Daydreaming is soft? Weak trolling Charles...I guess that whiff of colonialism just chaps you personally every time you catch it, huh?

Come on, white people have been day dreaming about Africa since at least the early 1980s.

@ 1, if William said that he daydreamed of traffic and put on urban sounds, Charles would praise him and profess his faith that the throne would be in good hands.

Anyway, calling him soft is just one more revealing insight to Charles' decrepit old-school notions on manhood.

@1 trolling? sorry, I was just trying to be funny at the prince's expense.

Soft? Sounds brilliant to me.

I may not choose Africa, but the sounds of the Rocky mountains (or any wilderness area I've spend time hiking and backpacking in) would be splendid when I'm stressed out.

Africa may be the first place William experienced uncultivated wilderness, so naturally that is where he'd "go" to get away.

Future king looks to Africa for solace. Back to the future.

#3

List of African countries by population density
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Afr…

Charles must wish he lived in Mauritius.

As far as batty brits, doesn't his Dad, Prince Charles talk to plants? I know he has a strong interest in all things ecological and wonder if he has been influencing Great Britain's current forward thrust into clean energies.

I loved this week's story of two cops challenging Prince Andrew to identify himself - as he strolled in Buckingham Palace gardens. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/…

#9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_throu…

Charles,
I have a CD of the roar of surf. Totally cool and very soothing. Drowns out the city noise if loud enough.

I also have a video of a fireplace. I "light" it from time to time. Last about 3 hours. That too soothes.

@4 - my bad - humor fail can come across in such unpredictable ways - I took it as an attempt to use insult as a means of attention getting. To be fair - insult can be hilarious - I was reminded by Fresh Air last week how much I liked Triumph on Conan (naturally, this was a Robert Smigel creation, not Conan's).

@2 - Dear Dog - like the worst ear-worm ever.

I think the point Charles is making is that William's Africa, like the Africa of too many colonial dipshits, is full of remarkable animals but no people. Most Westerners who visit Africa never even see the face of an African who is not a guide on a nature reserve.

I too put on CDs from Africa for relaxation, but mine have Kanda Bongo Man (featuring Diblo Dibala, the greatest guitarist who ever lived) or Tabu Ley Rochereau or Franco Luambo, or maybe Samba Magangala, or some township jive from South Africa, or maybe one of the fantastic Analog Africa compilations, not goddamn buffaloes.

Africans are people, dammit, not animals.

The prince is a goddamned idiot, like all of his class.

It matters little whether the 'future king of england' is soft or hard. The British 'monarchy' is a foetid and vestigial waste of English taxpayer money, and has zero political relevance. They are good only for generating tabloid sales, and making uncritical Americans wax nostalgic about some far off time that never really existed anyway. :>P

please define "stressful day", heir to the british throne.

Can't help but wonder what a 'royal' considers to be "having quite a stressful day..."

Even when they serve in the military, they've got to have the back-of-the-mind reassurance that there's virtually zero chance of them getting so much as scratched.

@14 Americans hatin' on the British monarchy since 1775.

@2: I fucking KNEW it was going to be Toto.

#7: Are you saying Mauritius must be some urban hellscape because it's dense and in scary Africa?

I can certainly see the appeal of Mauritius. Africa needs some positive PR and a sheltered prince with images of wild elephants and bush people isn't it...

Mauritius (Port Louis, capitol):

@13 - I'll see you Diblo and raise you an Ali (and heck, Vieux) Farka Toure along with a dash of Mtkutze and Diabate for good measure. That doesn't make me particularly more "authentic" in my understanding of Africa.

I don't know if William is an idiot or not - I doubt that even if he were a Serious Thinking Intellectual he'd have the freedom to allow those thoughts to be heard. Yes, it's certainly a pity he can't offer much more than sort of feel-good quasi-eco/conservation do-gooder-ism - and honestly, even if he could (and did have good ideas about) do more to help Africa, I think the Africans have had quite enough of Colonialism.

