"Obviously, Paul Simon’s Graceland is a huge influence on this. I do genre parody..."

"... and this is definitely mostly Graceland.... It’s a stunning masterpiece. But the lyrics are essentially him singing over Ladysmith Black Mambazo and then singing about how he’s depressed because he got divorced from Princess Leia and he’s awkward at Upper West Side parties. It was sort of loosely influenced by that, but he has these elliptical kind of lyrics; they’re hard to pin down sometimes. So a lot of the influence came from the visuals of the 'Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes' video and his performances with Ladysmith Black Mambazo on Saturday Night Live. There were a lot of 'a dorky white guy in front of an African choir' images. And I was definitely influenced by Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel...."

Says Kyle Gordon, interviewed in Vulture at '"Everyone Was Laughing at Me the Entire Time. It Was Awesome.'"

I highly recommend "Under African Skies" "Mr. Jambo":

"Well, I couldn’t speak his language and I couldn’t understand a word / But I knew his meaning was what I decided I had heard."

For reference, here's the 1987 Paul Simon video, "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes":

"Because of collapsing fertility elsewhere, Africa will make up an increasing share of the world’s population."

"Africa accounted for less than 10 percent of the world’s population until the early 1970s, but a demographic forecast in The Lancet suggests that by 2100, 54 percent of the world’s babies will be born in sub-Saharan Africa. Include North Africa, and the share is even higher. If that forecast is right (and always be skeptical of long-term demographic forecasts), at some point in the 22nd century a majority of the world’s population will be African.... In an aging and perhaps enfeebled world, Africa will also be a continent of youth — arguably making it comparatively vigorous and more of a hotbed for entrepreneurship and for music and popular culture...."

Writes Nicholas Kristof, in "In an Aging World, a Youthful Africa Steps Up" (NYT).

"He looked at her in disbelief, she recounted, as if he couldn’t believe she’d called the police over such a matter and asked: 'Why are you acting like you’re not a Muslim?'"

From "As Gambia weighs end to genital-cutting ban, this girl was cut behind mother’s back/The West African country could become the first in the world to overturn a prohibition on female genital mutilation" (WaPo)(full-access link).

Fatty, the imam promoting the ban’s repeal, appeared to refer to Fatou’s story in a sermon earlier this year, saying that a woman who takes her husband to court should be “ashamed.” Fatty compared her story with that story of a “good woman” who refused to take her husband to court even after he beat her so badly she lost four teeth.

UPDATE: "Gambia will maintain its ban on female genital cutting following a historic decision by the National Assembly on Monday that marked a victory for women’s rights advocates in this West African nation" (WaPo).

“I am relieved but sad that we had to be taken through this torment,” said Fatou Baldeh, a Gambian activist and survivor who has received international attention for her advocacy against the practice. “I am so proud of Gambian women for not giving up. We refused to let go.”

"[M]y notes weren’t always as illuminating as I’d expected them to be. 'What does ‘Alt’ mean?' I asked Hugh over dinner one night."

"He looked down at the page. 'It’s not "Alt,"' he said. 'It’s "A.L.T."' Then I remembered. We’d been out early that morning, observing a short parade of ostriches. It was misty, and I pointed to a vague shape on the horizon. 'What’s that?' I asked Dalton. He followed my finger and told me it was likely an A.L.T. 'Animal-looking thing,' he explained."

I'm so glad to see a new David Sedaris essay in The New Yorker, "Notes on a Last-Minute Safari/We saw every animal that was in 'The Lion King' and then some. They were just there, like ants at a picnic, except that they were elephants and giraffes and zebras."

I liked seeing the first syllable of my last name in a new context, but more important was the opportunity to find out David Sedaris's opinion of going on "safari," because I had quite recently asserted, to a complete stranger, that going on safari was really basically the same thing as going to the zoo. These things are packaged. It's not as though you're exploring the authentic natural habitat of elephants, giraffes, and zebras.

I watched all 3 parts of ABC's "20/20" show with Melania Trump.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

I'm not going to embed anything or point you to any specific clips. I'll just give you a list of thoughts that are nothing more than what I remember, in the order I remember them:

1. Melania sat stiffly and nearly immobile, her hands clasped firmly, as she gave calm, careful answers to everything the interviewer asked.

2. The scene was a balcony — someplace in Kenya — that overlooked a small, bleak, red landscape that we were urged to see as beautiful. I noticed the standing water in pools and imagined the insects and the chemicals that would need to be used to control the insects. And that was before ABC quoted President Trump as having called some places "shithole"/"shithouse" countries.

