World Cup 2010

Every four years, the world outside of the US stands still for four weeks while the soccer world cup finals are played out. The 2006 edition was played in Germany; 2014 will be in Brazil. Because the tournament provided the primary motivation for our trip, and because some of you may not be experts in the mechanics, this post is just a short primer on how the thing works.

During the two years prior to the finals, pretty much every country in the world participates in regional qualifying tournaments. FIFA has carved up the world into regions, and each region gets a number of spots in the finals. There are 32 spots up for grabs, and Europe gets 13, North/Central America 3, Africa 5, et cetera. This year's qualifying phase ended several months ago; perhaps the most notorious event of the qualifying was when France's Theirry Henry used his hand before scoring a goal against Ireland--France won and qualified, and if they had lost Ireland would have qualified.

The finals progress in two rounds--first, a round robin arrangement called the "group" phase, then an elimination tournament called the "knockout" phase.
The group phase proceeds as follows: the 32 teams are drawn into eight groups of four teams each. Some groups are strong (Brazil, Portugal, Cote d'Ivoire, and North Korea are generally considered the strongest group with three contenders) and some are weak (the US is in a middling group, with England, Algeria, and Slovenia). During the group phase, each team plays against the other three teams in their group and, through a rather complicated tie-breaker and scoring method, the winner and runner-up for each group advance to the knockout round. The third- and fourth-place teams in each group go home. The US-England match on June 12 (7:30 AM PST televised nationally on ABC) is one of the marquee matchups. Draw or win, and the US stands a very good chance of advancing.

Sixteen teams then advance to the knockout phase, which proceeds as a familiar-to-Americans single-elimination tournament. The winner will be crowned in Johannesburg on July 11.

South Africa is hosting matches in ten cities scattered around the country. We have tickets to the following:

• June 13: Germany v. Australia, Durban.
• June 16: Spain v. Switzerland, Durban.
• June 24: Cameroon v. Holland, Cape Town.
• June 29: Elimination Round of 16, Cape Town.
• July 2: Elimination Round of 8, Johannesburg.

The country is huge, as you'll learn from future entries on the blog, so we will be doing a lot of driving. But the atmosphere is already electric, with flags on every car and with soccer the ONLY subject of conversation.

Bye Bye East Africa

It is our last day in Entebbe, Uganda, we are awaiting our flight tomorrow back to Joburg and now seems like a good time to reflect on the places we have visited and to crudely sum up these large, complex places with a few pithy phrase and remembrances.
Uganda
Cheapest place we visited (and anyone who knows me knows that his is very important to me!). Great national beer is called Nile Special and is pretty good. Most everyone speaks pretty good English so we interacted a bunch with people, including our memorable walks in Lake Bunyonyi with some school children. We did not see a great deal of this country, but we liked what we saw and I could see us coming back here at some point. Memorable moments include:

- The bus's flat tire on the Longest Day (part 1) when we traveled from Entebbe to
Kabale,

- The lovely warm evenings in Lake Bunyonyi with a wonderful view and those comical "smoke fires" (as we dubbed them) which were fires built by the staff each night with fresh wood which generated a tremendous amount of smoke because it was not dried,

- Our walk with three kids up to their school atop the Lake, and
our tour of the Buganda Palace which included a walk through the creepy tourture/execution stalls built and used by Idi Amin and then by his successor, Obote through the middle-1980s.

I also must publish here my deepest apologies to Kampala - as Baby's Dad said in the classic Dirty Dancing, when I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong. We went back to Kampala yesterday on a day trip from Entebbe and I have a much, much better impression of the City. The taxi park is still a madhouse, the streets in many places are clogged with cars and burn your eyes with the diesel exhaust, but the City has some very interesting and beautiful places including views on its various hilltops (all of which have some structure of significance, Parliament for the Buganda Kingdom, a mosque built by Colonel Gaddafi, a catholic church, a protestant church, a hindu temple) and we shopped at The Best bookstore we had seen on our trip which was exciting (new books!). My regrets for my previous harsh words directed at this fine City.

