Africa Memoir: 50 Years, 54 Countries, One American Life (Seychelles - Zimbabwe)

By Mark G. Wentling

Visit all 54 African countries with an adventurous American guide who has spent over half a century on the continent. Volume III. covers Seychelles - Zimbabwe.

Africa Memoir tells the incredible lifetime story of Mark G. Wentling, a boy from Kansas who grew up to travel, work, and visit all 54 African countries.

Derived from over a half century spent working and living on the African continent, Wentling devotes a chapter to each country describing his firsthand experiences, eye-opening impressions, and views on future prospects.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Books
• Release date: Dec 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005254896

Book preview

Cover Page for (Africa Memoir: 50 Years, 54 Countries, One American Life (Volume III))Title Page for (Africa Memoir: 50 Years, 54 Countries, One American Life (Volume III))

Published by Open Books

Copyright © 2020 by Mark G. Wentling

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Interior design by Siva Ram Maganti

Cover image © Marish shutterstock.com/g/marish

ISBN-13: 978-1948598408

Dedicated to all those in Africa I Enjoyed Knowing

and All Their Descendants

Contents

VOLUME III

Map of Africa

Chapter 42: Seychelles

Chapter 43: Sierra Leone

Chapter 44: Somalia

Chapter 45: South Africa

Chapter 46: South Sudan

Chapter 47: Sudan

Chapter 48: Swaziland (Eswatini)

Chapter 49: Tanzania

Chapter 50: Togo

Chapter 51: Tunisia

Chapter 52: Uganda

Chapter 53: Zambia

Chapter 54: Zimbabwe

Epilogue: My Dream for Africa

Interview with the Author

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CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Seychelles

I ALMOST SKIPPED INCLUDING this tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean, over 900 miles from the coast of East Africa, because it has so little in common with mainland Africa. Seychelles is made up of an archipelago that consists of 115 small dots of land in the ocean. Altogether, the total land mass of Seychelles is less than three times the size of the U.S. District of Colombia. Yet, it controls ocean waters which cover an area twice the size the U.S. State of Texas. Its population of about 96,000 is crowded onto three islands, with most of its people living on the main island of Mahe where its small capital city, Victoria, of about 28,000 people, is located.

If you include Seychelles as one of the countries belonging on the long list of African countries, it is the smallest geographically and it has the lowest national population of Africa’s fifty-four countries. On the other hand, it has the highest per capita income level and is top ranked on the UN HDI index for African countries. Its remote location, small size and the relative well-being of its population make it unreasonable to compare it with any country on the mainland of Africa.

I do not like being a tourist, but on a whim, I went on vacation to Seychelles in 1995 for the Christmas-New Year’s holidays. I took a direct, three-hour flight on Kenya Airways from Nairobi to Victoria. I have found that the only way to see Africa’s island nations is usually to pay your own way to travel to these remote countries, which lie off the usual beaten track. Seychelles was everything I expected from a tropical paradise. If you are interested in white sand beaches, crystal clear ocean waters and all the amenities a tourist would desire, I highly recommend Seychelles. I found nothing I could complain about in this friendly tropical retreat.

I did learn some things about Seychelles from my observations and conversations with the local people. It was obvious that tourism was its main economic activity. There was some agriculture and fishing, but none of this compared to efforts to build its tourism industry. I found the people to be an odd melting pot of different races of people from various places in the world. I was reminded that when Europeans first discovered Seychelles in the fifteenth century when the islands were uninhabited. The first people brought to the islands in the late eighteenth century by the white colonists were black slaves from mainland Africa to work on their plantations. The colonial power for decades was the UK and it did not grant independence to Seychelles until 1976.

I was intrigued by the racial mixture I observed in some families. Some women had black and white children. I supposed they had children with different men who were of a variety of racial stripes. I learned that Seychelles was something like a matriarchal society where the women maintained the household and cared for the children while the main role for the men was to work and pay the households bills.

I did all the things a tourist would do in Seychelles. I rented a small jeep-like car and drove all over Mahe Island. I drove up to Seychelles’ highest point, Mount Morne, which measures about 3,000 feet in altitude. I was surprised it was raining on the top of the mountain but not at its foot. I saw how Seychelles collected its drinking water from catchment dams on the sides of the mountain. I wonder if this runoff water was enough to satisfy the needs of its population and the growing number of tourists who were coming to the island.

