simon, Seretse, Isang, and Gabriel in Gaborone
Douglas in Gaborone
Sumitro in Gaborone
Kaya in Francistown
Mr. Dube and his daughter Lindwe in Bulawayo
Terri (and Pat by proxy) in Gweru and Harare
The Kabade's in Harare
Justine in Daresalam
Derek in Daresalam
Ganga, Steve, Jess, and Anna in Arusha
Vincent in Kampala
Jonathan and Michael in Kampala
Johnathan in Kabale
Tom and Maria in Mbarrara
Pete, Nelly, and Shubha in Eldoret
Rick and his family in Addis
Wubet in Addis
Dani and Marion in Addis


All of these people went out of their way to help me in one way or another and I am eternally grateful. And if you happen to be a traveler, or are in a jam, or just happen to be homeless, now's probably a good time to hit-me-up becuase I'm anxious to repay the above samaritans.

When I was completely exhausted from having to be on-guard against thieves; every time I was frustrated by a bureaucratic, technological, or transport-related mishap; and once the constant feeling of being an outsider was about to conquer my own good will, I thought of everything these and other amazing people did for me and it more than got me through those times.

Ok, there will be more reflection to come on this blog, but nothing as sappy as those two paragraphs. Seriously, I love you all. I plan to write a little more about the trip and some of my overall impressions and I want to continue to analyze more State-side media outlets and how they're interpreting events in Africa and how this may or may not jive with what I was seeing on the ground. I'm especially interested in a certain violent border conflict for which the international community seems to have zero desire to forge a cease-fire. No, not Lebanon, that's getting plenty of attention: if you hadn't heard, Ethiopia is about to invade Somalia. However, the parallels with the conflicts surrounding Israel are quite astonishing - as is the lack of media attention.

So, I guess this blog will continue to look at crookedneck phenomena related to Africa, despite the fact that I'm now residing on what sometimes seems to be a much darker continent. But maybe that's just culture-shock.

Out Of Addis - Long Trip

They say you don’t need to reconfirm flights anymore for British Airways, but I say it’s always a good idea to drop by the office when you’re in Addis Ababa. I recalled that my flight time was changed when leaving the country on Lufthansa 3 years ago – Addis isn’t exactly a hub, so schedules fluctuate w/ demand – so I planned on checking on my flight a couple days before leaving; turns out it was only about 16 hours before leaving and my flight had been bumped up a day, with BA paying for a night in London before I catch the second-leg to New York.

This schedule change also added an extra destination to the trip, as I’m now writing from the tarmac in Alexandria, Egypt. I’m watching outside as they refuel and we should be leaving for Heathrow any minute. Funny, when we were in the air the pilot announced that we’d be on the ground in Alexandria for 45 minutes. We landed and kind of tooled around the airport for 20 minutes, then the pilot came back over the PA and said, “that’s right ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be on our way to London in 45 minutes, right on schedule…”

What’s worth any delay though is the fact that I got to see the pyramids on the way in. It’s a gorgeous day and they were illuminated in the sun on the edge of the Nile as we followed the river north. Very nice. Basically in the middle of the desert now at the airport though without much to see. Am realizing that this is my first brush with such arid conditions on this whole trip. Huh, and you would of thunk this whole continent was scorched and dusty…

So that was what I was writing from the tarmac in Alexandria, Egypt. By the time I got to London, the schedule had seriously changed. (Oh, more high-comedy over the flight PA: before we took off from Alexandria, with new passengers on board – I still had an entire row to myself – the following was actually said regarding in flight entertainment: “Our first-class travelers will be able to choose between a number of films, television shows, and news and sports for entertainment on channels one through eights and the rest of our passengers will have…on the main screen…[fumbling and totally off the script at this point]…a movie…yes, a movie.”) The British Airways folks in Heathrow told me that there was space on the next flight to New York and that they wouldn’t pay for my night in London, that being the case. So, I book-it to the other side of the airport, fail at attempting to change my Jet Blue flight that won’t leave New York for another 30hrs., and am on a plane trying to find phone numbers of people I know in New York City.

At JFK after some sleep and manage to change the Jet Blue flight, but can only leave a message on a friend’s voice mail to pick me up, a day early, at the Syracuse airport. Luckily I returned home to a big hug at the airport from two friends who had to leave the bar at midnight to come get me a day earlier than expected. I spent 16 hours in the air during a day of travel that started at 5am and ended at 12am the same day, yet there were 27 hours in between…not sure where that puts my speed of life, but I think I almost maxed out.

Out Of Addis - Short Trip

Sorgham and Lentil Crops
Originally uploaded by ODBennett.

Leaving Addis in any direction makes for a beautiful trip. I took a short sojourn to the Ethiopian Children's Fund School in Aleltu about 45 km outside of Addis. My friend Wubet, who was the librarian at Gibson during my time as a teacher, had volunteered there a couple of years ago. The purpose of the school is to provide not only education but also health care and meals for rural Ethiopian children. A much different mission than the middle-class private school that I taught at and a very successful model from what I observed. ECF is looking for volunteer teachers from overseas as well, so check them out at http://ethiopianchildrensfund.org/

On the way back from the school Mr. Wosene, the ECF's Country Representative stopped to donate some food bags to these sorghum and lentil farmers who were drying and sifting their crops on the road side.

Photo Update

Finally uploaded the photos from Kenya. Will also have the final couple posts in the next few days that will cover the last week in Addis and a crazy return flight.

Conflicted Cup

[Another delayed post; will be caught up to the current continent soon. Posting lots of pictures and am working on getting everything on the Flickr site labeled and organized]

Eventhough it’s the same-old cafés in Addis, a lot has changed. Since 2003, internal conflicts, controversial elections, regional destabalization, and related suppression of free-speech have dominated Ethiopian politics. Protesters have been shot in the streets, opposition MPs have been forced to quit and are currently up on treason charges, text-messaging was eliminated from the nations technological catelogue because of subversive messaging, and entire editions of independent newspapers have been burned in the streets. Meanwhile, economic growth is at an all-time high, the nation is enjoying unfettered support from the US and EU, and construction is booming in Addis.

For the average citizen of the capital, a state of high skepticism is what they’re left in. The most blatant change that’s tied to this skepticism and recent conflict: no one reads the newpapers anymore. If it’s in print, it’s government, and if it’s government it’s not worth reading. So maybe it’s not the Paris of East Africa, because everyone’s just sitting over there macchiattos staring out at the rain, unwilling to read the propaganda, a bit afraid to discuss politics, and too tired and jaded to get up to change these things.

To compound all this (or perhaps as a relief – definitely as a relief to the government) the World Cup has arrived to distract Ethiopians from their nation’s troubles. Which brings me to something that’s been on my mind throughout this tournament:

Can the media please stop with the World Cup promotes peace, is a symbol of more perfect path of globalization, and/or is a sign that we are all coming together on equal ground? The only thing that the World Cup surely promotes is patriarchy, hooliganism, and Budweiser (did you here about the Dutch fans who had to watch a game in their underwear because of their Bavaria pants? Beyond Kafka…). All this crap about Ghana’s defeat of the US as a sign that the superpowers are beginning to crumble is ridiculous and is trivial consolation for what the current world order is really doing to the nations at the bottom.

Events on the actual field of play have been no more promising either. Throughout this trip I’ve attempted to promote soccer as a sport that more Americans should learn to appreciate. This tournament has done nothing to help my cause, consisting mostly (well, definitely after the group-stage) of abysmall officiating and pathetic play-acting by players; boring play and a lack of star power; and anti-climatic endings. Some may say that the tournament has at least been unpredictable, but then again we might be on our way to the France – Germany final I predicted…

Rainy Season

[Finally the internets are cooperating. Oh yeah, that's because I'm back in the US. 4 flights, 3 continents, and 27 hours of travel - and most of that was in the air, literally sprinting around Heathrow and JFK to make connections. Working on unpacking my bag and my brain; here are some posts I had written but was unable to post from Addis. Just pretend I'm still there]

Ah Addis, the Paris of East of Africa. Serious crookednecks at work with people’s perceptions of Ethiopia: anyone who gave ‘the price of a cup of coffee’ to Suzanne Summers in the 80s for starving children would probably be appalled at the (literally) thousands of cafes that those children could have chosen from to redeem the donation. Seriously, Addis is apparently the exception to the 40% restaurant failure rule. All of my favorites have survived these three years and pretty much every other door on every street is still a café entrance. And the coffee is still amazing.

It’s rainy season as well and the clouds are guaranteed to roll in by noon with the downpour scheduled for approximately 3:15. Maybe the weather contributes to the success of the cafes, where no one is eager to leave their coffee and pastry for the muddy streets or jobs that I’m not sure many are attending to anyways. So, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, meeting with friends, and taking years off my life through caffeine and sugar overdoses.

For my first few days here I was staying with my friend Rick Hodes and his family of over a dozen (I’m really not sure how many) boys he has adopted in order to provide them with medical care in the US and a better life in general here in Addis. Many of these kids have survived incredible illnesses, malnutrition, and/or abandonment and there are a few currently undergoing treatments that Rick or other docs he works with are providing. A common affliction among them is spinal tuberculosis, for which Rick sends them to the US or Ghana for a surgery or a series of surgeries to straighten their spines, which are severely contorted by the virus. I taught a few of his kids when I was here in 2003 and it’s amazing to see how they’ve grown. This is a crew that really eat up life; they’re constantly reading and engaging everyone around them in conversation that’s more on the level of a US college student and not a pubescent kid speaking their second or third language.

I’ve also been catching up on other kids I taught; visiting the old school, Gibson Youth Academy, which has seriously expanded in my absence; and sharing café space with former colleagues and friends.

I’m now staying with a friend, Daniel, who use to live at Rick’s house and is now married to an American woman. I’m a block from the place I lived at in 2003, so it’s all very cathartic but great.

I’ll be attending the annual closing-day ceremony for the Gibson School and will have plenty of pictures of the kids. Uploading one at a time seems to be doable here, so it’ll be slow. There’s also plenty beyond the cafes and kids here that has changed, and I’m working on articulating the political evolutions I’m observing here.

Attended the annual Closing Day Ceremony for GYA, my old school. Lots of pictures of the kids up on the flickr site.

Blog Bus Takes Flight

An extended vacation from the blog leaves me with two more stamps in the passport and a lot to catch up on. I haven’t been feeling particularly eloquent lately, so I wanted to hyperlink to lots of pictures to compensate for the otherwise perfunctory prose below, but the internets aren’t cooperating w/ any uploading to flickr right now. I’m just glad I was finally able to access blogger. Last post was June 14th, so I’m just gonna start there:


My last couple days of work were spent ‘in the field’ observing one of the agricultural forums organized by the NGO that I was evaluating. Getting to the field should be much easier in a country that’s 90% rural: I got on a bus to leave Kampala at 7:30 am…the bus left Kampala at 10 am…on the bus ride, I received a text message from someone I work with that read: “when you arrive in Mbarrara take a motorcycle to the hospital and get in a small car there to Rubindi”…I arrived in Mbarrara at 1pm…no one knew where the hospital was…I managed to find a car going to Rubindi, we left when the small 4 door sedan was filled with 9 people, including the driver who is always a little guy so that he can sit on someone’s lap while he drives…on the way to Rubindi I received a text message that read: “When you arrive in Rubindi a man on a motorcycle will hand you a note, he knows where we are”…I waited in Rubindi for 20 minutes, but no motorcycle, no note…finally I received another text message: “An elderly gentlemen on a motorcycle wearing a blue shirt will come to pick you up”…such a gentleman finally arrived and he said “Andrew, we’ve been waiting for you.”

This was Mr. Biangile. He owns the farm that was hosting the forum, where the organization mobilizes local farmers to meet and discuss best practice agriculture techniques and methods. I rode on the back of his motorcycle over steep dirt roads to the top of the highest hill above the town. Gathered there were about 25 people, sitting on chairs beneath a tree – the forum could finally begin. This specific forum was focused on cattle rearing and it was really interesting to see the wealth of local knowledge that these farmers possessed and to listen to them discuss and refine that knowledge. The organization will then disseminate these techniques throughout the community and to other regions using ICTs and will use it to improve the practices of female farmers in particular. It was definitely worth the long and intriguing journey.

As the sun was setting and I returned to Rubindi on the back of Mr. Biangile’s motorcycle, another driver pulled up and handed me a note before speeding quickly away, it read: “Andrew, go with this man he knows where we are.”

I returned to Kampala for a final weekend in the city and a final taste of Kampala’s cuisine with some of the best Indian food I’ve ever had. A good way to end things in a city that treated me quite well and rivals Addis Ababa for my favorite African cities thanks to its friendly atmosphere and easy urban living. The US even came through with that well-played but intense draw against Italy. This match pleased me most because I was confident that once we were knocked out, there would at least be a team to cheer against for the rest of the tournament.




I spent 6 weeks in total in Uganda, a country I hadn’t even planned to visit initially. I had planned to spend at least that much time in Kenya, staying with my friend Pete and hopefully working with his NGO, Family Preservation International, but it got bumped because of the opportunity with Bridges in Kampala and I’ve been emailing Pete once a week for the last two months, basically saying: “Don’t worry, I’m coming, but not ‘till next week.”

That week finally came and it was great to see Pete and great to be in Kenya. He’s been working in Eldoret for the last three years, running a microfinance project for people undergoing ARV treatment for HIV/Aids. He’s finishing up his work with that project and will be going to school in Boston next year as well. I had some work to finish up myself, so my first couple days in Eldoret were spent sitting in Pete’s yard with my laptop.

After a few days, my friend Elin came to visit and renew her Ugandan Visa. For a day trip, Pete recommended we take a minibus to the Nandi Hills, home of his girlfriend Nelly (also an excellent host), former Kenyan president Moi, and an endless carpet of tea. I never imagined tea plants would be so beautiful, but in the heart of Kenyan tea country its just rolling hills of the iridescent green leaves. We hiked around the hills and eventually arrived at the Nandi tea estates, got a tour of the factory and some really cheap tea.

Next day we visited Nelly at Moi Hospital in Eldoret where she works as a nurse in a ward that cares for infants and children who have been abandoned or whose parents have died. Got to hang out with the kids, tried to take one home, but was busted by security. Then it was on to the Imani Workshop, one of Pete’s projects where women with HIV produce local crafts that are sold in order to build their income before they begin receiving micro-credit loans. Stocked up on plenty of gifts to go with the small Kenyan child I’ll be bringing home.

Finished up a week in Eldoret that was extremely refreshing – returned me to an old friend and to the country side. One downside of Kampala: tons of pollution. A week in the Kenyan hills and I feel like I’m learning how to breath again. Back to the bus and the cities though: Eldoret to Nairobi to Addis Ababa.


The bus trip from Eldoret to Nairobi is a bit like riding in the tin-can that’s attached to a newlyweds’ car. This is a well-traveled road, but perhaps a bit too well traveled and the Kenyan government apparently can’t keep up with the repairs. The only thing that redeems this 7-hour ride is that it takes you from top to bottom of the Rift valley and offers exceptional views. The Rift Valley is a bit hard to describe because it’s really a giant region that has no discernable entry and exit points. But you don’t have to be a geologist to realize that when you’re in it, you’re in a place that was absolutely brutalized by tectonic activity. What’s left today, however, is much more beautiful than brutal.

