Howard W. French (http://www.howardwfrench.com)

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A Continent for the Taking

Africa first captivated New York Times journalist Howard W. French more than twenty-five years ago, but his knowledge of and passion for the continent has the depth of a lifetime association. His experiences there awakened him as nothing before to… read more

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I have been fascinated over these last few days to read obituaries and other articles in memory of the recentely departed Susan Sontag.There was even an item on the Chinese television news the other night, which I watched in my hotel room in the desolate little town of Dengfeng, the home of Shaolin. The fascination has been to learn or relearn details of her remarkable life, and to savor insights into her work and anecdotes from people who knew her. It has been fascinating in a much more personal way for me, as well, recalling my discovery of her through readings like ‘Against Interpretation’ and ‘On Photography,’ in West Africa. I got a good laugh remembering how both were picked up somewhat naively, but avidly, by a young man who was working an interpreter, and thought he could perhaps glean something of relevance to the “craft,” and as an amateur photographer, in a similar spirit. I had heard of her writings in Harpers and elsewhere, and knew they were nothing like technical manuals, but didn’t suspect the worlds they would open (Baudrillard, Barthes and on and on).
These are a few of my favorite comments seen in the various and varied coverage of Sontag’s death:

“With that signature black-on-white swoosh in her hair, and her charismatic and hard-traveling style, she achieved something else worthy of note�the status of celebrity without any of the attendant tedium and squalor. She resolutely declined to say anything about her private life or to indulge those who wanted to speculate… For her, the act of literary consumption was the generous parent of the act of literary production. She was so much impressed by the marvelous people she had read�beginning with Jack London and Thomas Mann in her girlhood, and eventually comprising the almost Borgesian library that was her one prized possession�that she was almost shy about offering her own prose to the reader. Look at her output and you will see that she was not at all prolific…Susan, pressed to define the word “polymath,” was both sweet and solemn. “To be a polymath,” she declared, “is to be interested in everything�and in nothing else.” She was always trying to do too much and square the circle: to stay up late debating and discussing and have the last word, then get a really early night, then stay up reading, and then make an early start. She adored trying new restaurants and new dishes. She couldn’t stand affectless or bored or cynical people, of any age. She only ventured into full-length fiction when she was almost 60, and then discovered that she had a whole new life. And she resisted the last malady with terrific force and resource, so that to describe her as life-affirming now seems to me suddenly weak. Anyway�death be not proud.”
Christopher Hitchens — from Slate

“Susan Sontag was a Manhattan chauvinist. To her, the rest of the US was, as she put it, “drive-through country”. Like many, if not most, Manhattan chauvinists, she grew up in drive-through country herself before heading for the bright lights. But New York was her spiritual home. Not that she was a New York provincial, for whom the world beyond the Hudson River was of no significance. Quite the contrary. She loved New York because it was the best place to mix with the rest of the world.

Sontag was also a europhile who studied at Oxford, lived in Paris, spent much time in Berlin, worked in Stockholm and felt equally at home in London or Rome. Her kind of europhilia was a natural component of her Manhattan chauvinism, for she understood something about her city that sometimes escapes the attention of more casual or superficial observers: Manhattan is where you can still hear the last echoes of a particular kind of European civilisation that was uprooted and almost totally wiped out at its source, a civilisation that flourished once in Vienna, Prague, Krakow and Berlin, before it was swept away by a foul brown tide. Susan Sontag was high-minded in the way that Franz Kafka was, or Robert Musil - or Walter Benjamin, one of her many cultural heroes. She belonged to a humanist tradition that was shaped by the Enlightenment.

Knowledge, aesthetics, political commitment and philosophy, to her, were the stuff of life. Reading the best books, seeing the most important films, hearing the greatest music or contemplating the finest art was not a matter of snobbery, or fashion, or keeping up with trends, but something far more serious.

Art and literature, to Sontag, were not created just to amuse. High civilisation was something you worked for or wrestled with; it took knowledge and study and reflection. The meretricious and superficial were abhorrent to her. In this, too, she was an intellectual, as it were, of the ancien regime. She must have been one of the only people in Manhattan who did not own a television set. She loved works that were long and difficult and took pride in sitting through a German film that lasted for seven hours, not just once, but many times, until she felt she understood, was enlightened. Friendship, to her, was to share her enthusiasm with others. This she did with extraordinary dedication and generosity. Criticism, in her hands, was rarely destructive. She explained why something was good, a much harder task.

Sharing knowledge and enthusiasms is of course an essential part of the European humanist tradition. The exploration of other civilisations, the discovery of the hitherto unknown translation - these are among the Enlightenment’s greatest legacies.

Sontag was a fine novelist, but it is as a translator, a transmitter of art and ideas, not just of Europe but of China, Japan and elsewhere, that she left her deepest mark. Without her, fewer people in the English-speaking world would have understood what Roland Barthes was about, or Jean-Luc Godard, or W. G. Sebald. Without her, Summer in Baden Baden, the brilliant Russian novel by Leonid Tsypkin, would never even have been published. She introduced New Yorkers to the masterpieces of Japanese cinema. She was a Manhattan chauvinist because the city was like a treasure trove of culture, a bazaar of intellectual and aesthetic joys. Again, in the tradition of Benjamin, Baudelaire, and Barthes she was a flaneur, always on the look-out for new cultural experiences and pick-ups.

Browsing in a Manhattan record shop or bookstore late at night, usually after a Japanese meal, was one of the pleasures of knowing Sontag, for these were voyages of discovery. She would want you to read this brilliant Polish essay, or that extraordinary Chilean novel. But her delight was not only as a guide. Her eyes would light up, like those of an enchanted child, if you managed to surprise her with a book or a piece of music she did not know. That did not happen often.”
Ian Buruma - from the Financial Times, Jan 4, 2004

And this kicker from Margalit Fox’s obit in The New York Times:
“In a 1992 interview with The Times Magazine, Ms. Sontag described the creative force that animated “The Volcano Lover,” putting her finger on the sensibility that would inform all her work: “I don’t want to express alienation. It isn’t what I feel. I’m interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says, be serious, be passionate, wake up.” “

Posted at 1:50 PM · Comments (0)

I don’t know how to describe this music,or better, what label to apply, which is perhaps the best recommendation I can make. Some might say “trance,” whatever that means.Some spots remind me of u-Ziq, a computerized music outfit that produces a lot of captivating stuff itself. Graham Haynes is a clasically trained Jazz musician who has struck upon something deeply original. There are strains of Wagner, There are machine drums that, contrary to all expectation, punctuate sparingly and have soul. And there is Haynes’s cornet, which he plays with tremendous cool, riding above a variety of storms of his own creation.

