The African Queen
THE TOURISM Indaba has been and gone. They say there's in future going to be an increasing emphasis on destinations elsewhere in Africa, not just here and in our immediate neighbouring countries.
That's no doubt to be welcomed, though the presence at the ICC of Masai warriors, resplendent in their brocaded crimson finery, tells us some fairly distant countries are already well represented. Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania were very much on display.
And it was here that the allure of Africa showed itself in an odd way; a tantalising whiff of the timelessness of the Great Lakes region. Who remembers The African Queen, that classic 1950s film starring Humphrey Bogart (it won him his only Oscar)) and Katharine Hepburn?
In this the two take an old river steamboat down dangerous rapids in German East Africa (today's Tanzania) into Lake Tanganyika to attack the German warship Koningin Luise with torpedoes improvised from gas cylinders by Bogart. (World War I had broken out and one did what one could.)
It was a classic. Who can forget those shots of Bogart wading through the swamps, dragging the African Queen behind him on a rope?
Against all the odds they succeed in blowing up the Koningin Luise - though not before they are captured by the Germans, sentenced to death by hanging then married by the German captain in an eve of execution gesture of magnanimity (you see, they had fallen in love – she a missionary, he a rough and tough, boozy steam boat skipper – a thousand violins sobbing in the background).
Then comes the explosion and they escape in the confusion to Kenya to live happily ever after and already respectably married. (I tell you, they knew how to write scripts in those days.)
It all came back in a rush at the Indaba as I met Tinu Mhajan, a genial third generation Kenyan Sikh who owns hotels and safari camps in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
The African Queen – the actual vessel that was used to make the film – still exists 62 years later and is being restored in a boatyard on the Nile, in Uganda.
The Great Lakes beckon.
Double standards
IT SEEMS unfair. Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield takes to the airwaves from the International Space Station with an adaptation of David Bowie's song, Space Oddity, and he's an instant hit. Twitter folk describe him as "the coolest guy in outer space". Bowie himself sends him a tweet: "Hallo spaceboy." Hadfield's future career as a songster is assured.
But a woman on an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York starts singing the Whitney Houston hit, I Will Always Love You, and what happens? Two and a half hours later, and with the Guinness Book of World Records beckoning, she's still singing repeats of the song – and the plane makes an emergency landing at Kansas City and the poor woman is hauled off in handcuffs by a US marshal.
Why the double standards? Why the discrimination?
Okay, Hadfield was doing fancy stuff. He was floating in midair inside the spacecraft. He was accompanying himself on a guitar. Also he was at a far greater altitude than the American Airlines woman, which gives the performance extra cachet.
But when you come down to it, is it fair? Is this not irrational and unacceptable discrimination? It smacks of altitudism, musical elitism and possibly sexism.
American Airlines should be ashamed of themselves.
Why?
OVERHEARD at the Street Shelter for the Over-40s: "Why would anyone want to be a masochist? Beats me!"
Wholesome Harry
PRINCE Harry seems to have been having a whale of a time in America – whacking baseballs with the kids in Haarlem and elsewhere; apparently playing a bit of polo as well. All very wholesome.
It's nice that this time he seems to have avoided those strip poker parties. This time Las Vegas just wasn't on the itinerary.
Tailpiece
"My grandma always warned me against allowing boys to have their way with me and disgrace my family."
"And you've stuck to that?"
"Sure have. I have my way with them and disgrace their family."
Last word
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
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