Another Day in Shrimpistan

2007-02-26T12:35:00.000-08:00

February 26, 2007

I’ve sprung my surprise so it’s time to come clean about why my postings have fallen off the last month or so.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m back in New York, and I’m going to be here for a while. After nearly 19 months, my African adventure is over. I didn’t write much about this before because I wanted to surprise people when I arrived. Why? Because I’m a deeply disturbed individual.

After one scream that almost blew out my Dad’s eardrum and two people saying, “What month is this?” all I can say is, mission accomplished.

After getting through the initial decision to come home, making the decision about when to leave was surprisingly easy. I was just sitting around one day, after discovering that no editors cared about prisoners taking over Cameroon’s jails or the Chinese president’s visit, and knew that something needed to change. Bec recognized it too. We sat down that evening and both said, essentially at the same time, “I need to go home.” (Actually, she said, “It’s time for you to go home.”) That was mid-January or so. I was on a plane Feb. 15. It feels good to be back, getting started on my career again.

We figured it would be fun to cross into my 30s in Cameroon, because Bec was able to organize an absolutely perfect birthday party that included sitting on an open verandah watching the sun go down with dear friends I was saying goodbye to. We then made a trek to Chez Harris, a nightclub we like. We listened to music (that was unfortunately interrupted by MTN, the South African telephone conglomerate, office party), ate our favorite Cameroonian dish, chicken DG (DG stands for director general. Essentially, it’s a mercantile General Tso’s chicken) and just get one last blast of Cameroon. It helped that the birthday actually fell on a Saturday. I can’t thank Rebecca enough for throwing such a wonderful 30th birthday party, and under such melancholy circumstances.

We also wanted to spend Valentine’s Day together, and that worked out perfect, although it was slightly downbeat as well since I was heading out the next day.

I won’t regale you with tales of my flying, only to say it was a little more adventurous than I would have liked. Air France changed the baggage weight limits and we didn’t know, so I had to repack at the airport. And they were rude about it, I guess to prepare me for France. I watched “The Queen” from Yaounde/Douala to Paris, but was stuck with bad movies on a Delta flight from Paris to New York. Why don’t American airlines have the personal video screen, the greatest advancement in aviation since birds developed feathers?

I fell victim to a projectile vomiting event, although it was more that I was in the outer reaches of the blast radius, with a little landing on my right hand. I felt bad for the kid. He couldn’t have been more than 10. He was Italian, so he had the language thing going for him. Plus, other than having trouble with takeoff and landing, he was perfectly behaved. He sat around talking to his Mom and Dad, in Italian and I noticed an extra set of eyes on my laptop when I was watching Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup finals, when the Rangers won the Cup. Since it doesn’t look like they’ll win one for a while, thanks for the memories, boys.

On behalf of my jumpy-stomached friend, I ask this question. If a landing is bad enough that at least one passenger loses his breakfast, lunch and snack, does the pilot deserve applause? I’m against applauding a landing in general. But I definitely think that if someone boots, the pilot should be met with indifference. I’ll reserve booing for more serious flight difficulties I’d rather not write about.

I’m getting used to the cold, sort of. There’s snow on the ground outside. I can see it on my parents’ deck. It was 28 degrees Celsius when my flight landed in Douala (that’s roughly 90 Fahrenheit, and extremely humid). It was 28 degrees Fahrenheit when I landed in New York, with wind. That was a bit of a shock.

I feel like I should give some sort of wrap up on Africa. But honestly, my feelings haven’t changed that much from when I marked the one-year point. Maybe this is the best way to describe my African adventure: It was like living any place else. There were good times and bad times, things I loved and things that made me crazy. There were exciting moments and boring moments. But during my time in Rwanda and Cameroon, with brief stops in Uganda and Burundi, all those experiences were more intense. The happy moments were happier, the bad moments worse. Is that good or bad? I don’t know. It’s going to take some time to figure that out.

What I do know is that I’m extremely glad that I had this experience, and I think it was good for me. I thank Rebecca for letting me join her (and I can’t wait for her to rejoin me). And I don’t think I would change anything that happened.

Thanks for reading this and sharing in my experiences while I was away. I really appreciate it. It’s good to be home.

2007-02-02T05:45:00.000-08:00

February 2, 2007

Hey there, remember me?

I know at least one person has been asking why there haven’t been any new posts in this space over the last few weeks. While I’d love to say that it’s because I’ve been out traveling around Cameroon, the reality is far different. The truth is I haven’t written anything recently because there hasn’t been much to write about.

That changed today when Bec and I made another attempt to get our residence permits. I know the first question that came to your minds after reading that: Evan, why do you need a residence permit? You’re leaving soon. Why put yourself through the aggravation of dealing with the Cameroonian bureaucracy?

Answer: If I didn’t try to get this done, I wouldn’t have had the chance to go to the Justice Ministry’s Central Index Card Office, clearly a victim of bilingualism gone bad. To be honest, I’m not sure what a better translation would have been. I was so distracted by the Central Index Card Office that I failed to notice the French.

To my disappointment, there were no index cards in the Central Index Card Office. I had envisioned stack upon stack of white and pink cards all around the room, like some pack rat’s apartment. Instead, it was an open room with a few desks and bookshelves stacked with bundled legal documents. “Now we know why the courts are so backlogged,” Bec said.

In theory, we should have had our residency permits within the first three months of our arrival. But then the person at the desk decided (I say decided because the person was actually breaking Cameroon’s agreement with CRS and possibly the country’s laws) we’d have to wait six months. Six months came while we were in New York, so we couldn’t get our cards then. So we’re getting them now.

It’s hard for me to overstate how unnecessarily complex and slow the Cameroonian bureaucracy is. In some ways, it’s the perfect system for low-level flunkies to profit from. “I’m sorry, you needed that document signed at the office in the other ministry. But I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement about how we can make this go faster.” CRS doesn’t have to prostrate itself like that – it’s written in their agreement to work here – which means the organization has to wade through the muck to get anything done.

I think that Mathieu, the driver who has been in charge of getting our documents done, has been to seven offices to get two copies of one document. The reason Bec and I had to go today is that the man at the desk with the hand-written RECEPTION sign – a man with whom I hold one thing in common. I would have run out of room on the small piece of poster board where he wrote the word also – could verify that we were the people whose faces appear in our passports. We didn’t have to sign any papers. We didn’t even have to say hello. We just had to stand there. So we took the chance to discuss, in English, how Cameroon ranks among the world’s worst countries for doing business, the number of steps it takes to get anything official done and how if people are so afraid of Chinese doing better business in Cameroon, maybe Cameroonians should try to compete against them. That last bit will make sense in the second part of this post.

Poor Mathieu had to rewrite a hand-written letter requesting the documents needed to get our pink cards. Apparently, the letter was only in one of our dossiers. Each separate dossier needed its own letter asking for the forms. That it was a joint request hardly mattered. To top it off, there was no paper in the Central Index Card Office, so Mathieu had to go searching for more.

Although we thought we’d be getting our residency cards today, it turns out it’ll be Tuesday or Wednesday. I’m not holding my breath, since we were told we’d be getting our cards two weeks ago. I’ll probably get mine the day I fly home. No worries. It’ll just go in my collection of interesting identification documents, along with the Ugandan and Cambodian press passes.

The only worry I’ve got is that our passports are currently somewhere inside the Central Index Card Office. I have this nightmare vision that they are currently being wrapped up into one of the bundles and slapped onto a bookshelf, never to be seen again.

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As some of you may have known, and most of you probably didn’t, Chinese President Hu Jintao was in Yaoundé earlier this week. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that. It didn’t even make the front pages of most Cameroonian newspapers.

Hu is on an eight-country tour of Africa. Cameroon was his first stop and he left behind $100 million in trade deals, give or take a dollar or two. Unfortunately, he did not sign any trade deals with me.

I pitched this story to a couple of outlets, with, as you can see, no luck. This, of course, led to a new version of the famous Buddhist riddle: If the Chinese president comes to visit Cameroon, and no one outside cares, did he really visit? An American friend who is a photographer tried to get into the events where Biya and Hu would chat, meet and greet, but the Deputy Minister of Information told him, “It’s very late. Maybe we can do some business.” The Deputy Minister then asked for CFA 50,000 (around $100). Ben got up and left.

There are billboards all around Yaoundé showing Biya and Hu shaking hands, probably at a meeting earlier in Beijing. They’re quite buddy-buddy, don’t you know. I’m sure in briefings, Hu asked questions like, “what’s that guy’s name again?” There are also Chinese flags all around town. The streets in our neighborhood were completely shut down on Wednesday, which made walking easier and safer. I didn’t have any complaints, except for the soldiers with their rifles cocked and ready to rock.

What I’ve discovered from talking to people is that many Cameroonians don’t actually like the Chinese presence in their country. It’s not that they have any problems with Chinese because they’re Chinese. It’s because a lot of Chinese fill the same economic niche.

Chinese construction firms bring their own unskilled labor to do a lot of the building, jobs Cameroonians could fill. That’s a legitimate gripe. But Chinese also do a lot of the small trading, down to selling little sugar donuts (which have a proper French name that I can’t spell) in the markets. That’s where I kind of draw the line at legitimate griping. If you don’t like that the Chinese are outselling you in the markets, make a better donut that people want to buy. Compete. Don’t complain.

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The Chinese president’s visit caused my first “Listen, you whippersnapper” moment. That seems appropriate since I’m turning 30 next week. I went into the Internet café with the cappuccinos on Wednesday afternoon to get out of the house. There were some American college students who are studying in Cameroon in the café.

In amongst them was a large redhead. He asked what I was doing in Cameroon. I explained Bec’s job, and my attempts at journalism.

“I’ve got a story for you,” he said.

“Really, what’s that?”

“You know the Chinese president is visiting here today.”

“Get right outta town.”

“Yeah. He is. He’ll be passing by here any minute.”

“I pitched that story already. No one wanted it. It’s really a story when he goes to Liberia, because it’s Liberia, and Sudan, because China’s the only country that can really stop the Darfur violence.” [Did you know that China gets around 85 percent of Sudan’s oil?]

“Yeah, but people will care when the oil in the Bakassi Peninsula starts going to China.”

And that’s when it happened. That’s when I turned into a grumpy old man.

“Listen, I’ve been doing this a little while,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m a political science student.”

“Oh yeah? Trust me, the people that are telling you about this stuff aren’t giving the good information to a poli sci student from Dickinson College. No one knows how much oil is in Bakassi. In fact, no one thinks Cameroon has control of the oil in Bakassi. The rumor is that much of that oil stayed in Nigeria’s possession. And really what matters is what companies are doing the exploration. It looks like French and American companies, so how much of that goes to China? Probably not all that much.”

I didn’t like doing it, but I comfort myself by reminding myself that this guy was really beyond smug.

He then went outside to wait for the Chinese president’s motorcade to pass. It never did. I’m glad I didn’t follow his story lead.

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And finally, I may have gotten to the bottom of the Christmas crime rush in Yaoundé. It turns out, according to a friend who’s lived in Cameroon for nearly four years, that many of Cameroon’s coffee and cocoa brokers live here. For some reason, they get almost all their money at the end of the year. So for a couple of weeks, they’re rich. And within those couple of weeks, almost all of that money gets spent. So, with all of that extra money floating around, it gets tempting for thieves.

Huh. That’s the most logical thing I’ve heard about Cameroon in a while.

2007-01-12T02:47:00.000-08:00

January 11, 2007

One dismaying side effect of the prison guard strike I wrote about last week is over 100 prisoners apparently escaped from the Yaoundé Central Prison, which houses the worst of the worst in the city as well as many less serious offenders – the jaywalkers, the ID-less and the public urinators. Actually, only not having an ID can get you arrested, if you can’t pay. If the other two were punishable offenses, I’d be The Fugitive. (Kidding, mostly.)

This does not mean that the worst of the worst escaped from the Yaoundé Central Prison, just that a small group of the over 4,000 prisoners got out. There have been reports of a bump in crime – I hesitate to say crime wave, as friends have described it – although it’s unclear whether the bump is simply an extension of the Christmas rush that usually happens around this time of year.

I’m not totally sure how the prisoners got out. Maybe the gendarmes and police didn’t get there fast enough. If that happened, then probably a lot more would have escaped. Cameroonians are quite industrious. It’s entirely possible that the escapees entered into some sort of agreement with the surrounding police where everybody, except victims, benefits. Have I mentioned that Cameroonians are quite industrious? One other option is the escapees simply slipped through during all the commotion. If I had to, I’d bet the third option.

While some of the increased criminal activity has been the usual for Yaoundé, there has been at least one deadly incident. Burglars murdered a French woman and injured her companion when she discovered them in her house. There were reports of thugs driving around pretending to be supervisors from one of the many private security agencies, attempting to get into an apartment building. Fortunately, the guard on duty didn’t recognize them and wouldn’t open the gate. He was pelted with stones, according to the report, until they were either chased away or gave up.

As I said, I’m not sure whether any of this is tied to the prison break. Only the murder stands out as something out of the ordinary, and that just seems to me like an extremely unfortunate case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The attempted break-in the guard stopped isn’t frequent, but it’s not uncommon either. Sometimes they’re even successful. Bandits will wait for someone to pull up in a car and then follow the car into the gate. We get regular security updates from the American Embassy, and once every couple of months a home invasion, attempted or successful, appears.

The other thing that makes me hesitate to call what’s happening in Yaoundé a crime wave is that the incidents are happening at night. If these sorts of things were happening in the middle of the afternoon, it would be a cause for serious concern. They’re not. We take very good care of ourselves, and will reevaluate our nighttime excursions as needed.

As you can imagine, I was totally calm, cool and collected after I read about the prison break and the potentially accompanying crime bump. I didn’t do anything like make sure the door was locked or think about never going outside again, except to go to the airport. Nope. Not me. Never.

Okay, maybe a little.

“Man, this hardly seems fair,” I said to Rebecca when we spoke on the phone a little while after I read the e-mails with the crime reports.

“What?”

“The prison break.”

“Well, the murder rate and crime rate are higher in New York.”

That’s a good point. The only quibble I had with that statement was the certainty with which it was said, but that’s only because I’ve never seen crime statistics for Cameroon and probably wouldn’t believe them anyway. One never trusts a number put forth by the Cameroonian government (or just about any government, including ours).

When we lived on 83rd Street, someone tried to push his way into our apartment as I closed the door. Fortunately, I knew he was there before he started to push. All those years forcing attackmen outweighing me by 50 pounds away from the goal came in handy. I’ve had my wallet and cell phone stolen from a gym locker in New York. We listened to a podcast the other night about a Park Slope writer who was shocked by being mugged in his island, um, neighborhood.

I feel safe on the streets here, especially during the day. One benefit of having a corrupt and slightly less than competent police force is that the public bands together. Bec says the same thing happened in Uzbekistan. When a known miscreant walked through the market, vendors would start yelling thief. I don’t think that happens here. In fact, Cameroonians have a worrying penchant for mob violence when dealing with thieves and other criminals. It’s not abnormal to hear of a suspected thief being cut to shreds by an angry crowd. I’m reasonably confident that a thief would suffer some horrible fate if he or she went after me in a crowded area.

Stop me if I told you this one before, but I think it’s a good example of what I’m talking about. My friend Blake was in an Internet café in Accra, Ghana’s capital, in the evening. In walked a man with a machete with the intention of robbing the café and everyone in the place. Recognizing this would be bad for business, the staff member at the front desk reached for the panic button – his very own machete. Other staff members pulled out machetes as well. They proceeded to chase the wanna-be thief out and down the street. The customers stayed and paid; whether out of fear or appreciation I can’t say. But do you see what I mean about people staying together?

At the same time, I also know stuff happens. To a certain extent, Bec and I and every other expatriate here is a target. We have a lot more than most Cameroonians (or Rwandans or Ghanaians or Ugandans). Usually what this means is that people try to sell us stuff we don’t want, or be our friends or ask us for stuff we can’t or won’t give. On rare occasions, it might mean something else. So if anyone wants the car or the money or the cell phone, they can have it. We’ll get another. Just stay calm, give up the item and get on with life. I think that’s the same everywhere, though, not something that is unique to most of Africa, especially Cameroon.

But getting back to the crime bump, I’ll concede that the crime rate is higher in New York. However, I guarantee that the prison break rate is far lower in New York.

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The only home invasion we’ve suffered came in the form of wildlife. Remember when I said that the only big animals we’ve seen since we’ve seen in Africa were cockroaches? Well, that was before we saw what we saw crawling around our bathroom the other night.

I was sitting on the couch in the living room while Bec was washing up in the bathroom.

“Umm, there’s a huge spider in the bathroom. I know it’s bad luck to kill them, but this is really big,” she said, gamely attempting to hold it together and her face covered in suds.

“Sure. Let me get the spray.”

I went in and didn’t see anything. I had my doubts about the size of this spider. Bec is one of the bravest people I know, but bugs and spiders aren’t her thing. We’ve set it up so that I take care of insects and the occasional arachnid, while she gets everything else. So that when there’s a cockroach, I usually kill it. When there’s a crocodile, Bec’s on it. This seems fair to me.

After we watched some TV, I went back into the bathroom. And then I saw it. I had never seen anything quite like this spider. I could clearly see the shape of its body – the bulbous rear, the small head, the bends in the legs – without bending over. The light brown markings on its dark brown back were visible. I swear I saw its mouth. To paraphrase George Costanza, it was 10 feet long if it was an inch.

I was afraid that one of us would get caught in the spider’s web and become dinner. I’m sure it could have taken Bec down in one bite. I’m a bit meatier. We were pretty sure it wasn’t poisonous because we didn’t remember reading about venomous spiders in Cameroon. At least that’s what we told ourselves.

Most importantly, something that big should be paying rent. But I was afraid to make the request.

So it had to be dealt with. I unloaded probably a quarter can of bug spray on the spider, and it kept moving. I was afraid that it was angry and advised Bec not to get up to pee in the middle of the night at any cost. We tucked our mosquito net tight to make sure it couldn’t get into the bed.

I’m pleased to report that it worked and we are safe. There was no spider attack over the course of the night, and we didn’t see any yesterday. Now let’s see if our luck holds.

2007-01-08T09:43:00.001-08:00

January 8, 2007

I’ve wiped off the self-pity I was wallowing in, and after a long shower I’m ready to get started with enjoying what are probably my last two-and-a-half months in Cameroon.

It’s time to make an effort to see parts of the country I haven’t seen, and to meet people I haven’t met. I think I’ll enjoy this.

Of course, I still haven’t bought a plane ticket, so I reserve the right to change my mind.

Thank you for indulging me.

Just so no one is worried about me, here’s a link to something I contributed to the Sub-Saharan African Roundtable. It’s a more fleshed-out version of what I wrote about election reform in Cameroon. If you’re at all interested in Africa, you should check out the other stories here.

Before you read my post, Samuel Eto’o is Cameroon’s national football star. He is a striker for FC Barcelona and his face is everywhere here – on fabric patterns, on magazines, on advertisements. There are songs about him and he is always on television somewhere in the country. I just wanted everyone to get the reference.

And while I’m at it, here’s a link to an interesting Cameroonian blogger. If you want a much better understanding of life, politics and history in Cameroon than I can give, you’ve got to read Dibussi Tande. There is a far more informed critique of the penal procedure code I wrote about last week a few items in.

In other news, the technician was able to fix the transformer for our Game Cube. Only in the developing world would someone try cutting through the welded and bolted plastic cover to get at the delicate electrical components inside. That’s just what Desiree did, and it worked.

Unfortunately, within two minutes of plugging it in, the transformer buzzed, then smelled, then started to emit white smoke. So there goes that. I think the Game Cube is coming home with me. Bec will keep the Gameboy. We’re so mature.

2007-01-03T06:25:00.000-08:00

January 3, 2007

Since this is my first post of the New Year, I figured I would give an update on reform efforts in Cameroon. And guess what. They’re encouraging.

The new Cameroonian penal code went into effect on New Year’s Day. Okay, is the yawn over? Get that last stretch out…OK…. Here we go.

I know, penal reform sounds incredibly boring. Every once in a while when someone describes the whole process to me, I feel like grabbing my pillow. But for thousands of Cameroonians languishing in criminally neglected and overcrowded jails, this is potentially huge news.

How bad are Cameroonian jails? Guards in several prisons around the country went on strike over the conditions last week, and they’re the ones in charge. The strike in Yaoundé ended violently yesterday, with gendarmes and police storming the city’s Central Prison to retake control from the prisoners. The gendarmes and police took the opportunity to beat up on the guards and arrest several of them. Two prisoners were killed.

The Cameroonian legal system was, like the rest of the country, divided between British and French until recently. Essentially, habeas corpus rights came into effect countrywide on Jan. 1. They had previously existed only in the Anglophone provinces, in penal codes modeled on British law, while in the Francophone provinces, the government could just hold a person until they got around to holding a trial, or the person paid a large “fee” to get out. This system was modeled on French law. Hey wait a minute. Isn’t France the country that says it’s the birthplace of human rights? I guess I can’t say anything, since the Bushies are doing their best to get rid of the sacred writ in the United States. You know, he’s making it really hard to ride my high horse.

But I digress.

Anyway, under the new penal code, a prisoner can petition to be let out of jail if their cases aren’t heard within a prescribed period of time. I’m not sure how long that is, but I am sure that it will mean people picked up for little things like not having their ID cards on them probably won’t be sitting in jail for months.

But as always, there’s a catch in Cameroon. In order for someone to benefit from their newly granted legal rights, they will have to get their documents from office to office in the Ministry of Justice and prison authority. As you can imagine, this is tough to do from inside prison. There aren’t enough lawyers in Cameroon to help out every prisoner, and none of the lawyers work pro bono anyway. Most of the prisoners are poor; otherwise they would have bought their way out already. CRS, I know, is working to set up a pro bono legal service to help prisoners. But that will take time. There is a danger that people will be stuck in prison unnecessarily even with this new law (actually, that’s a guarantee). But at least the new law is there, and there is a chance for people to exercise their rights.

The second reform is electoral reform. (Why does that sound like something from Passover?) I’ve written earlier about the election reform laws snaking their way through Cameroon’s parliament. Right before Christmas, Biya and his supporters submitted their own proposals for electoral reforms, including a new electoral commission. Except their idea was to just have the president appoint some people to a temporary commission with the chance for him to renew their posts if they do a good job.

That doesn’t sound very independent to me, and it didn’t to most Cameroonians. Parliamentarians, including some from Biya’s party, diplomats and the press all cried foul. What usually happens in a situation like this is that the government ignores the outcry and does whatever it wants. Hey, it’s worked so far.

But something different happened this time. Biya caved, albeit quietly. They submitted a new law with an independent electoral commission that will be in place prior to this spring’s parliamentary elections. Not many people heard about it.

So, does this mean freedom is on the march here in Cameroon? Maybe. Cameroonians will tell you that the government is extremely good at giving up just enough to look like it’s working towards reform while still maintaining its power and the status quo. It’s a shell game, and the government usually wins.

This give on electoral reform may be different, though, since some of Biya’s supporters went against the president. That the government hasn’t trumpeted its magnanimity also makes me think there’s a bit more to this change than the usual giving an inch, taking a mile. If they were so happy with what was accomplished, why didn’t the Cameroonian authorities make a big deal about the new law? They certainly were pleased to tell Cameroonians about the law they liked but failed. I doubt that there will be a speedy opening up of Cameroonian politics, but at least there’s movement.

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All of this political and penal news came a distant second in the minds of most Cameroonians this last week.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Cameroonians know how to party.

Our New Year’s weekend was tame. On Saturday we went to pick up a TV and DVD player. We got tired of watching movies on our computers, and we wanted to finally plug in our Game Cube.

We got home and plugged in the TV. That worked, no problem. Then we plugged in the DVD player. It played most of what we had, but two things it didn’t were Dodge ball and all the Star Wars movies. That’s a deal breaker, so yesterday we returned the cheap, Chinese knock-off Samsung and bought a more expensive real Samsung DVD player. Star Wars and Dodge ball, I am happy to report, are now watchable, although some might debate that about Star Wars Episodes I, II, and III.

Then we plugged in the Game Cube. We attached it to a power transformer, and then the transformer to a power regulator. We figured we were safe. I then popped in NHL 2005, and it appeared on the screen. Excitement ensued, although I smelled the end of my journalism career.

“Do you smell something burning?” Bec asked.

It’s not rare to smell things burning in Yaoundé. People are constantly burning their trash, even rubber. So I didn’t think anything of it.

“I think it’s coming from outside,” I said.

I walked out of the room for a second, and then back in. And then I heard a small . And then I saw the black smoke coming out of the Game Cube’s power cord. That’s that, although we think it’s only the cord and not the box. The Indian guys we bought our DVD and TV from seem to think that they know a technician in Yaoundé who can fix it. Developing world knowledge. It’s fantastic.

Bec and I and the Kribi crew went to our friend Jean-Baptiste’s house for a New Year’s lunch on Sunday. JB’s wife, Jacqueline, fixed a scrumptious and huge meal of traditional Cameroonian foods. We had fried chicken, beef brochettes, salad, potato soup, carrots, greens, two massive fish, pineapple cake and watermelon. I might be forgetting something, but my stomach sure wasn’t. But the company, as always, was the highlight. Actually, the rooster crowing angrily in the yard when the chicken was served may have been the highlight. It’s a tough call.

Bec and I then spent New Year’s Eve playing board games at the house of her boss, Jennifer. At midnight, and this is where the knowing how to have a good time comes in, fireworks shot up in the distance, over the Nlongkak traffic circle. It was actually quite beautiful. We could see them from the verandah. Apparently, there were small displays like that all around Yaoundé, sponsored by the government. And Cameroonians were out dancing until 10 the next morning.

I know, bread and circuses. But what’s wrong with people having a good time every once in a while?

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Finally, a new year brings many changes. And a big one is coming for me.

Wow, who knew this would be hard to write? I always thought I'd look forward to say what I'm about to say, but I can't say I am.

It looks like I’m coming home in March, around St. Patrick’s Day, tail firmly planted between legs.

I’ve started to feel like my career is stalled, and I’m afraid that if I don’t do something to give it a jumpstart, I might permanently damage it. So I’m looking for wire service or newspaper jobs in New York and Washington, D.C.

There are many reasons why it’s difficult for me to write these words. First off, I told Bec that I’d be with her wherever she went. I also guaranteed I’d be in Cameroon for as long as her appointment goes. And I’m falling back on my word. In the long run, this is better. Publishing a story or two per month, I’m told, is pretty successful for someone living in backwaters like Rwanda and Cameroon. It just doesn’t feel that way. There are too many days where I feel like there’s nothing in front of me, and I don’t function well like that.

Next time we go abroad, and it’s going to happen, we both need to be working, and feeling like we’re being productive. I’ve always wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and that’s not going to change. But I don’t think I want to freelance anymore.

Second, I don’t like the idea of leaving Rebecca behind. She’s not coming back with me, and we don’t know when we’ll be together again. She’s got some work that she needs to finish here, and that could take awhile. As much as I need to jumpstart my career, she needs to keep working on hers. We need to get ourselves to similar levels, and this is probably the best, if most painful, way.

I keep thinking about how hard it’ll be for her to wake up one day and not find my stuff in the closet, and then come home to an empty house. I don’t like the idea of leaving her alone. It’s no fun, and will be extremely difficult. I feel like I’m abandoning her. At least going back to New York, I’ll have a lot of people there that I care about. Please don’t take this the wrong way. It’s not quite the same.

Bec feels guilty about the whole thing, which is just silly. I chose to come with her to Rwanda and Cameroon. I don’t think I evaluated the risks well, but that’s my fault. Everything I’ve accomplished here – and I recognize it has been a lot – is because of her. So she shouldn’t feel guilty at all. I feel indebted to her. In fact, I feel like I'm not tough enough to carry on here, and that doesn't feel good. This is all on me.

Third, I feel like I’ve lost. I’ve given freelancing my best shot, and I wanted to do it longer. When we came back from New York, I thought I’d make it to May and then reassess. But I don’t think I can. There are days when I feel like Sisyphus, and there are days where I feel like Indiana Jones. Except even on a lot of days when I feel like Indiana Jones, the giant stone ball crushes me. I thought freelancing would be easier, and if it wasn’t, I was good enough to make these countries interesting to editors. I was wrong, and losing is no fun.

Finally, I actually quite like Cameroon. We live comfortably in a comfortable place. We have Cameroonian friends I think the world of. The weather right now is gorgeous, cool, dry and sunny. It’s a shame I couldn’t generate more interest in Cameroon, but the country’s not bleeding, so it’s not leading.

Enough self-pity. This is the way it’s most likely going to be, and as much as it pains me to make this decision, in the long run it’s for the best.

So, why am I coming back on St. Patrick’s Day?

Well, I like Cameroon and don’t want to leave just yet, mostly. There are many places I want to go and things I want to do. Also, why go back early in the winter? Why not wait until spring is right around the corner? The hockey playoffs will be just around the corner also.

Most importantly, though, I want a freakin’ parade. So Maura, Kelly, anyone else with connections, get on the phone with Ancient Order of Hibernians. Tell them there’s a new grand marshal this year.

This decision does not mean I’ve stopped trying to make this work. I’m still writing for the Catholics (in fact, here’s a story I wrote last week Who’s this Catholic News Service guy?), and will have a pitch out to a major American paper tomorrow on the penal reform.

I haven’t bought a ticket yet, and plans could change. I could have a job earlier and leave earlier. Or a very preliminary discussion I’ve had could turn into a stringing relationship, and I could stay longer. Who knows?

But it looks much more like I’ll be back in March. Get the green beer ready.

2006-12-29T05:23:00.000-08:00

December 29, 2006

Getting to Kribi involves driving Cameroon’s notorious inter-provincial roads. I’ll be honest. Of the many reasons I don’t travel as much as I’d like – distance between locations, days getting away from me, the vain hope that I might have stories to write among them – is the roads scare the bejesus out of me. I still remember one of the veteran correspondents I met in Uganda saying, “Everyone thinks the most dangerous part of reporting in Africa is going to unstable war zones. Really, it’s getting from place to place.”

I’ve written before about the Cameroonian government’s efforts to reduce the blood spilled on its highways. Apparently, it’s not working. I guess they can’t forcefully remove people’s heads from their butts.

Charles heroically did all the driving last weekend. Our first stop was Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital and largest city, to pick up Paul and Laura. They had just arrived from Chicago the night before. We left early Saturday morning to avoid as many of the massive rigs hauling massive logs that slow traffic down and legitimately cause people to try to pass them on the winding two-way roads. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the trucks with the logs that are unbelievably big going unbelievably slow. I’d be far more freaked about the roads if they were trying to pick up speed. And I also don’t have a problem with people passing the tractor-trailers on the two-lane road. If we didn’t, Paul and Laura would probably still be waiting for us in Douala. It’s just that people pick the most inopportune times – on curves, near the crest of a hill – to do this. And that’s where the accidents happen.

Charles for the most part did his passing in a safe manner. Every once in a while, he’d have to jerk back into his lane because someone was coming head-on way too fast, but that was fairly rare.

I sat in the back seat, next to Bec, on the way to Douala. I was safely strapped into a seatbelt and in a relatively comfortable seat. There was traffic getting out of Yaoundé. Most people in Cameroon’s cities – and across much of Africa as well – still have family living in their ancestral villages. So a lot of people take Christmas as chance to get a bit of mom’s home cooking. When we passed by the bus station area, it was a zoo. There was the usual inability to take turns and wait, something I’ve noticed in Cameroon and other parts of Africa, and not just on the roads. There were tour buses backing into spots. There were traffic police in baby blue shirts and white pith helmets trying to get cars to move in an orderly manner, but to no avail. Taxis drove on the shoulder, and then cut off other cars when they could go no further. Jeeps tried to take up the entire road. Pedestrians walked behind the backing-in buses so they couldn’t go. All in all, a traffic nightmare.

As I said, the drive to Douala was a relatively peaceful three hours or so. There were few trucks on the road and only a few maniacs. I noticed black signs that looked a little like stick figures, almost like Keith Harring paintings, but standing still. On the first leg of our journey, I couldn’t figure out what they were.

