Something to Think About

30 January 2011

As I watched the situation in Egypt unfold from Boston, I must admit that my first reaction was one of admiration and fascination that the internet, and particularly Facebook and Twitter could possibly topple a government. I have been reading “In the Time of the Butterflies” about the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic and the years and lives it took to take him down. And now it seems there was a possibility it could be done in a matter of days and the speed of cyberspace.

Now I am here in Kenya. When I arrived on Saturday night the Egyptian Soccer team was sitting on the steps leading up to my hotel. They had lost to Kenya, but that was far from their minds as they watched their country explode. The did not want to return. Their faces were drawn and the coaches also had a tight expression on their faces. When I awoke in the morning, they were gone, so I guess they went home.

I have an eerie feeling being here now. I am not afraid for my safety, but the memory of post election violence of 2007-08 is never far from my mind. And what strikes me now is that everything is up for grabs. They no longer need leaders (like Kenyatta and Musyoka who started it up for elections) to fulminate bad feelings. I am here, far from the US and I know what tribal hatred looks like, I know what corruption does to the spirit of the poor, I know there is famine here again. I also know the intelligence of the college students and graduates who are withering without a job and I see the possibilities of eruptions all over Africa.

In the U.S people tend to separate out one country from another. I suspect they are deeply concerned about Egypt. That has been our “ally” for years and so stable. Folks like to vacation there, take a trip up the Nile. And now we are evacuating Americans. But Americans don’t really pay attention to what is going on in the rest of Africa. The Sudan (which is next door to Egypt) is going to blow, but no one cares, Darfur was just so 90’s.  But they are rioting in Khartoum, Tunisia, and given the haves and have-nots over here, there is a lot watch and to think about.

I don’t know how I feel about all this. There is a part of me from the 60’s, that time of being an empowered student that applauds their courage and roots them on. After all we toppled a presidency and nothing horrible happened.  But the older part of me thinks that we are now so interconnected (thanks to that very same internet) that doesn’t know if the unbridled power of social media and student revolutions may achieve goals that the students and people could not have foreseen.

It is an interesting time to be over here. I am anxious to read the papers each day, since they are much better than what you get online, and to talk to people. To get their take on what is happening and where the road will lead. It surely is a time to pay attention.

So I hope you’ll follow this with interest and get your friends to care about this continent. They have been waiting too long.