Posted at 6:59 PM · Comments (0)

I am heading off to Henan Province in the morning to indulge a childhood, well, not quite — a teenage fantasy, at least, born of Bruce Lee movies, and later, of all manner of Kung Fu films, mostly pretty atrocious, often seen in seedy West African theaters.
For the rest of the week, I’ll be visiting Shaolin monastaries and martial arts schools, with the added bonus of having my sons along for the ride. I studied Kung Fu briefly in high school, quitting because the drills that involved punching concrete pillars and trash cans full of sand, were too painful (ouch!)
Billy and Henry have both gone much farther, in a variety of martial arts traditions, and they are pretty excited about this, except for the minus-ten temperatures we’ve been warned about.
I hope to post pictures by the weekend. Stay tuned…

Posted at 12:17 AM · Comments (0)

We sat around the tree this morning, opened presents, shared wishes for happiness, ate breakfast, and then ran off to play with our new toys. Henry has a new computer. Billy and I are both installing Linux on our computers for the first time. (I’m using it now.) My Mac is in the shop because of a power plug problem, and I’ve had it with PCs. Henry, the devoted gamer, isn’t ready to throw in the towell.
Here’s wishing all of you happiness in the year ahead.

Posted at 2:21 PM · Comments (0)

This the story of Ivory Coast’s descent into ethnic cleansing, breakup and chaos, powerfully told by Ahmadou Kourouma, in the deceptively simply form of a fable.
Birahima, an ex-child soldier in neighboring Liberia, wanders the countryside, from Christian south to Islamicized north, seeking safety from death squads out to kill Muslims. His companion is the beautiful Fanta, several years his senior, and far better educated. She won’t become his lover, which is his dream, but she schools him on the history of their country from the colonial era through the post-independence period, delivering a series of remarkably effective homilies. Her language and Birahima’s, each very different from the other, is wonderfully evocative.
“Within the framework of French West Africa, Cote d’Ivoire was ruled by lieutennant governors. In 1934, the lieutennant governer master of Ivory Coast was a man named Reste. Reste was young, dynamic, full of initiative, and harbored big ambitions for the colony. The earth was rich, it must be exploited for the metropolis, France… He brought peasants from France to farm the country. This farming could only be done by pickaxe, by hoe and by shovel. That is to say, only by hand. No machinery had been invented yet that could work in tropical forests. What was required was manual labor, lots of manual labor, courageous manual labor… Governor Reste was free to do whatever he felt needed to be done. He began by setting up villages of people brought from Burkina in the Ivorian forest. Most importantly, he decreed a system of forced labor for the north of Ivory Coast, and for the portion of Burkina that he attached to Ivory Coast. That is to say, forced labor was decreed what what we call today the Dioula-speaking region.
The sytem of forced labor is nothing less than slavery under a different name. This slavery without the name is the most contemptible, shameful and contrary to human rights thing that was done under colonization. The youths who were conscripted, once recuited, were kept under careful guard for months of forced labor. They were sent south in freight cars that were kept sealed, even with temperatures reaching 45 degrees (C). These are the same cars, without the heat, that the Germans used to send the Jews to labor camps during the last war. Forced labor assured the French peasants a supply of high quality, cheap workers. The (French) planters and entrepreneurs didn’t care about the health of these workers. The laborers dropped like flies. No matter, they were replaced every few months.”
****
“Me, little Birahima, I’ve reflected on this and thought about it lengthily. There are two kinds of white men. Those who think that blacks are stinking liars, and believe that even when they put on cologne, think they still smell like a fart. They steer clear of blacks and treat us like asses. These are the partisans of apartheid, like the Petain crowd during the war. Others think that blacks are born innocent and friendly, always smiling, always ready to share whatever they have. They feel we must be protected from the bad white
folks. Those are the ones who are called Communists.”

Passages translated from the French by Howard French.

Posted at 1:15 PM · Comments (0)

For as long as I write this column on Asia - which enters its 10th year next month - I doubt I will ever witness anything as amusing or telling as the flare-up that took place at the close of the University of Southern California’s Asia Conference last month.

Until the very end, the conference on Japan’s new economy for foreign investors had gone swimmingly. Everyone on the panel had agreed that Japan’s economy was, indeed, a globalised flower garden opening up to outsiders faster than an overnight burst of spring. The consensus was seemingly harmonious until a single dissonant voice boomed out.

The consensus-breaker was a normally placid Thai businessman who, like a Buddhist monk, ordinarily kept his true thoughts to himself. But he just could not take it any more and lambasted the entire panel for being in denial about the reality of Japan.

And his view is not simply contrarian. Japan hardly seems to have made up its mind about which way to go. Like the French, the Japanese have a word or two for such a phenomenon. They use the term tatamae for the things people say out loud only because it seems to be the right thing to say. Then they use the term honne to refer to the real situation that often goes unsaid.

Take the question of the alleged Japanese economic recovery. The tatamae is that Japan grew at a remarkable 3.8 per cent annually from early 2002 to early this year. In fact, as The Oriental Economist, the authoritative New York-published monthly on Japan, reports in its issue this month, the growth rate was at best 2.6 per cent and perhaps barely 2.1 per cent. This honne is actually a slower growth rate. And now, a major investment bank in Japan is predicting growth next year of barely 0.5 per cent.

“You overemphasise Japan’s willingness to reform itself,” a long-time reader and former UCLA student said in a recent e-mail to me. “The Japanese don’t like change.”

That is just not true, assert many Japanese observers and west-coast-based David Matsumoto, a professor at California State University in San Francisco.

The truth, he says, is that Japan is a simmering caldron of change, fuelled by generational cleavage, a youth revolt and the unavoidable impact of globalisation. His deep-seated fear is not so much that Japan is unchangeable, but that unavoidable changes may catapult it into sudden social disorder, if not revolution.

Perhaps it is this insight that helps explain the seeming paradox of Junichiro Koizumi, the forward-looking prime minister who is trying to thaw the encrusted economy by, for example, privatising the vast postal service, yet who stubbornly trudges to those controversial war shrines and cemeteries that remind everyone else in Asia of the dangerously militaristic imperial Japan.

Mr Koizumi may contain within himself both the tatamae baloney that enrages Asians like our friend, the Thai businessman, and the honne honesty of Professor Matsumoto, the ultimate optimist.

