Tahl and Gigi's Africa Safari

A visual diary

Obama and the World

Post-9/11 the topic of America’s reputation abroad became a hot-button issue, with the discussion only getting louder and the tenor growing more divisive as Bush’s every move seemed to further alienate the rest of the world. But within America, the discussion remains an abstraction. It’s been anything but in our travels through Africa.

Of the countless foreigners we’ve encountered, from Swedes to white South Africans to Spaniards to native Africans raised in the bush, all of them want to talk Obama. It is said when American sniffles, the world coughs, and as one gent we met put it, we’ve been coughing so hard and so much lately that this breath of fresh air feels somehow biblical, prophetic. And there’s something that scares me about that.

When the foreigners we met spoke of America under Bush, they spoke of an America as some nihilistic monster that was going to destroy us all, with its every move leading to the undoing of civilization. Now, with Obama, the unsettling conviction is still there, except now they are messianic in nature. There were some Zambian waiters that truly believed America under Obama would finally solve all of Africa’s problems. Heaven on earth is just around the corner.

I don’t know what all that means exactly. One thing I do know is that what the founders called the “American idea” – an ineffable amalgam of notions and propositions and hopes, an unfinished metaphysical crossword puzzle made up of words like freedom, liberty, and happiness – has regained its power, and is as influential around the world as it has ever been. Better that than the alternative, I suppose.

Interesting times we live in.

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Elephant Schlong

Gillian comes face-to-face (or face-to-elephant-crotch, as it were) with the wild kingdom and is very, very impressed, not to mention a little obsessed. She expresses her admiration photographically and here's but a small selection of her pics:

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