September 29, 2006

I think one of the most disturbing commentaries on government in Cameroon, and this probably goes for much of Africa and parts of Asia and Latin America, came yesterday from a World Bank official I went to interview about debt relief.

We were talking about whether debt relief could work. Cameroon recently qualified for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, which means that billions of dollars were written off with the intention that the money the government would have paid to lenders like the World Bank and IMF instead goes toward development in Cameroon.

After we went around in a circle about whether Cameroon’s sticky-fingered government would make sure that the money goes where it’s supposed to (the short answer is that even with the many strings attached to HiPC, there are still major black holes that could suck in the money. World Bank Guy says they’re working with Cameroon’s authorities on improving monitoring, but I wouldn’t hold my breath), we got down to the real stuff.

In the end, all the debt relief in the world doesn’t matter if the people in charge waste all of their time fighting each other, and if their main concern is walking away from government with heavy pockets, he said. World Bank Guy drew a circle, and inside that circle he drew several smaller circles. The big circle represented the government, the smaller one the ministers and other officials. He then drew lines going in every direction, connecting each of the circles. But the lines weren’t bonds – they were arrows.

The government, my interview subject said, wastes all of its energy defending their small, petty interests and trying to get a step ahead of the other ministers. Since there’s a finite amount of energy, none of that wasted energy makes it out to the people. That means no money or services.

To make it even clearer, this international banker had a meeting with Cameroon’s minister of health to plan for the upcoming budget. “What are your priorities?” the banker asked.

“I want to be minister of finance,” the health minister is reported to have replied.

“But what do you want to do with the health ministry?”

The minister said, and I’m paraphrasing here, he wants to get money. That could be taken two ways, and I’ll take it badly.

Now, let’s say that rather than lust after Polycarpe Abah Abah’s job (there’s that name again) and play all sorts of medieval parlor games and backstabbing politics, the health minister actually used his energy to do his actual job. The Cameroonian health system might actually exist outside of the cities and a few charity hospitals run by the church and other donors.

I hope you noted that I said this disturbed me. I did not say it surprised me.

……………

Surprise! Evan doubts the conventional Africa wisdom. I’m not sure that debt relief is going to work. On its surface, it sounds like a great idea and makes a fabulous sound bite for campaigners. But it’s far more complicated than a bumper sticker or even Bono make it.

And it’s not just because of the above reason, although that’s enough. A study by the CATO Institute (what is happening to me) showed that when Uganda reached the HiPC Completion Point and had its debt relieved, the country actually accrued far more debt than it had before its debt was relieved. Because their credit rating went up, the government was able to borrow money from other places (private banks, etc.) for things like guns and tanks, which government donors usually won’t contribute towards. Even the World Bank Guy said it takes a lot of discipline on the part of governments not to abuse these newly discovered revenue streams. He ducked when I asked whether Cameroon’s government had that discipline.

There’s another issue that seems unjust to me. There are accountable governments who do not ring up ludicrous debts. Shouldn’t they benefit before the guys here and in Uganda? Shouldn’t there be a reward for managing your economy well, and punishment for not doing so? Maybe instead of getting bad governments off the hook, they should instead be held responsible by their people.

……………..

So, how do I watch what goes on around me without going bonkers? To paraphrase Frank Drebin from “The Naked Gun”: I think about hockey.

My fantasy draft is tomorrow. I’m sure no one out there cares who I have on my team, but I will give regular updates on the status of the Yaoundé Rangers of the Traverse City Ice League.

I also go out to for an omelet near a school. It’s for the little fellas, so school gets out at around 1 p.m. Parents line up and pick up the kids in their blue smock uniforms, and then the kids and their parents mob Yaoundé smartest ice cream man, who wheels his cart to the school’s gates when he sees the parents gathering.

……………..

One last thing before shutting down for the weekend.

Bec and I were listening to the BBC Africa morning show today, and they had a piece about the importance of camels in nomadic Somaliland. Along with dowries and payment, camels are also handed out to compensate for redress.

A man went through some of the prices. A chopped off ear or finger is worth five camels. Chopping off a testicle will cost you 50.

Rebecca was surprised at the price differential.