Tom Plate, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, is the founder of the Asia Pacific Media Network

Distributed by UCLA Media Centre - All Rights Reserved.

Posted at 12:47 PM · Comments (0)

That’s the title of one of my favorite songs by Fela Ransome Kuti, which I listened to for the second time in two days yesterday, while working out at the gym.
As much as I love Fela, I often skip forward to the next song when he comes up on the IPod while I’m at the gym. The problem is that you know his song is going to last 15-20 minutes, and I’ve got my gym routine set up as an overall airing out session: good exercise, read something totally unrelated to work while I’m on the bike, and listen to as much good music as I can squeeze into a 45-60 minute session.
Look and Laugh, which I’d never listened to so carefully before, though, is remarkable in a number of ways. Fela plays really clever tricks with his pronunciation of words like “country” and “democracy,” partly in order to force them into his rhyme and time schemes, but also partly, I think, to subvert the terms themselves; to get us to question them.
The musicianship is excellent here, several steps above the normally hypnotic Fela horn choruses, which are already so effective as to cause you to discount them after repeated listenings.
Best, though, are the lyrics, which are incendiary, and vividly recall the sham democracy of the Shagari years. I’ve done my best with the transcript:

“Since long time I never write new �ting. Long time I never sing new song. Long time I never write new �ting. Long time I never sing new song.

Many of you go dey wonder why, your man never sing new song. Many of you go dey wonder why, your man never write new ting. My brother no be so da be say, da bi I won�t keep quiet. My brother no be say I no want write new song for you to make you to think I�m happy. What �ting ya dey do be say. What ting ya dey do be say. (Chorus: They looku and dey laughu)

I say what �ting ya dey do. Ah dey looku and dey laughu. I say what �ting ya dey do. Ah dey looku and dey laughu. Change this way, me and you. (Chorus: They looku and dey laughu.). Guns for this cunt-TE �ry (country). Now wish for me. They looku and dey laughu. What ting de no sing, about in this cunt-TE �ry (Chorus: They looku and dey laughu.) Sing sing sing. Till dem come. Come charge me. For armed robbery. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. (Chorus: They looku and dey laughu.) A dey say make you bring your ears, near rap to me, and hear my experience, hear about (Chorus: They looku and dey laughu.) I say what �ting ya dey do, say. (Chorus: They looku and dey laughu.) Ah dey looku and dey laughu. I say what �ting ya dey do, say. (Chorus: They looku and dey laughu.) Ha ha ha ha he he he. Ha ha ha ha he he he. Ah shookudu, ah shookudu, (Chorus: Hey!) Ah shookudu. (Chorus: Hey! Hey!) Oooh.

Waiting man go do dey do one night Obasanjo pass guv�ment to Shagari-oh. Shagari do dey guv�ment regime four years � No head, No tail. Inside this no head no tail, same water no light till day. Shagari himself say the economy of de cunt-ery is collapsing. Then those old people with gap on eye, carrying walking stick come on to. With ah PPP, oh ye PPP, na say. All for 198-thuree (1983). (Chorus: They looku and dey laughu.) I must look and laugh-u. What �ting I no sing, about in this cunt-TE �ry. Sing sing sing. Till dem come. Come charge me, for armed robbery. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. Ha ha ha ha he he he. Ha ha ha ha he he he. Ah shookudu, ah shookudu, (Chorus: Hey!) Ah shookudu. (Chorus: Hey! Hey!) Oooh.

Contractor and minister commissioner make agreement to make road. All of us know how done government they take make road for year. Then the road starts, asphalt put, machines signs and stones. As the road starts, Shagari makes announcement, contractor self makes own. Contractor say as the economy done go things go cost, so road must stop. Government say no more money. Contractor go, government stay. Chey da one nourish to laugh-u. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. (Chorus: Looku and ah laughu.) I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. (Chorus: Looku and ah laughu.) What ting ya no sing about in this cunt-ery. When dem come and burn my houses. All my property. Burn one of them-oh. Pity, pity me. Kill my Mama. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. What �ting Ah no sing, about in this cunt-ery? What �ting Ah no sing, about in this cunt-ery? Sing sing sing. Four years later. Till dem come, break break de house. De house I dey stay. Dey come beat beat me, till dey say I dey die. Till the ting say I done die. Then I get up. Them tie my hands. Dem tie my legs. Dem throw me inside police infront. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. Them come carry me go. Dem charge me for, charge for armed robbery. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. I must-o looku and-o laugh-o. I must ha-ha-ha hey hey hey, Ah shookudu, ah shookudu, (Chorus: Hey!) Ah shookudu. (Chorus: Hey! Hey!) Oooh.

Look at our television and listen to our radio in Nigeria, the way dem do their nonsense finish. Newspaper self go join. My obie say too many oversea things in our home, too small. They way them do with our own smallThe way we do with our small self�. No plan, set, no ideas in sight, them dem dey go copy overseas, dey go. Government dis, guvment dat, in dey tights this and dungarees. Ahhh, looku loouku, laugh-u laugh-u. I no no what tin dem do inside. Looku loouku, laugh-u laugh-u

Police uniform come important. Nothing to do for this cunt-ery. Go to court in big a big English, and still dem do dey nonsense. Looku loouku, laugh-u laugh-u

Nigeria still dey he where dey. Poor man still plenty. looku loouku, Laugh-u laugh-u. Guvment people dey still enjoy dey, with police supporting. Looku loouku, laugh-u laugh-u. Nigeria still dey he where dey. Poor man still plenty. looku loouku, Laugh-u laugh-u.

I must look-u and laugh. I must look-u and laugh. I must look-u and laugh. I must look-u and laugh. I must look-u and laugh. I must look-u and laugh. I must look-u and laugh. I must look-u and laugh.
“
I’ve written at length about Fela in my book, having been privileged to see a show at the Shrine in Lagos. There is a brilliant reminiscence below from my colleague, Jogn Darnton, of the Times. There’s also an excerpt of an interview I found on the web.

Posted at 1:10 PM · Comments (0)

Visitors can see pictures of Banlao and the surrounding region in my Yunnan picture gallery (Click to view pictures).

BANLAO, China - The road to this town, treacherous and narrow, ends after miles of knee-deep mud on a mountain path that looks down upon the clouds. It was market day, and the gently sloping main street was so choked with people and goods changing hands that for all the tattered clothes and sun-creased faces, the place radiated a measure of prosperity.

