Final Post

In this final blog post I am going to recommend a book that I did not actually read on the trip. I read The Letters of Yonatan Netanyahu when I was in high school, which is a collection of actual letters between Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu and his various family members over the course of his lifetime. For those that don't know, Yoni Netanyahu led the rescue operation by Israeli commandos in what is now the old airport in Entebbe, Uganda to free over 100 Israelis taken hostage by terrorists when they're plane was hijacked. The operation was considered an enormous success, but in the last moments Yoni was shot and later died, one of the only casualties amongst the Israelis. The reason I'm talking about Yoni and the book is because before I flew back to Israel, from Entebbe, I was able to visit the old airport site where the rescue took place. (Pictures are in the album named Kampala and Entebbe)

When I arrived at the new airport I asked some of the airport security officers if it would be possible to visit the site of the hostage rescue. The first guy I asked said no, but the second one was more than happy to take me. I got a airport security badge and went off across the runway to the old airport site. The old airport site has had a new building added on in recent years and is the location of a massive UN logistics camp, which I'm told is the largest in East Africa. The original building is still there, and has barely been touched since the raid in 1976. All the bullet holes are still there, and the only real difference is the addition of a plaque commemorating the raid and honoring Yoni Netanyahu put up just last year. I was extremely moved just being at the site itself, let alone driving down the same runway the Israeli C-130's landed on, and seeing the far end of the airport where Yoni was shot during the last moments. I think it was a good of an end to my trip as I could have asked for. The Letters of Yonatan Netanyahu is an extraordinary book, and while you won't learn about the Entebbe raid in it, but there are no shortage of books on that subject, you will gain insight into a remarkable human being.

I'm back in Tel Aviv now, and I've got to re-start my life in here in a lot of ways, but I'm very excited about it. I'm less excited about the oppressive heat and humidity, but I got through the last few summers, I can manage this one too...I hope. After some time in Africa you kind of forget what a "developed" country looks like and while it wasn't a big shock to see the big buildings of Tel Aviv, its a little weird. Tel Aviv might have a bigger economy than entire countries I've visited. The economic gap is astounding between Burundi and Malawi, for example, and Israel, let alone the US.

Last night my friend David and Alexandra were married in Jerusalem, and it was a very nice wedding. They did not know that I'd be showing up, still thinking I was in Africa, clearly not readers of my blog:-), and it was a nice surprise for them. The wedding was a lot of fun, and a great event to have upon returning to Israel. Mazal Tov to Dave and Alex.

While this blog is complete with this final post, I've very much enjoyed the whole blogging process, and have been thrilled with the amazingly positive response I've recieved from y'all over the blog. I'm going to keep blogging on the issue of the genocide in the Congo, Darfur, and mass violence in general in Africa, which overall continues to be underreported throughout the world. Not quite sure what the direction of the blog will be, but if you're interested in viewing the blog, the address is: violenceinafrica.blogspot.com. I would also like to start a blog updating the status of the beloved Mr. Chocolate, although I think he deserves a website devoted to him. I have to figure out how to do that now too.

Anyways, to end the blog on a completely un-Africa related note, I just saw the first two episodes of The Office that I had missed while abroad, and the show is the funniest thing that's ever been made. Actually...I just realized this is not an entirely un-Africa comment, since one of my favorite conversation topics with other mzungus in Africa was The Office. I've discovered you can laugh just as hard recounting the Beninhana Christmas Special episode the first time in Malawi as you can for the tenth time, several months later in Uganda.

Lehitraot, ate logo y que les vaya bien, Ben

Butiaba

The latest book I've finished is Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and its incredible. Its like reading a horrible nightmare, but its so well written you don't want to stop. I've read some really good books on this trip, and this is definitly one of the best. Cormac McCarthy is the author of No Country for Old Men, which the movie based on the book just won the best picture oscar. When I got the chance to exchange one of the books I've read for it, I was really excited, and the book did not let me down.

Yesterday I went to a small fishing village on Lake Albert called Butiaba. Someone told me Ernest Hemingway crashed a plane there, but I haven't tried to verify that, so that may be completely inaccurate. I was told it was a really pretty village, and I wanted to see more of Lake Albert and the rift valley one last time. The road down from the valley escarpment down to the lake is very impressive, and when you get to the valley floor there are a gazillion baboons running around. The time in the village was nice, I just walked around the beach, had lunch, and had tons of kids come up and try to jump on me. Not the most exciting of destinations, but I enjoyed seeing one of the rift valley lakes for a final time. I put a few pictures in the Murchison Falls album, so if you click on that link the last few pictures in the album will be from yesterday. They're nothing special, just to kind of show what the area is like.