Rwanda
An amazing and interesting country, with its unusual topography, the intense land use of the cities, city-outskirts, and rural areas, the organization of the capital, Kigali, the feeling of hopefulness we observed in almost all of the places we visited, and the amazing transformation which has taken place since the genocide. While we visited a lot of this country, I would love to come back in 10 years to see the progress which so many believe Rwanda will achieve by 2020. We will have to come with a pile of cash though, Rwanda was the most expensive place we visited and it is likely to only become more so as it develops further.

I'll remember so many things about this place, including the hills and views in Kigali, Serena's awesome house and cute pets, the school children in their blue or green rubber flip flops (those were the best colors I guess), the GORILLAS (of course), a man I observed walking to work near Lake Kivu with a laptop compter bag in one hand and a machete in the other, the feeling of relief I had when my moto driver found Scott at a taxi park after we had lost him when my driver ran our of petro (that was quite a relief! Not good to not speak any French there!), a funny moment when a gang of toddlers ran right over to us along the road one day, ending in a big, leg-hug, and the amazing, AMAZING feats of agricultural terracing and cultivation taking place in so much of the country.

Tanzania
We spent the most time in Tanzania, traversing the country from west to east by land. The far west in Tanzania appeared very poor, poorer than most parts of Uganda. By Mwanza though, on the edge of the country's west if it were split in thirds, the influx of resources from tourism was clearly evident, with high-rise buildings and many cars and land rovers. The Serengeti was incredible and we could have spent more time there, I won't forget my inadvertent intake of breath when the cheetahs we were stalking made a run at the wildebeests and springboks, and Dar Es Salaam seems like an up and coming African city. On the down side, the farther east we traveled in Tanzania, the more frequent and more insistent sales people became, with the culmination in Stone Town in Zanzibar where 'touts' would walk along with us for blocks, trying to talk us into a t-shirt.

In spite of this, Zanzibar was an extremely interesting place to visit for its history and distinctive East African/Middle Eastern/South Asia culture (EPS will be happy to know that I read the entire exhibit from the Zanzibar Stone Town Conservation and Development authority which documents the seemingly impossible task of encouraging rehabilitation of Stone Town's many historic buildings (many of which are in complete disrepair) and regulating new development's integration with the historic structures). And I will not forget the incomparable Indian Ocean (though a special place in my heart remains for the fierce Pacific!).

While I wouldn't say that I drank A LOT in Tanzania, I drank enough beer here to know that - of the two national beers Serengeti and Kilimanjaro - I much preferred Kili (for the taste, though the beer made in impression on me because from the moment we entered the country, I saw bar and restaurants plastered with painted lettering spelling "It's Kill Time!" which somewhat disturbed me, I figured it was some soccer term I was not familiar with.. Later, I saw that the actual text was It's Kili Time! which makes much more sense for a beer advertisement..).

Thanks East Africa for a great trip! And sorry Kenya, we'll catch you next time.

Two tickets

South African
Our plane tickets to East Africa were on South African Airways in/out of Entebbe, in Uganda. We had no set plans for these five weeks, and in the end found ourselves in Zanzibar in week 4. The return to Entebbe would involve two hours on a boat, a ten-hour bus ride to Arusha, six more hours to Nairobi, another ten-hour bus ride to Kampala, and a one-hour matatu journey down to the airport. So, we thought, why not change our flight to leave from Dar es Salaam (or even from Zanzibar) for the return to Johannesburg? If the change fee were less than $150 each, the cost of visas and buses and all those hours would make it an easy decision.

First stop, the South African office in Dar, where we met a not-so-friendly employee of the airline.

-You cannot change a ticket once you have begun the journey.
-But we are willing to pay a change fee!
-No, this ticket can't be changed. You can buy another ticket leaving from Dar, one way. How much? Five hundred and seventy-eight US dollars. Each.
-But we have a ticket from Entebbe, and your flight from Dar on the same day at almost the same time isn't full. Why can't we just get on it?
-What I'm explaining to you is that you can't change a ticket once you have used one leg. You might be able to get a refund from the issuer and then apply those funds to a new ticket, but you'll need to call Orbitz since they issued you the ticket.

Orbitz
Hmm. Calling the US is, at best, difficult and expensive. Still, thirty hours of buses impelled us to try. We've been carrying around a cellphone with a Uganda SIM card in it, so we loaded it up with ten dollars of airtime and dialed the Orbitz number, some 212 area code in the US. We don't know our own phone number, though, which was never an issue previously but which turned out to be relevant here. Becca drew the short straw and dialed. I watched with some glee....

