|
My
sojourn in the White House
By TONY IYARE
On this Saturday
morning, Edwin Chen, the amiable Chinese American who works as White
House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times was busy clicking
away on his laptop as he tries to file for next day’s paper. He
barely managed to exchange pleasantries with Marc Lacey and this
writer who had gone to the White House Press Corps filing centre
located at the Shehu Yar’Adua complex, just across the road from
Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Abuja. For Lacey, a former White House
correspondent who now mans the East African Bureau of The New York
Times, it was a great fun reuniting with his former colleagues on
the beat. Chen would not be outdone by Richard Stevenson who also
reports the powerful office of the President of the United States
of America for The New York Times.
He dutifully
had to compare notes with Lacey, the forerunner who got here three
days before the arrival of President George W. Bush and this writer,
the paper’s stringer in Nigeria. Lacey and Chen had also had blossoming
relationship from the former’s days at the LA Times and they shared
fond memories of old acquaintances. The White House filing centre
at the lush and serene Shehu Yar’Adua complex reminds only of America,
just the way the Itsekiri perceive the Chevron/Texaco Tank Farm
located on the Excravos river in Ugborodo. I indeed spent hours
in America. The lights never blinked, the air conditioning, phones
and audio system were impeccable. One would almost be intimidated
by all manner of laptops and sophisticated gadgets. With regular
press releases and briefings anchored by The White House Press Secretary,
Ari Fleischer, the correspondents had plenty to chew. Only a thin
line separated them from the presidential pool which followed Bush
everywhere.
The reporters
also had plenty of food and drinks at the rear of the main hall,
so that they do not need to dash across to the hotel to pick up
things to eat. It was a great atmosphere of camaraderie and fun
meeting reporters who file stories about the world’s most powerful
leader. But I missed shaking hands with Helen Thomas, the oldest
White House reporter who recently left the United Press International
to become a columnist for Hearst newspaper in Washington. Born of
Lebanese immigrant parents, Thomas joined UPS in 1943 and started
reporting the White House in 1961. She is usually referred to as
the first lady of the press. In the wee hours of the morning, it
was banter all the way as some of the White House correspondents
shared drinks at the lobby bar of Sheraton Hotel. From a weary trip
in Entebbe, Uganda on Friday where they stayed back to file their
stories, leaving the US President George W. Bush to travel In Airforce
one with only the pool of 15 reporters to Nigeria’s capital, Abuja,
the correspondents who eventually got to the hotel around 12.30
am from the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, needed the booze and banters
to cool off.
They were particularly
elated seeing Lacey who made over 50 trips with former President
Bill Clinton in his two-year stint at the White House, before taking
up his present assignment in Nairobi, Kenya. “Rather than a structured
routine that you guys follow at the White House, I now plan my own
trips”, he told his former colleagues who were quite thrilled by
his new exploits. We also reeled with rib cracking laughter as this
NBC correspondent who strayed into the main bar usually peopled
by free girls relayed his near amorous encounter. “One of the girls
told me she wants me”, he says. “You should have told her that you
get this request everyday, so what’s new?”, another of his colleagues
retorted. We all enjoyed the fun and banters at the bar until after
2a.m when we had to retire to slumber in our various rooms. What
struck me in this second interaction with the White House Press
Corps in two years was the near absence of Africa in their despatches
and even discourses.
Save for the
glowing safari ride in Botswana and the memories of the beautiful
countryside in Uganda, Iraq virtually governed their lives. Though
President Bush was making his first heartbreaking trip to Africa
to demonstrate his poise as a “compassionate conservative”, the
trip was virtually eclipsed by the debacle in Iraq where close to
40 American soldiers have been killed as a result of guerrilla attacks
since the end of Gulf War 11 on May 1. The issues about Africa had
to take a back seat as a raging storm at home threaten to unsettle
the President. The American president sat on thorns as he merely
papered over the bloodletting in Liberia and the spectre of a continent
torn apart by the mushrooming of civil strife. The Bush administration
officials were riled by a bogus claim of how Iraq sought to buy
uranium from Niger got into the President’s State of the Union address
last January. The attempt to buck pass to a whipping boy was not
enough to assuage the rampaging Democrats aiming for Bush’s jugular.
Even the resolve by Director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
CIA, George Tenet to take responsibility for the line that could
not be proven in the president’s speech was merely pooh-poohed by
the Democrats.
“The buck stops
at the president’s table and he takes responsibility for anything
he says to the American people”, they seem to say. But how sad I
was that President Bush who promised to spend $15 billion on HIV/AIDS
never came to terms that malaria is still the highest killer on
the African continent. Malaria killed 400,000 people last year in
Nigeria alone. How I wish Africa can get a small slice of the budget
for taking care of the fierce but robust looking snuffer dogs used
by the US Secret Service for its roll back malaria programme. Iraq
hardly allowed Bush to spare thought for making definite commitment
to sending troops to Liberia, a country founded by freed American
slaves. He also glossed over how to stop the growing number of child
combatants in Africa’s wars. Responding to the demands of a large
number of refugees in a poverty ridden continent was hardly given
a thought. It was estimated by the year 2000 that Africa had half
of the 300,000 child soldiers. The continent is also said to be
home to 70 per cent of the world’s six million refugees by 2000.
This was before
the escalation of conflicts in the Great Lakes and Mano River. As
a Republican president who’s said to be a candidate of the military-industrial
complex, Bush’s nod was necessary to end the gun running in a continent
where sub Saharan Africa is estimated to spend $8 billion on arms.
The United Nations Development Programme UNDP says this amount is
enough to make a fundamental difference in the lives of the people
here. An abridged version was first published in the Sunday Punch
on July 27, 2003.
|