Traffic was snarled again on Douala’s outskirts. Like in Yaoundé, there were many people heading back to the village. But then we saw the real reason for the backup, especially since we were going against traffic. A green Volkswagen pick-up, essentially a VW bus with the passenger section converted into a flatbed, probably attempted to wind his way through the traffic until it met the immovable object of a box truck. The VW had its grill rearranged in such a way that I can’t imagine the driver walked out under his own power. The blue box truck had a few scratches to its paint job. The accident managed to back up traffic for seemingly miles in both directions for hours. Cameroon needs a traffic copter.

I sat in the trunk going from Douala to Kribi, a two-hour jaunt. There were jump seats, unfortunately without seatbelts, so it was a lot like riding in the way back of the Party Wagon, only facing the side. Oh yeah, there was no foot well, so I had to sit in ever more creative positions and still, parts of my lower half that I didn’t know could fall asleep did. But riding in the back did have one benefit: I saw all the stuff we passed after we safely went by. That was a pleasant change.

I also managed to figure out what the black signs were: markers of where people died along the roads. I also started to notice the charred hulks of wrecked cars periodically dotting the landscape. Some were there so long they had been mostly reclaimed by the surrounding forests. The roads in southern Cameroon run through relatively dense rain forest, in various shades of green with rolling hills and a few tree-covered mountains sprouting up. Charles pointed out that much of the forest around the road had been chopped down already, and that these were second-growth plants. We’d occasionally pass patches of scarred landscape where the second growth was clear-cut and burned, with fresh fires still lapping and crackling. It’s sad to see, but people have to eat, right.

I could see the water and beach of Kribi from the side of the car I was facing. It was gorgeous. Stretches of blue pulling out from the white beach, shrouded a bit by swaying palms and other trees. Delicious. We passed a public park with wide expanses of green for people to play football (soccer to you and me) and have picnics, complete with beach access. Many families were out enjoying the sun, an altogether idyllic sight.

I wrote about our trip and won’t bore you anymore. I rode in the trunk again on the way back to Yaoundé. I wanted to sit back and listen to my iPod, mostly Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, since they manage to capture the mood rolling through the Cameroonian countryside better than anyone else. I found this to be the case driving through Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi as well. Plus, there was the benefit of seeing what didn’t hit us after it didn’t hit us.

I noticed one last bit of the Cameroonian campaign to promote road safety. Along with the black signs are smaller ones that say “32 people died here,” or whatever the number was in that spot. And then I thought about why this campaign may not be working as well as the authorities might like. Most likely, people don’t pay attention. Or if they do, they think, that’s too bad, but it won’t happen to me. I think that’s the same for every road safety campaign throughout the world.

But there are some technical problems. The black signs are a little conceptual for most people. You need a second to think about them. Maybe they should be streaked with red or twisted in unnatural positions or missing a leg. And the signs advertising the number of people who died at a particular curve are too small. You have to really look at them to see what they say. Well, that hardly seems safe. It might even explain some of the freshly crumpled cars rolled onto their sides in ditches next to those signs. I think they should be bigger, like American highway road signs or billboards. “SLOW DOWN. THIRTY-TWO PEOPLE DIED IN AN ACCIDENT ON THIS SPOT,” in five-foot tall letters would probably work a lot better.

Maybe I should be the minister of transport. I’ve got the time.

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Apparently, Another Day in Shrimpistan is picked up in Google’s survey of blogs about Cameroon. Who knew my reach was so global. Get more people to come back, because the more hits, the higher I might be in their alert.

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On that happy note, Bonne Annee, mes amis. Don’t worry; we’re staying in Yaoundé to celebrate. Talk to you all next year.

2006-12-28T06:06:00.000-08:00

December 28, 2006

Yesterday was an exciting day. I went down to the market and bought new flip-flops. Yup, life in Cameroon is a thrill a minute.

That said, Bec and I returned Tuesday from spending Christmas on the beach. That sentence is a bit misleading. We did have a room, so we were able to get off the beach occasionally. I will say this: it was lovely spending Christmas in flip-flops and shorts rather than freezing my butt off, although it sounds like the New York area is feeling the pleasant effects of global warming this year. I don’t know what everyone’s complaining about.

We went to Kribi, which is on the Gulf of Guinea coast. Since I’ve described Cameroon as the armpit of Africa, Kribi is that pleasant part of the body where armpit gently edges into a person’s side. With us were our friends Charles and Ruth, their son Paul and his wife Laura. Charles and Ruth, if you haven’t guessed, are significantly older than us.

Kribi is delightfully underdeveloped. There’s electricity and paved roads. But there aren’t massive Hilton resorts or Club Meds along the beach. Instead, the hotels are much smaller structures, none more than two or three stories tall and decked out in the whites and pale pastels one expects from a beach community. They’re nicely spaced out and all have the easygoing vibe people want when they’re on vacation. Sure, there isn’t non-stop entertainment. But you aren’t sharing the beach with a thousand strangers either.

Our hotel, the Tara Plage, was just south of Kribi’s town center. It was a cluster of eight rooms spread between two buildings with an open bar area doubling as the reception desk. The bar opened on to a covered verandah, which then led directly to the beach. Despite all the problems with oil extraction, the rigs and platforms and pipeline terminals around 20 miles out provided beautiful lights at night. Jealous yet?

So, what did we do during our three days in the sun? Well, this being Shrimpistan, we ate shrimp. Lots and lots of them, and they were pulled straight from the water and plopped on our plates. We also ate other fish that was fresh-caught, including barracuda. Consider that vengeance for the time you went snorkeling and were confronted by a fleet of them, Dad. I probably have so much mercury in me that you can use my toe to take your temperature. But use your mouth, please.

We competitively lounged. The goal of the game was to see who could do less over the course of the day. I figured that since I have the most expertise at this of the people we were with, I would give everyone a head start. It’s no fun dominating when you know the other players don’t have a chance. I finished one book and read the better part of another. I lounged in a beach chair. I slept in said beach chair. I swam in the gulf.

I spent a great deal of time watching the lizards – Cameroon’s answer to squirrels. These are fascinating creatures, chomping on bugs so I don’t have to squish them. Some are colorful – there’s one especially attractive lizard with a Halloween-orange head, grey to black body and orange tail with a black tip. Others are just green. They don’t run so much as skitter, with short, choppy movements that almost look like stop-motion animation straight out of the original King Kong. They don’t bother people at all. They simply skitter, look for bugs, do what look like push-ups and climb trees, occasionally falling out of them with a splat into the sand and a confused look. I could watch them for hours. Actually, I did.

The Gulf of Guinea waters deserve their own special mention. They are pleasantly warm, like a salty bathtub. Sure, I went running out of the water when seaweed touched me. But I had just been reading about the silent, sudden death of saltwater crocodile attacks and I was a little on edge. Sure, there are no saltwater crocodiles on the west coast of Africa, but you can never be too safe. Fine, I’m a sissy.

We attended a traditional French reveillance on Christmas Eve, hosted by the Tara Plage’s French owner. A traditional French reveillance basically consists of eating. Course after course – ooohhh, squid salad, mmmm, fried shrimp, what’s that? Beef filet, chicken gizzard salad? ewwwwww – came out seemingly without stop. Dinner lasted from 8 to 12:30 and culminated with a beach bonfire.

“Why do they have a bonfire?” Bec asked, somewhat befuddled.

“Because they do,” I said.

The only trouble came to paradise on Christmas Day, when the hotel’s water pump broke. After a relatively long walk on the beach, Bec and I wanted to rinse off our feet before lunch. No luck.

Later in the day, we went for a swim (where I courageously fought off the aforementioned seaweed) and then splayed out on the loungers, sleeping and reading. Paul then came out and said, “They’ve fixed the pump!” I think every guest at the hotel went to his or her showers at once.

I chivalrously let Bec go first. I’ll be honest. She was far more vocally concerned about the lack of showering than I was. So in she went. I thought I heard the water pressure waning a bit, but figured that was from the large number of people showering at once. “You might want to give it a minute before you go in,” she warned. I kept reading.

After a chapter or two, I went to the shower. Figuring that I didn’t want to get all soapy and then be stuck with only toilet water at my disposal, I let the water run for a minute or two. It started with two streams of water, then went down to one, then went down to none. I stepped back out and got dressed, impressively steaming for someone unable to get wet.

“You know, there are times I don’t like being in the developing world,” I said to Bec. She then proceeded to give me helpful bathing tips. “Get one part soapy, then rinse off, then move to the next.” I finally said, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
So, we went back out to enjoy one last sunset, which were never as spectacular as we hoped. As I wrote in my journal, I remembered that all life began in the ocean. It felt as if the conditions to create new, single celled organisms were present in the crevices of my body as I sat and stewed. Fortunately, evolution is slow and the mutations stopped at algae by the time I showered after dinner.

I am pleased to report that I did not get sunburned, and even actually picked up a bit of a tan. Take that, sun.

Going to a resort in the developing world is always a fraught experience for me. To be honest, I often feel a little guilty. For the most part, the only locals I see at these resorts are the ones hawking trinkets on the beach, cleaning the rooms or scurrying off to get me another beer. Now, I recognize that all of these are legitimate professions and that these Cameroonians/Khmer/Thais, etc. might not have a job or way to feed their families if I wasn’t enjoying the time at the beach.

To be fair, there were a few well-off Cameroonians hanging out at the beach with us. And the French guy who ran the place all had Cameroonian wives and children. But at the same time, it just feels imperial in a way that makes me slightly uncomfortable.

Then again, the beer sometimes comes out slow, and I stop worrying about imperialism.

2006-12-22T07:49:00.000-08:00

December 22, 2006

One thing I like about living in the developing world, and this was true in Cambodia and to a lesser extent the Czech Republic, is the level of ingenuity you find on the street. Last Saturday, Rebecca and I were about to walk into a café to get some lunch and pastries for breakfast for the coming days.

As we were walking in, we saw a friend who is a teacher at the American School driving along. She waved. I waved and we walked on. But I didn’t want to make a big fuss because you never want to distract someone’s driving on the roads here. So we kept walking.

And then I noticed that traffic was moving, but our friend’s car wasn’t. Bec and I kept walking because we thought our friend just wasn’t looking. I soon looked up and noticed a group of men pushing her car over to the side and flipping up the hood. So Bec and I went and stayed with her.

The thing that was amazing, and why I’m writing about ingenuity, was that these guys on the side of the road were able to diagnose the problem and, with a few parts they picked up from a garage around the corner, fix it in under an hour. Try that in New York

Of course, they then tried to charge our friend 30,000 francs ($60 or so) for the work. But at that point, our friend’s Cameroonian husband showed up and got the price down to 7,000 francs, which is about $15. The parts turned out costing only around 2,500 or so apiece. I was in the car two nights ago, and can report that it works just fine.

But again, what was interesting was that a couple of guys off the street new how to fix the starter on our friend’s car, and probably around three-quarters of the guys in Yaoundé could do the same. I don’t think that would happen in the developed world, and it is one of those areas where we could learn something.

Of course, this can be taken a little bit too far. Last night, Bec and I were describing the wonders of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Bec was rightly saying how amazing it was that the temples and monuments were built without the aid of cranes or combustion-powered construction equipment.

I reminded her that they were built on the backs of and at the cost of thousands of slaves.

Oh yeah.

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The other day I walked out of the apartment and saw butterflies in the courtyard of our building. This pleased me greatly. It was beautiful.

And then I started walking towards these beautiful butterflies. As I moved towards them, I noticed their wings were brown. No matter. I don’t discriminate. Butterflies are one of those creatures whose mere existence makes life more livable. Even the ugly ones are beautiful.

I drew nearer to the butterflies skittering through the air, trying to see the patterns on their wings and saw that these were the biggest, ugliest, nastiest moths I had ever seen. I fear that not only could they put holes in my clothes, they could put holes in me. They are truly awful. And now, they just seem to be popping up everywhere. Run for your lives!

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Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it. If I don’t write again before January, Happy New Year.

2006-12-18T05:55:00.001-08:00

December 18, 2006

Rebecca started a small herb garden on our balcony last week, just a few small pots of coriander, basil and parsley with a few more varieties to come as we get more pots. She has decided that the lack of reliable coriander supplies in Cameroon is a matter that must be dealt with.

Fine. So last weekend we didn’t feel like driving out to the roadside plant sellers to buy the topsoil and fertilizer we needed. Instead, we decided to walk to the construction site behind the house – the one where I frequently, yet inadvertently, invade the privacy of the workers when they go to the bathroom – and take some of the deep red earth that was there for the taking.

I am not a gardener. I like getting dirty, but not by digging into the ground with my bare hands. There are worms and other little beasties there. Eeeeewwwwwww……

But I went down with Bec anyway and, well, watched her dig. As I said, ewwww…

After about 20 minutes or so, we had two small window boxes filled with the squishy red dirt (I’m not that squeamish). We assumed that everyone grew their food in the red dirt, and there is a lot of both dirt and food. This is a country where everyone eats, after all.

So Odelia came by on Tuesday and saw the barren pots. “Are you going to use that soil,” she asked.

“That’s what Rebecca said.”

“Oh, I’ll bring you some fertilizer next time I come.”

I told Rebecca this and she was concerned. We had a few sprouts coming up, but were they the treasured coriander or simply grass or weeds?

Fast forward to Friday. Bec has more sprouts, but we’re still not sure. Odelia shows up with a full plastic bag.

“This is manure. You know what manure is?”

Do I know what manure is? Much of my life centers on the very idea. So a few responses flew through my head. I thought about the Seinfeld where George discusses what an underrated word manure is. MAN-ure. I decided against that.

Then I thought, “Thanks for the steaming bag of poo” would be inappropriate. After all, this was a sweet gesture on Odelia’s part, and she doesn’t always get my sense of humor. I’m sure there are many people nodding in agreement while they read this.

So instead, I just said thanks and that Rebecca appreciated it. I realized that for Odelia, and for many Cameroonians, Ugandans, Rwandans, etc., the United States isn’t a place, it’s an abstract concept. It’s a place where everyone’s rich and no one goes hungry. It’s a place where no one has to farm because all the food is brought in. In fact, to many people, it’s a country of entirely clean streets with no crime and no corruption where everyone is happy. If only she knew.

I think most Americans, Brits, Germans and Japanese assume just the opposite about most of Africa. In some places the stereotypes are truer than others. In Cameroon they are less. In the Central African Republic, unfortunately, they’re more. People are starving and they have no health care. There are violent rebel groups and an abusive military and police attacking civilians. All in all, it’s a tragic place.

Cameroon, on the other hand, has large parts of the country where people can’t get health care and smaller parts where AIDS is on the rise. It has areas of lawlessness and police and government officials who rob from the people. But everyone eats, and, overall, people are content. They see where improvements can be made, and want them made, but know they’re not nearly as bad off as some of the neighbors.

So back to Odelia, asking me if I knew what manure is has nothing to do with saying I don’t know how the world works. She just didn’t think that I’d have any reason to know what manure is and how it helps plants grow. The sprouts have since started in earnest, and they appear to be herbs.

All of these deep thoughts did not stop me from calling Bec and saying, “Odelia brought you a big bag of crap.”

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Yaoundé is a city that knows how to fete. The week running into Christmas is officially called “Yaoundé en Fete” (Yaoundé in Celebration). One of the city’s main traffic circles is strung with white lights, including a bunch in the center that is in the shape of a Christmas tree. They flash joyously at night. By the way, the traffic circle is called Nlongkak, but not pronounced like you’d think.

A Christmas bazaar of striped tents on the parade route in downtown Yaoundé will break up the monotony of signs exhorting the population to support President Biya starting Wednesday. The street hawkers are walking around with inflatable Santas, plastic trees and other Christmas decorations. (Where’s the Hanukkah stuff?)

Sure, a lot of this stuff comes from the give-the-people-bread-and-circuses school of government. But if people can have enough food and a little joy in their lives, I see no problem with bread and circuses every once in a while. Why can’t people just sit back and have a good time rather than constantly being serious?

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Speaking of fetes, Bec and I are spending Christmas at Kribi, Cameroon’s beach resort area. It’s supposed to be spectacular. We’re going with our friends Charles and Ruth and their son and daughter-in-law. It’ll be good to see Cameroon outside of Yaoundé finally. And even if I have intestinal distress, I’m going.

Say what you will about living in Africa, but I'm spending Christmas at the beach. That might compare favorably to Jew day at the movies.

2006-12-15T06:07:00.000-08:00

December 15, 2006

At Frisbee the other night, I asked a friend who works at an embassy if I missed anything during my long sojourn to the United States.

“Well, they won the war on corruption. They won the war on poverty. They won the war on AIDS. They won the war on business development. They won the war on investment. And they won the war on homosexuality,” he said.

It’s good to see that things didn’t change too much while I was gone.

Which isn’t to say that things are static in Cameroon. Next week there is a special session of parliament where a new elections law that would set up an independent electoral commission, among other changes, will be introduced. Sure, the Catholic Church and its allies originally brought the bill to the prime minister over the summer, and President Biya said he would push for it when he spoke at his political party conference in August or September. And fine, it looks like the president may be backing out of the changes, according to some newspapers here (others say he’s pushing for it). But at least it’s finally coming before parliament, which may even vote for it.

The question, as always, is whether these new laws will mean anything. I want to believe that they will, mostly because I’m tired of being cynical. I’m a hopeful guy, and I’m comfortable being skeptical. I couldn’t do my job well without being skeptical.

But I’ve noticed that I’ve become cynical. And I can’t do my job well being cynical, either.

So, back to election reform. It remains to be seen whether new laws will allow for free and fair elections. The government has a distinct interest in there not being that sort of electoral process. But at the same time, they have an interest in their appearance. Foreign donors don’t like to see out-and-out fraud. Underhandedness is fine, just not fraud.

Maybe Cameroon gets its new election laws, and somehow the opposition comes out on top in parliamentary elections. What would that mean? Would the new guys be any different than the old guys? And would the ruling party let that happen?

I have doubts on all of those questions, but I’d rather hope that there is a chance for a change while not expecting it. It’s easier to sleep at night. And yes, it’s all about me.

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Meanwhile, every time I try to get out of Rwanda, it pulls me back in. (Cliché alert!) (Exclamation point alert!)

Here’s a CNS story I wrote yesterday, a follow-up to something I wrote last year around this time. Remember that good-hearted priest who ordered his church bulldozed to finish off 2,000 Tutsis seeking refuge? Yeah, well, he was convicted on genocide charges the other day at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Meanwhile, in another example of Cameroon being Africa’s Forest Gump, both of Father Seromba’s defense attorneys were Cameroonian.

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And now for the weather. It’s hot. In fact, dare I say, it’s Africa hot. December and January are the two hottest months in Yaoundé. The sun simply sits in the sky, daring anyone to move. Seriously, when I walk outside I immediately turn red. I’ve got sunscreen and I smear it on each time I go out, but it’s like fighting a battleship with a peashooter.

It’s so hot that Cameroonians have told me it’s hot. The Gold Bond powder is out in force to try to keep up with the sweat. I think we’re losing.

Yaoundé has two wet seasons and two dry seasons. We’re in the less pleasant of the dry seasons (although it still does rain at least once a week).

The weather apparently calms down in February, and then the rains come in soon after.

I’m not sure what the seasons are like in the rest of the country other than Douala is a lot wetter, the extreme northwest is hotter and drier and up near Bamenda, in the English-speaking part, the temperatures I hear are lower.

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And in sports, as the New York Rangers have heated up, so have their counterparts in Yaoundé. I’ve now got a fairly sizeable lead of 59.7 points over my nearest competitor in the Traverse City Ice Association. These things change quickly, and I could be out of first just as fast.

After my performance so far as a general manager in the fantasy hockey league, along with the Stanley Cup I won in NHL 2005 on the Gamecube, I think that I may give up this journalism thing. There is no shrewder GM in imaginary hockey. As a great man once said, at least I’ve got that going for me.

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Finally, Happy Hanukkah. Don’t worry. I’ve got a big plate of latkes with my name on it waiting for me tomorrow night.

2006-12-07T05:22:00.000-08:00

December 7, 2006

Happy Pearl Harbor Day! Was that tasteless? Yeah, probably.

But it is now off in cyberspace for ever, part of my lasting contribution.

Speaking of lasting contributions, here's my first contribution to the Sub-Saharan African Roundtable.

After reading my bit, stick around and read what other people are saying. You won't always agree with it, and sometimes you may want to smash something after reading it (I know I do), but you will always be informed on the affairs of this continent when you leave.

2006-12-05T02:22:00.000-08:00

December 5, 2006

It’s December in Yaoundé, which means the Christmas season is upon us. In the spirit of giving, the number of specials and sales are up in the French and Indian supermarkets around town. In the spirit of taking, so is street crime.

According to warnings put out by the American embassy and other organizations in Cameroon, every year around this time the amount of robberies, carjackings and other random crime goes up. Just a word of caution about the words of caution put out by the American embassy: they’re for stupid people, not for people who have been doing this for a while. So I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing: keeping my head up; not wearing anything ostentatious (and I dropped a lot on gold chains before we came back); and not walking down empty streets.

The warnings are for tourists who tend to attract attention and do dumb things. I can’t avoid the attention, unless I start taking the pills C. Thomas Howell took in the regrettable movie “Soul Man” (how did they get James Earl Jones for that dog?). But I can avoid doing dumb things. I’m pretty good at that.

The rise in street crime during the holiday season raises the interesting question of why. Is it like the end of the month when the NYPD needs to make its parking ticket quota? Do the thugs have a certain number of crimes they need to commit or risk demotion? Or do they need to pick up a little extra cash for holiday shopping?

I’ll probably never know the answer to this question. But it’s fun to speculate, as long as I’m not in any way part of the statistics.

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Bec and I got back to Yaoundé late Thursday night. The flights were easy enough, but hardly uneventful.

First, the travel agents put me on the wrong flight to Paris, which meant that we had to pay to get Bec and me on the same flight.

Second, the Air France crew went out of their way to be French – which means rude. One of them even told Bec something like, “This isn’t America” when she was waiting for the toilet while the seatbelt signs were on. And for all that they take pride in cuisine, Air France’s food is singularly rancid.

Third, we had to fly through Paris-Charles de Gaulle, possibly the worst airport on Earth. It’s unnecessarily huge, so it’s impossible to make a connection unless you’ve got an hour and a half – at least, and that means from the time you actually get off the plane – to spare. There are buses and trains to take you where you need to go, but they take the longest possible routes even if those routes defy logic. Plus, everyone in charge is French, which as I noted above means they’re rude even if you speak their language.

I think that airports should only accept the number of airplanes as they have parking spaces. That way, the flight from JFK wouldn’t have to park in Montauk, like ours did.

Our flight from Paris left an hour late because the Cameroonians on the plane all tried to bring every piece of luggage as carry-on. So it took all that extra time to get all of it into the cargo hold, and probably to convince the folks to do it.

I sat sitting next to some big, seemingly important Cameroonian guy who had just been to Russia and France on business. He knew half the plane, and they all came to greet my row-mate. I was in the aisle, so they all leaned in right on top of me and didn’t move until they were done. At one point, I turned to Rebecca, who was in the seat across the aisle, and said, “It’s like I’m not even here,” in English. The person who had his elbow in my sternum didn’t move.

My row-mate also managed to drink his orange juice so fast that he was able to ask for a second cup. This is fine and totally within his rights – he actually paid for his seat himself, so he had more of a right to ask for a second OJ than I did – but it apparently threw the flight attendant so much that I didn’t get my bag of snacks.

Because I had the aisle, the guy had to climb over me to get to the bathroom. I appreciate that he climbed rather than wake me up each time he went. But he kept stepping on my feet and on two occasions I received unwanted lap dances. Eww….

But we arrived, hearty and (relatively) healthy.

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Anyway, it’s now time to regain my motivation. That’s a tough one, and I’m not sure it’s going to happen. When I was home, people were telling me how impressed they were that I was able to keep working and stay motivated even though there are no bosses or deadlines or offices hanging over me. It’s a vicious cycle. There are stories I want to do. It’s just a question of getting the editors interested in them.

The days of being highly self-motivated may well be done. But we’ll see after I get back on a regular sleep schedule. Last night, I had my first full night of sleep since we’ve been back.

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I was, however, motivated enough to publish a story for the Catholics while I was away. It’s on a human rights activist detained in Congo-Brazzaville.

I wrote it at Joyce Bakeshop in Brooklyn, so don’t ask me about the dateline. I'm also not sure who this Catholic News Service person is, but he/she took my byline. But I took the money. Ha ha.

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Odelia says the water is too dirty to boil, Britta and drink. Welcome back.

Meanwhile, in another innovation in African democracy, presidential candidates in Madagascar were required to provide their own ballot papers at polling stations last weekend.

2006-10-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-10-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-10-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-20T07:10:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-18T07:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-09-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-09-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-30T08:18:00.000-07:00

August 30, 2006

Some things make me sad, like a sign Rebecca and I saw today driving in central Yaounde. One of the main roads in town is a designated parade route, and there are bleachers and VIP areas lining both sides. There are also signs and slogans. Here's where the sadness came in. There was one building with the slogan "Loyalty and fidelity to President Paul Biya" painted in bright red letters in English and French. Hail to the king.

But then, when things make me sad, there's always something that makes me happy . Hail to the king.

2006-08-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

August 29, 2006

I was listening to the radio this morning when I heard about a conference where European Christians are apologizing for slavery and colonialism in Harare, Zimbabwe this week. I tried to find a story online, but I couldn’t. So Google away all you want.

The radio clips I heard featured people on the brink of tears, if not past it, apologizing for the wrongs that their countries did at the 1884 Berlin Conference, where 14 European countries divided up the continent into the truly stupefying boundaries we have today. The believers went on to apologize for slavery and for stealing natural resources. Although they couldn’t speak for their governments, the Christians wanted to make it known that reparations needed to be paid.

It’s all very sweet and nice. But it’s also very silly, ineffectual and totally blind to the way Africa is run now. I hate to be nasty to people who mean well, but I think that their actions are counterproductive.

First of all, they’re doing this conference in Zimbabwe. Granted, Zimbabwe was called Rhodesia until 1980 or so, named after Cecil Rhodes, one of the worst people ever. And yes, there was a violent civil war that shook off a regime every bit as brutal and racist as the apartheid government in South Africa. But ask my friend Fungayi Kapungu, who is Zimbabwean, why he’s working in South Africa rather than his native country.

Robert Mugabe, the tyrant who runs the country now, has committed genocide against a national minority – and no, wasn’t the white people who stayed. He has recently made his country starve, when it once had been a net-exporter of food, by closing down productive farms in the name of land reform. Really, the reform was giving land to his cronies who were unhappy with their cut of the national pie. Zimbabwe has the world’s highest inflation, at around 1000 percent and he constantly makes threats against the democratic political opposition. They’re being told that they’re fomenting a coup.

So by apologizing for past evils in Zimbabwe, these people are ignoring the current evils that are still going on. And while those problems are tangentially and historically related to colonialism, they’re right now the doings of Africans. When does the dictator have to apologize to his people?

Second, people are calling for reparations and restitution. Africa has already received the equivalent of the Marshall Plan several times over since independence broke out in the 1960s. And from my experience, they haven’t done much with it. In fact, there’s a good argument to be made that aid has stunted political and economic growth. Why does a government need to reform if some European or American aid agency is going to come in and rebuild the road that the government is supposed to build? Aid reduces accountability, the argument goes.

Look at the roads in Cameroon. Except for Yaoundé, Douala and a few inter-provincial highways, they’re all dirt. This is a problem in a country that has two rainy seasons and is among the wettest in the world. But why bother changing policies? The people aren’t going to say anything because foreign aid comes in and does enough to keep people alive and provide basic services. That should be the job of the Cameroonian government. But they don’t have to do it.

Granted, people could argue that African countries were meddled with by Western powers when they gave aid. But those people should look at the histories of Greece, Italy and Turkey. All three of those almost “went Communist”. They all had democratic elections overturned. In Italy that gave us the wonderful chaos we have today. In Greece and Turkey, we got brutal military governments.

So why throw more money at this? I think I’m being won over, despite an aid agency paying my rent and beginning to feel like some cranky conservative (I’m not, by the way). I stress, as I always do, that these problems have nothing to do with intellect, talent or culture. They stem from corruption and dictators.

After the story, several people from different African countries text-messaged the radio show to say Western countries need to give more money. How about no.

Is it heartless for me to think that more than 40 years into independence, others have said sorry enough and people in Africa should start taking matters into their own hands?

….

Here’s a highlight from last weekend:

I was doing an interview with a musician, and afterwards someone came up to me and said, “Are you a trumpet player from Iceland? You look just like a trumpet player I know from Iceland.”

That’s a first. People say I look like someone they know all the time. But this was something different.

I, of course, said yes.

2006-08-25T08:50:00.001-07:00

August 25, 2006

Good news. My computer isn’t going to burn down my house.

I’ve got one of those cheap-o Sony batteries that are giving Apple and Dell owners heartburn. Fortunately, before we left for Africa, I bought a spare battery at Bec’s urging. It’s not a Sony, so I’ve put it in. The Sony is now sitting harmlessly in the closet.

Does that mean that I didn’t sit there and think, “You know, my computer was feeling a little warm the other day.” Does that mean that I didn’t wake up a couple of times afraid that the thing had caught fire, which had spread onto my wood desk and then over to the door and then into our room? Of course not. Sure, I know that only nine people have had a problem with their Macs. And I know that the only problem I’ve ever had was with my logic board. My battery never feels especially warm. But that doesn’t mean I’m not next. You see, I’m a crazy person.

But all is well. I just need to figure out how to get the Sony battery replaced from Yaoundé.

Here’s a thought, though, and it’s a little conspiratorial. Sony has been beaten like a rented mule by the iPod. Did Sony do this on purpose to hurt Apple? I live on a continent where hurting other people at your own expense out of spite is totally normal, accepted and even expected. So what if Sony loses untold money and prestige because of this. It makes sense from here.

…

Not only is Paul Biya the Godfather, he’s the Absentee Landlord.

In 2002, the International Court of Justice awarded Cameroon the Bakassi Peninsula, which Nigeria had occupied for several years. It took four years, but in June, the Godfather, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Kofi Annan came together to sign what is known as the Greentree Agreement, where Nigeria agreed to begin getting out in early August. (By the way, it’s called the Greentree Agreement because it was signed at the Greentree Estate in Manhasset, on Long Island. I explained to a Cameroonian friend that this was also a place where many Jewish people had weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs.)

Anyway, the agreement said that Nigerian soldiers and administrators would get out over two years starting Aug. 14. In return, Cameroon got a whole bunch of oil, natural gas and fisheries, plus around 20,000 angry Nigerians who will probably give Cameroon a bad case of natural gas. One rumor I heard (and if there weren’t rumors, there’d be no information in Africa) is that Nigeria gets to keep the money from offshore oil drilling, which has started and is far easier, while Cameroon gets to explore for oil and gas on land. That is far harder and requires dealing with local populations, spreading wealth and protecting the environment. Ask Nigerians how that’s going.

The point here is that the Godfather didn’t even show up. He was in Switzerland, probably shopping with the credit card for his Zurich bank account (we know he’s got one). One would think his country getting a valuable piece of territory would be enough to get the guy out of his mountain hideaway. Nope.

It’s increasingly hard to take the Godfather or his cronies seriously.

Even worse, it’s impossible the opposition seriously. There is a Social Democratic Front in Cameroon, led mainly by Anglophones from the Northwest, although it aspires to being a national party. Back in 1992, when political parties other than Biya’s CPDM were legalized, the SDF was said to be a party of ideas. They had a real platform and even came close to winning a presidential election, people say (I have my doubts). Only massive, obvious fraud kept Biya in power.

Since then, the party has declined to the point where it is fractured and the leader of the original SDF group is being questioned after the death of an activist of the splinter faction. Everyone thinks both sides are on the take from the government, who has shrewdly split the SDF. Now, the best anyone has told me about what would happen if hell froze over and the SDF took power is that they wouldn’t do much. But most everyone thinks they would just continue to rob and steal. The money would just go to a different part of Cameroon and to a different group of tribes.

