idland

Zimbabwe's inflation is sustainable, or What the thugs are thinking

2008-07-04T00:05:00.002+02:00

A lot of people are still wondering about Zimbabwe's hyperinflation, estimated at about 9,000,000% as of mid-June. Cowen, among many others, is still thinking through the lens of seignorage, i.e. printing money is a tax on holders of money, but costs through the cost of bank notes and damage that inflation causes to the economy.

Hyperinflation is attributed to incompetence, a Government shooting itself in the foot, those stupid African communists.

But it's not as stupid as it looks; the problem is that commentators still think of Zimbabwe as a state with a Government. In the last five years Zimbabwe has ceased to have a Government: it has been replaced with a small group of thugs operating the machinery of a state.

9,000,000% inflation makes no sense from the perspective of a Government. Hyperinflation destroys a state because (i) its citizens turn to other currencies or escape to other countries, (ii) economic activity grinds to a halt, and (iii) the Government finally runs out of people who will pay for its paper. This usually happens well before 9,000,000%. It does not happen in Zimbabwe because (i) security forces in Zimbabwe will arrest you if you try to buy or sell anything with foreign currency, (ii) the economy has mostly been killed but there are enough remittances from family members to keep the thugs in business, and (iii) security forces and mobs in South Africa are doing everything they can to stop Zimbabweans from fleeing and keep them trapped in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe a state no longer; it is a prison for its citizens, and hyperinflation is just one cog in the machinery of punishment. 9,000,000% inflation makes a lot of sense from the perspective of a small group of thugs operating a state. By forcing people through threat of violence to continue to transact in Zim dollars, you can sell them worthless paper for the foreign currency they get from their relatives outside. They would leave, but with the assistance of your state neighbors like South Africa, you force them to stay. Their relatives keep sending them money because they will starve without it. They keep using that money to buy Zim dollars because they will be thrown into prison if they don't.

The citizens of Zimbabwe are held hostage, and the thugs known as ZANU-PF are collecting ransom after ransom from their relatives. People are waiting for the country to self-destruct, but I'm afraid this money pump is more sustainable than commentators have suggested.

It's a remarkable little operation, and it seems like few outside of Zimbabwe have understood it.

Some references:
Zimbabwe's people kept alive by remittance market
Letter from Harare

Ugly food price effects

2008-04-18T00:00:00.001+02:00

This is a strange pair of articles in today's morning news:

Across globe, empty bellies bring anger. Food prices are spiraling out of reach, sowing volatile discontent and putting pressure on volatile Governments.

Ottawa to pay struggling pork producers $50 million to kill 150,000 pigs by fall. ...Most of the meat is to be used for pet food or otherwise disposed.

Wasteful rich and hungry poor are hardly news, but I find it striking that rising grain prices should affect us so differently. There is less to eat for the poor, and more must be thrown away by the rich.

Canada is great

2008-03-21T00:47:00.001+01:00

Nothing to do with development, but beautiful:

Plans for Canada anti-terror unit found in garbage. No, this is not from the Onion. I'm happy to see that in spite of all the talk, we aren't really that worried about terrorists.

It's hard to be good

2008-03-12T00:24:00.001+01:00

The ever busy Chris Blattman complains about Development Tourists, people who go on short trips to developing countries to do things like build houses with Habitat for Humanity, or run inane research projects or work in NGOs for less than a year at a time. Who are these fools, and who do they think they are helping?

It's a classic complaint among development workers, but I really don't get it. We complain that rich country Governments don't pay enough attention to International Development, that they don't meet their international commitments, that most Americans couldn't find Kenya or Darfur on a map. But it's when a person gets themselves organized enough to find out about Habitat for Humanity and go on a home building trip, that's when all the cranky and experienced development types really get their knives out.

Why are we development workers so quick to attack people who are trying to do the same thing as us, if perhaps a little bit less informed and less cynical about it? My suspicion is that it is an expression of deep anxiety about our own ability to make a difference. By attacking the Development Tourists, we can feel better about ourselves, because we're the real thing, not like those boneheads over there.

Blattman's blog is generally focused on positive undercurrents in development. If he is going to turn on the criticism, I can think of a lot of things worse than Development Tourists. How about the jaded development types who have spent years in Africa and know exactly how to abuse the system to reap huge consulting fees for work they know is useless? How about the preachers and con men selling false cures for AIDS? The promoters of abstinence-only HIV education? Or the majority of Americans who can't tear themselves away from their reality television shows for long enough to go on a short term Habitat trip and see something outside their own country?

Why would you attack the one group of people who are trying to learn more about how they can make a difference?

Seeking a new colonial master

2007-12-09T00:08:00.000+01:00

I'm struck by the language used in the Economist's article about the lifting of the European travel ban on Robert Mugabe, the man largely responsible for the ongoing destruction of Zimbabwe. The story goes thus: faced with an increasing Chinese and Indian influence on the African continent, Europe can no longer afford to moralize to Africa's tinpot dictators, or it will lose out on the spoils. Hence the decision to allow Mugabe to visit Portugal to attend an Africa-EU summit, with one conscientious abstainer, the prime minister of the UK.

What strikes me is that all the sound bites, from African and European leaders alike, indicate a story that is not about partnership, but about sale.

Nigeria's minister of finance:

"Nigeria is becoming a beautiful bride. What is happening is the Chinese, the Koreans, everyone is coming around, and if European companies do not wake up, they will see that most of the best businesses are taken."

Apparently the goal is to have all of Nigeria's businesses taken by foreigners. Interesting.

Another unnamed "African official":

"Europe is jealous. They say we have gotten a new colonial master, but our old one wasn't so good."

(I naively thought the best idea would be to have no colonial master at all.)

The [Europeans'] main concession is to be less critical of regimes that are a bit light-fingered, or disdainful of human-rights.

It is interesting that at the end of the colonial period, most of the African colonies were loss-making enterprises for the colonial Governments. Now that Africa's resources are again perceived to be valuable, I guess we can drop the talk about democracy and human rights, and get back down to business.

Where have we heard this before?

2007-12-04T00:17:00.000+01:00

I would guess that journalists must be most willing to take liberties with the truth when they are discussing subjects or places they can count their readers knowing very little about.

So I gather from this cover story that Business Week readers can be assumed to know very little about Africa. I assume that's why the author chooses to join a couple of entrepreneurs with a factory in rural Mozambique, and incorrectly generalize this experience to a continent. He describes Africa thus:

Airports open and close arbitrarily. Roads are often unpaved and clogged. Gasoline and diesel are scarce, and rolling blackouts common. The medical precautions are even more forbidding: Traveling to mosquito-infested interiors requires a round of injections and weeks of antimalarial pills that often induce hallucinations.

Was our correspondent really taking mefloquine? Only if his physician is seriously out of touch or old-fashioned - Doxy and Malarone and far more commonly prescribed, especially for short trips like our correspondent's. And even mefloquine produces hallucinations very rarely, not "often". But hallucinogenic anti-malarials sound like a great story, so why not take some liberties. (And the round of vaccinations is not that different from what you need to travel to South America or Asia.)

As for scarce gasoline and airports that close down, that's a bit dramatic. 25% of Africa's GDP comes from South Africa, where neither of those things are true, and another good chunk comes from North Africa or various capital cities with pretty robust refueling infrastructure at least. It's not really fair to pretend that this is a normal part of the business environment.

But I am nitpicking - the rest of the article isn't that bad. The title "Can Greed Save Africa" does make one think of another time in history that greed drove all kinds of investors into Africa, harvesting resources and cutting off hands and the like...

At least one thing hasn't changed - it's the land that matters. The world is experiencing an unprecedented commodities boom. Africa is one of the planet's last untapped resources. (Though the BusWeek article talks mostly about microcredit and agriculture, the biggest business in Africa is still natural resources, and the commodities boom is driving the credit boom.) So do you think these resource extraction projects are sustainable?

