Richard Leakey had dreams and worries about the future of mankind
Given all that he’d achieved I wondered how he’d been overlooked for a knighthood. “The Brits don’t like me,” he said. “My father was pro Mau-Mau.”
Continue ReadingForeign Correspondent Margot Kiser
Letters to Annie from Kaftanistan
Given all that he’d achieved I wondered how he’d been overlooked for a knighthood. “The Brits don’t like me,” he said. “My father was pro Mau-Mau.”
Continue ReadingSailing dhows made of garbage, crusaders, flying low over a baobab-packed forest, guerrilla warfare, Maulidi festival, tattooed and “bearded badasses”. This year I seemed to be at a loss for words. For most of last year I stayed in Lamu. I wanted to keep a close eye on a military operation.
Continue ReadingMarch, 2015 I’d been on the hunt for former U.S. security firm Blackwater owner, Erik Prince, for Newsweek. At the time Prince’s Malta-based logistics company, Frontier Services Group, was sending supplies and repairing oil production facilities. Contrary to some reports, sources said he’d also been training police and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army – SPLA – to […]
Continue ReadingLONG GOODBYE 07.27.15 2:20 PM ET How Obama Glossed Over Africa’s Troubles By MARGOT KISER To keep his visit to Kenya and Ethiopia upbeat, Obama declined to address some of the really big problems in both countries. NAIROBI — In what may give the term “birther” new meaning, it’s rumored that in Kogelo, President […]
Continue Reading“We fear Obama is coming to teach our children to be gay,” the owner of a beauty salon in a Christian town on the coast told me. In reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court decision last month to recognize a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, one anti-gay-rights fringe group reportedly plans to protest in Nairobi—and, for reasons as yet unclear, to do so in the nude.
Continue ReadingSouth Sudan’s civil war has been a disaster for humans and animals alike. Soldiers on both sides have turned the slaughter of giraffes and other animals into an industry.
Continue ReadingWhile researching Inside the Zanzibar Attack story for Daily Beast I spent a lot of time in Stone Town at Baboo cafe, near the scene of the attack, where two men on a Vespa threw acid at two 18-year old British girls. The cafe, decorated with Zanzibar beds, pillows, and safari camp chairs, was filled […]
Continue ReadingIs the International Criminal Court (ICC) guilty of political cleansing? Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), must have gasped on hearing Uganda’s Museveni lash out at the ICC while the newly sworn in Uhuru Kenyatta and Zimbabwe‘s Robert Mugabe clapping and snickering in the background. In his speech, Museveni accused […]
Continue ReadingFilm clip accompanying my Newsweek /DailyBeast feature, The Economics of Extinction, 01.28.2013 Watch a Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) veterinarian sharpshooter dart an endangered black rhino for translocation. Laikipia, Kenya. link to article – http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/28/the-economics-of-extinction-africa-s-elephants-and-rhinos-in-danger.html
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