Sometimes it seems that politics in Africa becomes a parody of itself. Parties fighting over who gets to divide up the spoils; presidents simply deciding they don’t want to leave office; constitutions ignored, ripped up or rewritten whenever they don’t suit the people in power. But then I watch my own government treat its Constitution like a game of Mad Libs. Maybe the joke’s on us.

….

Along with the nastiness I just described, there are people who spend day and night trying to find ways to improve the country. I met with Father Patrick Lafon, the secretary general of the National Episcopal Conference, today. I’m totally serious when I say that the church here does what you’d expect a religious institution to do. They see problems with elections, so the church decides to monitor them. When that doesn’t work, they draft solid laws that establish an Independent Electoral Commission and other reforms that are presented to parliament. Of course, the Godfather and his gang of thieves block them.

And when they see that corruption is making people poor, the church gets up and says, no. This is wrong. “They didn’t like that, but we had to do it,” Father Lafon said.

Plus, Father Patrick is how I imagine Friar Tuck might look now. He’s round and jolly, with a tight beard and wide face and he dresses like Bill Cosby. He laughs loud and a lot. When I asked him why people don’t rise up here, he said, “We have the same conditions that led to war in other countries. But we have enough food and enough drink. So everybody’s too busy drinking.” He wasn’t talking about milk, just like Friar Tuck.

…..

Finally, I should have the dates for my October return to New York set in the next week or two. I’ll keep you posted.

And even brighter news is that my friend Magnus from Kigali is heading to D.C. and New York come the end of next month. So everyone needs to be on deck to show the man a good time. He knows how to party, but keep your hands and arms away from his mouth when he’s eating.

2006-08-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

August 18, 2006

I’ve developed into a world-class schmoozer. (Before I go on, can I tell you how delighted I am that schmoozer is in the Microsoft Word dictionary.)

Last night, Rebecca had to stand in for her boss at a reception featuring some big muckety-mucks (muckety got the squiggly line) from Citigroup. Their head of international corporate banking was doing a tour of Africa, and Cameroon was the last stop. Along for the ride was the head of their Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa division (I think that’s it), the head of sub-Saharan operations as well as the Citigroup Cameroon team. The acting head of mission for the U.S. embassy was there with his wife, Pinky, who appeared to be Asian and not pink at all. Big business people were in town from Douala. Tyco, the company that brought you Dennis Kozlowski and peeing ice statues at birthday parties, has an affiliate here called Security Dog, which as you can imagine is a private security firm. It seems appropriate that Tyco is here. On that note, several Cameroonian government officials attended the event as well, including the finance minister, whose name really is Polycarpe Abah Abah, Jonah.

I was on my game. I don’t think I made a face when I was introduced to Pinky. In fact, I let Rick make the obligatory “like your finger” joke, holding up his right pinky. I mentioned to the big Citigroup guy that my sister can see his office from her apartment window, and that at night it’s quite a view. When I found out that the head of sub-Saharan operations for Citigroup was Czech, I talked a bit about studying in Prague, the neighborhood where I lived and what I was actually there to study (NATO expansion, privatization and the split of Czechoslovakia in 1938). I even wore a tie.

But I remembered Rusty’s rules from “Ocean’s 11”: be funny but don’t be memorable, etc. I didn’t tell the big Citigroup guy that “Pookie” could see the office. I left it at my sister. I didn’t talk to the Czech guy about Jaromir Jagr or Petr Prucha or the Rangers until the end of the night, nor did I mention that what I really studied in Prague was beer and hockey, in that order. I didn’t even talk about peeing ice sculptures with the guy from Security Dog, but that was mostly because I couldn’t say peeing ice sculpture in French. One day.

And then it was time for dinner. At first Rebecca and I were way out at the end of the room, away from everyone. But because a few people didn’t show up, we got put at the table closest to the podium where Citigroup folks gave their speeches. It was at this point that I lost it a bit. As the speakers took their turns thanking honorable government ministers, members of the diplomatic corps and distinguished guests, I had a “what am I doing here” moment. Since when am I a distinguished guest? And then I started to think about clubs Groucho Marx didn’t want to join, which I had already mentioned to Rebecca at the cocktail session. I fought hard to hold back a good, long laugh. I am happy to report that I won the battle.

Bec and I sat with the Czech guy, as well as some other high Citigroup officials and business people, including the Security Dog. The Secretary General in the Ministry of Health was sitting with us, but he wasn’t interested in talking all that much. Mostly because it’s hard to talk to a Cameroonian government official without saying, “You know, if you didn’t steal all the money, you really could develop a working country here.” People tried. The Czech guy asked him about hospitals and the health program that gets the most money thrown at it. You won’t be surprised to hear that more than 70 percent of Cameroon’s hospitals are either run by religious institutions or are private. It’s not that the government doesn’t have the money, of course, but much like the health problem that gets the most money thrown at it, the cash goes to the ministers’ anti-starvation program.

We overheard Security Dog berating the Secretary General about why there are no comprehensive HIV testing and anti-retroviral programs. Six of the Dog’s employees are HIV-positive and the company pays for their treatment, he said. The Secretary’s response was essentially that money doesn’t solve everything. Judging from the ample belly menacing the buttons on his finely tailored three-piece suit, it solves a few problems.

An African guy sitting at our table told us about his father’s cynical political platform, should he ever run for office. Our companion said his dad wanted to publicly state that he and all his ministers, upon taking office, would immediately each take $5 million from the state treasury. I imagine that other appointees would get something less, but we didn’t discuss it. After their version of a signing bonus, each minister would then vow never to take anything again, other than their regular salaries, and to work solely for the benefit of the people and the nation. They would also vow to leave office after one seven-year term.

The sad part is, I guarantee that political party would win in Cameroon. First of all, it’s far more honest than the nonsense the government here spews about fighting corruption. Second, it’s far less money than the government here steals. Let’s say that 30 ministers get $5 million each, one-time only. That’s $150 million. Thrown in another $50 million or so for lower government officials, again one-time only. That’s nothing compared to the amount of money that disappears from the Cameroonian government’s coffers every year. No one knows how much the Godfather is worth, but it’s a lot more than $5 million. He’s been in power since 1982, and his wealth is probably unimaginable to the non-kleptocratic dictator. Then throw in all the other officials on the farm. It’s staggering.

So Cameroonians would find the $5 million pledge a bargain compared to what’s been happening.

I also became even more firmly convinced that businesses want to help get this sorted out. It’s not out of the goodness of their hearts, but who cares about motivation. We need results. Banks and financial institutions are tired of being left holding the bag for corrupt politicians. That’s not to say that many bankers and banks aren’t happily helping. Enough are tired of being targeted by activists and the press. Also, business people are starting to realize that corruption and unrest are bad for investors, and therefore for the bottom line. Finally, poverty and corruption limits the number of people who can buy whatever it is they’re selling.

I understand that all it takes is a few business people willing to play ball with the thieves to make everything I said seem hopelessly idealistic. It happens every day here. But I really think many are starting to realize that good legal systems, relatively clean politicians and a stable country are good for business. And that, I think, is far more important than any development money.

…..

Here’s more hard-hitting, thousands-of-miles-away reporting on the for DRC elections .

Tomorrow, I go for my first haircut in Cameroon. I got it done in France, so it’s been about two months. I was hoping to string it out until October, when I can go to Astor Place, but I’m starting to look like Chewbacca. Here’s hoping they use scissors.

2006-08-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

August 17, 2006

We had our first run-in with the Cameroonian police on Friday night. As Bec, our friend Duncan (the fish guy) and I walked back from dinner, gendarmes at a roadblock. Bec was in the lead and didn’t notice them because of the military fatigues they were wearing. After asking why she did not respect the authoritay (that’s not a misspelling for you South Park fans out there), the policeman proceeded to go through the certified copies of our passports.

“This is expired,” he said.

“No it’s not, it’s good through August,” Bec said, I think.

“Yes, but it’s August now,” the policeman said.

“That’s right. This is only good through the 28th of August,” the policeman said.

“It’s the eleventh.”

Finally, another roadblock officer saved us. Clearly the guy was looking for a bribe. But we don’t do that, and if you’ve got information on your side, you don’t need to. This is how corruption works in Cameroon: change the rules and try to get people to pay when they say they don’t understand.

Another example: our three-month visas are up soon, and according to an agreement between CRS and the Cameroonian government, we should get long-term residency cards after that three-month period. Except they changed the rules, and said we need to be here six months to earn our cards. So we’ll just re-up our temporary visas, and again, not pay.

It gets worse though. Those were two trivial matters and Bec and I have a powerful organization backing us. Someone was telling me that a regional coordinator in the east wanted to have each person involved in a project identifying and helping AIDS orphans come and meet him. That’s code for come and present an envelope with a relatively large amount of money. Without accurately identifying the orphans, they can’t get the help they need. Who’s going to stand up for them?

Don’t forget, the RDPC, the governing party, says no to corruption.

……

My mom was asking me about the weather in Yaoundé. Right now, we’re on the border between a remarkably pleasant dry season, where there were some days where it was downright chilly, and a reportedly remarkably nasty rainy season. Gray is the sky's usual color these days. The air is getting thicker and steamier as we speak, and I’m getting sweatier and sweatier.

…..

I met a man named Lafort last night playing Frisbee. He’s Cameroonian. I desperately wanted him to be wearing one of those foam hats, like a Dixieland band wears. Watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to find out. (And yes, Jon, I know that it’s spelled different.)

2006-08-11T08:06:00.000-07:00

August 11, 2006

I can’t believe I did what I did last night. It was one of those last-ditch, desperate efforts a journalist trying to meet people in a new country has to do. It made feel a little dirty afterwards, like I wanted to brush my teeth non-stop or wash my hands until they bled. I almost didn’t want to tell Rebecca about it.

I attended a meeting of the local Rotary Club.

At journalism school, they told us that sitting in on one of the meetings is a good place to meet new people of some influence in the community. They also told us that on the boredom rating, it was somewhere below the meeting of the city council, village advisory board, school board or tenants’ association, but above being assigned to cover the opening of the new shopping mall. They didn’t say what it was like when the meeting was conducted entirely in French.

It wasn’t so bad. First of all, they said the meeting started at 7 p.m. My experiences in Cameroon so far have been that that means around 7:30, 8 or 8:30. These guys said 7, and they started at 7:10. Plus, they were genuinely welcoming. Sure, I had to sit and listen to a speech about the crisis of falling membership or something, but I got what I was after: phone numbers. The president of the Bastos Collines chapter is the director of studies at the Bank of Central African States – the common central bank for Cameroon and its neighbors. One of the members is an economic analyst for the government. Yet another is a presidential spokesman. C’est le but. (Goal.)

This week hasn’t been quite as busy as last. That happens. I think it’s more likely that my time here will be somewhere in between last week – when I had three stories published and was running around the whole time – and this week, where I had a conference to go to on Monday and then I sort of stumbled around for the rest of the week. An editor at an American paper dinged a story idea because they have a story on the same topic from Liberia coming up, so I’ll send it elsewhere. Plus I might have a different story to do for the same editor. I’m not going to jinx either of those, but by the end of next week I expect to have a good idea how the next month or so will look.

I was supposed to travel to Buea, in Southwest Province, for a journalists’ training on Wednesday and stay there through tomorrow. But a couple of things got in the way. One, the trip wasn’t confirmed until Tuesday morning, so I made other plans for the week – including the Rotary and getting started on one of my story possibilities. More importantly, I was just pushing back my Annual Intestinal Invasion. I didn’t want to be in a car for four hours with danger lurking around every turn, if you catch my drift. So I said I couldn’t go.

I was just planning on going to meet people, talk to them about life in Buea (pronounced Boo-ya) and twiddle my thumbs. Apparently the organization I was going to go with had other ideas. I’m not sure what they were, but here are two monkey wrenches for them to consider next time. First, I’m not doing a journalist training session for anyone unless I sign a contract and get paid. Not to sound mercenary, but I did my free training for African journalists already. Second, I won’t do any paid work for them because if I do I can’t write about them for CNS. It’s just not worth it, because this organization gets involved, somehow, in almost every single church development or human rights project in Africa. It’s not worth it for a one-off training session.

Apparently me being ill was not a good enough reason, so I got a phone call telling me how annoyed the organizers were. I thought about offering the aggressor the opportunity to come to the house and take a stool sample, but have decided to take a more mature revenge. The guy who bugged me doesn’t get into any stories. Ever.
…

My friend Dennis was describing what one of his teachers called moral economy. Basically, what it was describing was the zero-sum nature of human relations. It’s applicable in Africa – if someone else succeeds, it means that I’m failing, and if I’m failing it’s obviously because someone else is succeeding – as well as many other parts of the world. Bec likes to tell an (I assume) apocryphal story from Russia. A peasant sees that his neighbor has a new cow that’s producing a lot of milk. A second neighbor comes to ask the original peasant what he thinks. The original peasant says he’s jealous. So the questioner asks if the peasant wants a cow to produce milk. No, the peasant responds, I want to kill my neighbor’s cow.

Dennis, who is doing a master’s thesis on Cameroonian music, was telling me about a band he knows that a French producer wanted to sign to a contract. The producer went to the band’s manager, who proceeded to ask for the equivalent of around $40,000. The producer said they’re good, but not that good. The band stagnated. This is another example of the zero-sum social relations that I think make development in Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world particularly difficult. It’s even starting to make its way into American politics.

If someone else’s success necessarily means your own failure, what interest do you have in working with other people? And at the same time, what incentive do you have to not take money from your government/business/NGO and use it yourself?

It’s extremely easy for me to moralize like this. I’ve never had to wonder where my next meal is coming from, or if there would be another after that. But economies only work if there’s a certain amount of trust, even if regulatory bodies like the FBI and SEC enforce that trust. But if the trust isn’t there to begin with, than those institutions can’t develop. How does a country and economy develop if everyone is not only out for number one, but would almost rather see someone else step in number two?

2006-08-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

August 8, 2006

I think I may give up journalism and become a professional baseball player.

No, that doesn’t mean I’m coming home. And no, that doesn’t mean the annual intestinal invasion I’m currently fighting off has caused me to revert to being an 8-year-old.

It means that despite my inability to hit or catch and throws rivaling Chuck Knoblauch’s when his Yankee career ended, I have the potential to be an all-star second baseman in the Yaoundé baseball league.

What? Baseball in Cameroon?

I was invited to play softball by a friend who is starting up a digital recording studio in Yaoundé. A person attached to the US Embassy runs a game, and since so many people were out of town, they needed an extra person. So at first I thought I was going to be playing with the Marines and some members of the embassy staff. I was a little concerned about standing in the way of the shots the Marines stroked, but Dennis told me they can’t hit. I thought that was part of basic training.

On Sunday, a friend from the embassy picked me up and we drove to the field, in the shadows of Yaoundé’s main football stadium, the Omnisport. When we got there, Tad looked at the dirt that was meant to stand in for grass. “Nice field,” he said.

“It’s a lot better than the fields I played lacrosse on in high school,” I said. “There’s no broken glass or syringes.”

Tad told me Cameroonians played, but I took this to mean a few attached themselves to the American softball game. I was wrong. There was one team taking batting and fielding practice, decked out in pinstriped shirts and black leggings. Someone in Korea donated the shirts – they had the logo of the LG electronics company on the left side, numbers in the 60s and 70s and the names on the back were written in Korean characters. They all wore matching red caps and had a coach who reamed them out for every mistake.

A second team, most of them wearing yellow, non-matching shirts and mismatched caps, were sitting on the bleachers, messing around. Some of their players – both teams had men and women – wore green football jerseys and most of them, but not all, wore a hat of some kind.

In Cameroon, the rules of baseball are still the same. It’s still three strikes for an out, four balls for a walk and three outs to an inning (which I believe they called an attaque). A full count is a balle de match. The bases are still around 27 meters apart (90 feet) and the pitcher’s mound is still just under 19 meters (60 feet) from home.

There were ratty old gloves and ancient metal bats with little or no rubber grip. Two rubber bases were laid out at first and third, with a proper second base bag in between, and there was a rubber pitching slab.

An umpire stood behind home, decked out all in red – pants, helmet, mask and chest protector. He stood with his hands crossed in front of him for some reason and had clearly heard the caricature voices of umpires in the U.S. He had just the right gravel and theatricality in his voice when he called “strike” and the appropriate melancholy when saying “ball.” His strikeout calls were gleeful; his “walk” had a slight hint of mourning to them.

But the ump had an African stoicism missing from American umps. He took a solid shot in the nuts on a foul tip without even flinching. He just stood there and said “foul ball.” Yes, he was wearing a chest protector that covered the area, but I’m sure he wasn’t wearing a cup. Even in their suits of armor, an American ump would have been hobbling up and down the first base line for a few minutes after a shot like that.

The original plan was for the American team to take on the Cameroonians to give them some practice before the opening of the season on Aug. 20. But for security reasons – there was a club football match and some genius thought it was a risk for Americans to be in the area – the embassy team didn’t show. It was just Tad and I.

So Tad went with the Cameroonian equivalent of Earl Weaver, the longtime, unhinged manager of the Baltimore Orioles, and I went over to the Bad News Bears, in their appropriate yellow.

We were up first. Earl Weaver, who was around my height and a bit broader, was doing his Randy Johnson impersonation. Both Tad and I were expecting a leisurely game of softball, so we were a bit surprised at the heaters this guy was unleashing. I was also a little unnerved at how wild he was. In French, a “heater” is a chauffer I think. I never learned how to say “chin music”, but I certainly learned how to get out of the way of it.

I originally put myself into right field, not wanting any part of actually playing the field. That’s always where my coaches hid me in the mighty New Rochelle Youth Baseball League – the kind of league with no try-outs. But since no one took second base, I moved up to what was my position at the end of my baseball career and with the Riverdale Press softball team. Earl Weaver had his team running on everything. Each person on the other team stole second and, when the catcher bounced the throw over me and the shortstop that had only learned baseball within the last month didn’t back me up, would take third. Eventually I told our pitcher, Blaise, that all he needed to do was look at the runner to keep him on first. But the first baseman never held the runner on, so it never worked. We’re learning.

Our third baseman, Tindang, didn’t know that you had to tag the runner at third if it wasn’t a force play. So he’d stand there with the ball in his glove and have the runner beat by 10 steps, but the runner would be safe. (Bec didn’t know what a force play was, so for those of you who haven’t wasted your lives watching the Yankees, a force play is when a runner has to run. Only one runner can be on a base at a time, so if a runner is on first, he or she is forced to run on a ground ball. The same holds true if there is a runner on first and second and less than two outs and there’s a grounder. The runner on second has to go to third. Now, if there’s a fly ball….And we wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t pick up baseball as their national pastime.)

As I said, we’re learning. Tindang was in his fourth week of playing.

Since I stopped playing organized baseball after eighth grade, and only started playing softball in college where we discovered the beautiful mix of softball and beer, I forgot one very important fact about baseball. It’s boring out there in the field. You stand there, and even at second the ball rarely heads your way. You can switch from foot to foot. You can draw lines in the dirt. You can tap your glove and scream all the chatter you want (they didn’t teach baseball chatter in my French classes), but it’s boring. It’s a lot more fun to watch because you can get up, go to the bathroom, buy a hot dog or change the channel if you’re at home. You have to stay out in the field if you’re playing.

I went one-for-three on the day, including a walk and a contested triple in the ninth with the game out of reach. I sent a deep shot to right that I actually thought was going to make it to the street – there’s a short right field wall – but it landed a few feet short. I watched it all the way in. It landed on the line and then rolled. I didn’t really start running until I saw it land after I had turned at first. The ump called it foul. My team called it fair. Earl Weaver called it fair, saying it rolled foul. The right fielder, Tad, said he didn’t see. Coward. They compromised and put me on second.

We got crushed. Mostly because the other team didn’t stop the stealing even when the score got to be something like 17-2. I tried to explain to Blaise that the appropriate thing to do in this situation was to send a pitch inside at Earl Weaver or to drill him in the ass. But somehow, “Mets-la dans son derriere” just didn’t have the right force to it.

Does anyone know how to say, “to plunk” in French?

2006-08-04T08:06:00.000-07:00

August 4, 2006

Yesterday on my Google Alert for Cameroon, I came across a story where a Cameroonian newspaper – which is banned by the government because the paper has a long history of being a hate rag – had an article calling for the completion of Hitler’s work and naming the Nazi a saint.

In all likelihood, the article was written by a black man. Women tend not to be quite as vitriolic, and Cameroonians tend to be black. Maybe I should’ve been annoyed, angered or frightened. Instead, all I thought was, “Hey, Cameroonian guy. He didn’t think much of you either.”

Anyway, on a lighter note, here’s another story I wrote yesterday for CNS
. I told you I’ve been busy. There’s more to come.

2006-08-01T08:27:00.000-07:00

August 1, 2006

A year ago today, Rebecca and I arrived in Rwanda.

We actually landed in Africa the night before, but since all we saw was airport, road, hotel, road and airport, I won’t count that as our official arrival.

So today is the anniversary. Time sure does fly when you’re…well, um, er….

Kidding. I’m just kidding. In many ways I’m having a lot of fun. In many ways, it’s been really hard.

You’ve read in this space about the characters I’ve met – both the wonderful and the decidedly not – so I won’t bore you with that. It would give at least one of those decidedly not wonderful individuals entirely too much satisfaction.

On a personal level, tagging along with the luggage has given me a chance to advance far more in my career than I would have had Rebecca wanted a more conventional job. It’s good to be portable – I don’t have to worry as much about money as most freelancers do. I’ve been able to see history happen in front of me and how other cultures operate. Instead of reading the stories that other people are writing and thinking, “I wonder what that would be like,” I’m the one writing those stories. It’s really cool. I’ve been published in one major American paper (DaMN!) and the folks at the Catholic News Service have been nothing short of wonderful. A friend in Kampala, who has since gone on to Ghana, said that you want editors who are tough on the copy – journalists’ jargon for articles – but good to the reporter. That’s CNS in a nutshell. I’m lucky they gave me the chance.

And I’m pretty busy right about now. In fact, I had two CNS stories published yesterday, here and here. (You may be wondering how I covered the Congolese elections. I am everywhere at once.) I’m slowly building up my contacts, getting my pitches ready and hopefully that will result in some more work to come. Fortunately, the Catholic Church here in Cameroon is extremely active, so that makes for more and better stories for CNS.

I’ve had the chance to learn a lot more about Rebecca. You know what, she’s really cool. For most of the time we’ve really only had each other. Which brings me to one of my major complaints about the time on this continent, and you’ll be surprised to hear it. I’m bored. We’re starting to pick up friends and things to do, but on weekends and at night, Bec and I often sit there and say, “Well, what do you want to do?”

Jerry Seinfeld says that at about 30, a person isn’t taking applications for new friends anymore. In a way that’s true, although not entirely. It’s just harder to find something in common. I’ve found that it’s been easier to find good people to spend time with in Yaoundé than in Kigali, which isn’t to say I don’t have friends there that I’m in regular contact with. But it’s still hard.

And we’ve gone a year without regular access to television. I don’t really miss it. But every once in a while, it’s nice to have it around when you don’t feel like reading, there’s not much to talk about and the idea of watching a movie on a tiny computer screen doesn’t feel good. We’ve got so much to buy for our apartment that the TV and cable come way down at the bottom of the list, where they should be.

I feel like I’ve missed so much at home since I’ve been in Africa – births, weddings, new jobs and life changes, the Rangers making the playoffs, Miami Vice. But at the same time I’ve gained a lot. As hard as it’s been at times – and I only barely got out of Kigali with my sanity intact – I’m really glad we’re here. And I can hear your snarky comments about my sanity from Yaoundé.

As much as I’ve missed at home, I’ve learned on this continent. I have several cool new stamps on my smaller new passport. I’ve learned how to edit, run and not run a newspaper. I’ve learned how to get around in developing countries without much guidance and little or no support. I’ve grown up.

I’m not really sure what I expected about Africa before I got here. I definitely didn’t expect parts of it to be as orderly as it is. I can remember being surprised at the sight of license plates on cars. In Rwanda those mean a lot more than in Cameroon – you can buy them on the street here. I also didn’t expect parts of it to be as disorderly as it is, because I had no frame of reference. Three months in Cambodia only helped prepare a little.

There are some things that I don’t think I will ever get used to on this continent – the position of women of women in many countries (very low), the attitude towards homosexuality and other differences (very much opposed) and the violence that lurks just below the surface. Rebecca and I have been lucky in that for the most part we haven’t been in situations where violence was going to break out. But it’s always there, and situations can devolve extremely quickly. Someone you know and like and is extremely gentle one minute might be outside taking “Jungle Justice” – that’s an indigenous Cameroonian term, not mine – with a machete the next.

Africa is a complicated continent. I hate to generalize like that, as well as write clichés. But it is. While there are running themes throughout the continent – poverty, corruption, dictatorship, ethnic problems, good music, hopeful people – each country has its own special blend, like the rest of the world. My friend Ryan begins sentences “Africans do this” or “Africa is this or that”. That’s just wrong. There are too many differences between regions, countries; even regions of countries, to talk like that. This is yet another thing that I’ve had to learn.

While Africa is rich, it is very poor. And if people keep trying to say Africa should be rich because of its natural resources, they’re just blind. It’s what a country does with those natural resources that makes it rich. The United States didn’t get rich simply because it had natural resources. Along with slavery – is there another continent that history and the world has left more scarred? – the U.S. made its money by producing things from those natural resources. That led to farmers needing to get their products to market. That led to transportation networks, which led to businesses springing up around those transport hubs. Eventually financial institutions developed to process profits from those natural resources – farm products, coal, oil, whatever. And then cities grew, etc. I know. That’s way too simplified, but there’s a lot of truth there.

I just don’t see that happening here. First of all, many of the governments won’t let it happen. At least at its inception, the U.S. was known for its dream – all it took was hard work. Hard work doesn’t get rewarded as much here. Governments don’t want to give up power by letting money flow through their economies. Many government officials – and this is especially true in Cameroon – are much more concerned with their time on the farm rather than the rewards the peasant farmer is getting. One friend here said that the Cameroonian government is scared of having too educated a population. They’re probably not alone.

So there are few small and medium enterprises to create jobs and innovation. Without that, there’s not much happening in an economy.

And while Africa gets the short end of international exports because of farm subsidies in the U.S. and Europe, which just need to stop, the continent doesn’t make it easy on itself. The cost of trade between countries in Africa is ridiculous, so there isn’t all that much. Between the bad roads, corrupt officials and high tariffs that are basically official corruption, trading among African countries is stifled.

Which then brings me to one final thought on all of this. I’ve come to think that many development organizations have stopped thinking about development and only think about their organizations. How much more food aid needs to be shipped here before policy makers realize that it’s not helping? Maybe they do already, but buying all that surplus grain sure does bring in the votes and coming to visit some poor African village sure does provide the great campaign photo op. And don’t forget the guilt factor.

I don’t mean to sound cynical. Actually, I’m not. I see that many people – both Africans and international development workers – are starting to come to this conclusion. Aid is needed in many cases, but it needs to be changed. Unless it’s an emergency, cut off food aid. And stop sending all those old clothes. Instead, development should focus on development – helping people to create businesses and to stand up for themselves to fight for decent, representative governments. In a perfect world, organizations like CRS, CARE, Save the Children and the myriad others should want to go out of business because their jobs are done. Sometimes I think they’ve forgotten that goal. They certainly didn’t develop South Korea, Thailand or Singapore.

This has been a long posting, but I guess that’s appropriate since I needed to wrap up what’s happened over the year. There’s only about two to go. And then it’s my turn. I’m trying to get Rebecca to understand the beauty of a Brooklyn brownstone (goddam yuppie!). Anyone care to help?

2006-07-27T07:18:00.000-07:00

July 27, 2006

I have a stalker.

Jean-Claude, the radio journalist I met when Bec and I first arrived in Cameroon, gave my phone number to his sister, who is visiting during the break from her studies in France. She calls at least once a day. If the call doesn’t come through, then a text message does. I’ve never met this woman before, and I’m starting to get annoyed at the persistence.

I’m also annoyed at Jean-Claude, but not just for this. He’s now decided that I should help him arrange a major conference involving all the journalists in Yaoundé and every government spokesperson. Specifically, he wants me to rent the hall. What?

Jean-Claude has been very helpful and very welcoming, but now the other shoe has dropped. Now he’s started asking me for things – things I can’t begin to give, nor want to.

I was describing this to an American friend who is helping to develop a digital recording studio in Yaoundé. He said that what usually happens to him is that his friends ask him for something, he says he either can or cannot give what has been asked for, and they move on with the friendship. Last night, I met a Cameroonian guy who’s unemployed and has been for a couple of months. He was playing ultimate Frisbee with a group of Europeans and Americans (including me. What’s happened?). He asked me if I had any little jobs for him to do. I said no. We continued talking about how much fun we just had and said see you next week. End of story.

Dennis, my musical friend, says what’s going on with Jean-Claude is abnormal. I think I may have to end the relationship.

….

I should have a CNS story posted soon about a proposed new election law in Cameroon. Big Paul says he’s going to look into making the electoral process more transparent. I’ll believe it when I see it. After all, he is our president yesterday, today and tomorrow.

But I’ve been thinking more about what Big Paul is. Is he the Godfather or is he the figurehead for a group of powerful interests.

I interviewed the head of the Catholic Church’s Peace and Justice Commission. According to Prof. Pierre Titi Nwel, Big Paul is the big man. He’s the one pulling all the strings and the one who makes all the decisions. The professor went so far as to call him “le parrain” – the godfather in French – and held up a book called “Les parrains de la corruption” – “The Godfathers of Corruption.” From now on, I will refer to Big Paul as the Godfather.

So, that’s two-to-one in favor of the Godfather being the Godfather. Two Cameroonians who are in the know say he is the power, the Italian who monitors the government says the Godfather is merely the face of a wider system.

Is it possible they could both be right?

….

I’ve been amazed at how Cameroon, isolated in Central Africa, ends up at the center of world events. It’s sort of like Canadians and Australians. Whenever something big happens in the world, you’ll hear that a Canadian or Australian was somewhere in the vicinity. Usually they’re not really doing very much to be a part of events. They’re just there. For example, I heard this morning that Australia was pulling its troops out of south Lebanon. Who knew there were Australians there? And why don’t they just sit everyone down, by a few rounds and sort this whole situation out over a few beers. What, you say Hezbollah doesn’t drink? Fine, buy them a couple of Cokes. But I think Australians could get Hezbollah to drink beer. They can be quite persuasive.

Anyway, back to Cameroon.

Do you know who the president of the U.N. Security Council was when the U.S. and Britain went through their kabuki production for an Iraq war resolution? Cameroon.

Do you know which world leader was on a state visit to the U.S. when that war had its inevitable beginning? The Godfather.

Do you know the nationality of the head of the U.N. delegation in Rwanda during the genocide – the entire delegation, not just the peacekeeping force? He was a former foreign minister of Cameroon. And he hates Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian (see, there they are) general in charge of the peacekeeping force. He accuses the general of taking sides in the slaughter. Like this is a bad thing.

By the way, at the end of the Rwandan genocide, when the French army was protecting the surviving leaders of the genocidal regime, they cut a deal with Cameroon – and possibly other francophone countries – to give an easy landing to their friends. My Rwandan friends all say that Cameroon is filled with powerful genocidaires. Emmanuel, the AP correspondent I met last week, says at least one and possibly others have met grizzly, unexplained ends here. But no one knows for sure what happened.

I have an idea. The rumor in Kigali, and I have no reason to say this is definitely true or not, is that the Mossad trained the Rwandan intelligence services after the 1994 genocide. They have a little experience tracking down war criminals and taking them out in questionable fashion.

2006-07-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

July 24, 2006

There are more signs up around Yaoundé, but two stick out.