3. I didn't catch the name of the interviewer, a dark-haired man I didn't recognize. He was polite, but tried to draw something interesting out of Melania. The show had been promoted as an interview with no question off limits, but there was absolutely nothing that threw her off her determined firm poise.

4. We did not see — unless there are more than those 3 parts — any confrontation about sexual affairs that Trump may have had during her marriage to him. There was only a question whether she was wary about marrying him, given his reputation. She gave a strong no, and the interviewer did not follow up with specifics. In fact, no names of other women were ever spoken, including the names of his 2 ex-wives.

5. There were many nice clips of Melania doing First-Lady things while looking beautiful in beautiful clothes, and several repetitions of her saying that she wants to be known for what she does, not what she wears.

6. She was asked about her "I really don't care/Do u?" jacket, and she gave the answer she's given before: It was a message directed at the press. Specifically, she called it the "left-wing" press.

7. She expressed support for her husband about everything, it seemed, except the parent-and-child separations at the border with Mexico. She tells us she let him know that it was unacceptable, and then he agreed with her.

8. She was asked about the seeming discordance between her anti-bullying initiative and her husband's bullying of people (and we saw a montage of Trump calling people names and imitating how they talk and gesture). All I remember of her answer is that she spoke about how she herself is bullied: She is one of the most bullied persons "on the world." I would have been tempted to defend his speech as robust criticism of individuals who have chosen to pursue political power and to distinguish it from other bullying, but once you make a controversial distinction, you are showing everyone exactly where they can attack you, and she chose instead to put herself front and center as a straightforward, strong, independent, imperturbable woman. That's very hard to attack without looking like another one of her many, many bullies.

9. My memories of this soporific safari into the mind of Melania are fading fast. I had one more thing. Oh, yes. She's not unhappy being First Lady. The people who say that about her are wrong. She does miss being able to decide to go somewhere and leave in "a minute." And she has only her old friends — a small group — and she keeps in touch with them by phone and text. The interviewer prompts her about what they say about what to do if you want a friend in Washington. Yes, she knows the saying: If you want a friend in Washington, "buy a dog."

10. I thought the old saying was "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog," and I was going to muse about Melania's orientation to shopping and wealth. The saying is associated with Harry Truman, who didn't buy his dog, Feller. It was given to him. I'm reading the Quote Investigator article about the saying, and I see that Truman wasn't interested in that dog. From a 1948 newspaper article: "But Harry seems about as close to this pup as he does to Hank Wallace.... And now, months later, the animal is still an outsider." And, from 1949: "Why doesn’t Truman have a dog? … It is my understanding Truman does not have a dog because Mrs. Truman thinks dogs are too much trouble to care for." So quite aside from whether it's "get" or "buy," did Truman even ever express this thought? This was a guy who seems not to have wanted the dog he was given, but that's not inconsistent with saying "If you want a friend in Washington, get/buy a dog." That could be read as a disparagement of the common person's desire for friends. Just get a dog if you're so needy. As for me, I really don't care.

What Melania did was "like showing up to a meeting of African-American cotton farmers in a Confederate uniform."

What did she do? She wore a white pith helmet in Africa. The quote is from Matthew Carotenuto, a coordinator of African Studies at St. Lawrence University, who added "Historical context matters." That is, some people associate pith helmets with the colonial era in Africa. The quote appears in "Melania Trump Raises Eyebrows in Africa With Another White Hat" (NYT). The NYT says a few nice things, deep in the article:

Mrs. Trump has seemed at ease... She has posed for photos with babies and children, often murmuring the same things at each stop — “Beautiful!” and “Hi, guys!” — while holding their hands or waving at the cameras.... On Friday, she looked happy as she visited a red clay feeding pen for orphaned elephants at the Nairobi National Park. She administered them formula in oversized baby bottles, patted the animals on their heads and inspected their floppy ears.

We're told she wore a white shirt and that the shirt did not get dirty as she fed the baby elephants.

Why does the headline say "Another White Hat"? I think it's because there was a lot of talk last April about a white hat she wore in France. See "Melania Trump, White Hat/The first lady’s choice of headgear made quite a statement on the second day of the French state visit" (NYT). The NYT fashion critic struggled to find meaning:

In the iconography of the Western, the good guys wore white hats... It’s possible Mrs. Trump is not aware of this.... Except she has something of a history of using white suits to send what seem like fairly pointed messages; see her decision to wear white — associated with women’s rights in the form of the suffragist movement, as well as Hillary Clinton — to her husband’s first State of the Union address, which happened to be her first high-profile appearance with him after the Stormy Daniels scandal broke.... 

