Joe Flood | Updates

Iran: I came, I saw I wondered

Joe Flood — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 03:34:12 -0400

In 2004-2007 I went to Iran three times. This is the story of what I saw on my first nine-day work trip, where I had three very different experiences in three different large cities. I suppose my lasting impression is of a very ancient culture undergoing its own process of modernisation while out of touch with the world, of a substantial divide in the population, and of a culture of risk-taking and conspiracy theories.

Oddly, when I first posted this story online,, it was instantly routed to a dozen addresses in Washington DC.

The link here delivers both the story and subscribes to my newsletter, which is based on new posts to this website.

]]>

Big Dog and Man

Joe Flood — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 09:07:47 -0400

Flood, J (2024). “Big Dog and Man.” Hecate, vol. 47 no. 1/2, 2021 [2013], pp. 183–198.

Alf was the biggest dog, the most respected dog, and he would always win a fight. He was a loyal and fair companion, and a Pig Dog, there to cover your back fearlessly when the boars broke out of the brush. He was what Merv wanted to be, and never could be.

]]>

John Coad and the Monmouth Rebellion

Joe Flood — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:04:58 -0400

One of 70 or so posts that eventually ended up in the Unravelling the Code book. This 2007 piece tells the story of the Monmouth Rebellion, the Bloody Assizes, and John Coad who escaped hanging by being transported to the West Indies

]]>

L21: four and a half millennia of expansion and redistribution

Joe Flood — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 09:44:40 -0400

The first of half a dozen papers on various Y-haplogroups in Britain. L21 was the main "Celtic" haplogroup in the Isles until the mass arrival of Germanic U106 after 100 BC. More than 29000 people have viewed this paper.

]]>

Terror in Tarcutta

Joe Flood — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 09:38:05 -0400

For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened.-Exodus.

First story in a 300 page book of reminiscences, mostly covering the years 1980-82. Our ill-fated trip from Canberra to Melbourne with three small children, where the the car apparently cut out, we bought the ill-fated Leyland P76, and were hit by a vast swarm of locusts.

]]>

The Overlanders

Joe Flood — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 09:34:22 -0400

My family's epic overland journey across Australia in a Masonite caravan to visit Merv Lilley's relatives in Yeppoon Qld in 1961

]]>

Radio Blue Mountains

Joe Flood — Sun, 7 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Two days ago, I had a 45 minute radio interview on Community Radio Blue Mountains. "Rights, Rorts and Rants". I spoke on my work visits to Gaza (in "Buffalo Gals") and to Iran ("I came I saw I wondered")

We all had a good time and it went down very well. Plenty to think about for those who don't realise how long the Gaza horror has been going on, and for those who think Iran is only about mad mullahs.

]]>

WHY BUFFALO GALS?

Joe Flood — Tue, 2 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The book has a great deal to say about conditions in Kenya and in many other countries Jack visited in 1994-96. Amid the joys and troubles of travel in Africa, the narrative runs through a number of quirky, sometimes hilarious incidents while Jack is working at UN-Gigiri. Yet the book is not called Africa at Large or Gigiri Gallop or See you in the Serengeti, it is Buffalo Gals.

Why alienate audiences interested in patrolling my complex observations by introducing challenging and intrusive subjects like:

· prostitutes working in a bar,
· the emotional and physical needs of men who have left their families behind.

So. The book is Buffalo Gals because the original intention of the book as conceived in 1997 was to describe the lives of the Buffalo Gals, Njoki, Maggie and Gladys, and also middle-class Mumbi, within the social strata from which they emerged. In their dangerous lives, the political background in which they operated was only weakly contingent.

The uniqueness of the Buffalo Bills testimony is crucial. Anyone else who had visited these many different countries or had worked in the UN could talk at length about their situation, and tell many tales, possibly more interesting than mine. My particular angle was that I had made genuine friends with the girls of the bar, once they discovered that all I wanted was to enjoy a beer and their company. They knew I regarded their lives to be just as interesting and valid as anyone else’s. They were my friends.

Like most public venues, the bar morphed and changed, and by 1997 it was already different. Before 2005 it was closed and remodelled, and Nairobi lost “something wonderful if irredeemably seedy”. Without my testimony, Buffalo Bills would be lost in time.

In all my books, there is a place of entry from one world into the another world of very different possibilities, a portal if you like. In this one, it is Buffalo Bills.

Prostitution in Africa

There are very few formal sector jobs for women in Africa, and most women’s jobs are extremely poorly paid. The hospitality industry is a male preserve, and so are many other areas that usually provide women with employment.. Yet something like 40% of women households are women-headed, and health and education expenses must be met by these single women, and many choose sex work over domestic work or selling vegetables. With so many involved, the work is very competitive. European clients are held at a premium.

Statistics for numbers of women participating are rubbery and contested, but there are an estimated 2.5 million sex workers in sub-Saharan Africa. In most countries it is decriminalised, but procuring, brothels and pimping are illegal.

Despite its widespread prevalence, sex work is not well-tolerated as a way of life or profession in Africa. The taxi driver in Ethiopia who mutters endlessly about harlots. The traditional tribal people singing and dancing around the fire in Turkana to impress their girls with how it is bad to go to Nairobi and become a prostitute.

The crowd in Buffalo Bills and other Nairobi bars were entirely freelance in Jack’s time, and the atmosphere was not particularly sleazy or unpleasant, as it could be in Eastern Europe or South-east Asia. Jack encountered no madams in Africa and saw only one underage girl soliciting.

Prostitution is not only heterosexual. Jack was approached by a young boy in Karnak. Egypt does not admit homosexuality exists hence there are no laws and no recorded male prostitution.

Why is Buffalo Bills significant?