The magic of the larger market that has lifted so much of China out of poverty has bypassed most of this region, where peasants live as they have for generations, carrying firewood on their backs and farming the steep, terraced slopes by hand. But Banlao, otherwise lost in the shadows of tall mountains, where neighboring Myanmar, formerly Burma, looms visible in the distance, has another source of wealth.

The authorities say 10 percent of China’s illegal narcotics traffic enters through the surrounding Lancang Prefecture and 85 percent of the arrests in this part of southwestern Yunnan Province are made in this one hamlet.

During a simple lunch of noodles at a sidewalk restaurant, a local man was asked where to look for signs of the illicit wealth. Barely interrupting his meal, he gestured with his head to a storefront across the street. With its slatted doors, big glass windows and new tile roof, it indeed stood out, with the clean look of a Japanese sushi restaurant.

“That was a restaurant built by a drug dealer,” the man announced casually. “He was arrested, then executed.” As he spoke, he lifted his hand to his head, mimicking a pistol, and pulled the trigger. If what the man was saying was true, it would be a typical fate.

Local folk say that perhaps 70 percent of the shops on the single business street were built by people who made their money in the heroin trade, and that half of those arrested have been executed.

Heroin has a particularly repugnant resonance for the Chinese government, tied up so deeply as it is with the country’s subjugation at the hands of Western powers in the 19th century, when British trading companies promoted opium addiction among Chinese as a way, in part, of balancing their trade.

Drug use was almost eradicated under Communist rule but returned after the easing of border controls and social constraints in the 1980’s. Since then, year after year of strenuous campaigns have done little to stem the flow of narcotics across the border from Myanmar and Laos.

The poverty here is one cause. The nearest junior high school is still several miles away, on a road so bad that only tractors can navigate it. Electricity arrived five years ago, and mobile phone service came just last year.

Some here say one million yuan, or about $120,000, is not an uncommon payback for those who are willing to hike the 20 miles or so into Myanmar to sneak the drug back into China, where a portion will be sold by crime syndicates for domestic use and the bulk of it exported.

“The police have been fighting this problem intensively since the 1980’s, but people are so poor here there’s no difference between being alive or dead,” said Mo Zaigang, 36, a peasant who together with friends spoke with a stranger in the backyard of a tumbledown, barrackslike home, where peas dried on the ground in the sun. “The only way is going out,” he said, using the common shorthand for seeking one’s fortune in the drug trade.

As his friends nodded in assent, Mr. Mo added, matter-of-factly: “I am sure you can make a lot of money if you’re not caught. Others get nothing, though, and just lose their lives.”

With that, the men’s conversation shifted to the ebb and flow of misery here, from the severest times they could remember, before the reforms begun 25 years ago, when collective farming was still in force. One man said people ate leaves off trees to survive.

As China’s economic liberation gathered speed in the 1980’s and the borders opened a bit here, many people became migrant workers on poppy farms in Myanmar, getting their first taste of the heroin trade. Then came outright trafficking, followed by severe crackdowns, with big police sweeps, compulsory re-education programs and frequent executions.

But the enforcement efforts have hardly dented the drug trade because, many here say, poverty is not the only cause. Official corruption, they say, a plague that spares little in China, is also a factor.

Tales abound of how relatives of trafficking suspects have offered large sums of money to the police, only to have the cash disappear and their relatives sent away for imprisonment or execution. In China people can be executed for possession of as little as 50 grams of heroin, less than two ounces.

Whether true or not, other commonly heard stories are more sinister still, involving rumored collusion between Burmese drug lords and the Chinese police.

“People buy the drugs from a boss in Burma, and the boss informs on them to the police,” said Mo Shuli, a resident in another part of the town whose nephew was recently arrested, having been found with a friend in possession of over 1,000 grams, more than two pounds. “The boss takes the money, and the police here get to boast of another success.”

Mr. Mo, whose wife cut and diced sections of heart of palm to feed to a hog that grunted impatiently in its pen nearby, made no attempt to claim his nephew’s innocence.

“The boy needed money, and nobody warned him in time,” he said. “He is locked up now, and has left behind his little daughter. I am sure he is filled with regret.”

Copyright The New York Times 2004

Posted at 12:55 PM · Comments (0)

I ordered this for myself this morning, call it is a Christmas present to myself. Yes, I know. I’m spoiled. I came across the article below, from Slate, last night and was driven to action. I’ve already got the Complete Blue Note Sessions, which is a massive and gorgeous body of work. I’d discovered one of the discs, “Go,” as a sophomore in college, and was hooked. Go has a lot of upbeat stuff, breakneck, even, on the title tune. It is true exhilirating. What lay ahead in the other discs, that I bought one by one, though, was the real source of my addiction: Dexter’s ballads. There may be a small universe of sax players who have better chops — very small. But nobody can set a mood better than Dex. Nobody quotes better in the middle of piece, which is something Dexter brings off with such playfull nonchalance that the effect of pleasant suprise, indeed wonderment, never wears off. My friend Eric, in Tokyo, thinks Dexter is cheezy. Granted some of his “comeback mode” recordings in the ’80s were off par and even woozy, but listen to Dexter in his prime, close your eyes, ride with him, and you’ll never put him away.

“Dexter Gordon was a pioneer, the tenor saxophonist who combined the sonorous cadences of Coleman Hawkins, the fleet lyricism of LesterYoung, and the harmonic acrobatics of Charlie Parker. Every tenor giant in his wake�Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, especially�followed the path he carved. Yet 14 years after his death at age 67, Long Tall Dexter is nearly forgotten. He’s best known for his starring turn in the film Round Midnight, where his acting was stellar but his playingso-so (he wasn’t well during the shoot). So, this 11-CD box-set is more than welcome. Dexter could blow chorus after chorus without repetition. He first drew fame for his tenor duels, which he nearly always won, but sustained the applause for his way with ballads: his molasses tone and breezy phrasings, but more still his insistent focus on the form and romance of the song.” Copyright Slate 2004

Posted at 12:09 PM · Comments (0)

Has any other song ever had so much impact? Do They Know It’s Christmas?, the sing-along single recorded by British supergroup Band Aid in 1984 to raise money for starving Ethiopians, was the beginning of a fund-raising phenomenon. The song, which brought together everyone from U2 to Wham! (an achievement in itself), went straight to No. 1 in Britain and raised some $ 18 million. We Are the World, an even schmaltzier American effort, and the accompanying Live Aid rock concert, which was screened to 1.5 billion people around the globe, raised millions more. Band Aid, the brainchild of scruffy Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof and electropop pioneer Midge Ure, eventually pulled in more than $ 144 million, most of which bought emergency food for Ethiopia. “I once said that we would be more powerful in memory than in reality,” Geldof remarked in 1992 when the original Band Aid Trust was laid to rest. “Now we are that memory.”

