Carter Newman

I’ve moved from the ex-colonial outpost that is the Sarova Stanley to Gigiri homestead, a posh home in a bubble next to the UN HQ – not a lot I can walk to but the place and the food is nice, and for now it suits me. I am headed for Kampala on an early bus on Sunday, and hope to be thrown back into the thick of things. I’ve been experiencing quite different forms of containment since being in Nairobi (all of 2 days) while at the Sarova Stanley, downtown Nairobi, I was advised not to walk around certain parts of downtown, especially as a white girl unused to the city, so I got escorted to the bank… Now there’s simply nothing to walk to.

I was taken out last night by some friends of a friend, an Indian couple who grew up here. We speeded about in a tinted mercesdes, sure not to linger at red light for too long for security reasons. I got to see the influence of India on Nairobi – it’s everywhere. I don’t know why I didn’t expect it, I guess I was thinking more of the Arab traders. I got to feast on Kenyan/Indian food, chapatti, Mombassa mix combined with incredible rotisserie chicken and chips – the latter bit is the Kenyan/English influence. Supposedly the potatoes are far better than India or England and people regularly smuggle them out of the country…Potatoe smugglers, hmmm. The Indian influence is very tangible in the culture and society but it’s interesting that the big building works are being done by China. There is an incredible looped overpass, the first of its kind in Nairobi which means that you can never get anywhere directly – you have to pass your destination first on a highway that’s tantalising close and then loop round and under and back on yourself. We did it 3 times today, I think Francis particularly delights in pointing out our destination as we pass it by,  telling us we’ll be returning soon. I think the silliness of it tickles him.

The stories of 2 men; Francis, Austin. Francis is a taxi driver and has been driving me around Nairobi. He speaks Kikuye, Swahili and Enlish, and  comes from central Kenya, where his family is. He moved to Narobi and got a job selling tea at his uncle’s kiosk for 2 shillings a day, 60 shillings a month. He learned how to drive and started driving for a paper mill. He managed to buy his own car and now works for himself. He lives in Nairobi in a room and sends back the money he makes for his wife and two children for higher eduction. His son is a computer engineer, could have been a graphic designer but decided against. His daughter wants to be a nurse, she wanted to be a doctor but didn’t get the grades. When Francis was younger a barber managed to cut his head instead of his hair and his daughter has made it her personal mission to ensure she can look after him. He took me to his local place for food, chipati (indian influence again) and beef stew, and tea, happy days. I know this is not an unusual story, but still, it amazes me.

Austin is also a self-made man. I met him at the exchange bar of the Stanley Hotel, if you can imagine what the English colonialists would have built in 1902, I don’t think it has changed much since then – large leather arm chairs, fans…the whole gentleman’s-club-shebang. Austin hails from Aberdeen and is some kind of millionaire that started off as a butcher (he looks like he’s off to watch a game of football). His younger brother set-up in Singapore and he went out to help with a pub, it soon became a series of pubs, bars. It seems to have been a big success – he retired a number of years ago (he can’t be older than 50). And so now he travels, he drops by on his mum in Aberdeen long enough to buy her a Jaguar, and some rumps steaks, but then the cold gets to him and he has to head off for sunnier shores. To go back to the rump steak – as a butcher he knows how he likes it – he gets a 32 rump steak and gets it cut into 6 pieces, that and lemon sole, that’s all he eats… He’s bought land in an up-and-coming area in Nairobi, he doesn’t know what to do with it, but I think one day he hopes it will either make him some money or woo a wife. Yes, I learnt all this and more over a beer. I’d like to meet him again one day, his last words to me were unforgettable, “you see that’s what I believe, you use up here (he points at his head) for learning and down there (I was nervous at this point) for dancing.” I think I would like to include this in my epitaph.

Carter About food, Kenya, life stories, Nairobi, travel

I’ve been struggling to cross the threshold of digital mastery. There is Facebook and twitter, and YouTube, not to mention RSS feeds, google reader, linked in and various hybrids and competitors… I have been resistant to say the least. But the extent of information now available is irresistible to an information-hoard like myself. What has been striking me, the more I learn, is how revolutionary this is to empowering people everywhere. From helping to organise civil uprisings to providing health care and health stats via mobile phones, it’s joining up the dots like never before. I’m sure this is not news to many but it has just hit me how exciting this is. When we look back will we say twitter galvanised the Arab Spring?

It seems to me the key to continued failings in civil rights, provision of public services and maintaining peace is transparency, or lack of. And monitoring & verification work to boost confidence. With information that can be collected everywhere and sent anywhere what better apparatus do you need?! I see there is the problem of misinformation… That will need to be addressed but regulating mechanisms are springing up to counter this.

