COTONOU, Benin – On an epic journey through Africa, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton braved an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Uganda, escaped a swarm of angry bees in Malawi and witnessed a rare snow in South Africa. She even shimmied on a dance floor, gaining the nickname “Secretary of Shake.”
As she wrapped up her nine-nation African tour Friday in Benin, Clinton shattered her own travel record, logging 865,000 miles and stops in 108 countries — 10 more countries than her nearest competitor, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
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Circling from Senegal around the Cape of Good Hope to Kenya and back to the West African nation of Benin, she also engineered an oil deal between fractious Sudan and South Sudan, read the riot act to feuding politicians in Kenya, visited freedom icon Nelson Mandela and got Nigeria’s leaders to step up their efforts against terrorism.
Clinton’s grueling journey — her second major African swing — may be recalled best for including a visit to Uganda amid a deadly Ebola outbreak, for the bees that didn’t sting her in Malawi and for the dance moves she displayed in South Africa on the same day snow fell in the capital for the first time since 1968.
On Tuesday in Pretoria, as South Africans reveled in the unusual winter snowfall, Clinton hosts dubbed her “Nimkita,” or “the one who brought the snow,” at a gala dinner that would provide perhaps the most-viewed television footage of the trip.
“‘Nimkita’ will be a name that I will proudly bear,” Clinton told the crowd before the evening entertainment, South African jazz and pop singer Judith Sephuma, cajoled the clearly delighted former first lady to cut a rug with her and other guests at the Presidential Guest House.
Video of the secretary boogieing down amid a cluster of dignitaries with decidedly mixed dancing skills quickly went viral on the Web, drawing hundreds of thousands of views from around the world.
Clinton — once nicknamed “secretary of quake” by her traveling press corps for an uncanny knack of being in countries when temblors or other natural disasters hit (at least four times and counting now) — had a new nickname.
She had arrived in South Africa from making the first trip ever by a secretary of state to Malawi where she had also danced on camera — with rural women after donating a bull to an agricultural collective — but had not created the same stir.
In Africa, the Internet buzzed with exaggerated reports that Clinton and her entourage had been attacked and chased out of the country by a swarm of bees. A local newspaper report said the insects had descended on the tarmac at the airport in Lilongwe and caused chaos as she boarded her plane.
In fact, the bees swirled around her motorcade as it arrived but dissipated as it approached the plane. Later, Clinton did not recall even seeing the bees, and no one in her party was stung.
By far the more dangerous health risk Clinton faced on the trip was flying into Uganda in the midst of an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, which, by the time it was contained on the day she left, killed at least 16 people.
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