This Christmas we can hear it all again. The season marks the 20th anniversary of the original release of Do They Know It’s Christmas?, and Geldof’s resurrection of the song—featuring contemporary stars like Robbie Williams and Chris Martin from Coldplay—came out in Europe last week and is a hit again (it’s available in the U.S. as an import at music chain stores and as a download from bandaid20.com). Proceeds will again help starving Africans, especially those in Sudan’s Darfur region, where fighting between rebels and government-backed militias has left 70,000 dead and more than 2 million homeless in what Washington calls genocide. The new version of the song is mellower than the original, but the lyrics are the same: In Africa this Christmas, “the only water flowing/ Is the bitter sting of tears.” Still.

At the risk of appearing churlish and mean-spirited in this festive season, I have to say I’m not sure rerecording the song is a big help. Band Aid has been criticized before for its cheesy tune, and Do They Know It’s Christmas? may not be the right question asked of Muslims in Sudan. But my gripe is about the way the song reinforces the popular impression that all Africans are starving as they wait for heroic Westerners to come and save them. In 1984 Do They Know It’s Christmas? did a lot of good for the people of Ethiopia, and for that it should be praised. But it also left another, perhaps more powerful legacy: the image of Ethiopia as a land “where nothing ever grows/ No rain nor rivers flow.”

Mention Ethiopia today, and most people still think of starving, helpless stick figures scrambling in the dust for food. So strong is the picture of famine and hunger that Ethiopian Airlines’ offices around the world still field inquiries from travelers wondering whether they should bring their own meals for the flight. Upon hearing that the song had been rerecorded, an Ethiopian friend of mine, Edna Berhane, who works in public health in Africa, was worried that it sent the same old negative message: “Here we go again. It’s been 20 years, but Africa is still mired in its misery, famine, wars, genocide. Let’s help them see the light … again.”

In reality, Africa is a huge continent where most people are not starving, where over the past decade democracy has begun to take hold and Africans have started to grapple with their own problems and where more than 90% of respondents to a recent BBC poll said they were proud to be African. Sure, Africa has plenty of troubles: war, droughts, poverty and HIV/AIDS, but Do They Know It’s Christmas? doesn’t address any of the causes of these problems. There’s no mention that most of the continent’s famines are caused by strongmen who use food as a weapon against their enemies. And there’s no reference to the reasons behind the poverty: lack of infrastructure and investment, kleptocratic leaders and barriers to growth like European and American farm subsidies that price African produce out of the market. The truth is, 20 years after Geldof & Co. set out to feed Africa, Africa still needs feeding. But more aid—and a simplistic song that perpetuates stereotypes—is probably not the answer.

Geldof and other Africa activists, like U2 front man Bono, are wonderful advocates for the push to cancel the continent’s debt and open up Western markets to Africa’s farmers. But I suggest they change their tune and come up with a hit demanding that the West drop its agricultural subsidies, cancel more debt and urge Africa’s worst leaders to go. How about something like:

It’s Christmas time

There’s no need to block trade

At Christmastime

We can buy African and banish farm aid

And in our world of Western plenty

We can spread our wealth around

Throw out Africa’s despots

At Christmastime.

Get 1.5 billion people singing along to that, and you could really make a difference in Africa.

Simon Robinson is TIME’s Africa bureau chief

Posted at 4:16 PM · Comments (0)

SECTION: FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE - Lunch with the FT — Dec. 4, 2004

NO CONTEST: her show must go on

Despite the interventions of feminists and Islamic fundamentalists billions watch Miss World and raise millions for charity. Little wonder then that its boss, Julia Morley, makes no apologies.

Four years ago, a British woman named Julia Morley received a phone call from the American business tycoon Donald Trump. Her husband Eric, founder of the Miss World competition, had died shortly before and Trump owned the rival franchise, Miss Universe. “He said, ‘This is the time for you to throw in the towel,’” she recalls. “I said I would think about it.”

She was still in a state of shock. “Eric had been a wonderful, steadying influence on me - always enthusiastic, never bad- tempered. He gave me a lot of confidence.” But he was 20 years older than her and she’d always thought it natural that she would take over Miss World one day. So she declined Trump’s offer. “Miss World is a year older than Miss Universe,” she says, no longer mournful but combative. “Trump has only 70 countries, we have many more. I want to take him on!” she grins. “I love that challenge!”

The first Miss World was held in England to coincide with the Festival of Britain in 1951. At the time, Eric Morley was manager of a celebrated London ballroom, and he was eager to capitalise on the festival by holding a search for the most beautiful woman in the world. In the years that followed, Miss World grew rapidly. Now in its 54th year, it’s one of the world’s most watched annual entertainments on TV. Only the Olympics and World Cup soccer are bigger. More than 2.3bn people in 162 nations watched last year’s Miss World, and in the final week 30m visited the website every day.

This year the event - which began today in China - is more high- tech than ever, with viewers able to vote for their favourite candidate by phone, SMS, TV remote control and online. “Eric was a brilliant man but he didn’t understand technology,” Morley says brightly. “The vote is a very good moneyspinner. People are afraid to say that, but it’s true.”

We’re talking at a restaurant in London’s Soho. Morley chose Zilli Fish because it’s close to her office and because fish is “supposed to be good for you”. We forego starters and Morley orders the sea bass. I choose the special of the day, which turns out to be some kind of white fish.

“I’m an optimist,” she says. “That’s the way I am. Some people look at the downside. I have always found accountants depressing. They kill enthusiasm. I get nervous meeting my own accountant,” (an adviser she inherited from Eric). “I love him dearly but he always looks depressed. I can never make him say, ‘Yaaay! That’s a great idea!’ He says: ‘Yes, that might work.’ We should say, ‘Down with accountants!’”

Already in her 60s, Morley has dark hair and a virtually unlined face that looks 20 years younger. But it’s not entirely unlined, so she can’t have had “work” done, surely? Hoping to flush out the truth on this important matter without asking directly, I wonder aloud whether contestants on Miss World are permitted to undergo improving surgery. She says there’s no way she can stop them - but, unaccountably, stops short of admitting to any such work herself.

So much for her skin. Her smile incorporates a twinkle that is hard to fake. Her conversation too is likeable: constantly upbeat, she never attempts to intimidate with intellect. This is a woman who once admitted to thinking that Sharia, the Muslim legal code, was a girl’s name. “I did! I swear to you!”

