Nick Wadhams

Mental health break

Tattoos leave Belgian teenager star-faced

Classic revisionism

George Obama, half-brother of Barack Obama, seems like a nice enough guy. It really was absurd that conservatives took up his cause during the election campaign ("Barack Obama tells us that we are our brothers' keepers, but he can't even look after his own half-brother" etc etc etc). I didn't believe people were genuinely holding that against BO until I talked to a conservative pal, who swore it was true.

Now George is writing a book. Nothing wrong with that. Still, I found the following paragraph in the local newspaper to be a bit much:

"The book to be written with author-journalist Damien Lewis, will tell of George Obama’s fall into crime and poverty as a teenager and his eventual embrace of community organising — a passion shared by the president — and of advocacy for the poor, an identification so strong that he chooses to live among them."

"Chooses to live among them?"

In the meantime, journalists all across Nairobi are cursing themselves for letting Damien Lewis get to George first. Maybe it was more than luck; afterall, according to his web site, Damien Lewis ("author, war reporter, adventurer") has reported from "war zones, jungles, disasters, mountains and famines in the Sudan, Eirtrea [sic], Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Burma, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Venezuela . . . and more."

He must be good. He's reported from mountains.

Another journalism industry death rattle

Editors at an upstart newspaper for which I've written a couple of stories send word that they no longer pay for phone calls. Christ.

No one said that freelancing wasn't an occasionally degrading business, but, again. Christ. Unfortunately, it's standard operating procedure for a lot of papers. Cut staff and rely on freelancers, pay the freelancers a flat fee that does not include expenses.

It's the kind of thing that makes a guy want to abandon newspapers altogether. If you're only getting a flat fee for a story, your instinct for survival tells you to skimp on the expenses (and thus, the reporting). This is not the way good journalism gets made.

Joys of the Kenyan coast

Wednesday evening power outage

They say we'll get the power back in two hours. I'm not so sure.

 

Nairobi is bursting with little infrastructure-improvement projects like this one (they're replacing the transformer) these days. Some of the roads are even getting better. I still haven't figured out why.

Ah yes

Just back from a month's "vacation" in London and the US. I first felt the urge to flee back to Nairobi 24 hours after leaving, as we walked along the Thames and I passed the 500,000th man sporting Ray-Bans and perfectly shellacked hair. One hates to get grumpy about this stuff, but I couldn't escape the feeling that every man, woman and child in London had spent no less than an hour that morning primping themselves for their eventual appearance on the grand urban stage.

Then, 25 days later, chatting with immigration officials in Nairobi, I thought, "Ah, yes. Home." In the West, there is a certain amount of cold officiousness that comes with a smoothly functioning bureaucracy. Here, there's the corruption, the confusion about how much to pay for which visa, the swine flu screener wearing a face mask who never collected our forms. But at least people don't seem to mind having a nice chat in the meantime.

Appetite for Obstruction

One more on the pirates. As I mentioned in my last post, I think we can all agree that Maersk Line Limited is evil. Below is the photographic evidence.

Very briefly: As an esteemed member of the media, I have been corralled behind velvet ropes, behind cattle gates, behind the arms of ugly, unforgiving Secret Service agents. I had never been corralled behind a shipping container before.

That's what happened outside the Maersk Alabama. When we all showed up at Berth 11, where the Maersk was scheduled to dock, a big ship was getting ready to leave, and the area was unrestricted.

After the NYK line ship left, Maersk threw down a line of shipping containers along the dock to prevent reporters from getting too close to the ship. After the jump, take a look.

Maersk, U.S. Government = Evil, Evil

The Maersk Alabama story was a fun one to cover. I went down to Mombasa for People Magazine, which, to its credit, has no illusions about being anything other than People Magazine. Good news, or else.

Most of the reporting consisted of a classic media stakeout _ standing around for hours at Berth 11 of the Mombasa port a few feet from the ship, hoping that its crew would come out and say something marginally worth quoting. They did so on two occasions that I can recall.

Mostly it ended up being a colossal waste of time. I stood around that idiotic ship from about 10 am to 1 am for three days. The reason it was a huge waste was mostly because Maersk Line Limited is, I have concluded, evil. It was almost as if Maersk didn't want to give information to the media simply because it knew that the media wanted information. Maersk obstructed us for obstruction's sake, and steadfastly refused to give us even the most basic details. It's no wonder they hate the media so much: When you pointlessly withhold information, reporters become more dogged and more annoying.

