Personal Account of Journalist or Professor in Africa

A Primate’s Memoir

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

“Hearty, strong, large people who ate like hogs and worked like mad and filled their few leisure hours with hexes and witchcraft and clan feuds and revenge curses.”

No, not American political workers.

The above described the tribes such as Masai and Kisii– born in British East Africa. According to the book (which appeared to be credible although it lacked an extensive list of detailed sources, and an index), the warrior-tribes fought against each other, and on behalf of Britain during the world wars and against other tribes in Tanzania, Somalia and Uganda, near the Kenya borders, into the late twentieth century.

The Book of the Week is “A Primate’s Memoir, A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons” by Robert M. Sapolsky, published in 2001.

Starting in 1979, on and off, over the course of fifteen years, the author began observing a 63-member troop of baboons in Kenya. He learned about every aspect of their lifestyles. He made many errors in attempting to acquire experience anesthetizing them in order to test their bodily fluids and excretions. He finally learned how to shoot a tranquilizer dart from a blowgun, but even that had its complications.

The author also gathered a vast quantity of knowledge about the Masai tribe in the village. The women there were voicing their opinion that their children should receive a formal education. However, at that time, there were no supplies, no teachers, and most school buildings could be tens of miles away from villages. Even when progress was made on that front, the Masai men used their children’s school fees to buy alcohol.

The men felt entitled to be leaders in their communities, where they did almost no work. Herding cows and goats and deriving food from the animals was the mainstay of the Masai economy. The women did the housework and childcare; the boys did the herding until they became men, and in their late twenties, they were considered village-elders deserving of respect.

The Masai associated the author– a white male in his twenties– with someone who was knowledgeable about providing medical treatment to their people. He looked all official, with a box of bandages and a stethoscope. So he was pressured into dispensing the few drugs he had for a few different maladies, such as chloroquine for malaria and antibiotics for eye infections.

After a couple of years of graduate-school fieldwork, the author noted that there was no clear-cut “second banana” to the alpha male of the baboon troop. In fighting, the males bit each other using their sharp canine teeth in addition to pummeling each other with their fists.

As the years went by, two lower-level males– afraid of the top leader– formed alliances, but the leader was still sufficiently physically powerful to dominate them. The two allied with a third male, but all three were still too weak to stand up to the top baboon. They partnered with an old-timer male. It took a little longer for the boss to put them down. Finally, six males banded together and defeated the alpha male.

Read the book to learn much, much more about the lifestyles of the baboons, the Masai, and about how powerful-people were never caught and punished for knowingly spreading a plague among some baboons (Hint: “The meat was dutifully sold [by the Masai to the butcher], everyone became sick. The police came to investigate…”)

As can be seen from the aforementioned, the baboons have a social system largely similar to humans’. Here’s a little ditty one alpha male (Donald Trump) is singing now.

NO ONE WILL EVER

sung to the tune of “Nobody Told Me” with apologies to the Estate of John Lennon.

My foes are always talking. What they say is absurd.

America, I love. About you I really care.

There’s Socialists in the White House. Now we have Wall Street bears.

The IRS is out to get me. But my campaign is going on.

I always have something cooking. I foil all their evil plots.

They sent us disease from China. I started the Wall we’ve got.

No one will ever bring me to my knees.

Kudos to me. Kudos to me.

In ’24 I’m runnin’. No one else has made a move.

I’LL be the winner. I’ve still got lots to prove.

I’m a big super hero to all who are good and true.

Everybody’s on a witch hunt, and hauling me into court.

I’m a privileged leader. That’s my retort.

I belong in a million movies. But too bad. Life is short.

No one will ever bring me to my knees.

Kudos to me. Most excellent, MAGA.

The economy’s doing poorly. Prices are getting HIGH.

The liberals are crying. They’re eating humble pie.

All of them are liars, and I ain’t too surprised.

No one will ever bring me to my knees.

Kudos to me. Most excellent, MAGA. Whoa.

Beneath the Tamarind Tree

The Book of the Week is “Beneath the Tamarind Tree, A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram” by Isha Sesay, published in 2019.

In April 2014, Boko Haram members (Muslim extremists) abducted a few hundred female students from a boarding school in Chibok in Nigeria. For the attention whores of the world, a Twitter account was immediately started, inviting comments. The American news cycle ended quickly, but trauma for the victims and their families– even for the girls who were released (fewer than half at the book’s writing)– will never end.

Apparently, the trading relationship between the United States and Nigeria wasn’t a sufficient motivator to resolve the situation peacefully. In 2017, there occurred more than $9 billion worth of oil, cocoa, cashew nuts, minerals and animal feed exchanged between the two.