Whatever. We know Melania's most famous fashion message: "I really don’t care. Do U?"



AND: In getting pushed around by a baby elephant, compare Ava Gardner (in "Mogambo," suggested by commenter rcocean):

"This week, I’m traveling to Africa for the first time since I left office – a continent of wonderful diversity, thriving culture, and remarkable stories."

That's Barack Obama, Facebooking platitudes. It's kind of refreshingly mellow and relaxing, isn't it?

Over the years since, I've often drawn inspiration from Africa's extraordinary literary tradition. As I prepare for this trip, I wanted to share a list of books that I’d recommend for summer reading, including some from a number of Africa’s best writers and thinkers – each of whom illuminate our world in powerful and unique ways.

I'm pleased to have the opportunity to use my old "Obama is bland" tag. So... should we read some books Obama recommends, something that illuminates our world?

There are 6 books on the list, and the first 5 are by African writers, with African subject matter. But the 6th book is "The World As It Is" by Ben Rhodes:

It’s true, Ben does not have African blood running through his veins. But few others so closely see the world through my eyes like he can. Ben’s one of the few who’ve been with me since that first presidential campaign. His memoir is one of the smartest reflections I’ve seen as to how we approached foreign policy, and one of the most compelling stories I’ve seen about what it’s actually like to serve the American people for eight years in the White House.

Few others so closely see the world through my eyes like he can. Does it take nerve or just obliviousness to write that when the freshest image we've got of Ben Rhodes seeing the world is...

Ben Rhodes reacting to Hillary Clinton's hilarious defeat in 2016 is the funniest part of the new Obama Documentary on HBO.

What makes it even better is throughout the documentary he brags how she is going to win. pic.twitter.com/MGBQNE5ATY

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) May 30, 2018

"In countries such as Ghana, the intended audience for the Nivea ad, and Nigeria – where an estimated 77% of women use skin-lightening products..."

"... the debate has so far, understandably, focused on health. The most toxic skin-lightening ingredients, still freely available, include ingredients such as hydroquinone, mercury and corticosteroid. It’s not unusual for these to be mixed with caustic agents ranging from automotive battery acid, washing power, toothpaste and cloth bleaching agents, with serious and irreversible health consequences."

From "Nivea's latest 'white is right' advert is the tip of a reprehensible iceberg/No amount of sophisticated branding can hide the fact that the messaging of such ads is as deeply poisonous as ever" by Afua Hirsh in The Guardian.

Shadism, pigmentocracy – the idea of privilege accruing to lighter-skinned black people – and other hierarchies of beauty are a complex picture....

"Above all, his willingness to disregard political correctness makes the supporters feel he’s saying exactly what they really feel about issues..."

"... but they’re afraid to say it in public. In a way, he represents their hopes, fears and frustrations... Isn’t he the kind of person we need desperately in Ghanaian politics right now?"

Wrote Kwaku Adu-Gyamfi, a Ghanaian columnist, quoted in "Trump’s tone resonates in strongman-weary Africa."

I know. Some of you are going to say, if Africans like Trump maybe it's because he is a strongman. People who are weary of the strongman may nevertheless think the solution is another strongman. Here's Trevor Noah's take:

"Africans chuckle at ugly US election."

A BBC headline.

Under the hashtag [#Nov8AfricanEdition], Nigerians and other Africans have been flipping the script and imagining how events in America would be reported if they were happening in Africa, with fake "breaking news" headlines and sarcastic support.

"U.S. Support of Gay Rights in Africa May Have Done More Harm Than Good."

A NYT headline — the thud of recognition of unintended consequences.

“The U.S. support is making matters worse,” said Mike, 24, a university student studying biology in Minna, a town in central Nigeria who asked that his full name not be used for safety reasons. “There’s more resistance now. It’s triggered people’s defense mechanism.”

"Mugabe describes himself as both a practicing Catholic and a Marxist, but his birthday party was held at the Elephant Hills golf resort..."

