I'm a Very Proud Brother

It's not every day your little sister gets mentioned by name in the New Yorker.

More Obamamania

I thought Kevin Drum made an interesting point in this post:

Obama is frequently outstanding at giving speeches to large crowds. And that's a great skill for a president to have. Unfortunately, very few people, especially outside the early primary states, get to see Obama giving a speech.

So in the interest of encouraging a few more people to watch Obama the Speaker in action, I'm posting a couple more of his recent speeches. This first one was his victory speech in South Carolina last weekend.

And for those of you who appreciate the Camelot nostalgia angle to the Obama campaign, be sure not to miss this (long) video of yesterday's endorsement of Obama by Ted Kennedy.

I'm for Obama

It really is worth your time to watch all 34 minutes of the speech Barack Obama gave at Martin Luther King's old church on the day before the MLK holiday this week. I can't help feeling that if the Democrats don't nominate him it will be an incredible opportunity missed.

Then and Now

Imagine my delight when I came across this "Beverly Hills, 90210 Stars: Where Are They Now?" website. It's inexcusably biased toward actors that appeared in the later episodes, but there are some interesting bits of information in there, like this tidbit from Jamie Walters who used to play Ray Pruit (Pruit with only one 't' because that's all his mama could afford):

"People do get mad at you. I didn't throw Donna down the stairs, but my character did. I kept having to remind people of that," said Walters, who's now a firefighter in Los Angeles.

And what could be more appropriate than Cindy Walsh becoming a licensed therapist?

Speaking of "where are they now?" stories, I was a little surprised to read in this article that Eminem is now over 200 pounds, hasn't left the house much in 18 months, and is usually in bed by 9pm.

Ghana CAN 2008

Anybody remotely interested in soccer should be following the Africa Cup of Nations, which is in Ghana this year (official site here, Wikipedia site here). Obviously I'm pulling for the Elephants of Cote d'Ivoire, who had a big victory in their first match against Nigeria. The other matches I've been able to watch so far have all been pretty good, but what was up with Egypt just killing a supposedly good Cameroon?

Joy Ride

Like most people who can afford it here, I have a guy who I pay to come to my house a few times a week to clean the house and wash my clothes. I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to washing clothes by hand and it's pretty hard to keep things clean with all the dust in the air. (It hasn't rained a drop since early September and now we're in the windy season.) It's a pretty convenient arrangement and it's an opportunity to pay someone for doing valuable work in a country where there are tons of people with no money and no way to earn any. His name is Issaka and he's been very reliable ever since I hired him back in September. You hear a lot of stories of people having trouble with their domestic workers, but it's typically pretty minor stuff--a suspicion that the sugar is running out more quickly than it should be, a missing bottle of coke, some small change disappearing from a countertop, that sort of thing. I never had any problems like this, and because Issaka came through the recommendation of somebody I know pretty well I didn't worry much about it.

Much to my surprise and confusion, I got a call from Issaka last Thursday saying that my car had gotten in an accident. I assumed he meant that somebody had hit or scratched my car where it was parked at my house, but it quickly became clear that he was talking about an accident somewhere in town. Apparently, he had found my duplicate key and decided to impress his girlfriend by taking her in my car to a baptism (baptisms are big social events here). The accident was clearly Issaka's fault and he was pretty lucky that the other car (a military officer and his chauffeur) managed to swerve enough to reduce the impact of the collision, so nobody was hurt. And it turned out--to my surprise--that he actually has a license, so they didn't arrest him on the spot. In all it's going to cost me about $200 to fix the car (my insurance covered the damage to the other car, but not mine), plus the inconvenience of sending my car to the repair shop for a few days and the hassle of spending half a day at the police station, which of course included paying a $10 bribe for the "gas" required for the police to go from the station to the scene of the accident. Issaka doesn't have any money so clearly he can't pay for the damage. And I'm not particularly interested in holding him in some kind of indentured servitude until he's worked off his debt, as a few people have suggested. The police told me I could press charges against him, which would virtually assure that he would go to prison, but that seems unnecessarily harsh. (Take a moment to imagine prison conditions in a country where a sizable chunk of the "free" population won't have enough to eat in any given year.) I told Issaka I couldn't trust him to work in my house anymore and he actually managed to make me feel guilty for firing him. He doesn't seem to understand that the accident itself is less of a problem than the fact that he took my car and he keeps pleading with me that losing his job would be a huge shame for him, his brother (who recommended him to me), and his whole family.

