like her Roman namesake, a child of January
is continually fixated on gateways and doors
comings, goings
beginnings and endings.
My time in Senegal is unraveling fast; I picture the calendar pages dropping to the floor one after another. How could something so big move so quickly?
During my first week in this country, I went with some of the other girls to see a fortune teller in Dakar. Her skin was gray and thick and wrinkled like an elephant’s. She was old; but maybe not so old by other standards. One of her eyes was clouded. She was heavy, but still her boubou hung almost unfilled. Tossing cowries on the ground and gathering them, tossing again, gathering and tossing, and spreading them with her elephant hands into shifting constellations on the earth, she read our shells - our pasts and futures - with remarkable disinterest. She was incredibly right on! She read one girl’s divorce; one girl’s stomach problems; another girl’s visa problems; etc. (some lighter things too … ) She predicted things about them that have since come true. But me, she couldn’t read me.
I really do believe in this. Maybe not in supernatural abilities to foretell the future, but I believe there are people with an extraordinary ability to understand, and empathize, and literally read other people. But I think it’s not so much about “powers” as it is about the exchange: one person gives a little, and the seer reads, responds. I think some people give less outward clues, some people are harder to read. Some people have nothing to read. I think I fell into this latter category.
I came here very empty, in the sense that I had tied up so many loose ends and left them, with an entire ocean behind me. And here I arrived, with little baggage, and the seer couldn’t see a thing in me.
A friend recently told me she wrote a play based loosely on me, pre-departure. I told her to send it to me, because I can’t without difficulty remember what I was thinking only eight months ago! I was without expectations. I was freaking out, slightly, but felt overwhelmingly blessed. I feel the same way right now.
I’ve got those leaving-Africa-blues!!!
Blue but rich with these memories, too, that I’ve got. Of friends, and families, and small losses and wins, and teachers, and trips, and parties, and rooftops, and telling stories, and long conversations, and blue sheep, and food and love and nighttime skies.
I'm going to a jazz festival in St. Louis this weekend, which is a fun city. The former colonial capital of Senegal, it's kind of an overgrown fishing village crossed with New Orleans. I love people from that part of the country, on the ocean and very near to the border with Mauritania; I can't explain exactly why. They are known for being very kind but very traditional, very elegant, and very relaxed.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
pesach in senegal
This is me retelling the part of the story about the parting of the Red Sea.If it weren't obvious enough without the gesticulations.
I know! I’ve been blogging so infrequently. The truth of the matter is that I haven’t had much to write about at all these days. The events in my life have slowed down to this tam-tam lullaby pace with little variation from day to day (as Africa was before I came, the way it will be long after I go). The familiarity of it all has grown on me.
Last night, though, we celebrated Passover. I've found something very poignant in the way our holidays, especially the Jewish holidays, have materialized in this faraway place. My friend Inbal and I planned a sedar for some friends and coworkers, and it was really one of the best I can remember! (At least, it beat last year’s marathon sedar at the Chabad House.) It was an interesting mix of people gathered, from all geographic origins (the States, Europe, Africa) and faiths (Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Vegans). Inbal masterfully created something like an abridged haggada/passover 101 guide that carried us through the rituals, the storytelling, the songs, distilling the lessons of the old festival and imbuing them modern relevance. On my part, I made a killer matza kugel and, as the youngest (per tradition), sang the Four Questions. Why is this night different from all other nights? Inbal and I fell pretty naturally into the role of Jewish Mother, and in typical fashion fretted about having too little food, when in the end our left overs could have fed the entire quartier. Our dinner was potluck and kind of Sephardic in nature, given the ingredients we’ve got at our disposal: Moroccan chicken tangine, Yemeni beef stew the color of cumin and turmeric, fresh fruit and chocolate, we made our charoset with dates and raisons and peanuts. We ate so much! We drank so much wine, as custom obliged. All night we lied around the terrace on woven mats, while orange candle-light illuminated our faces and danced on the walls. It’s so good, continuing this year after year after year.
Inbal found a poem to share with everyone, by Judy Chicago. One which resonates with the nature of all this, one which is kind of cheesy in a sunshine-hippie-lovin sort of way, but a valuable ideal nonetheless. One that’s worth trying to live up to anyways.
And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another’s will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will share equally in the Earth’s abundance
And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all will nourish the young
And then all will cherish life’s creatures
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again
Friday, April 4, 2008
such a long long time to be gone and a short time to be there
I can tell it's been a while since I last posted anything, because the henna on my feet has long since faded. Except the toenails never lose the color. When you keep an eye out for it, you'll notice on the nails of all the women here strokes of burnt red, in crosses, stripes in some stage or another of growing out.
I have trouble grasping the idea that I've been here for seven months. It's gone so fast, but at the same time, it feels like a year or more. It still feels impermanent (my time here), but at the same time, I feel really at home. Almost. Although I can say the thought of family and Mexican food that awaits me in the ever imminent future is marvelous. I'm not sure what will become of my blog, though, when this journey's said and done.
So ever since I wrapped up my field visits a couple weeks ago, I've been nestled in Thiès and reluctant to move. Although my girlfriends and I make it to the beach some weekends, or Dakar when we're feeling really ambitious. I'm not stranger to big cities, but when I'm in Dakar I feel like a country mouse. My friends that live there like the ultra-swanky Lebanese bars where, no matter what I'm wearing, I feel very underhip. The bartenders ask my order in Wolof which means they think I'm in the Peacecorps. Which inevitably means I look frizzy, malnourished, and most likely wearing Birkenstocks. (Which respectively, I'm not, I'm not, and ok, I am).
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
presidential endorsement
Really moving piece by New York Times Op Ed Columnist, Roger Cohen. (With a foot on two continents, Cohen makes the connections that distance, economics, civil rights, etc ... have obscured but not eroded).
Beyond America’s Original Sin
March 20, 2008
There are things you come to believe and things you carry in your blood. In my case, having spent part of my childhood in apartheid South Africa, I bear my measure of shame.
As a child, experience is wordless but no less powerful for that. How vast, how shimmering, was Muizenberg beach, near Cape Town, with all that glistening white skin spread across the golden sand!
The scrawny blacks were elsewhere, swimming off the rocks in a filthy harbor, and I watched from my grandfather’s house and I wondered.
Once, a black nanny took me out across the road to a parapet above a rail track beside that harbor. “You wouldn’t want me to drop you,” she said.
The fear I felt lingered. I returned recently to measure how far I would have fallen. In memory, the abyss plunged 100 feet. Reality revealed a drop of 10. That discrepancy measures a child’s panic.
A “For Sale” sign was up on what had been the family house. I inquired if I might visit and received a surly rebuff. But not before I glimpsed the mountain behind where my father hiked and where I feared the snakes among the thorn bushes.
Fear, shadowy as the sharks beyond the nets at Muizenberg, was never quite absent from our sunlit African sojourns. My own was formed of disorientation: I was not quite of the system because my parents had emigrated from Johannesburg to London. So, on return visits, I wandered into blacks-only public toilet or sat on a blacks-only bench.
Blacks only — and I was white. Apartheid entered my consciousness as a kind of self-humiliation. The black women who bathed me as an infant touched my skin, but their world was untouchable.
Only later did a cruel system come into focus. I see white men, gin and tonics on their breath, red meat on their plates, beneath the jacarandas of Johannesburg, sneering at the impossibility of desiring a black woman.
A racial divide, once lived, dwells in the deepest parts of the psyche. This is what was captured by Barack Obama’s pitch-perfect speech on race. Slavery was indeed America’s “original sin.” Of course, “the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” lives on in forms of African-American humiliation and anger that smolder in ways incommunicable to whites.