September 27, 2006

The Gambia, a small, tongue shaped country extending into Senegal, held an election last week. Elections in Africa are not especially notable. I’ve seen them firsthand in Uganda and Burundi; I talked to my reporters who were ordered to stop drinking tea in a Kigali café because they had to vote. Tomorrow (Sept. 28) there’s an election in Zambia, and sometime in 2007 Cameroonians will go to the polls to pick their local councilors and members of parliament.

Because there appears to be an election somewhere in Africa every week, what made the Gambian elections stand out? Aside from the ingenious voting mechanism itself (voters dropped a marble into color-coded drums so that even the illiterate could vote in privacy. Whoever had the most marbles won), it was the honesty.

A day or two prior to the elections, The Gambia’s president, Yahya Jammeh, said to a crowd of supporters and over the country’s radio and television airwaves that no coup and no vote could remove him from power. In fact, the president, who took power in a coup 12 years ago, wants to rule for another four decades. The president, in a shocking upset, won with 67 percent of the vote. (The opposition has since claimed there was massive fraud. Shocker!)

Election monitors went through the motions of making sure that the number of marbles in the drums matched the number of voters. The opposition, to their credit, went for the win. By all accounts I’ve read their campaigns were energetic and active. But all of that doesn’t matter, unless people feel like they can make a change in their lives and in their world. What’s the point of development aid and elections if the people they are intended to help don’t think they’re going to change anything?

In Cameroon they voted the bums out. The bums managed to stay. Why would a Cameroonian then feel like they have any influence over events? This may be one of the things that hold this continent back more than anything else.

The word for this, I guess, is hope, although it’s not exactly right. Just about everyone I’ve met on this continent is hopeful that life will get better. They just don’t feel like they can help make it happen. (If anyone has a better word for what I mean, put it in the comments section of the blog. And yes, I do write for a living.) Why try to build something if you don’t think it matters?

I think I have unending respect for the 33 percent of Gambians who thought that they could affect the future in their country; who weren’t swayed by the free T-shirts and flowing patronage. I say I think I have unending respect because I’ve seen enough elections in Africa to know the extent to which people vote along ethnic or regional lines; or who are similarly bought by the opposition. But I’m sure there were at least a few Gambians who did bravely vote against the incumbent.

It does take some bravery. In another stunning bit of honesty, I heard a Zambian parliamentary candidate say on BBC radio that regions that don’t vote for the winner in tomorrow’s presidential elections won’t get any money from the government. So even people who do think they can change things have that notion beat right out of them.

This is a feeling that is hard for me to understand, because Americans are always told that each vote counts, that each individual can make a difference. I think that’s part of what colors my commentary when I say Africans need to do this or do that. The truth is people need to feel that they can make a difference, whether alone or in a team, before things start to improve. The rest of the stuff – getting businesses started, balancing trade, increasing real democracy not just sham elections, etc. – can’t be solved without getting at the core problem.

The question, of course, is how to get people to feel like they have any of this control. Wow, that feels really trite and simplistic. Your thoughts?

…………..

When is a government shake-up not a government shake-up? When it’s in Cameroon. Paul Biya had a Friday Night Special last week, and aced out a few members of his government. It was more reshuffling the deck, except for firing the loathsome minister of communications. The secretary general of the presidency, the equivalent of the chief of staff, replaced the foreign minister. But the foreign minister replaced the secretary general of the presidency. The sports minister is new – a former high school gym teacher.

The papers here say what happened last week doesn’t matter all that much. Most opposition papers say that the big thieves are still in office, including Finance Minister Polycarpe Abah Abah. I just wanted a chance to type his name one more time. One paper had a screaming headline that the big homosexuals were still in office. To this paper and many Cameroonians, that is far more important than any amount of money these suspected homosexuals might have stolen.

Diplomats told me the Godfather does this every few months to keep people on their toes; to show who’s boss; and to put on a demonstration of his willingness to reform for the international community.

This is yet another way in which Biya is a mafia kingpin. He lets every one of his underlings know that they only serve at his pleasure; their huge lifestyles all depend on the Godfather’s approval. The big shots are always looking over their shoulders because they never know when the knife is coming down in their backs.

