October 29, 2006

Greetings from Joyce Bakeshop, a must-visit for those of you who end up in Brooklyn. Perfect pastries, perfect coffees and free wireless – it’s everything the freelance journalist or recent Vassar grad could ask for.

Anyway, I thought that I’d take a break from the blog while I was in New York. But I realized two things. First, if I don’t write for six weeks, no one is coming back when I return to Cameroon. Second, there will always be jibba jabba that must be challenged.

Today’s edition of why I wish we could press the reset button on Africa like a bad round of NHL 2005 on the Gamecube is the recent announcement by Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese billionaire, that he would establish a $5 million prize for retired African leaders, who, well, who leave office before they die and don’t loot their country’s treasury.

Predictably, this effort has generated great acclaim for Mr. Ibrahim and his foundation, and I agree that it’s nice of this guy to reward people for doing their jobs. But in all seriousness, if we’re offering a prize to people who call themselves democrats for leaving office and not pillaging their people, maybe we’ve run out of ideas.

Let’s just look at the logic behind this. If you were a dictator – err, check that, president – why would you leave office for the chance at winning $5 million. A recent report by the Nigerian anti-corruption watchdog said that since 1960, successive Nigerian governments have stolen or wasted $380 billion.

I’ve done the math so you don’t have to. The study, which is fairly conservative since the anti-corruption task force just went through official government documents, covers a period of roughly 45 years. That’s about $8.4 billion stolen per year through every sector of the Nigerian government. Now, although every petty bureaucrat in the country was probably on the take, the president has the most access to the funds. To them, $5 million is nothing.

(To be fair, critics say the study is politically motivated and is not to be trusted.)

I doubt President Omar Bongo of Gabon, who has been in power since 1967, is sitting there thinking, “hmmm….If I leave office now, how am I going to make ends meet? Wait, I’ve got a chance at $5 million. You know what, I do think it’s time for a life of ease and plaid pants in Florida.” Bongo just won an election to extend his term as the world’s longest-serving leader. And it looks like he’s thinking about running again. Viva democracy.

I guess this prize is as good as any idea out there right now, which is yet another sad statement. But like most other solutions to Africa’s many problems, it focuses on the top level rather than the small-scale changes that might actually make a difference. People need to feel like they can make a change, like their voices, wishes and desires matter. I doubt a prize for a president who leaves office will accomplish that.

Don’t worry. I have thoughts on that. But I want to let this marinate.

------

Meanwhile, I’ve been conscripted into a group of writers and thinkers on African affairs, the sub-Saharan African Roundtable. Since blogger.com is giving me issues about linking to it, here's the URL: http://ssaroundtable.wordpress.com/.

It’s my friend Blake’s creation and includes several accomplished thinkers, African and expat alike, around Africa. And me. One of these things is not like the others.

October 11, 2006

That sound you heard around 6 p.m. Yaoundé time (1 p.m. in New York) was the sound of the Christian Science Monitor dinging my Cameroon music piracy story. They said that there just wasn’t enough there, and I can’t say I disagree with them. They’ve now dinged (dong? dung?) me twice – the other was a story on illegal and legal forestry in Cameroon. They had a similar story on former warlords and European arms dealers raping Liberia’s forests. Liberia wins in a knockout.

At the moment, I’m hitting like A-Rod in the playoffs. Even the Catholics killed a story I sent in. The umbrella group of Muslim organizations left the Cameroonian interfaith dialogue committee over the Pope’s quotations of the 14th Century Byzantine emperor’s thoughts on Islam. Again, I understand why they did it. That was a relatively minor reaction compared to some stuff that went on in Nigeria and the Middle East. No Cameroonians vowed to defeat the Pope and the other agents of Zionism. Africa light, right?

The CNS dinging did introduce me to the beauty of the kill fee. That doesn’t mean I’m a contract killer – although I am willing to negotiate – just a little something for the effort.

This is part of the reason why I’m taking such a long trip. I need to meet editors. I’ve got the stories. I’ve got the contacts. It’s time to find the editors who want them, and that’s much easier to do face to face. I’d like to think that I’m a lot harder to ignore than an e-mail.

