To give a job to a fellow tribesman is not nepotism, it is an obligation. For a politician or military leader to choose his closest advisors and his bodyguards from the ranks of his own tribe is not patronage, it is good common sense. Each group is protective of its own turf, each shares a cultural affinity and each, in its own way, feels superior to the other. Nationalism is a new concept in Africa, only four plus decades old. To do so would challenge the growth of an individual s tribe, to deprive the parents of the hands needed to till the fields today and care for the elderly tomorrow, to denounce religious and traditional beliefs that have belonged to Africa for generations.
Some governments consider birth control morally decadent.
This will happen, as the argument goes, only after the family s standard of living improves, along with its security and health. Kenya, for example, has made as much economic progress as any non-oil producing black nation since independence. Its history, people, and wildlife set it apart from the rest of the planet. When you visit, you must be patient. The Africans are trying to leap into the twentieth century and that just may not be possible until the twenty-first century.