Mutton curry and cabbage

Somewhere in Africa, the YouTube video doesn't say where, a village woman cooks a meal of mutton curry and cabbage. The meat is steamed with a small amount of water in a pot, and then the spices to make the curry are added. The cabbage is mixed with vegetables. She then mixes some sort of a flour concoction, it isn't bread, rather it is more of a paste.

She cooks it all over an open fire while around her, her kids who are well behaved, and the chickens occupy themselves. They eat it with their hands.

 

China Salesman

This is a review of the 2017 Chinese action/comedy/propaganda film China Salesman. I don't know if you can find it online, I bought the stupid thing for this post (I need to work on my money management skills). There will be spoilers in this review.

It stars Dongxue Li as a salesman for a Chinese telecom company which is bidding for a contract to sell superior Chinese 3G telephone equipment to an African country. Opposing him is an Eeeeevil Western telephone company that's trying to win the bid so they can tank the country's phone network, thereby restarting a civil war so's they can sell arms to both sides. Diabolical Westerners, hiding their illicit arms trade behind a telephone company! 

If battling phone companies seems like an odd premise, bear in mind that this was made around the time that Huawei's reputation was swirling down the drain, so much of the nonsense in this film is just touting the wonders of Chinese 3G technology compared to the junk the Westerners put out. 

The producers of the film also planned an international release and so, to bolster its overseas box office, they cast two huge Hollywood action stars -- Steven Seagal and Mike Tyson. OK, maybe 'huge Hollywood action stars' is an exaggeration, although in Seagal's case, considering his ample girth, huge certainly fits.

 

Ms Ling and the China Salesman,
who can't afford a radio phone to call their headquarters,
whine about not being taken seriously

We are introduced to the China Salesman and his assistant Ruan Ling as they are riding into the capital city on camels. Driving past in a fancy car are Susanna, the blonde woman who is running the bidding, and Michael, the salesman for the Eeeeevil Western phone/weapons dealing company. That seems like a bit of a conflict of interest to me, but what do I know? Susanna and Michael, from the comfort of their air-conditioned car, smirk at the two Chinese yahoos on their camels.  

Later, while the Westerners settle into luxurious accommodations, the China Salesman and his sidekick open up their old regional office in the Capital. It is dusty and pretty run down looking. At one point the China Salesman even complains to Ling that they don't have a radio phone to call their headquarters in China. Wait, this movie is promoting the wonders of Chinese 3G telephony, and these two boobs can't even call their headquarters? 

We then cut to a bar ran by Steven Seagal. It's kind of like Rick's bar in Casablanca, but instead of Humphrey Bogart you get Seagal waddling around. He's tasting some hootch from a barrel, declares it to be good and hands over crates of guns he's trading for the booze. Now, I'm not an international arms dealer, but it strikes me that Seagal got the short end of the stick trading of all those automatic weapons for only a few gallons of whiskey. 

Then, who should happen to walk in but Mike Tyson. His backstory is that he is a fearsome African Chieftan. However, unfortunately for him his entire tribe was massacred and exterminated. His big ambition is to reconstitute his tribe. How he plans on doing that when they're all dead is a mystery - I guess he's just an optimist. 

Tyson, Seagal, and Seagal's stunt double duke it out
(image from Film Threat) 

Since there are two high alpha action stars in the same bar a fight is inevitable. One problem is Seagal is in his 'beached whale' phase so all he can do is sit and wave his arms around as he does some fearsome chair-fu. Meanwhile, Tyson wants nothing to do with that, he just wants to run around punching people. To solve the problem of providing a mobile Seagal for the fight they hired the world's skinniest stunt double to do the duty. The three of them bust up the place, crashing through walls and demolishing all props in sight. 

When the required amount of promotional video has been filmed, the fight ends with a Tyson victory. Seagal, his contract completed, thankfully largely disappears from the show. Tyson continues as a minor character with an amusingly absurd faux-African accent that changes from scene to scene. 

The movie's plot is pretty much of a mess. It stitches together over-the-top action sequences while pumping the superiority of Huawei telephones, whining about the lack of respect for China, blathering about the incomprehensible civil war, displaying supposed African culture, and revealing devious Westerners. My favorite Tyson appearance was at one of the innumerable, technobabble infused telephony negotiation sessions. Tyson crashes through the front door in an armored personnel carrier and touches off a massive gunfight. Way to negotiate Mike.

Who needs guns when you have a Chinese flag?

Another ridiculous scene is when the China Salesman needs to get to the south to repair a vital telephone relay tower. However, there is only one mountain pass they can use to get there, and currently that pass is being blocked by the two warring rebel factions who are engaged in a massive firefight. Trying to solve this conundrum, the China Salesman thinks for a bit and then gets a brainstorm. He breaks out a gigantic Chinese flag, mounts it on the back of his truck and starts to drive through the pass. Hilariously the rebels all stop fighting and instead stand up and start shouting "Its China!", "China good!", "Yea for China!" so the China Salesman can make it through the pass. Yea, that sounds plausible.   