The author had a vested interest in seeing the girls’ safe release, as her mother’s family hailed from Sierra Leone on the continent of Africa, and her family had lived there. So her personal experience put her in a better position to get the story, more than other TV journalists. Even so, information-gathering through personal interviews could be life-threatening, as Boko Haram was a terrorist group comprised of sociopathic sadists with weaponry– child-soldiers– who had occasional episodes of sympathy but usually had no qualms about committing looting and arson, to boot.

The author felt that the 2016 U.S. presidential election eclipsed all media coverage of her Nigeria story– more media coverage would have swayed the world to take action on behalf of the abducted girls. Possibly. But– in the 1990’s, American media outlets covered Nigeria only insofar as to give it a reputation for fraudsters who got Americans to fall for inheritance scams via airmail or email.

So that is all that most people here know about Nigeria. They usually don’t actively seek news from the European media outlets, such as the BBC, the Guardian, Al Jazeera or Reuters. “Breaking News” coverage on their favorite celebrities, politicians and themselves, is much more of a priority. Sadly.

Read the book to learn many more details.

Chasing the Devil

The Book of the Week is “Chasing the Devil” by Tim Butcher, published in 2010. This volume’s author, a loyal fan of the British author Graham Greene, wanted to retrace the steps of Greene, who made treks on foot in Sierra Leone and Liberia in 1935. Greene went with his cousin to observe whether the countries were still practicing slavery. Butcher, accompanied by his friend’s son, insisted on having similarly primitive conditions on his trip in 2009. Both of the aforementioned countries have suffered bloody civil wars in recent decades.

Great Britain colonized Sierra Leone in 1807. In the 1940’s and 1950’s, many poor farmers abandoned their subsistence labor for a chance to get rich mining diamonds. Extreme greed prompted diamond smuggling. Although the nation achieved independence in 1961, it fell into disarray in the early 1970’s, as “… order collapsed and the pillars of society that I [Butcher] take for granted in a functioning state, such as the availability of fair-minded police or economic stability or unbiased journalism, crumbled away.”

The violence among white officials, black settlers and native Africans continued through 2002. Around then, a bloodless coup occurred, which represented progress. At the time of his visit, the author reported that Sierra Leone was fraught with corruption, and was suffering “brain drain” and “capital flight.” However, China became interested in building infrastructure and investing there due to untapped iron ore deposits. Modernization has been occurring, but not without growing pains. One part of that has been the advent of cars on the yet-to-be-constructed roads, causing extremely bad traffic jams.

Liberia became independent in 1847. In years prior, the United States launched a public relations initiative to assist freed slaves in returning to their homeland, just as the British did in Sierra Leone. However, the Americans did not colonize Liberia. This meant that the nation had black leadership much sooner than did Sierra Leone. Even so, in the early going, white men ran the campaign with hypocrisy and greed.

Read the book to learn more about Butcher’s trip and the histories of Sierra Leone and Liberia in the time of Graham Greene, and in the last twenty years.

Stringer – BONUS POST

This blogger read “Stringer” by Anjan Sundaram, published in 2014. The author studied mathematics at university but entered the field of journalism instead. He went to the Congo with the hope of getting paid for reporting news. Someone helped him become a freelance writer for the Associated Press.

However, this book is unclear about when any of his experiences occurred, as no dates– not even approximate ones– are provided. Not even during his description of Kabila’s historic election “victory” over Bemba. This appears to be a case of laziness and cheapness on the part of the author and his publisher. If dates were provided, then this book would need to have notes, references and possibly an index– entailing additional work, time and expense. Also, by omitting a timeline and confining the writing to the author’s personal experience, this work appears less credible and less literate than otherwise. Journalists are supposed to be recorders of history. History is all about when events occurred– so that there is context. This blogger has observed the lack of dates in other recent books written by foreign correspondents, too. It is a disturbing trend that bespeaks of the decrease in quality of personal accounts of “Darwin Award” candidates in war-torn countries.

Anyway, Sundaram stayed in Victoire, a section of Kinshasa with a reputation for “…gangs and disorder, and expatriate and embassy workers were banned even from visits.” As he was a stringer, he was paying his own expenses to collect news stories of the civil war. Competition in the region for getting stories published was fierce, as the AP bureau in Dakar covered 22 countries. “There was constant news of rape, child soldiers and violence.”

Congo was influenced by missionaries. When a child was misbehaving, and the family suffered a misfortune, it was thought that the devil was influencing the child, so a pastor would compel the child to confess.

“Congo’s minuscule 25 miles of coast was rich with oil.” Sundaram met an Indian whose land was allegedly seized illegally by the Congolese government and the Americans, because some natural resource was found in it. Sundaram avoided covering the story, as the situation was sure to be rife with corruption. The business community was comprised of Indians, Lebanese, Israelis, Belgians and politicians. These foreigners shamelessly engaged in conspicuous consumption; hence the common Congolese people rioted in wealthy neighborhoods.