The bus climbed high above the Rift coming out of Eldoret and it got cold…snow-on-the-ground-cold…that’s right, there were icy chunks of dirty snow surviving into the late afternoon at the highest points above the valley. That didn’t stop the guy in front of me from opening his window just to make sure I knew how cold it was on the mountain tops and just how much it was raining in the valley. When we finally reached the floor of the valley, the roads didn’t improve, in fact it was straight up off-roading through the savannah…in a bus…a bus that was probably manufactured in the 1960s: the rattle of the aluminum roof is so loud you can’t hear the music from your headphones, your seat is shaking so much you can’t read, and the whole experience is so terrifying that you can’t sleep.

I had no problem passing out once I finally arrived in Nairobi though. I didn’t even spend 12 hours in the city because it was time to fly. That’s right, cheating on the blogbus with an aeroplane. Time constraints and concerns with the Kenya-Ethiopia border forced me out of the bus and into the air. I had set out to complete this trip over land, but…well…you see…the flight was really nice. It was also nice to be reminded of the pleasures that I thought were restricted to the road: The Kenyan Airports Authority security screeners apparently stumbled upon my wallet in my checked-bag. When I arrived in Addis Ababa all the cash was missing – about $0.14. I had been collecting some small bills from a few countries and keeping them in this wallet. I’m not sure if the airport employees were deceived by the large dollar amounts on Zimbabwe’s currency, but I’m down a few souvenirs.

It’s pretty unreal to be back in Addis, where I lived and worked for six months in 2003. I’ll be here for two weeks - the last two of the trip. Hopefully will be able to get some pictures up soon, but expect some major updates to both sites once the blogbus returns to its final destination.

The Need For Maps and Guides

Took care of some blog-up-keep today. There are more pictures up and please note the two new links in my Africa Blogs and News roll: CIPESA and I-Network These are two organizations that I currently share an office with and both do great work in the ICT/Africa sector.

Spent yesterday morning at a Bridges.org workshop that focused on how development organizations can better utilize mapping resources and technologies. It was led by Sean, from Bridges, who has been here all week. Nice to have another American around, especially one from DC – he managed to bring a lot of my memories with him.

I only got to see about an hour of Sean’s presentation, but he did a great job of introducing and explaining the Map Library, which I’ve been having fun exploring ever since. The Map Library offers basic maps that African orgs who can’t afford GIS tools could use. Sean’s presentation and Bridges work in this sector are also designed to inform these orgs of other cheap, easy mapping resources that can be powerful development tools.

I mean, essentially every development project starts with a map, right? Whether it’s HIV infection rates in a region, location of bore-holes in a village, or breakdown of a nation’s ICT access, maps are vital to the ways in which we identify where development is needed and how it should proceed. Yet most, probably all, NGOs do not utilize maps and the related technologies nearly enough because they’re expensive and, despite their importance, require a relatively niche skill-set. Sean and Bridges hope to get small orgs utilizing affordable mapping technologies and to study which ones work and, more generally, how much the use of maps could help these organizations.

I’m wrapping up my work here, as my Guide is nearly complete. What it really lacks is a title. I’ve been writing Guide in italics for a while now…pretty vague huh? I go into the field to visit a forum of farmers who are participating in the project tomorrow. Will provide a more comprehensive look at what I’m doing later in the week. Maybe even a title for it. For now, here’s the website for the project, which I didn’t include in my previous summary of the work.

Tags: ICT Africa; Africa Development

On Winning The Cold War But Losing 3 - 0

I’m not a funny guy, but one joke that has done well during my travels is the one where I name the characteristics of Americans that have helped make us the world’s lone super-power: “we’re humble, passive, non-violent, open to alternative beliefs, have a propensity for multilateralism, and we’re definitely not arrogant.” Something to that effect and it’s funny because it’s not true. Well, not entirely. For some of us it may actually be true, and for most of us who spend time abroad, you really can’t afford to be too much of an American. That is, to be the complete opposite character of the joke.

Unfortunately, the cosmopolitan, humble, passive American is the picture of the US soccer team. These are probably some of our most worldly athletes – lots of time abroad and half the team plays in Europe for 6 months of the year. From a young age, our elite soccer players are taught that the rest of the world does their job best; that they are playing a second-rate version of a sport that is, domestically, not even second-rate. I can’t think of too many professions where Americans suffer from such a stigma. Just how much our soccer players suffer was on display last night as they were basically pushed around for 90 minutes by a team that was entirely more confident that they belonged at the tournament and were destined to excel at it. The biggest problem with that is that it’s what we’re usually best at.

With that in mind, I’m going to have to advocate for sending only NBA players or high-ranking Republicans to South Africa in 2010. Let the mild-mannered cosmopolitan boys get us there through the qualifiers, but when it comes to the world stage we should only be represented by Allen Iverson, Ron Artest, or Condoleza Rice. C’mon, Condi could’ve willed in at least one goal against the Czech Republic.

Tags: World Cup; NBA

This Weeks 'Relatively Democratic Medium With Low Barriers To Entry'

Bid a sad farewell the other day to what could be my final Hostel of the trip. I moved out of the backpackers and am actually living in a proper apartment for my last week here. I have a beautiful balcony above a restaurant called The LaFontaine. My view isn't exactly Paris in the spring, but it's nice and I'm loving being able to cook my own meals, even if it's in the dark, over a parafin stove during a power-outage.

Thought I'd get some News and Links out there to start fresh for this week back in Kampala:


Bloggers are not journalists so they don't have to pay millions of dollars for pictures of your children AND they get to doodle on the pictures of your children once they have "stolen" them from People who paid millions of dollars for pictures of your children. [NY Times]

However, bloggers should be wondering just how wide their digital trail is. I for one will surely regret that photo-session with the models and the sports car. [NY Times]

Ohmynews.com is hosting a big Citizen Journalists workshop this summer. Don't let that word fool you, OhMyNews is fueled by people who are definitely NOT JOURNALISTS and that's why the staff here at I Am Not A Journalist loves them.

Tag: I Am Not A Journalist


-This is old and only a little bit interesting, but at least it's about Uganda. More importantly it reminded me of a story:

My friend Adam is an English gap-year student interning at Uganda's state-owned paper, The New Vision. He said he was at a local court-house to cover a trial of a former government big-man. As the guy was being brought into court, Adam's photographer attempted to take his picture and the man said very calmly: "I'm gonna break that camera and beat the shit out of you." He then strolled into the courtroom, where journalists aren't allowed.

The camera man imediately got on the phone to his office and started relaying what had just happened. Ten minutes later, a New Vision van pulls up, and about a dozen photographers wearing Fast-Orange blazers get out. When the Big Man leaves the court room, they bum-rush him in a wave of flash bulbs, circle him while taking hundreds of shots, utterly confuse him (and stunned Adam), and then make their way just as quickly back into the van and speed off.

I've dubbed this a Ugandan Fire Drill.


More news actually related to Uganda:
The incumbent telecom provider decided to help me out with my upload speed and other companies might follow suit. You may have to scroll down a bit to read this article - Balancing Act is a great site, but why no permalinks?

Tags: Uganda; ICT Infrastructure


More Tech News:
Wired.com reviews Google Spreadsheets and comes to the mind-blowing conclusion that "If they set out to build a basic, easy-to-use spreadsheet tool that runs in the browser, then they succeeded." Until Today expands a bit on that for those of us easy-to-users.

Tech News

-Something I actually had to google today: "When Is Father's Day?"
No really Dad, you can totally expect a gift in the mail...



-"Thanks to technology, the Internet will always be a relatively democratic medium with low barriers to entry." That's from today's lead editorial in the Pollyanna - I mean - Washinton Post.
I'm not saying the folks at actforchange.com have it completely right either:

As the Internet grows, it's not surprising that the big corporations want to seize control, discriminate against people with alternative viewpoints, favor certain types of content, and set up tollbooths wherever they can.

Without network neutrality, AT&T, Verizon and others will be free to slow down or block emails and Web sites they don't like -- effectively silencing the voices of their critics and of people who don't share their politics.

[Holy Shit! I haven't paid my Verizon bill in months - I'm sure they don't like me and now they can really do something about it...] But I do think some legislated neutrality would be a good pre-measure towards preserving some of the values of the Internet that we saw TV lose over time.

Tag: ICT Infrastructure


World Cup News:
Some of this is really funny but most of it is not. If you've read DJ Gallo before you know why...because DJ Gallo wrote it.

My WC Predictions:
Abridged version of this in some comments I posted this morning, but I went home and found the original predictions [Oh yeah, I now live about 20 meters from where I work] I had circled in the paper and also realized that my matchups do in fact work out for the later rounds acording to the fixtures. So, you can say this is a little late, but I think the Sweden prediction is proof enough that I made these before the tournament began:

Advancing to the round of 16:

Germany; Equador
Sweden; England
Argentina; Netherlands
Mexico; Portugal
Italy; USA
Brazil; Australia
France; South Korea
Spain; Tunisia

To the round of 8:

Germany
Portugal
Sweden
Mexico
Australia
France
Brazil
Spain

The Quarters:

Germany over Portugal [will be the first time team to even challenge the Germans]

Mexico over Sweden [Things just worked out well for Mexico this WC huh? Who does Bruce Arena have to sleep with to get that kind of draw?]

France over Australia [I don't know why I like the Aussies, but I know I like the French because they're really good and I don't think anyone was paying attention to the way they simply destroyed teams in the warm-ups]

Brazil over Spain [However, this will be Brazil's second win that goes into 'golden-goal' time or to shoot-out. In fact, I'm betting on some devastating story of the USA being up a goal with less than ten minutes to go in the previous round]


Semis:

Germany over Mexico [But they get pushed again and I think the injuries to the home-town team will be mounting at this point]

France over Brazil [Brazil is unable to get silly in the midfield and can't finish and France gets at least one goal from a set-piece]

Finals:

France over Germany [A clinical dismantling]


In the US of A:

Even lesser-matches will get a better TV rating than the Stanley Cup, but the average American

1. Still won't care about soccer
2. Will continue to believe that most of the events described in the bible probably happened
3. Will utterly dissapoint me when they enter the voting booth for the mid-term elections

A comprehensive-unifying theory for the above phenomena is not even called for at this point.


Tag: World Cup

I've Got A Fever...And The Only Cure Is...

Ok, back from a long break from everything: Kampala, work, internets, and good health.

About two weeks ago I went, with the crew of other foreigners who are here for an extended stay, to secure Gorilla permits so that we could see the famous mountain gorillas. These are the Diane Fossey, Gorillas in The Mist gorillas. There are about 700 alive in the world, about half are in Uganda. The permit date we were able to secure: 06/06/06. The cost: 666,000 Ugandan Shillings (this is a lot of money in any currency, but let’s just say I’ve never left the bank with so much anxiety having to carry this on minibuses across town to the Ugandan Wildlife Authority).

I was pretty sure all these sixes were a good omen. I’m just that type of guy. Then I got malaria the day before we were suppose to see the gorillas…

Ok, basically everyone here has some level/form of malaria. Minor headaches and fevers come and go, but we’re all on medication and the common, less-resistant varieties can be held in check. After two days on dusty, polluted buses though, I found myself in a hotel room in Kisoro – near the Democratic Republic of the Congo border – with a nasty fever and the beginnings of some minor delusions that I was worried could be a nasty more-resistant variety of malaria. It was late anyway and I decided to self-medicate by taking an extra dose of medication. It worked and the fever broke overnight – I woke up literally soaking wet, a little delirious from a hectic night of dreams I’d rather not talk about.

Two hours stuffed in the back of a tiny private car chugging up mountain roads and I was pretty sure that if I could survive that, I’d be able to hike to the gorillas. The sun rose on 6/6/6 and we had beautiful views of the Virunga volcanic range that borders the DRC and took in the sights of the lush farm land that lines the mountain sides in steppes. I told the guide about my condition and he recommended I keep my distance from the gorillas, but that it was fine.

We descended down through the farms on the edge of the park (the Bwindie Impenetrable Forest – this is good: “bwindie” means ‘impenetrable.’ It use to be called simply the impenetrable forest national park, but was renamed Bwindie National Park after independence – tourists didn’t seem to like that as much, so they added the ‘impenetrable’ again, effectively naming it the “Impenetrable Impenetrable Forest”) and met up with the trackers. These guys go to the spot where the gorillas were seen the previous day and follow their “scent” and try to find their nests from the night between. Gorilla nests are basically huge brush piles, which they can create practically with the flick of a wrist, that they sleep on top of and basically defecate all around. The gorillas are usually within a half-kilometer from their nests that morning, they make a different nest every night and sometimes the nests can be 10 kilometers apart…that’s 10 kilometers of jungle hiking; thankfully we didn’t have to do any of that.

Just a 15 minute walk from the tracking party and it sounds like someone is trying to drive a bus through the jungle – well, no engine sounds, but definitely grunting. Two gorillas bound past us and I don’t even want to think about getting in the way of one of these things. We follow them to a river where everybody’s hanging out: the family consists of 19 members – three are infants or younger, two are giant silver-back males, one the alpha-male, the other an alpha in waiting. We got to see 8 of them, including two of the babies and the alpha male in waiting, who is actually the largest member of the group.

The Flickr site has some photos and some descriptions, but there’s not much I can say – it was so surreal. You know when you go to sleep at night after being in the ocean and you can still feel like you’re in the waves, but it doesn’t make you feel sick or anything, it just feels nice and nostalgic and it kind of puts you to sleep? The night after, when I closed my eyes I saw images of gorillas everywhere and it gave me the same feeling.

We only got an hour with them, and they’re not easy to photograph because they move a lot and they only let you get close for short periods, but I do have lots of good shots – more to come. I tried to shy away from my camera after the first 10 minutes though, because you really just wanna be still and look at them. They’ll glance over whatever leaf they happen to be eating and stare at you once in a while and it’s completely disarming. They look interested in you, but they also look like they might want to pounce and sever your head just to see if the expression on your face would change. Of course they’re very much habituated to humans and that wouldn’t happen, but the ‘habituation process,’ as I’d learn, takes three years (7 years for this family because of extenuating circumstances) and teams of highly skilled, organized individuals to pull it off. When you realize what it takes to make these animals accessible to humans you can easily understand why it costs so much to visit them.

And that access is problematic, but it does breed conservation. I know I learned a ton from being around those beasts; our guides, guards, and trackers were great too. A great experience that I’m very thankful I was able to participate in.

That said, my fever returned on the hike up, but I could tell it wasn’t malaria this time. By late afternoon, back in the car and consumed by dust, I was pretty sure I was being hit with the flu. We did make it to Lake Bunyoni by night fall and spent a beautiful two nights at a small hotel there, but I woke up the next day on that lake sicker than I’ve been in years. Been pretty miserable for the three days since, but am on the mend now and will even enjoy my first beer in a week while watching the England soccer match this afternoon.

The gorillas are the only thing keeping me from a jealous rage over those of you who are in Germany right now. Do your part on Monday.

