Now Playing - Hotel Africa

In 2006, while serving as the country director for the Peace Corps in Cameroon, I asked our staff to gather in the conference room for a special, all-hands meeting. My wife and I had recently watched Hotel Rwanda and were deeply affected by it. I wanted to know what our staff of 32 Africans - a staff that included members of 15 different ethnic groups, French speakers, English speakers, Christians, Muslims, traditional believers and some of the most highly educated and highly paid people in Cameroon - thought of the carnage that took place in Rwanda in 1994. I wanted to know if Hotel Rwanda could happen in then peaceful Cameroon.

When the film ended, the staff answered my question with one voice and one word. "Tomorrow," they said it could happen.

I was disappointed but not surprised to hear this. Bordered by perpetually unstable countries like Chad, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic, Cameroon prides itself as an "island of peace." During the five decades since it received its independence, Cameroon's more than 200 ethnic groups have lived peacefully side-by-side with only rare and brief outbursts of hostility. Yet while traveling throughout the country, I had heard many barely muffled statements of resentment at this group or that, and particularly at President Paul Biya who has been masterful at juggling so many competing ethnic interests while reining over them since 1982.

After the film, I asked everyone to complete a short questionnaire. I wanted to know what they thought they would do in circumstances similar to the ones faced by Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of Hotel Rwanda. I wanted to know what they thought their fellow Cameroonians would do. And I wanted to know what could ignite such a problem, what could prevent it, and what they thought the world would do if Cameroon ever went to war with itself as have so many countries in Africa.

The staff's answers were depressingly pessimistic. Few had any hope that their fellow Cameroonians would stand up like Paul Rusesabagina did. Or that the international community would lift a finger to help them. Most thought that even a relatively minor event could plunge Cameroon into Rwanda-like chaos. Their concern was validated in late February 2008 when a taxi strike quickly spun out of control and was put down only when the military was called in. Though the chaos lasted just three days, as many as 100 people may have died.

A few days after the Peace Corps/Cameroon staff viewed Hotel Rwanda, I reported their reactions at an Americans-only meeting at the US Embassy.

In a country famous for its people's willingness to argue furiously over the most trivial minutiae, the diverse staff at Peace Corps/Cameroon had been unanimous in its opinion that an ethnically driven conflagration could happen in Cameroon at anytime.

That didn't convince the Americans at the embassy. "Couldn't happen here" was their uniform response as they ticked off the statistical and ethnic differences between Cameroon and Rwanda. Two years later, that prediction didn't prevent the Embassy from going to "authorized departure" as soon as the 2008 taxi strike broke out, meaning any U.S. government employee could leave the country at government expense, together with his or her family members, if they felt uncomfortable or threatened by the short-lived turmoil in the streets.

On-going political mayhem has already set Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Sudan and several other African nations back decades and has the potential to destroy them as functioning states. These days even the most stable, promising and economically robust countries in Africa stand upon foundations that are often little more than thin veneers.

More than AIDS, malaria, malnutrition or childhood diarrhea, nothing has done more to retard Africa's economic development than inter-ethnic resentment and violence, which is often fueled by irresponsible, self-serving and intensely partisan megalomaniacal leaders. The list is long: Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia/Eritrea, plus now once stable and prosperous Kenya, and perhaps soon Madagascar and South Africa.

Every year, the international community spends billions to combat disease and promote economic development in Africa, but it does almost nothing to encourage people toward the simple goal of living together in harmony. It does nothing to educate African populations that fighting over the little they have will likely result in everyone having even less. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not limited to Africa - think Kosovo, Chechnya, the marginalized suburbs of France and even Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating - but it is in Africa that these sovereign self-immolations seem to occur most often.

What is particularly infuriating is that time and again, as ethnic and political tensions begin to simmer - with tragic consequences looming ahead as predictably as the iceberg in front the Titanic - the international community, which consists of the World Bank, the IMF, the European Union, regional organizations like the African Union, and the major diplomatic missions, invariably says that only the local community can resolve its problems. When locals beg them to intervene, their response is invariable. "We are not the police,” they say. “The local community must come together to find lasting solutions to their problems."

Never mind the decades that have passed while Northern Ireland, India and Pakistan, China and Tibet, and countries in the Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucuses and elsewhere have violently tried and mainly failed to find lasting local solutions to their problems.

As regards Africa, this benign washing of hands goes on, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for months or years, until the smoldering chaos explodes into a firestorm of murder, rape, and destruction that lands an otherwise little-known, off-the-radar country on front pages around the world. Then, once the flames die down, the same international community that declined to intervene gathers at a luxurious destination - typically in a snowy, mountainous part of Europe – to pass the hat and collect hundreds of millions, often billions, for rebuilding and perhaps a one-time only round of heavily monitored elections.

While the international community diplomatically declines to play the role of the police, a role that might resolve a problem before it develops into a catastrophe, it is always ready to come in and play the part of the deep-pocketed parent, ready to help the wayward adolescent who steadfastly ignored advice not to play with matches.

