A note from Darfur - and requiem for Knight Ridder

Thanks to everyone who made wardrobe suggestions based on my last post. (Once again, as with the post regarding my Congolese beard from last fall, it's nice to know the readers of this blog are interested in the big issues.) Shipments of multipocketed khaki vests (which Seth has dubbed "wanker vests") and flourescent tubes o' goo can be sent to me care of 700 12th Street NW, #1000, Washington, DC 20005.

I've spent the past five days in North Darfur, trying to put together some stories on the state of things here since the May 5 peace agreement between the Sudanese government and one of the Darfur rebel groups. I won't give anything away - you'll have to read the stories yourself - but if you've been following the news out of Sudan over the past two months the conclusions I'm reaching will probably not surprise you.

On long trips like this, to remote - and remotely dangerous - locations, it's nice to have things to look forward to. After a week in Sudan, a dry country, the thought of a cold beer - or even brewed coffee - nearly sends me into convulsions. I have great admiration for the aid workers and African Union troops I've met, many of whom have been here for a year or longer; I don't know how they do it. (Actually, I do know - they smuggle stuff in.) Anyway - Yatin, when you get to Nairobi to launch your 800-day weekend (I've revised your figure upward to include time spent at UCLA business school), we are drinking.

On that note - a UNICEF staffer I met last week described a phenomenon that she's allegedly observed in southern Sudan that, if true, deserves the attention of the scientific community. You might know that southern Sudan is recovering from its own civil war, a 20-year affair that ended with a peace agreement 18 months ago. That region is, if you can imagine it, even less developed than Darfur. People have gone without basic necessities for as long as many can remember. It's gotten so bad that, according to this aid worker (who will remain nameless in case, as many of her colleagues suggested, this story is patently ridiculous), certain children are too stunned by the mere sight of food to eat. She describes seeing starving kids who, when food is placed in front of them, go into epileptic-style seizures, buckling their knees and nodding their heads up and down. They're shocked into fits, and they don't approach the food.

No one around the dinner table who heard this story believed this syndrome exists. I'm no medical expert, but it sounds plausible to me. I had much the same feeling upon returning to Nairobi after two weeks on the Chad-Sudan border and seeing green vegetables. And that was only two weeks.

Finally - a belated requiem for my former employer, Knight Ridder, which was swallowed up (and parts of it spit out) by the McClatchy Company of newspapers last Tuesday. KR doesn't exist anymore, and McClatchy, owner of the Sacramento Bee and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, among other papers, now becomes the second-largest newspaper publisher in the country. Lots of words were written last week about whether the sale portends a wave of mergers in the newspaper industry. I don't know about any of that. And I guess I'm too young to be nostalgic about the death of a good company, even though my first job with them was in 1997, at age 17, at the Long Beach Press-Telegram (a summer that was notable primarily for the has-been athletes I got to meet as a sports desk intern: Penny Hardaway, Charles and Ed O'Bannon, Mitch Richmond, Serena Williams).

What I do know is that the good folks at McClatchy - who are known for Wall Street savvy as well as journalistic strength - have promised us that we still have jobs. After spending the better part of a year trying to get Africans to pronounce and spell "Knight Ridder" (not "Knight Rider," "Ninth Rider" or my personal favorite, "Night Readers") I can't say I'm looking forward to spelling out this new, uncommon Irish name. (That sneaky "T" is really going to throw people off.) But - ALERT: MAJOR CORPORATE SUCK-UP - this is a very good company. And it's very good to be employed.