The most telling comment for me is by the Dutch South Africa manager of a project in Mozambique: "I'd be the last person in history to go down as a philanthropist, but you cannot run a business when your workers are out with malaria or sick from dirty water."

This then, is the trade being offered. Anti-malarials and clean water, for the land.

Stupid headline of the day

2007-11-15T00:27:00.000+01:00

Thanks to that pillar of quality journalism, the New York Times, for bringing this barbaric practice to the front page. Just when we thought those Africans were becoming modern, embracing internet cafes and mobile phones, now they think children are witches. I guess some things never change...

Some more fishy reporting on the MDGs

2007-11-04T00:17:00.000+01:00

The folks over at the United Nations have developed a flashy new web site, the MDG Monitor, which tracks progress toward the completion the Millennium Development Goals, those "achievable" targets agreed to by all the nations in 2000.

I've long been convinced that the driving force behind the MDGs was not to increase foreign aid or development, but to increase the UN's influence in those areas. But I was curious to see how the UN is representing progress in some of my favorite countries.

So I punched in Lesotho, and received the following result.

How disingenuous! Whenever there is a goal that has virtually no possibility of being achieved, the UN is shrugging its figurative shoulders, uhhh, we're not really sure about that one. But I know for a fact the information is not insufficient - I have it on my computer! Lesotho has a comprehensive Demographic and Health Survey from 2004 that shows pretty clearly what the direction of progress is in these areas.

In fact, there's almost no hope of attaining the mortality goals, since the MDGs are measured from 1990, which predates the explosion of HIV in Southern Africa. Southern Africa's infant mortality rates, which the MDGs forecast to decrease by half, were higher in 2005 than in 1990. Should that not be described as "off track"?

This icon appears occasionally. I guess this means possible in theory. i.e. If development agencies became effective, if governments and civil servants in poor countries started to care about their poor, and if we find a cure for HIV in the next six months, then maybe this target could be achieved.

But try as I might, I couldn't find a single goal for a single country that the United Nations acknowledges to be Off Track. Sudan? No information. Congo? Nada. Surely Zimbabwe at least must be off track on some of its goals? Never heard of the place! That's right, Zimbabwe doesn't even appear on the UN's list of countries. Out of sight, out of mind!

Why does the UN want to hide the fact that so many countries are clearly failing to meet the Millennium Development Goals?

What does it take to get defrocked?

2007-09-27T03:06:00.000+02:00

The archbishop of Mozambique accuses Europe of manufacturing condoms with HIV. Words fail me. Link from FP passport.

Why there is corporate evil

2007-09-03T04:45:00.001+02:00

George Clooney has been polishing his image as a left wing man of the people who is not afraid to speak out against presidents or corporations. He speaks out against atrocities in Darfur, writes spiteful editorials about Dubya, drives an electric car and makes movies about evil corporations.

When asked recently whether he felt conflicted doing advertisements for Nestle, a multinational with all sorts of controversial practices in poor countries, Clooney answered, "I'm not going to apologize to you for trying to make a living every once in a while. I find that an irritating question." Unsmilingly.

This is a principle that seems to guide many people: Take an interest in all of the social problems that don't have anything to do with your lifestyle or career. As for the areas where you could feasibly make a difference in the world, mind your own business and just do your job.

And if George Clooney needs the money that badly, what hope for the rest of us?

Leaving Lesotho

2007-05-29T00:22:00.000+02:00

I am setting a pattern of difficult departures from Africa. When I left Rwanda four years ago, I ended up stranded in Nairobi, sick as a dog, all my cash foolishly packed in my checked luggages and thus unable to pay the Kenyan visa to get me into my airline-provided hotel.

Leaving Lesotho was not quite as dramatic, but held its own share of excitement.

The fun began even before we got out of our gated community, a sure sign of a long day ahead. A year of peaceful coexistence with our Government-financed guards had made us complacent, and we had forgotten the nonsense that paying residents are routinely put through. So as we approached the exit, truck loaded with our six overweight luggages and two bicycles, the guard hesitated in opening the boom.

"What is the problem?" I asked through the open window.

He was uncertain, peering into the vehicle, eyeing over the contents of the truckbed.

"It looks like you are moving out," he observed.

Not an unreasonable observation. I had forgotten about the twisted regulation of the place where we live: you are not allowed to move away. Not without written permission from the highly sketchy Mr. K___ who manages the housing unit.

We were on our way to the airport in Johannesburg, rendering the scene slightly more absurd. The guard could not seriously expect us to leave the truck behind, fetch a taxi to the manager's office, solicit his permission to depart, and then return. Nor was he even after a bribe - he was just fulfilling the irrational duties of the job.

We are familiar with the procedure. The expected process from here is a long, drawn out conversation, interrupted by repeated phone calls to superiors, negotiations and renegotiations, finally ending in our being allowed to leave. We have been through this kind of thing before, with the police, with customs, with anyone official - after enough time, they eventually tire of holding you back and let you through. But did I mention we have a plane to catch?

Luckily, a Mercedes van bearing a half-dozen Chinese textile mill supervisors also needed to exit the compound. While the guard dealing with us phoned his superiors from inside the station, another guard motioned our vehicle to wait while he let the Chinese truck through. I waited for the boom to go up, and then stepped on the gas and sped around the Chinese van and out the exit, the guard's objecting shouts floating behind us as we rolled down the hill. I don't mean to over-dramatize the situation - but let's not under-dramatize it either: the scene was pretty much right out of a Bond film.

It was a fitting way to get out of Lesotho. After close to two years of struggling with needless bureaucracies, for once to be able to cut through the red tape and race out of that gate without permission was immensely satisfying. One last flip of the bird to the all-powerful system.

We made it about fifteen minutes before the next challenge. Once again, our bursting-at-the-seams bakkie was a little bit too conspicuous for us to slip through unbothered, and the South African custom's officer wanted a closer look. We strolled around the vehicle together.

"What's in the boxes?"

Pretty much everything we own. "Just some clothing," I answered. "And there are bicycles in the cardboard boxes." It would be tough to pass those off as clothes.

"Where is your declaration form?"

Oh no. Here we go again. I have crossed this border over fifty times, and it is still inscrutable to me. I am always seeking the same thing, and yet every visit requires me to stand in a different line to receive it. The job of the officials is apparently to have you fill out papers and stand in line; any line and any papers will do, just as long as they convey a sufficient impression of crossing an international border.

"What declaration?" I asked, honestly confused.

"For the bikes, you need a declaration."

The bicycles are purchased in South Africa, and I have ridden them across this border dozens of times. Nobody has ever asked for a declaration, a fact that I share with the officer. I probably rolled my eyes - it was getting to be that kind of day. (In fact, I never declared the bikes in Lesotho, so technically they haven't ever left South Africa, but I figure I should keep that to myself.)

"I am going to fine you, because you are arguing with me. Because you do not respect my authority."

"Okay," I said, with more eye rolling. If I didn't get gouged by the customs agent, I would only get gouged by the airport money-changers when I tried to get rid of my rand, so I wasn't really bothered either way. Anyway, fines are cheap - the real cost is the time it takes to fill out all the papers required to record the payment of the fine.

At this point, J got out of the car, demonstrated the pregnant belly and began smiling and joking and flattering the customs officer, all Ntate this and Ntate that. (This, by the way, is the correct protocol for African border crossings. I was just utterly bored of it, and also still feeling like James Bond, who doesn't act obsequious toward ANYBODY.)

("Ntate" roughly means "Sir", a respectful form of address to a man.)

And just like that, he let us go without the fine. Turns out all he wanted was a little bit of respect.

The airport was complicated - we expected it to be, with our six overweight luggages and two bicycles. We did get things checked in, though the process took about three hours of negotiation over prices, and we finally had to resort to the technique of waiting for the attendant to turn around and then slipping objects back into the already-weighed suitcase. Don't look down on me, we're among the lightest passengers on the plane: we're entitled to a few extra kilos in the luggage.