Perhaps the highlight of my few days in Seychelles was flying over the sparkling ocean waters in a glider pulled by a motorized boat. Doing this was a real thrill. I also enjoyed windsurfing for the first time and just spending time on pristine beaches and in shoreline ocean waters. The weather was to my liking … warm, humid and sunny. I note for the reader that in spite of spending a lifetime in tropical Africa, I have never used suntan lotion or sunglasses. I really do not know why this is so, but I never liked either of these things. I also did not like using any insect repellents.

There were a couple more things I knew about Seychelles which I wanted to follow up on during my brief visit to Mahe. One of these things was to ask about the descendants of Prempeh I, the Ashanti King, whom the British colonists exiled to Seychelles from his home country of Ghana in 1900. Yes, there is this unusual connection between Seychelles and far away Ghana. Prempeh I had lost the Ashanti war at the end of the nineteenth century against the British and they exiled him along with about fifty other members of his family and entourage to the distant Seychelles. He was finally released after twenty-four years and returned to ‘Ashantiland.’ But, many of his group decided to remain in Seychelles and their numbers multiplied over the years, leaving a lasting impact on the islands. I believe this is a subject that incites deeper research.

I asked my hotel receptionist if there were anyone who worked at the hotel who could trace their lineage to someone in Prempeh I’s group. He immediately responded that he knew one woman working in the hotel who descended from Prempeh I’s original group of Ghanaian exiles. He called someone to ask the woman to come to the front desk to meet me. I was happy to meet the woman, but I really did not learn much from her. It had been several generations since the departure of Prempeh I in 1924, so any connection with Ghana had faded. This woman was like any other Seychellois. Her English and French were limited, but she was fluent in the local Creole language. The mix of her brownish skin complexion made her fit well into local Seychelles society. Obviously, she was quite at home in Seychelles and did not know anything about Ghana.

Another thing I knew about Seychelles at the time was the attempt in 1981 by ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare and his group of foreign mercenaries to overthrow the government of Seychelles. They were unsuccessful in this attempt, but this failure did not keep this notorious British mercenary from undertaking other military escapades in Africa. He produced a number of books during his long life and was a technical advisor to a popular 1978 movie, Wild Geese, starring Richard Burton and other well-known actors. This movie is about mercenaries invading some imaginary country in Africa. If the reader wants to know more about Hoare’s colorful life, his son Chris published in 2018 his biography. The one book of Hoare’s I did read was his Mike Hoare’s Adventures in Africa, published in 2010. I always chuckle when I think of one of Hoare’s favorite sayings, You get more out of life by living dangerously.

After I left Seychelles during the first days of 1996, I looked up more information on this country which was something of a fantasyland for me. The information I uncovered at the time was that there really was not enough room on the islands for its small population and that progressively the only option for many of its inhabitants was to migrate off the islands. It is possible that in the future Seychelles will have a negative annual population growth rate. Already, its population is growing slowly because of its relatively high education level and its active family planning programs which have propelled a high use of modern contraceptives.

At the same time, life expectancy has increased to around seventy-six years, giving Seychelles the highest median age, thirty-five years, in Africa. (More than twice of what it is in over twenty countries in mainland Africa.) It appears that Seychellois authorities realized they need to slow down the population growth rate if it is to accommodate all its people on the islands. Job creation thus becomes one of the government’s main priorities. It has been trying to create jobs by building its tourist industry and its reputation as an international offshore financial haven.

One major development constraint is generating enough electricity from imported fossil fuels. Not surprisingly, the value of imports into Seychelles is a multiple of the value of what it is able to export. Also, the building of its tourist industry has required skilled labor that is not available on the islands; therefore, it has also had to import talent from other countries, especially from India.

