It appears that children, stuck in a hospital are not the only ones to suffer the torture of clowns; they've now moved on to refugees. As was reported, a troupe of clowns from the group, 'Payasos Sin Fronteras' (Clowns Without Borders), has apparently been covertly moving around DR Congo, red noses and all, "entertaining" people in refugee camps.
Okay, let me be up front. I've never liked clowns. I don't find them funny. In fact, they generally scare the crap out of me and not just because of films like IT. It's people running around in face paint, acting weird, and often dropping their pants. I never knew how that got to be acceptable behavior in modern society and if you took the face paint out of it, they'd probably be arrested in normal settings. I suppose it's a good part of the reason I enjoyed Shakes the Clown so much as it tore open the sordid underbelly of the clowning world. Well, not really, but it make clowns out to be the terror that I find them to be.
There was always the longstanding joke that the reason clowns went to entertain children in hospitals was because the kids couldn't run away (see, it's not just me that's wigged out by clowns.) It appears that after working in Syria and former Yugoslavia, these clowns have gotten wind of the refugees in the camps around Goma that, gosh darnit, need some cheering up. What they actually need is a long-term development plan, de-mining, warlords to stop being funded by greedy international mining operations, and a functional government so that these camps can be shut down someday. But, until then, we have clowns. For me, it plays a good deal in to this argument wherein, since the refugees have nothing, a few hours of slapstick comedy will obviously make things better. I'm going to lean towards the 'not' side of things and toss this in the rather large pile of "people not gettin' it". This becomes even more clear when reading their blog wherein the title is "Lo nuestro es de risa" which is an idiom best translated as "this is a joke" in that it's not be taken seriously.
On a related yet unrelated side note, somehow I've managed to tie the Balkans and Africa together for two posts in a row. That just blows my mind.
You know how Caucasian people often have trouble distinguishing between the faces of African people even if they're comparing say, a Somalian and a Senegalese? It's usually attributed to being racist or ignorant and while that may be the case, it has more to do with cultural facial recognition patterns that one gets ingrained with from birth. I say this because it goes the other way as well in that random Caucasians will often look the same to Africans. Again, it's an issue of how a person optically addresses facial patterns to see the unique qualities of an individual. Most of the time it's just an amusing side note, but as was the case for Igor Majeski, it ended up in his getting arrested by the Kenyan police because he was thought to be the extremely wanted Bosnian Serb war criminal, Ratko Mladić.
I haven't been able to find out how the authorities were "tipped off" to this, but I'm sure once word got out that they could make the arrest of their career by getting the #1 Wanted ITCY Fugitive and also getting the $5 million reward, they got a wee bit excited. This then ended up in arresting poor Mister Majeski, who is a Croatian (not Bosnian Serb) that has been in Kenya for 23 years managing a hotel in Mombasa. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that this may the one and only instance of my Balkan background meshing with my African interests.
For those interested, there's a video on Reuters of Igor as well as a nice side by side comparison on the guardian.co.uk website. (How can the Guardian spell it 'Majeski' at the beginning of the article and then misspell it at 'Mejaski' the rest of the way?)
I would also like to add that had this actually been the real Ratko Mladić being arrested, Twitter would have broken the story first. When it happened, there was a flurry of activity on Twitter and absolutely nothing on not only news sites, but also on Google Blog Search as well. So, while there have been some flops in reporting the breaking news on Twitter, it's only a matter of time before serious stories emerge from this system that I once hated, but am now getting to love and build for.
It appears that Igor has finally been released from jail. I loved how the article was written up in a very understated British wit from the title of, "Kenyans release Mladic mix-up man" to this quote:
Mr Majeski's mother told reporters that he was coping with health problems and also facing a bad tourist season.She said the last thing he needed, in the circumstances, was to be falsely branded as a war criminal.
So, so true. Being falsely branded as a war criminal really craps all over my day as well when it happens.
From the rather-sparse-of-late Google Africa blog comes word that they've launch their Madagascar Google. Not really too much to report except that it's in French and Malagasy, the main language of Madagascar.
There is a pretty descent blog and internet scene in Madagascar despite the fact that connections tend to be quite slow. It's wise of Google to work to be part of this scene and do it in a native language to the country, since Malagasy actually has some traction on the web as you can see with Global Voices Malagasy and the foko project which is working to get more folks in the country to be part of the online community at large.
Overall, this mainly seems like most of Google's strategies to maintain a foothold on the African continent without really having to commit that much in resources. I mean, all the translation work was done for free, which is perhaps a wee bit cheeky given Google's vast wealth, even during our "tough times". As was shown with my previous article recounting the piece done by Atelier des médias on the Adsense issue, it would appear that Google has a long way to go in order to really figure out what they're doing in Africa. Of course, it wouldn't break my heart at all to see an African search and ad company take off and surpass Google. There is a lot of innovation happening there these days, so we'll see where things go.