With six of the eight bags sent, all that was left was the weight limit battle with KLM, and for J to self-inject the blood-thinner required before a pregnant woman gets on a 12 hour flight. In retrospect we did not need to hurry anymore, and could have taken some time to do this in a relaxed way. But it is easy to get caught up in the madness of the 48-hour journey with all your worldly possessions, to treat every event as if it MUST BE DEALT WITH AT THIS INSTANT, and in a frenzy no less.

So we found ourselves in a dark back hall of the Joburg airport, empty save for the occasional staff who would come through bearing trains of luggage carts in sets of twenty-five or more, which would crash into the walls with a bang that that made me leap out of my skin.

In this less than quiet environment, J was trying to inject the intramuscular blood thinner into her side. She was doing this rather than me because (i) she is a physician, and knows how to inject things; and (ii) I have a pathologic fear of needles. It is difficult even for me to watch people getting injected.

Unfortunately, the pregnant belly prevented her from seeing what she was doing, so she was waving the needle around blindly, pinching the targeted skin with the other hand.

"Here I go," she said, the needle poised to stab the thumb holding her skin in place.

Clearly this was wrong, but already bothered by the needle, the only coherent thing I could say was, "AAAaa NO WAIT STOP!!!"

She gave me an exasperated look, thinking perhaps I was panicking just at the sight of the needle, repositioned and tried again. This time she got the needle into the pinched skin of the abdomen, and then right back out the other side. Her finger on the plunger, she was about the send the drug squirting uselessly into the air.

I repeated my advice: "Aaaa NO WAIT STOP!!"

More exasperation. This wasn't working. So I took the needle from her, stabbed it in and plunged the plunger. I guess it wasn't such a difficult thing to do.

We made it through security with our handfuls of carry-ons and settled into the News Cafe on the far side, and had a couple of drinks poured for us. We still had over twenty-four hours of travel ahead of us, including over eighteen on a plane, but it hardly mattered. For the first time it was looking like we were going to make it home. The long plane ride hardly even mattered.

Adding Insults to Injury

2007-04-27T00:21:00.000+02:00

(I'm still writing about the Cape Epic. Click here for the beginning of the story.)

This is the first vacation in a long, long time where we are actually GLAD that Friday is finally here.

By the seventh day, it starts to look like we are going to complete the Cape Epic, something that only two days ago seemed highly improbable. This knowledge brings us no special sense of satisfaction or accomplishment: it is greeted with numbness and indifference, even regret. It is clearly too late to quit; but if we had the sense to have thrown in the towel on Day 4, we would be relaxed and drinking cocktails at some coastal resort instead of having to get back on our bikes and ride another 200+ kilometers. We might even still be talking to each other.

The cycling marriage between me and my partner is unequivocally on the rocks. The only thing keeping us from violence is the fact that we are getting too tired to keep the argument going, to continue giving voice to the latest complaints and criticisms. Eight days of grueling mountain biking under the requirement of never being further than two minutes from your partner. There are better circumstances under which to get to know a person, and since Day Four we have both been on our worst behavior. The pettiest things have become cause for conflict, and we carry on our pointless disputes like a bitter old couple, regardless of how many other cyclists are around us. One of us is always riding too fast or too slow, too erratically, not looking back enough, drafting too much, drafting too little. A major motivation to get to the end is that once we arrive we will not see each other again for quite some time.

The previous night we talked to a rider who had started the race on a semi-pro mixed male/female team. They had given up on each other and were now riding separately. "Riding on a mixed team, it's something everyone should try once in their life. And only once. You have to watch EVERY little thing that you say." We are not a mixed team, but we can identify.

The last two days are no less difficult than the first seven, with searing temperatures and endless climbs taking their toll on our weary spirits. And yet the abused body somehow continues to perform in its limited way, and our legs pull us through one long kilometre after the next.

There is even the occasional moment to look up from the ground to see where we are, and the views are generally stupefying. We are spending these days on a mostly blank part of the South African map - away from the coast and between no major towns - which grants the improbable mountains around us a secretive, mystic appeal. I remember looking up and finding myself atop a massive plateau, with precipitous horizons on all sides. The ground was blackened, but peppered with strips of iridescent green; I was standing on a microcosm of the globe. It was the kind of place that invites one to stare in awe, to stop, and loaf, to breathe and take it all in. We rolled through it in a matter of minutes, our attention quickly drawn from the vista and back to the trail as it pitched us down 800 vertical meters over the next 5km of riding.

The last day is especially torturous, with cross-winds and mandatory hiking sections, an absurd bone-rattling segment down the middle of a railroad track still periodically in use. It is as if the route planners (one of whom calls himself Dr. Evil) are taking this one last chance to reinforce the woeful inadequacy of our skills and training for this bike ride. It would be intolerable if not for the fact that it is the last day, that it is the last 40, the last 30, and 20 kilometres of the Cape Epic. And that we are never, ever, never coming back.

By the time we arrive at the finish line in the Lourensford wine estate near Cape Town, the party is winding down. The pros have come and gone hours ago, and the sorry stragglers like ourselves draw only a scattering of polite, sympathetic applause. The officials passing us our finishing medals seem tired and irritable, as if they were hoping the event would be over by now. Many of the marquee tents have already been pulled down, and a live band plays to an empty field where discarded paper cups suggest the earlier festivities of the afternoon.

It is all quite anti-climactic, though it is highly satisfying to hear the professional sportscaster on the sound system shouting our team name into the empty field, "The Boobee Doobees!" (The name was invented by my partner's 3-year-old daughter, but repeatedly transformed by mis-spellings and mispronounciations into something risque.)

We are smiling, but only because we don't ever have to sit on our bicycles again. M finds a trash bin twenty metres from the finish, and dramatically tosses in his helmet and bike shoes, as i unwrap the yards of gauze and medical tape that are holding my body together. Both of us are thinking that we will listen to our wives next time. (But we won't.)

A few inches from rock bottom

2007-04-18T00:25:00.000+02:00

(click here for the first part of this post, Rock Bottom)

It is difficult to say what is the worst part of a day on the Cape Epic, because every moment of the day has something miserable to contribute. In the mornings, the trauma is psychological, the unpleasant airhorn alarm, pushing breakfast into a disinterested body at 5 AM, the humiliating trip to Medi-Clinic, the putting on of tight cycling clothes on a cold morning, the hauling of the too heavy race bag to the transport vehicle, the painful reacquaintance of saddle with back side.

This morning we visited the race office in order to find out how my partner could drop out of the race and find his way back to his vehicle parked at the race start in Knysna. Ostensibly we wanted to make sure that I could legitimately ride on without him -- in reality I would only have made it about one water hole further, once the precedent had been set for dropping out. (There was also my wife on the telephone, "You can't drop out of the race before M!")

It would be necessary for him to start the day - short of riding, the only way to get a ride to the next town was to be picked up by the Medi-Clinic sweep vehicle - there is not much public transport across the blasted landscape of the Little Karoo desert.

Before long he had found his second wind and it was me who was falling apart. Feeling ill from the beginning of the day, I had eaten only a banana for breakfast, which is not the best idea when one plans to ride eight hours and burn some 2500 calories or more. At 6'1" and 145lbs, I do not have any appreciable reserves to call upon.

The world seemed to drag around me, and the few cyclists I had passed in the early minutes were now flying past me. Even the small descents were dizzying, the bike bouncing all over the place in my loose hands, the foggy shouts of riders around me, "Hold your line, #199, hold your line!"

A danger to others and to myself, I kept my mind fixed on my objective -- the porta-potty at the first water hole. After four days of drawing over half my calories from home-made chocolatty soy and wheat germ energy bars, my body's digestive system was staging a protest. What was coming out was beginning to look a lot like what was going in, and demanding to be moved at about the same frequency - one energy bar per hour.

Dramatically, I told my partner that my race was finished, and he was going to have to go on without me. I would make it to the next water hole, but no further. We ceremonially passed tubes, pump and tools from my pack to his so he would be self-sufficient.