One site which is attracting an increasing number of tourists, in spite of its remoteness, is the Aldabra Atoll, located 600 miles across the Indian Ocean from Mahe. Getting to this remote site is a logistical challenge, but I understand the headaches involved with traveling to this distant atoll are well worth the cost and effort. On this practically inaccessible tropical atoll can be found the largest number of giant tortoises in the world. The presence of these tortoises in this untouched natural habitat has prompted UNESCO to name it in 1982 a World Heritage Site. I note there are ninety-six World Heritage Sites in Africa and 1,121 in the world. If it were not for the corrosive effects of tropical weather and the kind of frail materials used to construct edifices in SSA, I am sure there would be more World Heritage Sites in Africa south of the Sahara.

Sadly, the Seychelles is progressively becoming an international center for the sequestering of ill-gotten funds and the drug trade. Increasingly, the economy and the people of this tropical paradise are becoming dependent on these illicit channels. These unrecorded trends do not bold well for the future of the Seychelles.

As long as it is not during a period when Seychelles is threatened by a tropical cyclone, I would be delighted to have the opportunity to return to this vacation paradise. If there is a next time for me to visit Seychelles, I would like to get to know better the local population, as well as travel to the Aldabra Atoll and some of the other pristine ecological sites of its many islands. There may be more to Seychelles and its surroundings than meets the eye.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Sierra Leone

I HAVE NEVER LIVED or worked in Sierra Leone, but I went to its capital city of Freetown several times while I was posted to neighboring Guinea during the 1983-1987 period. I lived in Guinea’s capital city of Conakry and worked out of the U.S. Embassy. As little was available to buy in Conakry, the embassy would send a truck to Freetown every month or so to procure what it and its employees needed. The frequency of these trips depended mainly on the condition of the unimproved road, which varied greatly between the heavy rainy season and the dusty, dry season.

We would draw straws to see who the lucky person would be to accompany the truck to the land of plenty. The distance between Conakry and Freetown was about 150 miles, but it could take all day on a rough road to make this trip. I have always found when traveling overland in Africa that it is best to leave early in the morning at first light because you never knew what obstacles you may encounter along the way. On the trips I made to Freetown, we left early in the morning and arrived late in the afternoon.

Upon arriving we would stay at the attractive Mammy Yoko Hotel and take advantage of the delights offered by a nearby beach. (Years later the international Radisson hotel chain took over the management of this hotel.) At the time, compared to Conakry, Freetown was heavenly. All the creature comforts were available. Freetown offered a nice break from the hardships of living in Conakry. I have fond memories of how Freetown was at that time. I appreciated being able to follow events in Sierra Leone from my vantage point in Conakry.

Freetown’s population was about half the size in 1985 than it is now (nearly 1.2 million), and the entire country of Sierra Leone now has about double the population it did when I first went there in 1984. Currently, about 8 million people live in Sierra Leone in an area slightly smaller than the U.S. State of South Carolina. Sierra Leone has an attractive coastline along the Atlantic Ocean in West Africa. Freetown also has a natural harbor which is reputed to be the largest in Africa.

I would always accompany the truck in Freetown to the Lebanese store, Barsouna and Sons, where most items desired by our Conakry mission could be purchased. At this store, I learned the Lebanese had been in Freetown since the 1890s. In Sierra Leone, as elsewhere in West Africa, the Lebanese represented an economic powerhouse, often controlling most of the commercial activity in the country. It would be an interesting study to document the history and role of the thousands of Lebanese in West Africa.

The American government did have concerns about the role Lebanese merchants played in the profitable smuggling of gem-quality diamonds out of Sierra Leone. It was feared that part of the profits from the lucrative diamond trade were being used to fund militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. Diamonds continue to be an important resource for this very poor country. It is still said that whoever controls Sierra Leone’s diamonds, controls Sierra Leone.

During one of my visits to Freetown, I did go see its famous huge Cotton Tree, which was the place the original settlers of Freetown met in the 1790s to pray and discuss their future in their new surroundings. As the name ‘Freetown’ suggests, it was founded by former black slaves who had been brought from America following its revolutionary war with Great Britain. They were joined by other freed slaves the British navy had captured from slave ships. The American abolitionists and the British believed they were doing the right thing 220 years ago in freeing slaves and returning them to their ‘homeland.’

