Richard Behar won The Ed Cunningham Award for best magazine reporting from abroad for Fast Company for his report "China Storms Africa." The six-part article looked at China’s resource rush in Mozambique, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo and Equatorial Guinea and incorporated his experience with a parasitic illness as metaphor for the Chinese invasion.
This story almost died before I could write it. After my tour of the sub-Sahara, I came back to New York and – unbeknownst to me – I had a parasite eating through the walls of my colon. I spent months lying around, unable to write, unable to even think clearly. Some 30 pounds of weight rolled off me like water.
But it was only when I started getting chills that I finally visited one of the world’s renowned tropical disease experts, Dr. Kevin Cahill — whose office is just a few blocks from here actually, just across the park, in case anyone here tonight is feeling a little shaky. Turned out I had a virulent strain of Entamoeba Histolytica, the same bug that killed David Livingstone in the 19th century — when it got its name — and that I likely picked it up in the Congo.
During my recovery, with it staring me in the gut, I had plenty of time to think about parasites — which I made the metaphor for the article. What China is doing in Africa – grabbing mountains of resources in deals where it clearly has the upper hand – is not too dissimilar to what the West did there in the past.
What’s more, while the Chinese decimate the forests of Mozambique (much of it illegally cut and exported), guess where the end-zone is for most of that wood? America, of course – perhaps the floors or the chairs we stand or sit on. The same with the copper, cobalt and coltan that China rips from the ground in Zambia and Congo, much of it illegally, which winds up in our computers, iPods, Sony Playstations for our kids. We’re all interconnected, and we are all parasitical, until we can devise a better way. If we can.
In Equatorial Guinea, I was the first American journalist to visit in about four years – the last two having been forced to leave, one for espionage (which in their rulebook means asking questions). Sadly, the American oil industry (and our government) has long had a Faustian deal with the dictator who rules the corrupt joint. The people suffer in poverty without democracy and we get the crude. Although it’s a tiny speck of a country – the whole nation has about 500,000 people, and its capitol about 90,000 — the U.S. embassy wouldn’t even return my calls, let alone see me. They had plenty to hide. So when America criticizes China for its business in Sudan, we need to look in the mirror at our own rat-infested picnic in Equatorial Guinea.
You know, it’s long been said that an editor is just a mouse training to be a rat. And for the most part it’s true. But then there’s Will Bourne – the executive editor of Fast Company – sitting over there at Table 44. We’ve been through a lot together on stories over the years. He conceived of the story idea, marshaled me through it, played nurse for months when I got sick – that must have been fun, huh, Will? — never gave up believing he’d eventually see some copy, and then edited it beautifully. You share this award, Will.
Fast Company editor Bob Safian, who is here, too, always supported me, with great enthusiasm for the story – and then ran it at 24 pages! Imagine that, in an age when long-form investigative reporting is on its deathbed, thanks to that parasite I call Entamoeba Google.
Finally, thank you OPC, the judges, and my family — Rebecca and Isabel, here today — for putting up with hearing about my parasite for month after month. It became quite an obsession with me.
Thank you.