As someone who grew up in the leafy suburbs next to the Kafue River, I’m no longer surprised when reporters and tourists exclaim about the tranquility to be found “inside the Real Africa”—with no irony whatsoever.
Zambia’s Turn
January 31, 2012 By 5 Comments
Michael Kors’s Safari: Part 2
January 30, 2012 By 3 Comments
Lord, these fashion designers and their obsession with the safari motif.
The excitement about ‘African fabric’
January 19, 2012 By 6 Comments
The Dutch fabrics manufacturing company Vlisco–the image is from the company’s new line “Delicate Shades“–says its “strategy is aimed at enabling well-to-do African women to experience the brand in all her facets … Developments take place at neck-breaking speed in Africa and Vlisco aspires to inspire and gain the loyalty of younger generations as well. Innovation is therefore an essential element within the company.”
The Real Housewives of Atlanta Go To Africa
January 18, 2012 By 12 Comments
It’s too bad that America sees Atlanta, black women, and maybe even women in general through the lens of The ‘Real Housewives’ franchise. When the first episodes of Atlanta aired, my upstate New York hairstylist gasped and gawped about the wealth and glam. To paraphrase her: Oh, the hair! the really short dresses! (and the token white girl!) I had to reply, with that special brand of irony that educators cultivate: “Lovey, I think you’ve probably never seen rich black women before.” So I did my part to defend the Atlanta women.
What you should be reading
December 22, 2011 By 5 Comments
I wasn’t pleased with the selection of short stories listed for the Caine Prize this year. That list made African writing look bad. Truth be told, the problem associated with such collections is hardly applicable to the Caine committee alone. Lists like that makes it seem like African writing remains subpar, and is simply being given a charitable helping hand by the largesse of nice prize-giving people.
Happily, the list below, including some of the most absorbing books of 2011, will convince you otherwise – read them all if you can (and please add those you’d recommend in the comments area below). I received several of the books for birthday presents/random presents from my partner, and read them on the journeys we make between New York City (where he works) and upstate New York (where I work). On those long train rides along the Hudson River–flowering trees, the ‘V’s of returning Canada geese, and kayakers in springtime to ice floes and 19th century industrialists’ castles, revealed among trees shorn of foliage during mid winter – there’s been more than one instance that someone sitting near us asked to have a look at the book I was reading. And surprise: their pleasure, from the first pages, was so obvious that I let these random strangers keep the book for the journey, re-learning what they know about African intellect, African poetics, African multiplicity in thought, ways of being, and life experience.
Queering the Congo
November 21, 2011 By 5 Comments
War photography forces us to ask questions about the limits of cultivating empathy via looking, and the limits of seeing self in the other when the image before us intimates something so violently different from the life experiences of the viewer. The troubling ethical questions that surround photographing conflict are centered around the attempt, by the photographer, to evoke a responsiveness for the distressed people within the photographs from the readers of these images – those who are almost never the subjects in the photographs, who are hardly ever ‘one’ with the subjects. Moreover, war photography often exploits our aversion and attraction to violence: when we see images of semi-starved people fleeing from burning homes, or eyes enlarged with terror, we are accosted by a double impulse: to simultaneously glare voyeuristically, and to look away.
Brokeback Iceberg
November 15, 2011 By 1 Comment
Everyone loves an African animal story.
People get terribly upset when African animals are declared extinct (as was the Western Black rhino, last week), but when we see this video about saving the black rhinos, using helicopters, massive amounts of tranquilizers, and WWF’s mighty funds, we get that lovely heart-warming feeling.
And we can’t but go gaga over cute pet hippos who get to come into the kitchen and are treated to an aromatherapy massage, when the cat isn’t even allowed in the lounge (warning to those who have a “I Dream of Africa” reveries and plan to copy these owners: a farmer in South Africa, 40-year old Marius Els, an army major, was bitten to death by the 1.2 tonne hippo he christened Humphrey and tried to domesticate on a farm in Free State province. And our family’s pet monkey sat on a tree and threw mango seeds at visitors, while my pet whydah bird pooped on my sister with remarkable accuracy).
But more than all the animal folklore from Africa, we really love a gay African animal story.
In a story that has been dubbed “Brokeback Iceberg,” the Toronto Zoo attempted to separate two male African penguins, who seem to have a penchant for homosocial interaction (keep in mind that African penguins do not live on icebergs, but on Southern African seashores swept by freezing Antarctic currents). People went berserk when the zoo announced that it had plans to wrench Pedro and Buddy “from each other’s flippers and lock ’em up with females until they nest and take one for the team.”