Segregation placed American blacks in the U.S. equivalent of that filthy African harbor.
It takes bravery, and perhaps an unusual black-white vantage point, to navigate these places where hurt is profound, incomprehension the rule, just as it takes courage to say, as Obama did, that black “anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Progress, since the Civil Rights Movement, or since apartheid, has assuaged the wounds of race but not closed them. To carry my part of shame is also to carry a clue to the vortexes of rancor for which Obama has uncovered words.
I understand the rage of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, however abhorrent its expression at times. I admire Obama for saying: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”
Honesty feels heady right now. For seven years, we have lived with the arid, us-against-them formulas of Bush’s menial mind, with the result that the nuanced exploration of America’s hardest subject is almost giddying. Can it be that a human being, like Wright, or like Obama’s grandmother, is actually inhabited by ambiguities? Can an inquiring mind actually explore the half-shades of truth?
Yes. It. Can.
The unimaginable South African transition that Nelson Mandela made possible is a reminder that leadership matters. Words matter. The clamoring now in the United States for a presidency that uplifts rather than demeans is a reflection of the intellectual desert of the Bush years.
Hillary Clinton said in January that: “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” Wrong. America’s had its fill of the prosaic.
The unthinkable can come to pass. When I was a teenager, my relatives advised me to enjoy the swimming pools of Johannesburg because “next year they will be red with blood.”
But the inevitable bloodbath never came. Mandela walked out of prison and sought reconciliation, not revenge. Later Mandela would say: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
Like countless others, I came to America because possibility is broader here than in Europe’s narrower confines. Perhaps it’s my African “original sin,” but when Obama says he “will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible,” I feel fear slipping away, like a shadow receding before the still riveting idea that “out of many we are truly one.”
Beyond America’s Original Sin
March 20, 2008
There are things you come to believe and things you carry in your blood. In my case, having spent part of my childhood in apartheid South Africa, I bear my measure of shame.
As a child, experience is wordless but no less powerful for that. How vast, how shimmering, was Muizenberg beach, near Cape Town, with all that glistening white skin spread across the golden sand!
The scrawny blacks were elsewhere, swimming off the rocks in a filthy harbor, and I watched from my grandfather’s house and I wondered.
Once, a black nanny took me out across the road to a parapet above a rail track beside that harbor. “You wouldn’t want me to drop you,” she said.
The fear I felt lingered. I returned recently to measure how far I would have fallen. In memory, the abyss plunged 100 feet. Reality revealed a drop of 10. That discrepancy measures a child’s panic.
A “For Sale” sign was up on what had been the family house. I inquired if I might visit and received a surly rebuff. But not before I glimpsed the mountain behind where my father hiked and where I feared the snakes among the thorn bushes.
Fear, shadowy as the sharks beyond the nets at Muizenberg, was never quite absent from our sunlit African sojourns. My own was formed of disorientation: I was not quite of the system because my parents had emigrated from Johannesburg to London. So, on return visits, I wandered into blacks-only public toilet or sat on a blacks-only bench.
Blacks only — and I was white. Apartheid entered my consciousness as a kind of self-humiliation. The black women who bathed me as an infant touched my skin, but their world was untouchable.
Only later did a cruel system come into focus. I see white men, gin and tonics on their breath, red meat on their plates, beneath the jacarandas of Johannesburg, sneering at the impossibility of desiring a black woman.
A racial divide, once lived, dwells in the deepest parts of the psyche. This is what was captured by Barack Obama’s pitch-perfect speech on race. Slavery was indeed America’s “original sin.” Of course, “the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” lives on in forms of African-American humiliation and anger that smolder in ways incommunicable to whites.
Segregation placed American blacks in the U.S. equivalent of that filthy African harbor.
It takes bravery, and perhaps an unusual black-white vantage point, to navigate these places where hurt is profound, incomprehension the rule, just as it takes courage to say, as Obama did, that black “anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Progress, since the Civil Rights Movement, or since apartheid, has assuaged the wounds of race but not closed them. To carry my part of shame is also to carry a clue to the vortexes of rancor for which Obama has uncovered words.
I understand the rage of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, however abhorrent its expression at times. I admire Obama for saying: “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.”
Honesty feels heady right now. For seven years, we have lived with the arid, us-against-them formulas of Bush’s menial mind, with the result that the nuanced exploration of America’s hardest subject is almost giddying. Can it be that a human being, like Wright, or like Obama’s grandmother, is actually inhabited by ambiguities? Can an inquiring mind actually explore the half-shades of truth?
Yes. It. Can.
The unimaginable South African transition that Nelson Mandela made possible is a reminder that leadership matters. Words matter. The clamoring now in the United States for a presidency that uplifts rather than demeans is a reflection of the intellectual desert of the Bush years.
Hillary Clinton said in January that: “You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose.” Wrong. America’s had its fill of the prosaic.
The unthinkable can come to pass. When I was a teenager, my relatives advised me to enjoy the swimming pools of Johannesburg because “next year they will be red with blood.”
But the inevitable bloodbath never came. Mandela walked out of prison and sought reconciliation, not revenge. Later Mandela would say: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
Like countless others, I came to America because possibility is broader here than in Europe’s narrower confines. Perhaps it’s my African “original sin,” but when Obama says he “will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible,” I feel fear slipping away, like a shadow receding before the still riveting idea that “out of many we are truly one.”
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
This post is the latest in my own series of desultory responses to a fascinating and broad-themed New York Times series on global migrations. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/world/asia/17remit.html?pagewanted=1)
This one is about Dilip Ratha, the once shoeless Brahmin country boy turned Ph.D-touting World Bank man, who’s life work exposed the major impact of remittances (the money sent home by immigrants) in developing countries.
To highlight some outstanding points in the article:
- The International Monetary Fund said the Philippines received $122 million [per year in remittances]. Mr. Ratha produced an estimate 51 times higher: $6.2 billion. His tallies, first published in 2003, showed that remittances, once dismissed as the equivalent of a rounding error, were nearly three times greater than the world’s combined foreign aid.
- In subsequent work, Mr. Ratha has argued that the importance of the money exceeds its sheer size. Unlike foreign aid, it cannot be skimmed by potentates. Unlike investors who flee crises, migrants increase their giving during hard times. The money is directed to the needy. And Mr. Ratha contends it is well-monitored, too, by intimates on the sending end. “It comes with a lot of goodwill, advice, knowledge and punishment if necessary — keeping in mind the welfare of the recipient,” he said.
- Mr. Ratha agrees that migration is wrenching and the economic forces that drive it are often unjust. But, “Once people decide to migrate, benefits can occur for local development — that’s the point,” he said.
The matter at hand here is immigration and how it pertains to development in the home country. To me, at the heart of it lies this fundamental dilemma: on the one hand, immigration is key to development. Giving money - and whatever other psychological/social boosts - directly to the people who need it most is essential. On the other hand, immigration has a somber side. Starting with the population left behind, the receiving end I guess, remittances may alleviate the symptoms of poverty but not the embedded causes. Whether they invest or squander the money is up to them. (Freedom to spend has got to be an important aspect of development I haven’t yet fully thought through). Even then, they aren’t getting 100% of remittances. Money-transfer companies like Western Union can claim as much as 10% of funds sent home.
On the giver’s end, the impacts of migration are a heavy weight to bear. I don’t even mean economically or social justicely, we all know that immigrants who come from the developing world - whether they lack language skills or “papers” - take on the dregs of job barrel. (And their family members left behind don’t always understand this).