Buffalo Bills first came to global attention in a three-paragraph mention in National Geographic in 1990. Prior to this, In the 1970s the whole hotel was known as Buffalo Bills. Artists and others choosing to live outside the mainstream occupied small apartments around the square of Heron Court. In much the same manner as King’s Cross in Sydney had in the 1950s been an artist’s colony before being taken over as a red light bar. It is not known when the owners allowed the bar to be fully colonised by sex workers, but it was probably in the late 1980s.

By 1994 Geoff Crowther was writing in his Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit

“The liveliest bar in Nairobi by far is Buffalo Bill’s at Heron Court … Decked out with mock, denim covered wagons surrounding a central bar, it’s extremely popular with a wide range of resident expatriates engaged in all manner of professions, tourists and locals. It’s the place to go if you’re single, but just as much fun for a couple. This is also one of the favourite bars of safari operators in Nairobi”. (abridged).

This misleading description from the Bible of budget travel brought streams of tourists to Buffalo Bills to look for Kenya action amid its real characters. To be faced by what Steve and Carmen saw, a crowd of prostitutes and their clients. This made the bar both notorious and legendary in equal measure.

Jack’s friend Noel had already predisposed Jack to go there. After a couple of days left alone in the hotel, Lonely Planet drew Jack and Laslo to the bar, where Jack was overwhelmed by the exotic bar, his instant rapport with Maggie, the strangeness of travel and the strength of Tusker Beer. He fell to Njoki’s elaborate fabrications – and then it was too late.

The real situation

With no experience, Jack did not identify BBs as a place of sex trade, as he would have done a year later. The women were modest and discreet, warm, friendly, talkative, and quite happy to sit and enjoy a beer. In fact, considerably better-behaved and better dressed than single nightclub-goers in Australia. The Buffalo Gals were very different to women in the strip joints and brothels of Canada and Australia, or the bar girls in Bulgaria or Thailand. These places mostly featured miserable or angry near-naked females on display in a sleazy atmosphere, like curiosities or cuts of meat.

Instead, the women in Buffalo Bills were dressed in neck-to-ankle fashions. This was forced by local expectations of modesty. Ordinary girls wearing short skirts could be stripped naked publicly or even raped to teach them ”a lesson”. Standing at a bus stop when they were aged 16, Mumbi and a friend were once almost raped by thugs who thought their dresses showed their legs,

As long as the dress code was followed, the women were mostly left alone by police and gangs. The regulars at BBs enjoyed a way of life made possible by the affordability of the women and beer and the relaxed, entertaining environment. Everts the Belgian stayed in Heron Court when he was in Kenya, kept a girlfriend in his flat, and took other women for variety when he felt like it.

Geoff Crowther was similar to Everts, except that his Kenya girlfriend worked for him and helped him put together the Lonely Planet Guide. He also had a Korean wife back in his tropical hideaway in Byron Bay, whom he lived with for half the year.

All these older white characters kept a low profile, They were aware that their activities, while comfortable and a great alternative way of life for them, would be disapproved of by their peers. They might have been providing the women with an income, with respect of a sort, and even pleasure in some cases, but society at large would never see it that way. In particular, the new generation of feminists were totally opposed, as Crowther says when Jack bails him up over his misreporting. The feminists would see it not as a willing and comfortable meeting of cultures, but as gender exploitation and neo-colonisation.

Buffalo Bills could be a gateway for visitors who wanted to visit the “real urban Kenya” like Jack. Just as Njoki did, Crowther’s girlfriend Alice introduced him to what he describe the “wrong side of the tracks, where all you see are smiling children’s faces, tenacity and extreme hardship”. That is the Kenya Jack wanted to see, not the flower gardens of Gigiri. Though Njoki’s snarl, “You think my home is a museum?”

Critics might see Jack’s interest in a similar light to those taking “slum tours”: as voyeuristic, exploitative, and a "commodification of poverty" where wealthy tourists gawk at locals living in hardship. But Jack was in a genuine position to assist, and coming from a poor situation himself, he empathised with the locals and accepted their communities as a valid, mostly tolerable way of life, although their marginal position was precarious if something went wrong .

Three men in deprivation

Many men, and some women too, find it extremely difficult to divorce or otherwise separate from their spouses. There is the loneliness, the loss of physical and emotional support and companionship. To most men, the loss of sex is the most glaring need at first, though it is ultimately not the most important.

Buffalo Gals contrasts three men who are alone. At one extreme there is Steve, the giant sea-kayaker, sword dancer and flower arranger. He is a true romantic. To find a partner, he advertises in the newspaper, chooses the best and deluges her with poetry and flowers. Success. He is deeply uncomfortable in the Buffalo Bills Bar, full of friendly women of suspect morality, and he leaves as soon as possible.

At another extreme there is Rod Silver. He is distressed about his unpleasant divorce and the fight over custody. He is not ready for a relationship and chooses sex workers for uncomplicated short-term company. In Buffalo Bills, he canvasses the place for action and in only three days he investigates the possibilities far more thoroughly than Jack ever did, even moving into the apartment of one girl.

There is also Laslo, who first took Jack to BBs for a kind of sociological investigation. He conducted this under the radar, having fun with Maggie while staying uninvolved and out of trouble.

Jack in the bar

Somewhere in the middle is Jack, We know from the prequel Jacob’s Ladder and several short stories that Jack regards sex as a powerful spiritual act. His one night stand with Dr Elizabeth sends him into the stratosphere for a month. For him, as for Steve, casual sex of any kind is impossible, and the idea of buying sex is inconceivable, though it might help to reduce his extreme deprivation.

Like Lazlo, Jack is curious. From the story “Sandbox”, we know Jack’s father told him he ”wasn’t a real boy” when he was small, and he has had no positive male role models throughout his youth. Therefore he wants to see what “real boys” are like so that maybe he can learn to become one. While he never mixes with the expatriates, over a few months he forms real friendships with a few of the women at Buffalo Bills without the complications of sex or money (restricted to Njoki), and he finds a social life there when Njoki disappears and he needs it.