She further reveals her flaky side when discussing the feminists who upstaged Miss World in 1970 - causing mayhem with placards, stink bomb, tomatoes, bags of flour. “What was the name of that girl,” Morley asks. “A nice lady, Australian.?” Does she mean the academic and author Germaine Greer? “That’s right, lovely girl. Well she made a fuss at the time but then went off and got married and lived happily ever after.” Hesitantly, I ask if Morley is sure this is correct. “Well, if she didn’t, forgive me,” she says, unfazed.

Like those feminists, however, Morley didn’t like all Eric’s ideas. “It made me cringe,” she once said of the onstage rotations, in swimsuits and high heels, that were co-ordinated by Eric shouting, “Turn! And turn! And turn again!” Under her influence, Miss World gradually changed: from the 1980s onwards women were no longer judged on looks alone but also on personality and intelligence. But that wasn’t enough. No longer regarded as suitable entertainment for right-minded people - in the UK, anyway - Miss World was dropped by the BBC and, in 2000, for the 50th anniversary show at London’s Millennium Dome, viewers had to watch it on the then obscure Channel Five.

“People can be very serious about the silliest things,” Morley says, attempting to explain why anyone would disapprove of Miss World. “But light-heartedness does not mean you are stupid. The girls are very bright and I would pitch their wits against anyone you care to name. We even have accountants among them. They actually want to be accountants! They’re very bright.” She reflects for a second. “But even if they weren’t, there’s room for everyone.”

She was born Julia Pritchard, the youngest child of nine (“and we weren’t even Catholic!”). Her father was a musician. She met Eric in 1958 at the Locarno Ballroom, where he worked at the time. “He was standing in the foyer and suggesting that the ladies should form a queue. He talked to my sister. She told him I was 17. He found out where I lived and sent me beautiful flowers. My mother invited him round. He got on incredibly well with my father.” That same year, Julia gave birth to her first child. She was unmarried. Eric was not the father, but two years later he proposed marriage. “I was very happy with my son, and being independent - I was probably one of the first independent women. But marrying Eric was good and right and a wonderful thing to do.” Eric looked on her son as his own, she says, and together they had four more children. The fifth, an adopted girl, died of a progressive disease of the central nervous system. “When she was four, the doctors told us she had only a year to live. But she lived until she was 16, and she was one of the happiest, most wonderful and brilliant people.”

After some years looking after the children, Julia started working alongside Eric. “Someone working for him was unable to continue. He asked if I could help out. I figured it was not much different from home life. You have to enthuse people. I was a bit surprised that business was so simple.”

A fair portion of food remains on Morley’s plate but I realise she stopped eating some time ago. We order coffee.

In developing countries, Miss World has gone from strength to strength. One million people turned out, in the early 1990s, to see contestants meet Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg. In India, homeland of four winners in seven years, franchised Miss World academies have sprung up to rival the ones already established in south America. The great new market is China: the day before our lunch, Morley was in Beijing signing a broadcasting contract. She obviously loves China. Why? “Well, the people are keen to learn.” She pauses again. “They nod and smile and they’re so nice - and then you realise you’ve been had! But they’re probably capable of making millions more without you, so it’s better to give a good share, rather than the usual 10 or 15 per cent. The Chinese like 50 per cent. And I think if you treat people on that basis you win in the end. There are hard business reasons: people will work harder for you.”

In 2002, the event was held in Nigeria, with catastrophic results. A journalist covering the event made the mistake of suggesting that the Prophet Mohammed might approve of Miss World. In the riots that ensued, some 250 people were killed. “Down with beauty!” the rioters yelled. “Miss World is sin! Allahu Akbar!” At the last moment, Morley took the decision to fly out of Nigeria and held the event in London instead - at a cost to herself of Pounds 1m.

How did she feel afterwards? “When you have these setbacks, you feel bloody shit. But you must not look down for too long.” Has she been back to Nigeria? “I was there for Christmas last year. They’re lovely people. And there is a lot of work to be done there, people who require surgery. “

The sentence peters out because she doesn’t like to “go on” about charity work. But it would be ridiculous, I counter, not to give some idea what that work involves. After all, Miss World has contributed some Pounds 250m to charity during the past 25 years.

So she relents, agreeing to tell a story about Ethiopian girls whose pelvises are too small to allow natural childbirth. One such girl whom Morley helped had given birth, after terrible difficulties - to just the baby’s severed head. The rest of it was still inside her. “She started to smell very bad, and she was thrown out of her house.” But a priest sent her to Addis Ababa, where doctors funded by Miss World repaired much of the damage. “This was the only place the girls were hugged. They were sent home with notes explaining to local doctors and midwives that they must never have a baby naturally again.” (Miss World is also training local people to perform Caesarian operations.)

“So it’s good to make money,” she concludes, “and there’s nothing wrong with profit. But I want to use it well. I’m over 60. There’s not much I need in life. And you can do a lot more when you’re older - because you’re not so screwed up about proving yourself.”

Zilli Fish, London

1 x tomato juice 1 x mineral water

1 x sea bass

1 x special of the day

2 x zucchini

1 x spinach

2 x coffee

Total: Pounds 64.10

Posted at 4:07 PM · Comments (0)

So, my new toy is up and running, and I’ve had a pleasant surprise in hearing from many friends, some long-lost, who have come across the site. I have also come to appreciate the burdens of publishing: having to create fresh content for something like this can very nearly become a full-time job, if one isn’t disciplined. (I’ve got a pretty interesting full-time job, and a big new writing challenge on the side already.) At the other extreme, of course, the whole project can be allowed to flag and stagnate, but that would be no fun.
My plan, for now, is to add some content, whether text or photos, every day. What I would most enjoy is seeing more from all of you. Many have written privately, with interesting comments about books or music or travel, or whatever. It would be great if, in the future, you would post your comments here — even simple greetings.

Posted at 9:51 AM · Comments (1)

This is a strong and unexpectedly rich bio by the former head of Procter & Gamble in India. Under the guise of a business book, it tells a great deal more, namely India’s emergence as an independent nation and now, fast globalizing society. That sounds dry perhaps. The book is anything but. Das writes learnedly and with great humor.