I Want Real Africa

Continuing with my tour of Kampala’s cuisine, I dined at a small downtown restaurant the other night and ate Ugandan food. My experience was in line with similar outings at ‘local-joints’ eating ‘African food’ for a number of reasons:

1. The menu is only meant to stimulate some ideas. You’ll become aware of what’s actually in the kitchen after your first attempt to order. I was forced to eat Beef with Posho (Maize-based, polenta-like starch), Matooke (Basically a Fried Banana mash), and Cassava (Sauteed Root Vegetable); but wanted Chicken with Ebinyebwa (Groundnut-based sauce) Posho, Rice, and Sweet Potatoes.

2. Something utterly strange happened: A lizard (or something, I only saw a flash of green) fell from the ceiling, just missed my plate, landed briefly on my foot and darted away.

3. I had to endure a “bad stomach” the next day (this phrase and the symptoms it describes are as common as a headache in East Africa).

Wasn’t all that bad though.

However, this reminded me of the “I Want Real Africa” tourists I met in South Africa. These folks would pay ridiculous sums to have an authentic African experience and they would spend weeks eating Capetown’s brilliant cuisine, enjoying Jo’burgs nightlife, and the beaches along the Garden Route and say “this place isn’t Africa.” Well, actually it is. And my experience with the ‘bad stomach’ is no more African than my meal at the Indian Restaurant the night before.

My friend Pat said something really interesting to me in Swaziland about the situation in Zimbabwe and the turn she felt the nation could potentially take – initiated by the expulsion of the Rhodesian farmers: “We don’t want whites…but we don’t want blacks either…we definitely don’t want people who are only going to see in black and white…we want Africans.” “Whites” are obviously those who are on their way out of places like Zim. I think those who “see in Black and White” are the “I Want Real Africa” folks. Africans are people who want to contribute to this continent, to make their way, and achieve their desired livelihood without oppressing that of others. Those are the people who make communities and experiences African. Northerners cannot afford to compartmentalize Africa into an underdeveloped, exoticized, slum. Africa is becoming Modern and is redefining what it means to be Modern, which has a lot more to do with liberation and compassion than it does with exoticism and a restaurant free of lizards.

Similar issues came up last night (ate at a mediocre pizzeria) when a table of Northerners were discussing colonialism. It was an absurd yet extremely common discussion: “Colonialism in Uganda: Good or Bad?” Actually, we also reviewed India, Ethiopia, and Tanzania in the same context. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “well, at least the Brits provided a good infrastructure” (always leaving out, “for the people they otherwise savaged”). Now, I didn’t throw anything last night, but my position was basically “what’s the point of the question?”

The response was that it’s “valuable to ask Ugandans today how they feel about colonialism” and my British friend reported that the overall response was positive (lots of jokes went on here too: “Colonialism received warm reviews on opening weekend…”). Again, this is compartmentalization: to look at colonialism through such a narrow lens that you ask a few people, judge by a few paved roads, and maybe look at a nations GDP (I met another guy who did just that in order to compare former French to former British colonies in order to determine who treated them best when they were there). As if Colonialism didn’t span multiple generations? As if those who survived it and their offspring may not have been incentivised/conditioned to support it? As if there were not a myriad of historical forces at work that determined how brutal an imperial regime would be in a specific region?

And underlying all this is the basic assumption that these nations would not be where they are were in not for the “spoils” of colonialism. This will get long and boring if I go any further, but the point I tried to convey last night is that it’s much more productive to constantly interrogate colonialism rather than stop time and ask what people think of it. Or fine, ask people what they think, but continue to interrogate their response based on their historical experience with colonialism. Colonialism is not an era, it’s an act. An ongoing act and an act that began long before the first fair-skin folk returned to Africa. Why confuse ourselves and even think for a second that there’s any good in that act?

I think people who fetishize over globalization have fallen into this same trap. Globalization is no more recent a phenomenon than colonialism and it cannot be compartmentalized into the computer age. Granted, globalization is a little more broad than colonialism, but I think it’s effective to view colonialism as one of many manifestations of globalization. Is globalization good or bad? Well, people all over the world interacting and improving each others’ lives through economic and intellectual exchange is not bad, no. But it’s not hard to fuck up a thing that good.

Ok, I may be getting boring, but I’m not bored. Going to a wedding tomorrow morning and joining the festivities for Martyr’s Day in the afternoon (celebrates Ugandan Christians who were executed by a former king in conflict with missionaries). Then I will leave for Kabale – a town about 8 hours SouthEast of here – on Sunday and will be trekking to see gorillas on Tuesday in Bwindi National Park. I promise to take lots of pictures but can’t promise when you’ll get to see them.

Some Sprinkles, Tastes, and Other Ramblings

The rain has returned in buckets. The mosquitoes woke me up last night - I meet a disproportionate number of foreigners who have had malaria in Uganda compared to other East African Nations and my mosquito-net and repellent seem to be less effective every night, not psyched - and when I was coming back from the bathroom I noticed that it was particularly warm for 4am. I went out onto my balcony and the air was so electrified that I was convinced I could cause a spark by snapping my fingers. By 7 it was pouring and the surge on the tin roof won't let you sleep.

Another one of those things I never thought one could necessarily be good at: living with the rain. Again, I'm not good at it and never will be. Granted, I've never seen rain like this, but it's worse than snow in upstate New York in a lot of ways and that's why I feel justified with a one-hour delay for work. Besides, I need to give it some time to dry otherwise I look like I literally crawled to get there. Meanwhile, Ugandans will slosh around wearing all white at the height of the storm and look like they just pulled the clothes from the dryer when they get to work. I, on the other-hand, can't even wear flip-flops anymore because the ass of my pants always looks like I was riding a dirt-bike through puddles.

With the exception of the occasional violent monsoon, I'm pretty resigned to a quiet routine here now. I can feel home and school and to-do lists approaching and my desire for adventure is tempered a little bit by all of it. I'm quite ok with this, Kampala is a nice town to settle-down in. I'm basically into trying out different bars and restaurants and seeing the sights in and around the city. It's kind of like living in DC; the bars and restaurants even compete. Have made a tradition of a different Indian restaurant for Sunday night curry and had a stellar Palak Paneer the other night. There's an amazing French cafe that just opened up by my work where I had a poached Talapia in a dill-cream sauce for lunch yesterday. Tilapia is basically the only decent fish I've had in land-locked African nations, but it's particularly good here as it's coming straight from the Nile or Lake Victoria. Grilled whole Tilapia is amazing too, we even had a barbeque at the Hostel last Friday, which seemed like the first time I've cooked in decades. Have also enjoyed more than a few Chinese restaurants, a decent Thai place, some Lebanese, and will try some Ethiopian soon too (though that will only be an appetizer for my two weeks in Addis).

Street-food here is amazing. Indian style Chapattis and Samosas are huge. For a breakfast treat, they roll up an egg and vegetables in a chapatti - dubbed a Rolex (I like to think it came from "Roll-Eggs" but have no proof). There are also tons of cakes and funky chips and assorted nuts that are great snacks. And the cassava root is really good too. They grow tons of it here, but don't export it. It's a basic fried street food or sautéed as a side with meet. Liver, Goat, and Chicken are biggest here.

Ok, getting hungry and need some dinner. I know it would be really nice to have some pictures to accompany these descriptions...well, there's a couple new ones up now...I don't wanna talk about it...just know that those two took me a while.

I also added some new minibus names, you can check that out.

Holiday News

I could almost smell the barbeques yesterday as I longed for Memorial Day weekend. Really a wonderful time of year. Last Thursday should have been a big holiday too: it was African Liberation Day, or Africa Day. Honestly, I had no idea. Learned a lot this morning though, thanks to related articles in Pambuzka, particularly one I’d like to publish in this space. I apologize for bringing anyone down from barbeque-bliss:

AFRICA DAY: WHO SAYS SLAVERY IS DEAD?

Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

In flight to Nigeria, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem encounters a howling young man being deported from the United Kingdom. How is it that the youth of African countries will do anything to leave their place of birth and slave away in poorly paid jobs in rich countries? What kind of societies are being constructed in African countries when remittances act as the only method of survival for whole communities?


Today is Africa Day and I wish to share a very painful story with you.

One has heard or read many horror stories about detentions, forceful removals, and deportation of Africans accused of being 'illegal immigrants' or failed asylum-seekers, almost always from one European country or the other. Most people are not likely to encounter this directly. In February this year I came face to face with the inhuman way it is done.

I was traveling to Nigeria with a former radical lecturer, mentor to several generations of Nigerian students and intellectuals, Dr Patrick Wilmot. In 1988 he was kidnapped by security officials of the IBB regime (government of Ibrahim Babangida) and forcibly removed from Nigeria, a country in which he had lived in for almost 2 decades and despite the fact that he was and still is married to a Nigerian.

Wilmot's 'crime' was allegedly, 'teaching what he was not paid to teach'! Wilmot is of Jamaican origin but has lived longer in Nigeria than in Jamaica and is better known to Nigerians and considered 'one of us' by many. Yet in one night the military government yanked him away from his family and academic community and landed him in the United Kingdom, a country in which he had never lived in before and had nothing but a painful historical link of slavery and colonialism. Britain finally gave him legal residence and later citizenship and London has remained his home since 1988.

In spite of fears and anxiety by friends and colleagues unsure about the selective efficiency of the African state when it comes to real and imagined 'enemies', Wilmot was happy to be returning to a country from which he was deported. I was never officially deported from Nigeria but have become expert at being 'prevented to leave or enter the country' throughout the military regime and even under the current 'democratic' order. My traveling with Wilmot was both a personal and political assurance that we could face any trouble together and tough it out.

From checking in and boarding you know you are Nigeria-bound and in many ways feel like you are already in the country. As loud as Nigerians are infamous for, that evening there was an unusual noise coming from the back of the plane, distinct from the racket of voices around. The voice grew more disquieting as we sat so I went to check in the next cabin.

At the back of the plane was a young Nigerian man, definitely not more than 25 years old, sandwiched between two bully-built white British police/immigration officers and handcuffed to both of them. I made enquiries from the airhostesses since my initial attempt to talk to the man's captives was rebuffed. The hostess casually informed me that it was nothing unusual, that these things happen fairly regularly, that the man was being 'removed' and assured me that his noise would reduce as soon as the flight settled.

Meanwhile, the removal police were trying their best to calm down the howling young man as they would 'calm' an aggressive dog or cat. On his part he was just crying, howling, swearing, and whining like a trapped animal. It was so dehumanizing and I felt humiliated for him and for Africa. Even sadder still was the general indifference of most of the other largely Nigerian passengers. Many of them have become inured to this kind of routine humiliation of fellow citizens. One even advised the whaling young man to 'shut up and try again when you get home'.

Here was Dr Wilmot, happy to return to a country from which he was unceremoniously thrown out, on the same flight with a young man being unceremoniously returned home. One got the impression that if he was left unshackled he could attempt jumping out of the plane. He wanted to be anywhere but home.

How bad can it be that a young man who should have his whole life ahead of him should be so frightened of going back home? What kind of society have we created where our young people see no hope in remaining in Africa and would do anything to leave it? We are even beginning to valorize poor jobs, bad pay and immigrant insecurity by gleefully talking these days about how important 'remittances' are to the welfare of Africans trapped in poverty at home. This actually makes it imperative for many young people to devise even more desperate means to opt out of Africa in order to become Western-Union life-savers to their families. Some countries are now even trying to launder that exploitation as part of Overseas Development Assistant (ODA)! And some of our own organizations in the name of Diaspora initiatives are directly or indirectly offering justification for this by only looking at the 'contribution' that remittance is playing instead of the wider conditions and the long term negative impact of whole communities dependent on handouts.

We do not tell the truth about the degradation, racism and exploitation that most of our people suffer in those 'shitty jobs', 'early morning and late night' that makes our peoples the last to go to sleep and the first to wake up!

These horror stories about immigration are repeated everyday across Africa and the world. Some of our own governments, despite being responsible for the economic and political conditions that are making many Africans leave home, even connive in the routine humiliation in their forcible return from different countries in Europe. Some of them are willing to accept payments from European countries in exchange for taking fellow Africans (not necessarily their citizens) that are deported from Europe.

Who says slavery is dead? This is official people trafficking by any other name and it is done with impunity by countries who have signed all kinds of international conventions allegedly protecting human rights. The same countries that are forcing us to globalize, open up our economies and markets, but are unwilling to open up their markets for our goods and our labour.

In spite of the humiliations many more people from across this continent will do anything to get a visa to go to the West and if that fails, anywhere else but Africa. Many years ago I had written about this phenomenon and suggested then that were a slave ship, properly labeled, to appear in any port city in Africa, people would rush into it proclaiming that they were fit to be slaves! It is worse today; we are in many ways financing our way into slavery both at home and globally.

As if the bad treatment from others was not enough, intra African trade and free movement of peoples are denied through branding of fellow Africans as 'aliens', 'foreigners', 'non indigenes' and 'settlers' even inside the same country. Pan Africanist entrepreneurs delivering goods and services to African people as when and where needed are criminalized as 'smugglers'.

They say Rome was not built in a day.

Today being Africa Day, we need to ask ourselves: if Romans were not there who would have built Rome? You need to ask yourself whether by your action or inaction you are part of the problem or part of the solution.

Happy Africa Day!

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

I reprinted some work by Dr. Abdul-Raheem a few weeks ago as well, really like him. The offices for the Pan African Movement in Kampala are just a short walk from my office too, which is pretty cool.

Here’s a related article from L. Muthoni Wanyeki in The East African:

Two things happened last week in Europe that should make us take a long, hard look at ourselves. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch legislator, was stripped of her Dutch citizenship after revelations that she had lied on her asylum application. And the French passed into law a new immigration Bill.

My instinctive reaction to the news about Ali was anger. For, in the face of ever more restrictive laws and policies on asylum seeking and migration in recipient countries, it is honestly not surprising that would-be asylum seekers and migrants lie to get where they need (or want) to go.

My office often receives requests from African women seeking asylum on the basis of their fear of women’s human-rights violations in their home countries. Regardless of my personal opinion as to the validity of their individual claims, I always supply the background information on the situation regarding women’s human rights to support their applications. For it is not for me to determine whether an African woman should stay on the continent if she does not want to.

Yes, some are clearly lying. I remember one request, for example, from the leader of a well-known musical group here who told me – openly – that his girlfriend wanted to migrate on the basis that she was persecuted here as a lesbian. He thus wanted information on the human-rights violations experienced by Kenyan lesbians. I was amused – but I did what I could to provide leads to the information he needed. After all, it is not as though any colonialist ever applied for asylum or migrant status to settle here. It is inevitable that the colonies are striking back.

Good stuff, please follow the link for the entire piece.

State-side Africaish news from the Washington Post today. Sebastian Mallaby does his best to defend G-Dubs HIV/Aids policy. He makes some valid points, but I think the real impact of shifting the focus to abstinence will not be felt for years. Here in Kampala, some other foreigners and I make it a nearly nightly ritual of comparing the ridiculous “sex counseling” peddled in the local papers. Straight Talk, another organization down the road from my office, plays a major role in this comedy. Interestingly, its run by the wife of the publisher of the government news paper, who happily publishes Straight Talks No-Sex-Education as well. Trust me, there’s nothing straight-forward about what they’re telling Ugandan youth. More on this later, I’d like to see what responses I can find from African AIDS activists.