Most African governments have done a fine job of demonstrating their ability to out-perform their former colonial rulers at asset-stripping and resource pillaging anyway. along with using wedge cultural identity politics to divide and exploit popular opinion - in short, I'm not sure they've anything more to learn from Europeans. Or is that not what you meant?

William's patter strikes me as harmless at worst (it's not even paternalistic) and going after it for humor strikes me in this case as kind of...looking for an excuse to attack.

@20, I have no idea what you're talking about; I never used the word "authentic", which is the least authentic word in the English language, and the search for it is the most boring thing in the world.

As for what Willie can "offer" "the Africans", I think the obvious answer is not more colonialism or asset-stripping or whatever, and it's not even "helping", which is not what Willie is doing here: it is, pretty simply, "attention". Notice the place, and the people in it, the same way you notice Australia or Switzerland or Quebec or Sao Paulo. It's a cultural, customary, and economic place, not just a safari, whether you're hunting the big animals with rifles or cameras.

Your focus on "helping Africa" is telling. It's Western paternalism, which is in fact intimately tied to Western pastoralism. Both are inaccurate; both are belittling; both are damaging. Africa has been in large part destroyed by all the helping, which is more closely allied to the exploitation and pillaging etc. than you might thing.

The best help anyone can give Africa is to face it on its own terms, good and bad. Stop fumbling around to "help", and start dealing with them as if they were your neighbors. It's just another part of the world.

The Western world, for all its pleasures, is a tiny, dark corner constrained by its own prejudices. We have much more to learn about them than they do about us; they know all about us. We could start by looking at them. Not their fucking megafauna.

It's not about "authenticity". And it's not just tourism, either (though that would be a start). It's about getting to know your brother. Your brother is not out in the fields lowing with the buffaloes, he's in the city trying to earn a living, just like you are. You want to help? Buy something. Sell something.

As for "an excuse to attack", you don't really need one, do you? Willie and his people are enough of an excuse right there. Now is always the best time to piss on the aristocracy. Willie's only function on this earth, especially now that his stud service has been completed, is symbolic. And the message he is conveying when he says stuff like this is "the purpose of the African continent is to recharge our postmodern Western stress with relaxing moments in nature, preferably at a couple removes from reality, via DVD, though I also enjoy good old-fashioned helicopter safaris to the savannah with my jolly old porters too. Pip pip, I say, jolly good fun, what!" He's like a weird mix of P.G. Wodehouse and a middle manager at Tesco's.

@21 I have no idea what you're talking about; I never used the word "authentic", which is the least authentic word in the English language, and the search for it is the most boring thing in the world.

You were offering rather detailed recital of the artists through which you appreciated Africa as a contrast to William's megafauna - implying bona-fides, hence 'authenticity'. My word, not yours, sorry you don't like it but it's a pretty effective word for conveying a concept.

My point about post-Colonial Africa was precisely to illustrate my appreciation of them as people, not novelties, "good and bad."

And the message he is conveying when he says stuff like this is "the purpose of the African continent is to recharge our postmodern Western stress with relaxing moments in nature, preferably at a couple removes from reality, via DVD, though I also enjoy good old-fashioned helicopter safaris to the savannah with my jolly old porters too. Pip pip, I say, jolly good fun, what!"

Well, perhaps he's reducing it to it's tourist attractions...and yet, you yourself say, "that would be a start".

It seems to me that your objection is that he's treating them as an entertainment experience - objectifying them - and yet, you don't critique him for this so much as for the way in which he appreciates them - it's too simplistic, too sophomoric. Yours (with your list of real African Artists) is more genuine. Pot, Kettle. Give me a break. I enjoy most of your rants, and while I agree any day is a good day to strangle the last King with the entrails of the last Priest, this one is hollow.

Oh, and it's not the paternalistic "helping" - its the rapacious mis-use and abuse of the resources, including people, that has done the damage. Western paternalism is odious, but mainly because of the hypocrisy - it was always more a pretext for theft than anything.

