World Watching And Politics

Buffalo Fence & Planet Baobab

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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May 27, 2002
We see the 3000km of 1.5 meter high “Buffalo Fence” along side the road on the way to Okavango Delta in Botswana. It’s actually a series of high-tensile steel wire barriers that run through some of Botswana’s wildest terrain. They were first erected in 1954 to segregate wild buffalo herds from domestic free-range cattle and thwart the spread of foot and mouth disease. However, no one has yet proved that the disease is passed from species to species.

The problem is that the fences not only prevent contact between wild and domestic bovine species but they also prevent other wild animals from migrating to water sources along age-old seasonal routes. While Botswana has set aside large areas for wildlife protection, these areas don’t constitute independent ecosystems. As a result, Botswana”s wildebeest population has declined by 99% over the past decade and all remaining buffalo and zebra are stranded north of the fences.

This story is told in detail in the book “Cry of the Kalahari” by Mark and Delia Owens who spent several years in the central Kalahari and reported seeing tens of thousands of migrating Wildebeest as well as herds of zebra, giraffe and other animals stopped short by the Kuke Fence that stretches along the northern boundary of the central Kalahari Game Reserve. Some became entangled in it, while others died of exhaustion searching for a way around it. The remainder were cut off from their seasonal grazing and watering places in the north and succumbed to thirst and starvation.

The last great tragedy occurred during the drought of 1983 in which wildebeest heading for the Okavango waters were barred by the Kuke Fence. They turned east along the fence towards Lake Xau, only to find the lake already dried up. Thousands died as a result.

The upside of the fence is that it keeps cattle out of the Okavango Delta which is essential if the Delta’s wildlife is to survive. However, the new 80 km long Northern Buffalo Fence north of the Delta has opened a vast expanse of wildlife-rich but as yet unprotected territory to cattle ranching. Safari operators wanted the fence set as far north as possible to protect the seasonally flooded Selinda Spillway; prospective cattle ranchers wanted it set as far south as possible, maximizing new grazing land; and the local people didn’t want it at all because they were concerned it would act as a barrier to them as well as to wildlife. The government sided with the ranchers.

We pass a truck accident-the truck had bounced over a 6 foot open ditch dug out right across the road-the accident must have happened at night-and then another truck hit the first truck and turned over…nearby we noticed a speed limit of 90km per hour…

Veterinary Stop. In 1939 Cattle Lung Disease
(pleuropneumonia) that kills up to 50% of infected animals was iradicated. But it resurfaced in 1995 when it was re-introduced across international borders-probably from Namibia-and quickly spread. The government responded by constructing four veterinary fences around the northwestern corner of the country but the disease was not contained and authorities wound up slaughtering 320,000 head of cattle.

We all have to get out and walk with our shoes through a medicated bath while the truck drives through a pool of the same solution.

At camp the black African woman behind the bar, Tops, was fascinated by the computer when I plugged it in to recharge it. To her delight I showed her how to use it and this is what she wrote:

“Tops i really loved Unice by the night we were at Planet Baobab because she taught me how to use the Computer it was on 27 of may the day of monday 2oo2 i was with KB and
GOSA

welcome Planet Baobab first thing you will find Tops with big
smile on her face as she is trying to use this machine!!!!!

hi tops are you playing nicely with this machine and laughing
while you are doing it. no dear whats the use of laughing whiie still learning? now i have to say something about my colics KT
LULU GRACE TWIST JOHN GOMAN BONES YAPS BEAUTY
and ISAAC

I didn’t correct her spelling. Tops and KB played Botswana dance muusic on the cassette player and danced the Wazoo-Wazoo for us-throwing their hips all over the bar room.

Pioneer Camp in Lusaka

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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We pull into camp outside Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. We listen to CNN…TV for the first time in weeks and hear yet another warning about terrorism in NYC…funny-Josh never mentions anything in his emails…I think maybe no one is paying any attention to the warnings anymore…maybe they are just political ploys to keep the hype going. Then we hear that the Palestinians that were holed up in the Bethlehem church are shipped out to various European countries…we all double over with laughter…why not Siberia we say? Then we hear that Nelson Mandela is scheduled to meet with the President of Malawi.

