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The island is a Mediterranean paradise that is well worth a visit, with visitors commenting on how authentic and unspoiled it feels, as well as its stunning natural beauty

The picturesque Greek island of Samos, nestled just off the coast of western Turkey in the eastern Aegean Sea, is a haven of stunning seaside resorts and quaint fishing villages. Separated from the Anatolian peninsula by the narrow Mycale Strait, this 185-square-mile island is a blend of mountainous terrain and fertile plains.

A significant part of Samos is carpeted with vineyards, producing the renowned Muscat wine. The landscape is dominated by two towering mountains, Ampelos and Kerkis. Ampelos, the larger of the two, sits at the heart of the island, reaching heights of 1,095 metres. Kerkis, although smaller in area, boasts the island’s highest point.

With a population just shy of 34,000, Samos ranks as the ninth most populous of the Greek islands. It’s also a hotspot for diverse fauna, including golden jackals, stone marten, wild boar, flamingos and monk seals.

Samos is steeped in history, with the Eupalinian aqueduct being one of its many archaeological treasures. In the 6th-century BC, under the rule of the infamous tyrant Polycrates, a 0.6-mile tunnel was carved through Mount Kastro to construct an aqueduct, providing the ancient capital with fresh water, reports the Express.

This engineering marvel, dug from both ends in a methodical manner akin to the Channel Tunnel, stands today as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The ancient city of Samos was once fortified by a wall stretching 6,430 metres. Starting from the eastern pier of the ancient port, it extended northwards, ending near the ancient stadium on the city’s western coast.

Today, only fragments of the limestone wall and a tower north of Glyfada Lake remain.

Classical Samos is perhaps best known for its connection to the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras. In 1955, the town of Tigani was renamed Pythagoreion in honour of his birth there.

The historian Herodotus, famed for his Histories – considered the founding work of history in Western literature – also resided in Samos for some time.

Samos enjoys a hot-summer Mediterranean climate with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers. According to the Hellenic National Meteorological Service, July is the hottest and driest month, but temperatures remain a pleasant 24C in October.

Whether you prefer remote or commercialised beaches, Samos has something for everyone. Tsamadou, eight miles from Vathy, is a pebbled, partly organised and family-friendly beach.

For those seeking seclusion, Mikto Sitani beach is non-organised and tucked away from the crowds.

Tourists have been full of praise for Samos, with one visitor gushing on Tripadvisor: “What a surprise! We had never heard about Samos but we booked by coincidence because it was one of the only European destinations where they didn’t expect cold and rain. So happy we did it. It’s a wonderful island. It’s still authentic[ly] Greek.

“Samos is not made for mass tourism. The roads are narrow, and there are hairpin bends everywhere. Some destinations are only accessible by 4×4 cars because there are no paved roads in some areas.

“Most of the island still looks untouched and the coastline is rugged and just magnificent.”

I haven’t had a car payment in a decade.

No lease, no financing, no $749 a month disappearing into a lender’s account. Just my old 2007 Honda Element, still rumbling down the road. She’s not the prettiest girl at the bar anymore, but she’s all I need.

At some point, I realized every “small” car payment my friends were making could have been a serious savings engine.

The power of redirecting that $749 a month

The average new car payment today is a jaw-dropping $749 a month. Skip that for 10 years, and you’ve kept nearly $90,000 in your pocket before even earning a cent in interest.

But that money doesn’t have to sit idle. Over the past few years, the first place I’ve been putting what would’ve been my “car payment” is straight into a high-yield savings account. At around 4.50% APY, that’s earned me thousands in interest while staying completely risk-free.

While I don’t want to keep all of my money in an HYSA, I keep my emergency fund with a few months of living expenses there and just make sure it’s always topped off. Beyond that, everything flows into my favorite tax-advantaged retirement accounts.

Why I park my money in a high-yield savings account

I treat my HYSA like a first stop for the money I used to waste on car payments. It’s my emergency and peace-of-mind fund, and here’s what makes high-yield savings accounts so easy to love:

• Safe and FDIC-insured up to $250,000
• Instant access when you need your cash
• Rates still around 4.00%, even as the Fed starts cutting

You can compare today’s top high-yield savings accounts here and find one that’s actually worth your money.

What you could do instead of sending money to a bank

Once I saw how quickly my savings grew, I realized it was really about peace of mind. I never worry about an unexpected bill or repair anymore. My high-yield savings account is my safety net, and every month I go without a car payment, that net gets stronger.