With the bittersweet taste of having failed the Cape Epic, I relaxed for the first time in five days, and opened my eyes and ears for my last hours of riding. Still close to our starting point, we were riding through a fabulous terrain of irrigated orchards, on footpaths and jeep tracks between pear and apple trees, scrubby desert mountains looming at our sides. It would be an impressive place to ride, if it didn't hurt so much just to sit on the bike.

Whether it was the temporary peace, or the lightweight pack, an hour and a half later I still found myself within a few feet of my partner, and finishing the day again seemed possible. It helped that by this point in the race, most people in our category (that being Those Who Should Have Stayed Home) were walking their bikes on all the major climbs, and many minor ones as well. This was a saving grace for me, because walking spares the butt from the saddle, and because being pathetically slow does not lose you nearly as much time to a walker as to a rider.

As the desert heat poured into the afternoon, even walking proved difficult, and our arms and legs were glistening with dusty sweat. A rider ahead of me slumped over his bike, and with an expression reminiscent of a painting by Edvard Munch, said, "Are you all experiencing your own personal Hell?" We grumbled our assent and dragged our bikes on up the hill.

In passing, we signed up for this race thinking that it would be fun, or at least that it would have fun moments. And for some riders, perhaps even the majority, it seemed to meet that expectation. For those who finished their days in times of 5 and 6 hours, there was time to relax, have a nap and a massage, stroll through town, drink a beer, spend the afternoon sampling South African pastries in a small town coffee shop. For us, the end of each day's ride was the beginning of an evening race: to find a tent, have a shower, wash and dry our clothes and eat dinner all quickly enough to afford ourselves eight hours of sleep before the next grueling day.

As I dialed my wife that evening, all I had in mind was to let her know that I would be dropping out of the Cape Epic the next day. She, who ten months and 6,000 rand ago, had foreseen that riding this race was an utterly senseless idea, did not sound impressed. "All the people at my work are cheering you guys on! They think you're going to make it." This hardly came as good news, as I had no intention of finishing. Disappointed coworkers. It was just one more thing to be miserable about.

Continued...

The Cape Epic: My week pretending to be a pro biker

2007-04-13T00:07:00.000+02:00

Rock Bottom

"I think this is the stupidest thing you've ever done," my wife says to me on the telephone. I am in full agreement.

It is the end of the fourth day of the Cape Epic. I am supposed to be happy. After all, M and I have just completed another day of this grueling, eight-day mountain bike race, in our best time so far: seven hours and thirty minutes. For the first time since the beginning of the race, I have had time to handwash my cycling clothes, and even stroll into the middle of nowhere desert town we are passing through. We have completed almost 500km out of 890km, and the worst days are behind us.

I should be happy, but I am downright miserable. The places I would rather be (which I have just enumerated to my wife in great detail) include:

At work, in a tedious afternoon meeting.
Naked in a winter snowstorm.
In bed with e.coli poisoning.

In short, anywhere but here. Things on my little bike race are not going so well. The thought of getting back on my bike and riding another 115km tomorrow is utterly depressing.

My problems are not exclusively psychological. My palms are quite literally blue with bruises from being pounded by the rocky descents of the Little Karoo. My cheap ($800) hard-tail mountain bike has fed the full impact of every little desert stone into my hands and back, and I now dread the downhills much more than the climbs. My toes are numb from the loss of circulation caused by my Time pedals and too small bicycle shoes. Worst of all are the growing saddle sores which make each pedal stroke painful, and for which I will have to endure the humiliation of standing in the Medi-Clinic "bum line", to have my male nurse Randall apply protective tape. Finishing this stupid race cannot possibly be worth this.

The shower truck is broken, but at the edge of our tent town (in a grassy and shit-filled cow pasture), cyclists are washing themselves in the sprinkler irrigation system that borders the highway. The men are stark naked and without modesty, their dark pelvic regions standing out even from two hundred metres away. The women in their midst have kept on their bikinis, but are undisturbed by the male nudity all around them. I, on the other hand, find it all severely disturbing. It is strange to think that I am here by choice.

Today was our Recovery Day, after the toughest three days in Cape Epic history. The Recovery Day, in Cape Epic terms, is 120km with 1200m of accumulated vertical - still longer than any mountain bike ride either of us had ever done before entering this race. Our's began badly, as M's rear tire rapidly deflated in the starting gate. The culprit can only have been a thorn picked up on our way to the start line - carefully removed from somebody else's tire last night, and then carelessly chucked into the middle of the tent town.

Nervous and jittery, it takes us an inexcusable ten minutes or longer to change the tube, by which time the peloton is long gone, not to mention the Medi-Clinic "sweep" vehicle, and the volunteer crew that takes down the race direction signs after the last rider - there will be no directions left for us. We speed into town, but of course the race is nowhere in sight. Trying to maintain tempo, we desperately shout at the elderly white folk standing on the street corners, "Which way is the race, where did the cyclists go??" They wave us on with half hearted and unconvincing gestures. Fifteen minutes of furious pedaling and we have not seen another cyclist.

As any road cyclist will tell you, the nature of drafting makes it extremely difficult for a pair of cyclists to catch up to a large group - especially an inexperienced and untrained pair of cyclists like ourselves, who finish 450th out of 500 on a good day. Our only indications of where to turn are the vague clouds of dust in the distance and the race helicopter which is tracking the pros. They are already so far ahead of us that the helicopter is partially obscured by the curvature of the Earth.

After thirty minutes, we finally catch the sweep vehicles, which have stopped for a team with mechanical difficulties, and after another thirty, we have caught up to a small group of laggers. But in this first hour, we have used what feels like a full day's worth of energy, and have pretty much destroyed any possibility of this actually being a recovery day. It gets worse from there, with sandy jeep tracks and desert heat sapping what little motivation we have left. Only the watering points make it bearable, because from each it is only 30km to the next. And even at the edge of despair, one can be convinced to ride 30km to the next water hole and defer the decision to quit by one or two more hours.

next: A few inches from rock bottom

Three days to Epic pain

2007-03-21T00:20:00.000+01:00

The Cape Epic mountain bike race begins on Saturday. This is an eight day, 900km bike race, covering 15km of accumulated vertical, much of it in the forsaken desert of the Little Karoo. For reasons incomprehensible, I will be riding this race.

Looks hot out there

I think my partner and I have fair reason to be nervous. A quick scroll through some of the Cape Epic blogs online is deeply disturbing. It would appear that these people have not only been training for this race for months, but that they have been doing little else. Granted, someone who writes an entire blog just about training for a mountain bike race is probably going to be on the intense side of things, but this sort of thing is worrying all the same. M and I have taken the attitude to training that it should be fun. So when we've felt like sleeping in, or taking it easy, or had other things planned... well the training rides can wait.

Not to mention that two months ago my partner got a new bike, adding one more excuse not to train hard... "I gotta take it easy, I don't want to hurt my knees adjusting to a new bike." So when the rider communication email came about two weeks ago encouraging us to enjoy our "tapering off" period, we were thinking it was probably time to start doing some tougher training rides.

The only thing in our favor is that we live in Lesotho - where the smoothest back roads are probably bumpier than the worst that the Cape Epic can throw at us. And our bodies are adjusted to the dizzying elevation of 5600 feet. Training, whatever! We don't need to train hard, we live at ALTITUDE!!

The motley advice on the site of a guy called "Spinman" seems to be unintentionally funny... such as "take it easy on days 1 and 2." Day 1 is 2660m of vertical climbing over 105km. Day 2 is 2200m of vertical over 134km. How exactly are we supposed to take it easy? We will struggle to finish by sunset.

Here's another good one: "Finish your washing by noon if you want it to dry." This seems to imply arriving in the race village well before noon. This advice clearly does not apply to us.