This night I finally got a full blast hot shower…what a pleasure…

To Lusaka Zambia

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Tues May 21-22, 2002 Long Drive to Lusaka the capitol of Zambia
Up at 5 am again and on the truck by 6:30. Take the whole day just to drive to Lusaka-about 12 hours or 800 km on the “bloody truck” as Janine put it in her diary.

Stopped off in a village in the early afternoon; watched two women under a tree lather up a naked little boy-child about 3 years old with soap and water from a plastic bucket but we are too respectful to take a picture. Whenever the truck stops raggedy kids materialize instantly…seemingly out of nowhere. Waiting for…hoping for a handout. I throw out two little bags of chips…The two biggest ones got them, I tell Rod! He answers with a cynical grin…African Democracy!

Then a black African adult about the age of 40 walked past the truck and yells at us bitterly, “What are you doing here! You are from free countries! You look like prisoners sitting up there! And don’t give the kids anything! You just teach them to be beggars!” I don’t blame him one bit for his bitterness…I want to know about his bitterness…otherwise how am I to know how to act-particularly in regard to my government’s foreign policies.

We see signs for Zambian beer called Mosi…I see a sign “Anti Corruption Commission!” Rod says “yes and there is an anti corruption commission on the anti corruption commission! Another sign…Knowledge is Power Bar and Restaurant…I can go with that!

African Presidential Excess
On the way into Lusaka all the traffic was stopped by uniformed policewomen and then we finally saw the reason for it; the president in an entourage of about a dozen vehicles…including an ambulance! Someone suggested he was probably on his way to the airport. Later in the South African Cape Times we read “Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa was clearly hoping to impress First World lenders when he ordered his ministers and officials to board a 69 seater bus bound for the airport. He was en route to South Africa to attend the World Economic Forum summit. Apparently the presidential motorcade to see the President off at the airport has become rather a drain on resources so in the interests of cost-saving, the Zambian leader has said it will become standard practice for ministers and party officials to bus it to the airport whenever they want to wave him goodbye.”

This is nothing compared to Zimbabwe’s president however. The U.S. is threatening to recall three commercial airliners sold to the country two years ago for nonpayment. It has been reported that Robert Mugabe will commandeer a plane at a moment�s notice so that his wife can go on shopping sprees in Paris-even having the seats removed so there would be space for all the packages. In the future, with international pressure, I hope this phase of Africa’s development is going to go the way of Uganda’s Idi Amin which is OUT!

On the way into town saw a huge billboard that said  “Do not allow people to become perpetually dependent! Do not give alms to beggars!” I think to myself this town is fighting a losing battle. Another signs read “Polite Notice-No Bus Stops.”

I keep losing track of the date…Bob has to remind me to take our Larium for prevention of Malaria on Sundays.

Every time the truck stops Damian from Australia gets out and runs up like a little kid to ask James “Are we there yet” Damian and Melissa sit behind me and I get to talk to them a lot. I like them. Once Damian made a cynical remark and Melissa apologetically said “Isn’t he terrible?” I said, oh no, that is just black humor! It helps us get through life!

Yellow Chicken Camp

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May 20, 2002
Then to Yellow Chicken Campsite and dinner in the dark. The charming camp, in the middle of a huge 40 year-old German farm, is run by a Brit and his wife who was 8 months pregnant. There is a law now that Whites cannot own land but this farmer’s land was grandfathered in because he had owned it for so long.

Soap and towel even…and so clean…and smells so good with candles burning everywhere…and hot water even…this is the nicest camp yet! The girls all have a shower the night we arrive so I decide to wait until morning. On my way I see how two black African guys have to bucket the water up out of the well…then into a barrel a few feet away…then pull it bucket by bucket up into an elevated water reservoir. Then a fire is built in an outside fire burner to heat the water. I stubbornly return to my tent without a shower.