She pushed a "1."
Another "1."
-Existing reservation.
Uh-oh, voice recognition computer.
-Change ticket.
Making progress...
-Speak to a representative.
Uh-oh.
-Speak to a representative.
-SPEAK TO A REPRESENTATIVE.
La-di-la-di-la-la-laaa. La-di-la-di-la-la-laaa. Sounds like on-hold music. Please remain on the line, all our representatives are busy, your call will be answered in the order it was received.

Several minutes pass and we imagine our airtime value slowly eroding. We can receive calls for free, though.

Hello, thank you for calling Orbitz. Your business is important to us and I appreciate you waiting on the line to speak to....
-Hi! I'm-calling-from-Zanzibar-and-I'm-about-out-of-airtime, can-you-see-my-number-there-and-call-me-back?
Sure, uh, uhm, one-two-one-two...
-No, that's YOUR number. I'm-calling-from-a-256-country-code.
She shoots me a "I can't believe I'm calling the US for a dollar-a-minute and the thing got forwarded to India" look. Money is running out here.
Uh, uhm, no, if you give me your number I can call you back.
-No, I-don't-know-it, let's-see-if-we-can-get-this-done. I-want-to-change-a-ticket.
Becca rattled off the ticket record, eyes rolling upward repeatly.
This ticket isn't allowed to be changed by South Afrrican once it's in progress, ma'am.
-Right, I know that, is there any way to cancel and reissue, or anyway I can get a refund on this ticket and buy a new ticket out of Dar.
I think you will need to speak to South African ma'am.-Uh, they-told-me-to-call-you.
I'm sorry ma'am, what I see here....

Click. Our airtime was finished.

Second chance
So we're stuck on the bus. Or maybe not. In our research we discovered a Plan B; Air Uganda runs flights from Zanzibar to Entebbe for $300 a ticket. We'll still need to buy visas, but we avoid the ferry and the buses and Nairobi and all the rest. AND they have a website with a Book-It button!! Better and better!
So we log on, choose the flight, click the Book-It button, and....nothing. Try it again and....nothing. Hmm.

Ah, Air Uganda has an office in Zanzibar, perfect. A two-kilometer walk from the hotel, it's a bit warm today but what the heck. Let's avoid those damned buses!!

-Hello, welcome to Air Uganda.
-Thank you! We'd like to fly on Sunday from here to Entebbe. Do you have any seats available?
-Yes, and they are 293 dollars each.
-We'll take them. Here's our credit card.
-Sorry, we accept payment in US dollars. Oh, and I'm closed tomorrow. And I'm leaving at 4:30 today.

What? Here we go again. We need cash and we need it in an hour. Fortunately, we've got several hundred US dollars still on the roll. Unfortunately, by now we've discovered that old dollars are no good (somebody muttered something about counterfeiting--whatever--but four of our hundreds would be cigarette wrappers by now if either of us smoked). So we're stuck with the double-conversion problem again. There's an ATM nearby to give us apparently useless Tanzanian shillings. We need to convert 800,000 shillings into dollars and get back to the office in an hour.

Bingo. The nearby ATM spits out 400,000. Combined with the 100,000 in my pocket we are well on our way. Of course, we've maxed out that card for the day. Next card..."Sorry, this card cannot be accepted." Uh-oh. Down the street we go to Barclay's. "ATM is finished," says the guard. Double-uh-oh. How much is back at the hotel, another 100,000, plus some US dollars? That gets us close.
Pretty soon we've got 600,000 shillings that we need to turn into dollars. Into the forex shop!!

-No dollars today.
-What? It says you are selling at 1505...?
-Sorry.

Ok, ok, next shop. We've got twenty minutes to the deadline.

-Sorry, no dollars here.
-DAMN!
-Try Eagle Forex.

Ok, next shop.

-Yes we can change four hundred, no problem.

Success!! The teller counts me out twenty twenty-dollar bills.
We stumble back into the Air Uganda office with a few minutes to spare. I've got 400 in twenties and a couple of post-2000 hundreds. We've done it!! Take this money, Air Uganda lady!