As another one of Rebecca’s co-workers said, in a way it’s a sad life for the scoundrels.

September 20, 2006

And now, for the first time and completely unedited, Becca speaks:

Ok, so if no one else is going to comment, I will. Evan's been saying for a long time that I should be a "guest blogger" once in a while anyway. So here goes.

Evan wrote, "What Bec's colleague says Cameroon needs is for the ... donor countries to walk into the Godfather's office, say we're tired of this nonsense and demand changes. Would that be effective? I don't know. That's essentially what's happening with World Bank debt relief right now, and you know what, I don't think it's working."

Actually, what Evelyne said was more complicated than that. She said all the things Evan recounts, including the part about how Cameroonians have tried to change things in the past and it got them nowhere. But her point was more that these same diplomats would be outraged if one of their nationals was taken into custody and had to sit in jail until the judges came back from their three-month annual vacation (I kid you not). They would march right in and push the governmant to change, and that person would be released right away. Yet if over 70% of the population of the population of Yaounde's main prison is still awaiting final sentencing, that doesn't keep them awake at night. They look to the Cameroonians to change that, even knowing the reasons they can't.

Second, I think the verdict's still out on the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative. It's certainly not the whole solution, but at least they're doing something. Change is slow unless it's a revolution, and there are few examples of those making people much better off in the short- to medium-term.

Finally, a broader point. Evan points all the time to all the problems of bad governance and corruption here, and I would be the first to agree. At the same time, it's overly facile to suggest that everyone should just stop choosing to be corrupt. For those at the very top, yes, they should just shape up and pay the country back for all they've stolen. For the vast majority, it's not that simple. Choosing to behave a certain way implies that one has an idea of the options and that other options seem realistic. It's easy for me, coming from a background where I was encouraged to consider all the choices and where I saw alternative ways to behave, to say that one can choose not to participate in corruption. What if you've never seen it work? What if the options are to pay the principal or not send your kid to school? Or if your salary just doesn't cover your living costs? Even more importantly, what if you've never really known someone who chose integrity and still had a decent life? As much as I don't deny the aspects of personal choice that keep a bad system going downhill, it's more complicated than Evan sometimes suggests. It's a giant collective action problem, where no one wants to be the one to stop cheating when everyone else keeps going. How do you get enough people to shape up at the same time? I don't know, and I don't think the Cameroonians do, either. That - along with all of the vested interests I concede people here and abroad have in keeping Cameroonians poor - is what makes it so hard to turn around. Not just a couple of bad apples at the top.

Off my soapbox now, and back to work. Hello to everyone patient enough to read all of this, and my regards even to those of you who weren't!

Rebecca

September 18, 2006

It’s a rare occasion when Cameroon makes the news. As those of you who read the New York Times know, one of its columnists, Nicholas Kristof, was in Cameroon last week with the winner of his contest to go on a reporting trip to Africa – a journalism student named Casey Parks.

By the way, only members of the infinitely lame TimesSelect club can read her dispatches and his blog. On the other hand, Kristof wrote a column for the Sunday Times about maternal health in Cameroon and the developing world as a whole. It was a beautiful column about the struggles of women to give birth safely – a struggle far too many lose. (I’d put a link to this, but TimesSelect is so lame I’m not sure anyone would be able to read it. The only reason Bec and I can is Jude Stich lets us use her account, and I don’t want to abuse it. The column appeared on Sept. 17, yesterday, for anyone who is curious.)

The story also touched on the lack of hospitals in eastern Cameroon, the lack of roads and the lack of decent services provided by the government. The Bush Administration rightly comes in for criticism for its policies – specifically cutting off funding to the U.N. Population Fund because of false accusations that the fund supports abortions in China.

But I think that Kristof and Parks, who I give more of a pass since this is her first international reporting trip, miss the central story of Cameroon – and I’m sure that regular readers will know what I’m talking about: corruption and governance.