If you want that same feeling, start by opening a high-yield savings account that actually rewards you for saving. Rates around 4.00% APY won’t last forever, but getting started now could give you years of financial breathing room.

Seeing one of your portfolio’s positions generate a 10-year return of 50,000% is truly mind-boggling. But this is exactly what Bitcoin (BTC -0.25%) has done (as of Sept. 17). A $2,000 starting investment in September 2015 would be worth $1 million today.

With such a fantastic historical return, it’s understandable if investors think that it’s too late to put money to work. But that’s a pessimistic view. Here’s the biggest reason you haven’t missed out on Bitcoin.

Image source: Getty Images.

Unsustainable financial situation

It’s safe to assume that the U.S. federal debt, now at $37 trillion, will keep increasing in the decades ahead. It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House. The country will continue to run massive fiscal deficits. For what it’s worth, the last surplus was in 2001.

This unfavorable trend supports ongoing growth in the money supply, as the government keeps borrowing to fund spending. Something must eventually break.

The counterargument is that because the U.S. has the biggest and most powerful economy, and the U.S. dollar is the global reserve currency, things can continue on this path. To be fair, unsustainable trends can last longer than people might think.

But the situation is becoming more fragile as time passes. Imagine if you kept opening new credit cards to pay off the balances of your old cards. This is financially reckless, but this is essentially what the U.S. government does.

Capital flowing to a scarce asset

Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million units. No single entity has control over it. It transcends borders. And it’s permissionless. This makes it a unique asset for more capital to flow to, particularly as more money and debt keep being created in the financial system.

Therefore, as long as governments across the globe continue operating in fiscally irresponsible ways, Bitcoin will have uncapped upside.

BRITS will have a brilliant view of Saturn tonight – and it’ll be looking pretty unusual to boot.

This week marks Saturn’s opposition, which is a premium stargazing (or rather, planet-gazing) event.

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During the opposition, Saturn is at its closest point to Earth.

And Saturn will be visible opposite the Sun in the sky so it’s fully illuminated.

That means it’ll be at its brightest point of the year.

So if you want to spy it, you’ll have your best chance tonight – assuming that it’s not cloudy.

It should rise after sunset and be visible all night.

This event will make Saturn easily visible to the naked eye,” said the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

“Appearing as pale yellow and rising in the east, located in the constellation of Pisces.”

Interestingly, this is a particularly special event because Saturn’s rings will be difficult to see.

They’re tilted at a severe angle to us, as we passed through their “plane” back in March.

We do that roughly every 13 to 15 years.

During a few weeks either side of that crossing, you can’t see the rings unless you have a very good telescope.

And even though we’re well on from March, the rings are still very severely tilted.

In fact, they’re just two degrees off dead straight to us.

“Saturn’s beautiful rings won’t be fully visible due to Saturn’s rotation turning edge-on to us,” Royal Observatory Greenwich said.

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“So unfortunately the rings will appear very narrow.”

If you miss Saturn (or you really enjoy it) then there’s another opposition opportunity just a couple of days later.

Neptune can be seen at opposition on September 23 – that’s the Tuesday.

“The planet will be visible with a telescope, rising in the east and setting in the west at sunrise,” Royal Observatory Greenwich explained.

“Neptune, the farthest planet in our Solar System at 4.3 billion kilometres away, will be at its closest point to Earth, shining blue and brighter than any other time of the year.”

But it won’t be easy to see.

Neptune is extremely far away – much further than Saturn.

So you’ll need a very good telescope to spy it.

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“Even with an optical aid, Neptune appears faint and you’ll need a high magnification to get a clear view,” the observatory added.

SACRAMENTO — There are echoes from California Republicans’ disastrous past in their solid support of the Trump administration’s ugly raids targeting Latinos suspected of illegal immigration.

California’s GOP apparently still hasn’t learned. Scaring, insulting and angering people is not an effective recruiting tool. It doesn’t draw them to your side. It drives them into the opposition camp.

That should have been a lesson learned three decades ago when Republicans strongly pushed a harsh anti-illegal immigration ballot initiative, Proposition 187. It became principally responsible for changing California from a politically competitive state to one where the GOP is essentially irrelevant.