Normally, Jack backs away in fright from female advances, though by the time of this book he has learned to control his panic. When he does manage to overcome his inhibitions and actually lies with someone new - Njoki - he is overjoyed and believes he is in love. As with Elizabeth, he does not begin sexual relations until he recovers from the “shock of the new” feels safe with her, and checks her for AIDS – not aware she is a sex worker, as she never asks for money. Soon after, to curb approaches, he lets the word be spread by Maggie that “he can’t do it with prostitutes” – which is certainly the case in the shorter term – and so he is mostly left alone, except when he ventures onto other turf like New Florida

One of the most effective tricks for dealing with the insistent crowds of sellers in the tourist parts developing world is to hire one to keep the others at bay. By accident, Jack does exactly this with Njoki, who is maybe the tallest, toughest and most jealous of all the bar regulars..

The women find Jack to be something very unusual “You are a very good man. We do not see men like you round here”, says Maggie. Even Gladys starts to think that maybe she Jack could be her first real boyfriend. Eventually, however, Jack sees the dark side of the bar too clearly, and leaves it all behind.

The Dark Side

Although Buffalo Bills looks just as Crowther described it, a colourful place where Kenya’s real characters meet, where the “wrong side of the tracks” has a portal. it doesn’t take long for Jack to encounter the darker scene.

First there is the hospitalisation of Gladys, after an attack by other girls, and her pack rape in the taxi. Then there is Njoki’s compulsive and casual lying, which goes beyond what even the Bar can tolerate. From the start, her complete unfaithfulness, tricks and lying hurt Jack and causes him to make doubtful and dangerous decisions. She does the same to several other “nice” men during the course of the book.

Monica, who is an honest woman, soon fills him in. After confirming Njoki’s profession, she tells Jack he should never believe what any of the girls say about each other, as they are in competition and will try to put each other down at any opportunity.

Then she says something very telling. “If you come asking for someone, they will never tell you where she is. They will say, that girl has died or has married.” In other words, as the girls see it, these are the only two exits from the bar. In trying to find alternative work for Njoki and Maggie, Jack is pushing against tradition and the lifetime experience of the women. His failure to find them work just confirms everything they already know.

The mysterious disappearances of Zemei and Cutie, girls mentioned in Lonely Planet Guide with Gladys, is ominous. And soon the dying starts, first Stella and then others.

As to marriage, the older women who have married, and who Njoki therefore holds as having reached the pinnacle and object of the profession, are fairly nasty pieces of work. Both Nancy and Pierina only socialise with Njoki as long as she buys the drinks (on Jack’s dollar) and they connive in cheating Jack. Carol is downright evil.

Monica tells Jack that Maggie is embellishing about goods stolen from her house, and that she and her roommate both think the other set the burglary up.

What finally causes Jack to leave (apart from traffic) is Njoki’s final heist involving three different thefts, her identity switch, and Gladys who says this is just standard behaviour. Then he sees a miserable 13-year old leaving with the old man. Finally, with Njoki gone, the speed with which the whole bar moves on him just confirms his new picture of an “aviary full of birds with all the pecking, twittering, swooping, posturing and territorial behaviour.” There are no ethics: men, particularly mzungus, are fair game to them all and are there to be stripped of as much money as possible, as soon as possible. Never as allies who might see them into a better life. The lack of any kind of constructive morality is too much for Jack to take. And so he leaves the bar behind.

Still, in Rod Silver’s words to Jack just before Istanbul,

if anyone has ever wrung out the last bit of experience out of a job as you’ve done in the last few years I’d be surprised.

And part of that experience was his year in the lair of the Buffalo.

]]>

EAST AND SOUTHERN AFRICA IN THE EARLY 1990s

Joe Flood — Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Jack arrived in Africa in March 1994, in a watershed year for the continent. In April, the African National Congress won power in South Africa, ending 45 years of apartheid. The country had been in a turbulent transition period for several years, during a reform period that ended minority rule, and the collapse of the homeland system. A referendum of the white population in 1992 supported and accelerated the process.

That same month, the Hutu Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were killed when their plane was shot down. This set in chain the 100-day Rwandan genocide, when up to three quarters of the Tutsi population were wiped out. Millions of Hutus then fled to Zaire, fearing reprisals from the victorious Tutsi-led Patriotic Front. Kenya was flooded with aid money and the currency doubled in value.

As well, both the AIDS epidemic and the neoliberal structural adjustment programmes were at their peak, creating havoc and poverty across Sub-Saharan Africa.

South Africa had an unexpectedly orderly transition from apartheid to constitutional democracy. The ANC took over government in 1993,. Despite becoming a key industrialized economy in Africa, the country continues to grapple with extreme wealth disparities, high poverty rates, and chronic unemployment. There were multiple corruption scandals, and the country became increasingly violent and dangerous.

Jack went to South Africa twice on World Bank missions to look at changes in the housing system as apartheid ended. On the first trip, to Jo’berg and Capetown, on the second to Pretoria, the Drakensberg range, Lesotho and Namibia, each of which were responding differently to black rule.

Young black professionals were trained rapidly for management roles. At the Roadside Lodge Bar, Jack watched the numbers of black professionals rise from one man to almost everyone there in four years.

In Drakensberg, Jack met a genuinely racist Boer who had become grudgingly pro-Mandela but was horrified about “miscegenation”. and the thought of his children with "dirty Africans".

Namibia gained independence in 1990, the whites tried to maintain a white enclave in Windhoek, with suitably high indicators of success, while slums built up on the northern outskirts. Jack met Stella Magoye here and asked her to join his team.

In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni ousted the regime of Milton Obote in 1986, but rebel groups continued to fight until 1995. His regime has been variously categorised as illiberal democracy, or as an elected dictatorship. Although authoritarian, he never promoted murder on a wide scale like the regimes of his predecessors. He liked evidence-based policy.

