Safari-rama-bama

I'm going to Kenya for the Obama safari. You should too, as daily there are more and more close relatives of the American President-elect popping-up out of the bush, eager to host your welcome visit. Of course, this burgeoning family tree seems to be more a branching out of capitalistic opportunity than blood-lines, but that's beside the point.

The Kenya Presidential Heritage Safari is a brilliant supplemental offering to an 11-day game park excursion. The dusty little Lake Victoria village of Nyang'oma Kogelo is the ancestral home of the senior Obama. An Obama step-grandmother still lives in the family home. You may ask for "Mama Sarah" and possibly expect a nice cup of signature Kenya black tea. (Here is Mama. She is actually very regal looking).

Always appreciative of a clever marketing scheme (how fortunate for William Shatner to enjoy the perfect 2nd wind to what might have been a bottom's up career in his very fun and oddly appropriate role as the Price Negotiator!), it is easy to see the rippling benefits of this "Roots" revisited trek.

Nairobi officials are finally considering road works and other desperately needed infrastructure improvements to accommodate Land Rover loads of enthusiastic American pilgrims inconvenienced by pesky, narrow dirt roads. Locals are especially motivated to put on their best 'good neighbor' face in addition to offering a host of affordable, genuine souvenirs. In a place that was very recently convulsing in a violent, bloody ethnic war after their presidential election ~

it is astonishing what can quickly be accomplished in hopes of luring back the tourist dollar from 'in-your-face' Tanzania. What's more, there is a real hope that attention to the new American president's fatherland will generate coveted U.S. relations.

The historic safari with the big name is the marketing genius of a White South African-born travel agent based out of New York, Mr. Kenneth Hieber. Being an entrepreneur with a 6th sense for exploiting popular trends, Bwana Kenny is also doing very well with another travel venture that appears as packed with diversified adventure as it is uniquely exclusive.

Actually, after all my personal interest in the world's cultural and social dilemmas ~ who would have thought that money really would be the solution? First things first: We don't need malaria prevention or clean, potable water; we don't need police reform or cleansing of Brazil's infamous drug slums, we don't even need a lot of attention to complicated government corruption or extremist religious ideology - we just need American tourists. Lots of them. Massive political and social cooperation will naturally re-direct itself towards graciously hosting and promoting a safe and welcoming environment for wealthy foreigners (whom everyone knows will not tolerate the same living conditions your own people have had to cope with forever). Hostilities at last aside, the peoples of the world would instead be focused on protecting and benefiting from their revitalized and oh so generous tourist trade.

Too bad Obama doesn't have more ancestral homes. Now the problem presents of what would act as sufficient spiritual draw to attract tourists somewhere in addition to Kenya...

Thinking of Africa

I never gave much thought to Africa until Bi ("bee" aka Robin) read "Cry, the Beloved Country" in high school. I devoured this beloved book. Next she handed me "Things Fall Apart". The first novel deftly unmasked post-colonial Apartheid in the 1940's, the second was brutally honest about ageless tribal conflicts that tore apart Africa's native sons and daughters setting the stage for sweeping European colonialism. We were prepared for Bi's announcement years later that she was undergoing an alarming array of gruesome immunizations and finally going to Africa.

Fulfilling a dream was bitter-sweet: the state language of Mozambique is Portuguese. Robin's mission to Brazil had prepared her to communicate on one level ~ she didn't anticipate how hearts would speak on another. When she came home after repairing water pumps, building shelters and serving in 3 or 4 different AIDS orphanages - if she could have she would have brought home Vincente (having inquired about the adoption process) - a little 2 year old who totally captured her heart and soul. I think she mourned him for a long time.

