Mea Culpa

CW... this one is for you... :-)


To watch it on the Onion, see this link.

These youth are very restive: Death Threats by Text Message...

The issue of censorship in Kano is becoming more and more worrisome. Last week Ibrahim Sheme, editor of Leadership and publisher of Fim Magazine, published on his blog a very menacing text message that his publisher recieved from an unknown sender.

I am very concerned. Also musing on how the language register of the text message, most often seen in playful abbreviated banter of friends can be used the menace of a death threat from an anonymous source.

So from the creative abbreviated language used in something like: "hope ur well. miss u. C u 2morro. :-)"

(to the language used here, and I quote--this is only part of the message Sheme recieved): "We don't want to believe u hv a hand in ds, hence ds call to put a stop to it. We don't know what will happen if u do not, but we do know tht d u're putting d Leadership nwsppr on line as well as ur othr invstmnts. We don't know wht indvdl members of d Coalition will do, but I do know tht we've been restraining thm with effort. And these youth are very restive."

Vote for those who Can't

Just a quick note. There is a group of young people on Facebook who had the idea, last night, of starting a website with the names and comments of people who can't vote in this election (whether because they are not American or are too young) who would vote for Obama if they could. They have started a blog at http://voteforthosewhocant.blogspot.com/, where you can post comments. Here is what one of the brainstormer/organizers wrote me, when I queried how people could participate:

We just got this started last night, so as of right now, we are simply asking people to send their info (name, age, location - reason they can't vote and reasons they support Obama) to the gmail address! We're already combining efforts to get a website started so we can show the collective global support for Obama!If you'd like to participate, you can also send your ideas to the same gmail address: voteforthosewhocant @ gmail . com. Thanks!!!

In a later email:
Thanks for your support!!! I actually just created a blog for this effort as well. I'm not sure how long it will take to get a website up and running and I thought it was imperative that we get this started. Thanks so much for posting the email address on your blog. If you have the time, we would be so appreciative if you could also reference the upcoming blog:

http://voteforthosewhocant.blogspot.com/

Xtend Foundation African Scholarship

A friend of mine, Tayo Oyedeji, has started a small scholarship fund for African undergraduate students. The $300 scholarship is for students whose familys' have an annual income of less than $5000 and who are enrolled in a sub-Saharan African university in a 4-5 year undergraduate programme. The online application can be found at http://www.foundation.tayooyedeji.com/. Please pass this information on to any deserving students you know of.

Of his motivation for starting the foundation, Tayo says "My graduate studies in the United States have cost a total of about $150,000 and I have never had to pay a single dollar because someone or a group of people established foundations to offset the educational costs of scholars with potential.

"Scholarships and foundations have helped me, an African, attain the best education the United States has to offer and I believe that 'to whom much is given, much is expected'.

"Therefore, I am setting up a foundation (Xtend Foundation) to provide $300 scholarships to 10 students in Sub-Saharan African universities. All students currently enrolled in a university in Africa (apart from members of my immediate family) are eligible to apply. "

As part of the foundation is Project 100, the goal of which is to grant scholarships to 100 university students in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2010.

For more information, see the Foundation website.

Death of Two Sons

Back from an amazing week and a half long trip to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. Maybe I'll post more about it later, but I wanted to highlight an amazing documentary that I saw last week: Death of Two Sons (2006), a 64-minute documentary directed by New York based filmmaker Micah Schaffer. The film sensitively juxtaposes the lives and deaths of two young men, the Guinean Amadou Diallo who was shot forty-one times by New York police, and Jesse Thyne, the American peace corps volunteer who was living with Diallo's family in Guinea at the time of Amadou Diallo's murder. The film subtly illuminates the global inequalities that surround these two tragedies: while the taxi driver whose negligence caused the accident in which Thyne died is given a harsh sentence of three years in prison, the police who shot Diallo forty-one times were acquitted of all charges. The Peace Corps lead a march to raise awareness about road safety and a high ranking Guinean official dedicates a memorial plaque with the name of the two Peace Corps volunteers who died (as if there were not hundreds of other deaths in car accidents every year), yet when some women attempt to protest Diallo's murder outside the American embassy, the demonstration is quickly shut down: the government does not want to risk offending America. These points are not hammered out into a fully-formed polemic but rather emerge in the quiet laments of Diallo's family and friends in Guinea and those of Thyne's family in California, out of the understated but powerful way the two stories are woven together.

The back story of Amadou Diallo's life also emerges. A young man from a cosmopolitan family, he had travelled in Africa, Asia, and Europe. He had gone to school in Thailand and studied computer science in Singapore. Already posessing academic qualifications, he worked on the streets of New York to raise money to attend an American university. Yet the dreams he had pursued in his life were overwhelmed by the clamour of his death. Films like Death of Two Sons move beyond the symbol Diallo has become to remind us of the person he was and the personal grief of those who loved him.

For more information about the film, which I highly recommend, see the home page: Death of Two Sons.

Update on detained writer Friday John Abba

Here is an update from Dr. Wale Okediran (Association of Nigerian Authors National President) on the detained member of Kaduna ANA, Friday John Abba. I don't want to post the entire letter that Dr. Okediran posted to the Jos-ANA listserve without his permission, but here is the basic outline: On Wednesday March 21, an ANA team consisting of Dr. Okediran, as national ANA president, and officials of ANA Kaduna met with the Director of the Kaduna state SSS. The director confirmed that Friday John Abba has been in the custody of the SSS and claimed that FJA has been accused of being a part of a Niger Delta gun smuggling network. Under the auspices of "state security and terrorism," the SSS has "secured a special legal permit to keep FJA until investigations are over," meaning that he will "legally" be kept incommunicado without a public court charge until the SSS is "satisfied" with their investigation. (This sounds wretchedly like the rhetoric being used by the United States government over their bypassing of laws and abuse of suspected "terrorists.") His lawyer's application for bail was rejected. The Director of the SSS Kaduna "assured" the ANA representatives "that FJA is in good conditions and is not being tortured in any way." The ANA request to see and speak with FJA was "turned down" and they were told they would need to "formally apply for this through the National SSS Director in Abuja." ANA members as well as PEN Nigeria, and International, currently await for further updates on the situation.