Jack went to Uganda twice, once with his own car. Mr Byaruhanga, the UN-Cities focal point, was the strongest supporter of his programme in Africa. His statistical assistant who collected the indicators was the first person Jack met to die of AIDS

In Tanzania, Julius Nyerere had presided over a benign nonaligned socialist state, but the economy weakened in the 1980s . He retired in 1990, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tanzania began a process of market liberalisation. The country suffered worsening food shortages, decaying educational and health services, unemployment, lack of accommodation, empty shops, and rampant corruption. As is usual, structural adjustment brought galloping inflation somewhat under control. Multiparty democracy was introduced in 1992 and elections were held in 1995. Under Structural Adjustment with the IMF, most parastatals were privatised. The servicing of debt was taking 40% of the budget. Food production did not increase during the 1990s, while the population increased at 3% per year. After 2000, an international program of debt forgiveness supported an inflow of capital, for mineral extraction and export crops. The poverty rate still sits at over 92%, one of the worst levels in Africa., though Kenya is not much better.

The Maasai in Tanzania have particularly suffered under economic policy. At first they were removed from their ancestral lands to make way for large-scale single-crops for export. More recently they have been evicted under a "green agenda" for more wildlife and tourist enclaves, including an exclusive game reserve for the Royal Family of Dubai.

Jack went to Dar es Salaam with Carmen in 1995. He met with the Ardhi Institute, who provided training courses in surveying, design and building economics. He was extremely pleased with the expertise he found there, and two academics were the first to fill in the Indicators form.

In mid 1996, Jack returned as a tourist, travelling across the Serengeti and into the Ngorongoro crater.

Jack and Carmen then proceeded to Zanzibar in severe heat during Ramadan. The first elections were held that year. An economic benefit of the succeeding liberalisation was a thriving tourist industry, mostly Italians and Germans Jack already met on the coast north of Mombasa.

In Ethiopia, the dictator Mengistu fled in 1991 as Soviet support ended, concluding a decades-long civil war. Muslim Eritrea seceded in 1993. The new government allowed a system of ethnic federalism. Jack visited twice and enjoyed Ethiopia’s unique and peculiar culture.

In Somalia, the collapse of central government was followed by brutal clan war and famine as Somalia became a “failed state”. A UN military and humanitarian intervention took place following the withdrawal of the USA, but the UN withdrew in March 1995. An enormous refugee complex of over 300,000 displaced Somalis was established at Dadaab Kenya. about 100 km from the Somali border. Mumbi’s elder sister was a professional aid worker at Dadaab.

It was too dangerous for Jack to go to Somalia, but Greta Gustin had been to the North, where her boss took a bullet in the leg. Jack met Somali former refugees in several small Kenyan towns. They were regarded as dangerous by Kenyans because of concealed weapons and their clannishness.

Eventually, Somali refugees in Nairobi established a vast trade network and today they provide a third of the city’s tax base.

Zambia, formerly Northern Rhodesia, moved to multiparty democracy in 1991 and instituted a heavy program of structural adjustment, which destroyed the economy. Jack found a very effective senior official who organised he collection of his indicators rapidly and professionally. He bought a multiple “emerging heads” ebony statue in a cultural village.

Sudan Colonialism always connected diverse areas and tribes into an artificial unity. In 1946, the British declared two very different zones to be a single country called Sudan– the Arabic-speaking Muslim north and the English-trained Christian South – and in doing so, they set the stage for 50 years of brutal conflict.

At independence in 1956, the South was given little representation and an army mutiny and civil war broke out. The Cold War power blocs supplied arms to the combatants. The Soviets and USA switched sides, with the Soviets supporting the south at first, and then the North. The countries neighbouring Sudan supported different sides in the conflict.

Omar Al-Bashir took power in 1989 and became President in 1993. Under his more militant Islamic regime, Sharia law was instituted, and the war in the south was declared to be a jihad.

Jack was right to be apprehensive during his two 1995 visits to Sudan. The regime was increasingly accused of harbouring extremist Islamist groups. Although Jack was never aware of any of this, Osama bin Laden had been expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991 and resided in Khartoum until 1996 while he built up his fortune and turned al-Qaeda into a structured organisation. Carlos the Jackal, a Venezuelan who orchestrated terror attacks in France, was captured in Khartoum in August 1994.

South Sudan became independent in 2011. As a result of extended war and deprivation, the country has the world’s lowest nominal per capita GDP per person, andwith Somalia it has the lowest Human Development Index.

Another civil war broke out in 2003, between the Western provinces of (North) Sudan (Darfur) and the Arabised east, commencing with a genocide. As in the previous conflicts, millions were forced into refugee camps, .

Jack travelled to Zimbabwe and Botswana only on holiday. Tourism and travel in southern Africa were still dominated by rich South Africans. In a strong El Niño climatic event, drought was taking its toll, with the Okavango Delta almost dried out.

Zimbabwe had been an “industrial giant” by African standards in 1980, but the country steadily declined, despite mining so many critical materials. Structural adjustment hit Zimbabwe particularly hard. Robert Mugabe took power in Zimbabwe in 1990, thereby ending a long-standing “state of emergency” but creating crises of bad management and impoverishing the country. The economic situation has since been erratic - exports tripled between 1979 and 1997, then fell back to the original level by 2008. Since then the economy has been highly volatile, and hyperinflation has occurred. Zimbabwe has had the greatest rate of expansion of informal settlements of any country.

Nevertheless, the GDP per person is about the same as Kenya, whilethere is almost no poverty. The country trades extensively with South Africa, unlike its neighbours Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania.

Passing through Harare, Jack was trapped with his family in a poorly-maintained elevator. In his travels in 1996, Jack could not find any accommodation at all in Victoria Falls and had to stay in the back room of an African travel agent who took pity on him.