The only entity any worse, of course, was the U.S. government. You've got to hand it to America. Our diplomats and government employees are just as well trained as the best Soviet bureaucrats to be slavishly obedient to pointless regulations. Yet our government has, by and large, managed to stamp out the corruption that allowed reporters to work around the system and get the information they needed.

Example 1: A few hours into the stakeout, as I stood by the gate leading to the ship with the Washington Post reporter, two guys walked up. They had FBI written all over them. Nice, color-coded shirts and slacks, matching ties, expensive sunglasses. No buzzcuts here: hair obviously maintained well and stylishly cut. They refused even to look at us, they were so scared of being talked to. It's funny to think that people see you that way. The Washington Post reporter went up, introduced herself and said she was with The Washington Post. One of the guys looked at her icily and said "I'm from Nobody." Jeesh.

Example 2: In my time in Nairobi, I have made the acquaintance of a young American consular official (I'll call him Leonard). We don't know each other well enough to be friends, but it's the kind of acquaintance that every reporter likes to have in his back pocket, just in case. At one point during the stakeout, when I'd become so bored that I'd begun humming the tune to Super Mario Bros., Leonard walked out of nowhere and approached the gate that led to the ship!

"Hey Leonard!" said I, thanking my stars. "What are you up to? Are you going on the ship?"

Leonard looked at me with an expression that indicated his sphincter had just seized up and was about to send him into frothy-mouthed shock. "Um... yeah, hey Nick. Yeah, I'm going to help debrief the crew."

This was gold, I thought. Maybe Leonard would give me an anonymous quote or two. Or at least some good detail on the crew. Or, failing that, a hint of a schedule so I could find out when the crew would go home so I could get back to my wife and kid in Nairobi.

"Cool. You mind if I ask you a couple questions? Just logistics and stuff?"

"Umm...." To his credit, Leonard managed to smile. "You know, Nick, five months of my foreign service training was spent on how to handle the media. I'm not supposed to make friends with the media." He smiled again.

(Five months? Not supposed to make friends? What the..?)

"Oh, OK." I said. "Can I at least have your mobile number if I need to call you?"

Leonard stalled. He actually wouldn't do it. Finally, I had to exploit his relative lack of experience and his refusal to be disobedient, and said curtly: "Give me your number." He recited it.

I knew that calling Leonard would be pointless, and I never did. I had heard it in his voice: They had already gotten to him. He'd been subjected to that strange mind-meld performed on every young American foreign service officer I've ever met. A refusal, perhaps born of terror, to play the information game. The conviction that their work is so important to the preservation of democracy and transparency that they must not behave democratically or transparently. The warped belief that telling a reporter in confidence when the crew is going home will bring a bunch of pirates, baying for American blood, to the tarmac and jeopardize national security to boot.

Hand it to Maersk, and hand it to America _ these guys are just too well trained!

Pirate Media Bias

The saga of the American ship, the Maersk Alabama, briefly held hostage by Somalia's pirates has nearly come to its conclusion with 19 of the 20 crewmen having returned home early this morning.

Much to reflect upon. One thing was the American media's rah-rah "We took those suckers out" boosterism of the U.S. Navy. Surely, the simultaneous sniper shots were an impressive feat, but it was hard to escape the feeling that the American media got a little too caught up in the narrative, what with its talk of "Three shots, three dead pirates," and "take-downs," and "high-seas drama," and forgot the fact that there were three poor kids who got bullets to the head. Whoever said the media doesn't like a good-news story was wrong.

Then again. While the American newspapers shook their pompoms, it was equally impossible not to detect the sour note that rang forth from the coverage by outlets such as the BBC, Reuters and AFP. Within minutes after Captain Richard Phillips had been freed, reports began debating the possibility that the U.S. operation would only encourage more attacks, or more violence by the pirates against their hostages. The suggestion was clear: The 200 or so hostages still being held off Somalia are in greater danger because of the American action (though French commando raids seemed to get less attention). Several quote-unquote pirates were interviewed saying how cruel the Americans were, and how they would strike back to avenge their fallen brothers. One Reuters report even mentioned how some Somalis were too scared to go to the latrine in the middle of the night because helicopters were flying over their heads. As if they didn't have more immediate things to be scared of _ like the pirates themselves.