But when it comes to the immigrants themselves, I’m less interested in the economic aspects than the cultural and psychological ramifications of it all. What impact does it have when families are broken up by oceans? When new families are merged across language and ethnic barriers? How great is the sense of displacement - in the sense that the immigrant is at home neither here nor there? And finally, how do new immigrants relate to or alter existing immigrant minorities? For example, how do new African immigrants to the US fit into the African-American community. (Which is not really to suggest there is one homogenous African American community).
Just a couple weeks ago, a Senegalese friend of mine from Boston came home to Senegal for the first time in four years. It was funny to see him, because when I left Boston he was still living a little under the radar shall we say and I just didn’t imagine I would see him here. (Also kind of a bizarre clash between my past and my present, but that’s another story). We went dancing, it was fun. But I got him talking, about some things I’d never even thought to ask him six months ago, and he told me what it’s like, coming home. If not so much in words, in action. The pressure to prove success, to feign it if need be … the inability to express isolation with loved ones here - where no indigenous word for “lonely” even exists.
I guess this was sort of all over the place - starting with immigration and economic development and ending with immigration and identity crisis. (well, kind of). But at the end of the day it’s all part of the parcel isn't it?
Tonight I'm making a religious pilgrimage to Tivouane ... more on that to come...
This one is about Dilip Ratha, the once shoeless Brahmin country boy turned Ph.D-touting World Bank man, who’s life work exposed the major impact of remittances (the money sent home by immigrants) in developing countries.
To highlight some outstanding points in the article:
- The International Monetary Fund said the Philippines received $122 million [per year in remittances]. Mr. Ratha produced an estimate 51 times higher: $6.2 billion. His tallies, first published in 2003, showed that remittances, once dismissed as the equivalent of a rounding error, were nearly three times greater than the world’s combined foreign aid.
- In subsequent work, Mr. Ratha has argued that the importance of the money exceeds its sheer size. Unlike foreign aid, it cannot be skimmed by potentates. Unlike investors who flee crises, migrants increase their giving during hard times. The money is directed to the needy. And Mr. Ratha contends it is well-monitored, too, by intimates on the sending end. “It comes with a lot of goodwill, advice, knowledge and punishment if necessary — keeping in mind the welfare of the recipient,” he said.
- Mr. Ratha agrees that migration is wrenching and the economic forces that drive it are often unjust. But, “Once people decide to migrate, benefits can occur for local development — that’s the point,” he said.
The matter at hand here is immigration and how it pertains to development in the home country. To me, at the heart of it lies this fundamental dilemma: on the one hand, immigration is key to development. Giving money - and whatever other psychological/social boosts - directly to the people who need it most is essential. On the other hand, immigration has a somber side. Starting with the population left behind, the receiving end I guess, remittances may alleviate the symptoms of poverty but not the embedded causes. Whether they invest or squander the money is up to them. (Freedom to spend has got to be an important aspect of development I haven’t yet fully thought through). Even then, they aren’t getting 100% of remittances. Money-transfer companies like Western Union can claim as much as 10% of funds sent home.
On the giver’s end, the impacts of migration are a heavy weight to bear. I don’t even mean economically or social justicely, we all know that immigrants who come from the developing world - whether they lack language skills or “papers” - take on the dregs of job barrel. (And their family members left behind don’t always understand this).
But when it comes to the immigrants themselves, I’m less interested in the economic aspects than the cultural and psychological ramifications of it all. What impact does it have when families are broken up by oceans? When new families are merged across language and ethnic barriers? How great is the sense of displacement - in the sense that the immigrant is at home neither here nor there? And finally, how do new immigrants relate to or alter existing immigrant minorities? For example, how do new African immigrants to the US fit into the African-American community. (Which is not really to suggest there is one homogenous African American community).
Just a couple weeks ago, a Senegalese friend of mine from Boston came home to Senegal for the first time in four years. It was funny to see him, because when I left Boston he was still living a little under the radar shall we say and I just didn’t imagine I would see him here. (Also kind of a bizarre clash between my past and my present, but that’s another story). We went dancing, it was fun. But I got him talking, about some things I’d never even thought to ask him six months ago, and he told me what it’s like, coming home. If not so much in words, in action. The pressure to prove success, to feign it if need be … the inability to express isolation with loved ones here - where no indigenous word for “lonely” even exists.
I guess this was sort of all over the place - starting with immigration and economic development and ending with immigration and identity crisis. (well, kind of). But at the end of the day it’s all part of the parcel isn't it?
Tonight I'm making a religious pilgrimage to Tivouane ... more on that to come...
Thursday, March 13, 2008
points of view: black on white and white on black ... the very coolest artist Faith Ringgold mixes it up!! http://www.faithringgold.com/racialquestions/
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Again I'm wrapping up another mission in the field.
Darkness falls as soon as the sun slips under the horizon, and the unlit room around me has as sunk silently from the blue shadows of evening to pitch black stain of night in as little time as it took me to write it. Up and down the corridor fluorescent light spills out of doorways. The cry of the muezzin marks the end of day as always, it just briefly interrupts the white noise of the quartier - bleating animals, tvs blaring soccer matches and repeated soaps, hushed, fast voices of women. I can hear Coumbis, the little girl who lives next door, suffering some awful fit of giggles. She has a barbie doll she calls Madame Toubab … something like the equivalent of Mrs. Whitey. Her little brother Abdoulaye is about as small as a peanut and he imitates everything she does.
I’m writing this from Tambacounda. Work has brought me once again out in the bush, and though I wasn’t much looking forward to this mission, it’s been pretty good. I’ve really been on the go since New Years, moving from here to there, never staying in one place for place for more than two weeks. It’s been wonderful to see as much as I’ve seen of the country but I’m looking forward to staying put for a while when I finally get back to Thiès. It’s getting hot, too.
I spent last week in in the northwestern region of Matam, right up there on the border with Mauritania in a small town called Ourosogui.
Old Ourosogui with your vaguely Japanese sounding name,
You old stomping grounds of traders and herders and tumbleweeds,
You dusty truckstop prelude to the three and a half million square miles of desert beyond you.
The winds are hot there and when there is no wind, the sitting heat warps the view into the distance. There is another volunteer who lives out there - a super Argentinean girl with a bad back but beautiful in all other regards. A breath of fresh air as they say if you can imagine … we spent one night up on the roof, sleeping under the stars, though I didn’t do much of that after all the café touba we drank beforehand. The people that live in the region are mostly Pular, it’s as if the border with Mauritania might well enough not exist. Islam and tradition weigh heavily in these villages that bake in the sun. A great many people have been resistant to our NGO’s presence in the area. You have to understand the education program that we implement in each village; while it brings truly great changes, in terms of health, literacy, alleviation of poverty, etc. - the image it’s gained within Senegal, and even more so internationally, is primarily as a combatant against female circumcision. A lot of people see that as an attack on their traditions, on Islam; a lot of people just don’t want to abandon a custom so integral and so meaningful to their cultures, histories … so not everyone welcomes our presence warmly and unconditionally.
Tamba was really good. Despite my protests, I left the village of Lounthji loaded wi
th presents - calabashes, wooden spoons, indigo cloth, and a SHEEP! Oh little baby, he was soo cute and dyed BLUE. They must have cleaned him to where he was white as the day he was born, and then wrapped him up in indigo clothes because his wooly coat glowed in this lovely iridescent way. He had Xs carved into his ears. He cried a lot :( When I brought him back to the office, they asked me when we were going to eat him, but I told them as a rule I don’t eat anything I’ve known for over a half hour. I’ll have to leave him here, because he wouldn’t do so well on the long trip back west.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Bush & Africa
It seems a president in his final year of office is a little innocuous. We can almost disregard all of his delusional worldviews and warviews, his inadequate response to a drowning New Orleans (and a drowning economy), his nod of approval to secret prisons, massive infringements on privacy, and funding for faith-based anything. As well as his multi-billion dollar cuts in domestic spending on health care and education, even his goofy pride in his one great domestic success (no child left behind) in face of sinking educational achievement rates as our peers in Europe and Asia outperform us.
