Scientists and wealthy tourists flocked to southern Africa Thursday to watch the first full solar eclipse of the millennium, a midwinter show greeted locally with both enthusiasm and fears for the eyesight of millions of poverty-stricken people.
The eclipse began in Angola and swept eastward across the continent into Zambia, Zimbabwe, the southern tip of Malawi, Mozambique and then Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Millions of people witnessed the celestial spectacle of the moon edging its way between the earth and the sun.
Bu many did not have protective glasses, raising fears of a major outbreak of eye problems.
Special protective goggles, made with a cardboard rim and dark plastic film for lenses, cost between 30 US cents and three dollars in a region where most people here live on less than one dollar a day.
Although some countries such as Angola distributed a few million glasses for free, many countries failed to provide the eye gear for peasant farmers.
And where the glasses had been available for sale, there were not enough for those who wanted to buy them - especially in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi.
Retailers in those countries were sold out, forcing even those who could afford the glasses to improvise with tin foil.
Scores of people in Harare were using cheap strips of aluminum foil to view the solar eclipse instead of the goggles, which were too expensive or sold out.
In Malawi, many shared goggles with friends. Others defied health warnings against looking at the eclipse with naked eyes and used compact discs, films and sunglasses.
Meanwhile, Angolan police seized some 5,000 pairs of fake viewing glasses earlier this week.
Health specialists warned that the eclipse, despite a big foreign exchange earner for the region, would have short-lived benefits as the region would have to battle with eye problems afterward.
In heavily populated areas in Angola, emergency eye clinics manned by opthamologists were set up.
Most eclipses, however, occur over the sea or over largely uninhabited areas.
The great total eclipse of August 11 1999 was exceptional -- as was that on Thursday -- because it traversed such a populous area, from western Europe to India.
The hype surrounding the eclipse in southern Africa saw thousands of wealthy western tourists and enthusiasts descend on the region.
The average three minutes that the eclipse passed across the region, was met with festivity at specially designed solar-viewing sites.
Thousands of Zambians, including politicians and President Frederick Chiluba, set aside their differences and burst into jubilation, ululation and whistling at the witnessing of the eclipse near the city's airport.
In Zimbabwe, thousands of people gathered at selected points to a chorus of honking horns, cheering, and ululating.
President Robert Mugabe watched the eclipse from the garden of his home, the State House in the capital, along with his family.
Thousands of tourists, scientists and Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos gathered in the coastal town of Sumbe, where authorities had set up basic tourism facilities in a nation known better for its intractable civil war than its sandy beaches.
But in some villages, the superstition surrounding the eclipse sent many indoors, or into prayer as it is believed that eclipses signal a bad omen.
Muslims in Malawi closed all businesses and prayed, while in Mozambique, most people stayed indoors.
Total solar eclipses happen about once every 18 months, and normally one area sees an eclipse once every 400 years, but southern Africa is due to experince another one in 2002. |