One of the most unfortunate aspects of incident like this is how people use it to reinforce a lot of ugly notions. Issaka is a Tuareg, a minority ethnic group, so most of the Nigeriens I know have reacted to my story with some version of "these Tuaregs, they're all thieves and they never do any honest work". A lot of ex-pats have offered the "these people! You can never trust them" advice. Even Issaka's brother Ismael, when he came to apologize and thank me for not pressing charges, made me pretty uncomfortable talking about how Issaka's problem is that he just doesn't know how to behave according to his own position ("we poor Africans shouldn't get ideas about living like white people"). It's also frustrating because I always try to avoid taking the condescending and suspicious attitude toward Nigeriens that I see in a lot of my friends and colleagues, but an incident like this is a pretty vivid reminder that there are a lot of people here who, given the opportunity, will take advantage of your trust. Some of my friends have suggested, not unreasonably, that because I treated Issaka like a friend and an equal instead of as an inferior, he probably figured it wouldn't cost him his job if I found out that he took my car (not counting on the accident).

I went to check on the car on Saturday and it was an amusing site. It's in the courtyard of the mechanic's house, propped it on its side at about a 45 degree angle. I was supposed to get it back yesterday, but the mechanic wasn't finished. He told me he was done with everything except the paint. He couldn't paint yesterday because it was too windy and dust would have gotten in the paint. I ought to be able to pick it up this evening, insha'Allah.

"Looks Like an Airline Logo"

This website has an outstanding "study" rating the flags of the world purely on aesthetics. Each flag gets a letter grade and a 0-100 score, with some good commentary thrown in as well. It's also worth taking a few minutes to appreciate the methodology.

Personally I can't see why Libya received such a high score. And speaking of Libya, have I mentioned that Muammar Gaddafi is my landlord?

(Apologies to Kenzie for singling out the Marshall Islands flag. But honestly, that was the best they could do?)

Kenya Musings

The situation in Kenya these days is very sad. It's hard for me to watch what's going on there without being reminded of what it felt like to be in Cote d'Ivoire in 2002. Not that the details of today's situation have much in common with the Ivoirian conflict, but both situations offer the spectacle of relatively prosperous, stable, and peaceful African countries falling into widespread violence and chaos literally overnight.

On a more encouraging note, though, I thought this piece in the Wall Street Journal made a good point.

"This is Africa," many people have told me, Africans and non-Africans. But what they overlook is that this nation blew up so much precisely because Africa is changing. Ten years ago, bolstering a candidate's results by a few percentage points would have been no big thing. In fact, 20 years ago, an 85% result for the incumbent would have been de rigueur. Today, there are more stringent regulations; more Kenyans know their rights; more monitors were at the polls; Kenya's media coverage was extensive; digital media are accelerating the distribution of information; and many people have cellphones with which they can pass on information.

Stealing an election is no longer that easy, and as we can see, you may not like the reaction. Rig at your own peril.

It's easy to be discouraged and horrified by some of the news coming out of Kenya, but the hasty comparisons to Somalia, Rwanda, and yes, Cote d'Ivoire, probably obscure much more than they elucidate.

Finally, I'm always irritated by the use of the word "tribal" in the coverage of African conflicts. I don't recall ethnically organized violence in the Balkans ever being described as tribal. And besides, ethnic, linguistic, and historical divisions between groups have always been fault lines for violent conflict. It seems like the only reason we don't describe, say, World War I as tribal is because the parties to that conflict had the opportunity to define and organize themselves as nations.

Happy 2008!

The other day my sister and I went to see west Africa's last herd of wild giraffes. I had seen them a few times already--I've driven through the area a number of times and sometimes the giraffes are right on the road--but never quite like this. My car can't really handle driving off-road, so we parked some distance away and approached the giraffes on foot. We soon found ourselves in the middle of a group of thirteen giraffes who barely seemed to notice when we approached to within 50 to 100 feet of them. We spent maybe an hour or so watching them browse from tree to tree.

My sister left at about 2:30 this morning and today I'm back at work for the first time in what feels like ages. Christmas and New Year's were pretty low-key events, but we had a good time. Her visit gave me a good excuse to do some of the more touristy things around here that I hadn't done yet, including a couple day trips, a few days of camping in a national park, and a demonstration of Nigerien traditional wrestling. We managed to do quite a bit during the two weeks she was here and I was sad to see her go.