"... near Victoria Falls, just up the road from the haunts of Cecil. Mugabe was honored with seven birthday cakes. One was so large that it had to be carried in by eight men; another was described as the size of a mattress. The celebration reportedly cost a million American dollars, in a country that now suffers up to ninety-five per cent unemployment and underemployment, according to the C.I.A.’s World Factbook. (Mugabe conceded during his last election, in 2013, that at least sixty per cent of his countrymen were jobless). Three-quarters of Zimbabwe’s population lives below the poverty line. 'It’s sad when wildlife is abused, but the Zimbabwean people have been suffering decades of abuse under the wily old Mugabe, who seems never to relent and never to go away,' Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, told me last week."

From "Cecil the Lion and Robert Mugabe," by Robin Wright in The New Yorker.

I don't understand the "but" in the first sentence — "a practicing Catholic and a Marxist, but his birthday party," etc. I mean, I understand it, but it assumes the reader thinks a certain way, and I don't.

"Are you saying that all this noise is about a dead lion? Lions are killed all the time in this country. What is so special about this one?"

Said Tryphina Kaseke, a used-clothes salesman in Zimbabwe.

"Why are the Americans more concerned than us?" said Joseph Mabuwa, a 33-year-old father-of-two cleaning his car in the center of the capital. "We never hear them speak out when villagers are killed by lions and elephants in Hwange."

Cecil the Celebrity Lion may only be a celebrity to Americans.

"I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt."

"I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt."

ADDED: This story of Walter James Palmer, the American dentist who killed Cecil the lion, got Meade playing the old Beatles song "The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill." We got to puzzling over the facts of the song, but there's no need to puzzle. They're set out quite nicely at Wikipedia:

This song mocks the actions of a young American named Richard A. Cooke III, known as Rik, who was visiting his mother, Nancy Cooke de Herrera, at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh at the same time that the Beatles were staying with the Maharishi. According to his mother, both she and her son maintained friendly relations with all of the Beatles except for Lennon, who by Cooke de Herrera's account was "a genius" but distant and contemptuous of the wealthy American Cooke de Herrera and her clean-cut, college-attending son. According to Nancy's life account, Beyond Gurus, the genesis of the song occurred when she, Rik, and several others, including guides, set out upon elephants to hunt for a tiger (allegedly presented by their Indian guide as a traditional act). The pack of elephants was attacked by a tiger, which was shot by Rik. Rik was initially proud of his quick reaction and posed for a photograph with his prize. However, Rik's reaction to the slaying was mixed, as he has not hunted since. Nancy claims that all present recognised the necessity of Rik's action, but that Lennon's reaction was scornful and sarcastic, asking Rik: "But wouldn't you call that slightly life-destructive?" The song was written by Lennon as mocking what he saw as Rik's bravado and unenlightened attitude.

Lennon later told his version of the story in a Playboy interview, stating that: "‘Bungalow Bill’ was written about a guy in Maharishi's meditation camp who took a short break to go shoot a few poor tigers, and then came back to commune with God. There used to be a character called Jungle Jim, and I combined him with Buffalo Bill. It's sort of a teenage social-comment song and a bit of a joke." Mia Farrow, who was also at the ashram during the period, supports Lennon's story in her autobiography; she writes, "Then a self-important, middle-aged American woman arrived, moving a mountain of luggage into the brand-new private bungalow next to Maharishi's along with her son, a bland young man named Bill. People fled this newcomer, and no one was sorry when she left the ashram after a short time to go tiger hunting, unaware that their presence had inspired a new Beatles song – 'Bungalow Bill.'"

Imagine the contempt if Rik had been a dentist!

AND: Bungalow Bill has a blog, and you can see a photo of him with the tiger and listen to his reminiscing about the incident here.

For the annals of unintended consequences.

Mosquito nets — "widely considered a magic bullet against malaria" — used to fish:

Nobody in his hut, including his seven children, sleeps under a net at night. Instead, Mr. Ndefi has taken his family’s supply of anti-malaria nets and sewn them together into a gigantic sieve that he uses to drag the bottom of the swamp ponds, sweeping up all sorts of life: baby catfish, banded tilapia, tiny mouthbrooders, orange fish eggs, water bugs and the occasional green frog....

[T]he unsparing mesh, with holes smaller than mosquitoes, traps much more life than traditional fishing nets do. Scientists say that could imperil already stressed fish populations, a critical food source for millions of the world’s poorest people.

"The Ebola crisis, and the role missionaries are playing in it, has brought dislike of missionary work out into the open."