Another article for the I Am Not A Journalist campaign [Thanks, Heart In Accra], where a court says that bloggers aren’t necessarily journalists but they’ll get the same protections, and bloggers and judges alike basically prove my point that Not Being A Journalist means you can do a journalist's job better. It all holds up, trust me, no need to re-read those long posts again.

Trying to upload some pictures. Check it out, but I’m done with making any promises over Ugandan Internet wires.

Finally, I can only assume that folks are taking to the streets in Mt. Pleasant in reaction to the Raven’s dismissal from one of Fritz’s coveted lists.

Searching

Ok, some pictures finally up. The latest are from Tanzania, was hoping to post more from a day-trip on Sunday to Jinja – a town on Lake Victoria about an hour’s drive from Kampala where you can visit the source of the nile; the spot where the river leaves the lake on its way north – but it might be awhile until I can get those on the web. Uploading is extremely painful here. Turns out, the guys in the office next-door to me are working on a remedy. Well, kind of.

CIPESA (Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa) is a policy research project of bridges.org focused on analysis of the issues implied by the name, with an aim at creating a body of research and discussion that can better inform African policy-makers. Big issue in their world right now is EASSy – The East African Submarine Cable System. Big issue in my world too, because a connection to EASSy could mean actually uploading from Uganda without wanting to swallow my own tongue.

Because the internet was originally conceived as a way to solely deliver information and not a two-way exchange, uploading is always going to be more difficult, but exponentially so when you don’t have easy access to high bandwidth. And Uganda has none of that. I’m not sure where my words go when they leave this computer, but the path could very well find them traveling first by low-bandwidth, dial-up line into Kampala, then out of Uganda by satellite to Cairo (satellite = slow and expensive), then finding their way back into the ground for a (getting faster) trip across the Mediterranean, and finally reaching optimal speed when they reach Europe. I have no idea, but trust me, it’s much slower and more complicated than what your words go through in the US if you want to comment on this post. Meanwhile, it’s also more expensive here than it is in the US. That’s right, forget what you heard about cost-of-living in the developing world: access to the least amount of high bandwidth in the world comes at the highest premium in Africa.

EASSy could potentially change all that. The cable system would be a broadband spine directly connecting Africa’s east coast to Europe’s internets, should increase access and speed by up to 75%, and could decrease costs by up to 50%. Who invests in it, who has access to it, and how much land-locked governments will be held-hostage by their coastal neighbors are all issues that need to be worked out first though. Throw long-time friend to Africa The World Bank and future wolf in sheep’s clothing NEPAD into the equation and it’s not getting any easier. I’m still sorting through it myself, I encourage you to read up on some of the work my colleagues are producing.

Ok, above ground in Kampala:

In a previous post, I kind of poked fun at Uganda’s soccer fans with my jibe about Arsenal and athletic colonization, but my ire was really directed at the US and the NFL. In other words, I’m quite impressed by the level of sophistication that soccer fans here and everywhere posses and believe that what people are responding to when it comes to Arsenal is more about style and beauty than imperialism. While there’s no hope of such an achievement for most American football (the one with less foot-work) fans, I do envision a day when basketball usurps soccer as the world’s sport. Like soccer, basketball, under the right commission, is a game of freedom. Fans and leagues are starting to realize this more these days, thanks in large part to the influx of foreign players in the Association. Of course (though I’m growing a bit weary of some of their commentators), FreeDarko is the ultimate representation of this trend. This revolution supposedly finds its roots in the ’92 Olympic Games when the US first fielded a team of professionals, and youngsters from Buenos Aires to Beijing and Berlin were subsequently inspired to trade in their soccer balls. Regardless of how much truth there is to this legend, I can guarantee that the colonial rites of the NFL are far more likely to be delivered through the hands of a marine to an orphan in an oil-rich nation than that of the NBA. So, if there must be a new world order in sport, let us hope that it is basketball and not an ill-named game that involves helmets and a shotgun formation. And until that take-over is complete, it would be nice if Americans took some time to watch the World Cup – 15 days and counting.

Ok, file this along side the minibus names. Without much comment, here are some sample ‘personal’ ads from one of Uganda’s weekly papers:

Searching:

I am a mature working guy in my early 30s, searching for a beautiful, loving, caring and God-fearing lady between 25-30 years for a serious relationship. She should be ready for an HIV test. Call (don’t beep)

I am a 21 year-old girl. Black, tall, not fat and not slender but just ok, searching for a white guy from any part of the world aged between 23 and 27, ready for serious commitment.

I am searching for a light-skinned Muslim lady for marriage. Only serious ones should call or SMS

I am Sserwanja Abu of Entebbe aged 29, looking for a girlfriend with whom to eat cash. I am lonely.

I am searching for a religious Muslim lady who is a single mother aged less than 25 years.

A 20 Year-old guy is looking for a girlfriend, black or white between 18-20 years, small, beautiful, tall and serious.

For Real For Real

There are really pictures up now. Only a few, but more soon, as well as a blog post on how much I love the internet connectivity in Uganda. Oh, and I added a few more minibus names, another for the Um... category believe it or not.

Neither Stately Nor Static

Ok...new pictures. [I hope, they were still uploading when I published this] Upload times in Uganda are unbelievably slow. Actually they’re just as slow as expected, but trust me, very slow. Only 6 new pictures up; all from Tanzania. Hope to have the camera out this weekend though now that I've replaced my camera-card reader.

Glad to see major media outlets are picking up on what’s going on in Somalia. Had been reading vague reports about this for weeks in the local papers, but it’s difficult to get much on this increasingly shady situation. The first I’d heard about it was actually from an equally shady New Zealander I met in Arusha. The guy was really into international conflicts and intrigue and, I’m not joking, vacations in Afghanistan and Northern Uganda. He had picked Somalia as his next holiday destination and told me has all kinds of access to CIA agents there and promised me that the Pentagon had some of their top guys in Mogadishu. He was really into weapons and the global arms trade too. He was like a fat, kiwi version of The Lord of War. But he might be right.

Also, it’s not often I get news from the local media in Africa on what’s happening in my hometown of Syracuse, NY – in Ethiopia, one of the papers covered an incident of ‘Man Bites Dog’ among the drunken revelers celebrating SU’s win in the NCAA b’ball tourney. I guess The Economist isn’t as local, but there was a story on Syracuse this week about the attempts to revive the city through the Destiny USA project, which would make the Salt City home to the largest mall in the nation. It was a little depressing to have such an authority as The Economist confirm that my city is in fact ‘dying,’ but it did include one of the best pictures of downtown I’ve ever seen…though the caption read “Stately but static in Syracuse.” Can’t win.

Related: has anyone w/ nytimes.com “Insider” access read the article online today “36 Hours In Syracuse?” Please cut/paste/email it for me.

I trust Americans were just as devastated by Arsenal’s loss on Wednesday as Ugandans. Well, the latter is true. I’m amazed by how well English football is marketed in Uganda. The NFL will do well to follow the pentagon into Iraq/Afghanistan/Iran/Somalia and replicate the British model.

Update: added some new minibus names to the list that was started in the last post, including one that has to be seen to be believed (devastated I didn’t have my camera with me), garnered its own category.

Changed Priorities Ahead?

Happy World Information Society Day everyone! AKA WIS Day, this great holiday was designed (last year) to commemorate the establishment of the International Telecomunications Union on May 17, 1865. The ITU is arguably one of the most successful international governance regimes in the history of international governance regimes as it has overseen world-wide television, telephony, radio, and other communications for almost a century and a half. However, governance over the latest communications technology, these-here-internets, threatens the viability of this regime and the holiday is as much designed as a reminder of the work still to be done.

Despite not getting the day off work and having an internet connection that is haphazard at best, I suppose my current work is an integral part of the above mentioned WIS. With this in mind, I’ll take some time to describe what I’m doing here in Kampala:

Basically I work for the new CEO of bridges.org. Prior to this position, he ran a successful business in Kampala that focused on organizing an annual conference here for ITish people. It was very successful. He was only 22 years old. That almost pisses me off. He decided, however, that his operation wasn’t very diversified and he started a number of for-profit and not-for profit businesses/organizations, all with an ITish theme. Now, he has quite an operation and has lots of folks who have since taken over his assorted projects at the office. I’m working on a few of these projects.

My main duty is writing an evaluation of and guide for a project that uses Internet and Communication Technologies to facilitate knowledge sharing among Ugandan farmers, with a focus on female farmers. It’s pretty cool: they (www.brosdi.or.ug) organize ‘knowledge forums’ of small farmers where ideas are exchanged and best practices for local agriculture methods and techniques are established. This creates a network of farmers who are then connected on the local level by a “Local Knowledge Broker” who receives these tips on a weekly basis via a text message to their cell phone (not all Ugandan farmers have cellphones, but there’s usually one per village). We also run a radio program; produce newsletters and How-To Guides; create instructive DVDs; keep a database of the network and the information; all with an aim of disseminating this information, which will hopefully improve farming methods and livelyhoods for small scale rural people, especially women.

I’m tasked with writing a guide that evaluates this project and presents it as a model for integration of ICTs into other development projects based on principles espoused by Bridges. It’s a ton of reading thus far, but a valuable education in how this is all achieved. The guide will definitely be published online through Bridges, and will hopefully have some further hard-copy distribution. I promise advanced copies on this blog.

Ok, back to the love for Kampala:

Got my haircut – kind of glad pictures are out of the question right now. Well, it’s short, but not that bad. Getting your haircut in another country is like a friend’s mom cooking when you’re a kid: It’s not necessarily gonna be bad, but it’s definitely not gonna be good.

I’ve talked about the minibuses I’ve encountered throughout this trip, but not about their names, which are often proudly displayed across the front and back windshields. A friend of mine told me about a play she saw in Durban, where writers were sent to explore Durban and write about it as part of festival. One writer produced a drama about the Minibuses, playing off their names and dramatizing the vast and complex social interactions that take place on their wild rides. I love this idea because, as I’ve said before, the minibuses are a great symbol for whatever African country they operate within and are quite unique to this region. Even Channel O, Africa’s MTV, uses minibuses and conversations that take place on them for their ad campaign: “If you’re African, you get it.” Another ad in this series follows the career from boy band to gangster of a musician named Jack Michaelson who manages to turn black over the course of his chaotic career. This is clever stuff, South Africans are some of the best marketers on the planet.

Where was I going with this? I wanna start to accumulate the names of the minbuses I see here. In Kampala the minibuses are actually called taxis or sometimes Matatus, which comes from Kenya – what Americans would call a taxi is known as a special here, as in ‘special hire.’ Of course, the Boda-bodas or motorbikes are big here and many of them have names, which can’t be as well displayed, but are just as creative none the less. I also like to think of these ‘tags’ as the last thing you’ll see before one of the minibuses or boda-bodas runs you over.

Ok, here’s the first installment. I’ve divided them into relevant categories. Religion is not a category because, well, as you’ll see, they’re all religious in a way:

The Daddys:

Big Daddy

Puff Daddy

Jesus Daddy

Home Boys

Call The Dr.:

The Doctor

Dr. Jesus

Sport (All Footballers – the kind who use their feet):

Joe Cole

Louis Garcia

Ronalhino

John Terry

Arsenal

Barcelona

Manchester United

Believe in Chelsea FC

Straight Preachin:

God’s Blessing Is His Wish

New Life

Let Them Say

Jesus is Driving

God Is Great

U'll Never Walk Alone

I [Heart] Samona Jelly

I [Heart] Jesus

I [Heart] My Job

Jesus Reighns (Yes, that's how it was spelled. Yes, I probably would have misspelled it anyway)

Jealous People Never Win

Fact of Life

Baby Talk:

Sugar Baby

Baby Andrew (personal favorite)

Baby Queen

Baby Face

Um...

White Cock

Niggah

Yes, these are all actual names for vehicles, I will continue to add to the list as I see them. On a related note, two of the most popular names for hair salons (oh yeah, from Botswana to Uganda, people pronounce ‘salon’ as ‘saloon’ – really gets to me) are Whitney Houston and Queen Latifah.

Saw a funny road sign today too. I think it’s an attempt to convey sidewalk work ahead or something, but it simply reads in white letters over a red background:

“Changed Priorities Ahead”

Are Americans Completely Full of Shit, or is There Still Room For a Little More Shit?

I was discussing the state of the Democratic Party with another American (thankfully dominating me in the role of obnoxious American), a Brit. (keenly more astute than the obnoxious American when it came to US political history), and a Ugandan. The American was proudly claiming (and loudly) that, judging by Bush’s current approval rating, the Republicans were finally done. I completely disagreed, saying that when Americans actually got to the polls they would come to their security-minded-homophobic-ant Islamic-senses and predicted that Republicans would retain House and Senate control and would probably win the presidency in 2008 unless the Dems manufactured a real leader (read, miracle). The Brit and the Ugandan were rather astonished by my characterization of the US voting block, who they thought was only Republican because of economic concerns, and the Brit said: “Wow, are Americans completely full of shit, or what?”

To which I replied: “No, there’s still room for more shit.”

Anyway, this is what I’ve been thinking as I catch up on news from home via the internets, which I have a re-connection with thanks to spending my days in an office again. Then I was thinking I could be wrong, maybe real idears were being delivered by Democrats to actual Americans who vote. Then I read some quotes by G-dub regarding his plummet in the polls where he says it’s due to ‘battle fatigue.’ [Note: despite connection to internets, don’t expect links to back any of this up; remember, I’m full of shit] No sir, your battle will never fatigue Americans. Fatigue is felt by the rest of the world; Americans will continue to vote for battle.

This trip has really opened my eyes to how closed American eyes are. To start, I’ve hardly met any American travelers (a noticeable decline from trips abroad dating back to 2000), most are Australian, Scandinavian, British, Western European (in that order). We need to get out. We’re the richest people on the planet, why don’t we travel? I know there are countless, meaningful reasons, but let’s at least travel in the intellectual sense even if it’s not safe to leave the country. The rest of the world seems much more concerned about what could happen to Iran. The rest of the world seems much more aware of what Muslims and Christians have in common. The rest of the world even gives America a pretty fair-break and doesn’t assume we’re scared, homophobic, or anti-Islam.

To be fair, I do meet lots of Americans in Uganda, but few of them are travelers. They work in NGOs, medicine, research, or as missionaries. The latter is quite unique to Uganda in my experience; I’ve not witnessed such an American missionary presence in any of my travels in Africa. Ugandans are big on the hip, new, born-againednest that defines the recent resurgence in the church in the US, as well as, to some degree, what I refer to when I even use the word American in the above tirade and our current president is in many ways THE symbol of this.

Every Christian church/sect you can name/imagine is taken up with zeal by Ugandans. Christianity plays a huge roll in many aspects of life/culture here and its manifestations are much more apparent than in any other country I’ve been in. Despite this, an American missionary I met here defined Christianity in Uganda to be: “A mile wide and an inch deep.” Apparently there’s lots of work to be done.

