I am feenin’ for my podcasts lately, but expensive bandwidth means I rarely get to download to my heart’s content. I took advantage of a recent Safaricom promo to get updated on all the old episodes of NPR’s Planet Money, one of my favorites. On that recent 18-hour drive from Nairobi to Dar, I had more than enough time to catch up on them.

The episode called A Marshall Plan for Africa had me intrigued. It is a criticism of Jeffrey Sachs’s approach to poverty alleviation (big amounts of planned aid) that is quite different, as far as I can see, from Sachs’s arch-critic William Easterly’s position. In the podcast, Glenn Hubbard, a former economic adviser to the Bush administration, describes his vision for lifting Africa out of poverty. Basically, he wants a Marshall Plan-style lending program to fund Africa’s middle class. (He argues that the Marshall Plan was a lending program, not an aid package.)

My ordinary political orientation notwithstanding, I’m more convinced by Hubbard’s plan than Sachs’s. But I’m still skeptical for a number of reasons. (Listening to the podcast first might allow the following to make more sense.)

1. Hubbard is proposing circumventing national institutions to lend to entities of the U.S. government’s choice. This will inevitably have political repercussions and could conceivably be co-opted for political interests.

2. The Marshall Plan worked only after defeating European armies. The United States was able to dictate where its money ended up only after military conquest of the countries where the lending was taking place. We might be able to do the same in Africa, but this, I would think, raises some sovereignty issues.

3. Hubbard says there is something “almost colonial” about China’s investment in Africa — because China is doing it in its own self-interest. This is a little ironic considering points (1) and (2) above, not to mention the West’s historic involvement with Africa, Latin America and Asia. The realist in me also wants to point out that China’s may be a more honest approach than a purportedly altruistic program from the United States. Since any investment in or aid to Africa will necessarily be self-interested, even if they also have good effects, it’s not much of a basis for criticism.

Maybe I’m being too paranoid about the proposal?

It’s not all 18-hour bus rides.

The picture of Africa’s growing middle class is sometimes lost among the breathless dispatches from more rustic corners of the continent. I thought it’s worth posting this photo I just took in the Java House in Sarit Center, Nairobi, an upscale mall in the Westlands neighborhood. Having just enjoyed a perfectly brewed latté and a blue cheese hamburger, I am now surfing the net for free on my laptop.

There’s a somewhat justifiable tendency for the more cynical foreigners around these parts (including me) to sneer at such experiences. I’m surrounded by a who’s-who of expats and Kenyan well-to-do. There’s a table full of white nuns, another one with what look to be development workers; the man sitting next to me just got up and accidentally left his iPod touch behind on the seat. It feels a little weird to have such an expensive experience in a land where there is plenty of want (hamburger + latté cost about $10, and many Kenyans live on less than $2 a day).

But let’s not forget that such experiences would be prosaic back home. I find a certain hypocrisy in decrying the rich-world experience while here and then going home and living surrounded by conveniences. Kibera’s have-nots are out of sight and out of mind when you’re enjoying your fiber-optic wifi and artisan tea in San Francisco. The consistent choice would be to shun the luxury completely, or admit you sometimes like it. I choose the latter.

I’m against ostentatious consumption anywhere. But I’ll take my wireless internet and latté where I can get it.

During this epic 18 hour ride from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam (really, not recommended — do it in two days) we got a flat on the high savanna below Mt. Meru, and were detained in the Arusha police station for nearly two hours. There was a passenger who was supposed to get down there but refused; the police made everyone wait while they took statements from the bus company people and the passenger. I’m not even sure what happened in the end. My eyes were red and nerves frazzled by the time we pulled into Kariakoo.

But views of vast Africa through poetically dirty bus windows, like this shot about three hours south of Moshi, made it all worth it.

Heading out again tomorrow.

There’s been some interesting debate on the relevance of Julius Nyerere in the comments field of my blog (thanks to the input of the great TZ blog louder than swahili). On the subject, this week’s East African had a nice column about the ambiguity of Nyerere’s life and contributions, check it out. It’s hard to sum up Nyerere’s real contribution to Tanzania, but I remain impressed by his vision, which almost singularly among leaders of his era transcended tribe and the other constraints that colonialism foisted on the continent. I got more convinced of that after watching the documentary “Mwalimu: The Legacy of Kabarage Nyerere” at the Kenya Film Festival last week. (This film has almost no presence on the internet, which is unfortunately not too big of a surprise for something coming out of TZ.)

In the last week, I came across two pieces of media about conflict that impressed me. One is a book called Kenya Burning. The other is a movie called This is Lebanon (Hayda Lubnan) that I saw for free at the Kenya Film Festival (sweet!).

Kenya Burning is a book of photographs from the 2008 post-election violence, published by the Kwani? Trust, a nonprofit publishing house started by a circle of Kenyan intellectuals a few years back. (Separately, they have some amazing collections of African literature.) The book is not for the faint of heart. It made me feel sick to the stomach, actually. And in other contexts the images of ultraviolence in its pages might slip into the category of “a pornography of violence” — especially because it has the look of a glossy coffee table book. But this is a book for Kenyans, by Kenyans, and it seems to me to be an important part of the historical record. I had not been totally aware of how horrific the 2008 violence was. The book is not a call to action as such — very little text accompanies the images. I see it more as a response to the mundane headlines and cold political negotiations that followed the chaos. “This is the consequence,” the book seems to say. “This is the insecurity all Kenyans have in the back of their head.”

