Notes from Africa

Lovely.

I don't see why you can't link to her blog.

I think it's against the TOS to link to blogs, no?

Well, dont link, give the url enclosed with some diacritics..

I'm interested.

If you google Jina Moore, her blog will come up as the second hit (Notes from Central Africa)

Forget the malaria, the dengue, the yellow fever…
February 11, 2008 ·
Let me tell you what will really kill you in Africa.

I arrived in Kigali in the late morning on Thursday, utterly beaten by my travel and utterly annoyed at my pansy self for feeling beaten. My luggage didn't show up, my nose wouldn't stop running, and I felt a fever, so instead of heading out to the city's outskirts, where I was supposed to stay in a bring-your-own-wash-bucket kind of establishment, I decided, a la Eat, Pray, Love, to "take care" of my shakra or whatever and go to a hotel I knew in the center of town. There, I could drop my bags, pick up a phone (swindled!), swing by the embassy (no go: as of Jan 1, it has packed up shop and moved across town, where the rest of Kigali is happily gentrifying), and buy a new shirt to replace the rather miserably-scented garment I'd been wearing. All that, and take a nap by 3.

The nap lasted until noon the next day. I missed check out and had to shell out another 18,000 francs?-to put this in perspective, I am told this is more than half of what a doctor earns in Kigali in a month?-for another night. I'm nervous, less about the extra cash than about offending my hosts, who'd arranged my much more reasonable 5,000 a night stay in the bucket-bath place at my insistence ("No, no, I don't need anything fancy?-no, I don't need a shower. Hot water? Overrated. Yes, I'll bring my own towel. Pack it in my…luggage.")

Finally I arrive at the little logement. I get your standard cheap Kigali room, which did me well for a whole month the last time I was here.

But then, I start to feel it. The wheezing.

This is a feeling I know. It's what led to The Great Summer Exodus of 2006, from my otherwise amazing Renovated-and-Then-Overpriced Harlem brownstone to my Humbler-But-Cheaper residence. This wheezing, it's sneaky. It starts all subtle, and then it's uncontrollable.

It's the last part I forgot about later, wandering wheeze-free through the city with The Law Student who also cares for the logement. We didn't get back until after 10 p.m., and I was beat. I laid down?-this next part I'm very ashamed of, so please, judge gently?-popped open the laptop and opened the only Grey's Anatomy left on my hard drive. (For fans: George calls out the anesthesiologist for being drunk, Izzie's mad Meredith is having sex with Derek, and this crazy woman's crazier boyfriend swallows her keys to keep her from leaving him.) Not a few minutes go by before I start to realize I am breathing like the crazy boyfriend, hacking like I want to release a doorman's set of spares.

I sit up. It gets easier, but not much. I get out of the malaria-canopy (ie, bednet) and go blow my nose. Breathing is much, much easier over there, three feet away, by the (non-functioning) sink. I lay down again, thinking it's all in my head.

Nope. It's worse now, and I resolve to sleep on the cement floor. This means exposing myself to Certain Death by Malaria: This particular net doesn't come off the bed, and all my DEET-filled bug spray is in the lost luggage. Upon reflection, I realize if I get malaria, I will notice and it can be treated, whereas if I simply stop breathing in the middle of the night, I might miss that completely. I strip the bed, lay one sheet on the ground and wrap the other around my body. When a mosquito whizzes by my ear?-their wings produce a high pitched, almost angry drone?-I grab my hoody, zip it around my body and tighten the hood around my face like I'm sealing up biologically hazardous waste. I think I am Malaria-Impenetrable, until I feel a mosquito on my cheek.

This is where, if you've read this far, you get your reward.

My dad had joked a few days before I left about the airline losing my luggage, so I threw five pairs of clean panties (back off, I learned to speak in Britain) in my carry-on. It dawns on me that the underwear-mask I used as a five-year-old to rob my own piggy bank might be at its most effective now, keeping the Evil Bastards off my face.

That's right.

Now completely mummified against the sleeping disease, I lay back. Wheezing again. I resolve that I simply must just sleep sitting up, propped against the wall. (Note to Mike Cornick: I like to think that you never intended your joke, which my sister is fond of repeating, to be such a curse.) And this is when I am finally, finally grateful for my inexplicably large ass (Have you met my family? In context, my ass makes absolutely no proportional sense).

So there I…sit, waiting for sleep, biding my time mostly by drafting this blog post in my head. Actually, it was, like, totally meta?-I was, like, sitting there thinking about writing it, and then thinking about writing about thinking about writing it. Way.

Eventually a new narrative emerged, one that involved a woman in a bustle, a bonnet with superfluous fabric and lace gloves. It was immediately clear to me that she was Little Bo Beep (for those keeping score, yes, she had no sheep), which is how I know I must've gotten some sleep.

Either that, or the Angel of Death is way more non-threatening than any of us ever imagined.

Just checked, it's ok. Reading...

i find it's usually somewhat (?) shocking to see the "leaders" of some poor nation attending a meeting , coming off an airplane ... ...
they are usually well-fed men , well-dressed , plenty of attendants looking after them ... ...
looks like they have no worry in the world .






when you see how the "ordinary" people have to live - well , that's a different story .




even opposition leaders and rebel leaders often look as if they don't come from the same group of people as those "ordinary" people they claim to represent .

i believe that this is a picture of nelson mandela (yes ,i know who he is) meeting with a government and an opposition leader - i can't tell who is who .
both look like they just came from a health-spa - unfortunately they forgot to invite some of the "ordinary" people .



is there a solution to this sorry state of affairs ?
i certainly don't know .

i'm afraid that's a worldwide problem, hamburger, not just Africa's.