Kenya

Kenya’s history features throughout Buffalo Gals. The British had a considerably stronger presence in Kenya than in the rest of East Africa, because of the lack of organised resistance, and similar types of apartheid-style exclusion from government and territory. The Mau Mau Rebellion began in 1952, and tens of thousands of Kenyans were held in barbed wire detention camps, while being excluded from Nairobi city. Mumbi’s father acted covertly as Treasure for the revolt. The British began to decolonise Kenya, and finally in 1963, the country became self-governing under the Kikuyu Jomo Kenyatta.

Kenyatta instituted pro-capitalist policies to court the USA, unlike all his neighbours. He maintained stable government with a fairly dictatorial style. He kept the army small in size, to discourage coups. At first, Kenyatta originally bought back land from European farmers and distributed hundreds of thousands of small holdings or shambas to Africans. However, 1.5 million acres of government land near the coast and in the Rift Valley were then transferred to wealthy Kikuyus, causing ongoing racial vilolence.

On Kenyatta’s death in 1978, the Vice President Daniel arap Moi, from a small tribe, the Tugen, was appointed as interim President. He was considered fairly harmless at first, but immediately strengthened Kenyatta’s one-party rule while keeping to the strategic pro-Western course. After the failed 1982 coup (when Mumbi’s classmates were locked in school), he began a programme of selectively eliminating his opponents, without the excesses and wholesale massacres in Uganda, Ethiopia and the Sudan. Kenya was apparently doing well a haven of stability where East African headquarters of many organisations were maintained. But the regime was highly corrupt and quite repressive.

With the demise of Communism, the West was no longer prepared to support dictators and kleptocrats like Moi. Elections were demanded in 1992, and Moi had to repatriate billions of dollars he had concealed abroad. Structural Adjustment, as in other countries, forced a sharp decline in Kenya’s prosperity. Its principal export goods –tourism, tea, and flowers - have not been a strong basis on which to sustain a country.

From 2002, Kenya began to capitalise on its reputation as a regional hub for technology and financial services with a growing entrepreneurial class. Mobile phones had a very rapid takeup, creating new tech-millionaires, bypassing Moi's inadequate fixed line service. Devices are enow assembled in Kenya. Kenya's economy began to improve at a moderate rate.

]]>

JACK DOE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE TASK

Joe Flood — Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

According to Orson Scott Card, “Who but adolescents are free to have adventures?” Jack Doe at 43 was enmeshed in a great adventure or three, therefore he was still an adolescent at heart.

He was an unlikely recruit to the UN. He was poorly equipped to handle any significant work on behalf of developing countries. He had never been to any, and certainly never worked in any. He came from an all-Anglo country, and by 1993, he had only ever met one African, no Arabs, and few Asians. He had no particular negotiation or fundraising skills. He was a terrible traveller – unable to sleep on planes, suffering from several forms of travel sickness and prone to getting lost and walking away from important documents once he became tired. He had never been in a slum, apart from Redfern where he was born. He could not really function emotionally if he was separated from his family.

As Sammy Lo said, “Doe does not know what he is doing.”

Standing in his favour however, he had a facility with numbers, an ability to “see how things worked”, an unshakeable desire to assist the unfortunate and disadvantaged, and a willingness to try unconventional approaches. He was unencumbered by prejudice, both in work and in person. He had no personal agenda, and was very ready to try whatever would work.

Steve Mayo – poet, sea-kayaker, carpet connoisseur and flower arranger - was the first mentor Jack had ever known. When Jack saw Steve’s program, he knew this was for him – and so did Steve. Jack had the bright idea to combine indicators with the facilitation techniques he had learned in Industrial Democracy. Like all committed researchers, Jack was prepared to sacrifice everything to try out his research on a broad scale – and the world was the broadest possible scale.

Other things were working toward a career change for Jack. Unlike most of his colleagues he had never seen the world. He was not happy in CSIRO nor with the way the organisation was progressing, and he feared his ten-year dream run would soon be over. After 20 years in the workforce he was still struggling financially. The situation with his wife Carmen had deteriorated and he felt a break would benefit them both. His boys Gabe and Rafe were enthusiastic about the prospect of having their education paid for while seeing the world.

Jack saw his dream bear fruit. His facilitation methods worked perfectly everywhere in the world to generate consensus strategies and measurement over a very wide range of topics and circumstances, and most of the indicators chosen were the same everywhere. He attracted more participants in the programme than even he thought possible. And he discovered the City Development Index, which had real potential to change the way the world looked at cities.

However, it was all too easy. While Jack would have liked the success of the programme to be due to his brilliance, he just happened to be in the right place doing the right thing at the right time. Once he had gotten rid of Greta Gustin and the computer committee, and Madeline the intern had laid down the template for their newsletter, they had what they needed and it was plain sailing. ,

At the time, the African nations were all being heavily pushed under structural adjustment to reduce expenditure on everything their people valued in favour of growing export crops. This was being done by the IMF without any real evidence it would work.

Evidence was what the African countries needed, and when the Indicators Programme told them they already had this evidence and they could collect it, they jumped at the chance. They could not lose – if results were good, they could say their strategies were working. If results were bad, they could say they needed more help and less stringency.

Once the programme had the backing of G77 and had completed a few successful demonstrations in different parts of the world, it was just as Steve had said. The donors were all looking for something that would work, could be budgeted in advance and be non-controversial. Indicators met the bill.

So Jack completed his impossible task quite easily, considerably exceeding even his own expectations of 100 cities in the programme. Except that the success was only temporary …

]]>

Dorothy Hewett's birthday 21 May

Joe Flood — Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My last words to Dorothy Hewett

HAIL DOROTHY

I always loved you Joe.
We went through so much
together

Yes we did
I said

]]>

Joe Flood — Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Marilla and I spent yesterday putting in some short stories for a competition. Yes, competitions are a fundraising lottery for the journals, but it's good for us to smarten up a few pieces.

The three I submitted:.