That being said, Africa-wise he hasn’t done all too bad. Not outstanding either.
During his six day tour of Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, Benin, and Rwanda, Bush visited several AIDS treatment centers that his own investment initiatives have helped fund. Writing for the Nicholas Kristoff (aah, my heart flutters ...) blog, Josh Ruxin claims the US has invested over $19 billion to date, 4 billion higher than what Bush committed in 2003. But who can really say which numbers are rosy and which are realistic? The breakdown isn’t as luminous as it may seem. PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) spends only about 55% on treatment of individuals infected with AIDS, mainly through the distribution of antiretroviral drugs. 20% goes to prevention programs; of that, an absurd 33% is spent on programs that promote abstinence. (One of the several reasons abstinence education is so futile in Africa is that in societies that condone men's polygamy and infidelity, and silence women's voices, married women contract the virus all the time.) None of the funds are expressly apportioned to improving the health systems in Africa which, in their crumbling state, have dangerously thwarted the good intentions of donors aid organizations.
On other fronts … While Bush hasn’t sent American troops into Darfur (should we, could we?), he has announced just this week he would free $100 million from his foreign aid budget to assist African countries that send peace-keeping troops to the region. He needs to back this kind of military support with harsher diplomatic efforts with the government in Khartoum. It might be too little too late, but it’s more than the Clinton administration did for Rwanda.
Africa's never been a fast-lane kind of place. Love it or hate it, the pace of life, maybe the pan-African philosophy, is ndank ndank (slowly, slowly). That's not how our country rolls, but it seems we've let it define our foreign aid.
That being said, Africa-wise he hasn’t done all too bad. Not outstanding either.
During his six day tour of Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, Benin, and Rwanda, Bush visited several AIDS treatment centers that his own investment initiatives have helped fund. Writing for the Nicholas Kristoff (aah, my heart flutters ...) blog, Josh Ruxin claims the US has invested over $19 billion to date, 4 billion higher than what Bush committed in 2003. But who can really say which numbers are rosy and which are realistic? The breakdown isn’t as luminous as it may seem. PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) spends only about 55% on treatment of individuals infected with AIDS, mainly through the distribution of antiretroviral drugs. 20% goes to prevention programs; of that, an absurd 33% is spent on programs that promote abstinence. (One of the several reasons abstinence education is so futile in Africa is that in societies that condone men's polygamy and infidelity, and silence women's voices, married women contract the virus all the time.) None of the funds are expressly apportioned to improving the health systems in Africa which, in their crumbling state, have dangerously thwarted the good intentions of donors aid organizations.
On other fronts … While Bush hasn’t sent American troops into Darfur (should we, could we?), he has announced just this week he would free $100 million from his foreign aid budget to assist African countries that send peace-keeping troops to the region. He needs to back this kind of military support with harsher diplomatic efforts with the government in Khartoum. It might be too little too late, but it’s more than the Clinton administration did for Rwanda.
Africa's never been a fast-lane kind of place. Love it or hate it, the pace of life, maybe the pan-African philosophy, is ndank ndank (slowly, slowly). That's not how our country rolls, but it seems we've let it define our foreign aid.
warning to readers. someone has been commenting on my postings, and in the comment they leave a link which contains a virus. So don't click on any links you might find in these comments! I have the feeling this could be a blogspot-wide trend soooo, as if we need reminding, best to not click on or open anything that looks suspicious ...
Sunday, February 17, 2008
quelles vacances
The mosque in Djenne, the largest mud-structure in the world. (why you should love mud architecture: highly sustainable, locally acquired, thermally efficient, and limitless in design possibilities)
Mali is a lot like Senegal, particularly areas of Senegal outside of its capital region. But the differences, of course, are there - understated, pale; like sisters.
Mali is immense, Mali unrolls the dusty tapestry of its territory in all directions interminably. Mali has so much space, so much void. And how we traipsed and retraipsed it ...
Salif Keita headlined the Festival on the Niger concert we went to in Segou. Salif Keita is an albino, and something about that suggested to me - irrationally I suppose - an infirmity. Which is why the strength of his voice and his heavy presence on stage blew me away. His voice is like a heavy harmattan wind that picks up all the murmurs and whispers and cries breathed across the Sahara and blows it at you with such a force, you’ve got no defenses against it.
I wish we had more time in the desert, but we only spent a couple days up in Timbuktu. We stayed with a young Tuareg married couple who were super friendly, if not a dysfunctional (arranged) match … we rode camels straight towards the red setting sun, as if we could meet it on the horizon. Spent the night in their cousins’ encampment, under a moonless sky and ten thousand stars. From the highest private dune I watched the desert come back to life in the morning. I thought about what it must be like to know your way through the desert by the stars and the dunes, so identical looking to me. The desert is like the ocean in many ways, fierce but traversable in the same way. Frightening and alluring in the same ways. The city of Timbuktu itself is really cool, a special blend of African and Arab. Magic lamps and flying carpets for sale. Definitely a trace of the grandiose center of learning it was so many many years ago. Getting there and back was a drag though! After the return trip, we crashed for 24 hours in a sleepy little town at the foot of a mountain that seemed made just for that purpose.
We spent a lot of time on the road, which was a really good chance to see the environment but tiring too because transportation tends to be a little uncomfortable … Laura and I spent a lot of time thoughtfully ranking the worst rides. The time we squeezed 13 people in a “public” 4WD vehicle and flew across the rocky desert might have been the worst. The busride from Djenne to Segou felt luxurious by comparison, until we got peed on by the sheep on the roof.
Mali is archaic and artistic and magical. It was incredible, really.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
For those of you who didn't know (I didn't know), 2008 is the International Year of Languages. A fitting time to learn a new language and to ruminate over the babel that both separates and connects us.
When I studied abroad in Senegal, I was lucky to meet Boubacar Boris Diop, a Senegalese novelist who published for years in French before switching to his native language, Wolof. This is a really thought-provoking interview with him that touches on so many interesting, if problematic issues concerning African writers and readers. (For more on UNESCO's International Year of Languages: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=41344&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html)
Interview by Jasmina Šopova
You wrote a dozen books in French before choosing Wolof, your mother language. Why this reversion?
Actually, my language was always there, inside me. The only problem I faced was the ability to write in my language. I was “corrupted” by French. I spoke everyday Wolof, but I didn’t possess it intimately.
Then there was Rwanda. A group of writers I belonged to went there after the genocide, in 1998, as part of the operation “Rwanda: writing as a duty to memory”. I said to myself that if we’d let 10,000 Rwandans get killed per day for three months, if nobody had done anything, this conveyed a certain contempt for Africa…
At that moment I felt even more strongly the desire to write in my mother language. It became essential. Oh, at first it was painful…I was very afraid of writing a French novel in Wolof. I had to fight against myself, but the Diops are stubborn! Then I began to hear voices – voices that came up out of the past. And writing became very easy. I am certain that my first novel in Wolof, Doomi golo (the she-monkey’s young), is my best piece of writing.
Is writing in Wolof therefore also a political act?
Absolutely. Coming back to the title of my novel The she-monkey’s young: what’s a monkey? It’s an imitation of the other. The passage that best sums up the book is the one in which you see a huge mirror in the middle of nowhere. Two gorillas find themselves in front of the mirror and they see their own images. They start fighting their reflections and as a result of hitting the mirror, they hurt themselves and die. What we call hatred of the other is in fact self-hatred. You have to be able to tolerate your image in the mirror, assume your identity.