Or this: "I finished like this, in spite of two raw holes 30x30mm, and 6mm deep, one on either cheek on the hotspot where the bum bones carry one's weight on the saddle." The advice I think was to apply duct tape. The better advice seems to be: DON'T RIDE THIS STUPID RACE!

This one is rich: "Be physically and mentally prepared." It comes up twice. If only somebody had given us this advice sooner!

So pretty much, we're dead.

Having run out of time to train, we've searched for commitment mechanisms. My partner's mountain biking friends back home are subscribed to his results page, so he has the added motivation not to give up, knowing they will all find out and begin ridiculing him almost before he has dragged his sorry ass off the course. A few good folk have put up money for an orphanage in Semonkong for every kilometre that we ride, so that we know we're doing it for the children. And my flight leaves Cape Town the morning after the race... so if I don't make it, the ride back to Lesotho is going to be a lot longer than just finishing the stupid race on time. Weak, but its the best we could come up with.

If this blog goes silent after this post, it means my bleached bones are roasting somewhere in the middle of the Little Karoo. Either that or I had too much pride to post about just how badly I did.

So wish us luck... we are going to need it in a big way...

Still staying away

2007-03-20T00:18:00.000+01:00

Another day off for parliament

This bus is never coming

A message for taxi drivers

Ernest Angley: The sad shadow of an old miracle man

2007-03-16T00:10:00.000+01:00

The sign heralding Ohio miracle worker Ernest Angley's visit to Lesotho is enough to make you wince. Next to Angley's pudgy face, it promises that the deaf will hear, the lame will walk, and "AIDS And Other Death Diseases" will be healed. In a country with an HIV rate of 25%, stigma and misinformation are still major barriers to prevention campaigns, and a startling number of people live in fear of discovering that they are HIV-positive. Education campaigns are our best tool, and the last thing we need is an American preacher coming to town dispensing miracle cures.

Feeling a little bit dirty but driven by morbid curiosity, three friends and I found our way to the Sunday night show at the Pitso Grounds in Maseru. They were still setting up when we arrived, and it looked to be quite the event. Public outdoor shows are not common in Lesotho - famous musicians tend to choose private clubs with stiff entry fees to cover their expenses. Angley's team was setting up spotlights, towers of scaffolding, and quite possibly the biggest sound system that has ever been used in Lesotho.

The grounds were predictably busy. The Basotho are a religious and superstitious people, and they live in a troubled time, with the future of their nation threatened by the HIV epidemic. As elsewhere in Africa, the colonial overhang has left an overly positive impression of white expatriates. So when a white preacher comes with a promise to cure HIV, it is going to draw a crowd.

Ernest Angley has been working as a miracle man for well over forty years, which raised my expectations for an impressive and well-oiled performance. The David Copperfield of faith healers. I was disappointed to see that miracle workers too are affected by age (wikipedia puts him at 86) - they become slow and rambling, old men remembering another time, slightly embarrassing and uncomfortable to be around.

The outfit was the first hint that Ernest Angley was still living in the heady world of 1970s televangelism, the white suit, azure shirt, the sparkling tie. The dark toupee and the gold, shining bible were all intimidating, but most striking of all was the face, the bulbous jowls and smooth, synthetic sheen. "Is it plastic surgery?" I wondered. "Is it a mask??" "Its Dick Cheney under there," G whispered ominously.

86 years can't stop him

Angley's sidekicks had brought their sparkling suits and mustaches with them from the seventies, and sang melodious tunes to the canned music that floated through the sound system. Religious music is big in Lesotho, and several locals asked me where they could get a recording, assuming from my caucasian coloration that I must be with the masked man. Each time someone talked to me, a suited man built like an ex-marine would quickly arrive and angrily tell the questioner that I was NOT with them. There must have been at least a dozen of Angley's thugs stalking the crowd. In any case, I was happy for the clarification. As the singing went on, the more gentler of Angley's aides scanned the crowd for visibly disabled people and escorted them to reserved seats in front of the stage.

Maseru dance party

The occasional songs in Zulu or Sesotho (usually consisting of only a few repeated words) made the crowd go wild. That was the fun part of the performance - Lesotho does not see very many outdoor dance parties. After the songs, they gave the microphone to Angley, and the show started to go weird. After weird came depressing, and after depressing came boring, and after boring came being escorted to the door by four mustached thugs.

I don't think he even introduced himself. They passed him the microphone, and he stalked the stage, shouting into his microphone, "The blood! The blood! The blood! The blood!" He was followed step for step, motion for motion, by his Basotho translator, shouting "Mali! Mali! Mali! Mali!" 10,000 people, shouting for blood.

This was followed by a long, strange speech, which was as long-winded as it was directionless. I expected that after 40 years of fine-tuning, Angley's speech would be perfect: crafted, refined, designed to whip the crowd into a religious frenzy that made people levitate and smash their glasses, throw their crutches into the air.

If you yodel, I'm leaving

Maybe from the Ernest Angley of the 50s, but not this guy. He talked for a good ten minutes about yodelling, and how he didn't care for the sound. I'm not making this up. How one day he had experimented with his voice, and discovered that yes, he could make that sound, but why would he want to? And maybe we liked to make yodelling sounds in our home churches, in which case Angley would not judge us, but he would prefer if we didn't do it at his crusade.

From yodelling, into a rambling autobiographical sketch which included a lot of conversations with God, and a lot of talents passed down, including speaking, healing, the aw-shucks Ohio accent, and presumably the Amazing Plastic Face.

After the rambling came the offering. He sped through how you don't have to give money to receive a miracle, but took his time at the fun part. "Who wants to be blessed tonight? Who's going to give 500 rand? Put your hands up, who wants to be blessed tonight? There are people here who can give 500 rand!" It was all worded so nobody reviewing a transcript could accuse Angley of associating offered gifts with miracles, but the implication was clear. No hands went up. We were thrilled. I overheard an American missionary advising the people around him, "Don't give money. Give to your local church instead."

Beneath the dejected auctioneer, the price of a miracle slowly came down: "There are people here who can give 100 rand, who wants to be blessed with a miracle tonight?" No hands. "There are a lot of people who can give 10 rand. Who's going to give ten rand tonight? Who wants to be blessed tonight? Who's going to give ten rand." One or two hands. He went down to five rand. He went down to two rand (about 25 US cents). Finally, a few hands went up. But to our disappointment, when the rainbow bags went around, it looked like almost everyone threw in a coin or two. Just in case it might make a difference.

All proceeds will be spent on 747 jet fuel

Finally, getting to the business of the miracles, one of the aides asked the deaf and mute people to stand in parallel lines at the back of the fairgrounds. D went and stood in line, and spoke with a young, made-up woman of Angley's. "I can't hear my daughter's voice," he said. "I can hear everything, but I can't hear my daughter's voice, ever since I had an affair I can't hear her voice." Taking him aside to talk about the thick presence of witchcraft in Lesotho, she suggested that he was in all likelihood possessed by a demon.

In line for a miracle

In the meantime, Angley began healing people in the audience. As with everything else about the miracle crusade, it was an underwhelming experience.

"I'm not going to point out anyone with AIDS, because I don't want to embarrass them. But you know who you are. You are a man, you are 42 years old, you have had AIDS for 3 years. Your middle name is Andrew. When you last went to your doctor, you had lost 59 pounds. You are now healed of AIDS."

The applause was polite but unconvincing. What a weak effort! Andrew?! The least he could have done was learned a couple of Basotho names before the show.

"You are 73 years old. Your daughter has died of AIDS. You have been caring for your granddaughter, who also has AIDS, and you got AIDS from your granddaughter. You would give your life to help her. You are now healed of AIDS."

The physician standing next to me grumbled. "What a great message to reinforce. That you can get HIV by caring for someone with HIV." The physician is right of course - there is no documented case of HIV transmission to a caregiver, but now maybe some people will go home, afraid to care for relatives with HIV.