I've never thoroughly been sold on tourism being a proper industry for a developing economy. Tourists are fickle, they aren't reliable in the long term, and quite often, they're cheap bastards. I fleshed out a great number of these issues in regards to Croatia here and here. While those articles dealt to a large degree with beach tourism, they can also be applied to many other types as well where the tourism has a flash in the pan factor which can explode and then quickly burn out.
That being said, I think it is possible for tourism to exist as a "gateway economy" for a region or nation. It can work to get capital flowing in a place where it hasn't been and it can work to introduce the world at large to a place which is in turn familiarizes outsiders to the people and their customs. While this can be an annoying and childish process at times (the education of daft foreigners), it can also work to bring about the real maverick travelers that want to see the "next... '___'" before everyone else does, such as a friend I know who went surfing in Liberia.
I am a bit more tame in my travels and more than happy to let others carve a decently worn path before I get there, although it doesn't need to be a paved highway by any means. That said, I am really looking forward to somehow visiting Namibia in the near future. No, it's not because of the 18 hole golf course wrapping around the bottom of the airport runway in the capital, Windhoek (must make for wicked hook shots). It's also not because Windhoek means, "windy corner" which is probably an apt, albeit rather bland name for a town.
It's because of photos like this or this and photos of Kolmanskop as it gets eaten up by the Namib Desert. There is an emptiness and beauty to every photo I've seen of the country that has the effect of beckoning me to venture forth from my comfortable desk chair. It's a country of only two million people that's twice the size of California (where we have about 37 million currently). Just as a side note for the sake of facts and figures, Namibia gained independence from South Africa in 1990 and is the second least inhabited country in the world after Mongolia.
I was re-reminded to the draw of Namibia because of a recent article on The San Francisco Chronicle where they talk about the rise in the tourism industry there and how one can have a very nice cycling trip through the northern region. While cycling isn't my thing, I do envy their trip. This article is a good read. You should check it out if the least bit curious of the country as it only steps in stereotypes once or twice--"Namibia is safe and clean by African standards."--which is quite good for an American article on Africa.
Who I don't envy is Anthony Bourdain; at least on this trip. You can view Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 of his trip, sampling Namibian cuisine. It's Part 4 at the 7:00 mark that's probably the roughest as Bourdain eats the business end of a warthog's lower intestine.
But all things aside, Bourdain pushes the boundaries of tourism a bit far. His experience does nothing to deter me from wanting to visit the country. Sure, many are probably scared to go as it is vast, deserted, and possibly full or lightly cooked warthog ass, but for me, it sounds just absolutely perfect.
Bloggers and website owners in Africa are getting taste of a new scam. Naturally, it's probably not originally created to be a scam, but it's turned in to that for those in Africa who use Google AdSense. For those unfamiliar with the term, AdSense is a program that people can enroll in to get a snippet of code to place on their site. Google then scans the content of pages the code is placed on, displays relevant text ads, and the website owner gets a small payment for each ad click-through. Overall it works quite well. I use it on a few websites of mine and make enough money to pay for the basic costs of the sites. I'm not getting rich on it, but I don't have to do anything to earn the money, so that's a win-win.
People with larger sites that get more traffic can make a great deal more though. This being the case, a number of website owners in Sub-Saharan Africa have taken to using Google AdSense on their sites. Again, it works well overall and they appear to get a good number of click-throughs which result in some pretty decent earnings for these guys. The problem comes when they want to actually get at the money coming to them from Google.
The quite excellent Atelier des médias, a ning network based on a radio show in French (ning doesn't like Google Translate by the way) broke the story about what has been happening to a lot of these guys with the checks that they get sent from Google. For those running AdSense, you may be asking right now, "They mail the checks? Really? But Google just does a direct deposit in to my bank account. The check is a last resort" Yes, they do direct bank deposits when you're not in Africa. This is explained a bit more in the article:
Google does not offer the possibility of electronic transfer to its customers residing in Africa and they only offer the sole option of receiving their payment by check, a check they have the greatest difficulty in cashing.
But there is an added layer of trouble to even starting a Google AdSense account in the first place as Serigne Diagne, the fellow who is the main subject of the article and owner of senactu (a Senegalese new portal), mentions in a comment which appears to single Africa out as a "problem" region:
...google only accepts payment by check for a person who is in Africa, for people who open the adsense account in Europe, America or Asia...
I have to admire the fact that Serigne is able to comment so evenhandedly on this as he has received good payments from Google that he cannot access as the article stated:
Serigne is quite angry because his site, senactu.com displays advertisements from Google (via AdSense) and has received two checks in the amount of $208.84 and $233.55 [USD]. The two checks are from CityBank, that banks located in the Dakar will not cash, not even at the local branch of CityBank.
