Nick Wadhams

Love those pirates

A couple of funny blog posts from Things Seen and Heard and South of West about western journalists' occasionally rather unfortunate penchant for quoting supposed pirate spokesmen in Somalia without knowing whether they are who they say they are.

We've all done it, of course. But... how difficult is it really to snag a pirate? There are plenty of pirate impostors and there are plenty of fixers willing to take naive reporters for a ride. But there are also plenty of bona fide pirates. Lots of them have mobile phones. Many pirates pass through Nairobi (and have even been responsible for a real estate boom). And given the fact that every Somali seems to know a relative of every other Somali, why wouldn't it be hard to track them down?

I think it has a lot to do with the pirate mystique. If reporters weren't endlessly comparing a bunch of drugged, starving, gun-toting Somali kids to the apocryphal "arrgh"-muttering, eyepatch-wearing, peg-leg-walking buccaneers of old, the notion that it's actually kind of easy to get in touch with them wouldn't seem so far-fetched.

A Somali judge is slain

Just in from the BBC: Gunmen in Somalia killed a judge who was known for jailing pirates and Islamic fighters.

It would seem most likely that Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aware was killed by the al-Shabaab in retaliation for his jailing some of their members. But his killing coincides with an obvious trend: Despite the best efforts of navies from a dozen countries, Somalia's pirates are only getting bolder and better at their job. They recently nabbed a British couple as they sailed near the Seychelles, in an area that was hundreds of miles away from what were considered dangerous waters.

Clearly the pirates have been investing their massive ransom payouts into better ships, better communications, better training. At the same time, the naval force fighting the pirates seems to have settled on a strategy of sending the pirates to Puntland or to Kenya for trial _ or extraditing them to Spain. All speculation, of course, but it would be a worrying thing if Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Aware's death was part of a new pirate strategy of assassinating those who try to slow them down.

All's not so quiet in Laikipia

People I spoke with for a Time.com story on the British army training in Kenya's Laikipia region put forward a brave face and suggested things were going well.

Not so fast, perhaps. Today, news comes from a Laikipia tipster:

"At 6 this morning my wife and kids were woken by helicopters coming fast. The kids began to scream and I Was able to get out of bed in time to see the first of several sorties of helicopters scream by, feet above the roof of our tent. These are the enormous helicopters (Hercules?) and they roar and close quarters. The British army is on another ranch, called Chololo. They arrived and began exercises with only one day's notice."

It would seem that for many of Laikipia's ranchers, the days of marketing the area as a wildlife refuge are long gone; the British army apparently pays too well. Chololo is a private reserve once known for a groundbreaking baboon study project. It is also a U.N. Environment Program protected area. Now it is home to car races and army training. I wonder what UNEP would make of that.

British army goes boom

Time.com just posted a wacky little story of mine: "In Kenya, Can War Games Coexist With Wildlife?"

It's pretty self-explanatory. For years, the British army has trained its troops in the Laikipia area, which has recently marketed itself as a premier wildlife-tourism destination. That marketing effort has coincided with the intensification of British army training exercises, as the UK beefs up its presence in Afghanistan. 

Can the two co-exist? Researchers are trying to figure out the effect of all those booms on wildlife. No results yet. But the army does seem surprisingly cooperative and flexible; so far, things seem to be working out (particularly for the landowners who make millions of dollars in rent).

Uninvolved

Even the U.N. is probably not so linguistically obtuse to have a sign that says "Involved in Africa," but this is still mildly amusing.

Since jatropha doesn't work...

... shouldn't Kenya consider rabbits?

Don't Believe What You Read

Astute readers of this blog will note that yesterday, I wrote a post citing an AFP report that Uganda had lifted a ban on trophy hunting.

Turns out that story was, um, false. Uganda has not lifted a ban on trophy hunting. Doing so would require an act of parliament. What it has done is expand a limited sport-hunting pilot project that began in 2000 to another area of the country. I found this out because I called the spokeswoman for the Uganda Wildlife Authority to ask about the ban being lifted and she told me that the ban had, in fact, not been lifted. 

I am not sure how AFP got the story so completely wrong, but there you have it.

Trophy Hunting

Uganda has ended its ban on trophy hunting. Will that lead Kenya to do the same?

This is a huge issue in East Africa. Many of the region's most respected conservationists are coming around to the idea that Kenya's hunting ban, imposed in the mid-1970s, has only made things worse for wildlife (numbers are down by an estimated 70 percent since then, though there are many other factors behind the drop).