- Sandbox. A small boy is being beaten up because he has started pointing out holes in his father's paranoid delusions, The school sees he's disturbed and puts him on Sandbox Therapy, His mother acts more forcefully - she grabs the kids and runs.

- Dreaming the Sublime. A spectacular, lost first kiss is repeated in a dream 50 years later, within a context of Hindu cosmology.

- The Editor. An incompetent internal editor, a general menace, can only be removed when he hits on the girlfriend of the Institute Director.

Marilla's piece was "Fusion and Nightingales" her experiences in an aged care home, watching her mother and three other residents sink into senescence.

]]>

The HIV-AIDS EPIDEMIC

Joe Flood — Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The more transmissible HIV-1 variant was first identified in Kinshasa from a 1959 sample, developing from a simian virus In a large urban environment. This variant never spread in West Africa.

AIDS cases were first diagnosed in Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa in 1983, the year after the gay epidemic in the USA began (though it had probably been around Africa much longer). AIDS appeared in the rest of East Africa over the next two years.

By 1998, AIDS was the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa, with 1.8 million deaths annually – double the deaths from malaria.

In Kenya, the incidence in the general population peaked in 1996, the year Jack left Kenya. Jack’s friends Stella, Sabrina and Gladys died in 1995-97 after short illnesses.

By 1995, the death toll in Kenya had reached about 200,000 people. In 1998, the prevalence rate among people aged 15-49 was 9.8%. Near Lake Victoria and Uganda, the prevalence was double this.

Unlike Uganda, which began a successful program of information and testing in 1987, Kenya did not recognise the scale of the problem for many years. At first, both Muslim and Christian leaders found prevention campaigns such as condom promotion difficult to reconcile with their teachings, while the government remained in denial.

Finally in 1999, the Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi declared AIDS a national disaster, saying “AIDS is not just a serious threat to our social and economic development, it is a real threat to our very existence, and every effort must be made to bring the problem under control.”

Once the authorities stepped in, infection rates and deaths fell rapidly. By this time, antiretroviral therapy was available in advanced countries. However, the high cost of antiviral treatments made their implementation in Africa nearly impossible at first. In 2001 there were more than 20 million people (based on current estimates) living with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, but only 8,000 people were accessing drug treatment. Eventually, drug companies were prevailed upon to allow affordable generic brands, and most of those infected were able to stabilise the disease.

By 2008, the incidence of HIV in Kenya among 15-49 year olds was still 44%, but fell to 12% over the next ten years.

Occupations

Intravenous drug users have always shown the highest incidence of HIV infection. Sex workers were said to play a large part in accelerated transmission rate. Truck drivers – alongside other migrants such as soldiers, traders and miners –facilitated the initial rapid spread of HIV-1, as they engaged with sex workers and spread HIV outwards on the transport and trade routes. In the 1980s, 35 percent of tested Ugandan truck drivers were HIV positive, as were 30 percent of military personnel

Sex workers were at great risk of contracting the disease. In Nairobi (and in Uganda) one study showed 85 percent of sex workers were infected with HIV in 1986. A later study showed most already had the disease by the time they identified as sex workers. Sex workers barely received treatments once they became available, because of discrimination, lack of education, and their own fears that they would lose their livelihoods if identified. Desperate Stella tried to follow Jack home, probably knowing she was infected.

The death toll in SSA is now about 400,000 annually, and over 25 million are still living with the disease. Deaths in Kenya are about 21,000 annually, from 1.4 million infected. The figures are similar in Uganda, where almost all are receiving antiviral therapy.

Although three of Jack’s friends from Buffalo Bill’s died, Njoki and Maggie who were much more careful never contracted HIV. Jack never contracted any STD.

Chance of contracting AIDS in heterosexual sex

There is between a 1 to 4 chance in 1000 of a man being infected in a single sex act by a woman with a high HIV load. This takes place through the urethra or foreskin, or through genital lesions caused by other STDs. The chance increases greatly if blood is present. The chance for women is about 8 in 1000.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 44 million people have died worldwide from AIDS.

]]>

POST COLONIAL AFRICA

Joe Flood — Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I owe my soul to the company store

Post-colonialism

In most countries, the colonial occupiers found they were making a loss by the 1960s, with the cost of providing facilities now exceeding export gains. They wanted out, and they passed the structural losses on to newly independent governments.

After independence in the 1960s, African countries sought to counter the inequities of colonialism. The new governments set about providing education and health for their people, and building up manufacturing industries so they could escape the prohibitive costs of imports. These activities were universally approved, but aid money to do it was given as loans, not as grants. Exactly what the lenders were thinking is hard to fathom. Lending money to poor people and poor countries places them under an indefinite debt burden and can hardly ever be seen as “aid”.

Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah refused to engage with the IMF from the beginning, describing aid as a “neocolonialist trap”. In his 1965 book, he wrote, “these agencies have the habit of forcing would-be borrowers to submit to various offensive conditions.”

The fault did not entirely sit with the Western world. Nkrumah for example built “white elephants” including factories and road infrastructure that could not yet be justified. Those countries embroiled in war or civil unrest were in a much worse situation, where too much of the national product was consumed in military equipment. However, even in this case a fair amount of conflict was stirred up by Western powers, such as the CIA-engineered coups in Ghana and Zaire in the 1960s, when the USA sought anti-communist allies.

In the early 1970s the situation was turning bad as oil purchase costs began to run higher. Then in the 1980s, interest rates shot through the roof. Most developing countries were soon paying out more in interest payments to past lenders than they were receiving in aid.

From 1972 to 2004, Kenya’s real per capita consumption expenditure actually fell, in concert with the aggregate across Eastern and Southern Africa. The GNI did not begin to rise until 2014.