A solemn woman was standing next to us, holding a baby whose face twitched in an irregular spasm. On his small head were lesions that are common in HIV-positive children, and extremely rare otherwise. With the translating help of another man, the physician gave the woman directions to the clinic where he works. It was a difficult translation, but she seemed to get the message. "Bring your child there tomorrow," he said. "We can help your child. It is free."

Too late we realized that we should not have come for entertainment. We should have prepared flyers with directions to free HIV clinics, and passed them out to everyone, especially to people with evidently HIV positive children. Next year.

Angley moved on to the one-on-one stage of the show, where he healed people who have no sense of smell. It was a strange shift, from AIDS to anosmia, but to judge from the line, this is apparently not such a common condition in Lesotho. (In my office where the toilets have been backed up for weeks, it could even be considered an asset.) Maybe at 80-something, Angley's tired healing powers need to start with some easy miracles to get warmed up.

The candidates were brought to him by the ex-marines, who by this time had almost all migrated to the stage. Presumably they were necessary to quickly dispose of any trouble-makers that made it past the screening process and on-stage. (Our friend D was rejected... likely the miracle he needs is too complex for the TV audience.)

The first woman was young, round, smiling. He put his hand on her nose and cast her nasal demon OUT!!!, the echo of the word reverberating through the sound system into the surrounding mountains. Angley waved a perfume-soaked rag under her nose. "Whoooo!" she yelped, folded in half at the hips, and spun around. The crowd roared approval. He waved it in front of her face again. She gave the same shout, and the crowd roared again. Angley was happy too, and he turned to the crowd. "Who did it? Jesus! Say it with me. Who did it?" "Jesus!" the crowd shouted back.

Next was a young, thin man, looking nervous under the spotlights. Angley cast the demon OUT! and waved the perfume-soaked rag. The man sniffed, and looked confused. "Do you smell it?" The man kept sniffing, but the confused expression did not change. Close enough for Angley. "That's what you want your girl to smell like!" he crowed. "You want to go out with a girl who smells like this!" This conversation went on for much too long before Angley sent the man off stage. "Who did it? Jesus!!"

After a few more unconvincing nasal healings, Angley moved on to those deaf in one ear. He cast their one-sided demons OUT and demonstrated the successful miracle by putting a plump finger in the person's good ear, and speaking into the other ear (and the microphone, and thus the best sound system in Lesotho). And they could hear him. Stunning.

Moving on, one of Angley's thugs brought up a woman in her 40s. "Reverend Angley," he says, "This woman has been deaf and mute for over 20 years." Angley looked keen for the challenge. Arms waving, he cast OUT! the demon of deafness, and he cast OUT! the demon of muteness.

Putting his large face close to her's, he enunciated dramatically, "baaaay-BEE! Baaaay-BEE!". And again. He repeated it at least 20 times, the plastic face seemingly stuck in a robotic loop. Finally she understood that she was to repeat after him. "aay-eee", she pronounced, struggling. "Baaaaay-BEE!" Angley shouted, feeling close. "Bay-bee," she answered calmly. Angley gave a twitter, and the crowd thundered - it was definitely the best miracle yet.

The healed woman was communicating with the friend who had come with her, and after some discussion, the healed deaf-mute turned to Angley, speaking directly into the microphone in perfect English. "I am not mute. I have always been able to speak. But I cannot hear anything." Angley, still focused on the crowd, seemed not to hear. "Who did it?" he shouted, and answered his own question. The woman said something else inaudible, and the thugs escorted her off the stage. Angley now looked a bit confused. "Whatever she came here with," he stuttered, "She left with more, that's what's important. That's what Jesus does!"

Next was a man who was actually mute, and appeared to struggle greatly just to mumble incoherently into the microphone.

Angley used the same approach. OUT!, followed by, "baaaaay-BEE!" Mumble mumble mumble, came the response. Back and forth they went for several uncomfortable minutes.

"baaaaay-BEE!" Mumble mumble mumble. "Come on man, you have to put some effort into it," Angley encouraged, the translater repeating after him.

"baaaay-BEE!" Mumble mumble mumble.

"Don't say it with your head. Say it with your lips. You have to use your lips. baaaay-BEE!" Mumble mumble mumble.

"Use your lips man, your lips. Come on Lord, he's almost there, he just needs a little bit more help. Just a little bit more healing, Lord. baaaay-BEE!" Mumble mumble mumble.

Turning halfway to the man's friend, halfway to the audience, Angley dissimulated. "We've made progress here, but he doesn't know the language. You have to teach him. When I see you next year, he'll be speaking perfectly. Who did it?? JEEEEESUS!!"

This was followed by another mumbling mute, who suffered the same indignity. Headlines from the Onion were scrolling through my mind. "Deaf-mute just not trying hard enough to speak."

It was painful to watch. I came expecting to feel anger at this charlatan spreading mistruths about AIDS, but the display was too pathetic for me to feel anything but sadness. To age with dignity is a privilege not in our control. Whatever Angley once had, it seems to have left him long ago. Between the bright lights, the thugs, the 747 and the white suit, the show can go on, but the mojo is gone. I wondered how many of his support crew have stuck around out of reverence to what this man once was, supporters who cannot bring themselves to tell him that he is a disgrace, who instead work days and nights to help keep up the charade around him.

The "healings" went on. M was getting anxious, as he'd told his wife he would be home by nine. G was looking bored. More significantly, D was starting to pass out the flyers that he had prepared in advance of the event. Their message, in short: "Believe in Jesus, but don't believe in Ernest Angley. You can be healed, through the MIRACLE OF ARV DRUGS." If that wasn't enough to get the ex-marines' attention, the flyer was topped with Angley's face blocked out by the red circle-slash symbol for NO.

It didn't take long for one of the goons to grab me and G by the arms and rudely ask if we were distributing these flyers, though he seemed to have already made up his mind.

"No," I said disingenuously.

The change in demeanour was instant. "Well in that case you can stay," with a too-wide smile.

"But I guess it is my friend who's passing them out," I went on with a helpless smile, and we allowed ourselves to be escorted to our car by the gate.

Things took a turn downhill at that point, as D and M had apparently found the anger that I had not, and an immature shouting match had developed.

"You're killing these people!"

"No, YOU'RE killing these people!"

"I may go to Hell, but I know I'll see you there!"

"I'll take my chances, you hypocrite!"

Rolling a couple of metres out of the gate, D stopped the car and passed out the rest of his flyers. We drove home in silence, each with our own thoughts. I never did get to see what Angley was going to do with all the crippled and disabled that he had assembled under the stage. But maybe its for the best.

Until next year, Lesotho!

How to (Legally) Manipulate an Election

2007-02-22T00:05:00.001+01:00

The ruling party of Lesotho has managed to steal, entirely within the letter of the law, almost a quarter of the seats in last weekend’s national election. Neither donors nor media seem interested in covering the irregularities. But the trouble is plain in the published numbers for all to see.

So begins a cutting post at Maseru Observer. It is disturbingly impressive to read how Lesotho's two major political parties have exploited the electoral rules to earn themselves about a third more seats in parliament than they were due.

The ABC are protesting the results of four individual district counts, but it seems like the wholesale trickery is a much bigger issue. Like most elections in Lesotho, it is looking like this one is going to be in the courts for a long time.

Read the post. It's a fascinating exposition of how anything less than perfection in electoral rules can result in seriously distorted results.

Voting season

2007-02-16T10:45:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow is election day in Lesotho. The level of enthusiasm about participating in democracy appears to be lukewarm, at least by African standards. Besides the occasional mass gathering or truck overflowing with ABC supporters, shouting and flashing the now ubiquitous "rising sun" hand signal, there has not been much to speak of.

And yet, it promises to be an interesting election. In the last six months, the political scene has shifted from dead boring to tumultuous, as the ruling party has broken in two. It is as if there is actually something to be contested.