Now, due to “gay activists [in Canada] and abroad [who] have questioned how Toronto, which led the way in North America on gay marriage, could treat this pair of two-legged waddlers so badly,” they’ve decided to forgo the concerns about conserving an endangered species.
AIAC is all for animal conservation–but not when penguin love is involved.
Gimme Hope
November 10, 2011 By 6 Comments
This is the second in a video campaign to promote the work of American ngo Mama Hope.
They work with local partners in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Uganda to fund the completion of schools, health clinics, children’s centers, clean water systems and food security projects. The idea with this campaign–titled ”Stop the Pity. Unlock the Potential”–is to tell “… the story of connection instead of contrast and potential instead of poverty.” In Mama Hope’s own words: “… People everywhere have talent and capacity, and people everywhere share a desire to be able to use those gifts to improve their lives and the lives of the people they care about.”
Ah. Mirroring. a classic way of encouraging the feeling that the chasm between the smug, satisfied prick of Self and the other is not so vast. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Media freedom in South Sudan
November 10, 2011 By 5 Comments
Oh dear. The new nation of South Sudan is already sprouting some early teething troubles about media freedom.
Apparently, President Salva Kiir Mayardit (above) “handed over his beloved beautiful elder daughter,” one Adu Mayardit, to her husband in a wedding ceremony held in the Catholic Cathedral at Rajaf.
One would usually imagine that this would be a joyous occasion, though full of tears appropriate for the tradition of “handing over” (and thereby “losing”) an elder daughter. Instead, Dengdit Ayok, the deputy editor for The Destiny newspaper in the capital Juba, wrote in a now ill-fated column, that the wedding was
attended by a small crowd of people with clouds of sadness gathered in their hearts as it was clear from their faces…because they were upset by the decision taken by the President to give his daughter in wedding to a stranger.
Ayok felt the Sudanese could have exploited the wedding the same way the British monarchy and media did to their young earlier this summer. Instead Ayok only “… witnessed a disappointing social episode.” He claimed the wedding “was found disgusting and denounced by many patriotic South Sudanese across the country.”
Why so disgusted? Was the man a pariah of epic proportions? A war criminal, perhaps?
The teacher from South Africa
October 24, 2011 By 4 Comments
Back when the British weren’t using “their” Indians as a tourist attraction, or as a means of portraying the infamously insular island as “multicultural” (because people like curry houses and Bhangra pop), a pompous arse got in a lift with my second generation Pakistani-Brit friend (then a teenager) and a tea-and-scones lady. In the characteristic understatement that his people are known for (and for which Americans continue to idolise the Brits), the Pomp turned to Tea and Scones and said, “Bit dark in here, isn’t it?”
When the lift doors opened, my friend shouted, “This man’s a racist!” But that’s all he could do.
While I was in grad school, our director of the graduate teaching assistants – a lovely woman whom I honestly believe meant well–regularly mixed up my name (Neelika) with that of the other person of South Asian descent (Shamim) in the programme. We did not look alike, sound alike (due to our different origins/countries in which we grew up), nor even study the same specialisation. So I looked at the Director and said, “Dr. X, are you mixing up your natives?” She reacted as expected: “Why Neelika,” she said, “what a terrible thing to say!” and looked back at me with shock and hurt. So: I was the guilty party for having pointed out, to a nice, older white professor – one who was a committed lecturer on US Civil Rights history – that though it is easy to mix up unfamiliar and ‘exotic’ names, she may be perpetuating some of the same problematic ways of interacting with the Other: errors she preached against.
But hooray: nowadays, kids in the Bronx don’t take that kind of shit lightly. The New York Times begins by staking pedigree: “perhaps few schools in the nation with as progressive a pedigree as Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where students are not only expected to live the values of tolerance and inclusion, but also to make the world more tolerant and inclusive.” So when a “popular but controversial” teacher at Fieldston reportedly said to two black students, “I hope I can tell you two apart,” they made an official complaint. The teacher, a 58-year old white man, was eventually dismissed from his position. And there’s more. The teacher, Barry Sirmon, is from South Africa; he has been teaching at this school for 11 years. “He is a very anti-P.C. guy in a very P.C. school,” said one mother, who maintained that she was “not a prude,” but that “words matter.”