There are some countries – the Central African Republic, Kristof’s next stop, for example – where foreign assistance is far more justified in the health sector. In Cameroon, it’s just not. Despite qualifying for World Bank and IMF debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, Cameroon isn’t even ranked as a poor country by most international measures. It’s technically a lower-middle class country. The need for aid is almost a choice – like when I decided I would get the lowest grade possible on the calculus AP exam and worked hard to learn nothing all year.

Let me make an analogy that might make more sense. Let’s say Cameroon was a family of four in the United States. If its finances were managed well, the family would need some help putting the two kids through college – a Pell Grant and student loans maybe. It wouldn’t need welfare or food stamps to survive every day.

But that’s precisely what Cameroon gets, and it’s only because the country’s leaders don’t manage the country’s resources in a public-spirited manner. I won’t even say they don’t manage them well. Their management works perfectly well for them, as the flashy suits and cars on display in Yaoundé can attest. But it doesn’t provide the necessary services poor women need to survive childbirth. Instead, because the UNFPA and other organizations are there to try to pick up the slack, the government can continue along its merry way – with hundreds of thousands of ghost employees, massive SUVs and without building anything.

Kristof touches on this a bit – he refers to the patient’s family being shaken down to provide care and the doctor going home rather than perform an emergency caesarian. He also touches on the lack of a clean blood supply – Kristof and his photographer bravely donated their own. He also writes about how governments around the world neglect poor, rural women. All of that is true.

But it all sounds like he’s saying it’s the Bush Administration’s fault. They’re wrong for cutting off funds to the UNFPA. They’re an important organization. But the government in Cameroon is far more wrong for stealing money rather than caring for its citizens, especially those of a different ethnic, tribal or linguistic group.

I’m not writing this because the Times crew didn’t have time to squeeze Bec and I in for a drink on their brief visit to Yaoundé. Nor am I writing this because on their blogs, both Kristof and Parks write about problems with satellite phones and guys who are supposed to pick up tickets for them at the airport and I wish I had these problems. I’m writing this because I think it leaves out the single most important issue in Cameroon.

……….

And while I’m attacking established battleships with my peashooter, I was reading an article from the Aug. 28 New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell (hey, I live in Cameroon. My magazines come late. I’m still waiting for my 2006 Hockey News Fantasy Guide. I’d better get it soon; the draft is fast approaching). The article, The Risk Pool , goes into the problems with health care in America, as well as why Ireland and East Asia developed and Africa, for the most part, has not.

To summarize, since the link is helpfully provided, it all comes down to demographics. Along with liberalization, Ireland became prosperous as a result of allowing birth control. As a result, there was a higher ratio of workers to dependents – the very young and the very old – who needed government and pension assistance. To Gladwell and the economists, this goes a long way to explaining why companies like GM and Bethlehem Steel – which provide health care and pensions to their workers individually rather than in a pool with other companies – are in trouble. In short, they don’t have enough people working to provide for the number of retired workers to whom they provide benefits. All the economic restructuring in the world won’t fix the problem – in fact, streamlining may make it worse.

At the same time, Gladwell and his beloved economists use this argument to explain why Africa hasn’t developed. In Africa, they argue, there is a 1-to-1 ratio of young, able-bodied worker to child or elderly dependent. So there’s no room for growth. In East Asia, on the other hand, there is a ratio of 1-to-2.5 healthy workers to dependants.

Fine. Gladwell then argues that rather than some loaded cultural explanation, this demographic fact is the main reason why East Asia’s economy has moved steadily forward while Africa’s hasn’t. Improving the ratio doesn’t make economic success “inevitable. But, given a reasonably functional economic and political infrastructure, it certainly makes it a lot easier,” he writes.

In some parts of Africa, this may well be true. In South Africa, which has the most developed economy on the continent and whose international corporations are fast becoming some of the biggest and most powerful in the world (the Miller Brewing company is owned by a South African brewer), the staggering AIDS rate may work as an anchor on the country’s economy. AIDS, primarily a young-person’s disease, is wiping out the productive sector of South African society. As there are fewer workers to provide for the dependants, there may well be a severe pension and health care crunch. (It doesn’t help that the South African government thinks giving people lemon and garlic is the way to treat AIDS, not drugs.)

