Quote // Monday May 19, 2008
No matter how well things look right now, there is always the fear that tomorrow will be different. The title of Chinua Achebe’s book sums it up poetically. Things fall apart. No success in Africa is immune to the threat of sudden chaos. Some call the belief that nothing can work here Afro-pessimism. Most of the time, it is simply pessimism, with a litany of disastrous results as affirmation. I have seen many success stories on this continent, little moments that make you believe anything is possible. I heard this morning in the Eldoret Red Cross office about a Kikuyu who had returned to his burned house and empty pastures, only to find that his Kalenjin neighbor had taken the animals in to feed and protect until he returned home.
But then you have the Kenyan post-election violence: an orgy of murder in a country once thought of as an island of stability floating in the unpredictable sea of Uganda, Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe.
And of course, you can add the weekend’s riots in South Africa: a display of intolerance in a nation that ought to know better.
All of this is unsettling. I’m leaning over to look out the window of the plane, trying to get a look at the nation below me as we close on Nairobi. I can’t see anything but clouds.
” — Wright Thompson