Something else unique about Ugandans (treading carefully here) is that, culturally, there appears to be an openness to foreign opinions, beliefs, and even instruction here that I haven’t seen anywhere else to the same degree, and is surely in opposition to the skepticism I observed in Botswana. They may not admit it, but the missionaries here are well aware of this phenomenon, and if I see an American in a public/social setting with Ugandans, they are inevitably evangelizing. At restaurants, at parties, at the bus stop, I have overheard Americans speaking of Christ and the way to God to wide-eyed Ugandans. Of course, this is cool, to a degree. But here are a couple of questions that I have heard Ugandans ask in these situations:

“How can I go to a night-club and be one with the Lord?”

“What will become of the people of the churches who allow homosexuals?”

So, this is when it gets a little disturbing, especially when the answers these foreigners provide are taken as, well, Gospel.

On one occasion I engaged one of the representatives of the Gospel (a 22 year-old from Virginia) regarding sin and trying to convince all that the definition has changed over time and that what we’re seeing from the “churches who allow homosexuals” is part of another historical shift. That was fun, but what really gets to me, and what I brought up with this woman, is how fanatical Christianity has manifested itself in Uganda (ok, some links, but now you know they're important) and how these missionaries can continue to justify their work when they can see what, in part, it breeds. There’s an uncomfortable connection between these folks, the fervor for relatively marginal sects of Christianity that Ugandans pursue, and the LRA that I haven’t explored yet. I’m not trying to say US churches are funding the LRA, but they aren't exactly proceeding with caution in my view.

Ok, please see the above as merely ‘almost completely full of shit.’ These are random thoughts right now as I try to learn about what shapes a place that is very new to me.

K is For Kampala

Of course, the day after I get into school I go to the job interview that brought me to Kampala and have to pass up an amazing job because I want to torture myself with two more years of skooling. This was with bridges.org who are starting up a really cool initiative on African IT Policy (CIPESA) that will involve a lot of interesting research projects and the opportunity to shape IT policy and development in East and Southern Africa. As it turns out though, the new CEO of bridges, who is based in here in Kampala, offered me a one-month internship to work on the many, many projects he has going here. So, I moved into a new backpackers, reserved a room for 5 weeks (which is so weird) and here I am.

Kampala's great though, happy to get to really dig into a place again after so much hopping around since Gaborone. The people here are very friendly, it's one of the safer capitals I've ever visited, and there's generally a lot going on. I've been watching a ton of movies lately: Inside Man, the new Spike Lee film, was excellent; V for Vendetta, pretty cool, over-the-top in a good way ala Matrix I, though I'm probably the only person in the world who thinks Natalie Portman can't act; and Paradise Now, as part of the big film fest going on here, which is about suicide bombers in Israel, could have been better.

So, Kampala has all these movies and all these jobs for folks in internets, they must have electricity too, right? Um, you see, well...no. Ok, currently electricity is on 24 hours then off 24 hours. This could get worse, in the midst of a drought, everyone from here to Cairo gets there electric from the Nile and surrounding lakes, and word is the "off" could be 48 hours by month's end. Granted, my work and the movie theatres have generators, but the internet connection here isn't very reliable, especially at my work, but it's suppose to get better next week. Also, gas is getting expensive and as I've been researching the ICT industry here for work, the lack of elec. is basically blamed for every failure in the industry and by every industry in the economy. Likewise, Uganda was expected to crest a 6% growth rate this year, but indicators are now pointing to a severe drop from last years 5.8%. So yeah, the power outages are basically killing the economy as well as my attempts to watch soccer - I was psyched that the place I stay has the SuperSport channels, but not so psyched when they followed their policy and turned off the generators at 11pm last night at the 53rd minute of the UEFA cup final...

Again, I love Kampala. Here's the kicker: I ride a motorbike to work. See, the traffic's so bad here that guys make a fortune giving short lifts on motorbikes (called "boda-bodas"). Granted, the pollution's so bad I'm gonna have to buy goggles (my eyes literally sting by the time I get to work) and it's often drizzling in the morning so I'm wrapped in my not-so-waterproof-rain-jacket (gonna be really cute once I get the goggles right?), but I love Kampala. Oh and the drivers only keep a little bit of fuel in the bikes, because of expense, but mostly as a defense mechanism so that if they're stolen they don't go far. So, I also go to the gas station every day, but I love Kampala.

Let's see, will have a better Internet connection Monday but no electricity 'till Tuesday, but hopefully will post again soon, expect more love for Kampala.

Dance, Dance, Dance, Revolution

[First off: I’ve been accepted to Tufts’ Fletcher school for graduate study next fall, for the first time in six months I actually know what I’ll be doing next year and where. Good feeling; come visit me in Boston. DC people, I plan to make it up to you with a trip this summer, also scheming for a big party at my parents house before I move…]

Back to the backpackers life in Kampala. Until arriving here and throwing my stuff down on a bunk bed in a stinking room with some guys ass peaking out beneath a mosquito net just meters away, I hadn’t realized that I had gone almost 3 months without staying at a backpackers – an abode that was a staple for my time in South Africa. The smell aside, it’s nice to be back; you meet interesting people and it generally opens your mind to new perspectives on Africa.

Speaking of which, I mentioned in one of the South Africa posts the tourist mantra: “I want real Africa” in response to supposedly well-developed and exceptional SA. Well, how about 18 hours on a bus over what is much closer to a path than a road? I can’t believe how bad the roads are in Kenya. Arusha to Nairobi is a heavily traveled road and yet both governments seem to feel ok with it being absolutely littered with craters. Not pot-holes, craters. A number of times I could feel a shooting pain in my spine and felt my extremities tingle after being jolted from a few precious seconds of sleep. North of Nairobi the road is under construction and was even worse, and apparently the road from Eldoret, Kenya to the Uganda border has never been close to paved. I think it was Tim who commented on the buses only getting worse north of SA….yup.

Was nice just stopping in Nairobi and talking to Kenyans there and on the bus – reminding me how friendly they are and getting me excited for spending some extended time in the country. Gotta love the Kenya/Tanzania border too, with informal tuck-shops and scammers spilling right up to the door of Immigration. I could really do without “pay toilets” at these borders though. This is basically someone who sets up shop at the sole-toilet outside Immigration, charges 500 Shillings (~50 cents US) for use of the facilities and gives a cut to the proper authorities who should be preventing such graft. Meanwhile, I make it my job to spend exactly every coin of the previous currency before I get to the border in order to avoid basically giving money away in the exchange-cut, which also means I’m getting good at ‘holding it’ on these bumpy rides…

Ok, once you get here, Kampala is great. Just a laid-back city where you get the sense that there’s a lot going on though. Has an old, impromptu feel (there is NO reason to the street lay-out though), yet a ton of construction going on, feeding off the country’s recent economic growth. Good reading in the local papers too - nice selection compared to other cities so far. Also, one of the best op-eds I've read on the recent growth in Mozambique and the author's brilliant warnings against that nation going the way of Uganda. Please read, this touches on a lot of what I discussed in my Zimbabwe posts in terms of true economic independence. I've been concerned about Mozambique as well because it was clear while I was 'down South' that South Africans and some Zimbabweans are basically buying up everything in Southern Mozambique and are re-colonizing the country in many people's minds. Actually, I'm thinking that link may not work without registering, so here are some highlights:

By Dr. Tajudeen If you read anything about mozambique today and the tremendous progress the country is supposed to be making, one cannot help recollecting similar rave reviews and reports about Uganda in the late 1980s through the1990s. The statistics are very familiar: over 6% growth rate, expanding opportunities for business, IMF/WorldBank ideology, a confident middle class, and an environment open to foreign investment, INGOs, donors blah blah blah. In other words: a nation open for business and nd a relatively enlightened leadership. Of course the ovation for Uganda is no longer as enthusiastic as it used to be not only due to the economic limitations of macro- economic rejuvenation in a dependent economy but also the limits of political tolerance between the ruling party and the President and its erstwhile over-indulgent foreign supporters.

Many new buildings are going up [in Mozambique] and old ones being rehabilitated. The hotels are in brisk business full of ubiquitous UN, Western NGO officials and assorted busines men and women all over the place. There are more than 20 big donor agencies and organisations in the country who are basically the engine of the new growth. It is a reward for successful peaceful settlement of the war against RENAMO, ideological capitulation or pragmatic realignment away from the former Stalinist model and endorsement for the political leadership. But as in Uganda, this support comes with costs that increase everyday. One, it is not sustainable that a country be so dependent on foreigners through both budget support and resources for its capital development.

Even our [Uganda's] largely foreign-sponsored NGOs (increasingly substituted for civil society) are also more accountable to their funders than the people they serve! Opposition politicians spend more time complaining, whining and pining to foreign (and usually Western ) diplomats and other aid officials than organising to politically challenge misruling governments. Our governments sign up to international commitments like the Millennium Development Goals in addition to mountains of other Intra-African protocols or agreements like NEPAD, the African Peer Review Mechanism, APRM without expecting to fulfil them.

Lots of attention to the arts in Kampala too - relative to other cities I’ve visited on this trip - a big film festival right now, good local music scene, and I’ve already visited a few decent art galleries.

One thing though: if I walk into a club and even think for a second that I might be one of the better dancers there, your country is in trouble. Honestly, I shouldn’t even be dancing to hip-hop period, but out of boredom and lack of music-alternatives in the clubs here it does happen and it’s only mildly embarrassing. Less so as I’ve moved north though and that’s a problem. I got a sense of this in Arusha, where I saw a couple of glaringly bad dancers, and in Kampala last night, there were bars full of them. Ok, dancing’s cultural and ‘good dancer’ is of course a relative term; whatever, this is great, I own the dance floors in Kampala.

People in Kampala are great – friendly in an honest way (ahem, Arusha) and always willing to help idiots like me. Had a couple contacts here through my class in Jo’burg and a friend of Ganga’s, so its nice to have local partners-in-crime. Also, I have a pseudo job interview on Monday with the CIPESA project, an initiative of bridges.org Very excited to check out the work they are doing. Organizing a trek to see gorillas next week too, hearing good things from other tourists. So, I’ll probably be in Kampala for another week before settling in Eldoret for a bit; plenty to keep me busy here though, I expect my dancing to improve ten-fold.

Still Raining

That's Ganga and Me at the market in Arusha (hope you can see it, we're under an umbrella [I H8 Blogger]). Have had a great time here; Ganga and her housemates, all of them volunteers in different capacities around Arusha, were incredible hosts. Some really good food has made up for the weather: Ganga makes a killer pasta, I spiced things up with some Indianish food, and I had one of my best meals at Kahn's, which was basic Tanzanian street-chicken and a huge selection of vegetarian curries and Indian/African fusion. Street food (small restaurants that set up grills on the sidewalk) is definitely the way to go for cuisine in Tanzania - second best meal was at a similar joint in Dar.

Took to the indoors yesterday with a full day of voyeurism at the UN-Rwanda Tribunal. Very interesting, and a real treat to have it in Arusha, which had previously been (in terms of tourism) a safari pit-stop where you organize your trip and basically get constantly hassled on the street. Seems like many tourists are taking advantage of the opportunity to sit-in on the public court and witness some history. After seeing it myself, I'm a little unsure of how said history will shape-up.

First off, it's down-right uncomfortable that the guy on the stand is being tried for crimes he allegedly committed over 12 years ago. Apparently I was lucky to catch one of the accused actually on the stand - he is one of six public officials (including his mother) who is accused of crimes constituting genocide in the Butare region of Southeast Rwanda. His testimony made for a decent overview of what I had missed from other witnesses who testified against him as he was basically given the chance to refute it case by case. The charges ranged from manning a road-block where people were known to have been killed or forced to bribe their way out of murder; to raping women he and his mother (that's right) pursued around town; to torturing witnesses who were lucky enough to escape his wrath.

Judging from my day's viewing though, it would appear a great many of these charges are unfounded. The defense dominated the day with key documents that were accepted by the court that suggested many of the witnesses had been encouraged to lie to authorities and that there testimony at the court in Arusha was inconsistent with that of previous trials (the accused had already spent time in prisons in Rwanda and Kenya).

It was interesting that the current politics of the tribunal itself came into play, as the defense was able to submit a letter from advocacy group that accused the UN of providing the accused better health care than that of the victims in Rwanda he allegedly infected with HIV. Meanwhile, they also submitted a certified HIV test that proved he does not actually have the virus and were able to argue that the group who wrote the letter and the false allegations had been working with witnesses who had previously took the stand, thus undermining their credibility.

In Arusha, the politics of the court are all about money. Many in the town, especially foreigners, view the court as a bit of a circus and play-ground for the UN employees. All here complain of the exorbitant costs of the trial which are constantly on display for the locals and wonder if the money wouldn't be better spent on survivors of the genocide. I came away with a similar sentiment after viewing the trial and am really at a loss for how we can properly prosecute such massive crimes. Granted, the UN has convicted 17 individuals via the Arusha court. However, based on what I saw yesterday and the more I learn about the events in Rwanda (check out the chapter in Jared Diamond's Collapse - thanks John) it just seems like an out of control situation that is impossible to police after the fact. (Pssst - did you hear about the demonstration over Darfur in DC? I did, and I'm in Africa). Furthermore, I don't know how much of a symbolic message the convictions convey from an Arusha courthouse with a bunch of tourists watching. Can anyone confirm the impact for Rwandans? This is obviously an issue that needs to be carefully addressed for any trial involving Charles Taylor.

Back on the bus this afternoon; will be in Kampala for a week or so before a long stay in Eldoret, Kenya. Hope everyone’s doing well and takes some time to enjoy the NBA playoffs for me - after such an awful college hoops tournament I knew there would be something astounding I would miss…other than all you wonderful people back home.

Some Kind Of Joke

Some thoughts on recent news that I was catching up on during my stay in the wireless-house in Dar:

Some focus on Africa in the Washington Post last week - African Pilagers

One of those 'overviews of hellish continent where bad leaders come to drag further into hell' articles. A lot of truth to this of course, but got me thinking of the way these leaders, bad as they are, are viewed by the main stream media (MSM). For starters, here's an exerpt from a discussin with the author that took place the following day:

Washington, D.C.: I have four questions, mainly on Zimbabwe and Mugabe:
1. If
Mugabe and his cronies have stashed millions outside the country, are there no
mechanisms of freezing these looted funds or even making the foreign Banks
accountable for, NOW rather wait until Mugabe is deposed.
2. If Taylor has
been brought to book for picking the fight with the international community, why
not Mugabe. The land grabbing affected not only Zimbabweans. He also openly
challenged Blair and Bush. Why is the world not taking Mugabe to book. To me, I
think the reason is because Mugabe still has friends (Mbeki etc) among African
leaders whilst Taylor no longer has any friends to shield him.
3. There is
another piece in Outlook on (the effects of)lobbyists and Equatorial Guinea. I
think these are the people who should be taken to task because they are
perpetrating the atrocities of the dictators.
4. I agree with you that the
slashing of coverage on Africa by major news organisations has contributed to
failure by the international community to police these dictators. Nobody also
talks about the deposed Ethiopian leader being shielded by Mugabe.

Douglas
Farah: There are some efforts to get at the money of dictators, but they are
underfunded, not a priority and rely greatly on international cooperation. The
U.S. is not the only country that ignores Africa. most of Europe does too,
except to protect direct national investments. If France and Belgium and others
are not willing to go after the money, it will not work and does not work.

