Zanzibar Chest Chronicles continue

p.189  “In Africa some tribes used to believe that a camera is a box with which to capture souls.”  Hartley makes this comment while talking about Lizzie, the girl who he would eventually abandon. 

p.189  “Africa is bathed in light” Hartley’s counter to Africa’s image as dark… “At evening, the light had such depth that one could observe the incredible detail of things, as if the continent was made of liquid glass.” Describing light in Madagascar.

p.190  “Seeing the world in monochrome extremes was exactly the lens through which I wanted to see the world at that time and, for me, the photographers made dying look beautiful, war seem noble, and chaos appear as monumental as a heroic statue.”  Hartley in explaining the allure of Lizzie at a photographer.

p.191  The French photographer Patrick was the hero of them all…once right after he was shot in the chest, “he dipped his finger in his own wounds and painted his blood group on his forehead, for the medics when they picked him up.”  Wow.  This is gangster.  Hartley doesn’t mention his last name but I think this is him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Chauvel  Here’s one of his photos:

8 Star post from ADM Stavridis and Harvey

A Four Star Blog Post x 2: Lessons Learned from Our Carrier Tours by ADM Harvey and ADM Stavridis

This is a post worth reading.  Without sounding like too much of a suckup, I read everything I can find by ADM Stavridis.  The fact that you can be a 4-star Admiral and still have time to write personal and intellectually engaging material is impressive.  This would be something akin to Angelina Jolie and President Obama writing her/his own tweets...

If you don't have the time to read their full posts, I have provided their most important points below:

Key point from ADM Harvey:

-First, the essential relationship between the division chief and the new division officer is what makes all the difference for overly enthusiastic, but perhaps dangerously naïve JO’s like myself. Senior Chief Neil taught me what it truly meant to be an officer. 

-Second, the ship, no matter how large, takes on the personality of the Commanding Officer, and a good leader must possess professional competence, intelligent good sense, and respect for those he leads. CAPT C. C. Smith exemplified those essential leadership qualities.

- Finally, and most importantly, it’s your choices, not your circumstances, that determine your future. You have to play the hand you’re dealt.

A good leader has respect for those he leads...very well put and a subtle point that is easy to overlook.

Key points from ADM Stavridis:

-He graduated from the second (or third if you ask my grandfather, '51) best class ever at the Naval Academy, with 2001 being the best of course.  '76 was my dad's class so I am happy to give them the nod for second.

-Ask for help: After my three years on the new destroyer, I thought I knew everything I needed to know. But the carrier was a different universe. I had to swallow my pride and learn to tap into the rich base of experience and knowledge that existed in the ship, from my Chiefs up to the Captain. And above all, I saw that the peer network that sustains us in friendship is also a deep source of technical experience and ideas.

-Creativity matters: The things I had learned on the new destroyer just didn’t seem to apply. I was in a new and tougher world on the carrier, and I had to adapt. That means getting rid of old habits, even ones that have worked in the past, and coming up with new approaches. Like in sports, you have to change a tactic or technique that isn’t working and try new approaches.

-Keep your sense of humor. Lots of things are going to go wrong. The measure of any officer is not perfection, because we will all fail at times. I certainly have; and for example we flunked the first big engineering inspection badly that I was involved in onboard FORRESTAL. But you keep things in perspective, learn to laugh at yourself, correct your mistakes, and keep coming back.

I think that ADM Stavridis' point concerning creativity is probably the most overlooked one in our military today.  With the military's inherent bureaucracy, the pivotal role that creativity and innovation have played in its development is often overlooked.  

Great new Army FAO blog

Please check out the blog of Major Dustin Heumphreus .  He's a Latin America FAO that just arrived in El Salvador.  His blog starts from the beginning on his training and has some very useful information on living in Monterey.  Definitely a good one to add to your RSS Feeds!