Killing wildlife may seem anathema to animal lovers, who, when they think of sport hunting, might recall colonial-era images of Teddy Roosevelt standing in front of the 10 lions and three rhinoceros he killed that day. But if it's regulated properly, trophy hunting can be incredibly profitable, and beneficial.

The idea is that communities will be more interested in protecting wildlife if they can get some benefit from it. In present-day East Africa, it's difficult to overstate just how much people hate wildlife. Elephants eat all their crops and lions kill their cattle. If an American or a Japanese hunter is willing to pay them $50,000 to kill a single lion, perhaps they'll be more likely to tolerate those losses.

The fear, as some animal welfare groups claim, is that Kenya is too corrupt to regulate trophy hunting properly. But some conservationists argue that the Kenyan government is too much in the thrall of "the animal rights lobby," as it's come to be known, with its big checks and frequent offers of assistance. And with wildlife numbers in such freefall, it would seem that it's time for new ideas.

The Jatropha Malaise

More jatropha news, this time out of Tanzania: The government there has decided to halt all biofuel investment projects for fear that they will result in farmers being removed from their land to make way for crops planted in poorly regulated schemes. 

The big problem with biofuel projects in most of Africa is that farmers are told that there will be a market for the seeds, when in fact there is not. It is just that simple. There is no infrastructure for farmers -- most of whom do not even have cars -- to bring their seeds to buyers, and there are very few people to buy the seeds anyhow. Jatropha may someday power lamps and stoves, but it will be a very long time before that happens on a scale that makes growing it worthwhile. There are bigger projects that do not involve small-scale farmers, but, as in Tanzania's case, they often involve kicking farmers off their land, which may amount to much the same thing.

In Kenya, the drought has been so bad that it doesn't really matter what people plant because nothing is growing. But when the rains improve, and there is still no market for jatropha, farmers will certainly feel the sting.

Jatropha

My stories about jatropha have moved at last at Time.com and NPR.

One thing that really struck me about this story was the sheer number of con-men who have sought to perpetrate the jatropha hype. I'm not really sure what can be done about it. Companies in the United States and Britain (notably D1 Oils) promote jatropha based on dubious science. You then have a bunch of men and women in Kenya and places like it who read the hype on the Internet and then persuade farmers to buy seeds at exorbitant prices by wooing them with impossible fantasies.

When I think about this stuff, I keep coming back to the amazing farmers who plant jatropha. I was so impressed by their knowledge of the land and their adaptability. They are always willing to try new things (in other words, innovate), and refuse to be cast as victims when they realize they have been scammed. Many I spoke to plan to keep jatropha around for a while, and if it really doesn't bring them any money in the long run, they'll pull it up and try something else. 

It's Our Turn To Eat

One of the most bizarre things I've come across in my modest three years living in Kenya is the case of Michela Wrong's book exposing Kenyan corruption, "It's Our Turn To Eat." 

The book is available pretty much everywhere in the world but Kenya, thanks to British colonial-era libel laws that permit someone who feels aggrieved by a book's author to sue the store where it is sold. It's been done before it Kenya, and the result is that no bookstore here will stock "It's Our Turn To Eat." I did a little story about bookstore owners' cowardice for Irish Radio back in June.

Talk about shameful. The most tragic part of the story is that Kenyans, who widely accept that their government is corrupt, have been denied the chance to read a book that details their leaders' chicanery. But that may be changing. If you have access to the Internet (no sure thing in Kenya), you can now order the book and pay via M-Pesa, the mobile-banking service provided by Kenya's main telecom provider, Safaricom. I just ordered a copy myself.

Apparently people have been reluctant to order from the site because they're worried it might be one of Kenya's legion web and email scams. That's not the case. Here is a note from Michela:

"The retail boycott on "It's Our Turn to Eat" remains in force, despite government spokesman Alfred Mutua's statement that the book is not banned by the government. Despite recent distribution efforts by USAID, the churches, Pen-Kenya and various other NGOs, the only Kenyans buying it at the moment are those who travel abroad and get it there or who own international credit cards and can order it off Amazon.

In a bid to get the book out to ordinary members of the public, a group of Kenyans - some based in Nairobi and some living in London -- has recently come up with a new initiative. They have set up a Kenyan website with an Mpesa link - no need for credit cards - selling copies of the book. A local distributor then makes sure customers receive their ordered books. They're starting off with an experimental 150 copies, which have just arrived in Nairobi and are now available for sale.