Beyond the fact that the journalist barely answered the question - his responses lacked depth throughout - the question itself illustrates how MSM audiences have been trained to view African leaders: Dictators and looters with cronies, off-shore accounts, and regional allies who protect them. Now, tell me which world leaders this DOESN'T describe? None by my count, but when it comes to Africa journalists and audiences practically refuse to look beyond said leader.

More from the original article:

...one of Africa's most astonishing stories of failure--Robert Mugabe of
Zimbabwe. In recent years Mugabe, who took office in 1980 as a national hero,
has gradually strangled his nation's political life and economy. He now controls
the closest thing the region has to the Disneyland for terrorists and
transnational criminal groups that Taylor created in Liberia.

I realize Mr. Farah was pressed for space, but can we at least get some examples of this strangle-hold (they're not too hard to come up with)? Also, what about the 'transnational terrorists' Mugabe intercepted on their way to incite a coup in Equatorial Guinea? I hate defending the guy, but if journalists would challenge themselves and their readers to explore the politics and array of decisions made by these tyrants, then we'd have a better chance at ending their tyrrany.

Under Mugabe's despotic rule, Zimbabwe, long a net exporter of food with a
vital economy and functional health and educational facilities, teeters on the
edge of starvation. The nation has one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates
in the world.

This doesn’t get deep enough into the issue and is symbolic of MSM media’s approach to Africa: Just mention despots, starvation, and HIV/Aids and the reader will know what you mean when you say "Africa." Rather than disecting a ruler’s decisions and the complex factors that lead to corruption and despotism we simply rule that Africa’s problems all come down to their tyrranical leaders. Is this an improvement over those who trace all of Africa’s problems to colonialism (and are highly condemned for doing so)?

A forum at Wits University, where I worked earlier in the trip in Jo'burg, recently brought former African leaders together to discuss issues of corruption and leadership on the continent. While clearly more progressive than the above write-offs, which basically discourage discussion, the article on the forum is still packed with quotes to illustrate the same laziness I cite above:

The pointed questions included a query from the moderator to former Kenyan
leader Daniel arap Moi. "Mr Moi, corruption, Kenya -- any regrets?" he asked, to
the cheers of the audience. After asking for the question to be repeated,
drawing chuckles from the crowd, Moi responded, "Of course corruption is a
deadly thing that has destroyed many nations."

The unwillingness of journalists to fully disect the problems perpetrated and faced by African leaders is a direct cause of the above ridiculousness with Moi. The question assumes the "Africa=Corruption" rhetoric perpetrated by the MSM to be dogma and lacks real depth to the point that it's easy for Moi to avoid. Meanwhile, both Moi and the audience are able to see corruption in Africa as some kind of joke, something that can't be helped, and surely something that can not be solved.

As I said in the Zimbabwe posts, I despise a great deal of what Mugabe has done in the country and believe there is a case to bring him up on charges in an international court. However, this recent trip to Zim. opened my eyes to the vast contours of his campaign (for worse and not-so-worse) there and to the complex politics that created him. Additionally, I came to see that replacing him with a bumbling opposition that many citizens don't trust wouldn't solve Zimbabwe's problems and would probably make them worse. Further, how will the international community justify to Zimbabweans and Africans in general Robert Mugabe on trial for crimes against humanity while Ian Smith (the former dictator of Rhodesia) sips gin n' tonics on his farm in Gweru?

The MSM would have us believe that corruption, human rights violations, and crumbling economies in Africa are almost entirely the result of maniacal leadership and wants to convince us that deposing said leader and placing them on trial ought to do the trick. Many of these nations are currently experiencing a second or third generation of despotic rule - clearly it's not this easy, so let's figure out why.

When It Rains

The rains have finally arrived in East Africa and thus for my trip as well. The ‘monsoons’ (no equivalent label in this region) begin in November in Africa south of the equator, but start a little later as you move north. So essentially, I’m following the rains north. I was aware of this from the beginning, and did my best not to take for granted the brilliant weather I had in South Africa and Botswana (which were at the tail-end of their rainy season while I was there), knowing that I would be approaching the rains north of Zimbabwe.

The clear weather on that otherwise hectic bus ride across Zambia and Tanzania was apparently a fluke. Even on my first morning in Dar, the sun was unobstructed and it was painfully hot. It started raining that afternoon though and I can count the number of times it has stopped since. The heat, however, did not let up in Dar and the short, grey periods between rains felt like a steam burn over boiling water.

I didn’t mind so much being cooped up in Dar though, with wireless access at the house and a good chance to catch up on internet dependent business. When I did venture into the city it was through streets that were sometimes beyond ankle-deep. The minibus was more of a hover-craft, with the tires completely submerged on some streets. All pretty routine here though, and the rains were late, so government concerns have been eased by the absolute dumping Tanzania is getting this month.

Probably should have stayed out of Dar a little more in fact: like I said, the place is very seedy with plenty of tricksters and thieves about. Combating robberies was beginning to feel like a game to me at this point though, and I felt confident in my abilities to identify and avoid them. Until, that is, I apparently underwent a temporary lobotomy and decided it was a good idea to get in a car with some guys I hardly knew…when we started to veer away from our destination down a dark street I knew I was in trouble, and my ‘rafiki’ (friend) in front turned around and said: ‘Ok, here’s the thing, we’re not good people…we are mafia.’ Anyway, they took my money and my phone (could have been much worse) and then the ‘mafia’ offered to give me a ride home. I said I’d rather just take my chances on the street and came away unscathed. Even got the license plate number, reported it, but I think the thieves got me pretty good in that game…

Other than that, a very uneventful week in Dar es Salam, and have now arrived in Arusha, Tanzania and enjoying a new abode thanks to my friend Ganga, who has been living and working here for the last four months. I was last in Arusha in December of 2001, at the height of what was apparently a very dry period, and I could hardly recognize the place now as it was more like a bus ride through the jungle to get here.

Next bus is Wednesday to Kampala, Uganda. Plan to lay low here until then; enjoying cooking meals with the folks here and just hangin-out (I realized I hadn’t talked to an American for about a month before Dar, kind of nice). Going to visit the UN-Rwanda tribunal tomorrow though.

In 10th Gear

I’m only two-thirds of the way through this journey, but I think the trip from Harare to Dar es Salam will be hard for the blog bus to top.

‘Executive’ bus line is apparently the only company left making this trip (I’m sure fuel prices and border hassles are an issue), which is really the only consolation you have for suffering through their ‘services.’ Their buses, each decked-out with a different soccer/corporate sponsorship (?) theme, are mutant experiments in transportation apparently because the body was mistakenly made too narrow and the engine has 10 gears and is designed for an eighteen-wheeler (seriously, the driver told me all of this and referred to them as ‘factory rejects’). So, the bus is only really comfortable at about 70 miles an hour – ideal for modern freeways, insane for the deteriorating conduits of this trip – with no shocks of course. Taking off from Harare and streaking across the Shona plateau was quite spectacular though. The stars were crystal in the wide-open sky and we were going so fast that they were literally rising in the north.

Don’t worry, we would more than make up for such expedience.

A stop for beer and food at midnight: the drivers and conductors have restaurants all over the route that give them free meals for stopping and forcing their customers to loiter.

Countless road blocks: the only feasible way for Southern Africa to 'patrol' the roads. We stopped at dozens and one of the conductors told me he was paying 10 - 20,000 Kwatcha ($4 - $7 U.S.D.) per stop in Zambia as a bribe. I recall being woken-up at one point to an officer coming onto the bus yelling "you have nine conductors, NINE conductors..." then shutting-up just as suddenly before we were on our way.

A rest at the border: we arrived at each border around 3 am and would ‘sleep’ on the bus until it opened at 7.

A stop in Lusaka: According to the conductor, it wouldn’t be fair to the customers to drive during the blistering Zambian day – I suspect it has much more to do with the bus overheating – so we were allowed 6 hours in the capital to, well, basically people just hang-out around the bus station, which is also ideal for the drivers because they’re involved in a great deal of commerce (currency, drugs, charcoal transport…) on this trip, but I managed to wander around Lusaka with a guy I met on the bus. There happened to be some kind of relay marathon going on too, so we followed its course through the city, which was interesting. Caught the Arsenal v. Tottenham match too – ended up running back across the city ourselves to make it to the station on time.

Back on the road streaking through the Zambian night, struggling to sleep with the wind blowing in my face because the window by my side won’t fully close (seriously, all this bus was missing was a screaming baby), then another rest at the border, another sunrise as we cross into Tanzania.

Southern Tanzania is stunning. I was lucky to catch it at the tail-end of the rains right now and everything glowed a deep green. We descended from the border and cut across the Rift Valley, followed by a steady climb up twisting roads – air-breaks and low-gears of our eighteen-wheeler were not pleasing to passengers or engine. Beautiful views and the temperatures were relatively low , however one passenger needed an emergency dose of Cypro; feel sorry for that guy…

I’m probably bitching a little too much; the guys who run the show at Executive really did make this great. Being the only bus, there are many repeat customers so everyone on the bus seemed to know each other despite half a dozen languages and twice as many nationalities. We even forgave the driver’s death-wish after a while, with one man nodding and saying on every break neck turn: “He knows his bus, he knows his bus,” and the rest of us consenting quietly. The conductors made the border crossings relatively painless, despite the fact that there was no semblance of organization on the part of the state officers there. By the way, the Zim./Zambia border is teeming with crooks and cons. This was blatant to me, so I didn’t exchange money there, luckily had about $5 worth that I traded with a Canadian in SA. At the next border though, I needed to exchange, so I asked an immigration officer where the Forex. was and he pointed to the herd of youngsters lurking outside the window and said “those boys will change money with you.” Turns out I didn’t get a bad deal, but that was funny.

More thieves at the Dar bus stop (don’t expect many pictures here), literally circling me just before my taxi arrived to deliver me safely to an amazing apartment owned by my new friend Justine (thanks Templefro). A beautiful place on the Ocean just north of Dar with a balcony and view of the Dhows bobbing in the bay. The toll for it: 52 hours, 3 countries, 1 Cypro, and zero sleep. Completely worth it, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Executive for your next bus trip from Harare to Dar.

Clearing Some Things Up

In Dar es Salam covered in sweat and mosquitos, but steps from the beach so it's cool. More on that and my 52 hour bus ride to get here later.

Want to attempt to clear-up my Reflections On Zimbabwe post, which didn't come out like I wanted it to. Well, I think it started right, as I hint at how confused I was about everything, but it didn't really end that way. Basically, I wanted to say that the place is a chaotic mess and you feel further away from the truth about what's going on and what to do about it when you're inside the chaos. The only things I am sure of are that 1. Zimbabwe will be better off in the long-run thanks to land redistribution 2. The MDC is not offering viable leadership to a country so desperately in need of it. Below is an email exchange between my father and I that will shed more light. The old man first:

The press still points to widespread food shortages particularly in the
rural areas. CARE says there isn't food in the rural areas, and the lack of fuel makes it impossible to move available food from the urban areas. Face it the country doesn't have hard currency to buy seed,fertilizer, oil, etc. So why do things look good to you? The role of the dictator is to deflect the opposition by creating "the bad guys." Dictator rule #2 is to make the populated centers happy by providing as
much material stuff as possible so the discontented will be quiet. Remember the rural people are going to follow him anyway...the opposition is centered in the urban areas. Dictator economic rule #1 is to keep inflating the currency so everyone feels richer, more money moves, and only the rich who try to buy dollars to protect their money suffer. Think how do I get enough currency in Zim to pay tuition for my kid who is going to SU. I see a pattern similar to every Latin dictator in the last 60 years. Middle Eastern dictators have survived because they can spread oil dollars which they control. Though not a dictator look at what Chavez is capable of doing in Venezuela...control the society and spread the petro money as appropriate. On the surface, things are probably not as good as they appear to you. This is a
controlled and manipulated political society. You see exactly the image that the government is trying to sell the population. They are succeeding. Historically, the currency becomes the issue that finally brings down the government. No one will invest hard currency under these conditions. So all you are doing is printing more money to keep everyone happy. Inflating the currency is a due bill which works its
way down from the top of the society. As more people have to face this due bill you bring the political opposition into the streets. We would like to think people are in the streets to bring democracy to the land; no, it was the money.

Stat I just found. USAID says Zim will need 1.4 million tons of maize this year which will cost $350 million US. Only a couple of oil wells will help this inflated currency.

And me:

Ok, Re-reading that blog post, it's really poor. I looked at all the same 'hunger stats' you did, and mentioned them to people (as you assume, middle-upper-class-urban. Honestly, among the lower classes I talked to, the language barrier was too great and I couldn't get that far - should have been a disclaimer in the blog post) who basically question their validity or say that it's because of sanctions or say that it will be better than expected this year because of all the
rain. The place is surreal because no one believes anything.

I suspect you're right about food/money distribution and its intent to please the influencial minority. Couple things: opposition is centered in the urban areas, but also in the Ndebele (minority ethnic group) areas (both urban and rural). Harare (mostly Shona) is an opposition stronghold, but I see a lot of efforts to please these folks now. Land isn't just going to military cronies, it's also going to the urban middle-class (perhaps cronies too). There are also rumours that food is being diverted from Ndebele regions (zim. operates on regionally centralized graineries), though not necessarily at Mugabe's directive, there are so many middle-men and such a huge black market that economic pressures are incentivising cons to divert grain. This all speaks to your point, but I guess what surprised me is that all this didn't come out to the work of a dictator.

Mugabe seems like such a reactionary and pawn to me now. The war vets were a powerful force in the late 90s, and he pacified them as much as he could. It wasn't until Britain got involved that he then said 'hey, I though you stopped telling me what to do along time ago.' Hence the vitriolic, diplomatic nightmare we have now. As things stand now, he's making a lot of efforts to please opposition constituents like the
working class through (at least rhetorical) commitments to developing manufacturing sector and the landed elite through tourism. I'm not
saying there's no case to bring this guy up on crimes against humanity
though.

My main point, which I don't think came across clearly enough in the blog, is that only ZANU-PF can bring Zim. through this time. Note: not Mugabe. My reasoning for getting Mugabe out is probably different than that of most though: not because he might be a dictator, because he's a liability. Get someone in there who can inspire investment, without which, like you say, will spell the end.

Those constituents who Mugabe has already embraced completely distrust MDC. And the malcontent, politically nonplussed lower-middle class seemed to have little faith in them, but do want leadership change in ZANU-PF. Furthermore, many see the MDC as being co-opted by whites and/or certain Ndebele factions who don't share their interests. The biggest threat to Zimbabwe is the lack of leadership.

People are concerned about the lack of fertilizer and seed. I hope that there are enough clear heads in ZANU-PF to prevent people from starving regardless of their political affiliation. And with a new head on this beast, I hope the world will stop seeing Zim. as a beast and will see all this potential. So many in the west who complain of 'donor fatigue' (hard work, right?) are now turning to a boot-strap
prescription for Africa. Well, Zimbabwe may be what they get.

If the recovery doesn't happen soon, the currency will bring them down. On the bus through Zambia and Tanzania, Zimbabweans and non were
constantly discussing Zim currency. If that doesn't change, the Reserve Bank minister should be brought up on charges too.