It is sad that the standoff could be resolved no other way, but there is no equivalency. The way much of the media almost seems to be siding with the pirates _ "Hey, let the shipping companies just keep paying ransom, no one's getting hurt here" _ is seriously flawed logic. For one thing, you're taking hostages. That's bad. Sure, poverty may drive you to do it, but it's still bad. For another, and more importantly, the Maersk Alabama, like several other cargo ships hijacked by pirates, was delivering food aid meant for Somalia. Every day that food aid does not get to Somalia, more starving people die. So those pirates are holding their own people hostage just as much as they're holding a crew hostage. Giving any credence to claim that the American Navy somehow wronged Somalis by killing three pirates seems awfully disingenuous.

You're covered

Spotted in today's newspaper, a uniquely Kenyan insurance policy:

Growl

Politicians have as much right to a good chuckle as everyone else, but I still find something deeply irksome in this picture of President Obama clowning around with sleazeball Silvio Berlusconi and Putin-pawn Dmitri Medvedev.

Maybe it's the wholy clubby vibe of the thing or maybe it's the fact that Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi is looking on with amusement in the upper right corner. It would seem that a dash of gravity would be required on Obama's part when he's standing four feet from one of Africa's Grade-A human rights abusing dictators. Perhaps I'm just feeling grumpy.

Ah, the irony

As U.N. agencies go, it would be difficult to find one more useless than the U.N. Human Settlements Program, UNHABITAT, whose goal is "to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all."

Forget that the world's slum population only continues to balloon, not least in Nairobi, where UNHABITAT is based. Now we learn that UNHABITAT, during the 22nd meeting of its governing council on Thursday, will host a news conference by Zimbabwe's minister for national housing and its ambassador to Kenya titled "Zimbabwe calls for re-engagement with the international community."

"In view of the recent development in the country, Zimbabwe feels strongly that the international community should re-engage with it in order to alleviate the suffering of the Zimbabwean people," says the UNHABITAT news release. "This can only be achieved if more attention is given to development support and humanitarian aid."

One might remember that it was President Mugabe's government which was responsible for "Operation Drive Out Trash," a unilateral slum-destruction program that was itself condemned by UNHABITAT.

Lion poisoning

The "60 Minutes" piece I helped research last year has aired at last. "Poisoning Takes Toll On Africa's Lions" tells the story of how farmers and Maasai pastoralists are using the insecticide Furadan to kill lions and other animals that prey on their livestock and crops.

It was a curious piece to work on. The most revealing part was how the Kenyan government investigated claims of lion poisonings with Furadan in the Maasai Mara. The laboratory of the Government Chemist reported traces of Furadan in lion samples sent to it. Displeaed with those results, the Pest Control Products Board, which regulates the licensing and sale of pesticides, launched a campaign to discredit the Government Chemist and then decided to test its own samples. Those samples were not from animals, but from soil which happened to have been collected long after the poisonings occurred, and in an area recently hit by heavy rains. And... voila! No Furadan.

Now I see that FMC, the maker of Furadan, which had initially argued it could not be held responsible for the misuse of its products, is no longer supplying Furadan to Kenya and will buy back what stocks remain.

Good news all around. The only depressing part is that Kenya is a tiny market for FMC. The move looks proactive, but it will cost FMC almost nothing.

Kenya's health system

A Kenyan friend of ours called yesterday to say that his wife had died after giving birth to a healthy baby boy in a cesarean section. Apparently she was recovering fine several hours after the birth but then stopped breathing _ something to do with the anesthesia she had been given _ and the nurses didn't notice. She fell into a coma, was put on a breathing machine, and then she died a few days later.

This seems to me to be the biggest failing of governance -- and western NGOs -- in places like Kenya. For all the government's talk, it is too corrupt or self-interested to provide even the most basic health care to its citizens. For all their grand promises about reducing poverty and ensuring housing for all, aid groups do not focus on simple ways to ease suffering. You see the effects of bad governance everywhere _ people crippled by easily prevented childhood diseases, maimed by botched surgeries, and in the worst cases, killed by the negligence of doctors and nurses.

In other recent events, the newspapers have been filled with stories about Kenya's politicians 1. demanding higher salaries if they are going to adhere to public demand that they start paying taxes and 2. forming political alliances ahead of presidential elections set for 2012. It is awfully easy to get snippy about these things, but cripes! It's only 2009!

Nairobi traffic (drought edition)

Nairobi can be a curious place. Take today. I was driving down a road in a fairly central area of this city of at least 3 million people, and I got caught in a traffic jam thanks to a herd of about 100 cows that came absolutely out of nowhere.