At the moment I’m translating this novel into French. It will be published in France in September 2008.
Why didn’t you decide to publish it in French in Senegal?
Because now there are only publishers in national languages. That’s good news, anyway…even if their tongues are hanging out! They work with enthusiasm, but with immeasurable difficulties too: no way to make a profit, no distribution…True, the state occasionally steps in. The “Direction du Livre et de la Lecture” (book and reading administration) funded, for instance, a second edition of my book Doomi Golo after the first run of 3000 copies was sold out.
Besides my publisher Papyrus, there’s the « Organisation Sénégalaise d'Appui au Développement » (OSAD) that does remarkable work. And also ARED publishers, but they’re specialized in research and in education for development.
How many readers can you have in Wolof?
If I’d asked myself that question, I would never have started writing! It’s true that where I come from, many people don’t know how to read and don’t buy books. And they have other priorities: their children’s health, feeding their families….There’s also another phenomenon: rich people who live in poor societies generally prefer buying a fancy car, because you can’t show off a book….
We have to accept this situation and bet on the long term. It will take a while for books written today in the African languages to prevail, but they’ll eventually find acceptance. Thirty years ago, literature in national languages didn’t exist, except for a few isolated cases. Today the situation is the opposite: hundreds of books have been published in Wolof and Pulaar, definitely more than in French.
There are two writers’ organizations in Senegal, one composed of writers in French, the other of writers in national languages. The latter are far more numerous, but they have no visibility, because we live in a society where French is the language of prestige.
Do you count on diaspora readership?
A great deal. But although the younger generations of the diaspora speak their mother languages, they don’t know how to read or write them. This is why I had the idea of organizing a Wolof workshop with young people whose background is Senegalese immigration in France. At first the parents didn’t necessarily see any benefit in their children learning their mother language, but there was great demand from the young people. We’re starting in Bordeaux on 25 February. It’s an idea that seems odd initially, but if it works I’ll be very proud of it.
Often when one travels from one African capital to another, one has to stop off in a European capital. Does this also happen in the world of African literature?
It would be fantastic if I could translate the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiongo directly form Kikuyu into Wolof, without going through English and French….To my knowledge there’s almost no translation from one African language into another. My novel Doomi Golo is translated into Pulaar now. But who will translate it into Swahili? Do we have to wait two or three centuries? Not necessarily, but that’s what I fear, alas.
You know, Africa was divided up by the colonial powers in Berlin in 1885. Africans speak to each other through the colonial languages. And me, making fun of it, referring to the Berlin Wall of the Cold War, I call it our “Berlin Wall”. It is invisible but terrible – it separates the English-, French- and Portuguese-speaking countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
With Moussa Konaté, Malian writer who heads the French-speaking festival “Etonnants voyageurs” (amazing travelers) in Mali, I’ve often discussed the idea of organizing a big meeting of African writers who write in national languages. A way of at least making cracks in this wall. But it’s easier to find sponsors for French-language writers than for those who write in national languages. UNESCO could be the perfect venue for such a pan-African encounter, particularly this year, international year of languages. And it’s an international space. Without walls.
When I studied abroad in Senegal, I was lucky to meet Boubacar Boris Diop, a Senegalese novelist who published for years in French before switching to his native language, Wolof. This is a really thought-provoking interview with him that touches on so many interesting, if problematic issues concerning African writers and readers. (For more on UNESCO's International Year of Languages: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=41344&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html)
Interview by Jasmina Šopova
You wrote a dozen books in French before choosing Wolof, your mother language. Why this reversion?
Actually, my language was always there, inside me. The only problem I faced was the ability to write in my language. I was “corrupted” by French. I spoke everyday Wolof, but I didn’t possess it intimately.
Then there was Rwanda. A group of writers I belonged to went there after the genocide, in 1998, as part of the operation “Rwanda: writing as a duty to memory”. I said to myself that if we’d let 10,000 Rwandans get killed per day for three months, if nobody had done anything, this conveyed a certain contempt for Africa…
At that moment I felt even more strongly the desire to write in my mother language. It became essential. Oh, at first it was painful…I was very afraid of writing a French novel in Wolof. I had to fight against myself, but the Diops are stubborn! Then I began to hear voices – voices that came up out of the past. And writing became very easy. I am certain that my first novel in Wolof, Doomi golo (the she-monkey’s young), is my best piece of writing.
Is writing in Wolof therefore also a political act?
Absolutely. Coming back to the title of my novel The she-monkey’s young: what’s a monkey? It’s an imitation of the other. The passage that best sums up the book is the one in which you see a huge mirror in the middle of nowhere. Two gorillas find themselves in front of the mirror and they see their own images. They start fighting their reflections and as a result of hitting the mirror, they hurt themselves and die. What we call hatred of the other is in fact self-hatred. You have to be able to tolerate your image in the mirror, assume your identity.
At the moment I’m translating this novel into French. It will be published in France in September 2008.
Why didn’t you decide to publish it in French in Senegal?
Because now there are only publishers in national languages. That’s good news, anyway…even if their tongues are hanging out! They work with enthusiasm, but with immeasurable difficulties too: no way to make a profit, no distribution…True, the state occasionally steps in. The “Direction du Livre et de la Lecture” (book and reading administration) funded, for instance, a second edition of my book Doomi Golo after the first run of 3000 copies was sold out.
Besides my publisher Papyrus, there’s the « Organisation Sénégalaise d'Appui au Développement » (OSAD) that does remarkable work. And also ARED publishers, but they’re specialized in research and in education for development.
How many readers can you have in Wolof?
If I’d asked myself that question, I would never have started writing! It’s true that where I come from, many people don’t know how to read and don’t buy books. And they have other priorities: their children’s health, feeding their families….There’s also another phenomenon: rich people who live in poor societies generally prefer buying a fancy car, because you can’t show off a book….
We have to accept this situation and bet on the long term. It will take a while for books written today in the African languages to prevail, but they’ll eventually find acceptance. Thirty years ago, literature in national languages didn’t exist, except for a few isolated cases. Today the situation is the opposite: hundreds of books have been published in Wolof and Pulaar, definitely more than in French.
There are two writers’ organizations in Senegal, one composed of writers in French, the other of writers in national languages. The latter are far more numerous, but they have no visibility, because we live in a society where French is the language of prestige.
Do you count on diaspora readership?
A great deal. But although the younger generations of the diaspora speak their mother languages, they don’t know how to read or write them. This is why I had the idea of organizing a Wolof workshop with young people whose background is Senegalese immigration in France. At first the parents didn’t necessarily see any benefit in their children learning their mother language, but there was great demand from the young people. We’re starting in Bordeaux on 25 February. It’s an idea that seems odd initially, but if it works I’ll be very proud of it.
Often when one travels from one African capital to another, one has to stop off in a European capital. Does this also happen in the world of African literature?
It would be fantastic if I could translate the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiongo directly form Kikuyu into Wolof, without going through English and French….To my knowledge there’s almost no translation from one African language into another. My novel Doomi Golo is translated into Pulaar now. But who will translate it into Swahili? Do we have to wait two or three centuries? Not necessarily, but that’s what I fear, alas.
You know, Africa was divided up by the colonial powers in Berlin in 1885. Africans speak to each other through the colonial languages. And me, making fun of it, referring to the Berlin Wall of the Cold War, I call it our “Berlin Wall”. It is invisible but terrible – it separates the English-, French- and Portuguese-speaking countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.
With Moussa Konaté, Malian writer who heads the French-speaking festival “Etonnants voyageurs” (amazing travelers) in Mali, I’ve often discussed the idea of organizing a big meeting of African writers who write in national languages. A way of at least making cracks in this wall. But it’s easier to find sponsors for French-language writers than for those who write in national languages. UNESCO could be the perfect venue for such a pan-African encounter, particularly this year, international year of languages. And it’s an international space. Without walls.