No oil wells to help Zim though (?)....but they are starting some mining projects in the south. Also, I'm not sure what money Mugabe is spreading to urbanites. If anything, I see these people getting by (some thriving) on their own ingenuity and spirit. This is also what I see getting Zim. through this time, if it gets can be supplemented by some inspirational leadership. Usually that equation should be
reversed, but that's the best you can hope for at this oint.

Reflections On Zimbabwe

Wrapping up my time in Zimbabwe now, and back to the road. The road’s not even fucking around this time: 3 day bus ride to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. That includes a 7-hour lay-over in Lusaka, Zambia, and, I’m predicting, 3 hours at each border. Trying not to think about that right now…

Probably couldn’t have picked a better week to be in Zimbabwe, just ask Robert Mugabe: Independence Day was Tuesday, no fuel shortages, grocery stores stocked, great weather that included the last rains of a very wet season, and general alcohol-induced jubilation felt by all (in Harare at least). Of course, this is just the face of it, and beneath each of these features is a contradiction and a conflict. At the same time, I’m not here to participate in typical Western Robert Mugabe bashing, because even the contradictions have caveats here and the landscape of Zimbabwe, which I think I’ve seen a great deal of in only 9 days, is an extremely confounding space.

I lived in Harare for six months in 2000 and things then seemed pretty clear: change is in the air, the youth will turn this country around, Mugabe will be out in a year. Supporting the MDC was like Miles Davis, too cool to argue with, and there was little to prove that ZANU-PF’s campaign was progressive, or even sane for that matter. This trip? As confused as I am about this place, I’m sure the MDC has nothing better to offer.

I’ve been a parasite for opinion this week, siphoning perspective from anyone who could speak English and reading everything I could. The simple question of “how are things?” elicits a few predictable responses: “oh, we are surviving;” “ah, Zimbabwe is struggling right now;” “mmm, the price of bread is 100,000 dollars!” All true. You dig a little deeper and people are split as to why they’re suffering: “Our government is crazy;” or “Our government has a plan.” For me, the latter is the biggest discernable change in six years. Many who are saying that truly believe it too, while for some it’s just wishful thinking because they have absolutely no faith in the opposition at this point.

Meanwhile, chatter in the blogosphere of mass-protests and armed-conflict between parties has surfaced. According to MDC mouthpieces, their support is at an all-time high and the tide on the street is about to turn against Mugabe. I honestly don’t see it. And today, I hope it’s not true as well.

Many here are beginning to see that the government has laid the ground work for real independence and wealth for Zimbabweans. Potential hazards include continued economic short-falls; mass-corruption; and the allure of new neo-colonialists, but many here believe (and I share the sentiment) that the course has been set and a new Zimbabwe is possible without the work of the MDC or whites (and they are synonymous to some degree at this point).

I don’t mean to paint ZANU-PF as revolutionaries here. If anything, they have been reactionaries acting to please influential, and at times violent, constituencies in the face of opposition from the MDC. They acted to secure the voting blocks of the peasants, the military, intellectuals from the generation that gained independence, and even the urban middle-class who are being granted new land in growing numbers. This is progress and democracy at work, and I see it continuing as recent policy maneuvers by the administration have taken aim at the urban working-class, entrepreneurs, and the tourism industry through initiatives that aim to improve their respective economic sectors.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t severe pain amongst this progress. The crises around inflation, parallel markets, exorbitant prices, and food shortages are extreme. Harare is in real danger of becoming a city of gangsters driven by cravings for for-ex., lost confidence in banks, a black market on an unimaginable scale, and the political corruption that inevitably results from such circumstances. Strangely enough though, living here is like living on Wall Street. I’ve never encountered so many average citizens with such an in-depth knowledge of local economics, not to mention such skilled algebraists who have to deal with complex exchange rates and prices in the millions and billions on a daily basis.

All of this has a huge impact on productivity too. Queues at ATMs are a constant as they can’t re-fill the cash fast enough to keep up with the average withdrawal of around 2 million dollars. Also, Standard Chartered Bank is apparently the only local institution willing to keep up with this insanity, so only merchants who bank with them are able to provide credit card service to customers and SC’s ATMs are the only ones that function for many citizens (definitely true for foreign citizens). Lines at grocery stores are also miles long due to the fact that the customer must count out currency in the millions, then the cashier does the same, and everyone is careful to watch for scams on both ends. Forex. Is being accepted straight away by more and more places, which is dangerous for the economy and, currently, illegal. Also of note: no one tips anymore, I’m not sure how waiters are making any money.

This all makes for an urban economy that is hectic at best: a big soccer match on national TV on a holiday Monday apparently drove the price of beer up by 25% for the morning rush at the bottle stores. However, money is definitely flowing, especially at the top, and this is keeping the place afloat for now. I expected to see all the familiar shops and restaurants shut, but like the people, they survive.

I had also expected to see a people miserably discontent, a press not publishing their opinions, and a government ignoring them. While the government does manage to push their propaganda through The Herald (state-sponsored print) and Ztv, there are plenty of alternative opinions on offer even with the absence of the Daily News. The Financial Gazette, The Mirror, The Independent, and countless imports like The Zimbabwean, The Mail & Guardian, BBC, and CNN make up the array of news sources available to many people. While more press-freedom does need to be granted here, it is not the crisis I expected. The real problem is journalists from both sides who don’t do their job. Those with a pro-government slant need to be watch dogs for that government and scrutinize corruption for example. Further, the government’s critics should be just that, and in a constructive nature that acknowledges revolutionary attempts by this administration to make change for Zimbabweans, rather than simply being a mouthpiece for the MDC and the West.

The contradictions in what I received from my press sources abroad and what I see on the ground here have been really shocking as well – who would have thought there are still white people here? Trust me, these people are filthy rich, they’ve moved to the cities and are doing just fine - I don’t mean to say that things aren’t bad here, but the sense of progress in the air and the foundation for potential achievement that I describe is not being conveyed by anyone. It amazes me that the American Left lauds so-called revolutionary efforts in Venezuela and Bolivia while continuing to vilify Mugabe. While I see plenty of villainy here, I also see a great deal that deserves applause, or at least tourist dollars and NGO money like they’re seeing in Latin America.

My hope for Zimbabwe in 2000 was literally youthful and basically ignorant. The current government has been able to negotiate an extremely complex political landscape on a path towards real independence. However, many of their maneuvers along the way have been ill-conceived despite having the nation’s long-term interests in mind. It’s a long path however, and I truly believe there are great things in Zimbabwe’s future thanks to what has been set-up and in a sense, torn-down (not alluding to ZANU-PF’s urban clean-up effort here, which is the height of their ill-conceptions), in the last six years. This is slow, painful progress. You can see an economy ready to take off though, and not just because it has no other direction to go.

Previously, the wealth of Zimbabwe flowered from white farms rooted in black land. Farmers and government alike are now climbing the learning-curve of land redistribution and that wealth will return with new ownership and when it does, there will be an extremely diversified economy functioning below it. I would encourage any foreign investor to bet on Zimbabwe, and I can now do so in good faith that that money will go to Zimbabweans.

So, the foundation is set and I believe it will be fairly easy to build on, actually. However, Zimbabweans must vigilantly guard against corruption. Like I’ve said, corruption in the form of the black market has kept this economy afloat in a sense, but this is obviously dangerous. There are signs that the president in waiting, Joyce Mujuru (c’mon supposedly-progressive-northerners, a woman), is eager to prevent higher level corruption – she’s currently touring re-distributed farms and chiding exploitation therein by government officials. However, efforts against corruption must be full-scale and focused on the aging statesmen who survive on skimmed dollars and not on transparency with their constituents and this vigilance must extend to the streets of Harare where I see a real danger of high-level organized crime developing. Further, freedoms of speech and press must be secured for all by the next president and issues surrounding affordable urban housing must be addressed.

I don’t see the MDC offering better leadership on the path I’ve described and people here definitely don’t have faith that the MDC wouldn’t dabble in corruption. Maybe I did just happen to be here during a perfect week for Robert Mugabe and don’t see the fomentations of coming upheaval on the streets, but there doesn’t seem to be the same support for the MDC today that there was six years ago. And even considering what I’ve seen, I still think that Mugabe needs to step down. There need not be a transitional government. Ms. Mujuru should take over and elections will proceed in 2010 while economic progress will continue and ZANU-PF’s path will be followed. The face of Zimbabwe must attract foreign investment. Mugabe has been the anti-diplomat. He has been a guerilla and an intellectual and achieved great things for Zimbabwe as a result, but unfortunately neither of those faces works for the North. All the positives from Zimbabwe must be conveyed to the rest of the world and soon.

I realize that Mugabe’s potential exit is complicated by the fact that he could face international prosecution for crimes against humanity. For me, the prospect of this is just as confounding as my last week in Zim. It will all be tackled though, and in the meantime I, like the people I met this week, can at least have real hope for the future of Zimbabwe.

Back To Buses

From a final, serene sunrise and one last dose of herbal tea, to the sweat of a long day on the road to Harare. Terry and I got a bus out of Gweru that made for one of my most frightening rides on public transportation yet. The vehicle’s shocks were non-existent and it felt like the body of the car and the passengers therein were lurching to catch up to the wheels on every break-neck curve and bump. My solace was that we’d get to Harare early, but unfortunately we were stopped at 4 traffic blockades within the first hour and further delays were made from the driver’s negotiations with the police over assorted possible violations. After killing only 100 or so of the 260 km trip, the driver notified us that he decided he wasn’t going to go all the way to Harare and that we’d have to transfer buses.

Our new transport faced similar harassment from the police before we could even leave the petrol station and its sluggish pace over the empty roads (it’s the middle of a big holiday weekend) made me miss the death-defying original ride. Day’s log: door-to-door; 260 km; 8 hours; Harare in one piece.

In the capital, Terry and I hang-out with an array of his friends and relatives at bars, Jazz Clubs, and family braais. Getting to see tons of live music and Terry, who is a trumpet player himself, gets us backstage at every club.

I spent Monday afternoon visiting the Kabade’s, the family who hosted me for my ‘fall 2000’ semester abroad. We had lost touch shortly after that (according to the family, their letters were being returned after September 11th) and the blitz of bad news on Zim. in the states had convinced me that they had probably had to move out of their peaceful, middle-class neighborhood. But I looked them up in the phone book on Saturday, and sure enough, they were safe and sound at 13 Hurn Close.

“Hello stranger,” Hope said when I called.

Being back in the house and seeing these wonderful people was truly surreal. The boys, who were ages ten and six then, are almost as tall as me and have gone from rambunctious kids to reclusive teenagers. Also, there is a new Kabade, Carl (picture-page has some great shots of him and the whole family), who is 19 months old and is learning to walk, talk, and be generally destructive.

The Kabades tell me times are very tough and are skeptical that they will get better anytime soon. They describe a steady economic decline over the last 4 years and the word ‘survival’ comes up often. And this is just what most Zimbabweans in Harare are doing, and while economic sustainability and wealth accumulation are definitely a struggle, most middle to upper-class Zimbabweans are achieving both.

On the face of it, Harare is Harare. Making the rounds through the shops; on the minibuses; and in the bars, it looks and feels like the same city I studied in 6 years ago. In the North, we imagine an economic depression to be an absolute death knell for all things fun and routine within city life. Of course, a fledgling economy affects people disproportionately and there is still plenty of money floating around at the top and its transferring hands with such frequency that urban establishments manage to survive. Don’t get me wrong, this place is in a state of econo-chaos, but I could easily take you on a tour of the city and introduce you to the right people and you would be convinced otherwise.

I’m on no such tour though, and there are plenty of contours to this chaos, some you’d expect but most are a shock, and in shocking ways. Yeah, it’s unpredictable. As a re-arrivant though; as a former student of this place; as a general know-it-all; I assumed I couldn’t be shocked here, but I must say my eyes have been opened. In another day or so I’ll be able to put it into words.

The Not-So-Quiet American

[Note: 4 new posts today; trying to catch up. Might want to start down at the African Success Story post and work up so that these all make sense]

My days with Terry are routine like no other. We wake when it gets too hot to sleep, which is considerably earlier than the rest of the world; we stumble around, barely able to talk, and make assorted concoctions of teas; we experiment with aroma therapies, taking advantage of Pat and Tony’s vast herb garden, in an attempt to get over our hangovers; by 11am we’re just about ready to eat; we begin cooking with the herbs, the local vegetables, the garden beans, the ranchers’ meats; by 2 we’ve eaten a meal that’s well worth waiting for, had a glass of white wine, and have our minds and stomachs functioning on the highest levels, stimulated by rosemary, fennel, and red meat. We walk around their property, admiring the fruit trees and landscaping and enjoying a cigarette on the veranda. By mid-afternoon it’s time for town, a town like no other.

Gweru in 2006 is something out of a Graham Greene novel. The characters – political, religious, and generally seedy – contribute to a fabric that can never be fully comprehended. Terry and I exchange money on street corners, browse the variety of vehicles for sale, and wander in and out of local bars. My favorite, The Midlands Hotel, is owned by a former mayor of Gweru who has a photographic essay that depicts his political falling out with his former partner Robert Mugabe, exemplified by the repeated photos of his bare-beaten-ass and gun-shot wounds in his leg. Inside his bar, the Mayor, who sits in a wheel chair with a right-hand man serving him drinks, orchestrates an eclectic cast of political characters: army men, students, local professionals, outsiders like Terry and I, all of whom are convinced the other is a political operative. I’ve never seen a bar where more people pop there heads in every ten minutes and leave immediately, just checking out the scene.

Today, the talk of the scene is a new CD playing, clearly produced by the MDC (the opposition party in Zimbabwe), a Chimurenga group (traditional Zimbabwean music) that is singing songs blatantly (and courageously) against the government and the recent “clean-up” in the Harare slums. As the music stimulates political conversation, I learn that this bar is a rare MDC hang-out in Zimbabwe’s air force town. The CD was delivered by a prominent MDC member, Ray Bennett, I am told. Assuming he’s Zimbabwean, I joke that I’m his son. The entire bar goes silent and the students near by edge up to me: “are you serious?” I’m not, but it urns out Ray Bennett’s white and everyone’s convinced I’m his son. Meanwhile, Terry is enjoying our pho-status as intelligence officers and continues to play this up with military guys in the bar who already expect just as much anyway.

We return home early to left-overs and moonlit walks with friends, talking politics and history – always with a slight whisper (everyone’s convinced that they can be heard from the air force base down the road). Like I said, it’s a beautiful estate and we live up our retreat and recovery before we head to Harare for the life of the capital. I expect nothing less than a place only Graham Greene could create.

Are You A Believer?

Another long day of travel from Francistown, Botswana to Gweru, Zimbabwe. Kaya tells me it’s better to just hitchhike across the border by taking advantage of one of the private cars delivering Zimbabweans and the goods they purchased in Botswana on a routine trip back to Zim. With so many shortages and unpredictable prices in Zim, this is apparently cheaper for most.

I woke early in order to get some money from the bank and some groceries. The usual unimaginable obstacles make this a longer process than it should (at least this time a horrified manager helped me make my transaction after one of her tellers blew me off, telling me I was out of luck) and I don’t get to the hitchhiking spot till around 9:30. I finally get a lift after an hour and a half in the blazing sun. It took me a little while to learn the sign-language of the road: I learned four different signs that signified respective destinations, mine was an outstretched arm with a wave of the wrist and hand as if your face-down palm was flowing over waves of water to signify that I wanted to go over the border. I looked pretty ridiculous.