Why the Navy needs to train some of their Africa FAOs in Mandarin today

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12357672


A picture speaks a thousand words...or in this case 9 billion...as in $9 billion of FDI in Africa by China over the last 6 years.

This in itself is a strong argument for investing today by training Africa FAOs in Mandarin.  We cannot afford to wait another day to expand our focus and assets from the traditional mindset on only training our AFRICA AOR FAOs in traditional languages such as French or Arabic.

Zanzibar Chest Chronicles Continue

So at this point I have finished the Zanzibar chest and am now doing the grunt work slowly putting together my notes online before I write my book review...(hint...this book was great!)

p.137-8

In Axum Ethiopia there are said to be more churches and monasteries than anywhere else in the world. 

p.139

Here Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas  is recounted.  This story illustrates the futility of pursuing free will and one’s own personal happiness. 

p.140

Hartley recounts being curios rather than shocked at initially seeing his first dead bodies initially.  However later these ‘memories made [him] weep with guilt’

“But nobody rejoices at the sight of defeated men.”  Hartley comments upon seeing Mengistu’s soviet trained soldiers--now POWs (20K of them) and the Tigrayans somber disposition in victory.

p.141 Hartley laments concerning the child soldiers ‘being robbed of their own childhood.’ These soldiers also served as his bodyguard.  Most of them were about 15 years old.

p.142

Operation Gideon was the airlift evacuation of 15K black African jews from Addis airport.  (Tigrayan rebels held off their attack to allow it).   These jews had been there since 'antiquity'.

p.144

“He was a handsome boy, maybe 15.”  Harltey comments on one of his guards…wow, 15 years old...

p.145

Add to book list “Africa on a shoestring.”

p.146

Carlos Mavroleon appears on the scene as he bring Hartley along whilst he loots Mengistu’s  office.  Google Carlos as he has a pretty interesting life.  Cameraman. Here's an interesting article on his death as well as parts of his life...it's a fascinating one!  To get an idea check out this 10 minute tribute on his life.

p.150

Addis Ababa means new flower.  Emperor Menelik founded the city in the 19^th century so that his wife could take the hot spring waters. 

p.153

Entoto is the mountain above Addis Ababa.  At the top there is a round church where the service is in Ge’ez (antique language of the Ehtipian Orthodx Church).  Hartley fulfulls a personal promise and goes her for a blessing. 

p.160

“One day honey, one day an onion.  Or some say life is like a cucumber: one day it’s in your hand, the next its up your arse.”  Harltey’s father on the ups and downs of life. 

p.163

Hartley’s parents gave him the name in honor of the place they had fallen in love.  However, Hartley’s granddad insisted on the irish spelling. 

p.164

“The sun had set on an empire.” 1967 when the last British soldiers flew away in Marine helicopters in yemen. 

p.165

“Aden used to be the greatest city in the world apart from Cairo, now it’s a ghost town.”  Laments Omar a local Yemeni taxi driver (post '94 civil war)

p.166

Holy Koran epitath for the ancients who in their pride ignored Allah:  “And they wronged themselves, so we made them as but tales, and we tore them utterly to pieces.”

p.169
Peter Davey on Sir Geoffrey Archer (former governor of Sudan, Uganda, and Somaliland):  "When I talk to him I experience the feeling one gets when one walks out of a very stuffy room full of tobacco smoke into the open air and is greeted  by a heavy buffeting wind, which pushes one back a step but which exhilarates and invigorates."

p.170

Comments on Davey’s and Aiden's father's initial mission to “replace barbarism with civilization.”  …”in time, their ideas would change.” 

p.172

Hartley’s father’s legacy of “drawf Cavendish bananas” is mentioned in Yemen. 

p.181 FEEDING THE BEAST chapter.  This is a metaphor for feeding their own personal carnal desires as well as the equally morally bankrupt news cycle.