In the rest of the continent, though, that throwaway line about “a reasonably functional economy and political infrastructure” is a big matzo ball hanging there. Gladwell doesn’t appear to be taking into account that Japan, the first of the East Asian growth stories, was never colonized. Sure, Commodore Matthew C. Perry showed up at Yokohama somewhat unannounced and told the Japanese to open up, but really, that wasn’t colonization. Japan had a strong industrial base. They had beaten the Russians and then took over most of East Asia during World War II. Rebuilding an industrial base is far easier than what Africa is trying to do.

South Korea developed by first producing things cheap, then by growing its own companies, all under the tender eye of a violent military dictatorship until the last decade or so. Thailand has had an enlightened king and also was never colonized the way Africa was. The Chinese are basically following the South Korean model, only at a vastly magnified scale. For the most part, these countries have always been in search of natural resources and have had to develop their economies in order to provide anything for their people. Are they free of corruption? Far from it.

Africa, on the other hand, is a natural resource producer, so unless there is enlightened leadership that wants to develop an economy, the elites in society who have access to the resources will always be taken care of. And that leads to sclerosis in economic development, which leads to unemployment (Cameroon has at least 30 percent official unemployment), which leads to people being unable to take care of themselves.

The elites then create political systems to maintain their dominance. No demographic shift is going to change that. It would help – women in Cameroon have on average around 5 children and Rwandan women around 5.5 – but it’s not the panacea Gladwell and his sources think.

…………………

From the Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions department (thanks, Mad Magazine):

I went to take a taxi the other day to the Ministry of Justice to meet the spokesman. None of the taxis wanted to take me, and the drivers who did stop often asked how much I wanted to pay. The rate is 200 francs in town, with a little higher or lower depending on distance. My ride should cost 200 francs.

When one of the taxis tried to get me to pay more, I said, “Hey, it’s close.”

“Well, if it’s close, you can walk,” he said, and sped off.

I did, however, end up paying only 200 francs.

Power was out in most of Yaoundé almost all of Saturday. So was water. Bec and I are lucky. We have a generator and water tanks. But the water was out for so long – probably most of Friday – the tanks were pretty much empty. Our landlord, a Cameroonian, came by Saturday evening to tell us what was going on and ask us to conserve water.

When I asked what the problem was, he said, “It’s Cameroon. Nothing really works here.”

………………….

I enjoy using the blog to counter arguments. The best part is none of the writers I’m challenging will see my little bit of cyberspace. So, to paraphrase Mr. T, at “Another Day in Shrimpistan,” fools will not go unpitied and jibber-jabber will not go unchallenged, at least not in too great a forum.

Aren’t I brave?

On another note, I sometimes feel like a broken record. So if I’m boring let me know. Or if you feel the need to challenge my jibber-jabber or pity my foolishness, use the comments section. I like feedback. I want to know what you all think,

Now get back to work.

September 13, 2006

I think I present African issues too simply. I keep writing that foreign aid gets in the way of Africans doing things for themselves, and that nothing will happen until the people of this continent take charge.

But things aren’t that simple, especially in Cameroon. Rebecca was having a discussion with one of her colleagues, and the colleague said that it’s difficult to listen to people saying that Africans need to stand up for themselves. Blah, blah, blah…everything I always say. She didn’t say that I was wrong - again, we’re getting away from simplicity here.

What she said was that in Cameroon, people have tried. In the early 1960s, they tried to get the bums out through bullets. The bums had bigger guns. In the early 1990s, they tried to get the bums out through ballots. Actually, they did vote the bums out. But the bums had better thieves and blatantly rigged the whole process.

What Bec’s colleague says Cameroon needs is for the French, the Americans, the British and the other donor countries to walk into the Godfather’s office, say we’re tired of this nonsense and demand changes. Would that be effective? I don’t know. That’s essentially what’s happening with World Bank debt relief right now, and you know what, I don’t think it’s working.

But the more dispiriting answer is that it won’t happen. People are too concerned with “stability”. I’ve actually heard about the French ambassador saying to visitors that if the Cameroonian people had too much information, they would rise up against the government. This, in his view, would be a bad thing. This is not surprising, given that it was the French ambassador. What was more surprising is that most of the other diplomats at this meeting agreed. They said that if civil society groups got active, there would be problems in society. Hello? There are problems in the society. And just because there would be protests, it doesn’t mean there would necessarily be violence. As a friend at this gathering said, what do they expect, people with machetes coming over the hills?