Whether its been on hikes or strolls in Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Rwanda, or here in Uganda the kids have always been the best part. The landscapes are breathtaking, but when you have a four year old just walk out of his house, and take your hand to walk with you along the footpaths its the highlight of the hike. Soon after one kid joins you a larger group always comes curious to see what this mzungu is up to. Some poke at your skin, most just try to grab on to your hand somewhere, and its quite charming. Eventually some adult comes to get them, but it can take a couple of kilometers some times.

These walks have been my favorite thing in Africa, and going between villages on their footpaths is as interesting and beautiful as the national parks I've visited. I love walking through the small farms of banana, coffee, beans, yams, maize(although I hate that they eat so much maize in Africa), peas, sorghum, millet, mangos, etc... You can often hear women singing in their homes, and a few times I've even come across some drumming sessions going on. It's not all idealic, though. Several times in the morning I've gone into a small pub to get some water only to see several men quite drunk. You rarely see men working in the fields, it almost always the women and children. I'm sure health problems are rampant, but I cant' get a good feel for this just walking through. Still, these walks have been the highlight of my trip, and you don't have to pay any national park fee to do it.

Today is my last full day in Africa, and tomorrow I'll be off to the airport in Entebbe for my evening flight. On the way I'm going to try to see the old airport where the Israeli hostage rescue took place in 1976. From what I understand its closed off to the public, but I've heard of people being able to talk their way into a small peek.

As for the blog...my folks keep asking me to do a one final entry returning to Israel, and I suppose I will. The blog has been one of my favorite things about the trip, and the response has been incredible. I want to thank Shara for this, because without her nagging me, there would be no blog. While this blog will end with that final entry, I do intend to start another blog, on a different subject. I plan to start a blog where I'll post links to articles and other information on the horrific situation in the eastern DRC. I'm doing it for my benefit, but anyone that would like can check back periodically can read any of the articles if they like. I guess I'll try to set up at least the site name before the last blog entry, and I'll post the link on the this blog. Well, hope everyone's doing well and have fun.

tchau, Ben

Encephalartos whitelockii

First off I want to say mazal tov to Rachel and Ben Oh, who were married yesterday on Mt. Hood. I haven't heard from anyone how it went, but I can imagine it was an awesome wedding. I made sure that everyone in Africa is wishing you both only the best.

Second, I only read today that fifteen hostages of the FARC were released a few days ago, including the high profile hostage, Ingrid Betancourt. Very, very happy to hear that they were rescued and I only hope the prisoner exchange with Hizbullah continues so Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, dead or alive, can come back to Israel. And of course hoping that Gilad Shalit will come back as soon as possible too.

So...Encephalartos whitelockii is the scientific name for the type of cycad plant that is found only in Mpanga gorge, a small gorge a few kilometers west of Lake George in western Uganda. What's even more unique about this plant is that the species has been in existence for 300 million years! Somehow the plant is still around, and yesterday I saw it, which was very, very cool. To get to the gorge takes some patience, considering almost no one living in the closest town, 20 kilometers away, had even heard of the gorge, let alone the cycad plant. I had read a dam is being built near the gorge, so luckily I decided to have a boda-boda take mae there, and only after arriving at the dam construction site did the workers confirm this was in fact the right place to see the cycad plant. The dam won't destroy most of the habitat of the cycads, but they have bulldozed some down a little upstream from the gorge. Still, its tough to know what might happen in the future and while they've been around for 300 million years they might be nearing the end of species' existence. Seems like a waste, considering the Mpanga river is pretty small, the cycad is so unique and rare, and there are enormous chunks of the Nile that could have a damn built that would bring in quite a bit more electricity. I'm not a fan of dams, but if they're going to be built, you'd hope there would be some attempt to do reasonable planning.

Anyways, the gorge is really pretty and it overlooks Lake George which is basically a runoff from Lake Elizabeth, which I visited in early June while going through Queen Elizabeth National Park. There is a pretty waterfall, Mpanga falls, which I saw from the top only, and all around are these cycad plants. Their trunks look like a palm tree, and the leaves are kind of palmish, kind of tree-fernish. In the middle of some of them are fairly large cones, and while they're not the beautiful plant/tree in existence it's pretty cool to see anything that has continued to exist for 300 million years. I'll put up pictures sometime this weekend.

Tomorrow I'm invited to an ultimate frisbee bbq 4th of July something or other with lots of Uganda peacecorp folk, but I may go for a day trip up to Lake Albert. I'll decide tomorrow morning. Finally, congratulations again to Rachel and Ben Oh.