People say the cows are coming further into town because a drought gripping Kenya has ruined their usual grazing land. When I returned along the same route, the cows were all munching happily on a tiny, verdant field _ nourished by a stream of sewage _ that sits between the walls of two residential compounds.

What the...?

Everyone knows that Kevin Costner's career is in trouble, but does he really need to dog it for Turkish Airlines? This giant billboard, advertising a new flight between Nairobi and Istanbul, now dominates the intersection leading to the U.S. Embassy and U.N. headquarters.

What does it say about Turkish Airlines' low, low attitude toward western diplomats that the company believes Kevin Costner's bemused and ever-so-slightly sheepish visage will spur them to buy a ticket?

The Vanished Stories

The hard-hitting piece that never ran.

The son of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was thwarted in his desire to go game hunting in Kenya's famed Maasai Mara game reserve with his treasured Mark IV hunting rifle, done in by a 22-year-old ban on the sport.

Al Saadi Gaddafi, the third son of the Libyan president, arrived in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in late January with his mother Haifa and an entourage of about 50 people. According to the East African Standard newspaper, the group was shuttled around by helicopters to escape Nairobi traffic, and was given a police escort of more than 30 officers.

Gaddafi, 35, also brought along his rifle in hopes of doing some hunting in the Maasai Mara, which is famed for its population of lion, elephant, leopard, wildebeest and numerous types of antelope. Kenya Wildlife Service spokesman Paul Udoto said Gaddafi never submitted a formal request to go sport hunting in the Maasai Mara. But he said it wouldn't have mattered because sport hunting has been banned across Kenya since 1977.

"We don't have one set of laws for royalties and another set of laws for tourists," Udoto said. "We welcome him to be like the millions of other tourists and take pictures of our animals."

Initial reports suggested that Gaddafi was upset when he learned that he wasn't allowed to hunt in Kenya. But Libya's charge d'affaires in Kenya, Hesahm Ali Sharif, said Gaddafi was simply told that sport hunting was legal in neighboring Tanzania, not Kenya, and he had no problem at all with the news.

"We told him that hunting is not allowed, you should go to Tanzania for hunting," Ali Sharif said. "He accepted everything. Why would he be angry? He respects the law and the government, and he was really happy about Kenya and loved the Maasai Mara."

Gaddafi is a footballer and former captain of the Libyan national team, who played one match with Perugia of Italy's Serie A before he was suspended for a positive steroids test. Gaddafi claims he was taking the drugs to treat back pain.

Days Like These (A Short Play In Three Acts)

ACT 1

The SCENE: Out past Nairobi's Village Market at a bar called Chicken Palace, NICK, a REPORTER, prepares to meet a source at 2 pm. He gets a PHONE CALL from EDITOR #1 on the foreign desk of an unnamed British newspaper.

EDITOR #1: "Hi, Nick, it's (Ms. X). We were wondering if you could do a story for us in the next couple of hours."

NICK: "Sure. What's the story?"

EDITOR #1: "Did you read The Independent today? Muammar Gaddafi's son got angry when he came to Kenya because he wasn't allowed to go sport hunting in the Maasai Mara."

NICK'S imagined response: "Hold on a sec, there. I've been pitching you genocide in Darfur, chaos in Somalia, deaths in Congo for the last five days, and you want Gaddafi's son throwing a tantrum? I can't say I'm particularly surprised, but fuck!"

NICK: "I didn't see it. Wow."

EDITOR #1: "Can you give us 300 words in the next three hours?"

NICK: "No problem. I'm at a meeting now but I'll be back at my desk in a couple of hours. Will that give you enough time?"

EDITOR #1: "Yeah, that's fine. Thanks, Nick."

(curtain closes)

ACT 2

The SCENE: Still at the Chicken Palace, NICK, the REPORTER, is pacing next to his car waiting for the source. The time is 2:30 pm. The phone rings again. It's another EDITOR on the foreign desk of the same British newspaper.

EDITOR #2: "Hi Nick, it's (Mr. Y). I know that (Ms. X) just called you about the Gaddafi story. We were wondering if you could do another story for us, too.

NICK: "I think so, what do you need?"

EDITOR #2: "Did you see the story on the BBC about how Marlon Jackson from the Jackson 5 is involved in a plan to build a luxury resort and slave memorial in Badagry, Nigeria, where slaves were put on ships and taken to the West?"

NICK: "I didn't see it."

EDITOR #2: "Can you give us 400 words on that?"