Was well worth hitching though; I got a ride with a man and his daughter - Mr. Dube and Lindwe; great conversation, very comfortable and his resident status in Botswana helped me skip some queues at the border, which still proved to be nearly a two-hour process.

Mr. Dube moved to Botswana a few years ago for a teaching position in the Kalagadi region (Kalahari Dessert…) near the SA border. The pay there was better than Zim. and of course the currency is stable. Just how unstable is inflation in Zim? At the border I exchanged 100 Batswana Pulas; about $17. I got a horrible rate, but this still yielded over a million Zim, most of this in 50,000 dollar notes. However, some of my ‘small’ change was in 20s and 50s. When I began my studies in Zim., this 50 Zim. Dollar note was about equal to US $1, and had a nice nostalgic value in mind as well, though I hadn’t really even begun to comprehend how little it was worth at this point, back to that later.

The Dube’s and I sped from the border to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, and Mr. Dube, who’s quite the naturalist (he was even smuggling seeds from Botswana), described the vegetation, geography and agriculture of the region between his queries about the same topics in North America.

Finally arriving in Bulawayo, where I began the hitchhiking game again; finishing-off the last 160 Km of the journey to Gweru. This time I didn’t even raise an arm (and definitely not a thumb, this digit isn’t even used in the game here) and a woman was pulling over pointing at me saying “you.”

This was Dorothy, on her way from Bulawayo to Mazoe, a citrus-town near Harare. I was one of two hitchhikers and we all had a nice time drinking soda and eating Biltong (beef jerky). Then the inevitable question from Dorothy: “Andrew, do you attend church?” Most folks in Zimbabwe love them some Christianity. Non-believers are hard to come by and other religious groups are all but ostracized.

“Actually, I went to Church a few weeks ago,” I say – very true…joined Kele and Asante…good times…everyone was freaked out when I refused communion though.

“And are you a believer?” She asks immediately.

“No, I must say, I’m not.” Here we go…

“And what will you say when you get to the gates of heaven and The Lord asks you what you believe in?”

I think for a second, thinking about lying actually and telling her I’d break down at that point and am reminded of the book I just read, Elizabeth Costello by JM Coetzee, in which the last chapter is about just such a circumstance for a non-believer (great book by the way), but: “I’d tell the Lord that I believe in the inherent good within the human spirit that lifts our kind above violence and evil and exists to potentially help us achieve what I believe is great and divine in its own rite.”

“That’s nice,” Dorothy replies, “but you know what the Lord will say? He will say ‘I don’t know you, go to hell.’”

I think I fell asleep shortly after this, and luckily woke up in Gweru and not Mazoe, where Dorothy dropped me on the side of the road, carefully counted her money and wished that God would be with me on my journey…and gave a nice chuckle after that.

I must say though, it’s great to be back in Zimbabwe. The people are friendly, helpful, and still have a spark about them that gave Zim an intangible glow to it the last time I was here. Surprisingly, there is an air of progress too…

I meet Terry at a bar in Gweru and as I expected, the drinking begins – me on a completely empty stomach, Terry not caring. Terry is my former professor’s partner, and he splits his time between their homes in Gweru, Harare, and Swaziland, where I saw both of them last at the end of my time in South Africa.

Still trying to make sense of currency values here. The exchange rate I got at the border is less than half of what I could get on the street, so from here on out Terry is in charge of converting my Botswana and US currency. When he sees the Z$50 bill that aroused such nastalgia for me earlier, he’s astonished: “man, that’s a collectors item.” It’s literally worth less than the paper it’s printed on. The Z$20 bill I got at the border as well is worth about .08 of a US penny. A cab ride here costs 1 Million Zim. Dollars. Everyone carries duffle bags to transport bills, rubber-bands are a constant necessity, and Zimbabweans are very good at counting money. I didn’t know one could be good at this. I’m not.

Anyway, we make our way out of town to the house around 9pm. The plot is overwhelmingly beautiful. Like a long wait for a great meal, I don’t mind once I feast. Likewise, Terry makes some wild-mushroom soup, a special recipe that he says is designed to sober me up, which I needed after all the beers in town. We then begin to smoke some meat and sit under the full moon amongst the fruit trees and gardens in the backyard. This felt like some kind of retreat and recovery, and the wild mushroom soup was just the beginning.

Update

Tuesday morning, my last in Gabs. Back to the packing, the loading, the gear I had grown so accustomed to in South Africa; the routine I was apparently eager to forget. Fully loaded, I made the short walk to the bus rank that I had made dozens of times during my time in Gabs. Walking across and then beside the road, normal traffic nearly running me down, a few people here and there walking as well when one stumbles in front of me holding out a hand. Again, nothing out of the usual, not even when he grabs my arm and starts asking something I can’t understand, really complete strangers will out and grab you and hold your hand while they ask for money. Not this guy: “Give me your phone.” Everything seemed so routine until then that I was a little confused. He kept repeating it and then moved in my path (I had been trying to just continue walking) and said “I have a knife, I stick you with it…give me your phone.” His grip on my wrist tightens a little so I shake free and push him away. I can tell from his face that there is no knife and that this attempted robbery was by no means planned. Just saw a white guy with more money on his back than he’ll see in a year.

I was a little surprised that none of the people around stopped to help though. I was yelling quite loudly for him to get away from me and looked straight in the eyes of an off-duty security guard who didn’t even pause her stride. Anyway, I walked away from this guy safe and sound, and told a few people on the phone and on the bus to Francistown. Now, no one said this, but I can guarantee that every Gaboronian thought to themselves “I bet it was a Zimbabwean.” To be honest, the regional xenophobia has infected me to some degree and I wondered the same thing. Wondered though. I have no idea what this guy’s nationality was, my wonder was due to the fact that with every story of almost any crime in Gabs comes the inevitable, “you know, those Zimbabweans, they’re crazy,” or something to that effect.

Arriving in Francistown, incident-free, only delayed, I met up with my friend Kaya, who is PSI’s lone sales-representative for Botswana’s second city. He is also Zimbabwean. Kaya worked for PSI in Zim. under the same Country Representative who now heads up the Botswana office. PSI and Kaya did quite well in Zimbabwe, with currency and product coming from abroad and programs with a lot of momentum, but inflation eventually got the better of people’s salaries, with consumer prices sometimes increasing as much as 300% overnight, even quarterly salary raises couldn’t keep up. Kaya eventually left and moved with his wife and daughter to Johannesburg.

There were no jobs for PSI in the region, and Kaya, even with his life’s worth of education and experience in sales, could only obtain work as a security guard. Jobs in Jo’burg were plentiful, but Kaya and his wife Wussi, a career teacher, encountered intense discrimination and impenetrable bureaucracy that kept them from obtaining decent-paying work in their respective fields. Kaya kept in contact with PSI and his former boss though, until the position in Francistown opened up and he got the job.

Kaya has been working in Botswana for a month now, Wussi and their daughter moved to join him from Johannesburg a week ago. I sat down with all of them at the end of my long day and they described their recent moves and countless encounters with the xenophobia that has possessed this region. In South Africa, you’re more likely to hear “those Nigerians, they’re crazy,” but no matter where you’re from, Kaya describes, when you get in a cab or a bus, as a black African, and speak English to the driver, they don’t start driving, they say “where are you from?”

It’s not much better in Botswana. Wussi is skeptical she’ll find work and Kaya has found it very difficult to do business with Batswana as a salesman in a close-knit town where he’s already known as that Zimbabwean from PSI. Both of them have been shocked to see how immigrants are treated in their two host countries.

“I never knew that people could be stopped on the street and asked for I.D. Where’s your I.D., I got that all the time, even here in Botswana,” Kaya says. He feels betrayed as well because Zimbabwe was just such a destination for regional immigrants in the 80s. Wussi described her schools being populated by students and teachers from all over Africa and never remembers anyone asking for I.D.

They are doing their best to settle into Francistown. I can attest that a foreigner’s existence in Botswana is a difficult one, but I can’t imagine how unaccommodating this place is for them. Like I said before, the vitriol of the xenophobia here is contagious, and Kaya even says that Botswana will get what’s coming to them if they don’t treat immigrants better. This is, bluntly, what I had in mind in the previous post on immigration issues, and hearing Kaya and Wussi has reaffirmed what I said in that post, but has also made me wonder what kind of lasting effects this will all have on Southern Africa. It’s convenient for both Governments in Pretoria and Gaborone to have a fall-guy for everything, so I don’t see them rushing to solve these problems through policy or legislation anytime soon.

An African Success Story

[Note: I wrote this post about two weeks ago now, but figure it goes best here as a 'Reflections On Botswana' post. I'm in Harare, Zimbabwe now, haven't had access to internet for a bit, but will be updating posts on what I've been up to the last week]

Most Northerners in Botswana, especially travelers, have probably encountered the above 4 words as a description of this nation. Botswana is considered an example of exceptional development, where wealth has been relatively well-distributed and political stability has been assured. Beyond the obvious problems implicit in this statement and foreign definitions of African success, there are many contradictions that this view of Botswana brings to light.

I’ve described Gaborone in a previous post as a ‘suburb without a city’ and I have observed many contradictions in its development that lead to fragmentation of community here and a general parochial life-style that I haven’t always enjoyed. [Note: this foreigner is defining development and community, among other terms, here, but understand that these are observations, not judgments, and I am by no means using these observations to guide regional economic policy through ignorance of the glaring problems within this “success story,” which is exactly what Northern economic and development institutions are doing.] Some other oxy-moronical descriptions I’ve come up with for the way Gabs functions: Punctuality with out Urgency; Industry with out Efficiency; Discipline with out Productivity. These are generalizations based on my experience working and living here, and are an attempt to describe the frustrations that someone coming from the U.S. (probably other nations too) would experience. In the same vein: there is little in the way of a middle-class, as an American would recognize it at least, in Gabs. The local manufacturing sector is weak, family business is practically non-existent, and nearly all consumer goods are imported. Either that or the consumers are exported, as the weekend trip to South Africa for shopping, leisure, and even automobile-service is common-place for many Batswana.

The above paragraph is not meant to degrade a great nation. Given these observations, I won’t deny that Botswana is doing well; that the people are relatively content; that the political economy here does appear to be, in fact, stable. However, these observed contradictions aren’t directed at Botswana, necessarily, but at ‘An African Success Story.’ Having heard the country described in this light, I expected to see a growing, if not flourishing middle class; self-sustaining local industry; and entrepreneurship or at least the opportunity for it. These are the economic indicators that I would think would impress the ‘development crew’ that is privileged to define African success stories. I see none of this.

There’s no denying that the majority of Botswana’s wealth is mined from below in the form of diamonds, gold, and other minerals. After a month here, I haven’t seen evidence of any other promising economic sectors – even tourist dollars seem to be very localized and aren’t bringing that much wealth to the average Motswana, though there’s no denying tourism hasn’t generated significant government income. Again though, Botswana is still successful. The secret to its success, however, can not be found in the formula recommended by the IMF and World Bank where privatization, a diversified economy, and specific currency regulations are encouraged. Again, Botswana has almost none of this. However, the massive wealth generated from the diamonds has actually been distributed through relatively socialist means, as the government guarantees free health care; free education, even through the University level; and has done an admirable job of delivering electricity, water, and other services to remote areas.

Many people here, Batswana and foreigners, argue that it is this governmental paternalism that results in the contradictions and inefficiencies I’ve observed in the ‘suburb without a city.’ I’m not sure I agree with this, but to elaborate: every foreigner I’ve spoken with here (most Kenyans, Zimbabweans, and Indians – rarely Americans/Europeans) has observed the inefficiencies in the function of everything from a fast food joint to transport infrastructure to government operations in Botswana. A Motswana friend of mine here, who studied in the US, put it best on one of my first nights here: “Batswana lack any sense of urgency.” I’ve since mentioned this to others who are baffled by the ways in which Gabs functions and they have all responded with strong agreement, it really is an excellent description. Like I said, people here are punctual and disciplined and are working long-hours, but what happens - or more specifically, what doesn’t happen - in the course of those hours, is astonishing. Thus, a common claim is that Batswana have been spoiled by their diamond-rich government’s vast social services and aren’t accustomed to independent production.

This does make some sense, but is far too simplistic. Further, it raises the question: what should the government do then, not provide for its people? Again, this takes me back to the Northern definition of an African success story. Botswana has done all it could to succeed and they have done almost nothing that traditional economic development institutions recommend. Just this month they were criticized by the IMF for their currency valuations over the last year, and they basically told the hegemonic institution to shove it (in public at least).
So, despite all the mineral wealth and superb government services, Botswana is just as likely to be a ‘success story gone wrong,’ due to an economy that I can’t see surviving a significant drop in global mineral and jewel prices. (By the way, people here are very weary of the potential of synthetic diamonds or liberal Northerners choosing more socially-conscious jewels for their wedding rings. Oh, and there’s a new pop-song, Diamonds Are Forever (“For evah, evah?” – Maybe this isn’t new or even popular in the states? – Asante just asked if I have any ‘Pop’ on my ipod: “Um, I’ve got Outkast.”) that plays often on radio here, even as the stock interlude/background music on one station, with no hint of irony.) In fact, if there’s any example Botswana should be used as, its as a prototype for just how hard it is to achieve a stable political economy in a region that has been, and is being, stripped of all of its valuables (in the broadest sense).

Back to the lack of urgency (was that a tangent or is this though?). A much larger factor than, though to some degree related to, paternalism, in breeding inefficiency and lack of personal responsibility (all of which I have observed in the Gaboronian life-style), is the mass socio-geographic transformation of Botswana that is taking place right now. A youthful generation of Batswana, newly minted in the privileged class from their parents success in rural mining towns, is moving into Gaborone. This is one of the fastest growing cities in Africa and the aforementioned group along with regional immigrants are the two demographics responsible for this (I address immigration issues in other posts). Prior to the diamond wind-fall, the families whose children are moving to Gabs were isolationist and far from cosmopolitan. I think this factor is what’s at work when foreigners notice how hard it is to communicate their ideas and conceptions of professionalism and industry to Batswana and how skeptical the people are of foreign conceptions compared to other people in Southern Africa.

I hope its clear that, although this American found functioning in Gaborone to be a cultural challenge, I am by no means trying to degrade its people or claim that Botswana is not successful. What I want to stress is how it is successful actually, and show that these means are in direct contradiction of what is implied by the term ‘African Success Story,’ and to further problematize that term itself. Meanwhile, as global diamond prices fall and fuel prices rise, I see gaping potential pit-falls ahead for Botswana. However, there does seem to be a general awareness here of the dangers of a one-horse-pony (I’ve never written that term…not even sure if it’s a meaningful cliché after having done so…) economy. The government is desperately trying to remedy this, but is not making much of an impact yet. The key to the future success of Gaborone is the youth who are part of the demographic shift I describe above. Despite all the barriers to communities, the arts, entrepreneurs, and general well-being provided by the ‘suburb without a city,’ I think that this generation of new Batswana are gaining the sense of urgency they need in overcoming these dangers (that’s the one-horse variety).