Tourists: Business & Pleasure

On the road last week:

> Bearded Beatnik Poet Allen (Howl) Ginsberg came briefly to rest in South Viet Nam, to investigate the crisis between the government and the rebellious Buddhists (see South Viet Nam). The saffron-robed monks at first thought Ginsberg either a “spy or madman” but after attending a poetry reading one enthusiastic monk told him: “You are an enlightened one. Maybe all the people in the world are asleep except you. You are awake.” Awakened, Ginsberg almost immediately left South Viet Nam, commenting, “This place depresses me.” >Guinea’s President Sekou Toure, on the way home from the Pan-African summit conference in Addis Ababa, stopped off in Tanganyika. Arriving 20 minutes early for a private dinner at Arusha’s plush Safari hotel at the foot of cloud-capped Mount Meru, Toure seemed miffed because 1) European and African guests quietly relaxing in the lobby did not “stand as a mark of respect to him,” 2) the hotel was not decorated by either flowers or the national flags of Tanganyika and Guinea. After the Toure party stalked out, the Tanganyikan government closed down the hotel, evicting its 28 guests. Explained an African official: “We are very sensitive to no appreciation of our dignity.”

> Moise Tshombe, president of Katanga, hastily left his capital of Elisabethville when central government authorities picked up several valises full of his personal papers, which had been cached in the apartment of a Belgian called Mr. Christian. Among the items prompting Tshombe’s sudden search for a healthier climate: documents indicating that he has funds tucked away in 15 banks in 13 countries ranging from Switzerland to the U.S. to Burundi.

> Rada Adzhubei, 34, blonde, plump daughter of Nikita Khrushchev and wife of Izvestia’s editor, turned up in Cairo as guest of Hoda, 16-year-old daughter of Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Rada told newsmen:

“My father is in very good health and has no intention of resigning.” Rada also explained that, because Communist ideology does not discriminate between the sexes, “the day is not far off when we will send a woman to the moon.”