-Uh, the bank is going to charge me for these small-small bills.
-WHAT? What do you mean? You asked for dollars and here are dollars! What's the problem?
-These small bills, they are going to charge me three percent. These are no good.
-No no no no no. You said you needed 583 dollars, and here are 583 dollars. If you are going to convert them at the bank why do I have dollars? We had shillings and just converted them, we had to stop at three forex bureaus to get it done!
-And this hundred, it's from 2001 which is no good. It needs to be 2003.
-Wait, what? 2003? Why? You didn't say that before. I'm American, I brought this from the States, it's a good bill.
-Sorry, this other hundred is good. I'll take it. Now you owe me 486.
-Wait, so you won't take a credit card; you won't take perfectly good dollars; you asked for dollars, I got shillings and converted them to dollars, here they are, and now you won't take them because you can't convert them back to shillings. This makes no sense. I just want to buy a plane ticket, tell me what I need to do to buy this &*@#ing ticket!!?!
-Ok, maybe I can take these small bills, but you are still one hundred short. And I'm closing in five minutes.
-Uh, ok, that's progress. Umm, what can we do now about the other hundred?

And here's where the joy of travelling in Africa kicked in.

-Just pay me the other 100 at the airport. You can go find one this afternoon and you'll just pay me there on Sunday.

Which is exactly what happened. We showed up at the airport, waited for her to arrive to check in passengers, handed over a new hundred-dollar bill (that we'd finally gotten out of the ATM-forex black hole and which disappeared into some hidden pocket beneath her robes), got on the plane and two hours later we were in Entebbe. It was frustrating and stressful (not to mention sweaty, Zanzibar is like a sauna), and shame on us for not knowing the 2003 rule, or the small-bills rule, or the dollars-to-shillings-to-dollars-to-shillings option. But in the end we showed up at the airport, handed someone a hundred-dollar bill, and got on the plane.

Air Uganda turned out to be one of those real blessings you never expect but sometimes find in out-of-the-way places...great flight, brand new jet, comfortable and fast despite a quick stopover in Mombasa. Despite the pain-in-the-ass cash transaction, the contrast with South African and your-call-will-be-answered-in-the-order-we-received-it Orbitz was pretty striking. We've lost something with our endless computer menus, clueless voice-recognition software, by-the-book-even-if-it's-stupid policies, and far-way call centers staffed with people who aren't allowed to make decisions on their own. We would have been happy to give our money to South African and it would have been win-win. Instead we gave it to Air Uganda and are miffed at South African (which is, otherwise, a pretty good airline).

Those who have traveled with Scott will know this, but for the benefit of those of you who have not I must relate the following: Scott in Africa has a very different public face than Scott outside of Africa.

Africa-Scott wears pants everywhere (some of you, like cousin Craig will know that home-Scott LOVES his shorts) because in Africa, only little boys wear shorts. 90+ degrees, he wears khakis, just like all the other men here.

Africa-Scott loves beer. home-Scott can barely get down a pint at home, but something about the hot humidity and the no-work-tomorrow turns Africa-Scott part-British.

Most astoundingly, Africa-Scott talks to everyone - Taxi drivers, kids on the street, waiters, bartenders, hostel-hotties (ok, everyone talks to the hostel-hotties), bus drivers, etc. And he doesn't just chat, he shakes hands and gets names and finds out where each is from and which football team they support, and what they think of Barack Obama (so far, universal love and admiration). You will find this hard to believe, but I am usually a wallflower in these encounters, listening to the conversation and wondering how I can get a word in..

There is a darker side to Africa-Scott though, Africa-Scott does not take any smack from anyone. When a ferry salesman stalks us on the sidewalk trying to get us to come into his office in Dar Es Salaam to buy his ferry ticket, Africa-Scott puts up with his following us around but does not abide the man getting a bit too loud and pushy - where America-Scott would have glared in my direction and tilted his head silently to indicate that we were getting the heck out of there, Africa-Scott stops dead and turns to the man and inquires why he is yelling in his face. Hilarity ensues. Africa-Scott also is a very, very hard bargainer. He advises me to put down the necklace and walk away from the salesmen when my bargaining is not going well and makes sure I do so, then eventually buys the necklaces for 1/4 the price I was at, from the window of our car as we are driving away. When a taxi driver asks for 35,000 Tanzanian shillings for a ride we think is 10,000 and hesitates when we ask him to lower the price, Africa Scott quickly goes to another driver, gets a good price, and then taunts the first man as we drive away, saying out of his winder "You asked for too much, too much my friend. You should not do that."