Monday, January 28, 2008
pause
This will be the last entry for a little. We found a swanky little music bar in Thiès - which is not so much a lucky find as an inevitable one. (New bar, small town). The more euphemistic of travelers call Thiès quaint, but really it falls somewhere between the giant, westernized Dakar and la petite ville africaine, but doesn’t much share the perks of one or the other. It’s quiet and easy, it’s a good place for R&R, for putting your head back together and on straight. It’s a good place to come home to, but a good place to leave. So hopefully the new Palais des Arts will add a new dimension to the nightlife thièsoise. The girl that sings there on Saturdays is unbelievable, her voice is like honey! So thick and sweet and golden.
Well leaving Thiès I am, and heading for Mali. Mali so deep in my Africa. I am traveling with a friend and possibly another friend, snaking our way along the Niger as far east as time lets us, and then retracing our tracks with the river then tumbling toward us. Bouncing from Ségou, Djénné, Mopti and Sevaré, the Bandiagara hills of the Dogon, and Timbuktu, tracing the centuries-old paths of travelers, dromedaries, and other beasts of burden who’ve gone that way before … it’s a little ambitious but dizzyingly romantic.
So farewell for a couple weeks, when I will return with a heart full of memories and a suitcase full of infinitely cooler if not kitschy treasures, insh’alla.
This picture has nothing to do with my journeys in Africa but everything to do with my amazingly intelligent and talented friend Natalia who took this picture during a flamenco-rendition of Carmen at the Theatre Champs-Elysées in Paris. Nevermind that it's black and white and not brilliantly pastel, something about dancers so absorbed in their own movements, so completely disinterested in the hyper-attentive eye of the artist capturing frozen snips of those very same motions, reminds me nostalgically (why? I don't know ....maybe it's that art history is - regretfully - so much a thing of my past) of Degas.
aaaaaah, Paris.
Well leaving Thiès I am, and heading for Mali. Mali so deep in my Africa. I am traveling with a friend and possibly another friend, snaking our way along the Niger as far east as time lets us, and then retracing our tracks with the river then tumbling toward us. Bouncing from Ségou, Djénné, Mopti and Sevaré, the Bandiagara hills of the Dogon, and Timbuktu, tracing the centuries-old paths of travelers, dromedaries, and other beasts of burden who’ve gone that way before … it’s a little ambitious but dizzyingly romantic.
So farewell for a couple weeks, when I will return with a heart full of memories and a suitcase full of infinitely cooler if not kitschy treasures, insh’alla.
in the meantime, I'll leave you with: www.freerice.com, and
This picture has nothing to do with my journeys in Africa but everything to do with my amazingly intelligent and talented friend Natalia who took this picture during a flamenco-rendition of Carmen at the Theatre Champs-Elysées in Paris. Nevermind that it's black and white and not brilliantly pastel, something about dancers so absorbed in their own movements, so completely disinterested in the hyper-attentive eye of the artist capturing frozen snips of those very same motions, reminds me nostalgically (why? I don't know ....maybe it's that art history is - regretfully - so much a thing of my past) of Degas.aaaaaah, Paris.
Friday, January 25, 2008
neither war nor peace
How much I took home from the Casamance, so far away from Senegal major. What I won’t ever forget is the nasally women’s songs at night and the golden dust - illuminated by a dozen gas lanterns - rising in clouds from the stomping of their feet. So loud the clack-clack-clacking in unison of their makeshift wooden percussion it made my ears ring. And so giant the trees down there; it's all so romantic when I put time between myself and that land. But, God, what it taught me about being lonely in urban Africa - what it showed me about my own limits in a wider sense … I still float back and forth between feeling like it was two months wasted and then feeling like what I took from that time is absolutely invaluable. But despite my mixed feelings about being there, or maybe due to them, I feel it got under my skin, I feel I owe something to the Casamance. And like my own unresolved relationship to that place, Casamance itself is sunk in an unsettled existence, between war and peace. I want to write this so whoever reads it knowsa little more about a conflict that’s received scant attention in its almost 30-year history. One of the modern world’s longest-running conflicts, the struggle in Casamance has ranged from violent confrontations between rebel and military forces to sporadic assassinations to long periods of calm, albeit the tense calm of peace in a land with mines interred shallowly beneath the earth’s crust. It has silently and permanently changed the landscape, waterscape, peoplescape, of the region, and the solutions that were inadequate before are at standstill today.
start. The Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance started in 1982 to push for an independent Casamance. (Physically, historically, and culturally, the region - specifically Ziguinchor* - differs significantly from the rest of Senegal). By 1990, MFDC’s tactics had turned into guerilla warfare.
displacement. Over 60,000 people are thought to have fled their villages. Many of them spread into neighboring Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia (these countries, until recently, freely harbored rebels too). 14,000 moved into the capital city of Ziguinchor itself, which due to strong military presence has remained untouched by the conflict, like the eye of a storm.
economically. "The climate of insecurity, principally the danger of armed robbery on roads or in villages by rebels or bandits, together with failing infrastructure, stifle much normal economic activity, particularly the sale of agricultural produce and tourism. Instead, combatants on both sides, together with actors in neighbouring countries, are exploiting the Casamance’s natural resources, though with no benefit to most of the civilian population.” (I quote Martin Evans, "The Casamance conflict: out of sight, out of mind?") The tourism industry has actually been slowly revitalized in past years.
international neglect. Compared to other west African conflicts like those in Sierra Leon and Liberia, that of the Casamance is essentially forgotten. Why? Well, luckily the violence has involved neither a six-digit death toll nor systematic mutilations or (debatably) the use of child soldiers - headline grabbers that have made the other struggles infamous. International intervention, particularly from France and the UN, has been almost nonexistent. Also, when the MFDC started planting landmines in 1997, many key aid organizations including USAID pulled out of the area, brining an abrupt end to projects underway, especially in agricultural development.
today. Despite the shocking but singular assassination of a popular peace-worker last month, the situation has recently been one of calm. Fragmented after the deaths of key leaders, MDFC forces have been nudged out of their safe-havens in Guinea and Gambia. Limited demining operations have encouraged many families to return to their homes, sometimes after 15 or so years of absence. But mines aside, the returning population faces severe underdevelopment of and/or damage to infrastructure (schools, hospitals, roads, wells and other water systems etc.) and lack of investments from aid donors.
In truth I guess you could say, what’s going on here is just a microcosm of what’s typical of struggles among the world’s marginalized populations. It’s all over the world. I risk pushing my analogy credibility (!), but it’s in our own backyard, in New Orleans. When did the world become this way, transformed into such a place that obstructs people’s return to their native lands? We, alone among the animals, who put so much value in home. On second thought, when was it any different?
start. The Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de la Casamance started in 1982 to push for an independent Casamance. (Physically, historically, and culturally, the region - specifically Ziguinchor* - differs significantly from the rest of Senegal). By 1990, MFDC’s tactics had turned into guerilla warfare.
displacement. Over 60,000 people are thought to have fled their villages. Many of them spread into neighboring Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia (these countries, until recently, freely harbored rebels too). 14,000 moved into the capital city of Ziguinchor itself, which due to strong military presence has remained untouched by the conflict, like the eye of a storm.
economically. "The climate of insecurity, principally the danger of armed robbery on roads or in villages by rebels or bandits, together with failing infrastructure, stifle much normal economic activity, particularly the sale of agricultural produce and tourism. Instead, combatants on both sides, together with actors in neighbouring countries, are exploiting the Casamance’s natural resources, though with no benefit to most of the civilian population.” (I quote Martin Evans, "The Casamance conflict: out of sight, out of mind?") The tourism industry has actually been slowly revitalized in past years.