Structural adjustment

Structural adjustment has been one of the most destructive things ever done to poor African countries trying to move ahead. From the late 1970s, a series of stringent economic mandates known as Structural Adjustment Packages (SAPs) were imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, They featured drastic cuts in public spending, privatisation, removal of tariffs and quotas, deregulation (removing price controls, marketing boards and state subsidies). Many of these same practices were also introduced in the rich countries in the 1990s under the general rubric of neoliberalism.

Rather than fostering self-sufficiency, SAPs shifted the continent from state-led industrialisation toward market-driven, export-oriented frameworks, worsening poverty, increasing food insecurity and eroding public services. Premature deindustrialization occurred everywhere before manufacturing sectors could develop. Widespread urban unemployment and wage drops followed; so foreign debtors could hopefully be repaid.

The collapse of the Soviets meant “the end of history”, in which a single economic ideology was dominant. The USA no longer had to compete with the USSR in courting African leaders and supporting dictators. At the same time, the G77 gained control of the United Nations. The USA could no longer count on the UN to rubberstamp its continual wars and economic interests. It held back its UN dues y=under Reagan and Bush, until the UN repealed its anti-Zionism resolution in 1991.

Some of the unrest that Jack saw in Buffalo Gals– the general strike in Nairobi on his first visit, and the student riot in 1995, were due to widespread layoffs and eroding pay and conditions. The Quito protest during his brief visit probably had the same cause.

In 1996, the World Bank under James Wolfensohn moved its focus from growth to poverty reduction, and the Bank moved from complex infrastructure programmes to the social sector. In 1999 the IMF moved to a Poverty Reduction and Growth facility in 1999, though its commitment was less convincing.

Despite structural adjustment, indebtedness did not reverse. By 2023 Africa’s total external debt was estimated at $1.5 trillion, with debt service payments of $163 billion annually. Sub-Saharan Africa received $59 billion gross in Official Development Assistance.

Informality

One of the most startling outcomes of rising population and the stripping of formal sector jobs was the growth of informality and the rush to the cities. Food insecurity increased as population rose and land was turned from subsistence farming to cash crops drove many people to the cities. There, they threw up makeshift dwellings and pursued informal sector survival strategies as best they could.

Informal settlements burgeoned all over the developing world, even in middle-income countries, as rapid unplanned urbanisation outpaced affordable housing construction. The Indicators Programme estimated that in 1993 550 million people lived in these informal settlements, while by 2023 the numbers had expanded to 1.1 billion. This population is expected to triple.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, about 80% of all jobs are informal, while up to 90% of new jobs are created in the informal economy. Women have been particularly badly affected, as most of those in formal employment are men. Yet some 45% of households are women-headed – mostly single mothers trying to support and educate children, like the women in Buffalo Bills.

References

Flood, J (2003). Neoliberalism and housing - how the world was ruined. May. http://www.muprivate.edu.au/fileadmin/SID/Advertisements/Seminar_Dr_Flood_handbill.pdf

UN-HABITAT (2003). The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003. (London: Earthscan, 2003). Chapter 3. http://mirror.unhabitat.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=1156

Tricontinental (2025). Africa’s Faustian Bargain with the International Monetary Fund. https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-faustian-bargain-imf-africa/#:~:text=In%20this%20dossier%2C%20we%20will,bankruptcy%20in%20the%20Third%20World

]]>

BUFFALO GALS #3. WHAT'S ORIGINAL?

Joe Flood — Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I write because I have something to say that no-one else has said or written about. “Buffalo Gals” discusses topics that as far as I am aware have not been previously aired in public, and others that are rarely seen today.

Survival strategies among urban Africans.

- Elite bar women, who live in a highly competitive but mutually supportive subculture;
- Domestic servants who are underpaid, often abused and are tempted to disappear with employer money;
- Well prepared and humorous con-men, and also public servants who may supplement their meagre incomes by extorting money from the public.
- General life in the slums, as seen by an outsider

The exceptionally varied romantic and sexual responses of women. And the varied responses of men as well, particularly Jack who is conflicted by powerful impulses and ethics. Thanks to Jack’s sudden installation on the Mating Mound, Jack has several girlfriends during the book – though not as many as his son Gabriel. However, “getting the girl” is only the beginning of Jack’s troubles.
The internal operations of organisations, specifically “motherhood” institutions like the United Nations and Australia’s science agency CSIRO. These have unusual personnel and management structures, and can be idiosyncratic and secretive. In both cases, while operational staff (and many support staff) are very dedicated to their mission, management can be poorly focused and there is a fair amount of self-seeking.
The isolationism in Australia’s international affairs apparatus
Ethnic rivalries based on very minor cultural differences. Jack is impressed with the great basic similarity of people around the world, despite their inevitable focus everywhere on the minutiae of cultural identity. The tribalism between Kenyans is at least as strongly contested as the more familiar racial conflicts.

There are other concerns in the book that are not common in literature

Middle-aged coming of age. During the course of the book, Jack finally becomes an adult - and a global citizen.
Male romance. About 80% of literature readership is female, and only 17% of writers today are men, compared with 55% in 1988. Novels providing an insight into diverse male attitudes to the opposite sex have become scarce. While Jack is kind-hearted and well-meaning, his acute inability to live without a woman in his life leads him into all kinds of trouble and possibly danger.
Africa. While Africa was once a last frontier and a common setting for adventure novels, that is rarely the case now colonialism is at an end. Jack sees a place of great beauty and complexity, but Africa has become stereotyped as ugly, full of disease, crime, starvation and violence. Jack’s preference for the company of Africans over expatriates like himself is not common in real life and in literature.
IT: the beginning. The beginnings of the era are poorly covered in literature. The arrival of email, Windows computing, websites and GIS forms a major backdrop to the book.

]]>

Different Joe Floods

Joe Flood — Sat, 2 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everyone likes to have their own name. Four Americans in the cultural space have chosen mine. Not so surprising, because while Joseph/Joe is rare in Australia, it is common in the USA.