If this method of getting the book out to the public works, they'll step up numbers.

The website link is: http://www.thekenyashop.com/. Two people who placed orders received same day delivery from the local distributor, so it really works. It's not a scam, or a rip-off scheme. Those behind the scheme are keeping their identities anonymous at the moment, but the author knows them all and can vouch for the fact that this is not a con trick. It is, on the contrary, an imaginative attempt at using modern technology to give ordinary Kenyans access to a book they have every right to read.

The book is priced in accordance to the sourcing and shipping costs. The individuals living abroad will not derive any profit from this scheme -- this is guaranteed. The profit on each book is exclusively to compensate the local individuals for the personal risk they are taking. They are selling it at 1,500 shillings. The book currently sells in the UK at £12.99."

The Kiva Konundrum, Part 2

New studies suggest that micro-lending isn't all it's cracked up to be. Researchers at MIT have found that microlending may make poor people's lives a little easier, but doesn't lift them from poverty.

One of the big problems with micro-lending is that no one really seems to know exactly how effective it's been, and the above Boston Globe story acknowledges that researchers had to come up with creative ways to figure out the metrics. To me, the takeaway paragraph is:

"And once an aid organization or philanthropically minded corporation, won over by powerful success stories, commits to an antipoverty tool, whether it’s microcredit or bed nets or building rural schools, they tend to lose interest in funding research that could suggest that it doesn’t work."

That seems to be a big problem with aid programs. If well-intentioned aid workers invest a ton of time and money in a project, they probably won't particularly want to know whether it succeeded or not.

A sign of the times

I just started Emma's War, a Nairobi bookstore staple about a young, idealistic aid worker who married a South Sudanese rebel leader. One hundred and forty one pages in, I'm most struck by the passage in which author Deborah Scroggins writes: "It was my first foreign assignment for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The newspaper had embarked on a long-term project looking at famine in the Horn of Africa."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitition embarked on a long-term project? |Looking at famine in the Horn of Africa? AJC reporters actually went on foreign assignments? To places like Sudan? I almost burst out laughing at how nonchalantly those statements were written. The idea of it now sounds so far-fetched!  Think of the bills that Deborah Scroggins must have racked up! 

The AJC is owned by Cox Newspapers. Three years ago, Cox was considered a good string because it paid the occasional expense; travel was out of the question by this point, of course, but Cox would at least chip in for a taxi ride or a couple of phone calls. Then there was Foreign Editor Chuck Holmes, a wonderful guy. Now Cox has been nuked to near oblivion by the financial crisis. It closed its Washington bureau and canned its foreign staff. Chuck moved on to NPR.

People often ask if it's not boom time for freelancers _ the theory being that newspapers may cut their foreign correspondents but will still need foreign reporting. In the United States, anyhow, that's not the case. Papers have opted to do with the wires, or do without. (The San Francisco Chronicle, once another freelancer stalwart that is now even closer to oblivion, just scratched its foreign service too.) 

Journalists often talk about all the stories that are not being written anymore because no one is willing to pay for them. Here is an example of a fine book that never would have been written if Cox had not been willing to pay for the reportage that forms its core.

More on the female condom

Anna Forbes, the deputy director of the Global Campaign for Microbicides, responds to my post on the female condom:

I hear your suspicion but I can tell you from first hand experience that you are just plain wrong. Women in Uganda do want female condoms – desperately.  We have met with over two dozen organizations serving women living with HIV and/or at high risk of HIV in eastern Africa in the last year and talked with women in all kinds of settings.  Most of them have heard of female condoms but, as one educator told me, “I have never seen one, and I do trainings on them!”

My colleague and I visited five different pharmacies one weekend trying to buy a female condom, just to see if it was possible.  Only one had them in stock. Suddenly, I had a deeper understanding of why guidelines exist for how often you can wash out and reuse a female condom.  The answer is five times before you start seeing significant damage.  Reuse is not recommended but its better than nothing.  And be sure to re-lubricate it, even if you have to use cooking oil.  Does this suggest to you that women do not want female condoms?

The Ugandan situational analysis released last February shows that 65% of new HIV infections are occurring among married people; 60% of all newly infected Ugandans are women (more like 75% if you look just at the 15-49 age group) and that the rate of extramarital sex between 2001 and 2005 increased from 2% to 3% among women and 11% to 18% among men.  So who do you think is actually bringing HIV into the relationship most of the time?  And what on earth makes you think that women don’t want to protect themselves?