And although you would not expect it, the history of political violence in Lesotho goes all the way back to independence. Since 1966, there has been exactly one peaceful election - that of 2002. This year, there have been two successful political assassinations, one attempted, and one botched attempt that ended in the killing of a volunteer physician from the Netherlands. The events most seared into the collective expatriate consciousness are those of 1998 - the Southern African Defense Force was "invited" to suppress the post-election demonstrations, resulting in mass riots, 60 people killed and the main street through town being burned to the ground.

The high turnover rate of expatriates mean that barely anyone in the community today was actually here in 1998 - most of the stories whispered in the expatriate haunts are already in their third or fourth generation and have acquired the status of myth. One thing is known - nobody predicted the mess of 1998. And so the rumors and predictions fly, will there be violence, and when, and how? And behind the concern for self and property, is there a certain thrill at feeling like a part of that most newsworthy of occurrences, a disputed election?

Anecdotal evidence suggests that expats will be leaving the country en masse out of concern for their safety. (Though in 1998, the country erupted only three weeks after the elections...) It is one of those strange schizophrenias of development thought, that we are utterly obsessed with the necessity of elections and democracies, and yet we are totally disinterested in the outcomes of those elections, especially in Africa, so long as we can call those outcomes "fair".

It is very difficult to predict the outcome next week, as there are no advance polls - the political rallies seem to be the substitute for polling, with the media gleefully reporting huge attendance at their favorite parties' packed events. These polls too are subject to bias, with the radio news in the hands of the State, and the English language Public Eye all but endorsing the upstart competitor, the All Basotho Convention.

The other uncertainty is how much tampering will take place. It seems clear that the understaffed Independent Electoral Commission (which rejected the need both for international volunteers and for exit polling) will not be able to police all of the polling stations. Some people will vote early and often, others will be illegitimately rejected or will spoil their ballots; ballot boxes will be lost, and ballot boxes will be stuffed - but how much and by who remains to be seen.

No matter how bad it gets, the spineless international organizations will declare the election to be "free and fair", because above all they want to avoid being responsible for a new bout of violence. The statistics that cast doubt on the final tally will be kept hidden - for instance, if the final tallies show that 30% of ballots were considered "spoiled" (as happened in '02, though this number was not made public), or the fact that the IEC's voter registration tallies show almost as many people registered as the census shows voting age population - surprising, given the loud complaints that thousands of people were not able to be registered.

My own informal polls show almost unanimous support for the ABC - there is definitely a sense in the streets here that it is time for change. What is not clear is just what kind of change that will be, since the leaders of the new party have spent their entire careers with the old party. One hopes it is not just a change of whose fingers are in the State wallet.

Unfortunately, the published platforms do not suggest much. ABC is campaigning on a promise to do something about poverty, with promises to improve economic development, expand health and education and reduce crime - laudable goals, if a bit vague on the how - presumably the ruling LCD would like to do all of these things as well. The highly biased wikipedia entry on the ABC leader, clearly written by a supporter, seems to express most clearly the lack of clarity of ABC's purpose:

It is believed that if Basotho could let Thabane to Office, he will try to draw new policies that would bring a broader understanding of approach to changing Lesotho's declining hope in the global market.

Indeed.

To judge from the ABC's support base in Maseru, clarity is not as important as change. But Maseru is only one small constituency in a country with the majority of its parliamentary seats located in the sparsely populated highlands. It is a bit of a bad augur - if the mountains deliver the prize to the LCD, there will be a lot of discontent and protest in Maseru.

Here's hoping that this time they don't call in the South Africans.

Amidst the puncture farms

2007-02-07T00:29:00.000+01:00

After Saturday's attack by stick-wielding topless women, we opted on Sunday to ride in tame, white-farm South Africa. Tired from yesterday, we meant to make it a relaxed day, and so when my tire went flat, we took it as an opportunity to sit beneath the shade of a eucalyptus tree and eat some snacks.

Before long a local Afrikaaner stopped his truck to chat with us through the window, his wife in the front seat and two quiet Basotho standing in the truckbed. He was thin, with a red goatee, shifty eyes, and he spoke in a conspiratorial tone that seemed to implicate us in his creepy business, whatever it was. He reminded me of that occasional Free Stater who leans into you and whispers nasty things about "the blecks", the implication being that because you are white, you must think that this politically correct talk about racial equality is all poppycock. The kind of guy who makes you want to run away shouting, "I'm not into that!" and then go wash your hands in disinfectant. I am probably being unfair, and he is probably a nice guy -- and yet my riding partner M had the same gut feeling as I. But there was nowhere to run to - he had a truck, and I a mountain bike with a flat tire.

He was building a bike track on his farm nearby, he said, and he wanted "you people" (that being us) to come advise and help him set it up. He seemed to ignore our indications that we are the only two mountain bikers that we know of in Lesotho, and a downhill track wasn't really going to bring "us people" to his farm on the weekend. I went with the, "I'm new here and haven't learned my own phone number yet" excuse -- M was not quick enough on the ball and gave the man his phone number.

"You know," the man said, "Why don't you just throw your bikes in the truck and I'll take you up there right now..."

"No!" in unison, near shouting. "It's ok, we'll ride our bikes there. Really."

That settled, he drove off, I finished replacing my inner tube, and we stood up to get on our way.

"I can't believe it," M. "I have a flat tire too." In the time we had been sitting, his front tire had deflated. Bad luck.

Five minutes, another tube replaced, we were on our way.

Five minutes more, the ground was feeling a little bit rougher than it should. "Do I have a flat tire?" I asked.

"You're looking a bit soft," M.

No shade this time, and I put on the last of our spare tubes. It was easy in the glaring sun to stretch the hot tire over the rim.

"Uh... M", I said nervously. "My front tire just went flat." In the time I was switching one, the other had deflated. It got worse: "Yeah, mine too," M sighed.

New holes in new locations. The culprit - goathead, also known as puncturevine, a long-thorned weed that has earned a reputation for puncturing soles of feet and bicycle tires. And apparently, we had planned the day's ride right through a veritable goathead plantation.

"I'm calling J for a ride," I said, defeated.

"You're giving up?? I can't believe you're giving up." Dismissively, his voice raised. "You can't call your wife for a ride on the Cape Epic, you know that right? Go, call her. I can't believe you would give up so easily!"

&*#@%#!

Grumbling, I folded beneath the verbal tirade and put my cell phone away; we sat in the sun and put patches on the multiple punctures in our tubes.

He at least agreed that it was time to turn back. We made it five minutes, not even back to the site of the first punctures. Another flat, the fourth of the day. We decided to walk to the eucalyptus trees where we had first sat. Just walking our bikes now, and we managed two more flats before arriving.

I phoned my wife, suffering another verbal onslaught from M for my trouble, but this one was not as bad as the first - we both knew we didn't have enough patches to repair the damage.

In three hours under the sun, we had clocked just over thirty minutes of riding, seven flat tires, from at least twelve punctures. Too bad for the guy building the mountain bike trail out that way - I don't think it's going to be very popular.

A crash course in cultural appreciation

2007-02-06T00:20:00.000+01:00

In training for the Cape Epic, my partner M_____ and I have set out to ride every major road in Lesotho. (We've covered about a third with eight weeks of training left.) Our rides last weekend were more eventful than usual.

The previous weekend's training ride was set back by a visitor who felt it necessary to take extended breaks and naps during the ride, so this time we headed straight for the mountains to put in some extended climbing. Not far from the airport, the tar gives way to rutted gravel and the road begins the steep climb up the first giant's stair step of Lesotho's sandstone plateaus.

It was a busy Saturday in the sticks, with herds of goats and cows winding their way up mountain passes and adding to the usual dogs and children. I am sure it has nothing on Pamplona, but wending one's way through a herd of strolling bulls on a steep and rocky road is nevertheless disturbing, their horns brushing the sleeves and handlebars as you search for the next gap. One sudden turn of a 50kg head could put a quick end to a long training program. But there was nowhere else to go, so past them we went, thinking, Surely bulls don't get angry... or attack and impale people... right? In Spain maybe, but not here... right?