Sundaram was present when the Congolese people were led to believe there might occur a historic political change in their nation, as they could vote for a presidential candidate. “From across the country came stories of villagers who had walked for days, supplies on their heads, families in tow, to reach a polling station… turnout was higher than 80 percent in many districts worst hit by the war.” However, as usual, their corrupt government took advantage of their lack of education and naivete.

Read the book to learn how Congo has historically been manipulated by foreign powers. But don’t expect to learn when.

The Zanzibar Chest

The Book of the Week is “The Zanzibar Chest” by Aidan Hartley, published in 2003. This is the autobiography of a foreign correspondent (journalist) in Africa. The diary of a late, close, adventurous friend of his father’s was found in a Zanzibar Chest. The author sought to interview all the people mentioned in it.

The author’s father was a British civil servant who helped colonize various African countries, and then supervise cotton growing with their independence movements and agricultural reforms. The light-skinned men destroyed the culture and economy of the dark-skinned men. The latter lost their livestock and crops, and began to starve. Toward the middle of the twentieth century, American Baptist missionaries aggressively pressured the natives to convert to Christianity in exchange for Western food and clothes.

Born in 1965 in Kenya, Hartley had two older brothers and an older sister. They were sent to boarding school in England. He started his career with the Financial Times in Tanzania in the mid 1980’s. After he got his sea legs– having learned to doctor his expense reports and stories– he became a “Darwin Award” candidate, covering wars in Ethiopia, Somalia, the Balkans and Rwanda. In that first country’s civil war in 1991, the rebels were supplied with arms by the Americans, Soviets, Chinese, North Koreans and the Israelis.

Hartley was also a freelance journalist, or “stringer”– “… he had flown four thousand miles without an assignment, immersed himself in a story about which he knew nothing, and would struggle until he improved his camerawork and got a good story.” For a while, he was with Reuters. However, it is expensive for a news service or newspaper publisher to pay for housing, armed guards and vehicles for a group of full-time reporters in a country full of desert and violence, such as Somalia. Other countries offer better business opportunities because they have a better climate and are resource-rich, in addition to being prone to violence, like South Africa.

Read the book to learn of Hartley’s adventures and how the nature of reporting of war and famine from Africa has changed through the decades.

Running with the Kenyans

The Book of the Week is “Running with the Kenyans” by Adharanand Finn, published in 2012. This ebook is a personal account detailing the author’s quest to find out why Kenya’s runners have developed a reputation in the past decade for winning so many races around the world.

Finn, an English journalist, moved his family to Kenya for several months to observe firsthand how the Kenyans do what they do. He himself jogs as a hobby, and while there, trained with many world record holders for his first marathon, in Lewa.

Iten is the small town where many Kenyans reside– in one of two major upmarket athletics training camps, where athletes, who get free food and lodging, do nothing but run, eat and sleep. The groups train daily in all kinds of weather, starting at 6 or 7am, braving “…potholes, cows and bicycles.” The camp manager decides who will run in races outside Kenya, and gets a percentage of the monies won.

The author notes that a Kenyan reports his or her age as significantly lower than it really is when signing up for a race. He couldn’t learn the real reason why. Also unexplained, is why, at the time the author was running with the Kenyans, they did not have big-money sponsors, like Adidas or Nike.

Another Kenyan cultural trait– that prompts competence at running from a young age– is that school is usually one to five miles from home, between which the kids run, so as to minimize transportation time. There are neither buses nor chauffeuring parents. At the time of his writing, the author had heard from various sources that Kenyans, counterintuitively, actually had high reverence for the British, who “… had brought civilization to Kenya.” So when Westerners were wearing shoes specially designed for running, the Kenyans thought they should wear them, too. This is in spite of the fact Kenyans run faster barefoot because most of them spend their lives barefoot, growing up on rural subsistence farms, and have won more races barefoot than not.

When Kenyan runners achieve fame and fortune, they return home to a village asking for a piece of them. This becomes a distraction and kills their careers if they, as many of them do, divert time and resources from their hours-long training every day; like, if they want to build a school for their village. This is not necessarily a bad thing– if they make a conscious choice to give back to their community, and they want to retire.

Read the book to learn more about other aspects of Kenyan culture plus other factors conducive to fast running, and how the author fared in his first marathon, before which, helicopters had to scare lions away from the course.

Looking For Transwonderland

The Book of the Week is “Looking For Transwonderland, Travels in Nigeria” by Noo Saro-Wiwa, published in 2012. This ebook’s author spent most of her childhood in England.