American diplomats here talk a good game in public, but I’m not sure they do much in private. I do know that with them it depends on the issue. I’ve witnessed some get directly involved with very sticky situations. But I’m just not sure how much they do behind the scenes, where it really matters.

…………

In many ways, Cameroon is Africa light. I was pitching a story on the destruction of forests here. I had an editor interested, but he then said they were doing a similar story on Liberia, and it also involved gunrunning and rebels and recovery from war. Damn.

So then I was pitching what the Cameroonians gracefully call “jungle justice”. In other words, they mean vigilante justice where mobs attack a suspected thief with machetes or something because they know the police won’t do anything about it. Interesting story, right?

Well, the Liberian government just urged its people to form vigilante groups because the police can’t protect them. Again, I was trumped by Liberia.

On a human level, living in Africa light is a good thing. In their own way, things function in Cameroon and you can see how things can get better. But having spectacular disasters elsewhere really makes it hard to move a story.

…………

Speaking of that, tomorrow I file my first story for the Christian Science Monitor. It’s on fighting music piracy. The story is being done on spec, which means they can choose whether or not they run it. There are no guarantees. But at least I’ve got my foot in the door. I hope I didn’t just jinx it (there go those superstitions). I’ll keep you posted.

But I know what many of you are thinking. Catholic News Service? Christian Science Monitor? Well, if you get me the contacts the Jewish Week and they want something on Cameroon, I’ll write for them too. This is totally mercenary.

…………..

I’d like to introduce you all to someone. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned my friend Blake in this space before. Anyway, he’s a Canadian journalist I met in Kampala. He was kicked out of Uganda soon after I met him, and is now in Ghana.

He’s been a big influence on me – many of the ideas I’ve expressed on Another Day in Shrimpistan I’ve bounced off him. I think I was coming around to his views before we met and he helped me crystallize them. But then again, he’s very persuasive.

So, here’s one of his stories on a topic near and dear to my heart – leadership.

………………

And finally, Joyce made the paper.

Mark says Joyce Bakeshop is like the Peach Pit for Brooklynite Vassar grads. I’m growing out my sideburns for my trip home. It’ll be like when Dylan came back.

Yeah, that’s right, Amanda. I watched 90210 when no one was around. The truth comes out!

September 12, 2006

I wore my FDNY T-shirt yesterday to the US embassy’s Sept. 11 memorial service. It was underneath my button-down shirt and sport jacket (it was damp and a little chilly yesterday). But it was there.

The ceremony we attended was mercifully brief – no more than a half hour – and featured a speech by the ambassador as well as a statement from the president, followed by a tree planting. Bec managed to get close to the ambassador during the photo of all the guests watching the tree planting. At the last moment, I felt goofy so I bailed and watched with the embassy staff.

I knew that the president and his staff had sent around a directive ordering American diplomats around the world to emphasize that the United States is a country at war, and that we’re not going to stop that war until it’s done, blah, blah, blah. But how many times do we need to say that? Frankly I’m tired of it. It almost sounds like the president and his bunch like the state of affairs. Maybe it makes them feel manlier. Maybe he’s scared. But as one of my friends said, they’ve already said that 5,000 times. Do they have to say it again?

I also knew that the ambassador here wanted nothing to do with that stuff. Being in Cameroon helps, because it matters a lot less what he says. The ambassadors in strategic countries, like Indonesia or Nigeria or Russia, I’m sure don’t have the leeway that the ambassador to Cameroon has.

But he didn’t go for the war. In fact, I don’t think the word war appeared in his speech at all. He talked about the fear that has engulfed the world, and how that needs to end. I think that’s a message the U.S. would be much better off sending than we’re coming to kill people and we’re scared.

When the ambassador read the president’s statement, you could almost see him sighing a little.

