My Africa Today

If you liked our report on the bizarre handwritten lawsuit against Google from a guy worried that his social security number was too similar to Google's name, here's another one for you. Once again, special thanks to Eric Goldman for passing this one on. This time, at least, most of the lawsuit is typed (there are some handwritten parts at the end), though, there are numerous typos. The lawsuit is being filed against both Google and Yahoo by a guy who is apparently being detained by Immigration services in Houston. He claims that both Google and Yahoo stole their names from Tanzanian tribes -- and now they should pay up. Specifically, he claims that Google took its name from the Gogo tribe and Yahoo took its name from the Yao tribe. Conveniently, this guy happens to be a descendant of both tribes. He's merely asking for both companies to pay $10,000 each to every member of both tribes, going back three generations. Simple!

While it is true that many companies are using foreign words (Swahili is especially popular) in choosing company and product names (Kijiji, Joomla, Renkoo, Wiki, Tafiti, Jambo, etc.), both Google and Yahoo have pretty well-documented histories of their names, and the names of these Tanzanian tribes clearly have nothing to do with either one. Not that the guy doesn't try: "The court is now been asked to answer a common sense question: Is "Google" much more related, semantically and lexically, with "Gogo" or with "Googol"?" Once again, the chance of this lawsuit getting anywhere is basically nil (even if they had taken their names from the tribes, which they clearly did not), but as Goldman points out to us: "There is, of course, a serious problem here about the courts getting clogged up with lawsuits brought by prisoners/detainees with too much time on their hands and nothing to do but file lawsuits, and companies having to spend money to stomp out these lawsuits." In the meantime, this seems mighty close to life imitating The Onion।

The documentary, directed by Hubert Sauper, focuses on the area surrounding Lake Victoria in the African country of Tanzania. The lake has been over-run by the Nile Perch, a large fresh-water fish that was accidentally introduced 50 years ago. This has created a huge supply of fish for export to Europe, which has made a few businessmen quite wealthy and provided jobs for many of the people who live around the like. But the species has decimated the eco-system, including the smaller fish that used to provide much of the food for Tanzania's population. And because Europeans can pay much more for the Nile Perch than ordinary Tanzanians, few of the people living around the lake and in the wider countryside can afford to eat what was once a staple of their lifestyle. Economists talk about globalization bringing down the price of commodities, but the opposite is often true in the Third World.

Sauper does a nice job of giving the feel of the lake towns, interviewing everyone from the owner of the fish factory to the pilots who fly the food back to Europe to the homeless boys who eke out an existence on the street. He spends much more time with the marginalized Africans than with the ecologists and economists who are often trotted out in these kinds of movies. This helps us understand how the problem has impacted the native townsfolk, though it makes it harder for us to understand the full scale of the problem. We see the particular rather than the general. But given how often economists and politicians talk about Africa and globalization in general terms, I welcome a movie that shows us how those abstractions are impacting specific people.

Darwin's Nightmare is shot in ugly-looking digital video, but the format certainly makes it easier to get the range of interviews Sauper does. A pair of scenes that focus on a group of boys is both touching and harrowing, as is a long sequence that shows how resourceful Africans use the cast-offs from the fish factories. Sauper also spends a great deal of time shooting the apparently empty planes that fly into the local airport. At first, it seems as if he's emphasizing that Europe doesn't provide anything to Africa in return for the food. But he finally gets around to the presumption that illegal arms shipments are actually flying in. That's an even more provocative argument--that Europe takes Africa's food and offers only warfare in return--and the film would've been helped if that argument had been made earlier on. Still, this is a compelling examination on the impact of globalization and a heart-felt look at an area of the world we rarely see.

While I agree with sex educator Cory Silverberg's prediction that spray-on contraceptive membranes for men and women probably won't become available in North America for quite some time, if ever, I would love to get all sci-fi with the concept. Flavors, colors, textures, zebra print -- you could do all kinds of things with less reduction of sensation than today's condoms provide.

Every so often I wonder why we haven't yet figured out how to make condoms effective yet indetectable.