As I think of other Africa Scott-isms, I will pass them along... For now, here is a photo of relaxed, Africa Scott..

Random Musings

I mentioned that our time at the beaches in Zanzibar did not translate well into posts because they were so leisurely - read, play cards, swim, read, get lunch, etc. - that instead of the play by play, here are some random thoughts I had along the way..

(Typical day, playing cards here..)


Disappointing bribery. While I suspect it has happened in other vehicles, Zanzibar was the first place I saw first hand the bribes demanded by local cops. It is very disheartening. The fact that it is done right in front of us, when we could work for the State department or something, and that it was done for very little money (as little as $0.30) indicates that they do it all the time and that they have no fear whatsoever of getting caught. Because there is no one to catch them, their bosses must do it on an even greater level.

Amazing Indian Ocean tide. The Indian Ocean is not only turquoise and a very comfortable temperature, in certain areas, like Jiambiani on the southeast coast of Zanzibar island, the beach is so shallow that low tide means boats sitting in dry sand because the water receded maybe three football fields away.. And when the tide comes in 6 hours later, the water gushes back to shore.. It is such an interesting sight, we set up our camera and took interval photos to mark the changes between tides.. Here is a photo at low tide and one at high tide, about 5 hours apart..




Ridiculous prices. For our nice, honeymoon feeling, we stayed in a resort called Blue Bay in Kiwengwa, along the east coast where there are a string of Italian-owned places. Our place was like the price of most places, $190 per night which included breakfast and dinner, but not lunch or drinks. Expensive, we thought.. Boy was it, the first night we saw that the beers, which were about 2/3 the size of regular bottles we had seen elsewhere, were 7,000 Tanzanian shillings - the price on the bottle cap is 1400 shillings.. we were outraged! So the next day, we excited the resort, which is kind of weird for guests to do on foot, there are two gates to go through and about 200 yards to walk to get to the main road, and sought out some cheap beer. We quickly came upon a bar where the resort-workers hang out - well, at least where the non-Muslims hung out. We came back to this bar several times, buying a couple of bottles of beers and promising to return the next day with the bottles (in many non-America places, the establishment returns the bottles to the manufacturer who reuses the glass bottles). We then went to dinner each night in our nice resort with a backpack full of beer and a leatherman to open the beer... Take that, over charging Italians!

The Maasai. The Maasai are a large tribe of herders in northern Tanzania and Kenya. They wear bright colored robes and historically (reportedly) were very fierce warriors who fought off other tribes and colonialists to maintain (a dwindling amount of their) grazing land for their cows and goats. We saw them from afar in Ngorogoro Crater, typically one or two men walking in their robes, with a stick, surrounded by a herd, they looked very.. other, is the only way to put it.. With their distinctive robes, piercings, and traditional dances, they are a favorite among the tourists... We began to notice that the Tanzanians and Zanzabarians refer to them as "the Maasai" or "a Maasai" as in, We brought a Maasai to watch our land rover.

At the resorts in Kiwengwa, they have a Maasai who stood at the spot that the resort intersected the public beach as security - he would walk slowly towards the trinket-selling person who was too aggressive with the tourists and the salesman would scurry away.. My impression of The Maasai changed when we hung out at the bar with our cheap beer - there we encountered many Maasai men, they were imported from 10 hours away (Arusha) to work security at the resorts.. They asked us about America, how much things cost there, why no Americans like football, what Americans thought when the embassy was bombed in Dar Es Salaam, etc. They had their cell phones inside their robes and one was in school (in the resort, low season) for computer programming..

Arusha to Zanzibar

From the mountains in the north of Tanzania, we took a 10 hour bus ride to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania's largest City and the economic center of the country. Our bus was the semi-luxury bus from a company which advertised luxury and semi-luxury, the semi- fit our schedule (7am departure instead of the ungodly 5:15am luxury). Semi-, we learned, meant that we got Cokes (score!), they played movie videos during the ride, and we had assigned seats. This kind of travel makes for uneventful trips. We got to Dar around 4 pm without any mishaps. Thanks semi-luxury!