Next on the itinerary was a group of about thirty men in red and black robes, red and black hats reminiscent of the Islamic kufi, crowding together down a sharp trail toward a steep cliff. The closeness of the group and sameness of the attire had the appearance of a cult ceremony, not to mention that they seemed about to throw themselves off the mountain in a mass suicide.

(Thus revealing my status as a cultural dimwit - OBVIOUSLY this was the much maligned "ritual cutting". These boys would be men soon - thus explaining the grim looks on their faces.)

Incidentally, there is a story told by expatriates that due to the highly secretive nature of the cutting ceremony, if a person is perceived to be intruding, he may be held down and, how do I say this, forced to take part. Though believed by the tellers, such tales are almost surely false - it is a myth which nevertheless contributes to the ominousness of the beating of drums from the village women up the hill.

After several hours, we returned along the same route. The drumming and dancing women were still drumming and dancing - now closer, we could see them more clearly, the flying skirts, the waving sticks, bodies covered with a white powder, bare breasts, often grotesquely large, heaving with the beat. It was a National Geographic moment, and only a few dozen kilometers from a reasonably modern capital city (which we call home). A National Geographic moment gone wrong. If only the photographers had been there.

Our approach brought great delight to the women, who leapt and addressed us, yelling, "Makhooa, Makhooa, Makhooa!" amidst other things incomprehensible, and rushed down to the side of the road.

When you ride in Lesotho, you learn to gauge the potential threats on the road ahead - dogs that might attack, children that might throw stones, horses that could spook, unpredictable drunkards, and so on. Dancing, bare-breasted women with big sticks rated at most a yellow on the threat scale, a curiosity. We are accustomed to people rushing to the road and waving or talking with us as we go past, running to keep up. But we should have known that a Basotho woman in her element is something to be feared.

Not content to stand on the side, they rushed into the middle of the road, laughing and continuing the Makhooa shout. And then they lifted their sticks and started swinging.

The first blow glanced off my helmet; the second caught me in the side. They were not striking to kill, but nor were they being very friendly about the task, and the swipe that caught me in the cheek stung enough to make me want very badly to find my way through the mass of half-naked bodies. Most frightening was the prospect of one of their sticks finding its way through a wheel, an event which could only end with my landing on my head, defenseless and at the mercy of the attacking women.

As culturally interesting as this all was, we fled as quickly as we could, the jeers chasing after us for some time. A little further down, we came across the men in the kufi hats, now sitting under a tent, with an entire village of people assembled around them. Our arrival caused something of an uproar, with about half the crowd, mostly men this time, getting to their feet and shouting. Luckily, we were descending from the mountain at this point, and we zipped through before any sort of blockade could be organized.

In all, a memorable ride. We turned the next day to South Africa, hoping to avoid bulls, violent women and recently circumsized men. While we succeeded on those counts, it was an eventful day on its own...

The better critique of the Oprah critique

2007-01-11T00:23:00.000+01:00

The Foreign Policy Passport notes Oprah's extravagant Leadership Academy for Girls, the $40M campus that she is funding outside of Johannesburg. They make this very cool-headed observation:

The better critique of Oprah's charity, though, is to ask whether she is doing the most good she can with the money she spends. I have no doubt that one $40 million super-school will do a lot of good in South Africa. But wouldn't four $10 million schools do more?

This is top notch thinking, and exactly the kind of question being taught in International Development programs around the world. It is also utterly missing the point.

Why are we so quick to engage our critical thinking on issues in philanthropy when that critical thinking part of our mind lies dormant through the vast remainder of our media-fed lives? Where were our quick-to-the-punch FP authors during Steve Jobs' recent announcement on the $599 iPhone? Trying to get one, I am sure.

Because amidst all the drooling, I didn't hear any thoughtful and cool-headed voices asking how many South African children's school fees and uniforms could be paid for by the price of a gadget that does what your other gadgets already do. Of course not - that's the kind of comment that makes you the dismal guy that nobody ever wants to talk to.

It's not about the techno-lust, but about the Pavlov response to philanthropy. It so happened that I was in Canada with family members when Oprah came on the television from South Africa to talk about her school. The response in the room was uniformly negative - we were roused from our Christmas cookie-induced lethargy to make our snide comments - "Oh, BROTHER, what is she on about NOW??" "And I bet she wants us to help by giving our money to Oprah..." "I was right! There IS an Oprah foundation, I can't believe it..."

I admit the tears and the drama were all a bit much, but they were hardly worse than the other holiday selections on the tube. Amidst soap operas, commercials with talking beavers and an unending stream of news stories about unseasonal weather, why is it that only Oprah's $40 million school wound us up enough to complain? Could our cynicism be the defense mechanism established to assuage our own personal discomfort about the vast inequalities in the world?

Who wants to think about children in Africa who can't afford school uniforms, especially when it is interrupting your opening of Christmas gifts and plans for post-Christmas sales? It's a lot easier to let yourself believe that everyone out there talking about poverty is a crook and a liar, out to tickle your conscience and steal your money.

Well there are a lot of crooks - I work with some of them - but they are not all crooks, and the immediate and massive criticism that meets any new effort to make a difference in the developing world does a disservice both to the poor and to those who are trying to help.

This is the challenge of being a member of the wealthiest 10% of people in the world. Our two easiest responses to global inequality - (1) Blindly throwing money at the problem; and (2) Criticizing all attempts to help and then doing nothing - both of these turn out to be ineffectual. What is needed is engagement, asking the question of why inequality exists, what does and does not make a difference, and how our consumption patterns in the West impact the lives of the poor elsewhere in the world.

So next time you see someone with a Master's degree puffing out his chest and asking, "Aren't there better ways to spend 40 million dollars?", take a step back and ask yourself, "Why are there only 40 million dollars, and why is it all coming from one person, and what does that tell us?" But if you ask those things out loud, don't puff out your chest, because there are too many people doing that as well.

Visuals

2007-01-02T02:10:00.000+01:00

Is anyone still tuned into this mostly quiet internet frequency? If so, you might enjoy photos from our 2006 trips to Namibia and Southern Italy. The Namibian ones are pretty stunning, if you ask me.

Nightly News Pundit Takes on Development Expert

2006-12-31T00:10:00.000+01:00

Jeffrey Sachs: This idea that the poorest of the poor are our enemies, this is the biggest lie of all time, and you are repeating it.

John Stossel: That they're our enemy??

Sachs: Well yeah, that all they want to do is shake you down.

Stossel: The poor people don't want to shake me down, the rich leaders of poor countries want to shake me down.

Sachs: Our government can find practical ways to ensure that the money that we're actually giving for real things there reach the real people.

Stossel: We're going to do that in Africa?? We can barely do it in America!

Sachs: Audit what's happening and those things have been shown repeatedly to work.

Watch the clip.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1957412

Omens

2006-12-15T00:01:00.000+01:00

The warning signs for the impending Cape Epic mountain bike race are swelling together into a dark cloud of discontent on the horizon of the new year.

For instance, there was the route profile that was recently announced, promising a more difficult beginning than any previous year:

Day 1: Distance: 101km. Ascent: 2425m.
Day 2: Distance: 132km. Ascent: 2245m.
Day 3: Distance: 128km. Ascent: 2425m.

Day 1: Gosh, look at all the flat parts!

The good news is if you can still move by Day 4, you'll probably finish the race.

I've also noticed that the Cape Epic web site currently is headlining the question, Do you want to transfer your 2007 Cape Epic team entry into the 2008 race? We are currently offering a free transfer...

Or to paraphrase, You sorry bastard, what were you thinking signing up for this? Take a look at yourself, there is NO WAY you are going to be prepared for this race in three months time. We will be charitable and pretend that if you trained until 2008 you might stand a chance. But don't even THINK about trying to get a refund...

It's great to see this kind of inspirational message on the web site that is ostensibly promoting this race. Maybe this is South African humor.

This question on the registration form is the icing on the cake:

Just a few things we'll probably need to know

What have I gotten myself into?