“Since leaving P & G, I have been consultant to half a dozen Indian companies, and I have concluded that most Indian enterprises suffer from this problem [poor teamwork]… The paradigmatic story concerns two Indians who meet in New York and decide to form an Indian Association. When a third arrives, they form a Tamil Association; with a fourth comes the Bengali Association. And so on until there are fifteen regional associations and the old Indian Association is forgotten. One day someone has the “brilliant idea” to join the regional association into an Indian Association. It’s a funny story, and it makes us laught, but it also illustrates our divisive character. A Swiss manager of a multinational company told me that sure way to inaction is to put two talented Indians on a glbal task force. The will never agree and brilliantly argue the proposal to death.”

… “With great charm, on the spring morning — one of Delhi’s best. We were ushered into the PM’s garden. Mrs. Ghandi looked charming, surrounded by spring flowers. She wore a white Bengal cotton saree with a narrow red border and looked cultivated, aloof, and imperious. She was not a particularly good speaker, although she had the instinctive ability to come up with the right phrase. Looking at her, it was hard to believe that this unimposing woman was the astude politician who had single-handedly destroyed the old Congress bosses and emerged the new messiah of the poor in the 1971 elections. She had dismembered Pakistan after a victorious 14-day war and given birth to the new country of Bangaladesh. She had stood up to President Nixon of the United States; she had been unimpressed by his diversion of the Seventh Fleet with its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to the Bay of Bengal. Finally she had declared an Emergency and become a dictator for twenty-two months.
After a brief speech, she opened the forum to questions. A few sycophants from the industry got up and eulogized her for her achievements. Then there was silence. Not a single person was willing to risk a hard question. This is embarrassing, I thought. Surely someone will get up. Just as she was about to close the forum, I got up and decided to take my chances. “Madam Prime Minister,” I sad. “May I have your views on two subjects that have been troubling me? The first concerns a friend of mine who cannot introduce a new product into the market because he does not have a license. Meanwhile, his competitor has preempted all the licensed capacity. What should he do?”
Mr.s Ghandi turned to one of her advisers and then artfully defended licensing. “We are a poor country, you see; we have limited resources, which we ration through the licensing system. If we let anyone produce what he wants, we will have no foreign exchange left for the country’s necessities.” All very plausible. I thought, but very bad economics all the same.
“It is a brilliant new product, madam,” I persisted. “What do you think he should do?”
“Has he made a proposal?”
“Yes, it was rejected because of the ‘excess capacity in the industry’.”
Send me the proposal,” she said. Surely it was wrong for the Prime Minister of the country, I thought, to get into such matters. “I was just wondering, Madam Prime Minister, shouldn’t the market decide what should be produced?”
“Does the market always make the right decision?” she asked.
“Not always, madam, but always better than bureaucrats,” I said.
“Ah, we have a market-wallah, do we?” She smiled and gave me a look as though I belonged to the school for the mentally disabled that she had opened the previous day. Others laughes as well and the tension eased.
My second question related to the high cost of our products. I suggested that if we brought down our exorbitant excise taxes and import duties, costs would come down, goods would become cheaper, markets would begin to grow, and government revenues would boom. Mrs. Ghandi shook her head and gave me the same indulgent look. Patiently she explained, “I don’t think industrialists will pass on lower taxes to consumers; lower import duties will fritter away our foreign reserves and businessmen will again clamor for protection because they won’t be able to compete against imports. As for income taxes, if we lower them, who will pay our salaries?” She smiled charmingly. The audience laughed again. I was unconvinced…
With great charm, on the spring morning, amidst shining marigolds, Mrs. Ghandi had attempted to preserve the three myths of the ancien regime — the value of licensing, the importance of high taxes, and the need to limit foreign investment. As I was leaving the PM’s house, an elder statesman of industry nudged me and whispered, “Watch it, young man!” I turned around, but he was gone.

Posted at 4:42 PM · Comments (0)

Betty Roche was another discovery. I’m going to borrow from Pedro Martinez and give Jeff “My Daddy” Kingston his props. I found this at his place in Gunma last summer, filed it away into the IPod, and it has been working on me ever since. Part Sarah Vaughn, part Dinah Washington, this woman has major personality and phrasing to run with the best. Does anyone know how and why she disappeared, scarcely leaving a trace?
She has two other discs on Amazon, both strong.

Posted at 4:29 PM · Comments (0)

This is U-Roy at his finest. I’ve never “forgotten” this guy, but rediscovered some of his songs this summer on a trip to the States with a freshly loaded IPod 40g containing most of my collection. Cycling through on the random setting I came across Small Axe and Evil Doers from this CD. Has anybody ever done more with so little? U-Roy’s ingredients are minimalist in the best tradition, but boy can he mix them. Listen to the little growls and cries.

Posted at 4:24 PM · Comments (0)

This is from a public policy group that is doing a great service on African issues in the US (http://www.africafocus.org). I’ve got a related article, about the importance of Africa’s emerging democracies in the November/December issue of The Crisis, published by the NAACP.

AfricaFocus Bulletin
Dec 19, 2004 (041219)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“What Ghanaians have managed to do with this election is prove that
election management is no rocket science. It requires adequate and
competent preparation, a high degree of transparency, a responsible
government, which respects its own citizens, and an alert citizenry
ready to protect their vote. … the process that I witnessed was
without exaggeration better than what transpired in the last US
election.” - Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Centre for Democracy and
Development

Of five African elections held in the last two months - in Ghana,
Niger, Botswana, Namibia, and Mozambique - none attracted major
international attention. All returned incumbent parties to office,
and none was entirely free of questionable aspects of process or
broader questions concerning concentration of political power. But
they were also a sign of the routinization of elections as a
component of political stability in a large number of African
countries.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a commentary on the election in
Ghana from the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD),
published in Pambazuka News for December 16, 2004. It is also
available on the CDD website (http://www.cdd.org.uk), along with
reports on other West African elections.