Lessons from an African Bush Camp Operator
Janine and Sarah stayed up and listened to the camp operator who has lived in several countries in Africa over a period of 15 years talk about things he has seen and experienced. He said most people are Christian but most only convert because they are given a bag of maize or a pair of shoes and still continue their own spiritual traditions including witchcraft.

He also said that if a woman gets pregnant outside of wedlock that she has to marry the father of the child. So sometimes if a man sees a woman he wants he rapes her until she is pregnant and then she has to marry him. I don’t know which countries he was talking about here. About AIDS, the locals don�t understand the disease and don’t believe that condoms are of any use-hence the proliferation of the disease.

The operator was particularly adamant about stopping the food and other aid that people get…he believes it keeps them from becoming self sufficient…teaches them to always have a hand out…that it would be terrible in the beginning to withdraw the aid but in the long run it would be better for the people.

In fact an article appeared in the South African Cape Times a few weeks after this in which it was reported that dozens of nongovernmental organizations rejected the final declaration of the United Nations World Food Summit in Rome saying it was “more of the same failed medicine” and would not end hunger.

Distribution of resources is almost impossible due to bad roads, insufficient trucks and buses, a poor public transportation system.This results in 90% of the villages and towns living in isolation having no access to the market and no access to money. One hundred and fifty poorly developed countries are leaning on 25 developed ones. If one figures in the cost of transporting, servicing, warehousing and preserving food, then the cost of a single meal for a refugee in some camp is higher than the price of a dinner in the most expensive restaurant in Paris, one critic has said.

The answer, many are thinking, is a multidimensional approach to the develop-ment of healthy societies: develop regions especially through education; encourage local societies participation in public life including ability to dialogue; observe fundamental human rights; begin democratization and develop interdependence. This will not be easy. It will require new politicians who care about development-not warlords who sew contention in order to retain their own political power long enough so they can drain the country of money and resources.

The camp operator said that he feels sorry for African-Americans who come to Africa looking for their roots…they leave devastated when they discover they have absolutely nothing in common except color…and being black means nothing here because practically everyone is black…so no one is going to greet the black Americans with open arms-particularly well-fed affluent ones and the Africans assume the blacks who come here must be rich or they couldn’t get here in the first place…and we travelers without a doubt are all immeasurably rich compared to the locals.

In the morning as we were leaving I asked the camp operator what the best thing was about living in Africa…the beauty and wide open free space, he said waving his arm out toward the sun rising over ripe wheat..and being able to live the way you want to with no 9-5 job!

Zambia Border

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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2002
Rod warns us the roads in Zambia are even worse “shit” than in Malawi-which we found hard to believe but he was right. Most of these roads we are on are not paved. They repair the potholes by digging them out and throwing them by the side of the road, Rod says wryly.

Reached the Zambian border just before 6pm. Aussies and U.S. pay $25 for a visa to enter the country; Kiwis and Canadians got away with nothing…Brits threw a royal fit when they found out they had to pay $60! Rod said it had something to do with the fact that Britain pulled millions of dollars out of the country when they gave Zambia it’s independence….
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History
In the 18th Century the Portuguese followed the Swahili-Arab slavers into the interior of the country. In 1890 the country became a protectorate of the British South African Company and was named North Rhodesia (the name coming from Cecil Rhodes). Malawi on the southern border was called South Rhodesia. North Rhodesia came under British control in 1924 but won its independence in 1963 when it became Zambia.

I imagine that most of the people in these countries, especially in the rural areas, never even knew they were being colonized! The British taxed Zambia to the bone but spent most of the money on South Rhodesia, a drain that plagued the country until well into the 1990�s. After independence President Kaunda combined Marxism and traditional African values to rule the country for 27 years.

