This is a kind of parental warning.  If you are a parent you probably shouldn’t read this entry for a few months or so.  I keep thinking of those amazing shanty towns.  On the way to the airport at Cape Town yesterday we drove past the one in which the Stanford University student was beaten to death with a brick.  She had a car and against the advice of her African passengers insisted on driving them home one night.  Since then her family has been deeply involved in racial reconciliation here in South Africa.  As I probably said yesterday though crime seems so bad and the government so corrupt that these should be top priorities.

    A few years ago Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Prize winning novelist was robbed and beaten in her home in Johannesburg when she refused to surrender her wedding ring.  The elderly woman had devoted her whole life to making art and helping South Africa work for all of its peoples.  Conditions in Kenya have severely deteriorated since Heidi and I were last there too.  Ngugi wa Thiongo the world’s most famous Gikuyu writer returned a few years ago to Nairobi (he had left as a University of Nairobi English professor) after being imprisoned for political crimes or really nothing at all (I’m not even sure he was charged with anything).  Anyway he was invited back to Nairobi for a visit.  Thugs broke into his hotel room robbed him, tortured him and raped his wife.  After a lifetime as a refugee politically powerful men still insisted on humiliating and harming him.

    These are two extraordinary literary figures, recognized around the world for their artistic achievements suffering two different kinds of crimes in unstable societies.  My friend Nick, living in a wealthy Nairobi suburb barely escaped in his underwear when thieves with machetes broke into his house in the middle of the night.

    Anyway the Shanty Towns with their cardboard houses constructed from the refuse of industrial life have sections with power lines, although people also steal electricity off the grid and sometimes die trying to do this in an inept way.  Scores of people were killed last week in another incident of stealing fuel from a pipeline in Nigeria.  The crowds attracted to the possibility of nabbing free gas were killed after a devastating explosion.  Flying high above the shanties you can see the paths worn into the soil, ways of getting around that have become permanent paths.

    It feels disrespectful to writing about the debilitating crime problem, about women drivers who are too unsafe even to stop their cars at red lights.  Although I write these lines from our compound with its high walls and electrified fence, this does not really convey our experience of this place.

    The moment that best captures what Durban means to us is the kindness in our friend’s faces when they met us at the airport yesterday.  No, it was at Kaley’s birthday / New Year’s party last night.  They had a disco theme and all of Linda’s cousins were there.  You were supposed to dress like a rock star so I met Elvis, Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson, Shania Twain, J-Lo, Danny Kay (no this is the African singer not the American actor), the phantom of the opera, Pink, Tom Jones, a beach boy, Kelly Clarkson, etc.  Micah wanted to dress up so he wore a tie (like one of the Beatles in the early years).  We love Linda’s family they are generous and fun.  Although we met a few of them back home in California, we only got to know what they were really like last night in their own element en masse, in the whole group that had always known them.

    It poured rain all night but no one minded.  Iwish so much that I had had a camera to take pictures of our new friends.  We sat in the narrow two one-car garages singing karaoke, dacing, joking and drinking.  Melia played all night with Kaley.  Micah sang (impressing us all with his encyclopedic knowledge of Abba lyrics) and danced.  I’m so impressed with his singing and dancing.  He reminds me so much of Heidi’s brother Keoki when he does this.

    Andrew and Tony, Linda’s brothers are one house up the hill form our B & B.  They are wonderful working and living in the apartment complex that they own together as computer consultants.  Andrew’s wife Bronwyn is so kind.  We look forward to our day together on safari.  For now though we are hungry.  The effects of last night’s burrowurst have long worn off and we’re ready for more…

    More news from Ethiopia and Somalia.  Apparently the Islamists have been defeated and the internationally accepted government (these are all the New York Times’ words although I imagine the participants would describe this in different ways), has moved back to Mogadishu.  Earlier I wrote something about the conflicts between the Christian kingdoms in northern Ethiopia and the Moslem southern and eastern nations.  All this does to omuch to make the conflict sound ancient and thus unavoidable.  This isn’t correct however, or rather it just isn’t a complete enough picture of the historical forces at play here.

    Although Ethiopia was not colonized by a European power, it was deeply affected by colonialism.  In many respects the war in Eritrea and the current conflict in Somalia arises out of Italian, French and British involvement in North and east Africa, and then later the power struggle between the US and the USSR.