For the original press release about FJA's arrest and the following discussion see here.

Off to the ALA conference and the detention of Kaduna writer Friday John Abba

I am off to the African Literature Association conference in West Virginia tomorrow, so I probably will be out of immediate contact until the end of the weekend. I'm traveling with several people from my department, and despite having never owned a car and having not driven in five years, I am signed on as a driver, so pray that I make it back to Blogville alive....! This time I'm not presenting, just hanging out and listening to papers, which will be refreshing. I will also be meeting Helon Habila! Yay!

After that brief preface, here is a more serious matter via the Jos-ANA listserve that I'm on that I have been wanting to blog on for a while, but I was waiting to find out more of the details. Over a month ago, the vice-chairman of the Kaduna chapter of the Association of Nigerian authors , Friday John Abba, went missing. After some investigation, it was found that he had been arrested by the SSS, and has been held in Abuja without any access to legal representation or to communication with his family. The Association of Nigerian Authors EXCO had a meeting scheduled with the national SSS director in Abuja today, and I will post an update when I hear what happened. In the meantime, here is a press release from Kaduna ANA.

And finally, here is a very interesting statement by Yar'Adua about his plans for Nigeria should he be elected.

Invisible Children

So, last night I went to see Invisible Children. I was a bit suspicious about the film, made as it is by a three white Californian 20 year olds. But since a Ugandan friend of mine thinks it is a really good documentary, I decided to go and see what all the hype was about. The film is made by three very young men who went to Uganda in search of adventure and found "their story" in that of the northern Ugandan children who "commute" from their homes in the countryside to the town of Gulu every night to sleep. The children sleep en-masse in the hospital and on verandas in town where they are less vulnerable to abduction from the Lords Resistance Army, a cultish rebel group who kidnaps children and indoctrinates them into the army. (This is the info I got from the film btw; here's a better explanation at a BBC site. Also here. And of course Wikipedia with it's series of links to other sources.)

I was suspicious about it being the "same old, same old" with white people from America wanting to save Africans from themselves, and the beginning of the movie, which highlighted the extreme ignorance of these three young documentarians and their weeping mothers as they went off to Africa, confirmed my fears. However, overall, I was pleasantly surprised. After the first 10 minutes or so the film began to focus less and less on the "adventures" of the young Americans and more and more on the voices of the children. Neither did it focus entirely on the poverty or sadness of the situation but brought out moments of humour and joy and agency. When the filmmakers enter the story, they mock themselves for their own ignorance. So, overall, I think that it is a film worth seeing, with the caveat that there aren't very precise explanations for what you are seeing on screen. If you want to actually get a good contextual understanding of the LRA and the current situation in northern Uganda, you will have to do your own outside research.

That said, the person who introduced and handled the Q&A at the end of the film was absolutely appalling, and my friends and I left the film fuming. Although he has worked in Uganda, he didn't seem to know very many of the details about the situation; he glossed over the history saying that we wouldn't understand it, saying things like "Africa has so many problems; it doesn't makes sense; it's just a loony situation." He was also very dismissive of questions from people (the majority of the audience were graduate students) who actually wanted to know about the peace talks, weapons suppliers, and other contextual details. He seemed to think the answer to the problem was to get a bunch of American youth to go over to "fix" things, energize the people, and that all would be well. He made some statements that were so stereotypical and so offensive that I got shaky. What made it worse is that a friend from another department had asked me to help with publicity for the event, so I had gotten my department involved. I was so embarrassed by the speaker, I was PRAYING that no one from my department showed up.

Last night, I came home and looked at the invisible children website and groaned. While I thought the film itself was well-done for a documentary of its genre, the whole hoopla that has come out of it is like "adventure camp" meets "Indiana Jones" meets "Madonna adopts a whole country." The first video on their media website has all these white twenty-somethings marching forth as into battle to what sounds like CCM music, and riding on top of vans and playing air guitar. It seems to become all about empowering the white American youth. The subsequent trailer for the new movie (Blair Witch Project meets Indiana Jones meets Uganda) is no better. The strength of the film I saw last night is that (for the most part) it let the children tell their stories. The website makes "Africa" into the new adventureland and makes it look like getting rid of the LRA will be like beating a computer game.

I hate to be cynical about well-intentioned people (especially when I am doing nothing to help the situation myself), and I don't want to downplay the positive aspects of this youth mission. I have no doubt that they have helped a lot of the children they have featured in the film. It is a good thing to mobilize American youth to be concerned about the rest of the world. I also think that any psychological rehabilitation that can be offered to the children who have escaped from the LRA is absolutely necessary. However, there are so many instances of so much harm being done by those who are very well-intentioned. The kind of vague understanding of (and indeed misinformation about) the context that the speaker gave last night only deepens stereotypes of Africa, without offering many options for practical activism. (I'm sure that other people who show the film have done a better job of this.) And the website gives me the same bad feeling that the recent celebrity obsession with Africa (especially that horrendous "I am African" campaign) gives me. I'm not going to take the time to do any in depth analysis of the film or the publicity images right now, but I welcome feedback and thoughts on this.

I admit that I did enjoy this clip though....