Would I recommend you watch it? If you can get it for free the plot is preposterous, and it is stuffed full of ludicrously transparent propaganda. Still, it is a hoot and entertaining in a crappy B-movie sort of a way. 

        

Rwanda today

We're back to Africa, this time Rwanda, with videos made by Willie Fungo an American who lives there.  Above is a video of a day time walk in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. It is through a commercial and night life district. He also eventually gets to a more working class part of the city. The video is not narrated, but it does have informative captions.

When thinking about Rwanda the genocide naturally comes to mind, but as the video shows Kigali is a very prosperous, nicely landscaped and well maintained city. The traffic stuck out to me, it was not the usual tangle and cacophony of beeping you tend to see in the third world. It is said to be the cleanest city in Africa and is safe as well with very little crime.

In below video he goes to a rural village and looks more like you expect, with dirt paths and mud brick houses. It is in Tutsi territory, so the people are more wary of strangers, but for the most part they are civil if not friendly. However, there is one entertaining scene where a rather belligerent women tells Willie, who is black, to go away because they don't want white people there. I guess to be American is to be white to them. He ends in a bar/café where he orders a tasty looking meal of roast rabbit, onions, mayonnaise and French fries accompanied with beer. The video is narrated.

 

Buying house plants in Cameroon

In the above video Marie Kimbi, a Cameroon based YouTuber, visits a nursery to buy her first house plant. She says that most people in Cameroon, if they have plants in their homes, have artificial ones. However, she's always wanted to have live house plants. She calls it a dream of hers.  

Marie Kimbi grew up poor, but she is a very determined young woman. She attended the Catholic University of Central Africa and is now a registered nurse. In her younger years she worked in The UAE as a maid and nanny. On her about page she writes:

Working in an Arab country as a maid I was told that in my country we live on trees and stay with animals, I was told the reason my skin colour is like this is because am dirty since we don't have good water and nice living environment and lack education. Am here to show to the world that my country despite the fact it's underdeveloped is still beautiful.

Her videos are view into a world we rarely see. The poverty is at a scale that is hard to imagine from an American perspective. Clean water, sanitation and a decent place to live are major concerns for a lot of the people. I first discovered her via a video (first video below) showing  the residential slum of Yaoundé where a lot of students live. It is eye opening to say the least.

In her further videos she tours a lot of houses and apartments, most not nearly as grim. She also tours Cameroon, discusses local political and social issues and describes an orphanage she volunteers at. Of course, me being me, I end with a cooking video where she starts in a market buying her ingredients and ends with the cooked meal of fish, vegetables and fufu (a type of corn flour).

Finally, if you're interested she has two videos describing her experiences working in the UAE: Part 1, Part 2. Also, her accent is sometimes very thick, so you might want to turn on captions.

African Ceremonial Masks

Click any image to enlarge

"Drums were beating, horns blowing, and people were seen all running in one direction;—the cause was a funeral dance, and I joined the crowd, and soon found myself in the midst of the entertainment. The dancers were most grotesquely got up. About a dozen huge ostrich feathers adorned their helmets; either leopard or the black and white monkey skins were suspended from their shoulders, and a leather tied round the waist covered a large iron bell which was strapped upon the loins of each dancer, like a woman's old-fashioned bustle: this they rung to the time of the dance by jerking their posteriors in the most absurd manner. 

A large crowd got up in this style created an indescribable hubbub, heightened by the blowing of horns and the beating of seven nogaras of various notes. Every dancer wore an antelope's horn suspended round the neck, which he blew occasionally in the height of his excitement. These instruments produced a sound partaking of the braying of a donkey and the screech of an owl. Crowds of men rushed round and round in a sort of "galop infernel," brandishing their lances and iron-headed maces, and keeping tolerably in line five or six deep, following the leader who headed them, dancing backwards. 

The women kept outside the line, dancing a slow stupid step, and screaming a wild and most inharmonious chant; while a long string of young girls and small children, their heads and necks rubbed with red ochre and grease, and prettily ornamented with strings of beads around their loins, kept a very good line, beating the time with their feet, and jingling the numerous iron rings which adorned their ankles to keep time with the drums. One woman attended upon the men, running through the crowd with a gourd full of wood-ashes, handfuls of which she showered over their heads, powdering them like millers; the object of the operation I could not understand. 

The "premiere danseuse" was immensely fat; she had passed the bloom of youth, but, "malgre" her unwieldy state, she kept up the pace to the last, quite unconscious of her general appearance, and absorbed with the excitement of the dance.

These festivities were to be continued in honour of the dead; and as many friends had recently been killed, music and dancing would be in fashion for some weeks."

From The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile by Sir Samuel White Baker (paragraph breaks added). More images after the fold.