These good intentions were blurred by the fact that the former slaves brought to Freetown originated from several places along the West African coast. They knew almost nothing about the place in which they had been transplanted. Moreover, Sierra Leone was the home to a dozen other indigenous ethnic groups, mainly Temne and Mende, who were suspicious of these newcomers and their ‘white’ ways. Many of the new settlers were killed by the people already living in Sierra Leone and many others succumbed to Sierra Leone’s abundant tropical diseases for which they had no previous exposure.

A small percentage of the new settlers survived and persisted, leaving a permanent mark on Sierra Leone. One legacy of these settlers is the Krio language which they developed in order to communicate with one another and to the indigenous groups in Sierra Leone. Today, while English is the official language, and many ethnic tongues are used, Krio is the main lingua franca among Sierra Leoneans.

I should note that the name, Sierra Leone, comes from a name given to this part of West Africa by the Portuguese when they first visited these shores in the 1400s. (In English, Sierra Leone can be roughly translated to mean Lion Mountains.) The name stuck and the British used it to define the territory it colonized for most of the twentieth century until it granted independence to Sierra Leone in 1961. Sadly, since gaining independence, Sierra Leone has suffered from corruption, gross mismanagement and horrifying destructive violence.

I was impressed by the Cotton Tree because of not only its symbolic value in terms of freedom from slavery, but by the tree itself. It was indeed remarkable that this gigantic kapok tree was still standing in all its glory 220 years after the freed slaves used its shade as a special meeting place. This tree is reputed to be the oldest kapok tree in Africa. I can recall seeing this tree in Central America, where it is called La Ceiba tree. I had also seen in northern Togo where the cotton-like fiber contained in the pods produced by the tree were harvested and sold for export to European countries which used them to stuff mattresses, pillows and other items.

On one of our drives from Conakry to Freetown, local farmers were burning off the brush so they could plant when the rains began. This method of field preparation was referred to as ‘slash and burn.’ During this season, it appeared that most of the countryside was on fire, releasing much smoke into the atmosphere and imperiling vehicles passing near the fields on the roads. I never quite understood the benefits of this method. I did not think that baking the soil’s surface was beneficial, although the ash residue could add some potassium to the soil.

I asked farmers why they employed this harsh field-preparation method and they usually responded that it was to kill insects and snakes. They also said they did not have the labor to clear the fields in any other way and they needed to impede the spread of the jungle. Local hunters also said the burning of the fields caused wild animals to run out so they could club or shoot them, thereby providing an important source of protein. In any event, slash and burn remains the main way to clear fields in those parts of Africa which have a dense brush cover enabled by a heavy rainy season.

The enormous amount of pollution released into the air by the ‘slash and burn’ method reminded me that home pollution was making sick everyone who burnt charcoal for cooking purposes or used smoky kerosene lanterns for illumination. The making of charcoal was not only contributing to deforestation but using it to cook was causing acute respiratory ailments. Yet, if most Africans do not use charcoal or wood to cook their food, what are they to use? Increasing the use of alternate cooking fuels remains a major challenge for most of Africa’s households.

When I first went to Sierra Leone, Siaka Stevens was its president. His corrupt, dictatorial regime lasted for eighteen years, 1967-1985. After the end of his mismanagement of the country, I began to lose track of the number of military coups and frequent changes in presidents. Sierra Leone suffered deeply from poor governance and a full blown, complex civil war that devastated its people and its country from 1991 to 2002. Tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneans were killed, and millions displaced during this disastrous period. Tens of thousands of girls and women were raped and used by rebel troops as sex slaves. Thousands of children were used as soldiers and obliged to commit terrible atrocities. The worst kinds of barbarian brutality were widely practiced.

UN and West African forces were deployed to put a stop to Sierra Leone’s prolonged nightmare. The British also sent troops to its former colony to help stop the destruction of the country and the unraveling of the social fabric. This was the British government’s first large-scale intervention in Africa. This was a complex and tragic period in Sierra Leone’s history which cannot be adequately covered in this personal memoir. I encourage the reader who is interested in knowing more about this period in Sierra Leone’s troubled history to undertake independent research on this subject.

