Zimbabwe activism

One change in the last ten years is that now rural Zimbabweans have cellphones.

Globalvoices has an article on netcitizen activism

Mawarire, wrapped in a Zimbabwean flag, posted a video on YouTube and Facebook, asking:

This flag, this beautiful flag, they tell me that the green is for the vegetation and the crops. I don't see any crops in my country. The yellow is for all the minerals… I don't know how much is left. I don't know who they sold it to and how much they got for it. They tell me that the black is for the majority people like me and yet for some reason I don't feel like I am a part of it.

read the whole thing...

Chinese peacekeepers in Mali

weibo link reports a Chinese UN peacekeeper in Mali was killed.

a long article about their work.

sleeping sickness

Librivox has an audiobook written in the early 1900's that investigates the problem of sleeping sickness.

they blame the epidemic on western traders and explorers who took infected porters with them, spreading the disease to new areas and killing hundreds of thousands of people.

However, what about the Arab traders, including the slave traders, who were in the area at the time? They cite Stanley and Livingstone, but ignore that Livingstone's work was most important in influencing people to oppose the slave trade...


Ironically, what opened Zimbabwe to western expansion was because the rinderpest epidemic killed off enough wildlife to stop the tsetse fly from having enough animals to feed on. There was a tsetse fly free area fenced off when I lived there 35 years ago...wonder if it is still working?