But speaking of "helping" the third world countries, here's another good post from Jina:

I Can't Believe I'm Posting About George Clooney
February 22, 2008
It has come to this. But maybe the "it" isn't me… Hold on, we need some context:

Clooney recently had a dark-night-of-the-soul (or of the red wine, depending) with Time Magazine's Joel Stein, about Darfur:



And I genuinely believe there's good in that. But who are we talking to? And do the people whom we're talking for think it matters?

A slightly different way of putting this point: During the campaign for divestment from Darfur, someone working closely with the government of Sudan told me that all this American youth activism confused Khartoum; the Sudanese president couldn't imagine why the most powerful man in the world, as they characterize Bush, would ever listen to a bunch of college kids.

One response to this is to say, "That's the beauty of our democracy." But that's a congratulatory way of missing the point. Which is the same one Clooney was making when he worried about turning the people he helps into targets: Even when your noise is the voice of the voiceless, the signal can get lost. At best, when that happens, you simply don't do any good. At worst, you do damage.

This is not the end of this idea ?- it's way too pessimistic a thought to end on ?- but it does have to be the end of this post. To be continued, hopefully with lots of ideas from you.

PS: It's a great article, and the only part about Darfur is the excerpted one. Otherwise, it's a light, funny read.

I really like her writing style, Dag. I've also read some of the stuff she linked to. Great reading!

Thank you. I'm very proud of her

Aid-ing the poor
Posted: 10 Mar 2008 02:00 PM CDT
Jina Moore

It doesn't take all that much time in a place like Rwanda to start wondering if aid works, or how it might work better. Here's an excerpt from a blog I just happened upon, in which a guy from Europe (Germany?) who's been here a lot longer than I raises a few difficult questions:
The failures of the aid industry are becoming more obvious and more difficult to hide. And it is unfortunate, because aid is not bad per se. For me, there are still brilliant people and great organisations doing amazing work in Africa. The methods of the aid industry simply need to change, and people back in "the developed world" need to begin to understand the change that is needed, in order to start lobbying for it. For example:
- Don't give anything for free. Used clothes from Germany destroy the local textiles market, free American vegetable oil competes with local farmers, free solar power modules put local traders out of business and free money goes to the corrupt and lazy. When you give things for free, you destroy local businesses and livelihoods.
- Use the private sector, even if it means that projects are more difficult. Use local construction companies, hire local companies to implement projects, create joint ventures and public-private partnership, encourage an entrepreneurial mentality. Find ways to deal with the cheats, con-artists and dubious businessmen that leach off donors.
- Stop using cash flow as a way of measuring aid agencies' performance. Almost all aid agencies have "spending targets" as a way of measuring their "success" in their country programmes. In the aid industry, if you're not spending, you're not working. This encourages reckless spending and bizarre behaviour. At the end of the fiscal year for example, many donors will start spending huge amounts of money on products and consultants with little overall strategy.
So the question is, is it worth continuing with the development aid industry?
You can read the whole post, or the rest of his blog, here. But don't stop coming back to mine. I'll be so lonely.

Greetings, or "What am I supposed to do with your hand?"
Posted: 10 Mar 2008 05:02 AM CDT
Jina Moore

Anyone who's ever left the States-hell, anyone who's left a small hometown for a big city, or vice versa-knows that awkward squishy feeling of saying your how-do-you-do's. Especially in a foreign culture, it's a guessing game of non-verbals…a form of communication which itself is totally unreliable, because non-verbals are not universal. That cute little informal wave goodbye in America, the one where you fold your fingers down a few times, means, "Hey, come here" in much of East Africa.
It's the handshakes that always get me. I have always found them very corporate, and I misjudge them every time. I might remember to grip vigorously-especially if it's a man, and he's in a nice suit-but I'll forget to fortify my arm, and I wind up being wobbled about.
Handshakes are not like that in Rwanda, to say the least. There's a national reprieve from shaking, actually; it's more hand touching, the kind of contact that qualifies in the States as the derided "limp handshake." But that's what's even weirder, for Americans: lingering contact with a… stranger.
I've noticed three categories of greetings: the extended hand-clasp, not so much a clasp really as a mutual habitation of the same hand-space while greetings are exchanged; the lower-arm clasp; and the full-on hug. (There's also the three kisses for women, or touches of the head for men, but this, like paper money and bureaucracy, is a legacy of the Belgians.)
The arm-clasp is my favorite, because I've never seen anything like it. It's like shaking hands but at the wrist level, or higher. I wondered if there was a hierarchy of greetings, if, say, the arm-clasp was for people who aren't strangers, but aren't friendly enough to hug. A Rwandan friend told me this is clever but completely wrong (see, "non-verbals are not universal."). "It is," she says, "like half a hug," and easier to execute if there's, say, a table in the way.
As for the hugging, another Rwandan woman told me, "It's just our culture. We don't feel we've properly said hello to you unless we've hugged you."
I think Rwanda is going to work out okay for me.