………

Speaking of all that, how come when the president officially announced that there were secret prisons holding terror suspects, nobody said, “Hey. Wait a minute. What’s the big idea?” First of all, he said we didn’t have those. In fact, he and his cronies said that people who did say we had them were conspiracy theorists and other nasty things. And nobody said, “Hey. You lied again.”

And even worse, nobody said anything like, “Hey. That’s something the Argentine military junta did during the dirty war. We shouldn’t be like that.” Or that secret detention in a foreign prison was in some way un-American. Or that if we’re going to go out and have secret prisons and fly people on secret planes and torture people, what’s the point of defending our values and way of life. That fight’s already been lost.

Instead, people bickered over whether people standing trial should be allowed to have access to the evidence against them.

Now, I’m in Cameroon, so I may have missed all those things that I wanted to hear. But I don’t think I did.

Does this mean that I don’t think there are threats to the United States and the West? Ask Rebecca, who has to listen to me stupidly accuse her of that very wrong idea. No, it just seems that if you’re fighting a “battle of ideas,” you shouldn’t abandon them at the first hint of danger.

………..

Meanwhile, back in Cameroon – I played my first game of soccer this past weekend. I was on a team full of middle-aged Italian guys and a few others who have played soccer every day for their entire lives. My friend Tad, who seems to be a part of all my Cameroon athletic stories, was on a team of primarily 15-year-old boys.

I hadn’t played soccer probably since I was about 14, and my lack of skill showed. I had Zinadine Zidane’s thuggish instincts, without his graceful skill. It got to the point where everyone was saying, “Hey, you kicked it” whenever I played a ball. At least they didn’t do to me what they did to Tad. He got stuck in goal.

I figured out that my biggest problem in soccer is that I’m used to playing stupid North American games where when someone came near my goal, they had to go down. Since I couldn’t do anything else, the Italians put me on defense. Scott Stevens used to say that a good hitter could see a body check developing before it happened. He’d see a guy skating with his head down, into open space or towards the goal. Then he’d see the exact path to take to nail the guy just right.

Well, I was Scott Stevens for an afternoon. Except that I always remembered to pull up at the last minute, which meant the little buggers usually got a shot off.

There was one occasion where a little guy did go down. He was running with his head down and I just moved into position to stop him. I even stopped moving so that I wouldn’t run into him. But he kept coming and the next thing I knew, this little guy who came up to my shoulder and was probably 13 or 14, was on the ground. I helped him up and dusted him off. “Why am I such a jerk,” I thought.

But then I noticed that it was the same little guy who had put his elbow into my solar plexus earlier in the game. You know, one of those punks who keeps his elbows up at all times to create space, or injuries. I hated those guys in lacrosse; I hated those guys in roller hockey; and I hated those guys in soccer. So I felt a lot less bad about sending him to the turf. His elbows stayed down for the rest of the day.

But this begs the question, which is something many people have wondered on many occasions: Why am I such a jerk?

September 6, 2006

Rebecca’s mom sent us an article from the Times Sunday Styles section about Americans, especially American celebrities, becoming more involved in Africa.

The premise of the article is, essentially, that Americans find that in a complex world, Africa’s problems are simple and easy to understand. There are poor people with AIDS stuck in a continent ravaged by civil war. Let’s help them. It’s a lot easier than getting involved in Iraq or Lebanon or even fighting global warming. There’s a clear problem and apparent solution. One young woman interviewed in the article said something like, “Africa’s simple.” Plus, Africans like the help and it makes us feel good.

I’m not going to take issue with celebrities coming to do “fact finding” missions in Africa. Sure, some of them are silly, unserious people. But Bono and Angelina Jolie and Don Cheadle and George Clooney know their stuff. I may not agree with the conclusions they’ve drawn on their “fact finding” missions, and I think one of those people managed to get himself snookered far too easily by the snakes who run our country, but they’re engaged and knowledgeable. That’s all that matters. Lindsay Lohan? Not so much. But if visiting a Kenyan AIDS orphanage makes her feel good and doesn’t hurt anyone, who cares?