Irony, however expensive, is, unfortunately, lost on the international community.

Equally unfortunate is that no matter how many examples show that acting out on ethnic suspicions is an extremely costly way for a country to achieve equality and harmony, this incredibly destructive societal psychosis occurs over and over again.

I think there's a better way. And a much cheaper way.

The movies.

In Africa, a free movie still brings people together like nothing else.

Hotel Rwanda needs to be translated into every African dialect and shown in every office, in every slum, in every village and in every school in every forgotten corner across the continent. Moderated discussions need to follow at which the consequences of ethnic cleansing, racial hatred and power-play politics need to be aired.

And then it needs to be done again and again and again. With other movies like Cry Freetown, The Last King of Scotland or even Schindler's List. People around the world feel for and respond to the suffering of others. They learn from it. And hopefully they will learn to avoid destroying their own lives and communities in the name of ethnic entitlement.

Those of us in the West forget, or aren't willing to recognize, that in cultures based on oral history, Hatfield-McKoy feuds aren't something that took place long ago but are as fresh and as real as the last retelling. To prevent subcutaneous hatreds from turning septic, this aspect of oral tradition needs to be countered. Movies - followed by open discussions in the local language - could do this. Armies and highfaluting after-the-fact diplomatic missions have repeatedly proven that they cannot.

Following the genocide in Rwanda, the cry "Never Again" echoed around the world. Yet now we see ethnically driven chaos in country after country. Just as every child knows how difficult it is to put Humpty-Dumpty together again, so does every diplomat know that history repeats itself. Yet, at huge cost in human misery, the international community seems incapable of absorbing this law of history.

So what did the Peace Corps/Cameroon staff think "the world" would do if a Rwanda-like cataclysm should befall their country? The following was typical of their answers:

"The world will do nothing. We will be alone and have to save ourselves. They will take their people away and leave us to die."

Despite all the talk and all the billions spent, that's pretty much what we see today in places like Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somalia where it’s way too late for movies to make much of a difference.

But it isn't too late elsewhere.

It is laudable that the international community commits enormous sums to fighting AIDS and combating malaria and rebuilding the corroding or non-existent infrastructure in Africa. Despite the failure of so many previous development efforts, maybe this time the billions will make a difference. But maybe what the international community ought to be doing is teaching people across Africa to love popcorn and gather together in the dark to watch movies.

And then, maybe, people will learn to hate each other a little less.

A version of this story originally appeared in the May/June 2009 issue of Stanford magazine.

Notes from the Underground

I have never cared much for pets. I grew up with cats and was as indifferent about them as they were about me. My brother once asked me to baby-sit his four cats for a few months. They were indoor cats. I was violently allergic to them so I put them on running lines in the backyard. When I came back several hours later they were all calmly suspended in mid-air, hanging by the neck as if out of some particularly demented Booth cartoon from The New Yorker. Taking the near strangled felines down from their nooses I realized that domestic animals and I simply were not meant for each other.

Now I'm older, wiser, more compassionate and absolutely in love with my new pets. Even though I never let them out of the basement, I'm just nuts about them. I look in on them everyday and regret that they only need to be fed a couple of times a week. I'm so crazy about them that although I started with 1,000, I quickly bought another 500 and have now bred more than 10,000. They're quiet, clean, obedient, fun to watch, never need to go to the vet, like living in the basement, and, here's the best part, they eat my garbage. They're just great and I'm totally insane for them. They're worms.

It all started last spring, just before Earth Day. For several years I'd been carting kitchen scraps to the community garden in San Francisco's Fort Mason for composting. This invariably involved putting a bucket of wet, stinky, molding slop into the car and then having to empty it into a garbage can of even more fragrant molding slop at the garden. And when the stuff ultimately evolved into compost there never seemed to be any left for me, my more aggressive fellow community gardeners always having beaten me to the latest harvest of "black gold."

It was about that time that a notice arrived from SLUG (the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners) informing me of a composting program subsidized by the City. If I acted immediately, a Wriggly Wranch Worm Farm (a $49.95 value) could be mine for the unprecedented low price of $20.00 (worms not included). I raced to Cole Hardware and was soon back at home with my Wriggly Wranch and two quart-size ice cream tubs, each containing about 500 rust-colored red wrigglers.

With great expectation I put the Wranch together, and fluffed up the Wranch's worm "bedding" with the anticipation of a newlywed fluffing up pillows on his wedding night. After sitting on the shelf for who knows how long, my newly purchased worms appeared nearly catatonic. Still, I had visions of churning out large quantities of quality compost on a weekly basis. After all, the literature said that the worms could eat up to their weight in garbage every day.

As instructed, I emptied the worms onto the bedding, covered them with strips of moistened newspaper, closed the lid and left them alone to settle in. Well, almost. I just couldn't leave them alone. They looked kind of lost and helpless. I wanted to see them burrow down to the business of making compost. And they looked hungry.

