some moments are priceless

(Photo: State Department via The Economist's blog. Thanks to The Bad Historian, who sent this over earlier this week. )
"Africa is, indeed, coming into fashion." - Horace Walpole (1774)
Oh, for goodness sakes.
Well, here's one way to get Kenya's politicians to behave.
I'm glad to see that President Obama has named Eric Goosby as global AIDS coordinator and head of PEPFAR. Observers are hopeful that this means a return to an HIV/AIDS policy that focuses on treatment and prevention - with realistic approaches to prevention of transmission of the disease. The Bush administration-created PEPFAR program has done a lot to help treat those who are infected with HIV, and they deserve credit for helping millions of people get access to anti-retrovirals.
From MSF, here's a video tour of an internally displaced woman's hut in one of the camps in Masisi, northwest of Goma. The woman (whose name, Confiance, means "confidence" or "trust") does a great job of articulating the problems faced by IDP's. IDP's, remember, don't get all the protections that refugees (who cross borders) are supposed to get.
Poor, poor Laurent Nkunda. The Congolese Tutsi formerly known as the dissident general leading the CNDP just can't catch a break. First, Rwanda's government realized that its donors were finally on to its machinations in the eastern Congo, so they arranged to have Nkunda's rival throw him under the bus by ousting him from leadership of the organization Nkunda built. Oh, and the Rwandans arrested Nkunda in Gisenyi.
"Unless your purpose is to steal public funds, leadership is nothing but an endless sacrifice."
Labels: yoweri's deep thoughts
Oh, the kids are out in Austin this weekend, and this time, they're protesting. Inasmuch as lounging under the live oaks in an "LRA camp" on the lawn of the state capitol can be called "protesting." Or "suffering" for that matter.
One of the disadvantages to finishing my PhD is that I now have to clean out seven years' worth of books, files, articles, journals, notebooks and other assorted stuff from my office. But in the process, I'm finding some very amusing relics from fieldwork and graduate school in general. Take, for example, a little book I picked up in Kampala a few years back, Yoweri Museveni in His Own Words (1986-2005). This gem is a compilation of 86 of the Ugandan president's thoughts on politics, society, religion, and Rwanda.
"Those who say that Museveni is engaged in telling lies have not studied the history of Uganda." (2000)
Labels: yoweri's deep thoughts
The Telegraph has the most amazing slideshow of Cameroonian First Lady Chantal Biya's hair. It defies description. Check out Chantal with Paris Hilton.
Now that my dissertation is finished and defended and the all-important signature page is being overnighted around the country (Thank goodness Committee Member #4 made it back from Afghanistan alive!), I actually have time to read books. On any topic I want. Without guilt.
"...he had concentrated in his persona a near-perfect cornucopia of all the contradictory evils of postmodern demonology: Maoism, Salazar's fascism, South Africa's apartheid, Ronald Reagan, the CIA, and antiwhite racism, and, last but not least, he had dared to threaten U.S. oil companies in 1992. Short of being a Nazi child molester, it is hard to do worse in terms of political image."I'll post a full review of the book's substance in a few days.
Extra-alert Texas in Africa readers may have noticed that over the weekend I did the one thing I swore I'd never do. I signed up for Twitter.
It's election day in South Africa, and while the ANC is expected to win the presidency, dissatisfaction with the party's 15 years of uninterrupted rule is high in many communities. That said, many voters will vote for the party anyway, but it's far from clear that the ANC will be able to enjoy an easy path to victory in the next few electoral cycles.
Chris Blattman has a great packing list for graduate students and scholars headed to the field for research purposes. If you're headed to an African country or anywhere else in the developing world, between it and the comments, you'll be set for any situation.
While there's some hope in the eastern DRC this week as a number of local defense militias are disarming, insecurity in North Kivu continues. FDLR (the Hutu extremist rebels whose leaders are in part responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide) troops are currently amusing themselves by terrorizing the population in Luofu, a town about 110 miles north of Goma. More than 250 houses were burned and eight people were killed in the town over the weekend, including five children who died in their burning house.
"We are trying to calm the population so they don't run into the bush," said Jean Bosco Masumbuko, another priest in Luofu. "We will stay in the church and pray. If they must come and kill us, they will kill us while we pray."One of my big criticisms of the way interventions in the eastern DRC are handled is that most of the ideas about "solutions" to the crisis are conceived in Kinshasa or Brussels or Paris or Washington - places that are in every sense a world away from the Kivus. Perhaps you've noticed that these so-called solutions never work. The Kivus, especially North Kivu, are still conflict zones, vulnerable populations are still at risk, and basic security is still a pipe dream for millions of innocent people.
Imagine if your town were destroyed by grenades and rocket launchers and helicopters falling from the sky and famine and disease and crumbling buildings and teenage boys with guns - and you still had to live there.
Surprise, surprise, Newt Gingrich's decade of punditry and self-promotional book writing may result in a 2012 presidential run. That's about the least shocking news since FOX News aligned itself with the crazies and their tea bags, but it's interesting.