international neglect. Compared to other west African conflicts like those in Sierra Leon and Liberia, that of the Casamance is essentially forgotten. Why? Well, luckily the violence has involved neither a six-digit death toll nor systematic mutilations or (debatably) the use of child soldiers - headline grabbers that have made the other struggles infamous. International intervention, particularly from France and the UN, has been almost nonexistent. Also, when the MFDC started planting landmines in 1997, many key aid organizations including USAID pulled out of the area, brining an abrupt end to projects underway, especially in agricultural development.
today. Despite the shocking but singular assassination of a popular peace-worker last month, the situation has recently been one of calm. Fragmented after the deaths of key leaders, MDFC forces have been nudged out of their safe-havens in Guinea and Gambia. Limited demining operations have encouraged many families to return to their homes, sometimes after 15 or so years of absence. But mines aside, the returning population faces severe underdevelopment of and/or damage to infrastructure (schools, hospitals, roads, wells and other water systems etc.) and lack of investments from aid donors.
In truth I guess you could say, what’s going on here is just a microcosm of what’s typical of struggles among the world’s marginalized populations. It’s all over the world. I risk pushing my analogy credibility (!), but it’s in our own backyard, in New Orleans. When did the world become this way, transformed into such a place that obstructs people’s return to their native lands? We, alone among the animals, who put so much value in home. On second thought, when was it any different?
* The Casamance is comprised of two regions: Kolda (the "high Casamance") and Ziguinchor (the "low Casamance"). While the conflict was concentrated in Ziguinchor, it often spilled over into Kolda.
Monday, January 21, 2008
jel ma photo!
This is something like a novice attempt at curating! What follows are a few favorites from the online gallery of African photography at africultures.com. In its fourth year, the site exhibits a growing collection of works regardless of genre but remarkably and refreshingly different and provocative. It is co-curated by one of the editors of Filigranes, a French publisher of some 300+ titles on modern photography and criticism, including 4 editions of Afriphoto, a compendium of work by African photographers on the continent and beyond.
the collection in its entirety: http://www.afriphoto.com/index.asp
and Filigranes: http://filigranes.revue.com/
(below) Thierry Boulgakoff, France, from the series "A Première Vie" (Sorry I couldn't find dates for the following photos).
André Loutsono Kinzenguélé, Congo, from the series "Mémoires d'un pays - Problème d'électricité"
Al Rashid Mahdi, Sudan, from the series "Le Studio Historique"
Germain Kiemtoré, Burkina Faso, from the series "Jeux d'eau"
Abraham Onoriode Oghobase, Nigeria, from the series "The Tunnel"
Emmanuel Mba Ondo, Gabon, from the series "Venez voir, mon quartier"
Donald Mouboga, Gabon, from the series "Bwiti"
Andrew Esiebo, Nigeria, from the series "Soccer World"
the collection in its entirety: http://www.afriphoto.com/index.asp
and Filigranes: http://filigranes.revue.com/
(below) Thierry Boulgakoff, France, from the series "A Première Vie" (Sorry I couldn't find dates for the following photos).
André Loutsono Kinzenguélé, Congo, from the series "Mémoires d'un pays - Problème d'électricité"
Al Rashid Mahdi, Sudan, from the series "Le Studio Historique"
Germain Kiemtoré, Burkina Faso, from the series "Jeux d'eau"
Abraham Onoriode Oghobase, Nigeria, from the series "The Tunnel"
Emmanuel Mba Ondo, Gabon, from the series "Venez voir, mon quartier"
Donald Mouboga, Gabon, from the series "Bwiti"
Andrew Esiebo, Nigeria, from the series "Soccer World"
Thursday, January 17, 2008
"About 1 in 7 Americans traces their origins to the African continent. And so the American legacy is really one of shared inheritance with Africa."
Africa Past and Present is a podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora. The show highlights interesting and significant people, ideas, and discussions in African Studies from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Our mission is to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences and to do so in a down-to-earth and informed manner. Shows feature interviews with eminent scholars and persons, commentary on current events, and key debates for Africans at home and abroad. http://afripod.aodl.org/
Africa Past and Present is a podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora. The show highlights interesting and significant people, ideas, and discussions in African Studies from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Our mission is to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences and to do so in a down-to-earth and informed manner. Shows feature interviews with eminent scholars and persons, commentary on current events, and key debates for Africans at home and abroad. http://afripod.aodl.org/
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
hi from Tambacounda! a little too drained right now to be forming complete sentences ... I won't write much right now, instead a memo:
Attn: reader
Subj: Tambacounda is really what I imagined it to be! Maybe with more trees. I think it's the heavy Malian influence. Ethnically and linguistically, it's dominantly pular and mandinka. it's cheap eats, sandy streets, empty, dusty, yellow by day and electrified by night. Tambacounda is faces carved into trees, scars carved into faces, blue tattoos on black skin, and beads, and papayas, and parades. And blue-turbaned fulani herdsmen chatting in groups in the shade keeping watch on their flocks. I came down here to prepare some reports before the declaration of abandonment we hosted this weekend. (really stressfully last minute, typical). It did however give me the chance to meet and interview some girls from an adolescent association, Kamben ("union" in mandinka), who formed a dance/theatre troupe and performed at the declaration. Got to spend a lot of time with them, and their songs and stories really stirred me. All of a sudden I saw the present and future of Tambacounda for what it is and will be, which despite progress, is not easy for girls. instead, pathetic and inescapable in many ways
As usual my ride back to Thiès was delayed two days - which actually gave me a chance to get out of the office and deep into this town. I'm trying to upload some videos from the declaration weekend .. wait and see
Friday, January 4, 2008
Charles Piller and Doug Smith recently wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times on some startling discoveries into the global fight against the most ravaging diseases in the developing world. (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gates16dec16,0,3743924.story?page=1)
While I don't normally write about public health, I found this issue to be pretty compelling. And given the onslaught of attention paid to AIDS in today's pop culture and consumer culture, between Bono's One campaign, Project Red, and the more and more Hollywood stars joining the ranks of UNICEF ambassadors - the awareness it's generating is phenomenal, the funding even better. But there's a dark side of this crusade that even the experts are only just starting to glimpse.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given an astonishing $8.5 billion to fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Most of their money is funneled through two major combatant organizations on that front: the Global Fund and GAVI, a Geneva-based organization that finances vaccines. Rates of deaths from AIDS in Africa are finally leveling-off, but overall health and healthcare on the continent is worsening. Why?
Piller and Smith’s article begins with a sickening anecdote about the pathetic and almost morbidly ironic state of affairs in African healthcare. Thanks to anti-retroviral drugs provided by the Gates Foundation, a Lesotho woman was successfully living with AIDS. But when she gave birth to an asphyxiated baby girl and the roach-infested hospital lacked a tube to give the infant much-needed oxygen, it died not long after.
According to a report commissioned by the Global Fund and World Bank, “Health delivery systems in Africa are now weaker and more fragmented than they were 10 years ago … [The weakening has been] exacerbated as the Global Fund and other programs now promote universal access to [AIDS] treatment." Another study, this one done on GAVI, shows that while vaccination drives have been inestimably beneficial - for example, curbing the rate of death from measles across Africa by 90% - there has emerged a distressing relationship between GAVI funding for vaccinations in Africa and child mortality. “Overall, child mortality improved more often in nations that received smaller than average GAVI grants per capita. In seven nations that received greater than average funding, child mortality rates worsened.”