But bloated civil service, mismanagement and corruption bankrupted the country and Kaunda was forced to give up the presidency to a man by the name of Chiluba. There was a failed coup attempt in 1997 and finally one of Chiluba�s men was elected in flawed elections in 2001 but at least it was the end of the rubber stamp one-party system. Nine African states were invited to the inaugural ceremony but none attended in protest of the elections. (I’m getting all this from the Lonely Planet book) 80% of Zambia’s 9 million people live below the UN poverty line of $1.00 a day.

On The Road In Malawi

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May 20, 2002
Up 5 am and out 6:30. Most of the day is spent traveling to Zambia. A bridge is out on the road south so we have to double back to Mezuza and take another route. Stopped off at Mezuza again for a couple of hours in a frustrating attempt to get e-mail.

Back on the Road
I turn around to say something to Bob two seats behind me and see Rod lying in the aisle asleep-recurring Malaria he thinks. He stays there for two days and then gets up but he is a rag. His head hurts and he is weak. Bob starts reading about Malaria. There are many kinds with symptoms all the way from feeling like you have the flu to feeling a piercing cold that makes you tremble and shake. During these times you want a heavy thing to mash you down and keep you still…you wish you could die.

Rod warns us to use mosquito repellant but Bob has his doubts about it’s effectiveness. In the tent at night we use a towel to kill off any mosquitos we find before we go to sleep but invariably during the night they mysteriously materialize-buzzing in your ear…keeping you awake until you finally get up and thrash around with your towel again.

The Malaria carrying mosquitos were especially bad around wet marshy areas like Dar es Salaam and Lake Malawi. Sunday is our day to take our Larium but it makes us have vivid dreams at night. One night I dreamt that some people had cut my chest open and was slicing up my heart and eating it!

To pass the time on the long haul today I read Edward Said’s memoirs “Out Of Place.” As I read I gaze out of the truck from time to time wondering…what to wonder…what to think…Edward was born a Christian in Palestine, had ancestors from Lebanon, grew up in Cairo but isolated from the muslim community, went to English schools which he hated, was educated in the United States and now teaches at Columbia University in New York and has become a spokesman for middle east affairs. “Out of Place” is a good title; I have felt that way myself.

Las Vegas Bottle Store…pass one woman chopping wood out behind a mud hut and two men sitting in front…”makes me mad!” Melissa from New Zealand says…children literally scream out their greetings…villages are perfectly neat no litter or pieces of paper or the proverbial third world plastic. As in Moroccan casbahs you would think absolutely no one lived there at all because they use and reuse everything over and over until there is nothing left to become garbage.

Cleaning The Lenses
I am feeling comfortable and at home in Africa. The lives and cultures of the people in these countries at least seem to have integrity…congruity. The way they live makes sense in relation to their history, geography economics and culture-not to be compared to any other place. Rather than judge, a friend says she tries to engage “others” with a “reverent curiosity” to describe how she travels. We are intentional-we borrow her idea and make it our own-we call it “reverent inquiry.” We want to respect the dignity of those we are coming to visit.

I want to be transparent in sharing my struggle with my own ethnocentric/class biases I have learned from living in my culture…insofar as I can become aware of them. Where are you from, he says…America, I say…which America, he says? And there it is again. I could cover it all over with political correctness but I want to explore-I want to peel the layers off the lenses-I want to write with integrity. Traveling is a seriously important business. Rod says 90% of Americans don’t have a passport which means that many Americans have never, in a substantive way, experienced any other valid way to live in the world. Isolated. Insulated. For how long? We cannot be a “superpower” and not be inter-dependent with the rest of the world; the world is going to force us to look and listen to it. It has begun with 9/11. And we thought the Cold War was bad!

I made the mistake of remarking to Rod that we liked the fact that our drivers were Africans and none of the other trucks had African drivers. He reminded me that he was African, which he is, and that even some of the British and Australian drivers have been at it for 15-20 years and know Africa well. There I did it again-I used the term African when I really meant black African. Assumptions can work both ways however. I have a friend whose husband happens to be black and when he visited Africa he had to explain that he and his brother were Americans born and raised in New York.