Born in mid-1970’s Nigeria– under the rule of a ruthless dictatorship– she was visiting the country for a few months in 2011 to find her roots. Corrupted by oil discovered in 1957, and a colony of the British Empire until 1960, the country has since become somewhat democratized. The author briefly discusses the history of Nigeria and its tribes, the Hausas, Igbos, Yorubas, Ogonis and Binis. Roughly half the citizens are Muslim, mostly living in the north; the other half are evangelical Christian. Many are Pentecostal, living in the south.

The author recounts her experiences of seeing her aunt in Lagos. Her aunt believes in witches, and many Nigerians believe in the supernatural. They also engage in daily public prayer. Saro-Wiwa met her cousin Mabel, a typical Nigerian 20-something who, every day, arrives at her journalism job in late morning due as much to anger and resentment at the nation’s greedy leaders, as due to a long, stressful commute. She gets paid irregularly, every several months; she’s in debt until then.

“A lack of professionalism characterises the top echelons of government, and extends down to the ordinary workers… [Including museum managers]. Nothing works, talent goes to waste, and nepotism is rife.” Approximately six of ten residents of Nigerian cities work “off the books” in the building trade, or selling small-ticket items and food. Water and electricity are considered luxuries. Infrastructure is hardly ever maintained. Instead of verbal mudslinging and spying on each other, to scare their enemies– Nigerian politicians employ cults to abduct foreign oil workers. Networking with militant groups is more likely to lead to a job than a university degree. Besides, due to lack of funding, “Lecturers were reduced to photocopying literature and selling it to students.”

Saro-Wiwa talks to people around the country. One told her about how a friend had died when a fire and explosion resulted from thieves’ punching a hole in an oil pipeline to get at the precious resource. That was not an isolated incident, as, unfortunately, cigarettes and paraffin lamps are items commonly present near Nigerian oil pipelines, which can heat up to about 900 degrees Celsius during a conflagration.

“Nothing in Lagos comes without a struggle or a squabble…” In one illustration, the author makes the quick-to-anger passengers of public transportation– along with the occasional evangelist and beggar riding overcrowded buses– sound worse than passengers in New York City. The disputes over trivial matters of perceived injustices do not usually come to blows, though. The author takes a number of hair-raising rides on motorbikes, too, minus the social entertainment. There are only a handful of traffic lights in Nigeria, but numerous Darwin-award-candidate pedestrians and drivers.

Read the book to learn more about the author’s observations of wealthy students on a college campus, her visits to Transwonderland and various other tourist attractions and a music concert in rural areas, Nollywood, the sorry state of her accommodations, Nigeria’s carnivorous, gerontocratic inclinations, and her other adventures.

Radio Congo – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed “Radio Congo” by Ben Rawlence, published in 2012. It is an autobiographical account of a 2007 trip to still-dangerous regions of the Congo adversely affected by the the country’s four recent wars– in 1964, 1977, 1996 and 2002; the second of which saw eight national armies and twelve armed groups fighting. The author resented having to hand over his “…precious francs to the insatiable Congolese bureaucracy” to interview, among many others, the non-refugees– people who stayed put during the violence.

Two major causes of all that strife is that 90% of the world’s mineral deposits are in the Congo– making it ripe for exploitation, and the fact that various regional ethnic groups hate each other.

Other bad situations the author heard about included: the spewing of lava on Goma in 2002, the demand for higher bribe amounts among local court judges due to economic recovery, and the fact that the incidence of rape in eastern Congo was the highest in the world. There were protection monies paid to soldiers by ten to fifteen thousand miners (in the amount of about $10,000 daily), and by poachers of antelope (whose meat was cheaper than goats’). Animal-park rangers also collected from the latter.

It behooved the local thugs to continue the hostilities. “Peace would mean the unwelcome attention of the government, the advent of commercial mining operations, taxation and the end of their private income… The usual tools of wartime– men and guns– are the deciding factor in most business arrangements and the colonel has the most in the region.”

The author spoke with all walks of life during his travels via hired vehicles and boats. “Each of these towns is a little island community unto itself, with its own radio, market and military command.” In Bujumbura, he encountered Americans whose U.S. government contract called for training the Burundian military. When Rawlence told people his main goal was to visit Manono, they thought he had a death wish. On the way, he ate chili, goat stew and tea in Walikale before he was told to leave, as foreigners were banned from that area. He was shoved onto an airplane loaded with tin ore to be smuggled back to Goma.

“Often the best way to solve a difficult problem in Congo is to get drunk.” The author went to a night club whose door sign proclaimed the wearing of vests, sandals and guns to be banned. In Magunga, the author was obligated by his hosts to attend Christian mass on Sunday morning, as all villagers did. It was a multilingual service; in Swahili, Kibembe and Kinyamulenge. The music ranged from drum and choir to car-battery powered electric piano.

Read the book to learn about the lives of the numerous refugees from Congo’s neighbors and about a boatload of other distasteful circumstances to which the author became privy– glutton for emotional trauma that he was.