What is more the regions that have yet remained unconnected from the world, sub-Saharan Africa, the middle east, are prime for this kind of communication and information gathering. The mobile networks driven by massive telecomms companies that have sprung up provide an inbuilt network ready for SMS info sharing. Maternity health advice can be given to a far wider catchment than ever before, not to mention harassment monitoring sites and sitings of violence. It can play into a despotic state’s hands easily but where the many outweigh the few, I think we will see a vast majority of positive interactions and results than the few malevolent ones. But hey, we’re only human. Not until we finally meld with all this technology will we be able to act rationally…

Carter About Civil society, mobile phones, online social network

I haven’t fully read this article yet but I had to laugh when I saw the heading: ‘Iran clarified on Tuesday that its offer of allowing “full supervision” of its atomic programme in return for lifting of sanctions does not include snap checks by UN inspectors of its nuclear units.’

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2011/September/middleeast_September102.xml&section=middleeast&col=

Am I being overly cynical? Or is it fair to feel like this is yet another tactic being played in a really ineffective negotiating process? The trouble is, if, in the worst case scenario, Iran does want to develop nuclear weapons, it will not come out BEFORE it has managed to develop them. Rather it will string along international community (well all the countries willing and wanting to enforce nuclear non-proliferation) getting as much as it can from the deal – civil nuclear technology and materials – which will help speed along it’s nuclear ambitions. The system seems unfairly weighted on the international community to somehow convince the country not to proliferate.

I am not advocating a military response – I don’t think that would work. And I don’t think economic sanctions would do much good either (show me evidence that it has ever worked before). But there needs to be more in place that will enforce all the alarm bells going off right now. The IAEA has found IRAN to be in breach of the NPT for some time now (since 24 September 2005, they had been investigating 2.5 yrs previously but didn’t have access to sites so couldn’t be conclusive in their findings) but really what has happened because of this international breach? There has been a UNSC resolution and there has been economic sanctions but so far they have been ineffective and there seems to be a lack of follow-through and escalation. I know there is not the political will behind this – China and Russia being 2 of the biggest obstacles. I do not know this subject well enough to shine much insight on this, but the fact that Iran will ahve a nuclear weapon which will drive other countries to gain nuclear weapons, particularly in the Middle East seems to be of the utmost importance to nearly everyone’s safety across the world.

UN is not an enforcement mechanism, it is a consensus builder and a norm em-bedder. What if there were protocol set-up within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (of which Iran is still, just, a member) whereby if requirements were not met entitlements would be immediately cut – specifically entitlements to nuclear fuel and civil nuclear technologies. It would be easy to continue escalating these responses, and if they were put into protocol. ‘decisions’ would not have to be made, it would be simply in response to meeting, or not meeting, criteria.

Carter About nuclear weapons Iran IAEA NPT

I landed in Senegal with a guidebook and a phone number of a doctor (a distant relation of a new friend). I had called ahead and arranged airport transfer in a rare bout of forward planning. The confidence I had in my French vanished with my first conversation, I think the passport controls officer ended up kindly offering a place to stay… Falou picked me up, he worked at Poulagou hostel. The crowd of people and eager taxi drivers drove me immediately back into the arrivals hall of the airport. I found my ride by asking a tour operator to call my hostel (I had no Senegalese phone at this point) and from there he got Falou’s mobile – a sign of how unnecessarily helpful I found so many people in Senegal. Everyone in Senegal has a mobile and they all have special ringtones, loud, attention-grabbing, hip-swinging ringtones. I gladly got in the 1976 estate with Falou, the back doors and windows didn’t work, this was pretty dam good – there were no fractures in the windscreen and we didn’t breakdown once.

Falou and Khalil were hospitable, gregarious, music-loving hosts at Poulagou hostel. If it weren’t for the being on a flight path I would have happily made it my Dakar home-away-from-home. Khalil loves Rasta and Bob Marley (Bob has to be the world’s most popular musician?). A good message for a rusty traveler – we’re all the same and deserve a bit of respect.

I am not going to lie, I was scared when I arrived in Senegal. My stubbornness had led me to looking for a non-touristy, local part of Dakar, not realizing how completely different Senegal would be from most places I have traveled. Maybe not completely different, just ‘more’. More alive, more loud, more anarchic, more improvised. When I left the comforting walls of my hostel I was immediately smack dab in the middle of a busy market street with sand roads, kiosks selling anything and everything and I had no idea where to go, how to look and if I was safe. The fact that no-one looked at me twice gave me courage. The telephone kiosk sold sim cards and could do anything with a soldering iron and a very steady hand. Straight from London-town I was overwhelmed.