I ask Rod if the local people can tell that James and George, who are Kenyans, are not from this area. Yes, he says, because of their size and they are very dark. And people here don’t speak Swahili so they have to use the common language-English. Rod says that Malawians and Zambians are more friendly than people in the north and south of Africa because they are not around western tourists enough to become inflamed with desire for the material things we have that they don’t have. In the north and south the feeling is that “You’ve gotten yours, now it’s my turn to get mine-no matter how.”

Tanzanian News

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Picked up a Sunday Observer-local Tanzanian paper in English; lead article: “Reading culture badly lacking” lamented the lack of interest in reading and warning that Tanzania could become isolated and left behind as the world was “changing so fast.” The advent of TVs, the Internet and use of CD-Roms, according to the article, has contributed to the decline of reading.

Subsidiary article extolled President Mkapa’s gesture to include opposition parties in a discussion of issues concerning the country. Big front page news!

A third front page article by correspondent Saum Zidadu reported on a conference on “Reporting Africa” held in Gaborone, Botswana. Ms. Connie Rapoo Garebatho, in her paper “Gender and Human Rights” said that “Negative coverage has created negative images of the African continent which has had a negative effect on the continent’s economic, political and social development, especially hurting women, and makes Africa look hopeless in the eyes of the rest of the world.”

Conference presenters said that most media houses in the developed world report negatively about Africa as not only a poor continent that it is, but also as a continent that has no hope economically, socially or politically. Most of the time Africa only makes headlines, the conferees said, when people are dying of hunger, engaged in civil wars and natural disasters…

Finally, an inside column on literature by Bernard Mapalala titled “Nelson Mandela’s Ageing Principles” gave an unflattering review of the official biography of Mandela written by Anthony Sampson that came out in 1999. Apparently many African leaders did not feel supported by Mandela after his release from prison. Well…?

Terrorism in Kenya

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The U.S. embassy in Nairobi was bombed a few years ago. The U.S. was going to rebuild across town, a merchant said, but now the location is being moved again.

Across the street from a local cooperative selling arts and crafts is a vacant lot. A woman in a purple gallabaya is using pans to scare birds off the lot. On the other side of the lot is a mosque. The merchant told us they think that the Muslims paid off the government to let them set fire to about a hundred Christian businesses and cooperatives that used to be in the vacant lot-six of them Maasai cooperatives.

Discovering African Issues

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One evening we had coffee in the Hilton coffee shop and just hung around watching the people come and go. There was an international UN conference on urban planning so there were people from all over Africa and the parade of women’s evening wear was wonderful to see. One striking woman who said she was from Rwanda had gone to school in Canada. She said the conference was dealing with many issues but primarily with the rights of the poor in shanty towns whose homes get bulldozed down in the middle of the night by the government or the police.

In fact, the local English newspaper, the East African Standard, recently featured an article about 200 armed policemen who destroyed shanties at the Kamuigi slums in Nairobi without warning at 6am. The article said the tenants accused police of being used by officials of the Kamuigi House Company Ltd to evict them. There was a dispute in court between officials and shareholders of the company but the police did not wait for the court to rule or the government to intervene. The land in dispute, the article said, was bought by 168 members at a cost of 125,000 shillings (100 shillings are worth more than a dollar) from an Asian who had since relocated.

Edfu

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Israelis Bombed 9/11?
While waiting for the others to come out of the temple at Edfu, and when it became apparent that Bob wasn’t going to buy anything, Bob was invited into a seller’s shop for tea. The seller, who seemed more educated than usual here, wanted to talk about things…did Americans think, he asked, if the massacre of 59 tourists at Luxor was masterminded by the Israelis? No, Bob said, no one in America that he knew thought that. “We think it was the Israelis,” he responded confidently.

The same rumor was going around the Arabic world after 9/11 that the Israelis had done it. Seems to be incomprehensible to some middle eastern people we have met that Osama or any Muslim could be responsible for such mass killing.