Before I tell you those, another correction. In my last post, I translated a sign to say, “The RPDC says no to corruption and misuse of funds.” Actually, a better translation is, “The RPDC says no to corruption and embezzlement.” Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Yesterday, Rebecca and I went with our friend Matteo to the French sports club. Matteo and I played tennis and Rebecca went for a swim. I know, I know. I thought the same thing too. I drink lattes and have tennis dates. Next thing you know I’ll be tying sweaters around my neck. Yes, friends, I am a yuppie.

Matteo is the West Africa regional director of the Publish What You Pay Coalition, which works at getting international companies to clearly state what they pay to governments in the region to make sure that no money is skimmed off the top. As he drove us, I saw a sign that said, “Paul Biya: Notre President Hier, Aujourd’hui, Demain.” That I can translate. “Paul Biya: Our President Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” All the three of us could do was laugh at the sign, which was a white banner spread across one of the main roads in Yaoundé. There was another one on the other side of the roundabout. So much for democracy.

The other sign we saw, which is up all the time, really is a problem. It is an anti-AIDS billboard that is designed badly. The intent is to say the country needs healthy people, so men and women should make good choices. Fine. Except that they way they designed it, the sign actually reads “The Nation Needs AIDS” etc., etc. To top it off AIDS is in massive red letters that dwarf the other smaller, white letters on the board.

But anyway, back to Big Paul. Last week I made him sound like the big power here, the man in control. He may well be. He’s been in power for well over 20 years. They’re going to have to wheel his stiff corpse out of the presidential palace, which looks like something out of Star Wars.

But is he Don Corleone? Or is he actually a simpleton being propped up as a convenient figurehead by powerful interests who only care about their own power, like George W. Bush? Is there a Biyaism? Or is Cameroon simply Mobutu-light? Mobutu was the famously corrupt ruler of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Among other things, he was famous for pink champagne and leopard-skin hats. There’s no word on whether he had a thing for Cadillacs and high-heeled boots with fish tanks in the heels. Biya, it must be said, is a better dresser. He goes for French-tailored suits.

I felt a little sheepish about asking Matteo, who grew up outside Rome, whether Biya was Don Corleone….

One of Biya’s strongest opponents was an author called Mongo Beti. I say called rather than named because he was not given the name Mongo Beti at birth. You’ve got me what the French name was, but I will find out.

Beti was a world-renowned author and social critic who emigrated from Cameroon in the 60s and returned in the 1990s. He became a thorn in Biya’s side until he died in 2001. One of the things he did upon his return to Cameroon was open a book shop in Yaoundé that was intended to distribute the kinds of literature Biya didn’t want sold. Beti was so well known that Biya couldn’t touch him. And he still can’t. I went to the bookstore, “La librairie des peoples noirs” (The Black People’s Bookstore) today. I had a nice conversation with the proprietor, Chantal, and she is working on finding me the phone numbers of the major authors living in Cameroon.

Maybe they’ll be able to answer just who is Paul Biya.

2006-07-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

July 21, 2006

Because this blog is all about transparency and honesty, I am duty-bound to provide a correction.

In my last entry I wrote about Bec’s “Patron Saint of Recklessness”. Well, I got the gist of it wrong. What Bec meant is that she knew all sorts of folks in Central Asia who did all sorts of stupid things. But they lived, so she assumed that there was a supernatural being watching over them. Until she started noticing many of them bore scars, and they all had friends and family who didn’t make it when they did the same mystifying thing.

So I didn’t get it 100 percent right, but I don’t think I got it 100 percent wrong, either. Why? Well, if Bec was able to talk to these people and notice the scars, something was probably looking over them as they took incredible risks with their lives simply to get from one place to another. …

Things here are going. I met the Associated Press correspondent for Cameroon yesterday. He’s Cameroonian, and he gave me a good understanding of how little I understand about the country. Basically, Big Paul here is really Big Paul. And if you cross him, bad stuff is on its way. Plus, business is so opaque and corrupt in Cameroon that many Western news agencies don’t even ask for reporting on it, even though there are serious privatizations of public assets going on. In the end, a lot of money ends up in the pocket of a government minister, or a former government minister who has finished his time on “the farm”, if you catch my meaning.

Of course, a banner on the main Bastos road advertising the ruling party congress being held today says “The RDPC Says No to Corruption and Misuse of Funds”. Priceless…

I’ve noticed that having a Mac is really a conversation piece. Or maybe, as Rebecca says, the entry card to a cult. Basically, whenever I’m in the Espresso Bar, the shwankiest and most expensive Internet café in town (but the only one where a fella, or yuppie, can get a decent latté) and I see another Mac, there’s instantly something to talk about. Usually, it starts out as a question about where to get the thing fixed if it breaks. The answer? Not in this part of the continent: back up all your files and get ready to take it home for care. But like a member of any cult, I’m not going to change computers simply because it would be logical and make my life easier. No, I’m now one of them.

So Bec and I had dinner with a guy who studies fish diversity on a Fulbright fellowship up in one of the far-away provinces. There are electric catfish in the rivers here that will make you look like Don King. He’s a Mac guy I met on Wednesday. Then yesterday, I met a guy who’s starting up a digital recording studio in Yaoundé. He’s a good guy to know since I wanted to report on music piracy here.

Finally, I’ve discovered there are few public toilets in Yaoundé. And the ones you can find you probably don’t want to use. So all the guys just pee on the side of the road, usually with their backs to the thoroughfare and sometimes even with a tree to block the view. I admit I’ve had to do this when out with friends. Women, I assume, have bladders the size of basketballs, because I have no idea what they do.

There is a point to this. As I mentioned, there’s a construction site behind our apartment. There are no porta-potties (or as I used to think they were called, porta-parties), and few trees or bushes on the site. So half the time I go out on our balcony, there’s a guy holding his junk in his hands aand taking care of business. It’s really disconcerting.

Bec says I shouldn’t worry about it. If the guy cared, he would have a) found a bush or b) turned his back to the balcony. Somehow this doesn’t make me feel better.

On that note, have a good weekend.

2006-07-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

July 19, 2006

I had hoped to be writing a story all day today. But complications of malaria – someone else’s, I don’t have it – prevented me from doing so.

The interview with the head of the Cameroon Catholic Church national Peace and Justice Commission coordinator was scheduled for nine this morning. That meant finding a taxi to the National Episcopal Commission’s headquarters. When I mentioned the name of the neighborhood, taxi drivers laughed and drove off. Finally one stopped, but I had to pay double the normal fare and he picked up 19 different people along the way. (I didn’t do a hard count. That’s just an estimate.)

Upon arrival, the commissioner’s deputy said my interview subject was at home with the palmudisme, that’s Frog for malaria. Malaria sounds sufficiently Froggy to me, so I don’t know why they need a whole other name just to confuse people. I’d give them malaire, to make it sound authentically Frog. But palmudisme is a word too far. Update: according to my handy French-English dictionary, malaria is malaria in French. Why do we need the palmudisme to confuse us?

Many of my friends in Rwanda used to be aghast when they found out Rebecca and I slept under a mosquito net. I didn’t tell them about the anti-malarial prophylaxis (that’s right. I spelled that word without a squiggly line from Microsoft Word) I’m on for fear of being laughed out of the room. At the same time, most of them said that they got malaria at least once a year.

The ethics of foreigners taking anti-malarial drugs are debatable – for is I don’t get malaria. Against taking them is the evidence that the parasite simply mutates and gets stronger to get around the drugs. I don’t feel guilty and won’t stop. Malaria sucks – but nets are not. Plus, treated bed nets reduce the transmission of malaria exponentially, even for people in the surrounding area not using bed nets. That’s part of what makes me not feel guilty about the malaron, our pill. The other part is that malaria sucks.

Why do people simply accept getting malaria when there’s a relatively cheap, even by Africa standards, and easy way to at least significantly decrease the chance of getting the dread disease? I’ve heard some people say that it gets too hot under the nets. That’s nonsense. It’s a net, and when used correctly it doesn’t actually touch you. I don’t particularly like sleeping under the net. I have a recurring nightmare that I’m a fish caught up in a dragnet. Usually when this dream happens, I wake up to find myself tangled up in the mesh. But at the same time, malaria really sucks.

Anyway, the deputy pointed out that my shirt was filthy before continuing. The seat belt in the taxi must have been covered in dirt, because there was a line from the right color to the bottom left of my stomach.

Later in the morning, Odelia was busy cleaning in the house when she saw my shirt. She asked what happened. I said it was from the seat belt. “You know why that is? We don’t really use the seat belts here,” she said.

Again, much like the bed nets, why not? Thousands of people die on Cameroon’s roads every year. It has one of the highest rates of automobile death rates in Africa, which means in the world. Surely a seat belt would save at least a few of those lives. And it’s right there in the car already. It doesn’t even force people to drive safely or fix the headlights so they work at night, which can be expensive.

Another plus for Rwanda is that the government recognized this when they came to power and put in a seat belt law that is rigorously enforced. Burundi did the same thing, but it is less rigorously enforced. Here? Nothing, and nobody seems to mind. Again, it’s a little thing. I don’t understand.

Rebecca often talks about the Patron Saint of Recklessness who watched over Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Forgetting the fact that both those countries are Muslim, she says that it was the force that guided Kazakhs and Uzbeks, well-educated, intelligent people, to drink way too much and then drive like Formula One racers, among other totally stupefying decisions. Maybe that patron saint is looking over Cameroon, a country full of intelligent but not as well educated people, as well.

The day was not lost. Justin, the deputy, gave me a lift to Bastos, where he was headed anyway, and we talked about his commission and what it does. It wasn’t the interview I wanted for my story, so that’s going to have to wait. But it’s a start, and I got a copy of the commission’s last election monitoring report. That’s important background for next year’s parliamentary and local government elections.

Plus, a Canadian friend cooling his heals in Toronto and who has taken a great and unexpected interest in how I’m doing, found me the contact information for the Associated Press correspondent here. I’m meeting him tomorrow night. As Blake, my friend, said, hesitation is the bane of the freelancer.

Now the obvious question is how Blake in Toronto found Emmanuel, the AP guy in Yaoundé, and your intrepid foreign correspondent did not. The answer: There’s a whole lot I don’t know about what I’m doing. I’m learning, but it’s slow.

2006-07-17T07:50:00.001-07:00

July 17, 2006

New cultures are hard to understand.

Take, as a case in point, a concert that Rebecca, our friends Ruth and Charles and I went to on Saturday night. One of Bec’s coworkers is a recent graduate of the University of Buea, in Cameroon’s Southwest province. She was also a member of the choir, which was launching a new CD in Yaoundé this past weekend. Who says no to a free concert?

The invitation said 5:30 p.m. So we got there at 5:30 p.m. The crowd didn’t start showing up until after 6:30. At 7 a young man made an overly dramatic apology for starting late because of some unforeseen delays. Why put 5:30 if that’s when the sound crew is just starting to set up the amplifiers and keyboards?

It may be oversimplifying things, but I think that part of Africa’s development problem is that no one is ever on time. And it’s rarely 10 or 15 minutes late. Sometimes it can be days. Rebecca said in a hopeful tone maybe Africa will catch up to the rest of the world. Fortunately, I have a new outlook on life that keeps this cultural difference from driving me crazy.

The choir was fabulous. They opened their set with selections from Handel’s Messiah, I got confused about the date because we haven’t really had seasons for the past year, plus I hadn’t consulted a calendar that day. The singers mastered the notoriously difficult song structure; their voices hit every note just right. Their accents did make “breaking the bonds” sound like “breaking their bones” (Bec had misread the program and got that into all of our heads), but we knew what they meant.

Intermission did not live up to the standards set by the singers. First off, they kept playing the radio commercial for the performance – complete with the admonition that the program would start promptly at 5:30. Second, the launch party was doubling as a fundraiser. The UB choir is apparently in financial difficulties, so no problem there. The guy who apologized for the program’s tardiness got up and said that if he called someone’s name, that person was expected to publicly show their support for the choir.

“They’re gonna call on us,” I said to Rebecca, noting that our group of four were the only white people in the room.

The guy started out with some high-powered government ministers and academics, who were apparently caught off-guard by being called up to donate money. But they each came through and offered sums ranging from 25,000 francs (around $50) to 75,000 (around $150). “Are they going to call up everyone in the room?” I asked Rebecca.

When they started calling up the original “chair people” – the ministers and academics mentioned above – and demanded that these people call their friends up, I thought we were in the clear. We didn’t know anyone but the CRS people who were there, and they certainly weren’t going to get hit up. I didn’t have that kind of money on me, anyway.

I was wrong. As I sat with my head in my hands, wondering when this spectacle, which included an annoying computerized horn riff that the soundboard guy played after each sentence, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Can you give me your name?”

“I’m not giving you my name,” I said without turning around.

The solicitor seemed surprised. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to,” I said, reaching back to the glory days of childhood arguments. Apparently, “Because I don’t want to” is the argument that trumps all others in every culture, because the guy walked away.

“Well done,” Rebecca said.

I didn’t feel like we were in the clear yet. I was convinced that if the guy saw me in the crowd, he’s say something like, “I want to call up my white friend to find out how much he’s going to support us.”

“They’re going to call on me. I’m going to the bathroom until the choir comes back in.”

I bumped into Mamadou the driver in the lobby. He had stopped to watch a boxing match on the giant television during the fundraising. I explained what happened, finishing with “Qu’est-ce que c’est ca?” (Roughly translated, “what’s that all about?”)

“Bien sur! Vous etes un invitee!” (Roughly translated, “Damn right. You’re just a guest.”)

As I chatted with Mamadou, my party came out. They were leaving. But not before Rebecca said someone had gone up and said that she wasn’t going to say what she was going to give.

Karine, Bec’s coworker who invited us to the concert, stopped us on the way out. We explained that we were hungry and were sorry that we were going but we needed to eat. We did arrive at 5:30, after all. We then offered to buy a CD because we were missing the traditional African portion of the concert. They didn’t have one for sale at the official CD launch.

As we walked out, Charles said he kind of expected something like what we just witnessed to happen so he brought extra money. Why hadn’t he warned us?

But that brings me to my new way of dealing with things here. I no longer get mad. Serenity now. Hot water heater broken? Serenity now. People 90 minutes late? No longer angry. Serenity now. Being called blanc in the market? No problem. Serenity now.

“What have you done with my husband?” Rebecca asked when I told her about my new policy. I think she fears serenity now may turn into apocalypse now. But so far it’s working.

I’ve found people that I can expound on this with. It turns out that my friend Jean-Claude, an exhausting Malian radio journalist who wants me to write out the words to the Star Spangled Banner for him (I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t remember them all), is a Buddhist. There is a community of about 1,000 African Buddhists in Yaoundé. They meet in a house by the airport. There’s also a place where people to do Tai Chi from 7 to 9 in the morning. I find this terribly interesting, since I know that Peace Corps volunteers are told not to do Yoga in Cameroonian villages because they will be accused of witchcraft. ….

Our apartment is still in process. We took a trip to the market with Odelia on Saturday. First she took us to the Cameroonian equivalent of Costco. There was nothing terribly notable about Niki, except that the awnings of each of their stores have life-sized statues of The Blues Brothers, Jake dancing and Elwood on the harmonica. No one knows why.

We made a few more stops and then into giant Mokolo market, where we were greeted with stares when we offered to put what we bought into our crunchy cloth bags. One market-stall proprietor even said that he couldn’t give us the metal spoons we wanted without the plastic bag. We could then put it into our big bag, he said. Plastic bags litter the landscape here….

Rebecca let me use power tools yesterday (a drill which couldn’t get through our super-reinforced walls). “I thought she was smart?” my Mom said when we talked on the phone last night.

2006-07-12T08:01:00.000-07:00

July 12, 2006

Apparently Cameroon was not entirely pro-Italy during the World Cup Final. According to Matteo, many of the Cameroonians he was watching with were supporting France.

Well, maybe supporting France isn’t the correct phrase. Matteo kept trying to reason with the Cameroonians about their rooting interests. He pointed to colonization and support for the corrupt government currently in power as reasons to root for Italy (it was apparently very important to him). The Cameroonians replied that they weren’t necessarily rooting for France. They were rooting for Africa and the Africans on the team.

For those of you who didn’t watch the World Cup – as I said, we didn’t watch the Finals, but we saw a France game in Paris – most of the French team was black. “Are there any white people on the team?” I remember Rebecca asking while we watched the France-Spain match.

There were a couple of white French players on the team that I can remember – the goalie and one striker. Zinadine Zidane is of Algerian descent, but born in France. I’m not certain where the rest of the French team was born – I’m sure some of them were born in France – but most of them appeared to be African.

Anyway, back to my story. Matteo then pointed out that on top of exploiting all of the other resources Africa has, the French were also stealing the football talent. That didn’t matter. France was now an African team.

But I don’t doubt that many Cameroonians were pulling for Italy. I think, however, rooting interests might have fallen along linguistic lines. Charles, the other writer husband in Yaoundé, pointed out that France was the power behind the decision to change Cameroon from a federal republic to a unitary republic in the early 1970s.

Cameroon was two separate colonies – one French, the other British – after Germany lost control of its African colonies at the end of World War I. The French colony was granted full independence first, in 1960. British Cameroon followed in 1961. The colony had a choice to join either Cameroon or Nigeria. The southern, mostly Christian half chose Cameroon in a referendum (Charles, who was in Cameroon at the time, says it was because British Cameroon was so far from Lagos, then Nigeria’s capital, the Anglophone Cameroonians banked on getting better government services from Yaoundé. Northern British Cameroon, which is mostly Muslim, stuck with Nigeria). The two Cameroons agreed to a federation, with a fair amount of autonomy for the former British colony.

A referendum in 1972 made Cameroon a unitary republic, which meant that Anglophone Cameroon lost its autonomy and began to lose much of its status within the country. Money stopped and services dropped and Anglophones have been pissed off ever since.

So why does this mean Anglophone Cameroon was rooting for Italy? Even after colonization ended, until recently, the French were in control here. (Now the U.S. is the most important country to Cameroon, much to French consternation.) French troops were actively involved in fighting against Cameroon’s one full-fledged insurgency, from 1961-63. They actually won!

Yaoundé and Douala, the commercial capital, are sort of model cities for the French to show off their good works in Africa. For a long time, no important decision was taken in Cameroon without French consent. Often, the ideas came directly from Paris. So it is likely that the French had a large hand in the 1972 referendum, and the Anglophones know this.

My theory is that French foreign policy is mostly based on stopping the spread of English as the dominant world language. That’s why I think they supported the genocidal regime in Rwanda (the RPF rebels, now government, were Anglophone). But an even better example of my theory is Cameroon. They actually changed the country’s constitution to make sure that Anglophones in the country did not gain more power. An Anglophone may have won the first contested presidential election in the early 1990s, but President Paul Biya rigged it, probably with French support.

Odelia, by the way, is Anglophone, from around Bamenda, the largest city in the northwest part of the country. That’s the former British colony. She was cheering for the Azzurri, not Les Bleus.

2006-07-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

July 10, 2006

We’re in.

The move is done. We got all of our clothes, computers, books, dishes we liberated from our old apartment, the remaining food and a mattress over to the new place in two trips. Since I’ve beaten “The Grapes of Wrath” to death, we were the Clampets. Now here’s a little story about a man named Ev…

Our apartment is a lovely space, white walls, high ceilings. Check that, they appear to be high ceilings. But Bec and I are munchkins in comparison with the rest of the population, so anything I don’t bump my head on is a high ceiling to me. There’s a spare room for an office for me, plus another that is a combination utility/storage/guest room once we get a bed for it. We’re not taking the one from our old place. It squeaks so much that if one of us rolled over in the middle of the night the other woke up from the noise.

The kitchen needs some work. There’s precious little storage space, just a few cabinets under the counter. So we’ll get ourselves some cupboards and storage units. When are they going to open up the Yaounde branch of Hold Everything? Also, the sink, for some reason, does not allow hot water. You’ve got to turn the handle and lift it to get water pressure, and turning the handle in the direction of hot turns the water off. We’ll figure that one out.

On the plus side, we appear to be winning the War on Bugs. The apartment was empty for a few weeks, and so the roaches and ants had the run of the place. We found this out our first night in the place when, after a night at a jazz club, I went to pour myself water. It was like the passage to the Temple of Doom, when the bugs are crawling over everything. Normally I’m not all that bothered by bugs, but it was way too much for me. Ants got into our breakfast for the next day (yummy raisin rolls that weren’t to be) and roaches were scaling the wine glasses. I was half expecting to see Kafka’s giant roach sitting at the dining table.

So we’ve set out the traps, cleaned every surface and are diligent in the continuation of that cleanliness. There are still bugs. Much like the wars on terrorism and drugs, the War on Bugs in a tropical climate cannot be won. But you can establish a manageable level of bugs.

There are a few other slight problems in the place, but I stress slight. One is that because the floors are white they’re hard to keep clean. We’ll do our best. A second is that for some reason, the French didn’t bring shower curtains to Africa. So we don’t have one in our apartment (and we didn’t in Kigali either. Damn Belgians.) That lack of a shower curtain, which Rebecca, Yaounde’s answer to Bob Villa, vows to fix, adds to the problem of the white floors. Plus, the showerhead doesn’t have a hook high enough to stand under the water. Why did the French like that arrangement? But the new bathroom is definitely better than the brown walls, floors and fixtures, compounded by bad lighting, in our old place. I guess the brown was meant to be evocative and help aid the process. I’m not sure that worked, but it definitely made the room dark.

The final problem is that our hot water heater broke. That can be fixed fairly easily, but Paul the super hasn’t showed up yet.

One of Bec’s co-workers, an Italian named Matteo, lives in the building. I’m not sure if he’s awake yet following his country’s victory last night. We didn’t watch the game because, well, France-Italy wasn’t that interesting to us. And I just can’t stomach penalty kicks deciding the World Cup champ. That is the lamest thing in the world, and the best argument against soccer. They should do it like hockey – keep playing until someone scores. I don’t care if you’re there all night and into the next day.

Anyway, after we heard Italy won, we heard screaming outside. Happy screaming, don’t worry. And then we heard the Doppler-effected horn of what we suspect was Matteo’s CRS-issued vehicle, going up and down our street.

Anyway, when I went out earlier this morning, Odelia, who cleans our place and Matteo’s, was sitting outside. Monday is Matteo day, and she said she didn’t want to disturb him. Then she showed me where he parked, outside on the street. It looks like the rear driver-side tire is in the drainage ditch that runs along the roads here. I’m not sure if it’s all the way in, but the truck is on a funny angle, and the other tires appear to be straining. Forza Italia!

I walked by the Italian Embassy, which is around the corner from our apartment. There was a long line of Cameroonians waiting to get in. There were lines at the Spanish and Swiss embassies, also neighbors, but they had decreased by the time I came back an hour later. That wasn’t the case with the Italians.

In case you’re wondering which former colonial power Cameroon was pulling for, Odelia says it was Italy. I can’t say that I blame them. First off, I think most of humanity outside of France, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya (read your history books about Fascist Italy to understand what I mean) and Zinadine Zedane’s hometown was rooting for Italy. Second, French rule in southern Cameroon wasn’t all strawberries and cream. Or even bananas and palm wine. It was nasty, brutal and entirely too long. The government the French left behind isn’t much better, but does have support from the Hexagon. I can understand why Cameroonians, if Odelia is right, were rooting for Italy.

2006-07-07T08:08:00.000-07:00

July 7, 2006

We’re getting ready to move. We have the keys to our new apartment and we’re ready to go. We even bought a refrigerator, stove, bed and dining table this week. In Yaoundé, even when you rent, you’ve got to buy your appliances.

But that was easy. The real adventure was buying the bed and dining table. It certainly wasn’t like going to Ikea. We bought both pieces of furniture at local woodcarving shops near the Mokolo market, Yaoundé’s biggest outdoor market. We saw the work being done right in front of us and the showrooms were the streets around the market. I’ve never been rained on shopping for furniture before. Each bed was put on wood planks because the bed district (each piece of furniture is built by neighborhood. I’ll be going to the desk district next week.) has dirt – actually mud – roads. The table district is built into the side of the hill, with the workshops down-slope and the finished products on the street. So the tables and chairs were also supported on wood planks, but this was to prevent them sliding down the hill.

We went accompanied by Mamadou, one of CRS’s drivers and a man who is known to get things done. (As an aside, when changing money in the developing world, if a local you trust says he knows a guy who will take less of a commission than the bank, go with the guy. Also, do your best to find the good Muslim moneychangers. They’re far less likely to cheat you.)

Anyway, Mamadou was our negotiator. He’s the guy who picked us up from the airport when we arrived, and is just generally fun. Both Bec and I have soft spots in our hearts for him. He handled everything for us, except paying. He knew everyone in the bed district and is a masterful negotiator. His style is a sort of, “Hey, it’s me, Mamadou. That’s not your real price is it? That’s disappointing.”

And it works. We got a bed with side tables built and varnished right in front of us for less than we had expected to pay. Getting it back to our new apartment was tough. We were three people in a little Toyota RAV-4, plus a bed that had been taken apart. The bed took up the entire trunk, and the back seats needed to be folded down, so Rebecca and I had to share the front passenger seat. It’s a good thing I like her a whole lot, she’s small and she smells lovely. I don’t think you’d get far driving around like that in New York.

But Bec and I sharing a seat in the front of a small SUV, as amusing as that was, was nothing compared to getting the fridge, stove, giant fan, table and chairs delivered to our apartment on the back of a standard-sized pick-up. Jean-Pierre, CRS Cameroon’s chief of transport and a man who carries himself with great authority, accompanied us on this trip. He drove us to the appliance store, where we witnessed his negotiating style. His is, basically, “I’m not going to pay that. This is what I’m going to pay.”

And it works, too. The guy with the truck – in the developing world deliveries are always done by that random guy with a truck – wanted us to pay 7,000 francs, around $14, for him to get the stuff to the apartment. The Indian guy at the appliance store started yelling that we shouldn’t have to pay that, was the guy with the truck overcharging us because we’re foreigners, you can’t do that to my customers, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, JP simply said we’re paying 4,000. And that was it.

We also had to enlist someone from the appliance store to come with us because we were picking up our table and chairs afterwards. This guy was forced to stand in the truck’s bed, holding on to the tabletop as they thundered over water-filled potholes and up steep hills. Everything else was tied down, but the tabletop extended out the back of the truck. To top it off, the guy had to help us get the stuff up the stairs, including the fridge and the stove, which he carried up by himself.

The truck would sometimes get a bit ahead of us, at which point Bec would say nervously from the back seat, “Where’d our furniture go?” But it was easy to spot the truck on the way back, between the fridge standing tall and the guy holding on for dear life. Remember when I described the luggage-filled zippy black Peugeot, with Steve Stich saying the Joads didn’t drive a zippy black Peugeot. Well, they might have driven this truck when they escaped Oklahoma for California. And the pile of stuff did look like something out of The Grapes of Wrath.

But everything is there and we begin the official moving process tomorrow. We’ll bring over our mattress and our clothes, as well as other personal stuff like computers, movies and music. Next week, we’ll borrow the living room furniture we’ve got now and then buy some new stuff as we settle in. Bec’s really ready to get into a new place. And while I will now have to pay to read about hockey online, I am too. And I’m glad Bec will have some distance from her office.

I hope everyone had a good Fourth of July. We went to a party at the US Embassy, which required me to wear a sport jacket. Others were there in suits. And it was in the middle of the afternoon, so no fireworks. Frankly, I was enraged at not being able to wear shorts and a T-shirt to an Independence Day barbecue. What kind of Commie Fourth requires proper clothing? But my rage over the dress code was assuaged when the American ambassador said that getting dressed up for that day went against American instincts in his speech. As long as he acknowledged our great sacrifice….

But still no fireworks. Stinky.

A few days before, we went to Canada Day at the Canadian High Commissioner’s house. There was only one guy in a Team Canada hockey jersey. I immediately screamed, “That’s awesome!” and went to introduce myself. I also managed to find someone to play hockey with. He only lives about five hours away, but you’ve got to make sacrifices. It’ll be street hockey, but no rollerblades because the roads in Bamenda aren’t smooth enough. I’m going to go when he does a hockey clinic for missionary kids, as well as some Cameroonians. “Invariably, the Cameroonian kids start using their feet,” Walter told me.

2006-07-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

July 2, 2006

My last Rwanda story finally got published in DaMN. Get your hankies...

2006-06-30T04:31:00.000-07:00

June 30, 2006

We’re back, rested and ready. Tanned is another matter. Freckled is more accurate.

To sum up, we had exactly an almost perfect trip to France. We celebrated Rebecca’s 30th birthday (June 22) in grand style. We took long walks in the startling Breton countryside and we slept in. I got to see a bit of Paris, which has made me want to see more, and we got a lot of shopping done: nerdy stuff like computer backpacks and a mouse. Bec and I celebrated our second anniversary. We stayed away from e-mail, mostly. We ate well and had wonderful company for most of the trip.

The flight to Paris is easy and relatively short, only about six hours. It’s also at the perfect time, around 11 p.m., so even someone like me who can’t sleep on planes is so exhausted that the magic happens. Airplane seats were clearly not designed for me. I’m too tall to keep my head on the lower part of the seatback without putting my knees over my head and I’m too short to put my head where it’s supposed to go on the head support of the upper part of the seat. So I’m stuck with my chin in my chest with my Adam’s apple jutting into my jaw. Thus, I cannot sleep on planes when it’s not proper sleeping time. But from midnight to 6 a.m., no problem.

We flew out of Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital and three hours away by bus. We watched “A Few Good Men” in French, and discovered that “You can’t handle the truth” and “You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall” really don’t work in French. It’s too much of a sissy-sounding language.

Air France security left a little to be desired, although it was a bank error in our favor. At the Swiss Air gate across the way, security agents went through every bag. At Air France, we got our metal table knife with the nice serrated edges through the metal detector. We needed it to cut the cheese (heh heh) we brought for a snack.

But Air France had personal video screens, which are the ultimate mark of a quality airline. I’ve still never been on an American airline that had them. They had movies that I wanted to see like “Match Point”, but really all I wanted to do was sleep.

We met up with Bec’s parents, Jude and Steve, at a hotel outside of. Once we got all the luggage out of the car in Pordic, where we were staying, it was incredibly comfortable. Even with all of the bags, it was pleasant. We just looked like the Joad family escaping the Dust Bowl. Steve pointed out that the Joads didn’t drive a zippy black Peugeot. I was assuaged.

Our first stop – and I promise not to go through all of them – was Monet’s house. We saw the water lilies – yes, those water lilies because we toured his garden.

I made a startling discovery at the Monet house. French people are funny. First of all, they speak French, which sounds girly coming out of a man’s mouth. Second, try saying “French people” without smiling. Start any sentence with “French people” and it has a better than average chance of being funny. French people drive cars. Funny. French people often have gastro-intestinal disorders. Again, funny. I can’t explain why, but I also can’t explain why French people like accordions, mimes and Jerry Lewis. See, that’s funny too.

I asked Jude if this was a problem. “Not if you don’t laugh at them every time they talk,” she said patiently, although I think I may have detected a hint of disappointment in her eyes. Was that with me, or with Rebecca?

After the house, it was off to Brittany, a brisk four-hour drive. Steve did all of it. He was the hero driver of the week.

The chateau was beautiful: pink exterior walls, old parquet floors and statues on the roof. The grounds themselves were spectacularly green with a path out to the coast. We took advantage of that several times. The rooms were decorated with ancient Egyptian and European medieval art. The house even came complete with two cats and a small horse – er, St. Bernard. But I swear I could’ve ridden Max. Two horses and a donkey lived across the road, and the donkey and I didn’t get along. Every time it saw me it howled. The first time that happened I was opening the gate at night, and I had no idea what was going on. I was looking around for a while, fearing that it was the world’s largest bat or rat. Nope, it was just an angry donkey.

Speaking of night, since Bec and I have spent the last year or so close to the Equator, night has set in between six and seven every night and it’s been consistently very warm to very hot. It was still light out at 11 p.m. in Brittany, and a little chilly. Bec liked the extra light. I enjoyed the slight bite in the air.

We spent the five days exploring quaint coastal towns and medieval cities, eating our way through each one. It was a lovely, relaxing time.