How can pouring billions of dollars into fighting diseases that kill millions, devastate economies, and debilitate entire countries possibly have such cruel correlations?
The Gates Foundation and others like it, with their strict focus on epidemic have contributed to a wider health crisis in a number of ways, not limited to the following (as I paraphrase from Piller and Smith’s article) :
- By targeting contributions into the fight against such high-profile killers as AIDS, Gates grantees have increased the demand for specially trained, higher-paid clinicians, diverting staff from basic care. So, aside from doctors and nurses leaving the country for higher wages and safer conditions elsewhere, within the country - within single hospitals - caregivers are diverted from child and primary health care to these higher-wage specialty positions that offer double or triple the salary.
(On a side note, Rosalie, a nurse I met in Ziguinchor, explained to me that in Senegal, on top of free HIV-testing and free anti-retroviral drugs, most HIV/AIDS patients qualify for small living stipends. Shortly thereafter she accepted a job offer in France).
- The focus on a few diseases has diverted funds from nutrition and transportation, undermining the effectiveness of the foundation's grants. Many AIDS patients have so little food that they vomit their free AIDS pills. For lack of bus fare, others cannot get to clinics that offer lifesaving treatment.
- Gates-funded vaccination programs discourage caregivers to screen for other illness. In effect, parents travel for hours to have their children vaccinated - often their only contact with health providers for years - and leave without worse medical conditions treated, or even addressed. Most of GAVI’s funding goes to vaccinations for children against hepatitis B, a disease they normally don’t contract until much later in life. Many die before they even reach that point.
So what are we left with, at the end of the day? Do we continue to pour resources into the fight against a few diseases at the expense of overall health care, and worse, survival? Luckily, though Piller and Smith’s article didn’t mention this, but Nicholas Kristoff’s (sigh) blog did, the Global Fund is beginning to allocate 20% of its budget to strengthening health care systems and infrastructure. (ie. equipping hospitals with $35 oxygen valves)
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
la fin d'année
New Years was as it should be, celebrated with good friends, good food, mediocre champagne, laughing to the point of hurting, dancing to the point to dropping.
But on a larger scale, the year came to a close in Senegal amidst overtones of blue. The joyfulness of the festival season was accompanied by the mourning of two major public figures whose passing lent a gravity to these weeks of celebrations. And I think the poignancy of it comes really from the significance of the two deaths, or better, of the two men, and what they represented to the people of Senegal.
The first was Chérif Samsidine Aidara, the well-loved religious leader and president-appointed ambassador of peace in the Casamance region who was shot to death in his village home on the eve of Tabaski. The four gunmen are as yet unidentified but are almost certainly members of the rebel separatist group Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance (MFDC), which has already brought so much unwarranted grief to this otherwise quiet region of Senegal. After the deaths of some of its head figures and the increasing intolerance it's faced recently from the once-sheltering governments of neighboring Guinea and Gambia, the rebel group was thought to be largely weakened, if not fragmented. I think on the whole, the murder came as less a reminder than a surprise about the continuing problem in the South. A problem which has existed for 20 years teetering between conflict and peace, and which seems to be once again tipped in the direction of the worse. Adding to the bitterness of the deed, the assassination, too, occurred almost a year to the day after that of another peace-promoting consul to the region, Elhadji Omar Lamine Badji.
A less frightening, but equally shaking death occurred a little over a week later, when Serigne Salieu Mbacké, head of the Mouride brotherhood (one of 4 major Sufi sects in Senegalese Islam) passed away, peacefully as 92 year-old beloved religious leaders often do. The Grand Marabout was a direct hereditary descendant of Cheikh Amadou Bamba, a figure who not only created the vernacular Sufic tradition - but who also represented to the people of Senegalese a fixture of resistance against French imperialism. Millions of people traveled to the spiritual center of Touba this weekend to mourn his passing. Millions of people were touched by his insights, spirituality, and leadership. I think most people carry a sense of deep and emotional gratitude for his contributions.
Bear in mind, I meant this to be more reflective than depressing! And while the first death was very cruel and signaled the re-aggravation of a distressing situation; I think the second - like the natural death of any great leader - represented something more venerated. Mbacké was the face of a deeply cherished tradition: something that syncretized the tenets of Islam with the ways of the indigenous to create something profoundly Senegalese, and in that sense, almost nationalistic. His life and death touched almost all Senegalese people, regardless of their religious affiliations.
On a last note, I think this gives form to the idea, the feeling, that we are always fluctuating between these extremes of sadness and joy. The world has its ugly conflicts, galore, but it also has this rainbow of culture that offers us so much beauty and value and dynamism. Maybe one makes the other fuller, complete. And I think, also, this is reflected in the mood this time of year. New Years is all about second chances, rejuvenation, hope, and resolutions, etc. of course, but it also reminds us how quickly time passes. How one year fades so imperceptibly into another, and how unable we are to hold time in our hands and let it go at our discretion.
But on a larger scale, the year came to a close in Senegal amidst overtones of blue. The joyfulness of the festival season was accompanied by the mourning of two major public figures whose passing lent a gravity to these weeks of celebrations. And I think the poignancy of it comes really from the significance of the two deaths, or better, of the two men, and what they represented to the people of Senegal.
The first was Chérif Samsidine Aidara, the well-loved religious leader and president-appointed ambassador of peace in the Casamance region who was shot to death in his village home on the eve of Tabaski. The four gunmen are as yet unidentified but are almost certainly members of the rebel separatist group Mouvement des Forces Démocratiques de Casamance (MFDC), which has already brought so much unwarranted grief to this otherwise quiet region of Senegal. After the deaths of some of its head figures and the increasing intolerance it's faced recently from the once-sheltering governments of neighboring Guinea and Gambia, the rebel group was thought to be largely weakened, if not fragmented. I think on the whole, the murder came as less a reminder than a surprise about the continuing problem in the South. A problem which has existed for 20 years teetering between conflict and peace, and which seems to be once again tipped in the direction of the worse. Adding to the bitterness of the deed, the assassination, too, occurred almost a year to the day after that of another peace-promoting consul to the region, Elhadji Omar Lamine Badji.
A less frightening, but equally shaking death occurred a little over a week later, when Serigne Salieu Mbacké, head of the Mouride brotherhood (one of 4 major Sufi sects in Senegalese Islam) passed away, peacefully as 92 year-old beloved religious leaders often do. The Grand Marabout was a direct hereditary descendant of Cheikh Amadou Bamba, a figure who not only created the vernacular Sufic tradition - but who also represented to the people of Senegalese a fixture of resistance against French imperialism. Millions of people traveled to the spiritual center of Touba this weekend to mourn his passing. Millions of people were touched by his insights, spirituality, and leadership. I think most people carry a sense of deep and emotional gratitude for his contributions.
Bear in mind, I meant this to be more reflective than depressing! And while the first death was very cruel and signaled the re-aggravation of a distressing situation; I think the second - like the natural death of any great leader - represented something more venerated. Mbacké was the face of a deeply cherished tradition: something that syncretized the tenets of Islam with the ways of the indigenous to create something profoundly Senegalese, and in that sense, almost nationalistic. His life and death touched almost all Senegalese people, regardless of their religious affiliations.
On a last note, I think this gives form to the idea, the feeling, that we are always fluctuating between these extremes of sadness and joy. The world has its ugly conflicts, galore, but it also has this rainbow of culture that offers us so much beauty and value and dynamism. Maybe one makes the other fuller, complete. And I think, also, this is reflected in the mood this time of year. New Years is all about second chances, rejuvenation, hope, and resolutions, etc. of course, but it also reminds us how quickly time passes. How one year fades so imperceptibly into another, and how unable we are to hold time in our hands and let it go at our discretion.
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