One woman told us, “as a woman, my private part belongs to my husband and he is the decision-maker in the relationship.”  Would you like to be the woman trying to negotiate male condom use in that relationship?  Or getting into bed knowing that you may be infected with HIV before morning, as so many of your friends have been?

Here in Washington DC (during the Bush administration), a Congressional staffer I was lobbying once said to me, “I have no respect for a woman who can’t make her man wear a condom.”  I am sorry to say, Nick, that you sound a lot like that guy when you write, “Do they really think that women need the female condom?”  In speaking to you, I did not get the sense that you are so lacking in compassion.  I wish you had taken my suggestion that you speak to some of the Ugandans I spoke with – as that might have clarified your view of the situation somewhat.

One educator told us about doing a presentation on the female condom from the back of a truck. It was market day and she was explaining the device in the hope that it would someday be available to this community.  At the end of the presentation, she was mobbed by women wanting female condoms.  But she only had her demonstration model, and she couldn’t give it away.

What it the tables were turned, Nick?  What if over 99% of the 10 billion condoms distributed globally each year were female condoms and fewer than 1% were male condoms.  What if you had reason to think you were being exposed to HIV every time you had sex?  Might you be crowding around the back of that truck begging for a male condom when someone finally showed you one?  Or would you still be as inclined to suppose that men in your area didn’t really want male condoms, and that promoting them was just part of someone’s money making scheme?

I slightly resent the remark that I'm lacking in compassion, and I didn't mean to suggest in my previous post that I don't feel compassion for women who want access to female condoms. Otherwise, this strikes me as fair criticism from someone who knows a great deal about the issue.

Female Condom Redux

In a story for Time.com, I revisited the story of Uganda bringing back the female condom. Partly this was because I got some more interesting reporting after submitting a story I wrote for The Lancet. The big issue for me is this: How much credibility you ought to give nongovernmental organizations that demand a particular initiative? Do they really think that women need the female condom? Or do they see a potential female condom campaign as a source of revenue?

My suspicion in the case of Uganda's female condom initiatve is that it's the latter. It's difficult to imagine a product that is poorer suited to fight HIV/AIDS in Uganda, chiefly because the virus is spreading most quickly among people who have more than one longterm partner. Those are the people least likely to use any form of protection at all.

Now there's more literature coming out that lends credence to something it's impossible to ignore when you're on the ground. Local NGOs are often a way for their founders to make a living, and the altruistic part comes later. The people who run them are entrepreneurs more than anything else, skilled in the ways of grant-writing and development-speak. This has been going on for years and ought to come as no surprise -- one of the key indicators of a charitable group's efficiency these days is the percentage of your donation that actually gets to the person you wanted to help. It is hard to fault someone who has the initiative to make some cash, but as in Uganda's case, the trouble comes when the campaigns they preach may actually hinder development or the fight against HIV/AIDS.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately as I wait for various strings to publish stories I wrote about jatropha curcas, a wild plant that has been hailed as the next great step in the biofuels revolution. Overzealous advocates of jatropha (who in many cases have a financial stake in the plant's success) persuaded poor farmers to plant jatropha based on claims that would be impossible to meet. It turns out jatropha isn't all it's cracked up to be, and smallholder farmers are the ones paying the price.

More mission statements

Just back from two weeks spent communing with wildebeest in the Maasai Mara. And what should await? More mission statements, this time at the Yaya Center shopping mall (which, if it were ever fortunate enough to be the subject of a journalistic profile, would inevitably be described as "gleaming" and "bustling").

Yaya has a nice motto (Y Go Anywhere Else?). And now it is the proud owner of mission and vision statements, which have been hung up on large banners in Yaya's atrium. I don't know which comes first, the mission statement or the vision statement, but see below for photographic evidence.

I am not sure how I am given a great experience that adds value to my life when I buy a loaf of bread at the supermarket in Yaya. And I am still trying to figure out what it means to create a place of choice for your customers, your tenants and your people. But there you have it.

Not photographed are several other banners informing customers that Yaya's values consist of integrity and good service. 

Speaking of which, Yaya is owned by Nicholas Biwott, a Kenyan politician who has been barred from entering the United States and Britain because of corruption allegations. Biwott, one of Kenya's wealthiest men, has been linked to several major corruption scandals in recent years. Scotland Yard called him a "person of interest" in the assassination of Foreign Minister Robert Ouko in 1990. Yaya is believed to be named after Biwott's daughter.