NICK'S imagined response: "Are you fucking  joking? You want something on the Jackson 5 building a luxury resort in Nigeria? And didn't you just cut your freelancer rate to $70 per story?"

NICK: "No problem. As I told (Ms. X), I've got a couple other things to take care of and then the Gaddafi story to do, but I should be able to get it to you."

EDITOR #2: "Thanks."

(curtain closes)

ACT 3

The SCENE: At 7 pm, NICK is in his apartment with his 11-month-old CHILD, who insists on repeatedly slamming a corkscrew on the tray of a high chair smeared with crusty avocado and cheese. Until now, Nick has not noticed that the child has somehow managed to get hold of a sharp object and is waving it around furiously. The PHONE rings.

CHILD: "Dug blug blug blah blah bleg!"

Editor #1: "Hi Nick, we got your Gaddafi story. Our legal team decided that we may not be able to use it because the Gaddafis are very litigious and might sue us for saying their son got mad in Kenya. So we were wondering if you could call a family spokesman and confirm it."

Nick's imagined response: "A Gaddafi family fucking spokesman?"

NICK: "Sure."

BABY: "Yow blah blech dee dee dee!"

NICK calls the Libyan ambassador in Kenya, whose mobile phone number he found on the Internet.

HESAHM ALI SHARIF (heard over the phone): ""We told him that hunting is not allowed, you should go to Tanzania for hunting. He accepted everything. Why would he be angry? He respects the law and the government, and he was really happy about Kenya and loved the Maasai Mara."

NICK calls EDITOR #1 to explain.

EDITOR #1: "Thanks. That's OK. I don't think we'll run the story."

Nick hangs up the phone and briefly wonders whether he will be paid for the story if it doesn't run. He tries to feed the baby, who bangs the corkscrew on the tray and slaps the spoon with rice and chicken out of his hand. The phone rings. It is EDITOR #2

EDITOR #2: "Hi Nick, we were wondering when you'd get that story about the luxury slavery resort to us."

BABY: (Sound of wailing)

NICK: "Yeah, I've been researching that and I think there are several inconsistencies that need more investigating. Is there any chance we could hold off until tomorrow so I can make some calls? Also, not that it's your problem, but I'm not sure I'm going to make deadline because I need to put my kid to bed."

BABY: (Sound of wailing)

EDITOR #2: "Well, we really need it today. I see that most of it has already been reported on the Web anyway. How about instead of 400 words, can you give us 300? Does an hour give you enough time?"

Nick's imagined response: (Stunned silence)

NICK: "Um, OK."

(curtain closes)

Should the U.S. ambassador resign?

The Kenyan reaction has been decidedly underwhelming to this New York Times story about the possibility that U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger was rooting for President Mwai Kibaki to win a second term _ and may have suppressed information that suggested his rival was winning. Perhaps that's because what was framed as a Times expose was actually reported in The Nation in far more detail nearly two months before. Or perhaps it's because Kenya's own media are not particularly free.

Whatever the reason, the evidence would seem to suggest that Ambassador Ranneberger was actively rooting for Kibaki to win the election. After years of lamenting corruption in Kenya, he made comments before the vote that downplayed the problem. Ranneberger denies the claims that he might have been partisan, but the record seems hard to ignore.

The question seems to boil down to a matter of strategy. It's possible that the Americans decided not to release an exit poll that showed Kibaki was headed for defeat because exit polls can be unreliable and the information may have only inflamed tensions that led to the violence that killed more than 1,000 people. Or would releasing the exit poll have backed the opposition's claim that it had been scammed, and would that have forced the government to seek a compromise sooner?

Kenyan press freedom

Kenya is a weird place. You can trick yourself into thinking that it's a perfectly normal place. But that is largely thanks to the privilege that being an expatriate brings you.

I was reminded of this today while reading about Francis Nyaruri, a journalist whose decapitated body was found in a western Kenyan forest on January 29. Nyaruri had been writing about police corruption before he died, and his body showed signs of a severe beating.

Kenya's police are so corrupt that it's often seen as naive or silly to comment on the fact. I and everyone I know has given the police a few hundred shillings "for a soda" from time to time. Some people refuse to do so, but the enormous hassle that the police can cause for some minor violation hardly seems worth enduring.

They are violent, too. The police operate under a shoot-to-kill policy that, if no longer official, is certainly standard practice. People taken into police custody frequently disappear, and so do the relatives who go looking for them. That nothing will be done about those deaths, or about Nyaruri's, is taken for granted