@17 - That hate officially ended on 29 July 1981when Charles and Diana got married.

We're all a little batty, Charles, including you.

@22, you're not getting it at all.

I named some musical artists not to establish bona fides -- you seem to be keen on striking and evaluating poses for some reason -- but to mention some PEOPLE I happen to know about. Africa is made up of PEOPLE. Willie's Africa doesn't have any PEOPLE in it, only wildlife.

Get it? That's the point: PEOPLE. Westerners only rarely go to Africa for the PEOPLE who are there; they don't look at them, they don't talk to them, they don't know what they're doing (unless they're planning on taking their kids home with them).

You say "you don't critique him for this so much as for the way in which he appreciates them", which is completely missing the point: he doesn't "appreciate them" at all. For him, "they" don't exist. All he sees is wildebeests and elephants and shit. To him, Africa is a nature reserve, with nobody in it.

The "good start" to which I was referring would be tourism oriented towards PEOPLE and their artifacts, not animals. Instead of heading straight to the national parks to look at the critters, people should be heading to the cities to see what PEOPLE have made there. Maybe that would create a little understanding of what's really going on there -- an understanding that almost nobody I seeing talking about "Africa" seems to have.

Including you. You have this thing about "authenticity" stuck in your mind, but it's a bullshit concept. What does "genuine" mean? I exist. So does Kanda Bongo Man. He's not a symbol of anything; he's a PERSON. You mean his passport says "DR Congo on it? I don't think so; I think it says "France". Who cares? Authenticity doesn't convey any meaning about Africans any more than it does about Seattleites. It's an empty word. And the idea it reinforces -- that some things are more "natural", or "real" or "untainted" or whatever than other things, which isn't true.

In fact, one of the things that's really cool about African music of the type I mentioned is that it ISN'T "authentic", i.e., traditional -- it's inflected by American music and Cuban music and Brazilian music and Colombian music, all of which are African music too, and fifty different kinds of African music which did and did not leave the continent, stayed in one place and changed or moved a hundred or ten thousand miles and came back, its reflection scattered back in a hundred ways from a hundred sources, African and otherwise, with a hundred changes mixed in along the way. It's a modern cultural product, a mediated product, not a primitive one. Just like our music, in fact.

You want to talk about "helping", for some reason. But the receipt of aid is not a cultural product. It's boring (and it serves the dictators). Africans are doing really interesting things all the time. Why aren't you interested in that? Why isn't Prince Willie? Why is Africa just a landscape to him, a place where buffaloes make sounds for him to listen to? Why is the only thing you can think of to say about the PEOPLE there is what kind of help you think they need, or what kind of resource crimes you think they have committed?

Why can't you talk about what's going on in Gabarone or Port Louis or Coutonou? Why doesn't Willie daydream about Ikeja Computer Village in Lagos, where thousands of containers of Chinese goods are shipped and distributed, instead of his untainted wildlife? I'll tell you why: because he isn't interested in PEOPLE. He's interested in the idea of the primitive, the time before history and the time before PEOPLE. Which is offensive in the face of those people, who want to talk to you.

@13: Franco is a genius. The recent compilations Francophonic Vols. 1 & 2 are absolutely definitive. I love Tabu Ley Rochereau as well (do you have their collaboration Omona Wapi? It's gorgeous. Rochereau's recent compilation is called The Voice of Lightness, equally definitive). And Youssou N'dour and Etoile de Dakar's The Rough Guide To... is equal to all these. Sorry for the gushing, but fellow African music fans are hard to come by here.

@27: Well said, as usual.

I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro several years ago and enjoyed my trip enormously, but the only Kenyans and Tanzanians I met were in the context of service staff at hotels and guides/porters on the hike.

In contrast, when I spent 5 weeks in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup, we rented out a small guest house from a South African family, got to meet many of their friends and relatives, and had dozens and dozens of random conversations with people from many African countries at games and while traveling. All in all, a far more memorable experience of "Africa" full of people, not just beautiful scenery and animals.