And you can go on to see similar stories in the comments from prominent African bloggers that are in agreement with the article. I just have to ask, what gives? First off, why checks by mail? In general, postal systems around the world are not known for always being that great. When mailing to Croatia, I tell people, "Okay, I sent it in January, you should see it in February." to which they always reply, "Fine, but which year?" African postal systems can work in their roundabout way, but at the same time, there is no need for this. Why no direct bank transfers like website owners in the Americas, Europe, or Asia can access? That would seem to be the easiest option. Or, barring that, how about phone credits? This is a highly-used form of complementary currency in Sub-Saharan Africa. It's almost like Google doesn't want the payments to be received...
Let's face it, while Google is making strides to have a presence on Africa, they're a bit timid. They don't really want to invest themselves wholeheartedly, but at the same time, they want it known that they're there. They're fine with their AdSense being displayed on African sites, but how many AdWords (the other, paying-to-Google side of AdSense) clients are they going to have there? Most likely, the clients are based in France or Belgium as shown by some of the ads that I clicked on senactu. Is the mighty Google with their secret sauce afraid that they'll get taken in some African scam? Is Google really working to develop a web economy in Africa? Why do their Western Union payments not include anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa? Does Google really want to pay these African website operators or just take the AdWords client money without paying the AdSense money? From where I'm sitting, it would appear that they don't and it's a nasty scam to those who started using AdSense in good faith. Hopefully others will chime in on this and show some proof to the contrary.
In this big mixed up world of us, the ever-growing need for energy has forced a constant demand for fuels. Obviously, just about anyone reading this is going to be readily aware that we as a race heavily rely on fossil fuels at the moment to power a great variety of engines around the world. There are other choices though. The best of sources of energy are derived from solar and other types that have little impact except extra heat for the world. But, if one must use a combustible fuel, then biodiesel is a decent alternative for the time being.
The government of Mozambique gets this and in order to try and not be so dependent on oil, they've drafted up a strategy to include growing large amounts of Jatropha, as was reported on Reuters. While this may seem problematic and counter-productive to growing food, this scraggly plant has some advantages:
Jatropha is a non-food crop whose oil can be used to produce biodiesel. It can be grown on semi-arid land and so poses less of a threat to food production than other biofuel feedstocks such as grains and vegetable oils, supporters argue.
Of course, who is to say that if production takes off and the money rolls in that those wishing to cash in won't start growing the plant instead of food crops. Long term is always the hardest term in all of this.
As one can read on Wikipedia, the plant is comprised of about 40% oil and has been tested to run everything from Mercedes to Boeing 747 jets (albeit in a 50/50 mix with jet fuel). So, the fuel potential is definitely there, but the jury is out as to whether or not this will all work out in the end. I happen to live along a bus route that used to run diesel buses which are now all biodiesel. I gotta tell you. It may cut down on hydrocarbons, but the exhaust air is just as foul from one of these new biodiesel buses. I'm still holding out for cold fusion flying cars to be honest.
Whatever the case, I have to applaud Mozambique for attempting policies that are in line with energy self-sufficiency despite an even bigger chunk of money going to build an oil refinery in the country. There are other countries [um]USA[/um] that could learn something from this.
UPDATE: Naturally, this is not all good now that I have more information on it. Leave it to Mother Jones to write a very recent article that I was tipped off to by @gianpandinha.
This is a continuation in my series on low bandwidth development.
When thinking about development, one absolutely has to think about deployment and when you think about that, you have to think about the issues surrounding the end user actually viewing the site that you put forth.
The first thing that's key in all of this is Firefox. It's a secure, solid browser that beats the stuffing out of Internet Explorer in any head to head test of the two. The browser can be had in a great number of languages, including all of the Colonial languages of Africa. There is, in theory, a Swahili version floating around as well, but it doesn't get official support from Firefox, which is a shame. Hopefully some folks can get on board to change that as well as bring out Yoruba, Akan, Lingala, Zulu, and a few others as well. The current version of Firefox does have some issues in tying up bandwidth though, which I wrote about how to get around in a previous article.
But probably the best thing about this browser from the user side are the Addons. Various elements can be plugged in to the browser to help out the user. The one I like the best when dealing with a slow connection is AdBlock. This slams the door on externally loaded ads from appearing on a website. Sometimes it can have unfortunate effects, such as photos not displaying in Facebook. It is also controversial as people make money from displaying ads on their sites and if you're shutting that off, aren't you stealing from them? According to one person who got a lot of press, yes you are, but that campaign is now thankfully dead in the water. What people don't realize is that if you're blocking ads, you're probably not going to be clicking on them anyway.
What is most important to remember in using AdBlock is that it's going to save a user endless amounts of bandwidth. Even when bandwidth is precious, ad servers don't care. If you take all of those out of the equation, you can quickly get to the website and the information that you wanted in the first place as you see in the example below. If you're not using it already, I recommend checking it out.