This occurred to me when reading recent poll data that showed strong overall objection in California to President Trump’s oft-inhumane immigration enforcement policies — among virtually every group, that is, except Republican voters. They overwhelmingly support his tactics.

The in-depth poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies delved into voter attitudes toward Trump’s mass deportation actions.

On the basic question of his immigration enforcement strategy, 69% of registered voters disapproved and just 29% approved. But there was a sharp difference between political parties. Democrats almost unanimously disapproved — 95%. And 72% of independents were opposed. But 79% of Republicans approved.

Interviewers also asked about specifics. And GOP voters were with Trump all the way.

Strong majorities of Republicans disagreed that federal agents “have unfairly targeted Latino communities for their race or ethnicity,” believed the raids have “primarily focused” on undocumented “serious” criminals — although evidence shows that many law-abiders have been snatched — and thought “all undocumented immigrants need to be deported.”

Smaller Republican majorities disagreed that detained undocumented immigrants “have a right to due process” and a court hearing — although the due process clause of the 5th Amendment indicates they do — and agreed that “agents should expand enforcement into schools, hospitals, parks and other public locations.”

Democrats and independents expressed emphatically opposite views — and they greatly outnumber Republicans in California.

The parties also reported diametrically opposite feelings when viewing news accounts of raids by federal agents. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans said it made them feel “hopeful, like justice is finally being served.” Democrats said they were “enraged and/or sad. What is happening is unfair.”

Republicans were more divided on whether immigration agents should be required to show clear identification, such as wearing badges. Armed agents have been going incognito in street clothes, traveling in unmarked vehicles and wearing masks.

Among GOP voters, 50% opposed requiring identification and 45% supported the idea.

Two bills currently are awaiting votes in the state Assembly to require agent identification and ban masks in most circumstances.

“Agents have been running around wearing essentially ski masks, grabbing people, throwing them into unmarked cars and disappearing them,” says Sen. Mark Wiener (D-San Francisco), author of the mask ban bill. “In a democracy, we don’t have secret police running around masked.”

Listening to Republican voters, I’m hearing reverberations from 1994 when that GOP generation overwhelmingly backed Proposition 187, led by Gov. Pete Wilson, who was subsequently demonized by Democrats and, particularly, Latinos.

That now-infamous measure would have denied most public services — including schooling — to undocumented immigrants, and turned teachers and nurses into snitches. It passed by a landslide, but a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional.

Republicans voted for Proposition187 by 3 to 1 and independents by 3 to 2, according to a Los Angeles Times exit poll. Democrats opposed it by 2 to 1.

White people voted for Proposition 187 by 59% to 41% — the exact victory margin — but Latinos opposed it by 78% to 22%. Today, there are a lot fewer white people and lots more Latinos in California.

The measure awakened Latinos and spawned a new generation of Democratic political leaders, including U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, former L.A. Mayor and Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and other legislative honchos.

And it instigated a hemorrhaging of Republican voters in California. In the November presidential election, Republicans amounted to only 25% of registered voters. In 1994, they were 37%. Many have since shifted to registering as independents, who amounted to only 10% back then and are 22% now. Democrats also have lost slightly to nonpartisan ranks, falling from 49% to 46%.

No Republican candidate has won a statewide race since 2006, and Democrats hold supermajorities in both legislative houses.

The GOP has been touting an uptick in Latino support in November’s election. But is that a trend, or just the reflection of a sorry Democratic presidential campaign? How will Latino voters react to immigration agents chasing people through farm fields, seizing teens without telling their parents and stalking picnickers?

“Republicans can talk about crime and homelessness and gas prices all they want but the immigration issue is a boulder in the road that will keep large numbers in California from listening to what they say on any other issue,” says Dan Schnur, a USC and UC Berkeley political science instructor who was Wilson’s spokesman in 1994.

GOP consultant Mike Madrid, who has written a book about how Latinos are transforming democracy, says Republicans “are limiting what could be a tidal wave of voters in their direction. They’re their own worst enemies.”

He adds: “Latinos are primarily economic voters but will respond when attacked. As long as the GOP resorts to anti-Latino appeals they’ll fight back.”

Republican voter attitudes also are symptomatic of today’s extremely polarized politics.

“Wherever Trump decides to steer the ship, Republicans are following him. Trump is the Pied Piper here,” says Mark DiCamillo, the IGS pollster.

Republican consultant Kevin Spillane theorized that Republican respondents in the poll were “rallying around Trump. They thought they were really being asked about him.”