Perhaps it's no coincidence: Biwott is also said to own of Kengele's Restaurant, also home to a very fine mission statement.

Drought in Kenya

Just visited the town of Kibwezi for a story about farmers growing crops for biofuels. Kibwezi has been in the middle of a drought for four years and its farmers have joined an experimental planting program for the jatropha tree _ often enticed by promises of great riches. Jatropha is a hardy weed that, if you believe the hype, is said to grow well in arid lands, with minimal "inputs," as the agronomics folks say (i.e. pest control, pruning, fertilizing, irrigation). Its seeds are harvested, shelled, and crushed for seedcake and oil.

I have a few stories coming out soon about jatropha in Kenya. One thing I'll say now is how impressed I was with the farmers. I kept asking whether they resented the people who came with big promises about jatropha, and they refused to rise to the bait. Here is a classic case of local people with few tools and no electricity who know far, far more about the best way to plant crops on their own land than the outsiders who come in and tell them what to do.

Some pictures:

Francisca

Boniface

Wellington

Joseph

Could it be? No.

Over the weekend, a document emerged purporting to show that Barack Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya! There are so many inaccuracies about the "birth certificate" that it's obviously a fake. Most are explained here.

One more small reason. The document says the birth certificate was issued on August 5, a day after Obama was born. August 5, 1961 also happens to have been a Saturday. My humble experience with getting a birth certificate (which looks nothing like this one) was that government offices are generally closed on Saturdays and that it takes at least a week for hospitals to send birth announcements to the government office where a birth certificate is issued.

Gosh, conspiracy theories are fun. And I love how Kenya, a country we moved to three years ago because we thought it would just be a nice place to live while reporting on all the crap that happens in East Africa, seems to pop up in the news all the time. Thanks, prez (and post-election violence).

For comparison's sake, after the jump a Kenyan birth certificate which I can testify with first-hand knowledge was not forged. Things may have changed in 40 years, indeed, but it's a tad different.

Piracy Musings Part 2

I often wonder about video piracy in Kenya, and particularly the fact that at Nairobi's many, many movie rental stores, the videos are always pirated. I have always assumed that the market is simply too small for anyone in international law enforcement to care that entrepreneurs here rent floor space and open businesses that advertise the fact that they are trafficking in pirated goods.

Suddenly, how odd! A video store now exists in Nairobi that rents out only legitimate movies. So people dying to see the new Transformers movie can get it at lots of places, but patrons of Mo Moviez (vision statement: "Quality Entertainment on your Desktop and at your Door Step; Original DVDS and Bluerays") will have to wait.

Friendly, Hygienic and Cheerful

One of the many things that continues to mystify me about Kenya is organizations' obsession with "mission statements" and "vision." For example, while visiting a government agency, you might come across a noticeboard stating the agency's vision in a sentence or so (usually, it's "to be the best X agency possible") and then its mission, which spells out in greater detail how it plans to achieve all that. This pointless claptrap is absolutely everywhere.

For example, the Pest Control Products Board helpfully tells us that its vision is to be "the leading regulatory agency for pest control products in the region." How many other regulatory agencies for pest control products are there in the region?

KEPHIS, the Kenyan Plant Health Inspectorate Serivce, whose name seems fairly self-explanatory informs us that is vision is to be "the lead regulatory agency in agriculture" (I wonder what the Agriculture Ministry might think of that! Smackdown!) and then double dips with a mission statement as well: "To provide an effective and efficient science-based regulatory service for assurance on quality of agricultural inputs and produce, thereby promoting sustainable economic growth and development."

The International School of Kenya: "Empowering students to create solutions for tomorrow's challenges". SCGIS Kenya (I don't even know what that is): "To serve, represent and network individuals using GIS for conservation in Kenya." Superfreight Kenya, which says on its web site that it handles "clearing and forwarding, shipping, export, air and sea cargo agents," comes in with this beaut: "To strive for excellence in all our endeavours and create an elaborate program to train our staff, looking after their welfare, and focusing on ethical practices to acquire credit in all we do on merit as a priority." BOO-YAH!

Today, I spotted the best one yet at Kengele's, a thoroughly enjoyable restaurant in Nairobi.

Now, this actually makes me less likely to go to Kengele's in the future. One ought to be slightly wary of any restaurant that says its mission is to be "hygienic" _ as if it recognizes that it's not quite there yet.