For reports on elections in Southern Africa, see
http://www.eisa.org.za More detailed reports on the election in
Mozambique are available at
http://www.mozambique.mz/awepa/issues.htm

A post-election report from an international observer mission to
the U.S. election (see http://www.africafocus.org/docs04/elec0410.php
for background and excerpts from a pre-election report) is available
at http://www.fairelection.us

Posted at 5:21 PM · Comments (0)

I re-read this during the summer, having read it (I shudder to think) way back in the late 1980s. It is a biting, comedic tour de force that spares no one, quite unlike anything else Updike has written. It is set mostly in a fictional African country called “Noire,” that bares a strong resemblance to Chad, or perhaps Niger, with scenes in the American Midwest, where the book’s African hero, Felix Ellelou, had come to study before returning home and becoming president. Updike once called it is his Mandarin novel, because of its baroque qualities. A sample:
“Esmerelda Miller was an interesting color, a gray as of iron filings so fine the eye could not detect the individual grains. In Hakim’s fancy the tint, which savored of manufacture, was a by-product of her beliefs, her economic determinism. At the same time she was an attractive, ectomorphic young woman, with a lean prognanthous face, almond-shaped eyes framed in pink plastic spectacles, and a bewitching way of thoughtfully swaying her jaw, as if testing molar crowns her father had made for her. “What are trying to achieve?” she would sak the young deserter from Noire, across the table in the Off-Campus Luncheonette, or later in the Pure Dairy Products Ice Cream Parlor, or later still in the Badger Cafe, with its beer-soaked sawdust on the floor, and its bubbling, phosphorescent advertisements. “Messing arouund with this deluded bitch Candy.”
“Achieve? That’s a rather other-directed way of putting it. What did Freud say? Pleasure is the removal of tension. There is a tension that screwing her relives. There was not doubt the sex has a component of vengeance, of tasting evil, of stealing Charlie’s prize, et cetera. From her side, kindred craziness. Still, we get along.”
Here’s another excert:
And this passage about Felix meeting his white American girlfriend’s (Candace) parents:
“In the home of Candace’s parents, where she took me late in our freshman year, the white woodwork was like a cage also. I marvelled at the tightness, the finish. Her father came toward me from rooms away, a big man with Candy’s beryl eyes and gray hair so thin and light it wandered across his skull as he gestured. I had the impression that his bigness was composed of many soft places, bubbles in his flesh where alcohol had fermented and expanded: he shook my hand with too much force, overcarrying. “So you’re the young man my daughter has been raving about,” he said.
Raving? I looked at Candy’s pointed polite face, whose straight fine nose had come from her mother; I had just met the lady, who seemed afraid. Maybe the something bloated and patchy about the Dad was fear too. We were all afraid. I was alarmed, as the house opened to me — its woodwork interlocked like the lattice of an elaborate trapl its pale, splashy, furtively scintillating wallpaper; its deep, fruitcolored, step-squelching carpets; its astonishing living-room, long and white, two white sofas flanking a white marble coffee table bearing porcelain ashtrays and set of brass scales holding white lillies whose never-wilt lustre was too good to be true. And what were these little saucers, with tiny straight sides and bottoms of cork, scattered everywhere, on broad sofa arms and circular end tables, as if some giant had bestowed on the room the largess of his intricate, oversize coinage?
“Daddy, I wouldn’t say ‘raving,’ ” Candy corrected, embarrassed, her face, that I now perceived as a clash of genes blushing.
“Rave is what she does, Mr. — I don’t want to mispronounced.”
“Call me Felix,” I said, Anglicizing the e. I wondered if I should sit, and would the sofa swallow me like some clothy crocodile? Often in America, in drugstores and traffic jams, I had the sensation of being within a bright, voracious and many-toothed maw. The Cunninghams’ living-room had puddles of cosmetic odor here and there. As in the old cinema palace on Commerce Street, a heroic stagnation had overtaken decor. Seating myself on the edge of the bottomlessly spongy sofa, I touched the brass scales and, sure enough, discovered a refusal to tip. Once an honest artifact, it had been polished, welded, and loaded with plastic lillies. Fixed forever, like that strange Christian heaven, where nothing happened, not even the courtship of houris…
“”Candy,” Mrs. Cunningham began with the overemphasis of the shy, having seated herself in a wing chair patterned in cabbage-sized roses, her lean shins laid gracefully, fiagonally together with a dainty self-concious “sexiness” that reminded me of her daughter… who had vanished! Horreur. Where? I could hear her voice dimly giggling in some far reach of the house. She had gone upstairs, it later transpired, to talk with her “kid” brother; or was it into the kitchen, to renew acquaintance with the Cunningham’s colored cook? At any rate she had left me alone with her terrifying pale parents, the female of whom was psed in mid-sentence, and now who settled on the verb she had paused to locate among her treasury of “nice” things — “alluded to your romantic adventures.”
“Not romantic, Madame; dreary, truly. The French in exchange for their poems asked that we fight in other poor countries. I obliged them Indochina, for it took me out of my native village; when it came to Algeria, where the rebels where fellow Africans, I became a rebel myself, and deserted.”
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Cunningham said. “Can you ever go back?”
“Not until the colonial power departs. But this may happen within the decade. All it needs is a politician in Paris who is willing to act as a mortician. In the meantime, I enjoy your amazing country as a fream from which I will some day wake miraculously refreshed.”
“There’s a question I’m rarin’ to ask you,” Mr. Cunningham sad, rising ominously, but not to throttle me, as his growling tone for a second implied to my alert nerves, but to move to a tall cabinet and het himself another drink, from a square bottle whose first name was Jack, or was it Jim? The riddle of my own name he informally solved with, “How about you, fella?”
My mouth was indeed dry, from unease. “A glass of water, if its no trouble.”
He threatened to balk. “Plain water?” Then his mind embraced my response, as something he might have expected, from an underpriviliged delegate from the childlike underworld. “Wouldn’t you rather have a 7-Up? Or a Shlitz?”
I would have, and brushed from my own mind the mirage of a beer sitting golden on a dark table of the Badger Cafe; but I felt the family dinner ahead of me stretch like a long trek through a bristling wilderness of glass and silver and brittle remarks, and had recolved upon sobritey as my safeguard. Also there was some silent satisfaction in impeding this big white devil’s determination to be hospitable. “Just water, if you please,” I insisted.
“Your religion, I suppose?”
“Several of them.”

Posted at 9:45 AM · Comments (0)

Published: December 18, 2004

The new movie “Hotel Rwanda” is a gut-wrenching true story of a hotel manager who sheltered 1,268 people in his hotel during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, bribing, begging and bullying the killers who came to hack people apart with machetes.

One of the most powerful scenes comes when the U.N. commander admits to the hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, that the West is allowing the genocide to run its course. “We think you’re dirt, Paul,” he says brokenly, adding: “You’re an African. … They’re not going to stop the slaughter.”

Against that backdrop of local butchery and Western indifference, the hotel manager summons the courage to stare down the killers, even as they hold guns to his head. The film is painful to watch not only for the slaughter it depicts, but also because it forces us, as viewers, to wonder what we would do in such a situation.

But we don’t have to wonder. We know, for a genocide is unfolding again, in Darfur. And rather than standing up to the killers, we’re again acquiescing.

Posted