So, why do I think I can jump to the New Yorker or the New York Times Magazine from getting whacked around by the CS Monitor, Dallas Morning News and the Catholics? Confidence, baby. Others might say I’m delusional. But that’s what everyone said when I decided I to be the King of Spain.

October 10, 2006

What’s the best way to prevent ethnic conflict?

As I discovered yesterday, bore the combatants so much they can’t remember why exactly they were fighting.

It’s a neat trick I discovered at a meeting held by the Cameroonian Ecumenical Service for Peace, an inter-denominational human rights group that includes the Catholic and Protestant churches, and sometimes invites Muslim clerics to play.

The meeting was to publicly show the independent evaluation of the SEP’s (French acronym. Sorry) conflict resolution project. The project itself involves setting up peace committees and getting local leaders to talk to each other. Yesterday’s event brought in a couple of participants from areas of ethnic conflict as well as SEP reps and the independent evaluator. Rebecca warned me it would be boring when she invited me. I agreed to go anyway I never turn down the chance to get a story.

As is usual in Cameroon, the show started an hour late. That was okay, since most people didn’t show up – including the people who were presenting – didn’t show up until an hour after the time on the invitation. Others didn’t show up until around noon for something that was supposed to start at 9:30.

And as is also usual in Cameroon, people spent hours and hours talking about what they did, not what they’re going to do. So, in this country of more than 200 ethnic groups, there was no discussion about what should be done to prevent violence leading up to next year’s election. Why do something interesting like that when you can have an evaluator tell everyone that SEP needs to involve elites more, and that CRS should give more money. Hey wait a minute. Why don’t we ask the elites we need to involve to put some money in before begging and bothering some Americans?

Rather than me try to make fun of what happened over the course of the four-hour presentation, I thought I’d just copy verbatim some of my notes. I have only added the quotation marks:

“Elections can bring ethnic conflict.”

“History of this in Cameroon, fears for the coming elections.”

“Happened a lot in the 1990s, after “opening” of the political system.”

“They should turn off the lights.” [Someone was showing a PowerPoint presentation with a yellow background and scrunched-together green letters on a yellow wall.]

[Bec gave me a melted sucking candy that had ants stuck in it about an hour in.] “Ziploc.”

[Bec wrote a note in her notebook for me.] “I can’t read your handwriting.”

[Realizing that there would be nothing looking at the future, only a report of what happened in the past few years] “No story here. Sorry.”

“[stick figure] – zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..”

“She has the biggest nostrils ever.” [Seriously, you could spelunk in them.]

“Why do we all need to hear this?”

[Bec then says I can leave. I decline.] “Cocktail! I’ve earned a reward for this.”

“How long is this going to go?”

“Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

“If this goes any longer, I’m afraid I might miss my plane.” [For those of you who don’t know, I depart Yaoundé on Saturday night and arrive in New York on Sunday morning.]

“In the end, this is all France’s fault.” [It’s their language. Bec often worries about writing grant proposals in French. It’s actually easy. The most vital part is never to get to the point of whatever it is you’re talking about. Make sure to do it in the most flowery language you can. The key in French is to be verbose.]

With a few exceptions to keep people out of trouble, that’s what I got out of the five hours of sitting through the nonsense. Well, that and a couple of spring rolls.

………………..

One of the people providing testimony about the usefulness of the ethnic conflict resolution program was royalty. Local chiefs still retain a lot of power in much of Cameroon. It’s not uncommon to hear someone referred to as your majesty.

Our majesty was wearing a long, red-and-black stocking cap with a pom-pom at the end of it. Whenever King Waldo walked, the pom-pom bounced.

King Waldo tried to cut me off on the line for spring rolls. I’m sorry, where I come from the king waits on the buffet line just like I do, your worshipfulness. I didn’t let him in. The Cameroonians behind me followed my lead. This is how revolutions start.

October 5, 2006

A couple of friends – old Africa hands – recently were talking about some of the people who have been running countries on the continent.

Idi Amin, to these friends, was a misunderstood and maligned anti-imperialist hero. Ditto Robert Mugabe.

They then went on to say how Westerners shouldn’t be imposing their view of governance on Africa and that elections weren’t necessary – Africans didn’t want them. Forcing transparency in governance and openness in politics? That’s just the man coming back and further destroying African culture.

Huh?