Boda-Boda

So I'm off on one final mini-excursion for a few days, but I plan to be back in Kampala for the weekend. I've met a really nice group of peacecorp folk here, and I've been invited to a fourth of july weekend ultimate frisbee bbq extravaganza. I'll write again after the trip and bbq, but I wanted to do a blog entry on what is by far my favorite method of transportation, the boda-boda. A boda-boda can be either a bicycle or a motorcycle that you hop on the back of. In Kampala there are almost no bicycles so boda-boda means just the motorcycle. Kampala's traffic is so bad that you can pay almost nothing to get on a minibus, but you will not arrive at your destination for at least a few hours. The only way to get around, the way I see it, is to get on a motorcycle which weaves its way, quite dangerously at times, through the city. I think the peacecorp is overreacting a little, but they deem the boda-bodas dangerous enough to ban their volunteers from using them with an automatic punishment of being sent home if caught.

Anyways, the main reason I like taking the boda-boda has nothing to do with it being faster than a minibus, but rather the boda-boda drivers. They congregate in herds throughout the city, and I really think there needs to be a doctoral thesis on the sociology of these folks. Anytime you get near a group they start yelling at you to choose them, and many times a few will even start up the motorcycle and go towards you with the apparent belief that running you over will make you want to choose them for your ride.

Once you've succeeded in getting rid of all the drivers but the one you want to talk to it gets even more fun. I'll ask them if they know where the place I want to go is, and more often than not you get a glassy blank stare, several seconds of silence, and than the following response "you come on, we go". "So how do you get there?" I'll follow up, to which I get a pleading "you sit down, we go". Before I knew that most of the guys had no clue where they were going I'd get lost quite a bit. Often in the middle of the ride I would ask them if they knew were they were going, and after a pause they'd always say "yes". But a few moments later we would conveniently stop for the guy to buy a cigarette. While I can't hear the transaction going I always find it curious that the guy selling the cigarette would always be pointing in a direction and his body language always seemed to indicate that he was in fact giving directions and not selling cigarettes. Eventually you make it to your destination, but its always a process. These guys are so desperate for any business they'll do whatever they can, including just driving off in a direction with no clue how to get where I want to, hoping that somehow the problem will resolve itself.

Agreeing on a price is not a simple affair either. There's the initial bargain, and as a mzungu I'm always charged more. You have to dictate the price from the beginning to get anything close to the local price. It doesn't end there though. Sometimes in the middle of the ride the guy will say "its very far, you give me more money". They're not actually expecting you to agree to increase the price, but they're trying, and well, I can't blame them. If you don't get the plea in the middle of the ride it will definitly come at the end. As you're getting off the boda-boda and getting the money out you usually hear the following "eh, the price of petrol is so high, you give me more money" I've heard it so many times now I usually start laughing. The other comical thing about it to me is the tone of their voice. The "eh" is so high pitched some soprano opera singers would be impressed, and the rest of the sentence is not much lower in the tone, and it's all quite an impassioned plea. At the end of it all most folks give you a big smile and thank you once they get the amount you originally agreed upon, and go off looking for their next customer.

I got an amazing insight into the world of the boda-bodas a week or so ago in Mbale after I had finished the Mt. Elgon hike. I was having dinner with Nico, the guy I climbed part of it with, when a Dutch guy and and a Ugandan woman that Nico knew came into the restaurant. So we had dinner with them too, and soon enough the conversation switched to the Boda-Bodas. The Ugandan woman was from Gulu, up in the north of Uganda, but now lives in Kampala. She was saying that the Boda-Boda price is not two tiered: Ugandan and Mzungu. Because she is not Buganda, the local tribe in the Kampala area, and does not speak Luganda, the main language of Kampala, she is charged more than Bugandans speaking Luganda. The Boda-Boda people size you up based on your dress, skin color, and once you open your mouth your language as well. This stuff is extremely complex as y'all can see, so mostly I just walk.

What Bob Barker should have said

Last night I saw, what I thought, was a ridiculous program on the National Geographic channel about a center for rehabilitating stray and behaviorially challenged dogs. There is an enormous dog center, called Dogtown, in Arizona. The medical facilities are the nicest I've seen anywhere for any kind of animal, humans included, and I was just in shock about the excesses put into this center. I had a thought in the middle of the ridiculous program people in the US probably care more about dogs than folks in Africa. While this is a very unfair general statement to make, there's probably some truth in it. My next thought was what if Bob Barker changed his famous last line of every show of The Price is Right. Instead of saying something like "remember to get your dog spayed or neutered" he changed it to "every day in Africa a 10 year old girl is raped and murdered" or "last year in Africa two million people died from AIDS" and followed it up with "do your part by doing x,y,z to help change this". Probably would have had little effect, if any, but who knows.