Whatever. They need to evolve into the increasingly diverse 21st century. We can secure the border without storming churches, hospitals and schools.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom, California lawmakers strike deal that would allow Uber, Lyft drivers to unionize
The TK: ‘The party is in shambles.’ But some Democrats see reasons for optimism
The L.A. Times Special: Their brotherly love transcends politics — and California’s tooth-and-nail redistricting fight

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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Maybe you’ve heard about San Francisco’s doom loop. But have you met its jumbo nude?

As just about any San Franciscan could tell you, “doom loop” is shorthand for the city’s post-pandemic troubles. Many of those worries stem from dwindling demand for office space, but would-be visitors have also been nervous about crime and withering retail energy.

That brings us to the jumbo nude. It’s a 45-foot, semi-translucent sculpture of a woman now standing at the foot of Market Street, officially named R-Evolution. Not everyone loves her, but she is one among many new or improved elements attracting locals and visitors these days.

Even with San Francisco’s office vacancy rate hovering around 35%, the sun keeps rising and visitors keep smiling, most of them, much of the time.

Make your way to the city and you can see major park upgrades at the Presidio and Ocean Beach. Or you can frolic among massive balloon installations, vintage photo booths and ‘60s artifacts in permanent and pop-up places that bill themselves as museums.

There’s also the prospect of a new “bay lights” show with 50,000 illumination points on the Bay Bridge. (Those lights were supposed to be on by now, but installation snags led to a delay; organizers say they’re hoping to be ready “sometime this fall.”)

Also, the food doesn’t hurt. When our critic Bill Addison chose 101 of his favorite California restaurants recently, 35 of them were in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, crime has been falling since early 2023, especially this year. Tourist arrivals are 11% behind 2019 but have grown steadily since 2021.

As this list attests, there’s plenty to see. But first, we should talk about a few places not on this list.

One is Fisherman’s Wharf. It has added a SkyStar Ferris wheel (which migrated from Golden Gate Park in 2023) and the Port of San Francisco says it will soon begin a big redevelopment, but the area remains dominated by T-shirt shops and multiple old-school restaurants that have been shuttered since the pandemic. The neighborhood was to have added a Museum of Failure this year but, not kidding, the enterprise collapsed amid an intellectual property dispute before opening. The storefront “failure” sign was still up in June, creating the snarkiest photo op ever.

Another mixed bag is Union Square, whose hotels, department stores and passing cable cars have made it the starting point for legions of tourists through the decades. The square is still pleasant by day, with young visitors drawn to assorted free games (ping-pong, badminton, cornhole) while cable cars pass, tourists line up for Big Bus tours and guests at the adjacent Beacon Grand Hotel (formerly the Sir Francis Drake) explore the neighborhood. But many key retailers have shuttered, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, and Macy’s will follow. (The company has said it will close as soon as it finds a buyer for the property.)

“We feel safe here. But kind of disappointed by all the closures,” said Melinda Parker, visiting San Francisco with her husband from Boise. Also, Parker said, “a city should be judged on the quality of its public toilets. They have one here, and it’s closed.”

Still, there are more than enough bright spots to light up a San Francisco visit. Let’s go back for a second to Tunnel Tops, one of the city’s recently improved park spaces. You grab a snack, commandeer a patio table and gaze upon the Presidio and Golden Gate. A family debate erupts over whether to hit a museum next or try an urban hike. This is a sort of problem, but a nice choice to have. And San Francisco now offers plenty like that.

Nestled almost two hours away from Munich and three hours from Frankfurt, Bamberg in Germany, is one of Europe’s most picturesque, well-preserved, and affordable holiday hotspots.

Tucked away in Upper Franconia, Germany, lies the charming town of Bamberg, a hidden gem that’s a must-visit for fans of beer, Bratwurst, and affordable holiday destinations. Located nearly two hours from Munich and three hours from Frankfurt, this picturesque town boasts a UNESCO World Heritage status and is often hailed as one of Europe’s most beautiful cities.

Nicknamed the “Franconian Rome”, Bamberg is built on seven hills and is steeped in history, with an array of architectural wonders dating back to the Middle Ages. This quaint Bavarian town, home to just under 76,000 residents, seamlessly blends modern life with historic cultural treasures of global significance.