Bec and I went to Paris on Monday, and Rebecca gave me a pretty good walking tour for someone who hadn’t been there for 10 years. We watched the France-Spain World Cup match in a bar on the border of the French and Spanish fans. We got all the stuff we needed. I saw the goddamn Eiffel Tower, which was surprisingly hard to find, the Arc de Triomphe, the Tuilleries gardens and the outside of the Louvre and Notre Dame. Not bad for a day and a half.

We flew back to Douala on Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, the movies on the flight where I wanted to stay awake stunk. (One of them was “Firewall”. Where have you gone, Han Solo?) The flight was uneventful, although they held the plane to wait for late passengers. They did this when we flew to France as well. Why? If the ticket says 10:20 a.m., be there on time. Africa time means that people will be late for whatever appointment. It drives me absolutely bananas, but I figure that when I’m a visitor to a continent, I should be patient with local customs. I think that should stop at air travel.

Arriving in Paris and arriving in Douala are like landing on different planets. For that matter, landing in Kigali is like landing on a different planet than landing in Douala. First of all, the heat and humidity cover you, and then bash you over the head, as soon as you get off the air-conditioned plane. “My armpits (or, if you prefer, substitute what I really said) are sweating already,” I said to Rebecca after a few steps.

After the long line at passport control, where a short book is pored over like “War and Peace”, it’s off to the baggage claim area. I think I underestimated the Cameroonian capacity for violence until I tried to retrieve our two suitcases from the baggage claim conveyor belt. I don’t anymore.

Notice that I didn’t call it a carousel. It’s not. Instead, it is a single, short belt that culminates in a dead end. The belt can’t be more than five meters, or about 15 feet, long. A few baggage handlers throw unfortunate, unclaimed luggage off to the side, potentially breaking everything inside. Because of that, people cram each other up against the belt, and then attack each other to get at their stuff. I watched as priests and old ladies were shoved out of the way. Suitcases became weapons and elbows were out and pointy. At one point, I was pushed against the belt in such a way that my knees were bent in the wrong direction with my upper body going the other way. I was Gumby, dammit.

Rebecca was trying to get out of the area alive with one of our bags, but she was blocked in on all sides and being pushed back. In the midst of the madness – and you’ll start to see why so far we like it here – a middle-aged woman looked at Bec and sweetly said, “You must be very hot. But welcome to Cameroon.”

That seems like a good place to end this endless posting. This weekend, we go to the Canada Day celebration, where I will find out whether I should bring my rollerblades and hockey stick back to Yaoundé later this year. And then we’ve got the Fourth of July on Tuesday. Even better news, my temporary press pass is ready. Just have to get it on Monday morning. I’m in business, baby.

Happy birthday, Dad. Everyone wish him one, too. And happy Fourth of July.

2006-06-20T04:04:00.000-07:00

June 20, 2006

Last week, I went to an anti-child labor and anti-child trafficking celebration at the American Embassy in Yaoundé.

While overall it was a fun event, and important, there are a few nagging thoughts that have stayed with me for about a week.

First of all, it was a fashion show of work done by kids rescued from child labor. Not only did the kids design the clothes, they made them. The workmanship and the designs were actually quite good, if a bit repetitive. Lots of bright West African patterns in traditional flared skirts and buboes – a sort of one-piece outfit – for the girls. The guys wore the male version of buboes, as well as Western-style shirts in the West African fabrics. Blues, oranges and yellows were the dominant colors.

I know that the event was meant to celebrate the potential of these kids, and they’re all going to school now. In fact, in many ways, I don’t find some forms of child labor so bad. For example, there’s a little restaurant Bec and I like to go to for omelets on weekends. A family runs it, and all the kids take part in making the business run. I think that’s positive and a far cry from the child labor activists campaign against.

But really, if you’re rallying against child labor and trafficking, is making them put together clothes the best way to make your point.

On a similar note, these were all children rescued from child traffickers and slave-labor conditions. They were also the models for most of the clothes on display. So it was a little jarring when the host of the event kept repeating, “Everything you see on this stage is for sale.”

Finally, can Mississippi please remove the Confederate flag from its state banner? It’s embarrassing, especially in this part of the world. The 50 state flags from the 50 states are up in every embassy. It’s an introduction. This is who we are. And then, in among the state crests and flags that feel the need to take the mystery out of what they represent – I’m looking at you Montana and Wisconsin – there are the Stars and Bars up in the corner of the Mississippi flag.

Think about it. Cameroon is one of the regions from where the slaves came. So when taking around dignitaries or visiting students, American diplomats have to show off the Confederate flag. All because Mississippi has to be difficult about it. I’m sure it makes life uncomfortable for the embassy staff every once in a while. “Oh yes, this symbol. Um, well, it’s from the time when we fought over slavery. No, the people who fought under that were for slavery. And yes, the Ku Klux Klan has taken it as one of their symbols. But you see, it’s a heritage thing.”

The embassy in Yaoundé has the state flags off the main corridor. You really have to go out of your way to find them. I wonder if that was on purpose? You don’t have to go out of your way to find the Rosa Parks posters.

This will be my last posting before our much-needed vacation. A week of French people, French food and probably shopping for Third World-made American products. Five nights in a chateau as well. Bec keeps walking around her office saying, “I’m the queen of the castle.” I guess that makes me the court jester. Talk to everyone at the end of the month.

2006-06-13T05:04:00.000-07:00

June 13, 2006

Yesterday was the first that I’ve taken some hits since we’ve been here. First off, I made the horrifying discovery that the cash machines here (yup, they’ve got ‘em) only take Visa. Well, our bank only has MasterCard. So we’ll have to figure out a way to get our cash.

Then, there was a taxi strike. The drivers wanted help with rising fuel costs. Despite Cameroon being a major world oil producer, there are few if any refineries here, so the gasoline is actually imported. One of Africa’s biggest problems is that the continent, for the most part, does not transform it’s primary commodities – the cotton gets shipped out as cotton not shirts, the cocoa gets shipped out as cocoa not chocolate, the coffee isn’t ground here – and the transformation is what creates jobs and generates cash. The gasoline costs in Cameroon are a case in point. Maybe Bill Frist can send his $100 to ease the gas price crisis to every Cameroonian household rather than every American household. They’d certainly appreciate it (and yes, I do think direct aid like that is bad. But Bill Frist is a spectacularly silly man and deserves to be made fun of. He’s begging for it).

And then I tried to download Skype so that I can start calling you people cheap. But I couldn’t get the Internet connection to last long enough to download the bloody program. So now I’m trying again but I have no hope. I’m also not sure if I can plug the necessary headsets into my computer. So let’s hope. Does anybody who has a Mac have any thoughts on this? There’s a reward of a Cameroonian gorilla in it for anyone who has the correct answer. Don’t believe me that I can get you a gorilla? To paraphrase Walter from The Big Lebowski, you want a gorilla? I’ll get you a gorilla. With nail polish. I can have it for you by this afternoon. It’s Cameroon. All it takes is a dollar and a dream.

So, all of those three things occurred yesterday, and I’m still enjoying Yaoundé. For some reason, it’s easier to accept the sort of developing world challenges here than they were in Kigali. A lot of it is me. I’m more hopeful about the work I’m going to have here. I say going to because the assignments aren’t yet assigned. But I know at least one editor is “keen” to develop an idea here. He’s English. They say funny things like they’re keen on things.

Part of it is that I made my cash machine discovery because I needed to start paying for our plane tickets for our vacation. Originally we were supposed to be going to Croatia for Rebecca’s 30th birthday. But then the move and other things came in, so we couldn’t take that trip. So then we said Italy. But that didn’t really work out. So now, finally, it’s France, or as my mom said, “You’re going to the land of the frogs?” We’re going to meet Bec’s mom and dad in Paris and then drive to Brittany. The Stiches have booked us a room in a chateau near the sea for Bec’s birthday. We leave on June 20, which I guess is a week from today. Nope, I’m not guessing. It is. (Don’t worry, we’ll be able to pay for the tickets and we’re going.)

But I think a big part of why the challenges are challenges more than annoyances is that I’m giving myself a chance to enjoy Cameroon. I’ve noticed people smile here more. But I’m not blind to the nastiness that happens here. I’m starting up a big story on human trafficking now that I see as a really long magazine piece. Anyone know any editors who may be interested? If I get the assignment, then you, too, could be in for a gorilla, or even a giraffe. I’ll just have to fold it to fit into my big suitcase. You may have to iron it. But I’m not stared at. People aren’t constantly calling out, muzungu! Occasionally I get called le Blanc, but that’s what I am. And it’s not in the same league as Rwanda.

So, I’m still smiling. And since this is my blog, I can show you something else that’s keeping the smile on my face. Anyone remember what happened 12 years ago tomorrow? Time’s up.

This: http://www.csh.rit.edu/~kenny/rangers/media/images/cup1.jpg

And this: http://prosportsmemorabilia.com/Images/Product/33-31/33-31533-P.jpg

And this: http://sportsmed.starwave.com/media/nhl/2001/1010/photo/a_messier_i.jpg

And this: http://www.newsday.com/media/photo/2003-09/9603029.jpg

I love having the Internet at home.

2006-06-06T03:42:00.000-07:00

June 6, 2006

We’ve moved from the “Land of a Thousand Hills” to the city of seven. Yaoundé is situated among seven hills that, much like the hills in Rwanda, are somewhere between the cul-de-sac that I grew up on and Mt. Everest. These are not hills. But they’re not mountains either. So we’ll just call them hills, because that’s what the people here say they are.*

In many ways, Yaoundé, a city of around 2 million, reminds me of Los Angeles. First, there are the green hills surrounding the city. The hills are spread out over a large geographical area. Every once in a while, I expect to look up and see the Hollywood sign.

Each hill has a different neighborhood, and each of those neighborhoods has a different feel and purpose. One is a government quarter, which is full of architecture that some call experimental, some call interesting and I, for the most part, call ugly. It’s all brown and in bizarre shapes with weird facings on the sides of the buildings. This link (http://crawfurd.dk/photos/cameroon.htm) will give you a good view of what I’m talking about.

My favorite building in the city is not yet finished. It probably will never be finished. It’s a standard tower-block skyscraper, probably about 20 or 30 stories tall. But through a combination of corruption and bad accounting, the firm building it ran out of money. So now there is a hulking shell sitting in the middle of the downtown area. There was no money for the wiring, so there are no lights and probably no plumbing. But that’s okay, because no one lives or works there. Its floors are built, but there are no windows and I’ve been told the walls aren’t there. At the top of the building there is uneven graffiti that I believe says, “Paul Biya Pour La Paix” (Paul Biya for peace). (See it here: http://www.pbase.com/richardmartin/cityshots. Look here http://site.voila.fr/cameroon-discovery/voyager/yaounde.html for more of central Yaoundé.)

Cameroon’s Big Paul took the presidency in a coup in 1986, and he is the ringleader of the corruption. His compound is huge, and the presidential mansion is visible from miles around. It’s good to be the president. The unfinished building, I think, may summarize the way the country is governed. Granted, I’ve only been here about a week, so I’m no expert (although tell me I’m not if I decide I am), but the building does seem rather poetic.

But not all of Yaoundé is like that. We live in a decidedly low-rise area called Bastos that is filled with NGOs, embassies and private homes. It’s very green and the main street up the hill is filled with shops, street food and little bars. It’s a pleasant place to walk, other than the occasional whiff of garbage and poop. I like to say that we live in the Santa Monica of Yaoundé, except for the lack of a pier.

Other neighborhoods are more working class and are usually organized around a major building or gathering spot, either a hospital or market or something. I say working class only because there’s not much of a better way to describe it. I’d say most people who live in those areas are either unemployed or work as street vendors or market workers, sort of the gray economy. I don’t remember the exact unemployment figures in Cameroon, but the five percent or so in the U.S. is nothing in comparison.

Another way that Yaoundé reminds me of Los Angeles is the lack of official public transport. There are no buses, not even the little mini-buses I used to take in Kigali. Instead, everyone takes taxis. There are thousands of little yellow cars that dart in and out of traffic throughout the city. When a person needs a ride, they just stand at the side of the road and the taxis pull up. A prospective passenger tells the driver where to go, and the driver can decide if he wants to take you or not (every driver I’ve seen so far has been a man). A passenger can also wave a driver past as well and wait for the next one.

Often there will be three or four other people in the taxi, and the driver just makes stops in order, like a bus. If a person is in a hurry, or just wants some alone time, he or she can wait for the next empty taxi and say “depot” after the destination to go non-stop. If someone wants to be a jerk, they can call “depot” on a full taxi. If the driver agrees, everyone else has to get out. See what I mean about being a jerk.

There’s a movie theater playing relatively recent American, British and French movies downtown, as well as smaller ones playing Cameroonian and African films around the city.

Shopping is easy. As a friend described it, you can sit out and get a beer at night, and the market will come to you. Bec bought a CD the other night (sorry Amanda, it’s a pirate) and I bought a cell phone charger last night – that actually works – from guys walking down the street. It’s almost like the African and Chinese street vendors in New York, except these guys are mobile and accepted by the authorities. There are also proper grocery stores, where yesterday we found one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen. It’s basically a ketchup packet with a double-shot of whiskey in it for 100 francs (about 20 cents).

And then there’s the Score, the French version of Wal-Mart (or Target, if we want to feel a bit better about ourselves). We went there on Sunday to get some towels, and were just floored by the amount of stuff that was available. It’s amazing how a little oil money can increase a city’s shopping opportunities. Once they figure out how to get that money to flow down to the people – ain’t that always the way – then we’ll have something here.

That’s all for now. Bec’s going on a nine-day trip up to Bamenda and the Northwest province tomorrow morning. So I’ll be on my own.

* Some of you who looked at this earlier might have noted this sentence at the beginning: So we’ll just call them hills, because that’s what the people here look like. I changed that because although people here are large, they are not mountainous, nor are they green and covered in vegetation. Sorry for the editing problem.

2006-05-31T07:44:00.000-07:00

The acculturation process continues. Rebecca and I had drinks at our first open-air Cameroonian beer bar last night with some friends of ours. Yeah, we've even got those fast. What a difference a country makes.

I've also started making professional contacts. The price for a temporary press card went up to 50,000 CFA francs, about $100. The folks at the Communications Ministry couldn't show me any documentation why the price went up that much, but I figured that even with the bribe it's a lot cheaper than working in Rwanda. They told me that the price rise was because they had to justify their costs to the Ministry of Finance. To be fair, it used to cost around $10, which seemed unrealistically low.

Anyway, here's my first Cameroon story. Take a guess at what it's about. Time's up. Corruption.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0603114.htm.

Still no word on my DaMN Rwanda story. But it'll be there. Eventually.

2006-05-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

May 29, 2006

Greetings from the armpit of Africa.

Ha, caught your attention there. But just because I’ve called Cameroon the armpit of Africa doesn’t mean I don’t like it. Quite to the contrary, it looks like both Rebecca and I are going to enjoy Cameroon.

No, the armpit of Africa refers entirely to the geography and climate. If you look at the map, Cameroon is right up in the place where the bulge of West Africa meets the torso of Central and Southern Africa. So, it’s in the crux, like an armpit. Plus, it’s hot and humid in Yaoundé, much like my armpit in this climate. Yummy.

That’s not entirely fair, though. Cameroon is about the size of California and has just about every climate zone on the continent within its borders. Up in the north there is desert and savannah, so we’ll be able to see all the hippos, lions and giraffe we missed in East Africa. The west of Cameroon, along the coast, is reportedly among the wettest places in the world. It is also punishingly hot, according to the guidebooks and friends, but the beaches are great. Douala, the country’s commercial capital, is nestled in this area. The east of the country is dotted with mountains and is part of the central African rain forest areas. This part of the country also has gorillas, so we’ll be able to see the beasties we couldn’t afford to see in Rwanda. They’re apparently not as spectacular as the Rwandan gorillas, but honestly, a gorilla’s a gorilla to me. We’ll be able to see the fellows in their natural habitat and that’s fine.

There are over 250 ethnic groups in Cameroon, each with their own language, many of which are incommunicable. Yet the country is at relative peace. I don’t have any large, global statement to make about this. It’s just an observation.

Bec and I arrived safe and sound on Thursday night. So did our luggage, so we’re already one step up on our Rwanda experience. To be fair, and I am always fair, our bags got lost in London on the way to Kigali, not Nairobi or Rwanda. So we can blame the English for that one.

CRS-Cameroon handled our visas and we got them in an e-mail. You’ve got to love a country that let’s you scan a visa into an e-mail, send it to someone coming from Rwanda and then let’s you enter the company with only a printout as proof.

Rebecca has a dispiriting commute to work every morning in the apartment CRS is giving us until we find our own place. I don’t envy her. She has to walk out of our apartment, hang a left, then a right and then a third left – all without going down a flight of stairs – and she’s there. That’s right, our apartment for the time being is in the office. It does have its perks. First of all, it’s extremely large and pretty comfortable. We have the office Internet in our house, which is great, although sometimes the router goes out. But still, we can listen to NPR in the morning. I can listen to the Yankees when they play in the afternoon. Hopefully we’ll have it in the next apartment – that’s probably what we’re going to do – so I can listen to Ranger games on the radio. It’s the little things, right.

Bec’s co-workers all seem extremely pleasant. Her boss, Jennifer, has two boys, 6 and 3, so I’ve got friends at my own maturity level. The local staff is extremely welcoming and competent. We had met a few in Kigali when the CRS regional meetings were there, and were greeted in Yaoundé with hugs. There’s a young Italian guy who works on corruption issues based in the CRS office, although he doesn’t work for CRS, who we’re told is lots of fun and good at what he does.

Plus there’s Ruth, who lived in Rwanda for years and who is the regional technical adviser on HIV/AIDS based in Yaoundé. We met a few times in Kigali. She’s a lot of fun, and when she found out we were coming to Yaoundé, she said, “Charles will be so excited there will be another husband with nothing to do.” Well, I don’t know about nothing, but he sounds like a good guy to go exploring Yaoundé with. We’ve already arranged to go restaurant trolling with Ruth and Charles – for those of you who didn’t get Rebecca’s last blast e-mail, she’s very excited about the food here – and they’ve invited us to go to the beach at Kribi with them.

As for me, once the Internet comes back, I’m sending in my first story and photos in to the Catholics. Jennifer invited us to an event at a Catholic school for an anti-corruption curriculum, and I got a story out of it. As always, I will provide the link when it appears. I’m still waiting for my last Kigali story to get published in Dallas, but hey, it will. They liked it, but it’s the problem of fitting it in the paper.

I think this will be an interesting – and far easier place – to work. First of all, everyone who knew anything about Cameroon before I wrote about it here raise your hands. Both of you can put your hands down. Don’t worry. It took me weeks of research in Kigali to know anything about it either. There are hundreds of stories here in Cameroon alone, plus there are neighbors with stories bursting out the seams, including Chad, so I’ll get some Darfur in without going to Darfur.

The attitude towards the international press is far different here, mostly because there are few if any foreign journalists based in Cameroon. For starters, I get a three-month grace period to work here free, and then it’s 5,000 for the year. Excuse me, that’s 5,000 CFA Francs, around $10. In Rwanda, it was $300 for the first two months and $1,000 for the year. I didn’t pay that thousand. Nobody does.

More importantly, people talk to you. They’re not afraid. And they won’t look like they’re going to kill you when you pull out a camera. It’s extremely refreshing.

Now, the country isn’t all mangosteen and cream. As I’ve said before, the country is extremely corrupt, one of the worst in the world in that respect. It’s odd knowing that, because I expect that the response to every question will be, “Give me $20 and I’ll tell you.” That hasn’t happened, yet.

And despite being blessed with ridiculous natural resources, including oil and abundant timber, people are poor. That’s where the problems of corruption come in. There isn’t even universal primary education here, despite there being a 65 percent literacy rate. I had earlier read that the rate was around 85 percent, but I was wrong. Either way, it’s one of the highest rates in Africa. I wonder whether that literacy rate is holding among kids.

No more walking around with my headphones on or my wallet in my back pocket. I’m not even sure how much walking around I’m supposed to be doing here. We have our security briefing at 3 this afternoon. But I can’t imagine Yaoundé is as safe as Kigali. Nowhere is as safe – from street crime – as Kigali.

Cameroon is a chance for a new beginning for Bec and me. And since this is a new beginning, there will be changes on the blog. First, you may have noticed that I’ve changed the way I do the dates, from the pretentious 29 May 2006 to the normal human being May 29, 2006.

Second, you may have noticed the change of names on the blog. The URL will stay the same, still www.evanrwanda.blogspot.com. But the name is now “Another Day in Shrimpistan”. Now, why Shrimpistan? It all comes from the country’s name. Cameroon derives its name from the Portuguese word for prawns. The Portuguese never colonized the area, but their missionaries were among the first Europeans to make it to this part of Africa. Traveling up the rivers, the missionaries noticed huge numbers of prawns in the river. I like to imagine that one of them asked, “What should we call this place?” and another said, “Camerao!”, dumbfounded by the number or prawns. The Germans, French and British all liked the name so much that the people in the country were stuck with it.

Bec then dubbed the country Shrimpistan. I wonder what the people here will think of that.

Since I’m insane, I was hoping that the people here would be more along the size of their namesake. Bec told me that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. But I did. I hoped. I was wrong. It seems ironic that people named after shrimp are really large – tall and broad. But they are. And so, living in Shrimpistan, I am the shrimpiest of them all again.

But it’s okay. They’ve got mangosteen, the world’s greatest fruit, here.

I think we’re going to like this place,

2006-05-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

23 May 2006

This may well be my last posting from Rwanda. The rumor is we’re out of here on Thursday. Rebecca’s got the tickets in her hand as we speak.

The only problem is the people in Kinshasa who are working on the project that kept us here in the first place are still working on it. In fact, one of them told Rebecca that they wouldn’t be done with a draft by Thursday. Of course, the final grant proposal is due on Friday, so what are they doing? If they don’t let us leave – I don’t care whether they finish – I fear Rebecca may renounce her pacifism, fly to Kinshasa and kill somebody.

Either way, I’ve got to leave. My visa expires on Friday, and I don’t want to be living here illegally. I won’t be able to bribe anyone because no one will accept. But there will probably be a fine the potential size of which makes me quake in fear.

I feel like everything I’ve written about Rwanda has been negative. I don’t want to leave people with the impression that that’s all I’ve felt since we’ve been here. Part of it was that I was really bored the first few months in Kigali. I was writing stories, but not nearly enough. The other part is that bad news makes news. When things are going well, it’s hard to consider that abnormal.

So I want this last Kigali posting – probably my last posting about Rwanda because dwelling on things is singularly pointless and stupid – to talk about some of the things I will look back upon fondly. Some of them will be tinged with doubts, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not rooting for Rwanda.

There are a lot of good things to be said about the government here. They are hard to work with – there are times when visitors say glowing things about their dealings with government officials and I wonder if they’re talking about the same people – but they do have a vision for the country that goes beyond lining their own pockets. They like to call themselves “visionary”, but call me crazy, I don’t necessarily buy it when someone calls themselves something like that.

Yesterday I went to a private investment conference in Kigali. And while the investors and government officials spent all morning patting their backs and saying stuff like it only takes two weeks to start a business here, there were some impressive plans that have already started.

Let’s start with the bad stuff, though. The bureaucracy here is ridiculous. As I said, it’s not corrupt; it’s just Byzantine. It is not possible to pay fees directly to government ministries. First, one has to get a bill from the ministry, run over to the Rwanda Revenue Authority which is on the other side of town, wait in line with the rest of the country, then run back to the ministry in question. This is after collecting the 17 documents with stamps. So, yes, it may take two weeks, if everyone an investor is supposed to meet with is available for the scheduled meeting – highly unlikely – and the line at RRA isn’t too long – again, don’t hold your breath.

But the most important thing I saw yesterday is the government’s plan for Kigali. In short, they want it to be the African Singapore in 50 years. Why not? They want high-rise buildings. They’ve started to build an airport that will be the size of Heathrow in the same 50 years. They see grand boulevards with entertainment and business going on everywhere.

The government also has plans for resorts along their many lakes, which are gorgeous. Shopping is coming to Kigali. They envision the country becoming a tech center, a call center and a transport hub. Again, why not?

Now, there are things that I could point out. Aw hell, I will point out. There are very few plans for the areas outside of Kigali, a recurring problem I’ve found in Rwanda. Even with new shopping options heading to Kigali – the first shopping mall opened up while we were here and another should be open soon – there are still very few people in this country who can afford to buy anything. Rwanda wants Kigali to become Singapore. But look at Singapore’s neighbors. Then look at Rwanda’s neighbors. Singapore was able to service needs in other relatively developed economies like Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and even South Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Australia. Rwanda’s got Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda and the huge, sucking vortex of the Democratic Republic of Congo surrounding it. Who in those countries has any money to buy the services Rwanda wants to make its central business? Again, I’m rooting for all of them. I just think it’s a lot of variables to pin a country’s hopes on. I hope I’m wrong.

One thing that gives me hope, and has made Rwanda interesting, is that it’s a country where I’ve seen significant changes in the 10 months I’ve been here. Between construction starts, new government policies and an increasing number of people out on the streets at night, seemingly being social, I’ve seen things beginning to build up. If they can keep this up, then they’ve got a shot. When people say they want to develop the country, they sound serious. I believe them. I just hope they remember to try to bring everyone along.

I’ve already written about the police. We like the police here. And we’ll definitely miss our house. It was a comfortable place to live, and a nice respite.

Most important of all, I’ve met some wonderful people here who do care about the country. Among them are the Focus reporters. I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of anything than watching Helen, the first reporter sign up, get herself to write better. There’s a huge difference from the first story of hers that I read to the last story I edited. Yeah, I helped. But the thing that makes me proudest is how much she wanted to get better, and how much she worked at it. You wouldn’t believe the difference.

Then there’s Teta, who originally showed up to run errands. Now she’s decided that she wants to stay in journalism. Finally, there’s Magnus. Magnus is goofy. Magnus is a space cadet. But Magnus also has this tremendous sense of justice, and responsibility to help stand up for the left behind. We had to stop him from writing so much about street kids and beggars. He never wants to write what everyone else writes. There’s always another angle. He’s my kind of guy.
There are many other people I could mention that made my stay interesting and worthwhile, but I’d be here all day and so would you. Get back to work.

All of these good things don’t get rid of my doubts and misgivings about what’s going to happen in Rwanda. I’ve written enough about them and don’t want to cover old ground. But they do give me hope that things may actually get better.

Rebecca and I are now on to bigger and better things. We get to Yaounde late Thursday night (I hope) and I’ve already got a story to write on Friday. A few other outlets have expressed interest in stories from the region already. It’s good to hit the ground running.

2006-05-18T07:23:00.000-07:00

18 May 2006

I’ve never been able to get U2 tickets back home. I’ve always wanted to get them, always meant to get on line early in the morning when they went on sale. But a combination of cheapness, laziness and bad luck has kept me from ever seeing them live.

It took moving to Kigali to get even close. Bono is here today, and one of the side benefits of being a journalist in a country like Rwanda – even when there I don’t have a story to do – is I get to go to the press conferences.

Bono – or Mr. Bono, as the Rwandan emcee called him – is here to launch the Red Campaign. Motorola, Giorgio Armani, the GAP, Converse, Nike, American Express and other companies are selling red products and a portion of the profits goes to fund the U.N.’s Global Fund Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Motorola is even doing something near and dear to my heart – they’re building their Red cell phones at factories in Nigeria. Ah, private business enterprises. Not only did it take me moving to Rwanda to come in close contact with Bono, it took me coming to Rwanda to become a free market capitalist. Anyway, Rwanda is the first country to benefit from the Red campaign. That makes sense, since unlike many African countries, when a country donates money to Rwanda, it can be confident that all the money will go where it is intended.

Mr. Bono is shorter than I thought. That’s one of those things I always notice, because I’m crazy. And he tried his best to say hello in Kinyarwanda. He got it right up to the last syllable. He said “Murahoo” rather than “Muraho”. At least he tried. That’s more than I can usually say.

I had a long list of questions I wanted to ask Bono. They weren’t softball questions; they were going to be tough ones. No, "What's your favorite song?" "When's the next record coming out?" kinds of things. Real questions. He was here touring AIDS clinics. Well, AIDS isn’t the biggest killer here – not like in other parts of this continent. Does the flow of money into AIDS keep other important development projects from receiving money they need? Bono talks about trade being key, but he means trade with the rest of the world. I don’t disagree. But African countries don’t trade with each other. In fact, they have ridiculous taxes on goods going from country to country. Does Bono think that trade will get Africa out of poverty if there is no inter-African trade?

But I had a violent case of the hiccups that lasted until now. So I didn’t want to embarrass myself. Plus, there were all these people from associations for people living with HIV/AIDS, and they wanted to ask questions of the big Irish pop star/activist. It felt wrong taking their time. I also wasn't able to get him onto my friend Sunny's radio show. Stupid hiccups.

The good thing about Bono is that he could’ve answered my questions intelligently, because he knows his stuff and is serious about it. He’s not some doofus celebrity spokesperson. He passionately talked about how the House of Representatives cut $2.5 billion from President Bush’s aid budget, after saying they wouldn’t. You could practically see him shaking with anger. You could also see that he knew the legislative process in the United States better than I did, which is kind of embarrassing. Get me the School House Rock videos fast. When someone asked about the dangers of foreign donors stopping money for anti-retroviral drugs that keep people alive – they pay for pretty much all of them in Africa – Bono simply said, “I think we have to be sanguine about that fact” and keep lobbying, and keep getting private companies involved in the process.

We’re not invited to the big Bono cocktail party and dinner tonight. That’s okay. I’m losing my voice. At least the hiccups are gone, after 10 hours.

2006-05-17T06:54:00.000-07:00

17 May 2006

We got into a car accident on Friday night. It wasn’t serious. No one was hurt, and the car Rebecca was driving (a massive Toyota 4x4) was in relatively good shape afterwards. The front left bumper was out of place and the axle on the front left wheel was bent so the truck was hard to drive. There wasn’t much damage other than that.

The only reason I mention this relatively minor incident is as we prepare to leave Rwanda – originally we were scheduled to fly out on May 20, but that has been pushed back to May 25 – the accident was an illustration of everything good and bad about the country. Unfortunately for my perceptions of the country, it was more of the latter.

We had just finished off a very pleasant dinner with my friend Andreas and his girlfriend Evin. She’s Kurdish, and the name causes no end of difficulties. When I was talking to Andreas or floating in and out of paying attention, all of a sudden I’d hear, “So Evin, say something in Kurdish.” I’d run through the memory banks for a few seconds until I remembered that I didn’t speak Kurdish. Fortunately, Evin is smarter than me and answered quickly. I simply sat there with my usual look of utter bewilderment.

Now, back to the story at hand. We were driving Evin and Andreas home because they don’t have a car. Bec followed all of the traffic rules as we pulled up to their compound. She slowed down. She signaled that we were turning left. She looked behind her.

And then out of nowhere, a car tried to pass us on the left and wham! right into the wheel-well on the front driver’s side. The Rwandan driver left his car in the middle of the street where the accident happened. His little sports car – an approximately 10-year-old black Toyota Celica – sustained far more damage, but everyone in it was in fine form.

Bec pulled over to the side of the road to get out of the way. The other driver jumped out and started yelling that we were leaving the scene of the crash and that we had done something wrong. He was doing all this in French, and let me tell you, French is not an intimidating language.

“Why did you hit us? What were you doing? Didn’t you see me coming around your left?” he shouted.

“You hit us. I was making a left. I didn’t see you because you were going way too fast,” Rebecca responded calmly.

“Are you saying that I’m crazy? Are you saying that I can’t drive?”

We didn’t respond. He kept yelling.

It went on like this for about 20 minutes, with the Rwandan guy’s friend piping up in English on occasion with all kinds of nonsense. He said that our blinker wasn’t on. It was. He said they weren’t going to fast. They were. “You shouldn’t drink and drive,” he said to Rebecca, despite reeking of alcohol. “That’s right, you shouldn’t,” she responded.

