Go forward by going back

I ate my first mouse last weekend. In summary, this was a one minute experience with about 24 unique flavors, uncountable bones crunched and two near vomit moments. I managed to swallow the whole thing despite my better mental and guttural judgment.

This act of masochism was in part a protest of a recent article sent around by the Associated Press (picked up here and here, for example).

The first three paragraphs are fun and mostly harmless. But then comes to unecessarily canned and out of context “malawi is poor” fourth paragraph.

Malawi, with a population of 12 million, is among the poorest countries in the world, with rampant disease and hunger, aggravated by periodic droughts and crop failure.

The paragraph is not inaccurate (maybe the population, which is now above 13 M), but it is entirely unnecessary. I find it infuriating when the MSM spreads brainless generalizations of African countries.

Matt over at Aid Thoughts writes the reply that I wish I had written;

This sentence is copied onto the end of every single photo description in the article. It reflects the media’s preferred African stereotype. Yes, Malawi is poor, disease-ridden, and often hungry, but it is really defined by these things? If we’re going to start bringing more dignity to development, we’ll need to start with our newspapers.

America, with a population of 300 million, is one of the fattest countries of the world, with a frighteningly awful perception of poor countries, aggravated by a befuddled, profit-driven media.

Anyone who sabotages the economy is an enemy of the people and does not deserve to be in this country.

That is Malawi President Bing wa Mutharika, commenting on several South African nationals deported from Malawi for “sabotaging the economy and harming tobacco growers.”

International sugar prices are at record highs. This should help the Malawian economy  considerably, especially during a year when tobacco prices are low.

Obama (and his speechwriters) have been reading their North, Rodrik and Greif:

Across Africa, we’ve seen countless examples of people taking control of their destiny and making change from the bottom up…

Now, make no mistake: History is on the side of these brave Africans, not with those who use coups or change constitutions to stay in power. Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.

…The people of Africa are ready to claim that future….With strong institutions and a strong will, I know that Africans can live their dreams in Nairobi and Lagos, Kigali, Kinshasa, Harare, and right here in Accra.

His reference to trade links with the US, however, were weak.

That’s the english translation of the Xhosa song, Nomvula, from  Freshlyground (see previous post).

It’s the best song that I have on constant repeat these days.

Listen and watch on YouTube.

Going to any motor vehicle authority, I am reminded of Tolstoy’s opening line to Ana Karenina: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

My trip to the Malawi Road Traffic Authority on Monday of last week was no exception. What follows is a user’s guide to obtaining a license in Malawi.

I was instructed by a police office that after being in Malawi for three months, I was required to obtain a Malawi drivers’ license. Monday, I finally decided to end my streak of procrastination and dive into the bureaucracy of registering myself as an officially licensed driver.

1. Arrive at the Road traffic authority as early as possible. ( I arrived at 8:20am)
2. Go to the door labeled “1 Application room / 5 Driving license collection”, where you are immediately told to go to Window #3.
3. Proceed to Window #3 and ask for an application. Don’t worry if it says “Learner’s License Application”…I was told that the form itself doesn’t matter.
4. Enter Door #2. Oops…”Test going on!” you are warned by the attendant.
5. Wait.
6. Ok, Door #2 open now, go in and submit your application.
7. After submitting your application, you are told to go to the un-marked door at the end of the corridor for “scanning and printing”. DO NOT CONFUSE THIS ROOM WITH THE ROOM LABELED “6 Photograph, Fingerprint and Scanning”
8. Wait in line to be digitally fingerprinted (all 10 fingers) and photographed.
9. Once your biometrics are in the database, proceed to “4 Cashier office, card receiving and Enquiries.” Don’t be afraid make physical contact with others as you protect your place in line waiting to pay MK 5270. (NB: never go to this room with an “Enquiry”…As with most of the signs, you are bound to go wrong if you trust their advertised services.)
10. With your payment receipt in hand, return to Door #2 and submit all paper work.
11. Obtain your temporary license at wait for “one to two months” for the permanent card.

The experience was a mixture of technology and speed at times, chaos and misdirection at others. All said, I can’t say that the entire experience was entirely more frustrating that what I have undergone in the United States.