READ MORE: ‘Life-saving’ menopause product inspired by menopausal 25-year-old sells out 3 times

As you wander through the streets, you’ll discover buildings that have stood the test of time, while the town centre is filled with ornate palaces and medieval castles.

History buffs will be captivated by the stunning 13th-century Bamberg Cathedral, one of Germany’s most famous cathedrals, built between 1211 and 1237.

This late Romanesque and early Gothic landmark is notable for being one of the only papal graves in Germany, housing the marble sarcophagus of Pope Clement II.

Another unmissable attraction is St. Michael’s Monastery, a Baroque church boasting a breathtaking “celestial garden” with over 578 flowers and herbs, as well as a terrace offering a panoramic view of the town.

In addition to its rich history, Bamberg is also celebrated for its lively beer culture, boasting 13 breweries in the town and 60 more in the surrounding area, reports the Express.

Beer enthusiasts can sample the city’s famous hand-crafted brews, including the unique smoked beer, Rauchbier, available at local breweries Schlenkerla and Brauerei Spezial.

Beyond its breweries, Bamberg offers a range of local culinary delicacies, such as Schäuferla, a roasted pork shoulder marinated in a meat stock and dark beer broth, served with potato dumplings and cabbage.

Another standout dish is the blue sausages, Blaue Zipfel, which are boiled in a seasoned stock to create a rich, smoky flavour, typically served with sauerkraut, a pretzel, and a pint of smoked beer.

Travel vlogger Wolters World recently featured Bamberg in his YouTube video, “The Best Cheap European Destinations”, revealing that it’s his “favourite city” to visit in Germany.

He joked that prices in Bamberg have remained unchanged for the past decade, making it a budget-friendly option compared to other German cities.

Visitors can explore the city’s historic landmarks, such as Altenburg Castle, the Old Town Hall, and the 17th-century Neue Residenz palace, with its ornate ceilings, tapestries, and rose garden.

Though it may take a few hours to reach Bamberg by train or flight, the journey is certainly worth it for those who are fans of bratwurst, beer, and history.

Bamberg’s captivating charm and cost-effectiveness make it a popular choice for tourists.

There is a tenderness between Fati Bukar and her eldest son, Lawal.

When he sits next to her, she holds his hands. As he gets up to leave the room, she asks where he’s going, and he says he’ll be back soon. When Lawal returns and sits across from her, she taps the mat beside her, and he moves closer. She holds his hands again. He says something, and she laughs.

The next day, Fati and seven of her children are set to leave the Muna Garage camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital in northeastern Nigeria. They are heading to Dikwa Local Government Area (LGA), as part of a government resettlement programme to close the IDP camps in the state. The initiative began in 2021.

Lawal, however, will not be going with his mother and siblings.

His resettlement papers indicate that he will be taken to Mafa LGA, approximately an hour and a half from Dikwa. Both mother and son are deeply unsettled by this development.

Lawal had told the officials he wanted to be with his mother and siblings, but the arrangements didn’t go as he hoped. Since Lawal has a family of his own, he registered as a separate household from his mother, who was listed as the head of the household with his younger siblings. They assumed they would all be sent to Dikwa, their place of origin, but the resettlement programme does not always work that way.

With one arm paralysed from a motorbike accident, the 23-year-old can no longer farm efficiently. Instead, he guides his younger siblings through it, showing them what to plant, how to weed, and when to harvest. 

Fati is especially close to Lawal, and the thought of their separation weighs heavily on both of them. 

She and her children have lived in the Muna Garage IDP Camp for seven years.

Fleeing home

Back in 2014, as news of insurgency spread like wildfire, and terrorists invaded town after town in Borno, Fati and her husband hadn’t decided to leave their village in Dikwa yet. They were holding on to hope that maybe the war would end. Still, she thought the worst-case scenario would be displacement. 

She was wrong.

The worst-case scenario unfolded as she was tending to her livestock by a stream when someone came running to tell her that her husband had been shot. 

She let the animals loose and ran home, crying, in disbelief, her heart pounding as she inched closer to her husband’s lifeless body. 

“I fell, and for the next three days, I didn’t even know what was going on. It was like I was going in and out of consciousness,” Fati narrated, her hands lifted, then fell, as if even they had lost the will to explain.

Grief consumed her completely, but survival demanded she keep going. So in 2018, she gathered her eight children and headed into the bush, trying to find a way to Maiduguri. 

