Something Rotten

Some 20 years ago, an article in the Economist newspaper posited that the greatest threat to world order in the late 20^th and early 21^st century was migration. It is true that by 2015 we still have not seen the apocalypse that the article predicted, but it is clear that we seem destined for a day when millions or even billions would be on the move from areas of the world where life is intolerable to other less blighted places. Yes, we are no way near an apocalypse. But we are getting pretty close to a human disaster that we seem unable or unwilling to stop. This horror is unfolding right in front of our eyes in the region where Africa meets with a Europe that is in no mood to accept anyone’s "...tired, poor or huddled masses, yearning to breathe free".   

Refugees at Lampedusa

The urge to migrate to better conditions is an almost irresistible impulse in human beings, ever since the first humans trudged out of the continent of Africa. 

And that urge to leave continues to this day maybe for less romantic reasons than we like to fancy. True, those early humans who blazed the emigration trail almost certainly had no idea where they were going. They just followed their nose and, presumably climate trends and food opportunities, which eventually led to their populating the entire planet and the survival of our species. And that was good.

          That same instinctual drive may be as difficult to resist in today’s Africa as it was in the Africa of two million years ago. How else can you explain the madness of embarking across the vastness of the Mediterranean in unseaworthy craft, without navigation aids, safety equipment or competent mariners? 

          As I write this blog, European Union leaders are being dragged kicking an screaming to a summit to consider ways of alleviating the plight of these thousands of migrants willing to risk their lives and those of their children to cross a sea notorious for swallowing up the unprepared. So far this year, thousands have drowned, and in the latest casualty figures, some 800 would-be immigrants have died in the attempt to cross the sea.

        Quite coincidentally, the issue of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers has become part of the general debate involving immigration that is dominating the election campaign currently underway in Britain. One party in particular, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) is really rocking the electoral boat with its anti-immigration stance. Its leader, Nigel Farage is a highly articulate and, for some,

charismatic figure but who, himself, is also of immigrant stock. On a recent visit to the Gambia while, looking up a number in the Gambian phone directory, I was forced to do a double take at a half page of “Farages” living in the Greater Banjul Area. Admittedly, there were no “Nigels”, the closest thing being something like “Nabil”. Could our Nigel himself have been African after all?

          So, here on the northern pole of the continent a tragedy, most horrible is in the process of being enacted whilst on the continent's opposite pole  another of similar horror, though not yet of the same magnitude plays out in the rainbow Republic of South Africa, celebrated for its accommodation of different folks with different strokes. The republic`s current imbroglio arose after the Zulu King, Goodwill Zwelithini demanded that foreign workers go home, provoking his 'subjects' (irony no doubt unappreciated in the 'republic') to take the law into their own hands. Now, after several deaths and a short reign of terror against fellow 'other' Africans, the king is backpedalling, claiming that his words had been taken out of context. 

          What these polarities are telling us is that there is something rotten somewhere in the middle of the continent. As if we didn’t know that already. Not only do we know what sickens the continent, we know also what to do about it. We just don’t have the will.

That’s all.

Tell Fren Tru

         

Send in the Robots

For fresh fruit and vegetables in Banjul I usually head for roadside stalls. They stock an abundance of produce loaded with the 5- or 7- a day substances that everyone says is good for you. And, as I make my way towards my favorite stalls my sense of anticipation grows not just for the buying but also for the gossip and banter. They ask about my family and I do the same about theirs, while I feign shock and horror at the prices they throw at me. The scene is usually further enlivened by the antics of one or two toddlers weaving their way among the stalls, occupied in their play, uncaring about the mischief they might create in occasionally upsetting their mothers’ pyramids of oranges, mangoes and avocados. 

          So, when on my recent trip to the city I went to my favorite vendor to get my fruit and veg and asked about the whereabouts of one of those toddlers, little Fouad, and his mother told me that he had “passed on a few months back”, I was absolutely gutted. For that boy, with a large cranium, mischievous eyes and quick movements, all attributes of an intelligent mind, not to say sound body, to have "passed away" just like that was beyond my comprehension. What made it even more difficult to comprehend was that the enormity of this scandal seemed not to have discomposed the mother at all. Putting the issue of PTSD aside, in answer to my question as to how that death had come about, the mother merely said, “It just happened. These things happen.” Indeed they do, but they need not. 

What is the use of all this big international exercise about defining millennium development goals and targets and failing so lamentably when it came to protecting a healthy four-year-old and depriving the world of a potential genius? Loving parental care, it seemed was not sufficient to the task. It got me thinking that a robot, properly programmed, could have done a better job. And this was on the day that we learnt that a co-pilot had locked his captain out of the cockpit of a passenger airliner and deliberately crashed it into the side of a French Alps, killing himself and 149 others. Such a catastrophe should be preventable in this day and age, I would suggest. If we can land a Philae-Rosetta probe on a moving lump of ice after a 10-year journey through untold millions of kilometers, and the dodging all kinds of celestial clutter, surely we can frustrate a rogue pilot bent on crashing his plane against the side of a mountain on this here earth.

Tell Fren Tru