The issue I have is with the premise that Africa is simple. It’s not. Even writing, “Africa is” makes me cringe. There are 53 countries, and each of them has its specific batch of problems. The article points out one church that raised money for a hospital in Tanzania, and that a group in Dobbs Ferry did a silent auction to support some cause or another in some country or another. I think that’s great that people care so much. They see the suffering and the work not getting done and decided to do something about it. The hospitals and stuff need to be built. They just shouldn’t be built by us. That’s where the questions in Africa stop being simple.

Cameroon’s roads are deadly. Does the government fix them? No. Do Cameroonians clamor for their government to fix them? A little, but not that much. Do Cameroonians slow down on their terrible roads and avoid occasionally death-defying, but all too often death-enabling, passes on the bad roads in the rain? Definitely not. So all the hospitals built by churches and the roads built by France, Italy or China aren’t going to do all that much. And all that money from debt relief? I’ll believe it goes where it’s supposed to go when the Cameroonian government builds the roads and hospitals.

I love the American instinct, even if it shows a little bit of neediness on our part. It’s nice to feel liked and wanted, right? There’s nothing wrong with that. But if people think that there are simple answers that don’t require real changes within Africa by Africans, they’re not actually helping.

……….

Cameroon beat Rwanda, 3-0, in Kigali on Sunday in a qualifying match for the 2008 African Cup of Nations. I didn’t watch, but my heart was with Cameroon. I’ve just felt better here, for all its problems.

But I got an e-mail on Monday from my dear friend Magnus bemoaning the loss, saying that except for a couple of players, Rwanda was just as good. I really can’t speak to that. He might be right. Yesterday, I was taking photos for a potential story (see below), and all these Cameroonian musicians were laughing about the Rwandan footballers. I felt an urge to defend the Rwandan side, but chickened out. My French isn’t that good yet.

………..

The dream is dead. The mysterious wireless Internet that had been flowing into our apartment has been locked. I don’t have the password, and I don’t know who to get it from. Bec and I figured that after the around three weeks that we’ve had the connection, the people who actually owned it wouldn’t bother locking it down. But they did, and that means that I can no longer watch Yankee day games on the ESPN.com Gamecasts. Have you seen this? It’s amazing. In real time, it follows every pitch of a baseball game. There’s no commentary or video, but I at least know who’s winning, and I can feel like I’m watching.

We have a friend from the American embassy that just moved in down the street. I can’t wait for him to get his Armed Forces Network television hookup. He’ll get all the games. It almost makes joining the Foreign Service seem worth it. But after talking to friends, it’s not necessarily a happy place to be these days. One person told me “the noose is tightening” in reference to the Bushies. What have we done?

………

I created a minor security incident today at the US embassy. Normally, when visiting someone there, a visitor has to be escorted out. When I was done with my appointment, I just went out on my own, bouncing down the hall. I’ve been there enough to know my way out.

The Marines were buzzing in their security booth. One of them said, “Who’s office were you in?” I mentioned the two people. They asked if they accompanied me. I said no. "Should they have?" The Marines looked really worried.

I guess they think I stole some secret documents or something. I’m hoping they went into lockdown.

………..

I’m still not sure if I’m going to Chad. Hopefully I’ll know soon, like within the week. Meanwhile, before I go to vacationland, I’ve been working on a fun story about musicians and their fight against music piracy. I won’t tell you whom it’s for until it actually gets published. Because it’s the first time I’ve written for this paper, the story’s on spec, which means I give it to the editors and they decide whether they want it or not. So as always, no jinxing. I should have it done within a week or so.

………

Finally, if you’re in Brooklyn, you have to go to Joyce Bakeshop . I’m putting in this link because it has the address and phone number. For those of you who don’t know, Joyce is Mo’s wife. And she’s a fabulous pastry chef. Skinny Mo even had a belly for a little while.

Give her a try. You won’t be disappointed.

September 1, 2006

It's hard to believe that it's September already.

I've noticed that when I speak French to people and they find out I'm American, they're often surprised. I've been asked if I was German, Russian, English and Irish. The last I'm actually used to. That question is usually followed by, "Your French is very good."

My French is mangled and passable, not very good. So what does all that surprise say about us?

Anyway, here's my first contribution to the Darfur nightmare .

This story means two things: I reached my monthly goal for stories, solely on CNS. It also means I may be on the road soon.