ninme

This is long, but engrossing:

New Yorker – The Hunted
Did American conservationists in Africa go too far? by Jeffrey Goldberg

It follows the story of a husband/wife pair of American grad students turned conservationists who moved to Botswana and then Zambia and got involved in fighting illegal ivory poachers. The first half quotes much of their own writings, and it’s amazing what they did with their lives and what they accomplished. Then in the second half they turn to the witness of other Westerners in the area and the Africans they interacted with, and it turns out they were just a bunch of racist misanthropes. I bet they would have loved Avatar. I also love, in the second half, the juxtaposition of the British cheerful coexistance (a heroic divider-of-Africa! Amazing! (read the article for details!)) vs ugly Americanism, which, basically, the Owens boil down to.

A key passage from late (very late) in the tale:

What is surprising is that a foreigner [Mark Owen] with no law-enforcement experience came to direct and arm a group of game scouts, and then appointed his son to instruct them in martial arts, and allowed him to accompany a scout on a patrol. Christopher was not an honorary game ranger, like his father; he was, according to the Zambian police, visiting the country on vacation. Mark’s decision to involve Christopher in his work has haunted the Owens family.

A dilettantish white man with thin credentials who demands to be saluted lets his unqualified brat kid (with little interest in animals, if you read on) terrorize the locals. Now, doesn’t that sound like the worst cliché of European colonists?

So then what happens? Why, they move to Idaho!

Darrell Kerby, a former mayor of Bonners Ferry, the nearest town to the Owenses’ ranch, said that, over time, Mark Owens became more moderate in his approach to his neighbors. “He realized he couldn’t come in and just tell people what to do,” Kerby said. “This isn’t Africa.”

God, what a jerk.

Read the whole thing. Curtsy: RC2’s Google Reader.