Defying the instructions that said not to feed them for the first two weeks, I took some lettuce trimmings and a few banana peels down to the basement. When I opened the Wranch a week later I learned that worms cannot be rushed. They hadn't even looked at what I had given them which had turned into a fuzzy carpet of mold. I scraped it off, picked out the few worms that had dared to climb in, said my apologies, and started over. Being a successful worm owner would not be a simple as I had first imagined.

Over time I've come to better understand my worms' dietary needs. Avocado skins they will avoid for months. But put a piece of slightly overripe cantaloupe in the box and a vermicultural orgy commences with thousands of inch-long wrigglers sliming their way over each other into a thick ball of oozing, living spaghetti. Like childbirth, it's simultaneously grotesque and absolutely riveting. My three year-old daughter can't watch them enough. She'll blissfully pick up a handful of worms, select one, and stroke it as though caressing a cat under the neck. Or she'll hold a piece of food above their tray while calling, "Here wormy wormy worm." (Like I'm going to tell her worms don't have ears?)

After six months of experimenting, I've fallen onto a favorite recipe. Here it is; into a food processor place any combination of banana peels, egg shells, salad trimmings, and used coffee filters with grounds. Purée. Pour over worms. They love it. My wife, however, finds this process completely disgusting and leaves the kitchen each time I joyfully call out "Time to feed the worms" and begin loading the food processor. Her retreat from the kitchen was particularly fortunate the time I tried to food process watermelon rind. The thick skin jammed under one of the blades causing the entire machine to skip madly over the counter.

Invariably, over-confidence gets lion tamers into trouble and as my worms and I grew more comfortable with each other, I, too, was headed for a fall. The Wriggly Wranch instruction manual firmly cautioned me against giving the worms much citrus. Facing a pile of grapefruit peels, I thought a little vitamin C couldn't hurt them. Into the food processor the peels went, creating one of the more pleasant and zesty slurries I've created. A week later, when I lifted the top off my Wriggly Wranch, a disgusting cloud of tiny flies rose into my face. Citrus. Red wrigglers. Not a good mix.

Now we are back on better terms. My initial 1,500 worms have multiplied countless times. The "castings," as the compost the worms leave behind is called, is a wonderful, dark, dense humus. The "tea" they excrete has transformed a pot of scrawny calla lilies into a portrait worthy of Imogen Cunningham’s viewfinder. Best of all is the smell. Each time I open the Wranch the fresh, clean, warm aroma of new soil rises into my nostrils. It smells like the humid floor of a tropical rainforest just as the sun begins to warm the day. Delicious.

One thing you cannot, however, expect from worms is gratitude. Unlike dogs, or even cats, worms do not come running at the sound of the can opener. They will not brush up against your legs or beg on their haunches as you try to put down their food. If anything, worms tend to dive for the cover of darkness when their box is opened for feeding. And there's no taking them out for walks. No teaching them stupid pet tricks. A box of worms will never land you on David Letterman. For the dedicated worm owner (as I have become), satisfaction comes from watching them transform kitchen garbage into beautiful rich soil -- while remaining blissfully ignorant of how they do it.

"Do worms have teeth?" I asked my wife not long ago, wondering aloud about how in fact they do do it.

"Do worms have teeth?" she repeated in a defeated, incredulous tone as she left the room.

"No really," I called down the hall after her. "What do you think? How do they chew all that stuff up?"

“Why don’t you subscribe to Worm Digest?” she suggested.

After nearly a year, my worms have eaten their way through two stacking trays of scraps and I will soon add a third. According to the instructions, when that last tray appears to have been more or less converted to compost the castings in the first tray will finally be ready for use.

It's been a long slow wait for the one cubic foot each tray contains. Recently the worms have become much more active. Their diet remains the same and yet they are positively frisky when I feed them.

“What do you think is going on with the worms?” I asked my wife as she was trying to sleep. “They’re multiplying like crazy.”

“Enough with the worms already,” she moaned. “Let me sleep will you.”

“Yeah but...” I began before I figured it out. “Nina, Nina,” I said. “I know what’s happened. It’s because we switched from decaffeinated coffee to regular coffee. Ha!”

“Oh give me a break already,” my wife pleaded, turning away from me and yanking the covers over her head.

“That’s got to be it,” I insisted. For a couple of weeks I had been giving the worms two coffee filters a day of Peet’s dark French roast grounds. My red wrigglers were buzzed out of their minds.

“What?!” Nina turned back to me infuriated with having been awakened. “You think worms are mammals? You think caffeine affects them?”

“I don’t know? Are worms mammals?” I said.

“Do they nurse their young?” Nina asked, before storming out of bed.

I suppose all in all it would have been easier just to buy some compost at the garden supply store. But then I wouldn't get to use the food processor so often. And I wouldn't have become a pet lover.

A version of this story originally appeared in the March 5, 2000 edition of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner Magazine.