I ordered a beer and as I contemplated where I had landed myself, the lights and fans cut. I found out that Dakar suffers from irregular but daily power cuts. There is a lot of speculation around them and some believe it is government-controlled. I think it was then that I smiled, we got out some candles and talked, and I trundled off to bed when I could no longer keep my eyes open. The water was cold, the planes flew over head and the fans did not work, but I slept and was excited to be in Senegal.

Carter About Dakar, Senegal, travel

I sent in my piece for review yesterday. But as soon as I had I couldn’t resist the urge to start formulating an addendum, an update to where countering nuclear non-proliferation is today, the relationship between America and the nuclear non-proliferation regime. So much has changed. Well we will see. I want to look into export controls now – what has happened to them recently and how effective they are proving to be. Let me know if you have any information.

Carter About

I get the impression France has had a love affair with its colonies. Still you see signs of the countries it cannot let go of all over Paris, Egyptian sphinxes, …

Monsieur Sarkozy is implicated in the ousting of Gbagbo, there are rumors that French special forces were the first to break the UN ‘protection’ of the be-seiged ex-president of Cote D’Ivoire at the Golf Hotel. With her forces in 3 countries; Afghanistan, Libya and now the Cote D’Ivoire, you’d be forgiven to think France might be over extending herself.

Tunisia
Egypt
Libya
Yeman
Syria
Bahrain
Saudi Arabia
Cote d’Ivoire (was this the first?)
Lebanon
Palestine

These are not my countries but I do believe they are the future of the world. What they set in place will set the shape and the tempo of the next century.  They have so far confounded economists and sociologists by there unique modus operandi, but have consistently failed to give the majority of people what they want; food. Shelter, education, health, and the chance to improve one’s own life. This may all change. And with regards to those that are decrying the chance of ‘western-style democracy’ in the middle-east, I hope they are wrong. Western style democracy suits the west, it covers the issues and perplexities of our nation-state, Westphalia, traditions. No, I firmly believe that something else will be required for the middle east, a kind of ‘democracy’ we have yet to see.

I would like just to seg-way for a moment into what is democracy. A government that is representative of it’s peoples, an independent judicial system, free and uncensored media, …. These are by no means definitive goalposts, most of the world’s finest democracies have yet to figure out how to fully achieve these ideals.

The exciting, revolutionary potential of the emergence of new forms of democracy, or governing ourselves and shaping our societies is that these countries are far more representative of the world at large, countries and regions that do not have a homogeneous societies, nor a market-based approach to Economics, democracies that cannot be created off the back of a strong leader but by consensus. (America could be used as an example here but the fore bearers were of English and tench origin and were building on their European foundations.)

Carter About

My name is Carter Parrish Barker Newman. They are all family names and give you a clue that though I am a Brit my parents are from the U.S. I do not think I  inculcated much American-ness (I think my parents were happy to welcome the UK as their surrogate identity) and despite living in the States for a little over 2 years, I lived in New York and the think-tank world of Washington DC – two of the most least ‘American cities’ in America. I have worked in both the US and the UK , and visited as many other countries as possible, including Ecuador, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Macedonia, Lebanon and Syria. I have realised that traveling is an itch I will never tire or and so I am trying to minimise the negatives (the eco-damage, the ignorance, the cultural-colonialism) and maximise how I can impact the world positively.

My interests are broad and some might say random. I have spent several years researching international security (disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation and the role of civil society in monitoring disarmament treaties) international development, (focusing on the role of US assistance) and democracy (what are the principles and how it can be assisted). This is quite strange when I reflect on the fact that in general I am wary of people en masse, I think humans act differently en masse, something changes in our psychology and we are prone to loosing our humanity. I also think we have have tendency towards selfishness and conflict. The earliest point I can source my passion for studying war and the inner workings of man and the state is from a module I took at the University of Hull entitled, ‘International Security’ our professor, Paul Robinson was an old hand in intelligence. I was sold. I would like to also credit my professor Paul Gilbert, one of the best Professors I have ever had the pleasure to study with – an incredible, enthusiastic, humble and sharing mind, a true gem.

Life is long and I have already carved an unpredictable and meandering path. I have created this site in order to post my writing and my photos and generally provide an online reference of my work, in whatever field and subject I can cover. I hope to post as much as I can, whether it be academic attempts, traveling collections, ponderous relfkections, and anything else that I can find along the way, who knows where this and I will end up.

I appreciate your considered feedback and apologise for the spelling mistakes and bad grammar.

Carter About About, summary