Good piece on Kenya in Vanity Fair

After that godawful, self-aggrandizing issue that Bono orchestrated, this piece, written by an actual African (what a thought!) is very good.

The author is a writer and it shows. Neat sketch of Kenyan history. His optimism on the place matches my own: not blowing off the rural poverty or disconnectedness, but sensing a critical mass with a post-Moi generation that's maturing and beginning to understand what it's capable of.

Find it here: Generation Kenya.

My favorite lines come at the end:

As I sit here, in upstate New York, and read The New York Times, or watch CNN, Africa feels like one fevered and infectious place. In this diseased world, viruses spread all over—and a small local crisis in one corner can infect the rest of the continent in one quick blink. In a highly suggestive New York Times piece, dated April 23, 2007, and titled "Africa's Crisis of Democracy," Nigeria's recent flawed election is used to show how everything democratic in sub-Saharan Africa is teetering on shaky stilts.

This habit—of trying to turn the second-largest continent in the world, which has 53 countries and nearly a billion people of every variety and situation, into one giant crisis—is now one of the biggest problems Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Ghana face.

We have learned to ignore the shrill screams coming from the peddlers of hopelessness. We motor on faith and enterprise, with small steps. On hope, and without hysteria.

Thanks to Jarrod Myrick for sending.

Comments

[Michael]

Also good is James Wolcott's blog post Fade to Black; Mark Steyn gets nailed right between the eyes. There's a link to the right of the page.

[antonymous]

Wow. That's really an excellent piece - I'm really enjoying the DeSoto-esque articles that you've been linking to recently.

The informal economy becomes legitimized through its own means, rather than allowing top-down governance to influence who succeeds and who fails. Cronyism and its remnants are declining, it's the hustlers who will run the show! These folks could probably even teach Jay-Z a lesson in capitalism...