They eventually found safety at the Muna Garage IDP Camp, a crowded settlement on the outskirts of the city full of families like hers; people who had lost homes and loved ones to the Boko Haram insurgency. The camp shelters about 10,000 displaced people.

Fati shared her story with HumAngle through an interpreter, who bridged the language barrier. It was a scorching Sunday afternoon in the camp, and people were packing and preparing for the journey ahead. 

“I don’t want to go,” Fati frowned. “I know the kind of terror that made me come here. I know how much we suffered. Why would I go back to such danger?”

There is anger in the pitch of her voice and the sharp, insistent gestures of her arms.

After the conversation, she agreed to show what packing looked like.

Fati ducks to enter her thatched room, which has a small partition just inside the entrance, so that her makeshift bed isn’t immediately visible to anyone stepping in. The air inside is warm and still. 

“I don’t have a lot of things, so they’re just in this bag,” she says, pointing to a bag and two sacks beside her bed. 

“The first time we tried to flee from our homes before coming here, soldiers chased us back. So we had to try again. When I left, I knew I wouldn’t go back until everywhere became safe. But is it even safe now?” Fati reflects. 

The return

It’s been four years since the Borno State government began working to close all official IDP camps in Maiduguri and resettle displaced people, either back to their home communities or new locations across the state. 

Governor Babagana Zulum maintained that “we will never eradicate insurgency without resettling people,” arguing that the camps have become sites of deepening social problems, including child abuse and prostitution.

The United Nations defines resettlement as a “voluntary, safe and regulated transfer of people [and] is intended as a long-term solution.” 

But that’s the theory. In reality, many residents in the Muna Garage Camp remain hesitant. They are unsure what they are returning to or what kind of life awaits them.

Some are returning to places where security remains fragile. Others are being moved to unfamiliar towns with no jobs and no clear path forward. What was meant to be a temporary displacement now stretches into a second chapter that looks different but feels just as unstable.

With resettlement comes many fears: the fear of starting all over again, the fear of the unknown, and most terrifying of all, as Fati puts it, the fear of “coming face to face with the terrorists you fled from almost a decade ago.”

“If I go back there, what I fear most is that I won’t have peace of mind. That I’ll be constantly thinking, ‘Will the terrorists come today? Will they come tomorrow?’ That alone is enough to make someone lose weight, to live in constant fear. That alone is enough.” Fati says, then looks down at the floor, and starts to draw invisible circles with her index finger. 

Outside the hut, a cluster of people sat together in the open, under the shade of trees, waiting to collect documents needed to claim shelters in Dikwa. They were also given meal tickets, with both the papers and tickets handed to heads of households. 

The buses arrived at sunrise on Monday, May 12. 

Even before they left, parts of Muna Camp were already coming down. Huts made of straw and tarpaulin were dismantled. A crowd formed near the camp’s edge where HumAngle met Fati amidst the chatter of people, children playing, and some murmuring their unwillingness to leave. 

She was squatting, shielding her face from the sun with her hands. When asked whether she is tired, she simply smiles. She was very quiet but managed to say, “I’ve packed up. We’re just waiting to leave now.” 

Then she continues looking into the distance. 

They left around 11 a.m.. Lawal stayed behind and waved goodbye to his mother. A few hours later, he tried to call his brother, but the call didn’t go through. It turns out that his brother’s mobile network, like many others’, doesn’t work in Dikwa. His mother’s phone was also switched off. It wasn’t until later in the day that he could finally reach them. They told him they had arrived safely.

Still not safe

Soon after their journey to Dikwa, Fati’s fears started to materialise. 

Although HumAngle couldn’t reach her for a few days after their trip, we were able to reach other returnees.

“We keep hearing gunshots at night. People are going back to Maiduguri in scores.  Everyone is scared,” one of them, Kaka, explains over the phone. 

The following day, on Friday, May 16, Kaka reached out to HumAngle and said, “I just called to tell you I am back to Maiduguri. I can’t live there with my baby. But my parents are still there.” 

Kaka is now staying with a neighbour in Muna camp who, like Lawal, was meant to be relocated to Mafa. However, none of those assigned to Mafa have been relocated yet, so a few rooms in the camp remain standing. She had heard about an ISWAP attack in Marte, a nearby town, which forced thousands of people to flee to Dikwa. 