Via Karl (who linked to it in the comments of this post on Wronging Rights), here's a fantastic description of Tuesday night's debate between Mahmood Mamdani and John Prendergast over advocacy and the situation in Darfur. Mamdani knows more about central and eastern Africa than just about any other academic working on the continent today. Prendergast works on the advocacy side of things; here's James North's description of him:
"He is more a publicity-hungry showman than a genuine scholar, an Alan Dershowitz with shoulder-length hair and a laid-back Indiana Jones manner."Ahem. The focus of the debate, it seems, was on how the situation in Darfur is presented to the Western public, particularly with respect to the Save Darfur advocacy organization. Mamdani doesn't believe that what's going on in Darfur today can properly be termed "genocide." Prendergast, from the sound of it, knew better than to argue with Mamdani on that point and distanced himself from Save Darfur's insistence that it is a genocide (despite the fact that Prendergast's Enough Project clearly calls it such) and that external military intervention is necessary to end the suffering of the Darfurians.
Labels: darfur
This debate (on the subject of which county gets to claim the title "Official Goat BBQ of Texas") tells you everything you need to know about politics here in God's country:
So there are pirates in Somalia.
Andrew Rice has a fascinating piece about African Christianity's mission efforts in the West in this weekend's NYT Magazine. It's a dead-on analysis of the way African Christianity is changing the nature of the religion globally.
The Redeemed Church offers a case study of the crosscurrents that are drawing Christianity southward. Its leader and guiding force, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, sums up the church’s history this way: “Made in heaven, assembled in Nigeria, exported to the world.”Rice's piece is fantastic, pointing out that the cultural divide between a Nigerian pastor and his Spanish-speaking flock can be difficult to surmount. The RCCG is a great example of the way that Protestant churches in Africa tend to be heavily dominated by persons from one ethnic group (in this case, the Yoruba).
Robert Mugabe is just a piece of work. In the last year or so, Our Man in Harare stole not only an election, but also, apparently, the Ark of the Covenant (or at least some relic a scholar in London believes to be the Ark of the Covenant). He also threw himself a very special birthday party despite the fact that most of his population is starving to death.
Dr. Keith, who in addition to apparently being a Texan is also a dentist working in Monrovia, sent me this little bit of awesomeness from Ghana. I think you'll agree that it's pretty much the most amazing thing ever:
As South Africa prepares to celebrate 15 years since the end of apartheid, it's also showing the marks of disunity that are the hallmark of any truly democratic political system. The African National Congress is splitting and some people aren't behaving very well in the process. The country holds a general election later this month and the Cope ("Congress of the People") party - which was founded by former ANC members who support former president Thabo Mbeki and who don't like the likely future president, Jacob Zuma, one little bit - says that their members are being intimidated by the ANC.
Are you tired of all the Congo-centric African politics discussion on this board, or just looking for something new? May I suggest my friend and colleague Julie's new tumblr blog? She's hanging out in Tbilisi, Georgia at the moment. Apparently there's going to be some kind of protest/bloodless revolution next week, and, being a good political scientist (with, incidentally, a book on ethnic separatism in the Caucuses coming out later this year), she couldn't miss out. Follow the adventure here.
It's my last semester teaching intro American government, and we just started the part of the course that deals with the judiciary, theories of constitutional interpretation, civil liberties, and civil rights. The students usually really enjoy this part of the course as the cases we study are all about sex, drugs, and free speech. Oh, and what not to do when you get arrested. (Some of them take alarmingly copious notes on that part of the lecture.)
There's a wildly entertaining discussion of the world's worst NGO's over at Chris Blattman's blog. My favorites (all of them real) so far?
Texas in Africa reader Dustyn Winder, who keeps a great record of stories about development and foreign aid horrors on his blog, sent me this today. I am mostly speechless. We'll just let the FOX Business story/thinly veiled press release speak for itself:i
Visiting families will be thrilled with the unveiling of Schlitterbahn Waterpark Resort's latest blockbuster sensation, the Congo River Expedition, a multi-sensory jungle adventure scheduled to open this summer.Deep in the heart of the rainforest guests discover an ancient river teeming with wild animals, restless natives, thundering waterfalls and a mysterious underground diamond mine.
After crossing makeshift rope bridges, guests enter the Congo River Outpost gaining access to the exploration campsite. Towering over the encampment is a giant angry volcano on the edge of eruption. As the epicenter of the outpost begins to rumble warning of an eminent explosion, the volcano vents plumes of steam before blasting water more than 20 feet in the air!
It goes on from there. But the piece de resistance? Why, the list of animatronic "creatures" in the jungle, which ends with the "restless natives." Natch:
The adventure continues as guests float at the will of the water's current and encounter a variety of special effects and animatronic creatures including a mischievous monkey; angry, snapping crocodiles; a ferocious lion; a menacing, coiled python; a mammoth, trumpeting elephant and an agitated tribe of natives ready to attack without warning.Oh. My. Freaking. Word.
I really don't know what to say. Part of me is completely horrified that the family-friendly folks down at Schlitterbahn have apparently taken a page from the 1958 Brussels World's Fair . I would never consider giving them money to see one of the single most offensive things of which I've ever heard.
(Note to the gang in New Braunfels: having downloadable "desktop tribal art" doesn't make this okay. It especially doesn't make it okay given that lions don't live anywhere near the Congo River. Because lions? They're savannah animals. They don't like deep, dark jungles. Like the one that surrounds all 2,000 miles of the Congo River. Also, that "mysterious underground diamond mine"? Those are blood diamonds. Now I'm no expert on the Disneyfication of Texas-based waterpark dynasties. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that perhaps you don't want your family-friendly fun park associated with small children dying in mineshafts because of the West's greed for industrial diamonds. You know, just maybe.)
The other part of me thinks it may be time to invite you all out for the first annual Texas in Africa field trip/protest in New Braunfels sometime in July.