I will note that independent mercenary forces were engaged in the early years of Sierra Leone’s civil war. Some observers believe these forces played an important role in preventing things from becoming much worse. Organizations like Executive Outcome (EO) provided the specialized forces needed to repel the main rebel movement, Revolutionary United Front (RUF). The effectiveness of EO demonstrated that a small, well-trained and – equipped military force can quickly put down an untrained, disorganized rag-tag rebel force. Years later, I wished such a force could have been hired to stop the genocide in Rwanda.

The head of RUF was Foday Sankoh. He was collaborating with the chief rebel leader, Charles Taylor, in neighboring Liberia which was being torn apart in a similar manner. Taylor was helping Sankoh in exchange for diamonds from Sierra Leone. Much of the bloody conflict in Sierra Leone was over controlling the lucrative diamond fields. Both of these heartless, vicious warlords were indicted for war crimes against humanity and jailed for life in foreign prisons.

If any of the readers have seen the popular 2006 movie, Blood Diamonds, starring the famous actors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou (originally from Benin), they understand the background behind the exploitation of conflict diamonds. The term ‘blood diamonds’ originated in Sierra Leone during its long eleven-year civil war. The role the illicit diamond trade played in this war stimulated efforts to have diamonds traded as certified as being conflict free. I wonder how Sierra Leone manages today its rich fields of diamonds, which still account for a large percentage of the value of Sierra Leone’s exports.

When I visited the beaches of Freetown, I learned another export from mineral-rich Sierra Leone was rutile. I had never heard of this mineral and, thus, I had no idea about its uses. I did notice that it was mined from the beach sands of Sierra Leone. Evidently, these sands possess a high content of rutile. I asked what rutile was used for and I was told that it was part of the stuff used to make clothes irons. I was later to learn that Sierra Leone was one of the world’s largest sources of rutile and that its principal use was in paint pigments.

Sierra Leone was just beginning to recover from its catastrophic civil war in 2014 when an unprecedented Ebola epidemic struck the country. This deadly disease killed around 3,000 people and made many other thousands very ill. The entire country was traumatized and the expatriate community left Sierra Leone in droves. While this dreaded disease was brought under control in 2015 with massive international assistance, the people of this impoverished country still worry that Ebola could return again and spread death about Sierra Leone.

We could not make our regular trips to Freetown during the rainy season. In the May to October period, it can rain in Freetown over 100 inches, making the roads impassable. The hot and humid climatic conditions of Sierra Leone and other West Africa coastal countries offer optimal conditions for the breeding of disease-spreading vectors, bacteria and viruses. The most notorious vector is the female Anopheles mosquito which spreads, most importantly, malaria. This reminds me of hearing that Sierra Leonean authorities erected a statue in Freetown in praise of this mosquito because the widespread presence of malaria kept foreign white people from settling in their country.

In many of the African countries I have lived in, you often hear expatriates describe their African surroundings as being like a scene from a Graham Green novel. This renowned author wrote many books during his life and several of his books were made into movies. He admitted before his death in 1991 that his popular 1948 book, The Heart of the Matter, was based on his time assigned to Freetown as a spy for the British government during World War II. I believe it is true that this book captures much of what Africa was like at that time. The expatriate protagonist in his book is described as a weak man with good intentions, but who was doomed by his big sense of pity. Such a statement lends itself to the view that Africa is generally a difficult place for kindhearted foreigners who seek Africa’s betterment.

I remember when I was living in Guinea, I became involved with the death of an American in Sierra Leone. An American agricultural scientist who was doing research work in northern Sierra Leone had succumbed for unknown reasons. Our embassy in Conakry was asked by our embassy in Freetown to help collect the body of this man at the border between Guinea and Sierra Leone. I participated in the receipt of the body and the preparations of its shipment to the U.S. Months later we learned it had been confirmed in the U.S. the cause of his death. He died from leptospirosis. This was the first and last time I ever heard of this disease. I learned it was caused by consuming food on which rats had urinated. Since learning about this disease, I have asked myself many times when eating if rodents had urinated on my food.