That attack is one of several recent signs of ISWAP’s resurgence in Borno State, including another in Dikwa on May 13. These incidents have prompted many to flee again, with some heading towards the Cameroonian border and others to Maiduguri. 

Some security analysts and international groups say the resettlements are ill-timed. They point to recent attacks and the ongoing threat from ISWAP as signs that many areas remain volatile. The violence, they argue, reflects a level of instability that makes voluntary return difficult, if not dangerous. Without consistent safety, people are unlikely to settle and may continue to move.

For example, the International Crisis Group has warned that these resettlement efforts are “endangering displaced people’s lives,” especially in areas that “tend to lack rudimentary health care, education and other state services.”

With no updates from officials and the relocation to Mafa still on hold, Lawal decided to travel to Dikwa on Sunday, May 18, to check on his mother and siblings.

Fati was delighted to see him. 

“When she saw me, her face lit up with a smile,” he said. “She looked over my shoulder and asked, ‘Where is your wife? Why didn’t you come with her? I kept a room for you that used to belong to a woman who has returned to Maiduguri.’”

Fati wants him to stay, because “it’s easier for the family.”

She tells HumAngle that they are fine and prays no harm comes to them.

“When we arrived, the government gave us one bag of rice, four litres of cooking oil, seasoning, a few measures of guinea corn and ₦50,000,” Fati says. “The problem is that there’s no running water even though they [the officials] said they’ll sort it out. The toilets are quite crowded too because some of them were damaged by the wind, so there aren’t enough.” 

Fati explains that, while they are getting by now, the future remains uncertain, as there will be no food once their current supply runs out. The farmland in Dikwa is far, and going there means risking an encounter with terrorists. Reaching the fields also requires a bicycle or motorbike, neither of which they own.

These poor living conditions and persistent threats have forced many returnees in other communities to flee once again, despite having been resettled in recent years through the same programme. Kaka’s return to Maiduguri, for instance, is not an isolated case; several families have also left Dikwa. 

Such recurring setbacks paint a bleak picture for Fati and her family. 

For now, she is focused on surviving each day in Dikwa, caring for her children, rationing food, and holding onto hope. What she wants most, she says, is not just food or water, but peace. 

When HumAngle last spoke to her, over a week after the trip to Dikwa, Fati still sounded worried, but there was also a lightness. 

In the background, Lawal teased her attempts to greet in Hausa, a language she doesn’t speak. She laughed. Then he took over and facilitated the conversation, fluently translating her Gamargu to Hausa and vice versa. But laughter needs no translation, and neither does the anxiety in Fati’s voice. 

WASHINGTON — In the wake of the Murphy Brown uproar, Vice President Dan Quayle has delivered another double-barreled commotion. First, in the past 10 days, he has made two more fire-breathing speeches on family values, one to a convention of Southern Baptists and the other to a National Right to Life gathering. Second, he has demonstrated he does not know how to spell potato .

My West Coast sources say politically aware people in the entertainment industry have made up their minds about the vice president’s “values” theme: It will not play in Peoria. Quayle’s distasteful traditionalist fervor, in this view, simply does not reflect the ethics or concerns of most Americans. Besides, how can you take a man seriously who doesn’t know the names of his vegetables?

But Quayle’s critics are kidding themselves, trying to suppress the message by deriding the messenger. They may think the vice president’s misspelling marks him as an irredeemable jerk, but many of his fellow citizens are not so sensitive, and some will even sympathize with him. (Pop quiz: Is it potatos or potatoes ?)

The same critics are surely right in seeing considerable daylight between most Americans’ general moral posture and the pungency of some of Quayle’s stronger words. Nonetheless, the “values” card might not only help the Bush-Quayle reelection effort, it may even play a moderating role in the campaign.

In his speeches, Quayle again criticized the “cultural elite” that “flees from the consequences of its self-indulgence.” But he also expanded on the idea of this elite as an alien force in American life. The country is made up, he said, of “the cultural elite, and the rest of us.” The elite “mock us in the newsrooms, sitcom studios and faculty lounges,” but “we Americans” must “stand up for our values, stand up for America.” The American people are “playing David to the Goliath of the dominant cultural elite,” he exhorted, “but remember the final outcome” of that battle: “The Philistines fled.”

This is unattractive stuff. It says only the people on Quayle’s side of the argument can lay legitimate claim to the label “American.” One of our worst national characteristics in politics is the tendency to read our opponents out of the rolls of American citizenship–and parts of the Quayle speeches serve as fair examples of this nasty habit.