Harltey falls for Khadija, a “striking Somali…and a rich educated Francophone.”

p.184 Compares his friend Julian as the European version on his Zambian friend Buchizya. 

p.185

In Djibouti, they called the local weed bhang. 

p.187

In Madagascar, Hartley’s first encounters the women who will haunt him, vex him and ultimately fail him (from a relationship aspect) in the years to come.  He fails to say hi to her.  “I considered at trip into a war zone routine stuff but lacked the courage to say hello to a beautiful woman.”  

Poet of the Week from Zambia: Gwendoline Konie

Poet of the Week from Zambia: Gwendoline Konie

Gwendoline is a former Zambian Ambassador to the UN.  Following that she was a businesswoman in Lusaka, and edited Women's Exclusive.  She remained politically active contesting the 2001 election of President Mwanawasa.  

The following is from the article Dr Kenneth D. Kaunda wrote on his blog after Gwendoline's funeral service.

"Gwen, my dear Sister, you were part of this wonderful revolution. You were part of this fight against British colonialism in Zambia. Yes, you were part of this great revolution against colonialism in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and in the fight against racism and apartheid in South Africa. Rest ye well, beloved Sister."

I thought her poem really captures the fire she felt as she and her countrymen struggled to break free from colonial rule.  She uses striking imagery of blood to characterize the oppression.  I especially liked her closing phrase:  "my hidden courage will saw off your first."

IN THE FIST OF YOUR HAND

Like a worm I write in your tight fist
As you try to smother my voice
And my mind with your brutal grip;
Fear stalks the house of my brain
As your pepper-red eyes shout blood.

Your grip strangles my tongue
Your fingers sprinkle seeds of fear in my mind
And it sprouts like a raging bush fire.
You have set up fear as my companion
And I cringe from your bloodshot eyes.

Secret alarm bells sear my brain
And leave me burning with a wild rage
For I will not let fear swallow
My breath, my dreams, and my hopes!
My hidden courage will saw off your fist.

FUUO Past Poets of the Week:

http://fuuo.blogspot.com/2012/05/african-poets-of-week-compilation.html

Some of my favorite poetry books:

Poet of the Week from Somalia: Abdirashid Omar

Poet of the Week from Somalia: Abdirashid Omar: A brave poet of the week from Somalia!


PLEASE CHECK OUT THE LINK FOR THE FULL ARTICLE. MY HAT'S OFF TO THIS BRAVE YOUNG MAN!


Abdirashid Omar, 28, is in hiding after writing a poem criticizing the Somali Islamist group al-Shabab, which controls much of southern Somalia and is fighting interim government forces for control of Mogadishu.

Somalia: 20 years of anarchy

Omar breaks it down in "Fatwo":

Some of Fatwo (The Decree) Translated:

Somalia's consuming plague; The inferno that did ensue; And the guns that burn and blaze; For sport, and the sake of fun; The carnage that devoured and ruined; Facing down in a pensive stoop; I brood, pensive in thought.

Slumped, in a distant droop; Seized by sobs of grief; Lodged in my core and self; In a feat so shocking in deed; A butcher that Lucifer unleashed; The envoy of wicked devil; Bequeathed Hamar a bath in blood

Scions of the Somali stock; Since the space of time; The tragedy that set its march; On Somalia it chose to perch; Wiping masses in a purging rout; Forcing them into frenzy flight; Flowing wild in a second decade

This fad of raging cults; First of note; al-Shabab; The felicity they oft flaunt; Just like the fumes of essence; That infest the nose and lungs; Then choke and fog the snout; They thrive on flimsy feuds; Conceived in blinding mental fog

Scions of the Somali stock; The fanatics of Shabab; Whatever good they flaunt; Via blasts and fear of bombs; Is blight, and ravaging plagues; A taboo, in The Text of Time; With no grounds in the Holy Book; So heed the word, and stay advised.

FUUO Past Poets of the Week:
http://fuuo.blogspot.com/2012/05/african-poets-of-week-compilation.html

Some of my favorite poetry books: