Many questions, and now a few answers

Now that I am back online (sort of) and have access to regular media sources (sort of), I wanted to share with you a story from today's New York Times which sheds light on some of the issues I struggled with in Friday's posting about the violence in Kenya.

To view that article, please click here.

There was a rumor this morning that people are arming themselves in another nearby country and preparing for tribal warfare there as well. I certainly hope those rumors prove to be false. How much more must Mother Africa endure?

World Pax

What does Pax see?

Earlier this week, I met a chimpanzee named Pax, whose name means “peace” in Latin. In an ironic twist of fate, Pax was emasculated during a brawl in his youth, leaving him without reproductive organs. And yet Pax prevails to this day.

It is interesting to me how easily peace can be emasculated. Traveling over the past two weeks, I have been shocked by the events taking place in Kenya. At times I have found myself asking taxi drivers “What is the news on Kenya?” instead of “How much will it cost to the post office?”

If you are reading this site, you probably have access to major media sources (radio, TV, newspapers), and you no doubt have seen photos of people fleeing their homes or lying motionless in empty streets. I have unfortunately had relatively little access to news, but I have had the chance to talk with people – including a few who have fled Kenya – to get second-hand news and stories about what is taking place there.

The facts are heart-wrenching: a church burned while dozens of women and children were trapped inside, police not only shooting protesters but kicking them when they fall, and “neighbors looting from neighbors,” as one woman reported wearily on Al Jezeera. At least six hundred people are dead; about a quarter of a million are homeless, and still the unrest continues.

I have asked many people to help me put this conflict into perspective, asking lots of "How?" questions of people I meet. Regardless of the answers – tribal politics exacerbated by age-old tribal clashes – they still don’t explain how the conflict turned so violent.

“It’s the 1.5 million people living in the slums that are the problem,” one woman told me, explaining that Kenya's poorest have nothing left to lose, and as a result they keep fighting. But does poverty really strip someone of their humanity? I certainly hope not.

Seeing Pax this week reminded me that humans did not invent warfare. Jane Goodall discovered chimp warfare years ago. It was one of her breakthrough discoveries. But Jane has been quick to remind people that humans are not chimpanzees. Unlike chimps, we have complex brains that enable us to overcome our impulses and do what we know is right. We may want to strangle someone who voted for the other political candidate, but we don’t actually do it.

And yet, apparently we do.

Reports from Kenya have been horrific and shocking, but the storyline is not new. Nor were these political prerogatives invented by headline predecessors such as Northern Ireland, China or Rwanda. But I continue to hope that one of the things that separate us from Pax is our ability to lift above our impulses and achieve true peace, but the will has to be there for us to do it.

Otherwise, we will continue to create peace in name alone; and when peace is just a name, there is often little peace at all.

Cloves for the road

Airborne over Zanzibar

I have two rules for flying: the planes must have two propellers, and there must be a pilot and a copilot. (A third, harder to enforce rule is not to fly on planes manufactured by a bygone superpower).

My plane to Pemba had only one propeller, but I was anxious to get to the island for a working Holiday, so I closed my eyes and pretended not to notice. I was of course surprised when I opened my eyes to find that my second rule had also been subverted: the copilot seat had been sold like any other seat on the aircraft, and was filled by an eclectic and potentially crazy man I made an effort to avoid outside the terminal.

The pilot – twenty-something and with a foul mouth to prove it – fired up the engine. The propeller spun, the plane jerking anxiously like a dog on a leash. The pilot let the throttle run, and soon we lifted into the sky, sliding from side to side on currents of turbulent air.

Zanzibar is the world’s largest exporter of cloves, producing a majority of the world’s supply. But as I understand it, most of those cloves are not actually grown on Zanzibar, but rather on their neighboring island: Pemba.

Pemba is a funny place. It doesn’t seem sure if it wants to be a river, an island or an ocean, the land constantly giving way to one body of water or another, divided and bullied by the waters from which it once rose.

But beyond its shores, cloves grow. The island looks like a field of cloves draped in clouds, strips of them drying in the dirt along the side of road and sometimes in the median. Cloves dry in front of shops, on porches of houses, often with someone nearby to turn them in the sun with a strip of cardboard. Wherever there weren’t already cloves is where cloves would be.

It was on this island that I spent New Years, reading, writing, swimming and eating clove-clotted foods. “Some people chew them to get rid of onion breath,” one cab driver told me with a hint of salesmanship. But I found it unlikely that people needed more excuses to consume the spice here.

I rang in the New Year while playing cards by kerosene lamp with two night watchmen, the rest of the world having gone to bed or slipped into the darkness hours before.

And when the plane lifted for my return, I knew it was an experience I would never forget. But just in case, I brought some cloves home to help keep the memory fresh.

Boat to Misali Island for a day trip off Pemba

Blue blue waters

The Beach

Schooner named "Jambo" off Misali Island

Goodbye 2007