Hayda Lubnan has no special relationship to Kenya Burning, except that I also saw it this week. It’s a documentary by a young Lebanese woman, Eliane Raheb. It is not a big budget movie and some of the editing in the beginning is a little choppy. But the movie has some of the most poignant treatments of Lebanese sectarianism I’ve seen. Raheb, a Maronite Christian, feels totally alienated from the Lebanese Forces that supposedly support her sect. She interviews family and friends, and presses them to explain why they are afraid of Muslims when they have suffered more at the hands of other Christians. She shows the pain on the faces of Shia Hezbollah supporters as they listen to a speech, I think by Samir Geagea, announcing Maronite superiority — “We’re not bedouins! We don’t have camels!” (One conclusion I took from this movie is that it’s preposterous that people who feel discomfort with Hezbollah don’t feel equally ill at ease about the Lebanese Forces.) The most memorable part is the closing scene, when Raheb’s father, a pretty stridently sectarian Maronite, tries to explain to her why her non-sectarian thinking is all screwed up. He ends up calling her “errant,” and walking away. The movie was a good peek into everything that’s wrong and right with Lebanon. Worth a watch if you can figure out how to get ahold of a copy.

By the logic of Iran’s conviction of Kian Tajbaksh, that is a reasonable conclusion. The Iranian-American academic was sentenced to 15 years in prison last week, partly for having been in contact with Gary Sick, an American expert on Iran based at Columbia University. Part of the allegations are that Sick is a CIA agent. In a refutation of the charges, Sick notes that he’s spent more time with Iranian officials than he has with Tajbaksh. Sick asks if they should also be investigated for connections to him. This is an important piece by a guy who is, ironically, sometimes accused by right wingers of being in cahoots with Tehran. Read it here on The Daily Bea(st.

(Now, to return to East African affairs…)

Jacaranda trees, cool breezes, a downtown that feels something like San Francisco (for lack of a better reference point). Seventeen hours on a rickety train, terminating in a landscape that looks something like the high desert between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, or the llano further east. Except that there are giraffes running off the train tracks here, ostriches prancing wild, and bizarre birds alighting and something hairy and baboonish lumbering through the bush.

I must be in Nairobi. It seems like life has been drawing me here for awhile.

Everyone says to be careful about getting robbed. Don’t trust anyone, stay west of Moi avenue, don’t let anyone give you food or a beverage, beware of fake plainclothes detectives.

I remember that a friend had a gun put to his head on the back of a Muni bus in San Francisco in high school, while a ten-year-old apprentice in a Starter jacket squeaked, “That’s what I call gettin’ jacked!” And I remember that, having heard this story, I didn’t stop taking Muni. I find such thoughts strangely comforting: it can happen anywhere. Panic and blind suspicion can be as dangerous as obliviousness. Still, I appreciate everyone’s advice, and I promise to be extra super-duper safe.

Here’s what I need to do during the next few days: Go to a capoeira class at the National Theater (it’s been three horribly long months, and lack of capoeira is a major obstacle to any long-term plans to relocate to TZ); spend some time soaking up the middle-class East African experience (i.e., hanging out in Java House); see the Nairobi marathon; try to figure out the safest and least tasteless way (i.e., no slum tourism) to see the other sides of Nairobi as well.

I remain very open to story ideas and activity suggestions.

Over the last two days I took the beautiful ride throught the verdant Usambara mountains of Tanzania to Tanga, and then on to Mombasa by way of a scraggly coastal road: red dirt, thatched villages in stands of coconut palms that looked like they could have been transplanted from Fiji, stout lonely baobabs on the hilltops.

I’m writing this from an internet cafe on Haile Selassie road in Mombasa, and it smells rather like a pit toilet for some reason, so I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to make this off-the-cuff post.

Kenya is (guess what) subtantially different from Tanzania. This simple observation will sound idiotic to anyone who is from one of these countries or who has visited both. For those for whom — like me before coming here — the two nieghbors are distant abstractions on a map, let me list a few of my shallow, impulsive observations. (I reserve the right to reverse, amend or confirm any of these impressions once I’ve spent more than a day here. I also apologize in advance to Kenyan and Tanzanian readers for any oversimplifications or misleading generalizations.)

• People generally spend a lot more time on greetings and pleasantries in Tanzania. It’s all about politeness and saying hello. Coming to Kenya from TZ feels a bit like arriving to New York City from, say, Ohio.
• The customer service experience in Kenya is closer to the experience in the United States.
• Corporate sponshorship is everywhere you look in Kenya. In one town, every single store (probably about 30 stores) had a brand new sign with the Elessar logo on it.
• There are more rough looking young men hanging out on the street here than in Dar.
• There is no difference in internet speed. If anything, it’s worse here.

Follow my blog for more brief travel updates. I’m off to take a look around the city, and possibly, a short nap.

Not much! Except that a guy was selling posters of all three on a sidewalk near Kariakoo the other day. Also, check out the awesome Rambo bag distributed at the local vegetable market.

"You could love me or hate me/I swear to God it won't make me or break me..."

It's like they finished designing this bag and thought, "Crap, we didn't include any cpoyright violations. What can we slap on here?"

Feedback most welcome. I want a sleek look, easy on the eyes, distinct without being distractingly so, a nice header that is also not distracting. Of course, the most important thing is that you can read it easily!