As many of you know I worked in and for Africa for many years and I grew to love the stunning beauty of the continent, its friendly and outgoing people and the perseverance of its people under sometimes very difficult circumstances.
Africa is generally poor, for reasons which I will explore in another post. African countries face a great deal of natural and human-made problems. they have made great progress, though.
Many Americans, when they think of Africa, think of jungles and people living in huts and hunting wild animals. While there is some of that there are also great modern cities and towns. Here, for example, are Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Dakar in Senegal. (In the bottom right corner of the photo of Dakar you will see the hotel where I always stayed when I visited there.)
We claim that we want to help Africa and Africans but sometimes it seems we do our best to keep them down. We spend millions to teach African farmers to grow things like cotton and peanuts more efficiently, but, through tariffs and other mechanisms essentially ban them from exporting their harvest to the US. Our food aid, while well-intentioned, often displaces local food markets and drives African farmers out of business.
Now comes a new threat. Kenya, a country more advanced than the US in some ways, has banned plastic carrier bags and many similar single-use plastics throughout the country in an effort to reduce pollution and preserve its land, wildlife and waters. Kenya also does not allow import of plastic trash for ‘recycling’. US and multinational oil and plastic firms, however are lobbying hard for the US to force Kenya to back off its restrictions as part of a trade agreement. They want to force Kenya to accept plastic trash from the US and rescind its ban. The New York Times covers the story well in THIS ARTICLE.
Let’s hope the Kenyans stand up for themselves so we don’t end up with more of this in one of the most beautiful countries in the world.
I just finished reading ‘Disappearing Earth’, the debut novel by Julia Phillips and I loved it. The novel has been well-received – one of New York Times 10 best books of the year, finalist for the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics’ John Leonard Prize. A Best Book of 2019 by Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, NPR, Kirkus, Vanity Fair, Variety, Esquire and many others.
The book is set on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula where, one August afternoon two young girls go missing. In the ensuing months police investigations and volunteer searches turn up nothing.
What follows is a novel in the form of overlapping stories about women who are affected directly or indirectly by the disappearance. The book takes us through a year in Kamchatka – an odd place with no road connection to the rest of Russia because it was a closed military reservation during the Soviet period. There is one major city – Petroplavovsk and a number of small villages – many inhabited by the indigenous people who herd reindeer and visit the city in the winter.
Phillips does a wonderful job not only of delineating the scenery of forests, mountains, volcanoes and stark vistas of snow and ice but also the stories of the women who have all experienced loss in one sense or another. The disappearance of the two Russian girls which is exhaustively investigated is contrasted to the earlier disappearance of an native girl which is hardly noticed by the authorities. It turns out they are related.
It’s a wonderful, well-written book and I urge you to give it a try. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. HERE is the NYT review.
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