We spent one night in a YMCA in Dar and head to the ferry to go to Zanzibar. The ferry is bouncey, they hand out sick bags which we do not end up needing. We stay in Stone Town for two days, which is the tourist part of Zanzibar Town (the island is generally called Zanzibar, Zanzibar Town is the name of the main town on the island). Tourist spending is a very big part of the island's economy which means there are at least 2 times as many people selling to tourists as there are tourists in Stone Town. (It's called Stone Town because, as a British Protectorate, all the Brit administrators decided to make that little part of Zanzibar the main British area, so they got rid of all the mud-huts and only allowed stone buildings.)

One funny attempt at parting us from some money begins with a salesperson (who are nicknamed "touts") approaching on foot and saying Didn't I see you yesterday in Stone Town? To us, this seems like a terrible opener. We still haven't figured out where a successful pitch goes from there.. We typically replied with No no, we were not in Stone Town that day. Once, we replied with, Yes! I did see you yesterday, and you told me you were going to give me some money. That is my favorite turnaround on street sales folks.

So, Zanzibar is full of people who will fall in step with you as you walk to try to figure out that you might buy. Taxi, t-shirt, tour guide, spices, etc. We tend to engage these folks in conversation, brightly talking about how much we are enjoying our stay, how beautiful the island is, Obama is our president (a good topic for Americans!) and then our next topic is the World Cup. We have found much less than universal interest in the World Cup in Tanzania. We just met a tour guide nicknamed Striker who was not very interested in the Cup. Weird.

While on Zanzibar, we took a spice tour which was fairly interesting. The island used to be dominated by spice plantations - vanilla, cloves (which smell AMAZING in the wild), nutmeg. We took a tour with 4 other people to a farm and as we began to walk around the place, which was planted with such a wide variety of trees and plants that it looked like a wild garden, we were followed by some local teenage boys - The guide said to us in English right in front of them, that they would follow us around but that we should not accept anything from them (they make rings and bracelets out of leaves) because they would expect payment and they were truants, bad boys, and smoked weed, their reputations were destroyed! The nutmeg plant was the most interesting to me, the guide noted that a woman has to know a lot about cooking with it to be a good wife (in too large quantities it can make an eater very ill) and that men like it to be brewed into some kind of drink because, only after drinking it would women dance and their eyes would become "open" as he put it. Oh my. Here is a pic of nutmeg, inside the red pit, below.





We also visited two large Indian Ocean beach locations, one called Jambiani and the other called Kiwengwa. These days we mostly spent reading, hanging out by the ocean or pool (in Kiwengwa, where we stayed in a fancy resort!), and playing games.. While these are very fun activities for us, they do not translate to the blog very well, so instead of the play-by-play, I have put together some random bullets for your enjoyment in the next post.

Despots

All despots are not created equal.

Independence

Following independence (roughly 1960), most African countries adopted one-party states, with the party head or revolutionary general becoming president. Deftly playing off the West against the Soviet Union, some of these men enjoyed huge personal gains with few negative consequences--the aid money would continue to flow from one side or the other, and maintenance of power usually meant ensuring that the security forces got some kind of raise each year. How the broader economy did, or what the unemployment rate was, or whether your country faced famine was immaterial. Every presidential transition in sub-Saharan Africa between 1960 and 1990 involved the death or violent removal of the sitting president.

All that changed, sort of, in 1990. After balancing the seesaw for thirty years, African presidents found the balance tipped irrevocably toward the West. Within a year or two, new constitutions were written in most countries and opposition parties were discovered to no longer be threats to the State. And countries began to have elections for presidents who were now constrained, in theory, by the new constitutions they had been forced to adopt. But in the West, with strong written constitutions or thousand-year traditions to limit presidential action, underestimated the despots. They soon discovered that constitutions can be amended, supreme courts can be packed, opposition press can be silenced, opposition leaders can be disallowed from running, and, if necessary, elections can be stolen.

The gains were not all hollow, though. South Africa led the way with a free election (and largely peaceful presidential transition) with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994. Ghana's big man, Jerry Rawlings, chose to enter retirement in 2000. And a handful of other countries (including Tanzania and Zambia) have successfully held elections that resulted in a change at the top. Ghana even held a successful close election last year, decided by just a few percentage points, which all parties eventually accepted.