This documentary looks awesome:

Zaire ’74 almost didn’t happen. The festival was “a fool’s mission” from the start, said Stewart Levine…When Mr. Levine heard about the boxing match in Zaire, he said by telephone from Los Angeles, “it just hit me — how about a music festival?”

…The government of Zaire subsidized the boxing match; Zaire’s dictator,Mobutu Sese Seko, wanted to burnish his country’s image. But Zaire would not finance the festival. So Mr. Levine rounded up backing from bankers in Liberia…

…With contacts at ABC, Mr. Levine said, he prevailed on the sportscaster Howard Cosell to hold back for 24 hours the news that the fight had been postponed, lest the American musicians stay home. He was also lucky, he said, that it was Rosh Hashanah, and many of the performers’ managers were observing the holiday.

…Many of the performers and Mr. Ali himself are shown as starry-eyed about Africa. Mr. Withers, who was well-traveled after nine years in the Navy, was more levelheaded. “I felt like a very privileged person in an unprivileged setting,” he said. “This Mobutu guy, this dictator — that didn’t cheer me up, the disparity in the wealth. There seemed to be a large gap between the chosen people that were around him and everybody else.”

Seems like a must see.

After 18 years at the helm of Ethiopia and increasingly autocratic tendicies over these years, President Meles Zenawi may be leaving office. This is what a piece from AllAfrica suggests.

A leader in the struggle against dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in the 1980s and 1990s, Zenawi ushered in a new era of multi-party elections in Ethiopia. He is rightfully commended for this. In recent years, Ethiopias has also produced one of the region’s highest economic growth rates.

The most controvertial of his three electoral victories came in 2005, when fraud and vote-rigging were rather evident. This election saw a significant amount of vioilence in its aftermath.

Heavily spported by the USA and Britain, it is hard to disentangle the straegic relations of these coutries with Ethiopia vis-a-vis Somalia and the increasingly tight grip of Zenawi and the EPRDF over Ethiopian politics, media and society.

A recent op-ed by David Dage for Project Syndicate, calling for more press freedom in Ethiopia, mentioned the following quote from a journalist:

“There is only fear, not freedom, of expression in Ethiopia.”

If true, Zenawi’s announcement of stepping down would be huge news. Should I believe it? Why isn’t this story getting more international press?

…this paragraph from Michela Wrong’s It’s Our Turn to Eat should figure prominently when reflecting on the first half of this decade:

By the turn of the century, Western policy in the developing world was increasingly being set not in ministeril offices but by NGOs – organizations like Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid. The Make Poverty History campaign, pushing for the cancellation of Africa’s foreign debt and dramatic increases in Western aid levels, was gathering momentum. Jeffrey Sachs, the brilliant American economist who campaigned in favour of a massive hike in funding, appeared to have won the emotional, if not the intellectual, argument. Other analysts might shake their heads at Sach’s simplistic formula for the continent’s recovery, but he had successfully wooed pop-star campaigners like Bono and Sir Bob Geldof, and their abilty to mobilise a younger generation bored by traditional politics awed Western governments. Whether on the right or the left, political parties realised that promising to ’save’ Africa was a potential vote winner in the eyes of an idealistic coming generation. No wonder members of the African elite, aware of these pressures, sometimes sounded unappetisingly smug when contemplating tortured Western attitudes to the continent. As one Kenyan newspaper editor told me: ‘What we Africans have realized is that your leaders need to lend to us more than we need to be lent to.’

See Chris Blattman’s review of the book.

Not published until September 29 of this year, William Kamkwamba’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (with Brian Maeler), is already on my reading list.

William, already a top blogger in Southern Africa, provides an example of an inventor and a man with a spirit for making dreams reality. I predict that it will be a worthwhile read for anyone interested in development, Arfica and invention. The power of human ngenuity should be a motivation for all of us who strive to improve living conditions throughout the world.

William’s home town is in Kasungu, Malawi, where I do a lot of my work. I hope to meet him once he returns to Malawi after an international tour of engagements.

Here is the twitter feed for The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: http://twitter.com/malawindmilbook

And here is a short clip of William at TEDTalks.