The other Joe Floods are about ten years my junior. There is a musician in Connecticut who has played with several big names; an actor who has been in five fairly high profile films; a comic book author with a dozen titles; and a Washington DC journalist who has written four novels and a bestseller "The Fires" about 20th century planning in New York.

My own birthname has only eight letters, "Joe Flood". That is all there is. I try to avoid confusion with my juniors by being "Dr Joe Flood" when necessary.

]]>

BUFFALO GALS #2. DEVICES

Joe Flood — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Scattered through the book(s) are assorted photos, callout boxes, letters or emails, Swahili proverbs and malapropisms. They are there—partly because the book is long, to give the reader a break, and partly because the book partly follows the designs of Lonely Planet Guide and Unravelling the Code.

I am told that interruptions to the flow of text are a real no-no in literature, as it spoils the “reader trance”. I agree these are more effective in reference books such as the Guide – but there is a time for everything.

The photographs are largely my own, from slides and film I took in 1994-96. In a few cases I have borrowed uncopyrighted photos from travel sites, with attribution. The picture of the Mating Mound is AI-generated.

The boxes are mostly verbatim from articles in Nairobi’s The Standard, from April 1994. They add information to the text. For example, when Jack passes a religious group in Kawangware, we find it is led by the Prophetess, a MP who believes a graveyard near the summit of Mount Kenya is the work of devil worshippers. Or—when Jack is concerned that he might not have selected the right partner by marrying young, we find out from a Letter to the Editor that this may lead to the loss of his private parts.

There are also three boxes explaining what Jack’s job actually is. These show a little of what Jack is actually presenting to officials during his global journey.

Swahili proverbs are part of Kenyan culture and are visible everywhere on kanga cloth. Many show considerable wisdom.

The correspondence is there to provide alternative viewpoints to Jack’s rather monolithic world-view. As time passes, the letters move from handwriting and faxes to emails, which are just being introduced in 2004.

]]>

Ugh - Marketing

Joe Flood — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the name of marketing, I have set up a facebook page, an author website, an email-collecting "reader magnet" on Iran, and a blog. At the moment the blog is discussing the complexities of the Africa book. As usual I find myself being a "beta tester" and discovering many bugs and problems in the underlying platform, to the great annoyance of the Bookbub help staff.

]]>

THE WORK PROGRAMME

Joe Flood — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It is a very busy time. I am currently publishing

my first poetry book "The Bay" and
my two-volume creative memoir Buffalo Gals about my Great Adventure in Africa and beyond.

In 2024 we finished "Remembering Dorothy", a festschrift of pieces for the centenary of the birth of my mother, the eminent playwright and poet Dorothy Hewett - with a strong collection of memories from major Australian theatrical figures, and several stories of my own.

Back in 2013 I self-published

- "Unravelling the code: The Coads and Coodes of Cornwall and Devon", a giant 300,000 word genealogical portrait of a surname. It did surprisingly well.

On the literary side, already completed and ready to be formatted for publication are

My mystical memoir-novel "Jacob's Ladder" set in 1970-71, where, under existential fear of the draft, I lived in a house full of odd characters and ended up with an eccentric wedding.
A book of short stories, "The Phenomenon", largely about the very different women who flitted into and out of my life, without leaving much except quick memories.
My second book of accumulated poetry 2012-2023, Ouroboros: Eternity and Endless Return

Waiting to be written are

"He Ain't Heavy", a sad and uplifting memoir about my little son Nathaniel who died of leukemia at age 7 after a mighty fight.
"The Last Australian", about the wanderings of my father-figure Trot Maguire as he sought his missing sons and the great abuses of Australian history, while suffering from delusional schizophrenia
"Jury Duty", about the Revenge Rapist and doubts about his conviction.

Publishing houses make a great deal of "genre" these days, as various genres once considered trivial or lowbrow have taken over the book trade. I seem to be comfortable in a spot somewhere between "literary memoir" and "magical realism", which is something of a family tradition. This has its dangers, as my mother found out when she was sued in 1974-6 and attacked in every major newspaper and the Australian Senate in 2018. Hopefully we have learned something from this.

For non-fiction I am planning

Long Wave: Hitting the Top, about history reaching a potential warlike head now, at the top of the sixth long wave
The Years of Plague, from my Covid blog during the years of shutdown.
The Three Ancestors (well, some better name) as to how and why over 75% of European men are descended from 3 men who lived around 3300BC.

Much work ahead, and much marketing needed to get the messages through.

]]>

BUFFALO GALS #1. LONELY PLANET GUIDE

Joe Flood — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My second novel I have chosen to self-publish, partly for the experience and partly because it is quirky in both form and subject matter. I doubt a mainstream publisher would be interested, in these days of collapsing readership.

Critical to the form (and contributing to the narrative) of the book is "The Lonely Planet Guide to Kenya" which had appeared only two years before the events of the book, and was already the Travellers' Bible. An entry in the Guide suggested visitors should pay a visit to Buffalo Bills Bar, a unique attraction, and so a stream of travellers headed there. Only to find out that what had once been a hangout for artists was now a pickup joint featuring exotically dressed sole traders of great conversation but doubtful morality. Because he was misled, the "hero" finds solace there in making the best of several probably bad decisions that affected the rest of his life.

Like the Lonely Planet Guide, "Buffalo Gals" has lots of pictures, and boxes containing interesting side material (mostly outrageous newspaper articles). It skims across the wonderful animals and cultures of Kenya and elsewhere (especially the unique culture of the bar), describes adventures within the very varied landscape, and even has a few maps.

As well as in Kenya, the quixotic "hero" soon finds himself having short adventures in other exotic locales - the Alps, Egypt, South Africa, Zanzibar, Jordan, Canada, Budapest, Romania, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Yemen, Brazil, Jamaica, Cuba, Gaza, Korea, Venice, Uzbekistan and Turkey. Sometimes accompanied by his equally quixotic hard-travelling wife Carmen, sometimes with other companions.

]]>