Lady Florence Baker

Lady Florence Baker

In my earlier post Hunting Elephants I excerpted one of Sir Samuel W. Baker's, who was a the 19th century explorer, descriptions of an elephant hunt from his book In the Heart of Africa. In passing I also mentioned that Baker's wife accompanied him on that expedition, and that she likely saved him when he fell sick from the fever at the end of it.

A commenter by the name of Raven left the follwing comment to the post:

Baker purchased his wife in an Ottoman slave market. Although she could not speak a word of English the universal language of love was enough- she was his devoted companion for the rest of his life.

Intrigued by that bit of information I looked up Lady Florence Baker's biography and, not that I ever doubted Raven, sure enough he did buy her from a slave market in 1859.

Her story reads like a barely believable Victorian era potboiler.

She was supposedly born to a aristocratic Hungarian family, only to see them slaughtered during the Hungarian Revolution. Her nurse escaped with her and took her to Bulgaria, then part of the Ottoman empire. From there her nurse ran off to get married and she got kidnapped by slavers who groomed her to be a concubine in a harem.

At the age of somewhere between 14-17 (they're not sure exactly when she was born) she was finally being auctioned in Vidon's slave market when Baker, who had gone to the auction on a bit of a lark, saw her. He was smitten by her and attempted to buy her, but he was outbid by the Pasha of Vidon.

Undeterred, Baker bribed her guards and ran off with her. They eventually got married.

Lady Florence continued to travel with Baker. As I mentioned, she was on his expedition down the Nile when he discovered Lake Albert, and likely saved him when his expedition collapsed and he nearly died of the fever. The were to return to The Sudan and battle against the slave trade. However, luckily for them, they left the region just before the Mahdi overwhelmed Gordon in Khartoum.

There are two books about her, at least one of which I plan on getting: To the Heart of the Nile: Lady Florence Baker and the Exploration of Central Africa and Stolen Woman.

So, if you pass back through here -- thanks Raven, I appreciate the information about her.
 

Persistence

The video shows three African hunters using the persistence method of hunting. It is thought to be one of the oldest forms of hunting. They locate a herd of Kudus, which are a type of antelopes, and then cut the one they think will be the slowest from the herd.

Once that's done a single hunter chases after the animal until he exhausts it. In the case of this hunt it took him 8 hours to run the animal down.

An interesting detail of the film is that all three are wearing manufactured shorts, socks and shoes, plus they seem to be carrying modern steel knives. I wonder what the economy of the area is that mixes stone-age hunting with trade modern enough to get industrially produced goods?

The web of human affairs is frequently baffling.  

The film is from a BBC YouTube channel where you can find a lot of other interesting clips. 
 

Friday Links

The proud and sad history of the Detroit oligopoly.

Now we know: almost all matter is nothing but quantum fluctuations in the vacuum.

Massive glaciers have been discovered on Mars.

Chicago is on a roll.

Bad cars can live almost forever.

Google axes 3D.

Why worry about a little trillion dollar deficit?

A new Ebola virus has broken out in Africa.

China's expanding sphere of influence in Latin America.

Learning math causes massive reorganization of the brain.

Shades of Stalin: Iranian blogger "confesses" to spying for Israel.

Introducing GlassDoor.

Is the universe teeming with aliens?

Japan is itching to take on the pirates.

Limitless clean energy for the taking.

Is the US going down the tubes in the next two decades?

Sunday Links

Shown: uranium eating bacteria.

Secret Al-Qaida enclaves of the UK.

A triumph of temperament not policy.

Teaching nanoparticles to swim.

Kasparov beseeches Obama.

When things get too dry the government is toast.

A Hard Day's Night is finally solved.

When photoshop goes bad.

The good virus.

The top 10 most irritating phrases.

Individual responsibility and self-reliance are for chumps.

The hotel of the future.

Beware the 5 year old witches.

A man of decency and integrity.

Be the first on your block to get a mini nuclear plant.

The top 10 things to look forward to in Windows 7.

No bittorrent in China.

Chandrayaan enters lunar orbit.

In my CLU.

USMC Camp Lemonier, Djibouti.

A Containerized Living Unit. Spartan. 20 X 8 X 8. A desk, a twin bed, a few lockers. Books from home.

Bathroom nearby, in another container. About 200 yards from an active runway.

It is remarkable what a mollycoddled civilian can get used to after three months. At least I'm not getting shot at.

Weekly Links

As big a shock as Sputnik? So much for superpower status....

Is the new Zune better than the iPod Classic?

Fast food nutrition.

How to get 99% of the hydrogen from waste.

Google claims to have produced a quantum computer—but is it a hoax?

The 10 weirdest houses.

Is 10 years old too young for the 39 raisins?

Introducing Songza.

Squeezing 40% more transistors in.

The difficult patients of the information age.

The source of empathy and autism?

Krugman's latest innocent mistakes.

Even more poor people are with us in South Africa.

More Python goodies.

The source of all chocolate.

How to invest in Africa.