I'll come back to Firefox again in future articles as there are a great many of these Addons that I use in web development.
Admittedly, things in the Guineas aren't all the rosy these days. With the recent assassination of the president of Guinea-Bissau, the attempted assassination of the president of Equatorial Guinea and Guinea-Conakry being ruled by a military junta (is there really a better junta?) since the end of last December, one has to wonder, what on earth it is about having 'guinea' in your name that screams instability?
Turns out it happens to be (as it often is) the case that foreigners are messing about in a medley of Guinean issues and for some reason, it seems to be the British who come out on top as getting the most giddy when it comes to foolin' with things. It's true that the whole thing in Equatorial Guinea with Simon Mann actually involves a South African of British descent in the case of Mann, but I'd still call Mann, British. I wouldn't say it to his face as he'd probably beat me to a pulp using just his ears (he was an SAS soldier), but it's still true. Of course, there is little to debate about the fact that the guy funding all of Mann's exploits was Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Why? Oil. Lots of lovely, flowing, happy oil, which Spain is currently enjoying a great deal of access to.
Oh, but this wasn't the first British incursion in to Equatorial Guinea. For some reason, Frederick Forsyth was actually part of and funded the 1973 failed coup that became his book, The Dogs of War. While definitely strange news, it only came back to popular knowledge recently as Forsyth was in Guinea-Bissau when the president was killed. The Englishman obviously realized that his nationality and past in the other Guinea might make people wonder as to why he just happened to be around during another upheaval and left him making the following statement:
I can assure you I had nothing to do with the coup d’etat.
Of course, there has been no coup to date, just the assassination which will now make way for elections within the next 60 days and dictate a great deal of the Guinea-Bissau's future. Maybe they and the other Guineas will get a wee bit more stable if particular British nationals manage to stay away from them for a bit. You'd think that Britain was suffering from a case of USA-itis with all this getting in to other peoples' sovereign nation affairs stuff.
Just the other day I was thinking (actually, no, I wasn't, but go along with it), you know with Ben Affleck all up in Congo's aid business, where on earth is his best buddy Matt Damon? I mean, he's done soooo much for Darfur, but has otherwise been kinda quiet lately. Ah, that's why... while Ben has been saving Congo, Matt has been saving Zimbabwe. Man, what a duo. My awareness is so raised right now, that I probably shouldn't get out of my chair for bit.
Of course, the big thing with Matt is that he skipped that whole fact finding thing that Affleck was trying to do (and for which I initially admired Ben until he went to ABSS). Yeah, Matt is completely in to the "Won't somebody please think of the children?!!" phase of it all. And hey, don't get me wrong there are some serious problems in Sub-Saharan Africa which remained unsolved after decades of ill-constructed aid programs. It's just that when reading...
action has to be taken
...right next to a headline about how Rachel Ray would do her FHM shoot again tomorrow, it makes me ask the questions, "Um yeah, okay, what 'action'?" Why does the news even cover these soundbites anymore? They're useless and while I have don't the solutions (I don't think any one person does), I'm not sitting there, trying to use my "celebrity capital" to bring attention to issues that have already been brought-ed. Of course, I actually don't really have any "celebrity capital" to use, but still, ergh.
As a side note, Morgan Freeman is playing Nelson Mandela? I guess with Don Cheadle typecast as Rwandan and Forest Whitaker typecast as Ugandan, that just left Freeman or Denzel Washington to play Mandela. Way. To. Stretch. Yourselves. Hollywood.
Paula Góes has written a good article about the assassination that happened yesterday in Guinea-Bissau. The president, João Bernardo Vieira was killed while fleeing from his home.
This is news that isn't necessarily that great for the populace at large. Everyone is a wee bit worried about an impending military coup happening, seeing as how Vieira came back to power after a coup in 2003 that led to his becoming president again in 2005. This was of course after already being president from 1980 - 1999. Not a bad run, but apparently there will be no more of this getting back in office nonsense anymore.
For those who are maybe a bit hazy on this particular Guinea, it's the former Portuguese colony that's just under Senegal and not be confused with the other two Guineas: Guinea (only 'Guinea' and formerly a French colony) and Equatorial Guinea (formerly a Spanish colony). Yeah, I know, when you look at this and the fact there are two Congos as well as eventually two Sudans, it makes you wonder why there can't be a few more names to go around. Sure, history dictated a good deal of this, but still... Then again, no one wants probably wants to be another C.A.R. which is about as lame a name as U.S.A. when you think of it.
Of course it appears that I'm not the only person to pick up on this naming business. African Unchained gets in to the fact that in an unfortunate twist of irony, these three countries that share similar names also happen to share similar issues in their failing power structures. Weirdness.
