A faceless, stentorian English voice saying, “This is BBC World Service.”…Years later, when Idi Amin said and did outrageous things, I understood that his motivation was to rattle the good people of Greenwich Mean Time, have them raise their heads from their tea and scones and say, Oh yes, Africa.
-Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
I remember asking Hajj Bashir how he’d heard that John Wayne was near death and he answered, Voice of America. His son Mahdi said he’d lie in bed each night listening to the Beeb. When Daoud and I were new on the Darb in February 1984 we listened to World Service on my transistor radio and learned of the Southern Sudanese attack on the Chevron oil camp in Bentiu, the restart of their civil war. We wondered if we were safe with the drovers, not far away as the crow flew but in effect millions of miles. They knew Um Badr and Um Sunta, Maraheek and Sodiri, but had never heard of Bentiu and had no need for motor oil out there anyway.