Finally, they threatened to call the police, which we wanted them to do. But before the police came, they called some guy, apparently a friend. He kept saying that they wanted to come to an “amicable solution” which involved us paying for the damage on the idiot driver’s car. No deal.

All the while, I was keeping calm and watching Rebecca’s back. If you think I’m making this up, you can ask her. I was totally calm. Andreas and Evin did the same thing. Occasionally I’d tell the crazy screaming guy to calm down, told the English-speaking passenger to keep quiet because he was stupid (not in those words) and asked the weird guy who just showed up who he was. “You don’t need to know who I am,” he said. “Yes I do. Who are you?” And then he left.

I didn’t mention the other two passengers in the idiot mobile. Two young women piled out of the back seat. They were dressed for a club and appeared to be woozy. They kept calling their friends to say that they were in an accident with muzungus. They were dismissive, annoying and arrogant, much like the guys in the car.

This is where all the bad stuff about Rwanda comes in. First of all, they drive in an unbelievable position. When a person sits in the driver’s seat, the driver manages to fold himself (or herself, let’s be fair) in such a way that his head is literally up his butt. I guess that there is a periscope and they find a way to extend their feet down to the pedals. This is of course the perfect position for driving insanely fast up winding, curving, poorly lit streets.

Then there is the inability to acknowledge any personal fault. We hit them. How? I don’t know. But it was clearly Rebecca’s fault for slowing down, putting on her left-turn signal and making the left turn she had warned other drivers about.

Then there was the attitude among returnees to Rwanda that they are in charge – everyone else has to do what they say or get out of the way. The guards at Evin and Andreas’s compound – they live at the Swedish development agency compound – all told me that the Rwandan driver was at fault. He was going too fast and tried to pass us on the left. His car was in the wrong lane after the crash. But when the Rwandans saw the guards talk to me, they rushed over and started yelling in Kinyarwanda. These kids seemed like they came from a serious family, with serious fathers and serious mothers. We imagine that they were yelling at the guards something along the lines of, “Do you know who our parents are? Do you know what will happen if you say something against us.” Whatever they said, it worked. When the police came, the guards had nothing to say.

Security guards in Rwanda are usually under-educated demobilized soldiers and poor. There may be an ethnic component to all of that, but I’m not sure. There are Hutu and Tutsi security guards, even though technically there are no Hutus or Tutsis in Rwanda. Either way, the returnees run this country and in my view are turning everyone against them. They appear to know nothing about the country, and care even less that they don’t know anything.

Then there was the muzungu nonsense. As Rebecca said, “Does it matter the race of the person that they hit?”

Finally, there were the relations with the rest of the world. At one point, I turned to Andreas and Evin and said, “They’re going to blame the international community again.” At which point Rebecca made comparisons to the way they deal with the Genocide, which always involves talking about how the international community let them down, with Rwandans picking up machetes and killing each other a distant fourth in reasons for the deaths.

“At least we can leave this stupid country. These guys have to stay,” I said loud enough so everyone could hear me. Rebecca seconded that, much to my surprise.

Finally, the police showed up. This is where the good parts about Rwanda, the parts where we both think this country might go somewhere other than back to darkness, come in. The police officer that took the statements was professional, like the rest of the Rwandan police. Andreas pointed out that the Swedish police trained Rwanda’s. Who knew there was crime in Sweden?

Anyway, he simply took the statements from Rebecca and the driver. The driver tried to do his statement in Kinyarwanda. Rebecca asked him to do it in French so she could understand. “Yes, do it in French or English so everyone can understand,” the policeman said.

There was never a question of a bribe, as is the case with police in most African countries. There was no favoritism towards the Rwandan driver. The policeman moved the process along as fast as possible, doing all the necessary forensic checks with a tape measure and writing everything into his notebook.

If all of Rwanda functioned like its traffic police, then I’d be more comfortable about where this country is headed. But more of the country is like the two drivers. Shyaka Kanuma, the now executive editor/managing editor/advertising director/marketing director/lead reporter of Focus is actually far more representative of the country, and much like the kids with whom we had the run-in.

It’s kind of funny that one of the last entries I will write from Rwanda – I am so out of here mentally – is about driving, just where I began. It’s amazing how a country’s behavior on the roads can be emblematic of its behavior in everything else.

The most important thing is that we’re okay.

2006-05-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

5 May 2006

The grand Focus experiment is over. After new information – some of it too ghastly to even contemplate – I finally quit today.

Here they are, and then no one will have to read about this nonsense again until the book comes out. Anybody know any publishers?

My descriptions will be mercifully brief. When Shyaka fired Sunny, he trashed my erstwhile replacement in front of the staff. He didn’t say any of this to Sunny, of course (he’s incompetent, he can’t do the job blah, blah, blah…) and none of it’s true. That was bad. I can’t write the other thing I heard until I know it’s true. But I may have to find out.

Anyway, when I realized I was going to counsel a potential volunteer not to join Focus, I realized I was wasting my time. It was making me angry, making me cynical about everything on this continent. I’m still skeptical about Africa, but I know there’s a lot of good here. I feel oh so much better.

On the way out, Shyaka accused me of trying to make the paper fail. I told him he’s the one doing it. He told me he “knew about my whispering campaign against him,” I told him he was paranoid. He wondered why I kept coming back. I asked why he didn’t have the courage to fire me if he didn’t want me there. He didn’t respond.

So now he’s all by himself and the paper is on its last legs. I’m hoping I’m wrong, because what Shyaka’s doing is important. I’m rooting for him, but I also know in my heart he’s going to kill this thing. And that’s just the way he wants it.

Now, we’ll have room for happier – and funnier – topics. I’m learning how to drive manual transmission. Stay tuned to hear me ask, “Did I just break it?”

2006-05-04T07:14:00.000-07:00

4 May 2006

Full marks to Mo Q. Chin, who not only got the clue I gave in my last posting, but managed to advance it with further information in the comments section of the blog. Mo, since I can’t give you a prize or even the big hug you deserve, you get acknowledgment on the blog and a gold star.

Still no word on when we’re going to Cameroon. Hopefully we’ll find out soon, but we both really want to get out of here. I edited out some words that might get others in trouble. Nothing serious. I'm just paranoid. Rwanda does that to a fella. I'm perfectly happy getting myself in trouble. I just don’t want to drag anyone else down.

And speaking of getting in trouble, Focus is disintegrating right before my eyes. And you know what, I don’t care. Shyaka likes to blame other people for bad things that happen, but that’s only because he can’t admit when he’s wrong.

The new computers that are sitting next to me in the office are a perfect example of his utter mismanagement and self-sabotage. Last Thursday (April 27) he came in boasting about the new computers that would be here the following morning. Friday morning passed, no computers. Friday afternoon passed, still no computers.

Friday evening he says that he’s picking them up on Saturday. Saturday was umuganda, so that means no work. Umuganda takes place the last Saturday of every month. It’s not a surprise. The schedule never changes. I knew this. The staff knew this. Everyone knew this. Shyaka, who is fond of telling me that he knows the Rwandan market better than me, somehow did not know this. I came in on Tuesday (Monday was a holiday – May 1. International Day of Labor. I’m surrounded by Commies!) to find no computers. “Saturday was umuganda, then Sunday was Sunday then Monday was a holiday,” was Shyaka’s excuse.

Tuesday went by, and still no computers. Wednesday morning, they two refurbished computers finally arrived. But there was a problem. The power cords for one computer and monitor had the wrong connectors so we couldn’t plug them in. The other computer and monitor didn’t have power cords at all. Focus’s new computers are a little grungy looking, but that doesn’t matter. At least, that’s what we thought.

Our new designer, Lee, found all the cords we needed by the afternoon. I was sitting outside at the time he plugged everything in, but about two minutes later, everyone came pouring out of the office. “The computer exploded,” Eunice, one of the reporters, said. She was laughing, so I knew everyone was okay.

“I plugged in the monitor, there was a crash and then the thing started smoking,” Lee said when he came outside.

I sauntered in. The smoke had stopped rising out of the computer, but the acrid smell hung in the air. That dissipated soon as well.

A computer technician from the Internet café downstairs was in the office checking out the new computers because Shyaka hadn’t. Instead, he just took the guy’s word for it that they were up to specifications. “These things only have 256-k or RAM,” Abdul said. Now, I don’t understand computers. In fact, I fear them, to be honest. They bring joyous news, like the release of the entire 1994 Eastern Conference and Stanley Cup Finals on DVD (Let’s Go Rangers!). But I still wonder how the tiny hamsters manage to get all that information from the United States into my machine. But even I knew that 256-k of RAM sounded miniscule.

“You can’t run anything on this,” Abdul said. “It’s way too slow.”

After Abdul left, we had trouble getting the second monitor on. It worked for a little while but we couldn’t turn it back on. After a little jostling and checking different sockets on the power strip, I got the plug into one that worked. After the initial sound of a television flicking to life, there was a nasty whirr. That was followed by a small crash. The small crash was then followed by smoke and the same smell of burning circuits that hovered in the office previously.

“Awww man,” Shyaka said. “They sold me bad computers.” Did they, or did he just go to a crook? There is a place that does sell refurbished computers. It’s reputable. I know at least one person who got a computer from them and it works just fine. But why do things easily?

The final insult about these new computers is that one of the keyboards is missing the letter v. How do you write without the letter v? It’s only a four-point letter in Scrabble. I couldn’t even put my name on stories without the letter v. Shyaka was unaware of this problem. He hadn’t even looked.

“And he’s going to blame everyone else,” a Focus staffer said to me.

All of this happened on the same day that Shyaka fired my replacement, for basically no reason as far as anyone can tell. Apparently, Sunny was fighting with people. I never saw this, and no one could point to any real instances except one, and Sunny said he didn’t realize he was in a fight.

I’ll admit that Sunny, who is Rwandan and whose name I am spelling correctly, is obnoxious and immature. But he was dedicated. He had even quit smoking so he could get up the stairs to our top-floor newsroom easier. He wanted to make this work. One of our reporters is Sunny’s recent ex-girlfriend and the two of them even found a way to work. Sunny had severe food poisoning on Monday night and I had to tell him not to come to work on Tuesday. He shouldn’t have even come yesterday, but he did because he cared about Focus.

But Shyaka, in his eternal struggle to undermine everything he does, decided to can him. When Sunny said something like he was disappointed that he never even had the chance to make it work, Shyaka started yelling at him, “It’s my paper and it’s my money. I’ll do what I want.”

So the reporters, and others, are starting to jump ship. Two have already left, while two more are investigating other opportunities because they’re tired of Shyaka yelling at them.

Pay is two weeks late. Not that it matters, or that I’ll even probably ask, but I haven’t been paid since February. Andreas, our Swedish volunteer, has stopped coming. Shyaka always wants me to call him, and I say no. He’s a volunteer and he can volunteer not to be here. I was getting heavily involved when I was training Sunny. I was about to show him how to lay out pages and work with the designers. I’m not doing that with Shyaka. If he wants to run everything himself, he can run everything himself. I’m just coaching reporters and telling Shyaka I’m here to answer questions. Sometimes I think that’s juvenile, but in reality it’s best not to enable Shyaka. If he wants to destroy what he’s building, that’s fine.

It’s at the point where every decision Shyaka makes is bad. What really needs to happen is what George did on Seinfeld when he got the job with the Yankees. Shyaka needs to start eating chicken salad, on rye, with a cup of tea. But he won’t, because it’s all everyone else’s fault.

Remember earlier, when I got fired, I wrote that I was scared about what would happen after I left Focus? I’m giving Focus two, three months tops. I overheard Shyaka say to his brother, who lives in Bujumbura, that Focus has to survive. It won’t, and it’s his fault.

What a shame.

2006-04-26T06:33:00.000-07:00

26 April 2006

Focus got Jayson Blaired. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, one of our reporters was making up quotes. The explanation that he gave was that he got a friend at the New Times to give him quotes from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees when he had trouble getting in touch with them. The alternate explanation is that Bonny just out-and-out plagiarized. Both of these are time-honored New Times practices that we’re trying to break. And by the way, he got the story wrong.

Either way, Bonny had to go. Apparently the explanation Shyaka and I gave on Monday didn’t sit well with some of the reporters. One of them, Helen, asked why we couldn’t accept an apology and let Bonny come back. We both took our turns explaining journalistic integrity and all that stuff. Trust is all we’ve got, blah, blah, blah.

So yesterday, I spoke to Helen again to make sure she understood what Shyaka and I were talking about. “Well, I know someone who sawed off his pregnant wife’s head during the Genocide. He asked for forgiveness and they let him back into the community,” she said.

Touché. How do you come back from that? I mumbled something about the same blah, blah, blah that I did on Monday. And then finally Helen and I figured out that she didn’t understand exactly what we meant. When we explained the plagiarism and lying (Bonny told me he spoke to these people), Helen conceded that in newspaper terms what Bonny did was worse than chopping off his pregnant wife’s head. I’m glad I made my point.

Anyway, I’ve got big news. We finally know where we’re going. I’ll give you a clue. Here it is: Beef jerky time.

Stumped? For the one of you who got the clue (Jon Abrams, I’m counting on you), congratulations on existing in fantasy land with me. For the more normal people out there, I’ll give you another hint.

In the movie “Trading Places”, Eddie Murphy impersonates a student from this African country on a train, and punctuates a fake prayer with the phrase “Beef jerky time!”

Still stumped? Fine, I’m out of clues. It’s Cameroon. Rebecca will be, as she puts it, a “professional schmoozer” in the Yaondé office. Yaondé is the capital. It’s basically a fund-raising, PR and relationship position. I don’t quite understand it, but I don’t need to. It’s her job. Officially, her first day is May 20, and we’ll know exactly when we’re leaving Kigali soon. But it’ll probably be between May 15 and 20.

Don’t be embarrassed if you don’t know anything about Cameroon. There’s not a whole lot written about it. The reason is that it’s stable and has been for around 40 years. It’s essentially a one-party state where the president’s been in power for 20-something years. It has a raucous independent written press, but political parties mostly control the press. I did say that it was essentially a one-party state. There is an opposition, but it will never get into power. It’s sort of like Japan.

Anyway, what else do I know about Cameroon? It has an 85 percent literacy rate. The corruption is blatant, obvious, open and joyous. Cameroonian food is apparently very good, and the culture is reportedly warm and inviting. I can understand the Cameroonian French accent much better than the Rwandan French accent (a couple of Cameroonians who work for CRS were here last week). There are over 200 different ethnic groups, and over 200 different languages. And yet they haven’t killed each other. It’ll be interesting to come from a place where two essentially colonially created ethnic groups take turns killing each other into a place where people at least can’t be bothered. I think there’s a book there, but I’m not sure.

Finally, Cameroon’s neighbors are basket cases. We’ve got Equatorial Guinea, which has lots of oil, lots of poor people and a violent corrupt government. We’ve got Gabon, with its impressive national parks but the longest-serving head of government in the world, President Omar Bongo. And we’ve got Chad and the Central African Republic, which are vying for the title of “saddest place on earth”. I’ll let you know who wins.

All of those places are filled with great stories, and there are no foreign journalists in any of these places, except Chad. The field is open. I’m ready to go.

2006-04-14T05:23:00.000-07:00

14 April 2006

Today marks the end of Genocide commemoration week.

On April 6, 1994, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s airplane was shot down over Kigali – in fact it crashed into his compound and one reporter I know claims that the plane wasn’t shot down at all. Instead, Habyarimana was showing off his swimming pool to the president of Burundi, who was also on the plane. I don’t believe this story at all.

On April 7, the 100 days of madness and killing that made Rwanda infamous around the world began.

So for the week from April 7 to 14 every year, the country stops and thinks about what happened. In fact, unless they leave the country, people don’t have a choice. It’s Rwanda, after all. Radio stations, even privately owned ones, are only allowed to play programs relating to the Genocide. Only religious music or music talking about the Genocide is allowed to surf across the airwaves. Television is filled with news footage of the killing – horrible, hellish images of violence – and movies about the Genocide. The National University of Rwanda caused a scandal by holding lectures during Commemoration Week. The minister of education showed up at a different university to complain that one professor held a class – a class his students asked for. All sports leagues are cancelled.

Rebecca saw a sign at the Novotel saying that the pool was closed for recreational activities for the week. We originally thought that it was because people were not allowed to swim and enjoy themselves for the week. Actually, they were doing scheduled maintenance and this just happened to be a good time because people aren’t allowed to have fun.

I wonder if this is the best way to relate to what happened here. It’s a surprisingly difficult question to ask some people, because they assume that you’re telling Rwanda to just get over it and move on with life. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m wondering if rather than enforcing sadness it’s better to let people grieve and mourn in their own way.

Every person has a different way of relating to grief. Many Rwandans who have the means leave the country for this week. Helen, one of the Focus reporters, says that her aunt every year says to hell with it and leaves. This year she and her husband went all the way to Canada.

My reporters say that they have mixed feelings about all this. They say that most people decide not to watch TV and don’t listen to the radio. They can’t deal with it. Other people say that it’s necessary. People can’t be allowed to forget what happened here. But how do you forget?

The New Times, the local, competitor rag, reported in the last sentence of the story with the scandal about lectures happening at universities that there is a sharp increase in trauma cases reported in the country during this period. It being the New Times, this issue was not further explored. (Hopefully I will for an American paper or magazine or something.)

Is this what the government wants?

Again, this is just an intellectual inquiry. Okay, fine, it’s partly a criticism because at heart I hold contradictory political beliefs. I want some government regulations – protection of employees, the environment, provision of national health care, a certain level of gun control – but a libertarian on most social issues. Get out of my personal life, I say.

So what effect does this enforced morning period have on people? And why is it done this way? Is it to make sure no one ever forgets? Is it to make sure the current government – which does many good things – was the group that actually stopped it, and is the only force that can prevent the mayhem from reoccurring? Is it because no one knows what to do? Is it because the people who plan broadcasting and social events are incompetent? Shyaka thinks that last question is part of the answer.

Foreigners get into the act of this self-flagellation. (To a certain extent rightly so. The world stood by and did nothing. But then again, except for France, Egypt and China, no foreigner actively helped, either. Rwandans butchered Rwandans.) The American Club was supposed to show King Kong on April 7, the day of national mourning. It got postponed and instead we watched a new BBC movie called “Shooting Dogs” about the Genocide. I recommend it. It’s quite good. Before the movie, a survivor talked to the teeming masses of foreigners, and took the chance to tell us how wrong we all were for not stopping the Genocide. He kept asking us to remember where we were when the whole thing started. I plead guilty. I was a junior in high school. I was probably watching the Rangers. I did nothing to stop the Genocide.

While he did have a point, he only took a few minutes to talk about the responsibility of the people who actually killed.

A friend of mine was visiting from Kampala, so we finally took the opportunity to go to the Genocide Memorial in Kigali. It’s done by the same people who created the DC Holocaust memorial. It’s quite impressive. You can even buy a purple plastic bracelet (a la the Lance Armstrong “Live Strong” bracelets) that says Never Again on it. The money goes to support the memorial, but I couldn’t bear to buy it. I never bought an AIDS ribbon, either.

So anyway, we’re now moving out of official mourning. There is an unofficial 100 days of mourning where one of the survivors associations digs up mass graves and reburies people, and generally goes around making people feel bad. Kigali is going back to its usual fast pace. Fine, it’s not. It’s going back to its usual lack of pace. (Can I leave now? I’ve got the idea.)

One last creepy thing about all of this official mourning. The colors they’ve chosen to commemorate the Genocide (everything needs an official color) are purple and white. For those of you who don’t know, those are the colors of New Rochelle High School.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks and I’ll write more later. But I figured these thoughts should stand alone.

2006-04-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

4 April 2006

Focus is involved in its first major dust up. I’m keeping this short so you guys have a reason to read the book.

We published a story – and please understand that if we publish it, we stand by our reporting – that a former soldier and a newspaper editor here are plotting to set off bombs (possible) and poison gas (whatever you say there, ace) in Kigali. We’ve got an e-mail that links them, and people who say they were at meetings where this plan was discussed. Fine. The story is there, and in my mind it is solid.

We went as far as republishing an entire e-mail we have, including the Yahoo! buttons, advertising – everything. Originally, Andreas and I only wanted the text of the e-mail in there. But at Shyaka’s urging we put in all the outside stuff.

We did, however, insist that e-mail addresses be smudged out. We fought Shyaka on that (amicably. It was just a disagreement) and it turned out we were wrong. Andreas and I thought people would understand that we were trying to their privacy. Instead, people saw that we had smudged the e-mail and of course now think we forged the thing. We should have listened to the Rwandan.

As Shyaka said, there was an uproar from the admittedly small journalistic/newspaper consuming populace in Kigali. The guy we published about is the publisher of the opposition newspaper here – sort of a roguish, beloved figure in some circles. His newspaper, however, is terrible. It’s full of lies, slander and bad reporting and writing. The publisher is purported to be a thief, and I know that the reporters there rarely got paid. When they did, it was late and less than promised. This is supposed to be the standard-bearer of the free press in Rwanda? Why? Because he makes stuff up that the government doesn’t like?

I’m not making any of this up. Reporters without Borders tried to claim that Focus was some sort of government stooge out to attack its opponents. A friend of the paper basically invited them to come see both of our computers and reporters playing musical chairs before they released anything. We also proved that we didn’t forge any documents. I haven’t seen anything on my regular e-mails from RSF, so that may have worked. At least one of our reporters has been threatened. Will RSF come to our aid? Although I worked in the human rights community, I’m beginning to have my doubts. I was the militant wing of Human Rights Watch, after all. A country is violating human rights on a massive scale? Bomb them until they stop, I say. Few in those halls agreed with me.

But nothing has happened and nothing will happen.

Whenever I think I’m done being surprised by Rwanda, something new disavows me of that notion. I’d say surprised and disappointed. I found this whole incident disheartening. Doing the right thing – protecting people’s privacy – made people think we were forging documents. I was thinking all sorts of bad things about Rwanda and the people here. I started to wonder if it was ever possible to have a free press in Rwanda if there was such a huge lack of trust. And then I wondered what the point of it was. They can have their country, their newspaper and their petty little fights. I thought about throwing up my hands and walking away.

Shyaka talked me down over a Guinness. He got me over my disappointment (mostly) and surprise (somewhat). This is a cultural difference (although this is the first time I’ve encountered this in any culture I’ve experienced). He said that the reason it’s important to have Focus here is that we’re trying to open up space for people to think and have ideas. Our guys are working too hard to accomplish this goal to leave them now.

Plus, it’s bad form to go home when it’s time to stand up. What kind of an example would I be sending to the younger people I work with? Some of them are as young as 17 and 18. If I didn’t support them when they needed all of us together, then why should I expect them to support each other. I like to think I’m someone you want at your side when it’s time to circle the wagons. Leaving just wouldn’t be right.

If anything, the incident has brought the newsroom together. This is real. This is big time. We’re in this together. I think I’m done with clichés for now, but I can’t make any promises.

So, a lot of you will read this and worry. Don’t. I’m fine. My friends will be fine. This will blow over, or there will be angry articles in newspapers. That’s it. On the plus side, people are buying the paper. They know we’re out there.

On to other Focus news. We are now coming out every two weeks, doubling production. That means more work, but I think we’ll be able to do it. I’m learning how to design a page since Andreas’s family is coming to visit, but what’s one more job. I’ll just have to get my part more organized, and probably stay late a few nights. I’ve done that before.

Andreas redesigned the paper, and you can tell he’s Swedish just from looking at it. It bears a striking resemblance to an Ikea catalog.

We now finally have a key to the bathroom on our floor. This is huge, and will probably save me from any permanent damage.

In still other news, Bec will probably find out soon where we’re headed next and when. We could be on the move soon, and I will keep you posted.

Finally, I am writing this on my Mac. I’m so happy that the Hidden Rebel Base is back, fully armed and operational.

2006-04-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

3 April 2006

This isn't something that I'm going to send to editors when I try to get a full-time job (http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0601855.htm), but it still counts.

I've been to Burundi...

We were driving back to Kampala from Jinja on Uganda's election day. The CSM reporter, the NPR correspondent our driver, Ismael, and I crossed a washed-out bridged, faced trucks hurtling past us and stared down mini-buses speeding down the wrong side of the road. "You know, people think that our jobs are dangerous," Jason, the NPR reporter said. "But they don't realize that the most dangerous thing is getting from one place to another on the roads here."

We all laughed.

I'm about to go test that theory and take public transport home. Wish me luck.

2006-03-27T08:13:00.000-08:00

27 March 2006

Long time, no read everybody. Sorry I’ve fallen off the face of the earth (I do live in Rwanda after all), but at least I come armed with excuses.

First, my computer is still not back from Kampala. The logic board is sitting in Ugandan customs, just waiting to push its way through. The computer store guy said he expected that to happen today. After they get the part, we’ll see if they correctly diagnosed the problem. I’m fairly confident they did.

The only obstacle standing in my way is getting the computer from Kampala to Kigali. I’m still working on that. One option would be to go up there, but I really only have time to do that if I’ve got other stories to do. I’m still waiting to hear about a few pitches, and will keep you posted.

A second option would be to have a friend pick it up. That may happen also. The third, and least appealing, option is Elite Computers DHLing the thing down. That would cost millions of dollars and probably hundreds – maybe thousands – of lives as I fought through Rwandan customs, so here’s hoping that we don’t have to go that route.

So, how does me not having my computer prevent my loyal readers from wasting time at the office reading this nonsense? Well, Rebecca has kindly lent me her laptop for the time mine is in sickbay. But because she is working on a major project for CRS, she needs to use the machine at night and on weekends, prime blogging time.

There is excuse number one.

Excuse number two is Focus eats up a whole lot of time. Editing stories, working with the reporters, taking advantage of the free Internet access all take more energy and thought than one would expect. Fortunately, the hard work is starting to pay off. We’re at the beginning of Hell Week, where a group of stories, opinion articles, editorials, photos and just a smattering of advertisements become a newspaper.

But unlike past editions, we’re actually a day or two ahead because of cooperation from everyone, and I’ve calmed down enough that it looks like I won’t have pop an aneurism. We intend to come out every two weeks now, so let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

My schedule is so packed that I haven’t even had time to tackle a story that DaMN asked for, or pursue an opportunity that came up suddenly at the end of last week as much as I’d like. Again, since I don’t want to jinx this, I’ll keep the opportunity a secret. All I’ll say is that if it works out I’ll be converting from pounds to dollars.

I left off my three-part extravaganza on the trip to Uganda at a discussion of the elections there. I trust you’ve all read my DaMN piece, so I won’t go into anymore. But it looks like in some ways I was right, and some ways I was wrong. A Canadian guy I met in Kampala who writes for the Economist and the Washington Times got kicked out for being a “security threat” and other journalists told me they’ve “been warned.”

But you don’t want that. You want the Complete Idiot’s Guide to covering an African election. I am your complete idiot guide.

Unfortunately, over the month that I’ve been back in Kigali I’ve forgotten much about the little things that happened, but I’ll try to remember a few.

What do the boys on the bus talk about when traveling from Besigye campaign rally to Besigye campaign rally? The Winter Olympics. More specifically, biathlon and skeleton. My mom’s theory about the beauty of the skeleton is that it looks like you could just throw a dead guy onto the sled and send him down the chute – a Weekend at Bernie’s situation, if you will.

As I was advancing this theory – which met with great approval – we got word that the Ugandan military had plowed through the cheering throngs (I wrote about this on March 8), killing four people. As I wrote before, nobody got killed. I did see one guy who was run over, but nobody got killed.

So one would think that after this potentially important incident – hell, we even got off the bus and investigated – we would be talking about what it all means.

“So how did they figure that going head-first down the chute was a totally different sport than going down on your back?” either Rob or Hans, my fellow travelers, asked almost immediately after getting back on the bus.

I wrote earlier that the elections were basically a journalism convention. I met the New York Times correspondent (I even got to ride in his car), the NPR and Christian Science Monitor correspondents (who took me to Jinja, on Lake Victoria, and didn’t make me pay) and ran into my friend Fred from Human Rights Watch.

When all the journalists heard my deal with DaMN, they said I needed to find a new string. (“They don’t pay expenses? How do they expect you to do anything?” was the common refrain.)

The Friday nights I spent in Kampala were neat bookends. On the first one, I had to wake up at 4:30 the next morning for the 75-hour trip to President Museveni’s ranch (okay, it was only six). The next one, I was out until 4:30 in the morning with the rest of the hacks. That’s when I found out that Times reporters were not allowed to expense prostitutes, but some creative ones have managed to expense items like Russian sable coats. I don’t need a sable coat, but I could sure use an expense account where I can exercise my creativity.

So, that, in a nutshell, was my Kampala experience. Sorry that I forgot all the good stories. Next time you see me, corner me and I’ll make something up. Now get back to work. And congratulations, Maura and Kelly. Welcome aboard, Julia.

2006-03-13T06:06:00.000-08:00

13 March 2006

The wait is finally over. DaMN published my story on March 12. Hey, it's a Sunday. You can find it here: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-uganda_12int.ART.State.Edition1.3f54744.html

The site requires registration, but it's free.

Now, it's time to work on the next projects.

2006-03-09T07:15:00.000-08:00

9 March 2006

I'm such a doofus. I forgot to post the links to my two CNS stories (here: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0601041.htm and here: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0601141.htm).

Unfortunately, they don't post the photos publicly. But the photo editor apparently told the international editor, "Evan sure sees some interesting stuff."

Meanwhile, the vigil on my DaMN story continues. Two weeks after election day and counting. However, I do appreciate that they've taken a chance and keep asking me to do stuff for them.

2006-03-08T06:28:00.000-08:00

8 March 2006

Shyaka did not like my last posting. After several creative differences that were building up to the ultimate event, he fired me on Sunday.

But my guys came through. Apparently everyone in the newsroom was unhappy – the office manager, the designers, all the reporters – and they said they wanted me back. So they forced him to talk to me, and after both of us made concessions, I will be back at Focus tomorrow. Shyaka apparently told the staff I would be there on Friday, but we had agreed on Thursday and that’s when I’m heading there. I love my reporters.

Anyway, that’s enough of that. No need to get myself into more trouble.

It’s time for me to talk more about Uganda.

I already wrote about Kampala, and while I did enjoy the city, I was working. And was there a lot of work to do. I got three stories out of it – two for CNS and one for DaMN (I’ll talk about that later) and at least two photos sold – and met pretty much the entire Nairobi press corps. Kenya’s capital is where most East Africa reporters live. It was pretty much an African journalism convention.

Today, I will give you the basics of the Uganda elections. President Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986 following a five year guerilla war. For 10 years, he did not hold elections, instead ruling by what he called the Movement system, which I don’t necessarily understand. In 1996, after pressure from donor countries – Uganda gets around 50 percent of its operating budget from foreign countries, especially Britain and Ireland – Museveni instituted what he called “one-party democracy.” Candidates from within the National Resistance Movement (if you’re in government, what exactly are you resisting?) competed with each other for parliamentary seats. Museveni won election handily. They had similar elections in 2001, and Museveni won again.

This is where Dr. Kizza Besigye enters the scene, and Ugandan politics turns into high school drama. Besigye was Museveni’s personal physician during the 1981-1986 bush war that brought the NRM into power. Besigye’s wife, Winnie, was far more. The rumor is that Winnie, who was a guerilla fighter, was Museveni’s mistress during the war and even moved into State House in Kampala after victory. The rumor continues that security agents basically had to pull Winnie out of State House when Museveni’s wife Janet came in from Nairobi. Whatever the truth, the two couples loathe each other.

Meanwhile, Besigye was serving several high-level positions throughout the government until he had had enough. He and Winnie married during this period. Besigye was Museveni’s opponent in 2001, and lost badly. Soon after, he fled to South Africa after claiming that he was threatened by agents of the NRM. Again, rumor has it he fled on a Rwandan passport. The Ugandan and Rwandan governments don’t like each other and their forces have fought in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the Rwandans winning handily each time.