You can't visit this continent and not be affected by some of the horrific problems here. For me, ironically, I think I've been more impacted by the problems going on in a country I have not even officially visited, the Democractic Republic of Congo. You can see on the map of the trip that I have literally been next to half of the country's southern border and almost the entire eastern border. I've looked north and west for months now and seen the landscape of the DRC. In the last two decades over five and half million have died in the conflicts, primarily resulting from the Rwandan genocidaires fleeing into the eastern DRC. More and more, people have an idea that something has happened and is going on in the DRC, but I'll be 9 out of 10 people worldwide couldn't tell you a single detail about it.

Here's one detail about the war. The genocidal hutu militias and other rebel groups support themselves financially in large part through the mining of tin. The DRC has one third of the global reserves of tin, and its located in the eastern DRC in a region called the Kivus, where the militias pretty much run the show. Tin is used now in cellphones, computers, and quite a few different electronic devices because its replacing lead, which is more harmful to the consumer than tin. Tin is even being praised as allowing such devices to be more "eco-friendly". The militias control the mining and smuggle it out of other countries, such as Rwanda and the Republic of Congo(different country. yes, it's confusing), where it gains so called legitimacy for export to the world market.

This means that when you're buying your eco-friendly cellphone because it has tin, coltan, casserite, or other minerals from the eastern DRC which are supposedly better for the environment than lead you are in fact doing the following:
Unknowingly supporting groups responsible for five million deaths in the past twenty years. Groups that use sexual violence as a weapon of intimidation and genocide through the spread of HIV. In the three eastern DRC provinces of South Kivu, North Kivu, and Ituri its estimated that 75% of the women have been raped! Unfortunately, from what I've heard, simple rape is uncommon. Its usually gang rapes for days or months at a time. Women as young as you can imagine are regularly raped. Fathers are often forced to rape their daughters or see them killed. Sometimes they have to rape their daughters and than shoot them or be forced to watch the militia members rape their daughters and than hack to death with machetes. These groups are funding themselves through rich mining resources of the DRC, and the world is turning a blind eye. That the average world citizen does not know about this is an indictment of the world governments which know full well where they are buying their raw tin resources from, but choose to look the other way.

When I was in Gisenyi, Rwanda I was a few meters away from Goma, DRC. The two towns share the northern end of Lake Kivu, and from Gisenyi you can see planes taking off all the time from Goma. Its supposed to be a very poor city, and I couldn't figure out who the heck was flying in to the town every half hour to hour. Well, I just found out from Patrick, an American I met while rafting in Jinja who is working in Goma. He works for a non-profit airline that provides at cost flights to humanitarian groups around the world, and Goma is one of their biggest locations. I asked him about the flights, and he said there are constant flights from the mining regions to Goma and from Goma to several different places taking the raw ores out for processing and export. He said some of the flights actually go straight to Gisenyi, and that the Rwandan govt is seeing a nice middleman cut on the trade. The DRC can't really be considered one country by any sense of the imagination. The "central" govt. in Kinshasa has little control over events in the eastern DRC, and how could it? The country is half the size of the western US has only a few hundred miles of roads in the entire country. Most of the country is the rainforest, has huge mountains, and geographically is one of the most difficult places to move around in the world.

The geography of the region is definitly preventing any end to the ongoing violence, but the rest of the world's complacence is criminal. I recently read a Nicholas Kristof editorial in the NY Times which talked about the ongoing sexual violence and how the US was bringing up the issue at a special session of the UN. If the UN was serious about doing something they could have asked each nation to ban the import of tin from the DRC or the neighboring African countries which usually export it on behalf of the militia groups. There would be a black market trade, for sure, but it might make a dent in the groups finances. The decrease in funds wouldn't have a negative effect on the local communities who have been forced to work in the mines for non-existent wages, in the meantime their crops are neglected and people are hungrier with the mines than they were before. The only people making money are the militia groups and corrupt middlemen.

Ultimately, to sell something these days you need cheap resources and having an "eco-friendly" label is a great marketing tool. So its unlikely anything regarding the militia led mining in eastern DRC will change. Women will continue to be raped on a massive scale, more people will be killed, and our cellphones and computers will be cheap and "good" for the environment.