I’ve written about the sham that most African elections turn into, so I’m not a big fan of them. Elections should be the last thing to come into a democracy, not the first. Iraq had elections. Is it a democracy? No. People voted solely along ethnic and religious lines. There aren’t politics outside of ethnic and religious politics in Iraq. And I’d say that’s true in much of Africa as well. (By the way, the Zambian opposition candidate I wrote about recently has a wonderful nickname: King Cobra. He’s got my vote!)

I’m not a fan of imposing what I think is right on people. The American political system works, except when leaders feel their only job is to scare people, for America. The British system works great for Britain, as does the Canadian for Canada (am I right, Blake?). So I don’t want to see the National Democratic Institute or the International Republican Institute coming into Cameroon to show people how things are done.

But our friends are blind if they think people are happy with what they’ve got here. They’re not. What one of the friends in question calls “a Cameroonian guy grooving” is actually a guy without a job because there aren’t jobs to get, in the minds of most Cameroonians. And they’re not happy about it. I have yet to meet someone outside of government or without significant ethnic or political ties to it who likes the people in charge.

People want change. The right way to help that along is to ask where Cameroonians want to go and how do they want to get there. The Catholic Church and CRS do things like citizenship education, which teaches people what their rights and responsibilities are; what they’re entitled to from the government; how to resolve ethnic conflicts and form responsible, multi-ethnic political groups; and that in a democracy, you sometimes lose.

Our friends think that this is imposing something on Cameroonians. I say it’s the Cameroonian Catholic Church that asked for it and Cameroonians in charge of the programs. This is, to the best of my knowledge, what many Cameroonians want.

………………

Now, onto the “anti-imperialist leaders.” I’ve written about Mugabe before, so I’ll keep it short. He turned one of the best-off countries in sub-Saharan Africa into a basket case; killed thousands of his citizens in one of the under-reported ethnic massacres of the 20th century; and has destroyed the homes and lives of most of his urban, African opposition. This is an anti-imperialist hero to our friends.

I’ve also written about Idi Amin, and most of you have heard of him before. This great anti-imperialist leader killed his enemies, fed them to crocodiles and started a disastrous war with Tanzania. Uganda was so badly destroyed by this point that Tanzania, which had no army before the Ugandans invaded, routed the invaders once they roused a fighting force.

To be fair to Amin, he did prove my “eating the citizens” theory wrong. The theory was that once a ruler ate his subjects, he automatically became the worst ruler in that country’s history. I thought that ended the debate. But many of the Ugandans I met said Milton Obote, Amin’s predecessor and successor, was worse. They said many of the people Amin killed were probably enemies of the regime. Under Obote, soldiers would just stand on a street corner and kill any random person unlucky enough to be on the street at that time.

Good times.

I deliberately used the pronoun “he”. I have my doubts that a female head of state would resort to cannibalism. I think they have every capability to slaughter their citizens. I just have my doubts about cannibalism. However, if someone brought me evidence about Margaret Thatcher eating some hapless Scot or Welshman, I’d be willing to listen

Our retrograde friends with discredited ideas remain our friends, despite our differences.

…………………..

Hockey starts tonight. The NHL opened last night, but the Rangers don’t start until today. So it didn’t count. This is one of those times where I feel cut off from the things I care about, like when I miss a wedding or a birth.

In honor of tonight’s event, here’s the opening-night line-up for the Yaoundé Rangers.

We play two lines, four defensemen and a goalie. There are three bench players, a backup and a third-string goalie.

First line:

Center: Pavol Demitra, Right Wing: Daniel Alfredsson, Left Wing: Ilya Kovalchuk

Second line:

Center: Joe Sakic, Right Wing: Jarome Iginla, Left Wing: Brendan Shanahan (Rangers!)

Defense:

Brian McCabe, Francois Beauchemin, John-Michael Lilles, Philippe Boucher

Goalie:

Vesa Toskala, Cristobal Huet

Bench:

Matt Cullen, Petr Prucha, Scott Hartnell, JS Giguere

Yahoo! wouldn’t even let me into the draft, so most of those players I got by luck (except for Prucha, Cullen and Beauchemin).

The foil is on.

I’m not sure if the sound I’m hearing is the construction site next door or my loyal readers stampeding away from the site.