But the failures are significant and make for depressing reading. Libya's Muammar Khadafi is the dean of African presidents, in power now for forty years. Zimbabwe's Mugabe is celebrating 31 years in power. Uganda's Yoweri Museveni is on 25. Cameroon's Paul Biya is on 27. Kenya's last election descended into chaos and tribal conflict. Rwanda's Paul Kagame, president since 2000, has been the power behind the state since 1994. Hosni Mubarak took power in 1981. And Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the ICC for war crimes, was just "reelected" in Sudan after 21 years in power. Most of these men have amassed enormous personal fortunes, and it is highly unlikely that anything but death would push them from power now.

Liberal Democracy

But it's not clear that vibrant democracy should be the goal. Over the past fifty years lots of countries have been non-democratic, either in lacking elections or lacking a credible opposition (Japan, Mexico, China, South Korea, SIngapore, Malaysia), and most have had dramatically better economic performance than their African peers. And, with the notable exception of China, most have eventually strengthened their democracies after long periods of big-man leadership. Holding a sham election doesn't appear to gain much for these countries' populations other than an increase in instability and the possibility of descent into tribal or ethnic chaos.

What seems to be important is not elections or presidential transitions, per se, but implementation of the rule of law, freedom of speech and the press, the ease of starting new businesses, lack of low-level corruption, et cetera. That is, emphasizing the liberal in the liberal-democratic dogma more than the democratic. This is not a new idea--Fareed Zakaria wrote a whole book about it a few years ago, and the idea has kicked around in academia for decades--but it does require a revolution in American foreign policy. George W. Bush made it a stated aim of American policy to strengthen democracy around the world yet repeatedly refused to criticize allies whose liberal records were weak. In the African context, democratic success stories--South Africa, Botswana, Ghana--went hand in hand with improvements in liberalism.

Corruption

One of the most devastating problems on a local level is corruption. Every country (including the United States) has some significant institutional corruption at the upper levels of the economy and political structures. That corruption has significant macro-economic effects--I don't have the numbers at hand but I suspect that you could pave a very large percentage of the dirt roads in Cameroon if Paul Biya were to spend his personal fortune on the task. But at the grass roots it's the local corruption that is most devastating.

I've been aware of bribes being paid on public transport dozens if not hundreds of times, but in Zanzibar, probably for the first time, I've seen bribes paid in the open. Last week we hired a taxi to take us across the island to an east-coast hotel, the driver had some problem with his vehicle and handed 500 shillings (about 40 cents) over to a police officer. When I lived in Cameroon there were often police checkpoints every ten or fifteen kilometers, so the transport drivers had to pay out large sums in bribes on every trip, with the costs being passed on to the passengers. The issue is minor for a tourist--forty cents won't break the bank--but for a farmer trying to get crops to market the extra cost can be devastating. This comes on top of the extra cost of traveling on poor roads with a high risk for accidents.

The contrast between Tanzania and Rwanda, in terms of this kind of low-level corruption, has been striking. Rwanda has billboards up decrying corruption; Tanzania has none. Rwanda has few or no police checkpoints (checkpoints were one of the primary tools used during the genocide to target fleeing Tutsis, so there may be come cultural aversion to them now) while Tanzania has many. We saw no bribes being paid in Rwanda, in Tanzania we have witnessed it openly on several occasions. Yet, while by most measures Tanzania is more "democratic" than Rwanda, I am almost certain that I would prefer to open a business in Rwanda than in Tanzania.

Policy

The implications for the United States are fairly straightforward. Emphasize human rights and freedoms more than elections. Deny aid dollars to countries with high corruption indexes. Impose travel bans on non-liberal leaders. Freeze their assets (that means you, Switzerland and France). Reward liberal leaders (Mo Ibrahim's leadership prize http://www.moibrahimfoundation.org/en is a worthy start). Enforce transparency in economic dealings with African governments by publishing trade terms, and by requiring corporations to disclose terms of agreement. Insist that governments fund and support anti-corruption campaigns (it would surely be simple for an auditor to ride around Zanzibar citing policemen who openly take bribes on the roads). With some luck and a bit of hard-headed thinking, then, the gains of the last twenty years can be extended during the next twenty.