"When an infected American missionary was flown back to the United States for treatment, Donald Trump griped that do-gooders trying to save Africa should be prepared to 'suffer the consequences.' Ann Coulter called the doctor 'idiotic,' and asked of his mission to Africa, 'What was the point?'"

From Brian Palmer's Slate article subtitled "Should we worry that so many of the doctors treating Ebola in Africa are missionaries?" Palmer is an atheist who admits to a milder sort of skepticism about missionary doctors. Who's keeping track of the quality of care? There's no oversight. There's no medical malpractice law. They might be proselytizing, which for Palmer includes even just revealing that they are doing what they're doing — to quote one doctor — "because of what God has given me and his love for me." Palmer experiences a "visceral discomfort with the mingling of religion and health care."

If you were a vulnerable patient — poor and horribly ill — would you rather be attended to by those who are inspired by the love of God or those who are doing the dangerous, onerous job because the world health care system had provided adequate pay to motivate a person who responds to financial incentives?

Palmer ends his article with a puzzle of a paragraph:

As an atheist, I try to make choices based on evidence and reason. So until we’re finally ready to invest heavily in secular medicine for Africa, I suggest we stand aside and let God do His work.

I read this to mean that missionaries only have to beat the better-than-nothing standard, so fans of secular medicine can just shut up.

But on a more cynical level, the notion of God's work is sarcastic. There is no God, thinks the atheist, but if there were, He'd be responsible for this disease.

In that light, when the atheist says "let God do His Work" he might mean: Let God continue his scheme of dragging Africans into early, painful death. And: If a few of His very best friends see this horror show as an opportunity to demonstrate their fealty to Him, who's to say that's not in the plan?

"As someone who grew up with a much stronger sense of my black American roots, and an understanding of African culture distilled primarily through an American sensibility..."

"... I feel as though the term African-American doesn’t quite suit my identity."

That didn’t stop my father from (sort of) jokingly asking, upon my return from Kenya last month, “Did you feel different when you landed in the motherland?” What he meant, of course, was whether I felt as if I’d returned “home” to a place I’d never before been. People have spent their whole lives hoping to find the equivalent of their own personal Zion. Had I?

Collectors "are in their closets crying" because immensely valuable collections are about to become worthless.

Worthless in the sense of unsellable, but the possessors of ivory-inlaid walking sticks/guns and pianos with ivory keys and ivory-topped violin bows can still admire, caress, and use their objects.

The new regulations from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service are, of course, intended to wreck the demand for new ivory and thereby protect the elephants. The NYT has an op-ed titled "The Wrong Way to Protect Elephants," which doesn't really offer much hope of finding a right way:

We should encourage China, where much of the poached ivory ends up, to start a detailed public education campaign that underscores the damage done to elephant populations by the illegal trade in ivory. We also need more aggressive enforcement of anti-poaching efforts in Africa. And we should figure out a way to manage the trade in raw ivory to protect elephants. For instance, several years ago, ivory stockpiles owned by several African countries were sold in a series of United Nations-approved auctions in an effort to undercut illegal ivory trafficking. The proceeds went to elephant conservation efforts. This is a better approach than destroying these stockpiles, as the United States did last fall to six tons of ivory.

Here's a comment at the second link:

"Following Portugal's April 1974 Carnation Revolution..."

"... , it granted independence to Guinea-Bissau on 10 September 1974."

Luís Cabral, Amílcar Cabral's half-brother, became President of Guinea-Bissau.   Following independence local soldiers that fought along with the Portuguese Army against the PAIGC guerrillas were slaughtered by the thousands. A small number escaped to Portugal or to other African nations. The most famous massacre occurred in Bissorã. In 1980 PAIGC admitted in its newspaper "Nó Pintcha"...  that many were executed and buried in unmarked collective graves in the woods of Cumerá, Portogole and Mansabá.

Today's "History of" country is Guinea-Bissau.

"In 1958 the French Fourth Republic collapsed due to political instability and its failures in dealing with its colonies,..."

"... especially Indochina and Algeria. The founding of a Fifth Republic was supported by the French people, while France's colonies were given the choice between more autonomy in a new French Community and immediate independence. The other colonies chose the former but Guinea — under the leadership of Ahmed Sékou Touré whose Democratic Party of Guinea had won 56 of 60 seats in 1957 territorial elections — voted overwhelmingly for independence. The French withdrew quickly, and on October 2, 1958, Guinea proclaimed itself a sovereign and independent republic, with Sékou Touré as president."

And that was the beginning of the modern state called Guinea, today's "History of" country.