When Uganda instituted multi-party democracy last year, again under international pressure, Besigye’s supporters started up the Forum for Democratic Change. Museveni also had the constitution changed so he could run for a third term. Besigye returned to Kampala in October – the normally 45-minute drive from Entebbe airport to central Kampala took almost an entire day due to his supporters dancing in the highways. Soon after his arrival, Besigye was arrested on charges of treason, associating with criminals and rape and had trials in both civilian and military courts. The government claimed that Besigye was supporting rebel movements acting against the government and the rape charge is fairly self-explanatory. Besigye was acquitted of rape yesterday, and the Ugandan civilian court system tossed out the treason charges, saying that the military courts had no jurisdiction because Besigye had not been a member of the military since 1999.

But Besigye spent some weeks in jail, and spent much of his campaign shuttling from court to campaign stop. The government did all it could to intimidate Besigye and his supporters, going so far as to surround a court house with a shadowy paramilitary group called the Black Mambas – elite commandos from the army and police who don’t wear uniforms.

The campaign itself was relatively peaceful until the last few weeks. With a little over a week to go, a reserve soldier shot and killed at least three FDC supporters. And a military convoy drove through a Besigye rally/convoy, running over four people, who survived, and allegedly hitting Besigye’s car. I was in that convoy and saw the army pass. They had their weapons ready to go, which you can imagine puts a damper on a celebration. But I would be willing to believe that they did not intend to hit the four people as much as I am willing to believe they were aiming. The crowds were mobbing the streets and it was impossible to drive. People were hanging off the back of the bus, and there were points where we literally could not move. “I know that I should feel like I am witnessing history as it happens,” Rob, an English freelancer who was in the mini-bus with a few other guys and me, said. “But all I want right now is for these people to get out of the way so we can get on with it.”

There were a few more teargas incidents throughout the campaign – I missed them all – but no other serious violence.

The violence people feared was going to happen after the election.

Election day itself was fairly boring, as voting days usually are. Not much happened, although there were a few incidents around the country of violence and intimidation. The biggest problems involved names not being on the voter roles. People were afraid that when Museveni won – and there was never really a question of whether he would. We only questioned how much vote rigging he would need – Besigye’s supporters would take to the streets. When the supporters took to the streets, then the soldiers would turn their guns on them. One journalist I knew was even guessing a death toll – he figured 16. I refused to play that game.

Anyway, when the results were announced there was basically no violence in the streets. A few Besigye supporters were teargassed by riot police, but they earned it. They were throwing rocks at cars along one of Kampala’s main roads in front of FDC headquarters. I missed the gassing, but there was still a whiff of it in the air when some colleagues and I arrived. Yucky.

Now Besigye and the FDC are challenging the results in court. They did this last time, and the courts ruled there was fraud but not enough to turn the election. So we’ll see what happens.

A few of the FDC supporters – young men who were probably drunk – asked me to get them machine guns from the U.S., but I told them I didn’t know who to contact about that. No one thinks anyone will go to the bush to fight for Besigye, and Besigye himself said he would not be going to the bush. But one never knows in this part of the world.

The saddest part of all this is that Besigye, from everyone I spoke to, was not much different than Museveni. Same imperiousness, probably similar corrupt people around him. The most qualified person to run the country was probably Winnie, everyone told me. The legal problems made Besigye look like Vaclav Havel or Lech Walesa. He’s not. He was just an unhappy guy who wanted his piece of the pie, in my view. Even most of his supporters said they supported Besigye only because they wanted change. I saw one guy running around screaming “Give me my change!” and was a little confused. I went into my pocket until I remembered I hadn’t sold him anything.

People don’t go out into the street to die for “At least he’s not the other guy.” That was the theory I put forward when the other journalist was guessing body counts. Everyone in the car laughed, but it looks like I was right.

Anyway, this is long enough. Now that you’ve got the background, I’ll show you the glamorous life of a foreign correspondent next time. Stay tuned for long bus rides at 4 a.m. and watching speed skating in a tropical country.

2006-03-05T05:09:00.000-08:00

5 March 2006

So I’m back from Kampala and the March issue of Focus is up there getting printed. Now I can put my intestines back where they go, because it felt like somebody ripped them out over the course of the last week trying to get the paper out.

I think that rather than regale you all with the details of what happened last week here at Focus – to put it succinctly, even if I leave instructions nothing gets done here unless I do it – I will begin spinning stories about Uganda.

First off, it was just fabulous to get to do what I actually love doing. I like editing this ridiculous little newspaper just fine (although I fear what will happen to it when I’m no longer in Kigali), but I’m a reporter. Being in an office all day is entirely too constricting.

I took the Jaguar Executive Coach from Kigali, an eight-hour drive that is dominated by Celine Dion, Backstreet Boys and N’Sync videos and terrible Nigerian movies. You have no idea how bad a Nigerian movie is until you’ve had to sit through three of them. These movies follow families through generations, and they come in two, sometimes three parts.

Destroying one’s family in order to make a larger point is one of the characteristics of a Nigerian movie. For example, in one a woman faked her step-daughter’s death to show the young woman’s father just how much he would miss his daughter if she were gone. The step-mom hid the daughter out in their home village and when the father shows up to explain to his parents that their granddaughter died during a botched abortion, the daughter comes out.

The step-mom then explains that she faked the whole thing. Rather than ending up in a divorce or fist-fight, the movie ends in hugs. They’re all like this, and my Rwandan friends can’t get enough of them.

Anyway, I survived the movies, the videos and the people jabbing foot-long skewers of meat into the window every time we stopped inside Uganda. I almost took one in the eye because my window was open. On the Rwanda side, every time we stopped people rushed the window begging.

It’s possible to feel the grip of the police state I’m living in ease almost immediately after crossing the border. And when we finally got to Uganda, I saw just what a deranged country Rwanda is. People are on the streets in Kampala at all hours. Vendors sell food in stalls, bodaboda drivers (that’s what they call the motorcycle taxis there) are available at 4 in the morning. There are movie theaters, bowling alleys, tree-lined avenues with comfortable places to eat outside – it’s a real city. Kampala is just as safe as Kigali, but it’s far freer.

People who say they speak English in Uganda actually speak the language. And I got far less of the muzungu nonsense. When I did, it was much friendlier.

I don’t want to make Kampala sound perfect, because it’s not. It’s dirty and congested. I thought the bodaboda men would be the end of me on several occasions. There are drastic power cuts there that can last 24 or 36 hours in parts of the city. The police are ineffectual and take bribes. It’s hot and muggy and smelly. But I think we could’ve made a comfortable home there.

I fear that this will come out too long if I try to cram everything in. I’ll leave the election stuff until next time. But I’ll leave you with a few closing items:

My laptop died on my third day there. Fortunately, there is an Apple licenser in Kampala and they should be taking care of the repairs. So it’s good that it happened there. And it showed to all the established foreign correspondents there that I’m a guy who can solve problems. That’s never bad. I may not have the computer back for a while. That’s really bad.

Ugandans tend to switch their l’s and r’s. Hilarity often ensued when we discussed elections.

2006-02-15T21:53:00.000-08:00

15 February 2006

Yesterday was one of those days where all you can say is, “Well, at least Dick Cheney didn’t shoot me in the face.”

Shyaka and I kept calling each other, playing a game of “top this” with our bad news. Shyaka started. We have to move. The VOA heard from Washington that they have some sort of training coming up at the end of this month, and they need the office we squat in. So he spent all day trying to figure that out. Since next week is also deadline week, and I won’t be here, this was unbelievably bad.

So then I topped him. We’ve been working hard at getting stuff done early so that Shyaka and Vincent and I don’t have to stay here until 2:30 in the morning when we’re finishing off the paper. So Vincent had finished seven pages out of the 40 we’re putting out. We were cooking along.

And then yesterday, Vincent said that five of the pages were gone. The virus had killed them. As you may have noticed, the Fonze was not mentioned in the above paragraph. The Fonze has jumped the shark, you see. Among the many things he did wrong – even worse than not showing up for work when he said he would, not showing up with the business cards we asked for – he infected us with a computer virus he knew he had. Worse than that, the Fonze gave us copies of the layout and photo programs we needed that were infected with a virus. That’s considered homicide in some states.

So that’s what happened to Vincent. The virus ate the files he did since the end of last week. So that’s when I topped Shyaka and told him. “Ohhh man,” was all he could say.

I then called the Fonze. I explained to him, as calmly as you would have imagined, that he gave us a virus and he needed to come to fix it. He said he was sick. I said I didn’t care. I then explained what the virus did. “My virus doesn’t do that,” he said.

And then I grew even calmer, as you would have expected. I explained to him, calmly, that he had to get down here, that he was responsible for the paper being up against it and that he was a terrible person. All of this, I assure you, calmly. So he hung up on me.

Well, I had to tell everyone that all he said was, “My virus doesn’t do that.” And it got a laugh. The staff all said he was drowning in a bottle of Primus, one of the local beers. The IT guy from the Internet café downstairs redid our systems. Of course, my computer may have the virus, too. Ah, the sacrifices for journalism.

I spent all day yesterday trying to hold the place together. We had a good laugh that no one on the staff could spell Big Paul’s wife’s name. J-E-A-N-N-E-T-T-E. And then I crashed when I went home.

So of course we thought things couldn’t get worse. And then there were rumors that Alex, our society columnist, got beat up last night while taking pictures with my camera. His mobile phone wasn’t working all morning, so I had visions of getting a camera case with smashed-up pieces of glass and plastic back. That’s when I thought about leaping from the balcony.

But he was not beaten up, and the camera came back okay. I was a little concerned that I was more worried about my camera. Shyaka found us a new office and we’ve got pirated versions of the software we need on the way. The Fonze is officially no longer a member of the Focus team. Ah, life is better.

Anyway, I’m off to Uganda tomorrow morning and will be back a week from Friday. So if I don’t post, Jordan, don’t worry about me. I’ll be reporting during the day and night, and editing even later at night.

Remember when I said I was considering breaking the law when I went? I’m not doing that. I will register with the government. It’ll just cost an arm and a leg.

Happy early birthday, Moms.

2006-02-09T06:47:00.000-08:00

9 February 2006

So, I bet you all were expecting a posting tomorrow. Ha! Fooled you.

The Focus media empire is starting to grow. I think we’ve hired two more experienced reporters and one more cub. I say we think we hired the two experienced reporters because Shyaka and I both made it clear we wanted them to start up with us today, but they didn’t show up. I’m wondering if they misunderstood when I asked for copies of their work. I just want to know with whom I’m working.

Our cub is a person who has never done journalism before. Hell, I don’t know if Leilah has even written anything before in English. She’s just out of high school, waiting to start up university. All we wanted from her is to know she’s aggressive enough to ask questions. I can turn her into a writer and journalist. I wanted two cubs originally, but I figured out that was going to be too much work.

We’ve also hired a society/gossip columnist. We had to take photos of him to put on top of his column. I actually got to start shouting things like, “Work it! Work with me! Come on, give me something!” and mean it. I felt like Austin Powers. Or Mo. Shagadelic.

We’ve got a circulation/advertising manager and an office manager. I think we’re hiring a second designer named Khaddafi (no, I’m not making that up. Next up I want a copy editor called Kim Jong Il). Once we have it in our budget, I think we’re stealing Rwanda’s one and only news photographer from the New Times. His name is George, he’s got the best camera in Rwanda and the best part is he actually bears a striking resemblance to George Jefferson.

So, now that we’ve got our mighty reporting staff of potentially six, plus Shyaka and me, we’re ready to take on the world. We just need to figure out whether the people we hired yesterday are actually working with us.

Our interview process is not as rigorous as one might want. Essentially, it’s three questions:

1) Do you have a pulse?

2) Do you really speak English?

3) When can you start?

Of course, if an applicant does the Rwandan Grand Entrance, where someone walks in the door, stands there and waits for someone to talk to them, they’re automatically out. We want aggressive reporters.

The Rwandan Grand Entrance is one of the most annoying things I’ve found in this country. That’s saying a lot. A person will just stand there for a good 30 seconds before saying anything. Usually they don’t. And people move so quietly that sometimes they’ll come up behind me and scare the hell out of me.

Sometimes the person will build up the courage to actually speak, but by that point I’ve already started. So they stop. And then I stop and ask what they said. But they won’t say it because I’ve already started. It’s like walking down the street and bumping into somebody. And then the person steps to one side at the same time you step to the same side, and you go into the who-goes-where dance. That’s the Rwandan Grand Entrance. Why can’t people just come in, introduce themselves and say what they want? How is this so hard? Even the Kenyans think it’s insane.

Now, we just need an office and more computers. We’ve got three-and-a-half; two bought by Focus, my laptop that I hope makes it through the experience and one of VOA’s computers that we have to get off of when VOA needs it. We’ve now got sign-up sheets for the computers so people don’t kill each other.

Shyaka said the VOA is starting to get tired of us being here. I hope we don’t have to move the whole operation to my house.
So, as I said earlier, we’re making it. How do I know we’re making it? We’re the subjects of vicious gossip around the small but petty Kigali journalism world. The other papers are saying that it’s written by white people, that the copy-editing is so good that the RPF must have paid for it (although I’m not sure those guys actually read what we wrote if they think that the governing party is paying for this paper). As Shyaka said, “That means we’re doing something right. When they see the second issue, they’ll think the World Bank is funding us.”

Focus is following my motto, although it wasn’t adopted. Our enemies are being crushed. We are driving them before us. We hear the lamentations of their women.

2006-02-06T04:52:00.000-08:00

5/6 February 2006

I saw a Rwandan wearing a Vassar T-shirt on Friday evening while I was walking to a movie at the American Club. I ran up to him, screamed “Go Brewers!” (Vassar’s mascot) and walked off calmly. It scared the bejesus out of the poor guy.

That was apropos of nothing; there’s no story that pops out of that. Just thought I’d share with my loyal readers my chance to say something random and annoying to a stranger on the street. It was cathartic, like I was exorcising all of those stupid “muzungus” I hear. It felt good to have the shoe on the other hand there for a second.

And now for something completely different. The first edition of Focus is out on the street, although the streets are shut down because today is Election Day for local officials. There are literally no people out on the streets, and the Internet café we borrow access from is shut down, so we can’t get on. Anybody know who won the Super Bowl?

But we return now to the business of newspapers. There were some problems with the printing, so it’s not as colorful or well designed as when it left our office. But people who read the paper seem to like what they see. I’ve heard reports that the directors of the New Times are saying that they’ve got a real fight on their hands. That makes me feel good. Imagine what we can do when we are fully staffed.

The reporters were excited about the paper. One of them, Teta, who had never seen her name in a newspaper before, called all her friends and family. And then she said she needed to scream. So she did, and jumped up and down waving her hands.

That was Thursday. On Friday we were back out on stories again. The news watch never stops, as they say. I had to go take photos at a meeting of the Batwa council. For a little background, the Batwa are Rwanda’s third ethnic group and are better known in the West as Pygmies. Although the Tutsi ethnic group lost the largest number of people during the Genocide, the Twa lost the largest percentage of their population. It’s sort of the silent Genocide. Historically, the Twa have been the most discriminated-against of Rwanda’s ethnic groups, hunted almost for sport in this country and the surrounding countries that also have Twa populations (Congo, Burundi and Uganda).

In the regional languages of Central Africa, Ba signifies a group of people. So an individual is a Tutsi or a Hutu or a Twa, but the ethnic group is the Batutsi, Bahutu and the Batwa. Only in Rwanda, however, are the two letters Ba a security concern. The Rwandan government, on their anti-ethnicity campaign (no Hutu, no Tutsi, just Rwandans) is now threatening to cut off all the aid, from governments and NGOs, to this population of around 33,000 people unless they change their name. The government wants the Ba taken away from the Twa. So this group, perpetually put-upon, is trying to figure out what to do. Bahumbug.

The money goes to pay for school fees and other essentials, because the Twa are barely educated and essentially have no income. Most of them live in the forest, hunting and gathering. Fortunately, since this is Rwanda, the Ministry of Local Government (no, that is not a typo. In Rwanda, even local government has a central ministry in Kigali) does not know that the Ministry of Justice is forcing the name change. So Local Government recently sent a letter asking how much money the Batwa need for school fees. That letter came soon after the Justice letter saying that all funding would be cut off unless the Ba was cut off. So the Batwa representatives are all understandably confused.

This is where our story comes in. Helen has been reporting on the funding threats. We were joking around in the newsroom about how our Twa story was really standing up for the little people. I’m sure when I said that the Batwa were better known as Pygmies, a certain picture came to mind.

When I went to take pictures with Helen, I was expecting to see Willy Wonka’s Oompa-Loompas, or at least no one over four- or five-feet-tall. Boy, was I wrong. They were pretty much all taller than me. It must be understood that one of my favorite parts about working in Cambodia was that I was a giant among men. Literally. My stature had nothing to do with my job as a reporter or role as a white person in Cambodia (most of the Khmer could care less what color I was). My stature had everything to do with being taller than almost all the natives. So having the “little people” of Rwanda looking down on me was deflating.

Anyway, I’ll get over this. I think. Or I’ll just ask Rebecca to get a job in Cambodia. It’s good to be tall.

The streets of central Kigali, where the businesses are, are absolutely dead. When the government decides to shut down the country, the country is shut down. What a stupid thing. They want to turn Rwanda into a customer-service call center. Do they think they’ll be able to just shut down the country whenever they want and still be able to do this? Do they really think that someone trying to get their credit card fraud taken care of in the U.S., Europe or South Africa will sit back and say, “Oh, I guess that thug will have an extra couple of days to play with my card because the call center staff has to do umuganda”? Or they have to vote? Or they have to plant trees?

Of course, shutting the country down for Election Day is not all that weird. It might even increase voter numbers in the U.S. if elections were held on Saturdays or Sundays. We might even get a leader that more than half the country wants to elect.

There are two disturbing factors to local elections in Rwanda. The first is that there was no campaigning. Sure, this is pretty much a one-party state, or, as Shyaka wrote in the first edition of Focus, a progressive dictatorship like Singapore. But there were no campaign posters, no rallies, nothing. Everyone just knows who to vote for.

The second disturbing part is that only certain people know where to vote, or who to vote for. Apparently, although there is universal suffrage at age 18 in Rwanda, unless one goes to umuganda or Gacaca (the traditional courts that hear Genocide cases), one does not know where the polling station is or who is running for office. So there are essentially two categories of Rwandans: full citizens who do everything the government tells them, and everyone else. Considering that an estimated 80 percent of people don’t do umuganda or Gacaca, only 20 percent of Rwandans are full citizens.

What an odd little country.

2006-02-02T05:31:00.000-08:00

2 February 2006

Yesterday was Heroes’ Day here. It’s a holiday to commemorate the Rwandan Patriotic Army, Paul Kagame’s boys and girls who started their war in 1990, stopped the Genocide in 1994 and have ruled a progressive yet single-party state since then.

Despite what you may have heard, Rwanda, my friends, is not a representative democracy. For example, the RPA, whose political arm was the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which is now the governing party here, won the war in July when they stopped the Genocide. Yet Heroes’ Day is celebrated on Feb. 1. No one knows why. One theory in the newsroom is that Feb. 1 is Kagame’s birthday, but I have no evidence for that. It could be that the war started on Feb. 1 in 1990. The point is nobody knows. Big Paul (from now on my informal name for the president) decided Feb. 1, and that was it.

Big Paul’s office invited me to the festivities yesterday. It was at 8 a.m., and the president’s media guy said it would be short, only two-and-a-half hours. At least they were honest this time. I was only going to take pictures, because no one outside of Rwanda cares and the paper I’m helping to run in Rwanda is a monthly. We don’t come out until March, so we just needed a picture with a caption and that’s it.

Well, getting the photo would be harder than I thought. I showed up a few minutes early because this is Rwanda and I know to expect all sorts of problems even when I’m on the list. So I started talking to the protocol officer, who had no idea what I was talking about. He then called his boss, the man in charge of the media, who had no idea what I was talking about. The first protocol guy then took me up to the metal detectors to let me in. I wasn’t on that list and no one knew what I was talking about. We then got the president’s chief of protocol involved. She had no idea what I was talking about either.

Then I noticed Rwanda’s one newspaper photographer (I wish I was making that up) at a separate entrance. “Is there a second list?” I asked and walked to where Photographer George was. Sure enough, I was on that list. Rather than just let us in we had to go back to the metal detectors where we started. Doesn’t anyone here talk to anyone else? Ever? No. What’s wrong with you, white boy?

Then I found out that mobile phones were not allowed for people near Big Paul (there’s this paranoia that someone is going to pack their phone with C4 explosives, receive a call and blow everyone up. No one who wants to get at Big Paul is that smart), and since I had no place to put the phone, I went home. The soldiers of course didn’t have a basket to hold people’s phones in, and of course there was no announcement beforehand. I should’ve just stayed in bed like I wanted to.

And then I started to realized what makes me crazy here in Kigali. I never thought I’d say this, but I need a little bit of order around me to function. Newsrooms are inherently chaotic, people coming in and out, making a lot of noise, cursing like sailors. But there’s an order to it, some procedures.

What makes me crazy is trying to impose order on the insanity around me. The reason the newsroom at Focus makes me happy is that, aside from doing good work and creating something new, I make the rules for the reporters. I’m imposing order on the chaos. There are procedures. They’re democratic and I’m not dictatorial. But deadlines are respected. Reporters are learning how to copy edit, things like that. It’s my island of sanity.

You might want to sit down before reading this, but I’m the detail man here. I even spent the morning showing Vincent the designer how to organize his files. We’re in worse shape than any of you thought.

Speaking of that, we’re still waiting for the first edition to arrive from Kampala. Apparently there were some problems with the printer. Ugh. Some of you have requested that I send copies. Hopefully there won’t be enough to send to you; they’ll all be sold. But I’ll have some for myself to show off next time I’m home.

2006-01-30T07:55:00.000-08:00

30 January 2006

It’s alive!

Sorry to alarm everyone. It’s just been really busy here. Despite the power going out; only having a staff of three reporters; only having two designers – one who had a problem getting to work, the other not knowing how to design a newspaper; despite the U.S. government taking over our offices two mornings during our last production week (we are squatting in the Voice of America bureau and some folks were in town from Washington so we had to get out); despite the power going out repeatedly; and despite a wall nearly collapsing (it’s now leaning a little, but into the store next door so it will fall on them. No biggie) the first issue of Focus hits the streets this week.

That’s assuming Vincent the designer gets to Kampala tomorrow morning with files the printers can use. That was our latest disaster this morning. I got a fairly panicked call from Shyaka saying that the printers couldn’t open the files. Ruined my whole day. I text-messaged Bec saying I thought I’d go play in traffic right about then.

Our little guerilla operation has put out quite an impressive piece of journalism. Of course, I had to rewrite much of it, but the reporters are learning. The paper is 32 pages, and we have far more original stories than our competitors. And best of all, they make sense. We broke news, which a monthly with a reporting staff of three shouldn’t do, and the photography is actually pretty good, if I do say so myself.

We’re going to have work on respecting deadlines so that we’re not staying until 2:30 in the morning on the day before the paper goes to press, and then come in for another ten-and-a-half the next day just to finish it, though.

Last time I wrote we had one reporter, Helen, who is doing a bang-up job now that she knows what we’re after. She’s pitching stories and we’re letting her do them, and her writing’s gotten better in the nearly one month we’ve been working together.

We hired two more. The first was Teta, an 18-year-old who has never done this before. She’s the niece of my friend Steve, the English guy who put me in touch with Shyaka. Steve said Teta was just sitting around, doing nothing in the year before university. Did we have need for a runner? Well, we don’t have the people-power for a gofer, so she’s now our health and culture reporter. And she, too, is learning. She’s even taking the Associated Press Style Book home with her tonight to read. I’ve got Helen reading “The Elements of Style.” I’m particularly proud of that. When we get into our own office space, I’m getting a white board and am teaching classes. “Okay, people, who can tell me about the inverted pyramid?”

The third reporter is a guy named Magnus, who has got “it” as far as I’m concerned. He just needs to work on the writing. But he knows what news is and he wants to find it. At first he thought he could write for us and The New Times. Not at this paper. We’re competitors and we’re trying to beat them.

My biggest problem with Magnus is that I want to call him Ultra. But that would mean explaining The Transformers, and the movie, and how Ultra Magnus didn’t want the Matrix of Leadership and then Megatron (or at least the version using the voice of Leonard Nimoy) blows him up when he couldn’t open it and he’s rebuilt on the junk planet and then I look like a big nerd, and we just don’t need that. So I’ll just call him Magnus Arvedsson, former winger for the Ottawa Senators hockey club. That’s not nerdy at all.

So anyway, it’s done. The first issue is done. And I’m sleepy. And now we get to do the whole thing again. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done, and the contribution we’re going to make to Rwanda. Maybe that’s a bit much. In reality, I just want to beat the living daylights out of the other papers. We were discussing possible slogans for the paper (you know, like “All the News That’s Fit to Print”) the other day. I could only come up with two, and they were stolen from movies. The first was from Conan the Barbarian: “Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentation of their women.” The other was from Dodgeball: “We’re better than you, and we know it.” That’s directed at The New Times and Newsline, the other English papers in town, not the readers. Neither suggestion was accepted. Shyaka said he didn’t want a “newspaper war.” Well, I had an answer to that also, from Rambo: “To win a war, you have to become war.” That didn’t go over well either.

February is going to be busy. I’m going to be contributing at least two stories to the paper this month: the kids’ rights story I’m keeping quiet until it happens and my trip to Uganda. Plus I’ve got assignments for the Dallas Morning News and CNS.

I’ll try to write more frequently, but I think I may have to scale back to once a week or so. But that means more personal e-mails. I’ll post more this week, however, as I’m getting the Uganda trip together. But just to make everyone more at ease, I’m debating whether I should break the law when I go there.

2006-01-18T06:09:00.000-08:00

18 January 2006

I thought I’d never work at a paper smaller than The Riverdale Press. But the robust reporting staff of three, plus the part-time sports editor, the truly insane but unfailingly nice part-time lifestyle editor and superiors who occasionally contributed to the reporting, we had Riverdale covered.

Well, I was wrong. The Focus action news team consists of Shyaka, myself, our lone reporter Helen and two designers – a Kenyan named Vincent and a Belgian whose given name is Erwin Winkler but we now call the Fonz. Shyaka didn’t know who Arthur Fonzarelli was, but now that he’s done the research approves of the name change. Our Fonz knew whom I was talking about immediately.

A Fonz citing is like finding Big Foot. Every once in a while he floats into the office (he has other contracts) and works on our little newspaper. He’s quite good, by the way. But more often Shyaka is calling and text-messaging him, trying to figure out where the Fonz is. Today he had a toothache, which can be very debilitating. Shyaka says the Fonz has been here too long, about seven years, and Rwanda is giving him a nervous breakdown. Sadly, since Rwanda is landlocked, he is not out jumping sharks.

People sometimes get the Fonz and me confused. He’s elfin and skinny, with curly brown hair that comes down to his shoulders. His skin is graying from smoking and he has a pointy nose and far skinnier lips. He also has a Flemish-Belgian accent, far different from mine. I sound like I’m from New York. But since we’re both white, we’re obviously brothers.

The first edition is slated to come out at the beginning of February. I think we’re going to make it, but we keep dumping stories on Helen, and Shyaka has to do some as well. I’m contributing at least one business story and maybe a bit on the cholera from last week. We’ll see. The problem with a monthly newspaper is the news sometimes passes you by.

The paper is supposed to be 40 pages. We have about 20 already filled with stories, photos and opinion columns. Advertisers are coming, but slowly. We actually have about 30 pages if you count the stories we’re still working on.

The biggest problem we’re facing is the Rwandan aversion to risk. Everyone we talk to about working with us wants to see the newsboys hawking the paper before they sign on to join. Well, until we get the ideally eight reporters, we’re going to have a problem getting the paper out. We also need advertising people (although the rumor is we’ve got a guy who is waiting for the paper to be out), an office manager (we may have one of those) and more computers it’s going to be a slog. A better photographer would be nice too, but I’ll have to do.

Our plan is to steal reporters from the other papers when they see how good we are. Our stories will be readable, partly due to my editing. And we’re also selling my editing. I’m supposed to make these guys better. We’re getting a white board and I’ll essentially be teaching classes. “How many of you guys know what the inverted pyramid is? Most important information on top, and move down the line. Nobody?” Reporters here tend to just write what each person told them in the order they did the interviews. That’s why the stories make no sense.

I think my own biggest problem, which will come as no surprise, is that I speak to fast. All the Africans I work with complain about my American accent (What other accent should I have? I don’t complain about theirs) and the astonishing rate the words come out of my mouth. The explanation that I’m from New York and we don’t have time to talk slow often falls on deaf ears. Or they don’t understand because I said it in a blur. Helen finds it funny that neither Vincent nor I speak Kinyarwanda. I explained that it’s not exactly a world language that people learn in school. She pointed out that she grew up in Uganda but speaks Kinyarwanda. “But you’re Rwandan,” I said. “You spoke it at home. And you can’t write in it anyway.”

Despite those obstacles, we’re cooking along. We’re disorganized. We have a skeletal staff. Our bookkeeping is practically nonexistent. We’re small, and we don’t even have an issue out there. But we’re the best damn newspaper in this country.

2006-01-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

11 January 2006

Before I get started with today’s post, I need to provide two corrections.

The first is one that I should have corrected long ago but only recently found out I was wrong. The second is something I just learned.

First, umuzungu is not technically correct. The noun is muzungu, and adding the “u” to it is like adding “a” in English. So instead of just meaning whitey, umuzungu means an indefinite whitey.

Second, bundu is not a Kinyarwanda word. It’s a word used throughout sub-Saharan African. In fact, Shyaka tells me, bundu does not even get a squiggly line underneath it when using the South African edition of Microsoft Word. Who knew there was a South African edition?

Anyway, on to the latest happenings in my life here in Kigali.

I’ve discovered that my career is actually rather ghoulish. In fact, I wrote that in my notebook yesterday. I’m supposed to peer in at the trials, tribulations and triumphs of complete strangers’ lives (actually, mostly the trials and tribulations). At least it’s better than having a real job.

This thought came to me while I was in a health center covering a cholera outbreak yesterday. It’s on the outskirts of Kigali and has killed around 20 people since just before the New Year. I wrote a story about it for Catholic News Service yesterday, so hopefully I’ll have a link for you soon. (Update: Just after I wrote that the story appeared. Here’s the link: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0600156.htm.)

While I was there, I saw a boy who couldn’t have been older than 8 sitting around in his hospital scrubs, just looking confused, lonely and lost. He was in the tent for people who just needed some extra fluids, but weren’t terribly sick. A couple of Rwandan guys came by and shoved cameras in his face. I wasn’t sure if they were journalists. All I knew was they were heartless. But I also knew it was a great shot and had to resist picking up my camera. That’s when I realized my profession, which I really like, is rather ghoulish.

I came to another realization yesterday as I drove to the cholera outbreak with the director of hospitals for Caritas-Kigali. My life is all about controlled stupidity. Here’s what I mean. The stupidity is driving to a cholera outbreak to see people getting sick (which I did, all over the dirt path). The controlled part is that I went with a doctor and did what he did so I didn’t come out violently ill myself.

I have to do stupid things for my job. But in order to do it well and not take stupid risks, I have to do it in a controlled way.

I’m sure that’s comforting to everyone.

2006-01-09T06:47:00.000-08:00

9 January 2006

Please check out the previous post (7 January 2006, posted on 9 January) before reading this. Otherwise most of what I write here will make no sense.

I learned a fabulous Kinyarwanda word this weekend: bundu.

The bundu is where you go after you’ve driven way past the boondocks. That’s where I was yesterday. Many of you are probably thinking, but Evan, you’re already out in the bundu living in Kigali. Ah, you have not seen the bundu until you go out to formerly-Umatara province, where it borders on the game park.

Shyaka, his uncle, The Guy With the Truck and I went on a search for The Man Who Would Be King yesterday. Who is this man who would run Rwanda? He’s just a pissed-off old guy who’s been forced to move his hut onto the border of the Akagera National Park because of the cattle quarantine in Umatara and other factors I didn’t really understand. This old man – we will call him Miguel Cairo because apparently The Man Who Would Be King’s name sounds much like the Yankee utility infielder’s, according to Red Sox fan Shyaka – has decided that he wants to take over the government.