The corruption and degradation witnessed was mind-boggling. The population is so decimated by AIDS that many villages only have scant numbers of adults (or nearly adults) and all of them have hordes of orphaned, hungry children. A cultural adaptation to this phenomenon is illustrated by the children calling any female who is willing to help take care of them "tia", or "Auntie". Some of these care-giver angels are only teenagers themselves. Another evil reality looms darkly; eventually these same young women must venture out of the dubious safety of their village to supplement meager home gardens and milking goats by walking to the nearest town market. Scavenging for firewood closer to home can be equally hazardous; always the threat of violent rape upon any unaccompanied female is a cruel companion to the tragedy that is abject poverty and plague in a land that is literally the richest on earth. The generous cycle of fatherless AIDS babies is assured a place at the table of want.

Today on CNN I saw part of a documentary entitled, "Living With Corruption" about similar issues which oppress Kenya. The main corruption focused on by the report was bribery. For a little money, virtually anyone could present a false petition as a non-profit charity and receive their documents outside of the officially recognized 3 month process in only 3 days - no questions asked. They are then eligible for internationally sponsored relief monies ~ tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars ~ of which there is no accounting for.

Africa, however, is not the only continent beset by the stranglehold of corruption. As missionaries in foreign countries, three of our children have been tutored first hand in that nasty business. Bi was disgusted by arrogant, self-important public and ecclesiastical officials in both Mexico and Brazil who turned a blind eye to crime and injustice for a few pesos. James watched as people had to pay everyone from the Greek Orthodox priest to the man in a bread line that ran out of bread in Ukraine. Leiland saw the Mexican government brutishly betray her own citizens ravaged by a major, killing flood simply by officially declaring the disaster in ridiculously diminished terms to save herself the inconvenience of relief funds and re-building culpability.

When corruption pervades every single aspect of the social structure, there is no way to excise it for the cancer that it is. It is like an ill patient advancing to the fatal stage as multiple vital organs begin shutting-down. Where's the Doctor?

Now more than ever in the history of the world, good people everywhere feel compassion and charity and frequently respond to need around the globe. Some relief organizations are more successful than others in achieving a high level of efficiency; they have avoided CEO’s remodeling private mansions and can actually distribute the goods they deliver. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints works quickly and quietly within select international relief agencies – including a Muslim agency, to get food, blankets, medicine and equipment where it needs to go in a hostile environment.

There are also many brilliant acts of goodness and enormous bravery sparkling within the darkness of these sinking societies. Men and women who, like the widow of Zarephath, give and give again on faith to others when there is so desperately little to give – or who speak up for justice when doing so is a death-wish. There are impoverished men who never give up trying to provide for their wife and children, and who do not abandon them but find motivation each day to do the honorable thing – and mothers, who once abandoned or widowed, give their all to protecting and caring for their children in the midst of inhuman conditions. I think the prayers of these oppressed in whatever language and addressed to whatever deity in name pierce the Great Heart of Heaven.

It doesn’t sound intellectual, and sociologists would roll their eyes along with human rights advocates and political junkies...but isn’t God the great triage answer? And beyond stopping the bleeding – He alone can HEAL.

I don’t know how the suffering in the jewel that is Africa can finally stop; except as the hearts of men experience a real change. If they knew they were part of a divine heritage, if they understood their countrymen were also their brothers, if they weren’t “past feeling” so that chopping off hands and arms and rape and robbery and murder didn’t please them, if destroying others was abhorrent instead – there would be no support for the corruption cycle that currently enslaves. It would simply ‘fall apart’.

That day of justice for all the world will come. I know it will. As much as we feel helpless to really make a difference in the world condition and as much as we hope for success and happiness in our own families, we DO make a difference! There are little miracles all around us every day that point toward the culminating powers of good and evil facing off at long last – and there’s a clear winner in that story.

The Jehovah Witness lady that visits regularly is getting frustrated with me. She seems confused when I express hope. The Bible verse selected more often is to show me that God will have His vengeance on the wicked. She does not share my observations of the rising good in the world, but seems to be in a ‘lock and load’ mode of ‘us’ against ‘them’. In spite of my cheerful alliance with her about the goodness of our Lord, I think I am one of ‘them’. I wonder if she has ever thought about Africa.