Sierra Leone is ranked within the bottom ten countries in Africa on the UN’s HDI. Any way you examine Sierra Leone leaves you no choice but to place it among the most impoverished countries in Africa. Most of its people are subsistence farmers who eke out a fragile living by tilling by hand the soil. About half of Sierra Leones are illiterate and average life expectancy is sixty years of age. Nonetheless, the cultural desire for large families predominates in this largely Muslim country and, similar to other African countries, its population is growing fast. An estimated projection of its young population is that it will triple by 2050.

When I first arrived in Africa in 1970, Sierra Leone had nearly 250 PCVs. This number of PCVs was one of the highest level of all the countries in the world with a Peace Corps presence. The civil war obliged the Peace Corps to close its program in Sierra Leone for fifteen years. It was only in 2010 that the Peace Corps was able to restart its program. (Of course, all Peace Corps programs in the world were obliged to close because of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.)

I have met many expatriates in Africa who had worked in Sierra Leone. Many of these expatriates had worked on NGO projects. Sierra Leone was one of the first African countries to receive assistance from NGOs. I believe that CARE, a prominent U.S. NGO, was the first to work in Sierra Leone. Most of these expatriates have fond memories of the country they and the local people call ‘Salone,’ basically a Krio-English word for Sierra Leone. The work of all these humanitarian assistance agencies was halted by Sierra Leone’s lengthy civil war.

For Sierra Leone and its people to progress, and to make up for lost time, its leaders need to run, not walk, forward. These leaders must be honest and competent, putting the best interests of their country and its people first. Barring any further national calamities, Sierra Leone can advance, but to do so it must enjoy good governance in an environment of peace and stability.

Postscript: I have decided to dedicate this chapter to Odilon Long, although I could choose to dedicate other chapters to Odi. I first met Odi when he was serving as a school construction PCV in Togo. He oversaw the building of a two-story, six-classroom school building in a neighborhood in north Lomé, the capital city of Togo. This was quite a spectacular feat. No other construction PCV ever got beyond building a one-story, three-classroom building.

Odi was remarkable in many ways. He joined the Peace Corps at the age of sixty-five after a full career in the U.S. He served for twenty years in five different countries: Togo, Sierra Leone, Gabon, Burkina Faso and Haiti. He was from Maine and used his Canadian French in francophone countries. He was the most hardworking PCV I had ever known. He was also the oldest PCV I had ever known. He always said that Sierra Leone was one of his favorite countries. I assume he took his last breath while working as a PCV at the age of eighty-five.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Somalia

MY HANDS TREMBLE AND my heart hurts when I try to write about Somalia. I involuntarily break out in a sweat when I think of Somalia. I spent the most demanding and perilous year of my life in this wartorn country in the worst of times, 1993 to 1994. This was one of Somalia’s worst years among many bad years. The whole world was shaken by what occurred in Somalia during this timeframe and the rest of my life was changed forever.

I learned many hard lessons in Somalia. I attempted to share many of these lessons and record key events during this period by writing and publishing a lengthy book in March 2017. The 510-page book is entitled: Dead Cow Road – Life on the Front Lines of an International Crisis. I made this book a work of fiction, but it is based on my own firsthand experiences in Somalia and other countries in Africa’s northeastern Horn of Africa. I am loathed to repeat in this book the same information I provided in my 2017 book.

During this chaotic year the daily routine would alternate between outright mayhem and full-blown anarchy. There were dangers, violence and hunger aplenty. U.S. and UN multinational forces tried to save Somalia from itself by altering its inextricable self-destructive course. The U.S. provided 25,000 troops and twenty-five countries contributed 12,000 more troops to the UN. Fielding and supporting this large deployment of people and their equipment was costly (over 1 billion U.S. dollars per year). This formidable military force found that taming Somalia could not be achieved with military might or all the money in the world.

At much less cost, a huge humanitarian assistance effort was mounted to feed the hungry and help those across the country who had been affected by the protracted war among a dozen clan militias. On the spur of a moment, men and women were prepared to fight to the death for the honor and pride of the own clan. Millions of Somalis were uprooted and fled to protected camps within Somalia or neighboring countries. In their wake, the entire country was looted. The warlords profited immensely from the sale of loot to other countries. Entire factories were dismantled and exported. The country was divided into fiefdoms controlled by warlords and their well-armed militiamen.

Violence among the clans was rampant and ruthless. Nowhere was safe. It