But the recent Quayle sorties, despite the rough language, are not the beginning of a crusade–which would fail–to Puritanize American life. Instead, speeches like his accomplish two other things.

First, such talk shores up the Bush Administration’s base among social conservatives. They are not a majority in America, but they constitute a Peoria in which the vice president’s ideas will play to standing-room-only crowds. Solidifying a core constituency is a prudent thing to do for an electorally weak Administration facing a three-way presidential race. In olden times, national politicians could do this type of cheerleading in obscurity, with their most inflammatory words heard only by the special groups they were addressing. But now, because of modern communications, we are constantly eavesdropping on each other’s private political conversations.

Second, Quayle’s theme promises benefits for the Administration’s campaign even among many who do not share his moral fervor but do share a general unease with TV, movies and a popular culture that seems out of control. Often these are the same people now lured, to the Administration’s discomfort, by the siren song of Ross Perot.

Perot, it is becoming clear, is a strange man. He has displayed an authoritarian temperament in his business and public life and in the preemptory ways he proposes to deal with problems ranging from entitlements to the cost of U.S. troops abroad. He is cavalier about constitutionally rooted civil liberties and about institutions with which the Constitution says a President must share power. The different versions he gives of his own life are starting to make Ronald Reagan’s lapses in this area look trivial and benign.

In short, Perot is dangerous. Moreover, his attitudes do not reflect the considered views of the electorate: Americans of all kinds remain massively attached to the basic features of the American system. Yet Perot maintains his political strength because he has succeeded in presenting himself as the ultimate outsider to a citizenry that has been brought to mistrust all insiders.

We know today’s citizens are increasingly alienated from their government and public officials. Many Americans have come to see today’s politics and government as one vast sinkhole of incompetence and corruption. Even with the large problems our nation faces, this despair is out of proportion.

There is more than one reason for this mistrust, which has been building for a quarter-century. But the “cultural elite” cannot deny having had a hand in shaping it. If popular culture has shaken tradition regarding sexual morality, parts of the elite have also mounted a challenge in the arena of conventional politics.

To take the largest example, the national press, since Watergate, has given news consumers an unending stream of political scandal. Yet national politics is, by most measures, far cleaner than it was 25 years ago. But there is no way that newspaper readers and TV viewers absorbing this reportage can escape thinking that today’s politicians are incorrigibly dirty.

The view we get from movies that deal with politics is even darker, ranging from simple corruption to grand conspiracies to steal the presidency from the American people. “The “faculty lounges” that Quayle cited are, like the sitcoms, a mixed bag, but some major university campuses have been seedbeds for critiques of the profound structural racism, sexism and imperialism said to infest our conventional social and political institutions.

Those who have purveyed this radical political disaffection may have hoped it would lead to a more just America. Instead, what they begot was Perot, and they should recognize him as their child.

By pounding away at the theme of the cultural elite vs. America’s traditional values, Quayle is asserting that the Administration should be seen not as a bunch of political insiders but as the champion of all those cultural outsiders who feel denigrated and ignored by the media and popular culture. In other words, he argued that voters should exempt him and President George Bush from the “insider” curse of 1992.

More important, in appealing to traditional values, Quayle took the quickest and most powerful route to generally delegitimizing what have been called the “chattering classes” and casting grave doubt on whatever comes out of their collective mouths. Once people are reminded of how little they trust the “cultural elite,” they can be persuaded to exercise this mistrust in other areas. If members of the elite are insensitive to issues of family values, there is no reason to think them trustworthy on general politics. If they say American politics stinks, they should not be believed any more than they should be trusted on the issue of sex.

But if American politics does not stink in the way Hollywood says it does, then Perot should not get credit for being the outsider who champions the people against the Establishment. To the contrary: Perot can be portrayed as a creature of the cultural elite and its cynical view of American political life. His contempt for other politicians and his insistence on his unique ability to save us are perhaps messages not from the majority of Americans, but from an elitist fringe. Quayle has actually started in on this idea, chiding Perot for not showing sufficient respect for the Constitution.

If this strategy works, the “family values” issue will have tapped into some of the same anti-Establishment voter anger to which Perot appeals and will shake Perot loose from his position as the embodiment of average people’s sentiments. Even for those who do not like some of Quayle’s recent speeches, this is probably a good trade.