He’ll have to find his way out of the bundu first.

The Guy With the Truck and Shyaka’s uncle picked us up at 9:30 in the morning, only a half hour late and a big improvement from Saturday. Plus, they didn’t bring the “Who the Hell is this Guy?” Guy – another great leap forward.

We stopped at an empty cattle-trading post so the uncle and the Guy With the Truck (my attempts to get their names were fruitless) could tell us what happened there usually, and how farmers were getting hit during the quarantine. I didn’t understand a word but got a summarized translation from Shyaka. Basically, cows wander down through a metal maze into a central viewing area surrounded by bleachers and are sold. While the explanation went on, I took pictures and maintained my perfect record of avoiding cow pies. Everyone’s got to be good at something.

It was time to head into the bundu.

Miguel Cairo, a friend of uncle and truck guy, had recently moved. So we were running on directions. But Miguel Cairo must have given them the wrong sorghum patch to turn at, or the wrong hut as a marker, because we got horribly lost. We stopped and asked people for directions – “Hey, do you know where we can find a pissed-off old guy who wants to overthrow the government?” – but no one really knew. So we just went off.

The Guy With the Truck was plowing over virgin grasses, up hills that were previously insurmountable and through small holes in the trees we were sure would take off the rear-view mirrors. But we made it. Periodically, the uncle would pop out of the truck and scout. Before he could return, The Guy With the Truck would hustle after him. And then we’d back out and beat a different, previously untouched, path.

The landscape was beautiful, straight out of the old West. “Man, I’ve never been this far out in the bundu,” Shyaka said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some giraffes or antelope.” (We did see a couple of antelope who had strayed out of the game park, putting themselves in mortal danger.)

Finally, we stumbled upon an excited, dirty child who knew where we needed to go – until he noticed me, which totally confused him. His arms started to flail wildly and he almost spun himself into the ground. We went with his initial instructions, and those of an old guy pushing his bike along the grasses.

And then we got to The Man Who Would Be King’s hut. The uncle walked up and asked why he had moved into the game park. Miguel Cairo responded that he was angry about it, and he was especially angry that they had brought an umuzungu to see it, Shyaka said later.

We walked into the hut (who knew that traditional African huts were partitioned? I thought they were single rooms.) and Shyaka began the interview. I took pictures of Miguel Cairo, his grandchildren, daughter-in-law and the neighbors who wanted to see the umuzungu.

Since it was all in Kinyarwanda, I can only tell you what I saw of the hut. It was round with a thatched roof, although blue tarpaulin was visible among the sticks to keep the rain. The interior mud walls were painted yellow with black stripes and designs along the sides. Cloth doors hung from the ceiling, setting off the rooms. Flies buzzed everywhere. There were so many that people stopped swatting them. The hut was part of a small compound, complete with another small hut, chicken coop and covered cooking fire.

The interview was done in about an hour, and we headed out of the bundu. The Man Who Would Be King followed us to the truck and we were off to visit other members of Shyaka’s family who live nearby before returning to Kigali, which looks like New York compared to way out in the bundu.

By the way, I think the Rwandan government is safe.

2006-01-08T22:42:00.000-08:00

7 January 2005

Greetings from Nyagatare, in the province formerly known as Umatara. I’m now in Rwanda’s northeast on a story for Focus, the newspaper I’m helping to start. But I’m not reporting. I’m the photographer. It’s one of my four jobs at Focus, along with staff writer, headline writer and editor. (Oh yeah, did I mention I’ve got two stories to do for Catholic News Service and two for DaMN. When it rains it pours, to use a beaten-to-death cliché.)

The story Shyaka, Focus’s founder, is working on is heartbreaking. Umatara is, and always has been, drought and famine prone. It is the province where the country is experimenting with rain collection and other ways of saving water. The manager of the hotel where we’re staying, the Sky Blue Lodge, said it rained a bit yesterday, but only a drizzle. Other than that, it’s been three weeks. But this is only slightly worse than normal, so people rely on cows for food and sale rather than farming. But there’s been a foot and mouth out disease outbreak, so the government has quarantined all livestock, both cows and goats, from Umatara. Cows are dying from the lack of water and the disease, and people are starving. The story is actually that someone is buying the cows extremely cheap and then turning around and illegally selling them at full price. Nice profit if you can get it, and Shyaka is trying to find who that “you” is. I’m just taking pictures and trying not to step in cow pies.

Getting out here was slower and slightly less comfortable than we had hoped, but relatively easy. Shyaka’s uncle lives in Umatara, and he arranged for a twin-cab pick-up to get us at 9:30 this morning. It was just supposed to be the uncle and The Guy With the Truck, but a third guy was in the truck. The whole trip, Shyaka kept saying, “who the hell is this guy?” So Shyaka, his uncle and I crammed into the back seat with the bags.

We finally left Kigali at 11:30 this morning and stopped for lunch at around 1 p.m., at a pretty little restaurant on the shore of a lake where President Kagame keeps a weekend retreat. As we walked in, Shyaka said that it would take an hour to just prepare the food. So we sat at the bar. I got a soda, Shyaka a beer. He then had time for two moor. The three other guys disappeared after getting a snack. We think they went on a boat trip (none for me, thanks). Lunch was delayed because not only did the restaurant have to prepare the chicken, they had to slaughter the birds as well.

Anyway, at a little after 3 we were back in the truck and I went to sleep. When I woke up it was time to take pictures. Most of them are of cows because Rwandans are incredibly afraid to have their pictures taken. It’s all a part of the paranoia. Even my tricks with kids – squatting so I’m at eye-level, shaking hands and showing them the video display of their faces – didn’t work. Not that I wanted straight on photos of people. I was looking for action shots (although how much action is there when herders are just trying to get their cows watered), but I was trying to keep everyone from running away.

The different ecosystems and terrains of Rwanda are astounding. After spending last weekend in green and lush Kibuye, I’m in an area where the rainforests of central Africa ease into the savannahs of east Africa. The hills roll rather than shoot up into the sky as in Kibuye and Kigali. They are covered in browning grasses, stubby trees that look like cypresses or the cover of U2’s “Joshua Tree” album and cactus. Some of the trees look like they’ve given up and have sprouted cactus branches where leaves should be. I was half expecting to see Clint Eastwood or John Wayne riding over the hills while we were driving, but no such luck.

After photography, it was off to Nyagatare, the largest town around these parts. It has a paved road, but unlike Butare, no intersection. “It’s not exactly Las Vegas,” I said to Shyaka. I’m about to go to bed. It’s 9:21 p.m.

Tomorrow morning we get up bright and early for more interviews and photos, and then we’re taking the bus back to Kigali in the afternoon.

As for as the “province formerly known as” stuff at the top, Rwanda just changed its administrative structure earlier this week, shrinking from 12 provinces to four with Kigali it’s own separate administrative zone. The new provinces are North, South, East and West, and I’m not sure if I’m in North or East province. I don’t think the people who live here are either.

6 January 2005

I’m in the office now. Everyone is speaking Kinyarwanda. They can all speak English or French. But apparently I’m not here to the ladies from the Voice of America. Actually, they all speak at least some English.

2006-01-02T06:53:00.000-08:00

2 January 2006

That’s weird to write. Happy New Year, everyone.

We got back safely from our country weekend late yesterday afternoon.

As I said before we left, Bec, her parents and I spent New Year’s weekend at the Esperance Children’s Village in Kigarama, a village in the hills around Lake Kivu in Rwanda’s west. And just to make sure everyone knows what I mean by hills, we were at around 6,000 feet.

The Esperance Children’s Village is a home for 103 orphans ranging in age from 18 months until, in theory, 18. At 18 the kids are supposed to leave and head off to a new life. Some of the kids are as old as 21. Victor, our friend who runs the place and invited us for the weekend, recently discovered that one of them was 30.

We got there on Friday afternoon. Bec hired a driver even though the CRS drivers told her only around the last kilometer was tough. Apparently their definition of tough is far different than ours. The last hour of the journey was on windy, rutted dirt roads. Jude, Bec’s mom, Steve, Bec’s dad, and I sat in the back, and poor Jude, who was in the middle, was bouncing between the two of us on every violent switchback. I got well acquainted with the door.

The Children’s Village is in one of the most beautiful settings you can imagine. At the top of a hill, it is surrounded by lush greenery and little else. Clusters of homes are scattered around the compound, but the area is not densely populated. There is nothing taller than one story anywhere near where we were. We were firmly in the countryside, in the version of Rwanda where there is no electricity or running water and people can go a lifetime without seeing a foreigner, especially a white one. Victor, who is Guatemalan but travels on a German passport, is the most exciting thing to happen to the area in a long time.

As I’ve written before, Victor is aiming to develop eco-tourism along with the agricultural projects he’s working on. So he wanted to take us canoeing and hiking. The hiking was necessary because the canoeing was 20 minutes away, pretty much straight down a mountain.

After the walk, which was surprisingly easy and pleasant early Saturday, before the sun really got angry, we saw the canoes. Victor told us they were dugouts, but until you actually see them it’s hard to comprehend. They were carved tree trunks. After Steve, Bec and I – Jude stayed back to read and have some alone time – figured out how not to tip the boats, we were off. Victor told us that it would take over an hour to paddle out to our island destination. I assumed that it would be no big deal.

Steve, who had spent more than a week in a dugout canoe in Papua New Guinea almost 20 years ago, got his own canoe. Victor and one of his kids, Innocent, took another. That left Bec and I in the last.

You have to understand, both of us like to be in charge. Okay, let’s be honest. We both can be bossy. And neither of us had any idea what to do. So we spent the first 45 minutes or so trying to figure out how to go straight. And while with normal people, that would be handled calmly and quietly, we bickered the whole way down. Bec was convinced the boat was tilted right. I was convinced that it was all her fault. And we filled the quiet, pristine lake with the sounds of our arguing. She just happened to be right.

Finally, Bec asked, “Didn’t you go to summer camp? What did you do there?”

“Well, played soccer and softball. The only nature I got was hiding in the bushes after lights out, jumping out the windows of the girls bunks.”

After we made it past the first outcropping, the expedition pulled into another small cove to separate the two of us. Bec went with Steve, and I got my own boat. I still had no idea what I was doing, but was happy to be on my own.

It was only after I pulled the canoe out of the brambles that I realized the canoe and I were not going to get along.

After Victor pushed my canoe off the shore, I didn’t back out enough. So I paddled and I paddled and I paddled and I didn’t hit the rocks I was heading for. And then I paddled and I paddled and I paddled, and I ran into the tree. There were many sharp things sticking out of those trees, and they all seemed to find me. The fisherman near us thought this was the funniest thing they had ever seen.

After I freed myself from the green prison, I was still stuck in the middle of the lake. Steve is a university professor, and I had never before seen him in action. He skillfully gave me suggestions of how to get where I wanted to go, and I even listened. I finally got myself going, almost straight, and was paddling along. Everything was going smoothly until I realized we were going to be doing this for a while.

And then I started to turn again. “Oh goddamit, why does this thing only turn right!” I screamed, channeling George Costanza. I gave up, let my boat turn around to face the opposite direction of where I was heading, and smacked my paddle at the water. Steve gave me more instructions, and after sulking I was on my way. And then it hit me again. We were going to be doing this a while.

“I feel like we’re in ‘Apocalypse Now.’ Where are the guys with the spears?” I asked.

Most Rwandans are long and lean, skinny to the point where you wonder whether the ones who have enough to eat actually do. The canoes are built for them, not me. So I couldn’t find anyplace to put my legs. As they started going numb from being straight out, I saw the island. Victor and Innocent started to pull in. And then they didn’t. “I think they’re going to the far side,” I said.

“No they’re not,” someone in the Stich canoe said.

“No, they are.”

“Oh yes, they are.”

We got there, almost two hours after we started but without any sunburn. It took a while for my legs to come back. We had lunch and spent about an hour on the island. It was gorgeous and worth the pain, small trees set against rocky outcroppings and bright green grass. But then we had to go back.

Bec went alone and I went with Steve. The idea was with the two of us in the boat, we’d have some serious speed. I had a round banana branch to sit on. As you can imagine, the mixture of wet and round and easily tipped canoe was not a winner. I spent the whole trip back pretty much reclining without a backrest, and I still have the bruises under my arms to prove it.

At one point, Bec said, “Why don’t you lean forward so you can paddle?”

Okay, I thought, why not. And then I heard “whoa” from behind me and saw the horizon moving from side to side. “No more suggestions!” I shouted back.

Steve Stich is my hero. We made it back with him paddling all 300 pounds of us back. I realized two things. One is that stunning natural beauty can carry you only so far. The second is that Jews and canoes usually don’t mix.

When we got back, Victor decided he needed to figure out what to do if a canoe tipped.

The rest of the weekend was picture perfect. Victor was hospitable beyond reason, constantly apologizing for the lack of running water and the latrines. Hey, that’s Rwanda and the company was worth it. It was refreshing to be away from Kigali.

The kids were adorable, and while their lives were incredibly hard, they managed to keep singing and laughing. Two choirs sang for us on Sunday, right before we left. The little kids choir did a song that Bec calls the “Shake the White Person’s Hands” song. Each one of them came by to shake hands with each one of us. I think Bec wanted to take at least a couple home.

So we’re back to Kigali, with one more day with Jude and Steve. They’re off on a 12-day safari through Uganda tomorrow. And I start editing tomorrow as well. Wish me luck.

2005-12-29T06:42:00.000-08:00

29 December 2005

Bec’s parents, Jude and Steve, are here, and everything so far has gone well. They’ve actually seen more of the sites here in Rwanda than we have.

They arrived late Monday night, and are staying in the Hotel Mille Collines. For those of you who have seen it, the Mille Collines is the famous “Hotel Rwanda.” On Tuesday, they went around Kigali and saw the Genocide Memorial, which is supposed to be really well done, with the collaboration of the folks who put together the Washington, DC Holocaust memorial.

Getting them a driver was a bit more of a hassle than I had planned. There’s one taxi driver that I (used to) use named Ignace. He has the typical Rwandan taxi, which means you have to hold onto the door to make sure it doesn’t open up while he’s driving, and the windshield is all but shattered. But he’s reliable and he speaks passable English. So we had agreed that he would pick Jude, Steve and me up at noon on Tuesday at the hotel, and he would take the ‘rentals-in-law out for the afternoon.

When I called him on Tuesday morning to confirm, he was in Gisenyi with another fare. Now, you have to understand, Gisenyi is way the hell out on the other side of the country.

I found another driver near our house, and he worked out fine. I asked John Peter in French, “Do you speak English?”

“Yes.”

And then I switched. “Okay, we’re going to have a test. I am going to speak to you in English and use big words.”

“Okay.”

He passed.

Jude and Steve are now in Nyungwe National Forest, where the chimps live. They’re coming back this evening and then tomorrow it’s off to Mugonero, to Victor’s orphanage, for New Year’s. That should be fun. We’ll be there until Sunday afternoon. Jude and Steve head off for a 12-day safari through Uganda on Tuesday. …

So some of you have been asking about the paper I’ll be editing. Getting any new enterprise up to speed is slow, and starting an English newspaper in Rwanda is even slower. There just aren’t the reporters here. So, my boss says he has one story ready to edit, and when there are a few more he will send them to me. Eventually I’ll be able to work in the office, when the reporters are there. …

A Rwandan friend and I had an interesting conversation on Tuesday evening. We spoke about the war here, and the aftermath of the genocide. I was under the impression that there were no widespread revenge massacres when the RPF stopped the genocide. My friend said yes there were, in the west of the country where the Interahamwe and old Rwandan army didn’t have to go do the killings because the local populations performed their tasks with amazing gusto.

We then spoke about the massacres committed by the Rwandan army in Congo in 1997. The Interahamwe and other genocidaires had mixed in with other refugees, all under the knowing noses of the UN. The thugs set up their own government within the refugee camps and killed anyone that stood up to them. They were also rearming and launching deadly cross-border attacks into Rwanda.

In 1997, Uganda and Rwanda, but mostly Rwanda, propped up a militia force that eventually took over Congo from Mobutu. The Rwandan army did the bulk of the fighting, and made time to chase down and slaughter the refugees. I asked if my friend had a problem with this.

“I may sound like a cold man,” he said, eyes blazing, “but the Hutus killed us for decades without any threat of retaliation.” Maybe a reverse massacre would teach them a lesson, he said. “There were no innocent Hutus.”

I rode into the debate with my “eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” and my Human Rights Watch background. The violence just perpetuates a cycle, I said.

But it felt like I was attacking a battleship with spitballs. None of my arguments could make a dent in my friend’s convictions. In either 1959 or 1962 (I don’t remember which one), my friend’s parents, Tutsis obviously, barely escaped another series of ethnic, Hutu-on-Tutsi, massacres. “They got out by the skin of their teeth,” he said, “They were just children. They were doing this for 40 years. What were we supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” I sputtered, and we changed the conversation.

I still believe that the revenge killings of innocents were wrong, but I have no problem clearing out the genocidaires, especially since the useless UN was letting them launch brutal attacks from the camps.

But at some point in every conflict, someone has to say we’re not going to fight anymore. At some point, someone has to be brave, and accept whatever may come. Otherwise people just keep killing each other for no reason. Someone in Israel and Palestine (that’s right, I said Palestine) is going to have to say enough. Bec says the more powerful party in a conflict has the responsibility to do that. I don’t think any side has a greater responsibility. Someone just has to get up and say, enough.

I recognize that what I just wrote is a sort of dream world. I’m not a pacifist, and do believe in self-defense. People aiming at attacking innocents need to be stopped, within the law. None of this torture or illegal wiretapping nonsense. But maybe in cases where it’s just one revenge killing justifying another revenge attack, people need to step back and say, we’re not going to retaliate. Maybe that’s the only way to move forward.

I guess that’s my New Year’s wish. And since I’m going to be out of town, in the sticks, for the changing of the calendar, here’s hoping everyone has a happy and a healthy one. Sorry for the rambling and bringing everyone down.

2005-12-26T02:20:00.000-08:00

26 December 2005

Christmas and Hanukkah were joyeux.

Other than a little disagreement between the vegetable peeler and my left pointer finger, everything went off without a hitch. We had an intimate group of six, including our friend Anne, who was here for Thanksgiving and works for CRS, our friend Laura, another regular, and two Columbia Business School Students who are here doing a short-term consulting project, Jake and Tricia. I was the only non-business person at the gathering, but we were able to redirect the conversation out of the business world, except when I was off making the latkes.

The latkes, by the way, were a huge hit. Thanks Mom. They were the source of my injury, though. And the pot roast with a red wine reduction Bec made was fabulous as well. Normally Rwandan beef is ridiculously tough. But she managed to make it chewable, and tasty. Anne had the best theory as to why Rwandan beef is as tough as it is. “The cows have to walk up all these hills,” she said.

Laura lives up in Kimironko, a mostly middle-class neighborhood by Rwandan standards on the other side of town from us, in a house maintained by a joint Rwandan-American non-governmental organization (yup, yet another NGO) called RAPs – Rwandans and Americans in Partnership. Both Rebecca and I hate the name. Why can’t it just be Rwandan-American Partnership? Or Rwandan-American Partners? Why does it need the “in”? Why must it be like a Steven Seagal movie title?

Laura is starting another NGO here, a health services one that is putting a proper hospital in underserved rural areas. There are over 400 registered NGOs, Rwandan and international, in this country. That’s not including the UN and the various Western government aid agencies like USAID. There are probably more NGOs than there are private businesses in Rwanda. It’s gotten to the point where there are two international NGOs working here with the same acronym – FHI – but with two different functions. One does family planning and anti-AIDS work, the other food security. I’m sorry, but once we’ve run out of acronyms, we need fewer NGOs. One needs to change its name or go out of business. I have thought of two ways to do this. Either the organization that was in business first gets to keep the name, or gang fights between the rival executive boards. Their choice, but one FHI has to go.

Somehow the number of NGOs in Rwanda seems wrong. I fear it’s like Bec described in Central Asia, where a few people decided that they were going to form an NGO, they gave themselves a snappy name and mission statement, got a boatload of Western foundation money, and then…. Nothing. No work, just the founders living better than they had before.

I have no doubt that Laura and her backers are doing and will do good work. But people have to start thinking about making money here, or nothing will ever really develop. As much as non-profits are necessary – and one of them is paying my rent and employing my wife – a country needs a vibrant private sector in order to really grow.

Anyway, back to Laura. She’s from Hanover, N.H.; she is hysterical; and she’s ready for a vacation. She hasn’t had power in her house for a couple of months because the previous owner never paid the electric bill. So the current tenant is expected to cover the previous delinquent. That hardly seems fair, since RAPs was up to date on its bills. Anyway, the person in charge of paying the bills is a bit forgetful and didn’t take care of the previous bills before spending six weeks in the U.S.

And then Laura’s just grown tired of a lot of the nonsense I’ve written about. So one day, after a particularly annoying morning, she just went home and went to bed. And now she’s taken to swinging her umbrella like a Billy club. Her house manager, a Rwandan, told Laura she wanted to walk around with her American friend at night for protection. “As if me and my umbrella are going to do anything,” Laura said last night.

It’s comforting in it’s way to see other people at short ends, although I wish we weren’t. Laura said Rwanda is turning her mean, which she wasn’t before. She doesn’t like it. Sometimes I feel the same way. But I’m still able to laugh, and so is Laura. We just try to keep our equilibrium, and to keep our spirits as intact as possible.

2005-12-23T06:04:00.000-08:00

23 December 2005

So this is Christmas. And Hanukkah.

When I think of Christmas, I think of cold and snow and music. In Rwanda, it’s 90 degrees, and Christmas just isn’t that big a deal. I don’t think Hanukkah is a big deal here either. It’s been a bit hard to get into the spirit of the season, but we’re working on it.

Bec and I are hosting a traditional Christmas/Hanukkah dinner, complete with a big ol’ pot roast and potato latkes. Yummy. We’re still not sure how many people are coming, but we should probably find out soon since we need to shop tomorrow. Did I tell you that living in Rwanda was like being on the knife’s edge?

Here are just a few more thoughts on what I wrote about last time. The people who bother me when they call me umuzungu, which I probably spell incorrectly, are the adults. The street kids just break my heart, and when one of them is selling tissues or something, I make sure to buy. Bec and I also keep planning on putting together bags of peanuts to give to them, just to make sure they get something in their tummies. We’ll get to it.

The other kids don’t bother me that much either. I’m different than them, and they’re starting to explore their world. When something is different, they study it and point. That’s normal. That’s discovery.

Teen-agers do it too, but they’re just universally annoying and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

It’s just the adults who get to me. And when I asked Bec’s French teacher, Florentine (who is graciously letting me sit in on some classes), she said that to many people, umuzungus are supposed to be driving big white cars, or have a Rwandan driving them. They’re not supposed to be walking around, or taking the mini-bus. Many of the people on the street have just come in from their hillsides, she said, and they still ask her whether her husband, who is Belgian, eats with his mouth, or whether umuzungus do everything differently.

So when these people see me walking or taking the bus, there’s obviously something wrong with me, and therefore I should be laughed at. Florentine’s husband no longer walks around the neighborhood, unless he’s with their kids. It just got to be too much, and he’s been here at least since right after the genocide.

None of this makes me feel much better. It’s profoundly sad in its way, and it doesn’t make the laughing any less annoying. But I’m not going to change what I do. I like to walk around, and private taxis are far too expensive. Plus, I’m stubborn and I’m not letting people here change what I do.

So, now that that’s out of the way, I’m now a newspaper editor. A guy I met named Shyaka, who is Rwandan and reported from here and from South Africa, is starting a new English-language paper. Shyaka was also a Nieman Fellow in journalism at Harvard and got a master’s in journalism at City College in London. He’s serious about what he’s doing. The only problem is he’s a Red Sox fan. And he’s not happy about Johnny Damon.

Anyway, he wants his paper to be on an international level, good enough for people outside of Rwanda to read. Not like the New Times, the competition which I’ve stopped reading because a) it’s wretched and b) they make almost everything up.

Both Shyaka and I agreed that I shouldn’t report. I don’t speak the language, and he wants his reporters for his local paper to really dig. If there’s a story I’m working on that might work for his paper, he told me to give it a local angle and he’d publish it. But where I can really help is by bringing along his young reporters. I’ll also help put together a stylebook, so that all the reporters spell things the same way and the paper looks uniform.

The paper, called Focus, is going to be a weekly but is starting out as a monthly. The first edition is expected in January, and will probably be online. I’m not working in his office yet, because there’s not enough room and the reporters aren’t working out of there as of now. But it’s an exciting project, and he said it’s no problem with him if I take time off to work on my own assignments. I just need to get them.

I have a feeling this is going to be good, and it’ll be steady work. That’s enough for me.

Bec’s parents are coming for a few days next week, which should be fun.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone. Miss you all.

2005-12-20T23:51:00.000-08:00

20 December 2005

It’s taken me a little while to get used to being back, and journalistically things have been a bit slow. But I’m making progress in both areas.

On the work front, I sent out five pitches to editors in the US yesterday, including three to DaMN, which I’m far more hopeful about. In baseball, if you bat .300, you’re going to the Hall of Fame. I’m aiming to bat around .600, meaning I get assigned three of those stories. Of course, it’ll be one of those first-week-of-the-season batting averages that are skewed because of the meaningless number of at-bats.

Two are foreign stories, one in Uganda and one in Congo. I actually have to leave the country within the next three months because my trip to Connecticut to get the new passport cut into my time to get the fingerprints I needed for my FBI clearance to get a long-term visa. That’s right, in a country where one million people were killed in the span of 100 days – admittedly not by the people in power now, not including actions in Congo in the late 1990s – I need to prove that I’m not a criminal.

So I have to leave the country every three months. That’s okay. It keeps me on my toes, thinking of places to go and stories to do.

One story I pitched is poople power, and the other is a “development of philanthropy” story. The final story is inside Rwanda, and is really awful. But I’m not telling you what it is until I know if I can write it for DaMN or not.

But I will tell you a little about the person that gave me the awful Rwanda story. His name is Victor and he’s a Guatemalan who runs an orphanage out in the middle of nowhere. In Rwanda that’s saying something. Bec met him through work, and he was in town for a few days last weekend. We had dinner on Saturday.

Anyway, Victor lived in Europe for several years, speaks Spanish, German and English. No French. No Kinyarwanda. He says he speaks to his kids in the universal language of love (his words). He’s right. A good hug can go a long way.

Victor is an agronomist, and one of the projects he’s working on is creating a plantation on his orphanage’s sprawling property where he will grow papayas, mangoes, pineapples and other fruits to dry, get certified organic and send up to Europe. He also wants to start an eco-tourism business, and we may be spending New Year’s at the orphanage hiking and canoeing on Lake Kivu.

Because of his training, Victor knows a lot about farming. And he knows a lot about tropical fruit from growing up in Guatemala, which he says has a remarkably similar climate to Rwanda. He’s bringing in new species of mango and papaya to grow here. Right now only pineapples grow on his orphanage’s grounds.
He noticed that people were picking them while they were green. Victor said people told him green pineapples were the sweetest, and the best time to eat them. He knew this was nonsense, so he pressed on.

The people then told him they took green pineapples because they were sure the neighbors were going to pick them early, and they wanted to make sure they at least got a bad one. See, it’s that lack of trust I’ve written about before that keeps coming back.

Victor’s initial reaction to that and mine start out in the same place: it’s tremendously sad that Rwandans can’t trust each other.

But then they diverge drastically. Victor hired a guard for his plants and hopes that people will see that yellow pineapple is better, and that maybe they’ll start to trust each other. Mine is to just say, you know what, have fun with that. It’s not worth the frustration.

I hope that I lose this feeling. But every time I start to feel differently, I have an experience that just knocks most of my positive feelings out.

Yesterday, I was buying bread at the local store. This guy Jean-Baptiste, a Rwandan who lives near us and speaks English, was there. We have a little game. Every time I see him, he asks me for a job, gardening, doing laundry. Usually, I politely say we’ve got a guy.

He was sitting and drinking a beer in the store. When he saw me, he said, “How about that job?”

“Sorry, I don’t have one.”

“But I need a job.”

“You can keep asking me, but I still won’t have one.”

He persisted. “But I have a wife and kids. How am I supposed to feed them?”

“Why are you sitting here drinking beer?”

“But it’s Christmas, how am I supposed to buy presents.”

“I’m not Christian, and I still have no job to offer you.” (The first part was clearly not the right thing to say, but I had had about enough.)

He cursed at me in Kinyarwanda and I walked off. On the way down, the guards at the apartment building next to our house and one of its residents – you have to have money to live there – started in on “Donnez-moi du pain!” (Give me bread.)

I asked if they had self-respect, in English because that’s kind of where my French gives out, and kept walking.

To fight back, I’ve taken to walking around with headphones on. So when the Congolese moneychangers start in with their calls of “My friend, change?” they sound like Bruce Springsteen. As they get up in my face and continue, despite me saying no, they start to sound like Bono.

Now, to balance out my annoying Jean-Baptiste story, I met a new friend right before I left for New York. His name is Thaddee, and he just graduated with a degree in environmental sciences from the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology. He’s helping me with my environment story. And despite not having one, he has not asked me for a job.

We met up early yesterday, and he told me that he’s looking for work anywhere, and is learning Dutch because he just likes languages. He also started a small brick-making business. The government recently banned the use of wood in industrial ovens, like those for making bricks. Deforestation is a huge problem here. So Thaddee started using the shells and stalks from picked coffee beans. Unfortunately, that has gotten far more expensive than he can afford, so he’s looking for another way.

But that’s the key. He’s looking for another way. And it’s people like Thaddee that keep me from telling Rebecca that we’re getting the hell out of here and going home. I just wish folks like Thaddee stuck in my mind more than people like Jean-Baptiste.

2005-12-14T02:21:00.000-08:00

14 December 2005

Well, we’re back. I wish I could say I’m glad to be back here in Kigali, but it is what it is. There is a lot of work to be done, so I’m looking forward to jumping right into it.

The trip to New York was too short but fabulous, other than sending my passport on a wild ride through the spin cycle. A trip to Connecticut and almost $200 later, everything was fine.

The new passport photo has engendered more discussion than is probably necessary, and has divided people into two camps. One, led by Rebecca, says it looks like a model’s headshot, complete with the scruffy beginnings of facial hair and a mischievous half-smile. The other camp, with my Mom at its head, says I look like a mass murderer. I’m not sure which I fall into, or which I would prefer.

The trip back was uneventful. It was, however, a flying metallic pill filled with freaks and weirdoes. There were Hassids going to Belgium who arrived late for the flight and caused us to leave almost an hour late and then refused to sit down or follow the instructions of the cabin crew. Somehow the lunatic fringe of my own religious and ethnic group is far more annoying than other loons.

And then there was the person sitting to my right.

Bec and I were stuck in the center row on the way from New York to Brussels. I knew we were sort of in trouble when the third member of our row, an American NATO employee, showed up with framed pictures that didn’t fit anywhere on the plane. She got someone to wedge them in. “Are you American?” she asked when she sat down.

“Yes.”

“I don’t fly very well,” she said. “But don’t worry, I’ll take a Valium and be out for the whole flight.”

Why did my nationality matter? Would she have divulged this important piece of information to someone other than an American? How bad a flier must one be to drop a Valium on the plane?

She continued: “The Valium makes me talk in my sleep, so don’t worry about it.”

Note taken.

Anyway, she snored but didn’t talk in her sleep, which disappointed Bec. I spent much of the flight pushing her out of my space. And she stuck her leg out into the aisle. When the flight crew bashed into her and demanded that she move it, my neighbor replied, “Oh, I thought it was a puppy.”

The Brussels-Kigali leg was easy, and Bec and I had the window-aisle combination, so no weirdo neighbors.

And now we’re in Kigali, where the geniuses who replaced our cooking gas tank forgot to put the valve onto the new tank. So we can’t cook. It’s good to be back and see that little has changed. The Congo earthquake that happened while we were away left our house untouched.

It’s time to get back to work, and I’ll post again soon.