The Emperor and the Elephants

Folowing is a review of The Emperor and the Elephants - A Peace Corps Volunteer’s Story of Life during the late 1970s in the Central African Empire,  Peace Corps Writers, Oakland, CA. 2016.

This memoir of Peace Corps service by Richard W. Carroll, who went on to become a noted conservationist and activist leader of the World Wildlife Fund, recounts his early years in the Central African Empire.  Initially Carroll was a “fish guy” charged with inculcating the virtues of fish farming to rural residents.  This was an active and successful program in the CAE as long as some outside agency - the Peace Corps, the French or the UN - kept funding the production and distribution of fry, i.e. baby fish. Sadly, once the donors left, without new fish coming in at the bottom, the system collapsed. 

But during Carroll’s tenure, it all worked fine.  After a stint as a fish guy, Carroll sought and received a transfer to the nation’s nascent game park Manda-Gounda St. Floris in the far north east. The park was relatively undeveloped and un- assessed. Carroll’s task was to catalog what was there in terms of animals and plants, of which he found a profusion.  His experiences in this wild place are what propelled him onwards to a career as a wildlife professional.

In the book Carroll tells about people, places, animals and birds. He muses about life and its meanings.  His African adventure took place during the bizarre times when the Central African Republic’s tinpot dictator Jean Bedel Bokassa crowned himself emperor. Carroll provides an accurate description of the national scene and observations of what that meant, or did not, to the rural folks he dealt with on a daily basis.  Essentially, it was all dramatic theater that had few repercussions on rural life. The fact that national resources were stolen and squandered by the emperor and his ilk was just how life was. However, the larceny included not just tax money and foreign aid, but also within a three or four year window the slaughter of tens of thousands of elephants for their ivory.  (Hence the catchy title of this book.) Even today, years after Bokassa’s demise, poaching continues apace. 

After his Peace Corps days, Carroll returned to the renamed Central African Republic to do research on lowland gorillas and help found the Dzanga Sanga reserve near Bayanga in the south western forest.  Although Carroll alludes to this time and again in the book, he never really elaborates on what was involved in that much longer experience. I wanted more. 

Finally, included in the memoir are excerpts from several latter day speeches decrying poaching of elephants and rhinos, the bush meat trade, the timber industry, and mining. In the CAR all the rhinos are gone, as are most of the northern elephants. Only the forest elephants remain and they are threatened by poaching and human encroachment. 

In sum the book is sort of a hodgepodge of themes all of which have some linkages one to another. 

Disclaimer:  I too lived and worked in the CAR for a number of years (1974-76 and 1992-1995) from a perch at the U.S. embassy. Carroll and I may have crossed paths for a month or so in 1976. A former PCV myself in Kenya, I was a keen supporter of Peace Corps programs and volunteers and, despite its odd politics, the CAR was a great Peace Corps country. Volunteers had productive and happy tours. I visited both St Floris and Dzanga Sanga on numerous occasions, and found them wild and wonderful. I am saddened by the communal violence that has afflicted the CAR during the past few years and the toll it has taken on the people and their communities, but also the negative impact the violence has had on those special wild places. St. Floris is empty and Bayanga under siege. Carroll’s plea resonates.   

Liberia's Iron Lady

Following is my review of  Madame President - The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper, Simon and Schuster, NY, 2017.

This is an authorized biography that is really glowing in its depiction of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected woman president. Ellen or Ma as she is called by many of her constituents rose to power via the votes of women. By 2005 Liberian women had had enough of war, of rape, of terror, of destroyed families, of lives lost and of livelihoods devastated. So when the time came they were rallied and did rally around to assure that a woman would lead Liberia out of perdition.  Ellen, who is still president, began that process, which continues today. 

A woman did not fit the mold for political leadership in Africa. So how Ellen rose to such heights is the grist of the book. She was not from the traditional ruling class of descendants of freed slaves from America that founded Liberia in the 19th century and who shamelessly ruled as an aristocratic class for 150 years. However, Ellen resembled them on account of a German grandfather. Light complexions counted for much in 20th century Liberia. Ellen’s father was an up-country African, son of a chief of the Gola tribe.  Ellen grew up privileged. She went to the right schools where she proved her academic mettle. She wed young, had four sons, but her marriage to Doc Sirleaf did not last; not the least because of physical abuse.  Ellen managed an American education and became an accomplished economist. For thirty years she was only sporadically in Liberia while otherwise gainfully employed in international finance by the World Bank, the United Nations or several private banks. 

Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf lamented Liberia’s slide into chaos and terror under Master Sergeant Samuel Doe who took power in 1980.  She initially supported Charles Taylor when he invaded in 1989 and thus began a new round of violence. Doe was killed in 1990, but civil war dragged on for years. Ellen quickly realized her error in endorsing Taylor as his true colors emerged. He was a violent, vengeful leader whose militia, including child soldiers, wreaked havoc on the citizenry. Thenceforth she opposed him and battled him politically at every turn, even running against him for the presidency in 1997. Taylor was ousted in 2003 and fair elections were held in 2005.  As the book recounts, politics in Liberia - as in most of Africa - was essentially a man’s game, so how Ellen and her supporters prevailed is a good story. But prevail she did; then as president used her knowledge, experience and contacts in the international system to get Liberia’s debt rescinded and to gain support for Liberia’s economic recovery. Most importantly, she ushered in a new era of peace. Her accomplishments led to a second term in 2011. 

Alas, just as matters were looking better, Ebola struck in 2014 and again Liberia went into crisis.  However, yet again Madame President’s steady hand and solid leadership helped surmount the problem. 

Author Cooper’s prose is precise and readable.  Although favorable towards Madame President for the most part, the author also frankly addressed shortcomings and lapses in judgment.  That criticism along with regular insertions of dialogue in Liberian English provided a good dose of reality and local color to the saga. 

I served in the U.S. embassy in 2002 while Taylor was in power and later led a team of observers for the 2005 voter registration drive, so am familiar with places, issues and some personalities mentioned in the book.  However, even persons with no inside knowledge of Liberia will find this biography fascinating and enlightening. It is indeed the story of a strong and determined woman. It is well worth reading.

Endangered Rhinos!

My review of The Last Rhinos: My Battle to Save One of the World’s Greatest Creations by Lawrence Anthony with Graham Spence, Thomas Dunne Books, 2012.

I got this book thinking that it was a conservation oriented memoir about saving the white rhinos from poaching in Northern Congo’s Garamba National Park.  It was, in fact, a conservation oriented memoir but more about South Africa than the Congo. About the Congo it was an indictment of third world bureaucracy and political infighting; surprisingly the book was also a first person account of Anthony’s interaction with the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Bottom line up front: the battle to save the rhinos failed, but the effort was noble and notable. 

The basic plot was that Anthony, a South African conservationist, who lived on and owned his own private game reserve became seized with the idea that the dozen or so northern white rhinos that lived in Garamba Park, the last of their species alive in the wild, could be tranquilized and transported to safety outside of the Congo, probably to Kenya.  There they could live and breed until safe for them to be returned to their native range.  Problems to be overcome in the effort were:  the necessary permissions from the government of the Congo, the extreme isolation of Garamba and the fact that in 2005 the park was infested with elements of the Lord’s Résistance Army, the notorious mystic-led guerilla force that had fled west from Uganda to wreak havoc among villages in the most out-of-the-way corner of the continent. 

Anthony easily organized a team of experts and logistics that could handle the finding, tranquilizing and, transport of the rhinos. This would involve helicopters, heavy aircraft, veterinarians, vehicles and the logistics necessary to keep the operation in the field for the time required. Besides calling on friends and conservation organizations for funding, key to these arrangements would be the participation of the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Congo (MONUC).  A more thorny problem proved to be permissions from the government of the Congo.  Intially, it looked easy as senior officials readily endorsed the plan, but when it came down to the two organizations that actually had responsibility for the park, impasse after impasse was encountered.  Apparently both turf and internal politics caused hurdles that could not be resolved.  In despair, because the rainy season would soon come to an end and poachers would be able to move freely, Anthony decided to try to contact the Lord’s Resistance Army to seek its support for safeguarding the rhinos. 

Anthony learned that peace negotiations were underway between the government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Juba, South Sudan.  Although leery of the LRA on account of its horrendous record of human rights abuses including rape, murder, and forcible recruitment of child soldiers, he decided to take the chance. Ultimately he contacted the LRA and because he was an animal man, i.e. specifically interested in rhinos, and not someone with a political agenda, he won their confidence and their agreement to interdict poaching of rhinos, an animal that the Acholi people considered sacred. Anthony finalized the agreement during a visit to LRA camps in Garamba. Yet, the LRA wanted more, they wanted Anthony to help make their case to the world.  The case was that grievances against Museveni’s government were legitimate, that his abuses of the Acholi people had to stop, and that justice should come through traditional mechanisms of palaver rather than the International Criminal Court.  In turn Anthony advised that attacks against Ugandan internally displaced persons camps must halt and also the recruitment of children.  Anthony reported that in addition to protecting rhinos General  Vincent Otti and the “high altar” command agreed to those terms.  Despite being planned, Anthony did not meet with LRA chief Joseph Kony during his bush sojourn. 

Embolden by this success, operation rhino was closer to go, but it never happened. Congo permissions never came through, Otti was executed on Kony’s orders days after Anthony left, the agreement voided, the rainy season ended and rhinos were poached. 

What a saga! Interspersed with it all were anecdotes about wildlife, including southern white rhinos, on Anthony’s home preserve. Sadly, Lawrence Anthony died before the publication of this book.