Archive for December, 2006
… a word about grandmothers. They have emerged as the heroes of Africa. The physical ravaging of extended families and the desperate poverty of communities means that grandmothers step in when there’s no one else to tread. I wonder if such a situation has ever occurred before in organised society … in the instance of Africa today, these old and unimaginably frail women often look after five or ten or fifteen kids, enduring every conceivable hardship for the sake of their grandchildren, alongside additional numbers of other abandoned waifs who wander the landscape of the continent. The trauma of the grandmothers equals that of the orphans; in fact, every normal rhythm of life is violated as grandmothers bury their own children and then look after their orphan grandchildren … that’s not the end of it. When the grandmothers die, there’s no one coming up behind, and so you have the phenomenon of what we call “child-headed households” or “sibling families”, where the oldest child is the head of the household.
From Race Against Time, 2005 CBC Massey Lectures, by Stephen Lewis
Africans make a big deal of family, of the community, of brotherhood, of sisterhood, of kinship. We believe we are all our brother’s keeper. And rightly so. I sincerely believe that it is through these social structures that Africa’s solutions will be found. The doctrine of individualism, every man for himself, would destroy us faster than any pandemic we face today.
The group of people that symbolise above any other group, this unselfishness, this sacrifice for community, the group that is the rock of African societies up and down the continent, that provides a family home, a sympathetic ear, a lesson in discipline. The group without whom African society today would NOT exist are whom I’ve given the Mentalacrobatics Person of the Year 2006.
The Mentalacrobatics person of the Year: The African Grandmother.
I love you all and I appreciate you all.
Previous Mentalacrobatics Person of the Year:
2005 - Mzee Kimani Nganga Maruge
2004 – Sven Goran Eriksson
2003 - Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
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Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 9:46 PM
So what does the USD 100.00 laptop look and feel like? Luckily for us Samuel Klein, Director of Content at the One Laptop per Child association, carried one to the Global Voices Summit in Delhi. This is the fourth one ever made and the second one of the assembly line. (The first two were put together by hand apparently.) These things have serious cool factor. They look better than most laptops. The operating system is Redhat and all the software is open source. It has a battery pack which you can charge with either electricity or manually by hand winding/foot pumping. Using the manual method you get approximately 10 minutes computer time for each minute of winding. Here it is:
Technorati: gvdelhi2006
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Saturday, December 16th, 2006 at 12:30 PM
The Global Voices Summit is in full flow. You can participate remotely through listening to live audio stream or logging on the IRC chat channel. All the information is on the Global Voices website. Or if you are more of a voyeur the pictures may interest you. Congratulations to Nicolás Luco who managed to catch my question and link on the audio stream. I’ll say hi to Rosario when I see her!
The African contingent here is strong led by the brilliant Ndesanjo. Gaphiz and Inktus are also representing Tanzania and Uganda respectively.
As with every other blog conference there is a lot of controversy in the air. Why did they take so long? What were they thinking? What excuses would they give? Will he stay? Will he go? I am of course talking about Monty Panesar and the whole world – v – the England selectors. Monty finally got his chance to attack the Australian batsmen in the third test of the Ashes. The brilliant thing about being in a cricket mad country such as India at this time is that we can talk cricket all day and all night as there is so much cricket going on. We tut tut as the England bating line up collapses faster than Uchumi. We wonder whether reverse spin was just a myth, we wonder which India batsmen who are struggling in South Africa would make the English team and vice versa. Yesterday Rezwan, my cricket loving brother from cricket mad Bangladesh, and I had a long discussion on which countries should get test status, whether Kenya should replace Zimbabwe as a test nation, whether Kenya is still better than Bangladesh in the one day version of the game.
I threw down the challenge; Kenyan bloggers –v- Bangladesh bloggers in a 50 over one day game. KenyaCricket, we need you to whip us into shape bruv. (I’ll bat at number 5 or 6 and field at 2nd or 3rd slip – I’m a rugby forward don’t you dare put me on the boundary!) On the coach to the conference this morning, Georgia and I gave Ndesanjo a quick lesson in cricket. Georgia is from Trinidad and Tobago which is where I hear the Kenyan cricket team will be based in before going to St Lucia in next year’s cricket world cup. T&T has enjoyed a fantastic sporting year the highlight of which was the Soca Warriors playing at the football world cup.
A couple of things about these conferences; if you want to make friends fast carry a multi socket electric extension lead. That way when you commandeer a electricity outlet for you laptop you can share it with your grateful neighbors and look well organised. Secondly, if you aint got mac, you aint got game. Us PC users are hiding our laptops under the tables as the mac boys and mac girls strut their stuff with their apparently superior machines. Thirdly it’s all about the stickers baby. Stickers on laptops are back in. Not useless brand name stickers but cool obscure stickers. The best one I’ve been so far is has a black ground and in big white letters “will work for world peace” that’s currently flossing on Rebecca’s laptop (which is mac of course).
Technorati: gvdelhi2006
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Saturday, December 16th, 2006 at 11:42 AM
The ancient capital of the Mughal Empire. The capital of an independent kingdom by Tomars. The capital of The Raj. The current capital of a bustling India. The venue of the Global Voices Summit 2006. I’m en route to New Delhi, where the players play.
The Global Voices Summit is the main order of businesses, although one or two other exciting developments should take place.
I’m blogging this from Dubai Airport. The whole airport is one big fast wireless internet hotspot (although strangely the closer you get to MickyDs the worse the signal gets). This is the internet as it should be.
Technorati: gvdelhi2006
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Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 12:54 AM
The rain stayed away and the sun was out for the marking of World AIDS Day 2006 at Kenyatta International Conference Centre in Nairobi. What can be said on AIDS has been said. Instead check out my pictures from the day including very important people such as the Vice President and cabinet ministers, and even more important people, AIDS orphans. The Mathare Mother’s Development Centre won the 2006 Red Ribbon award and the USD 5,000.00 that goes with it. Well done to them.
In addition, here are two (very basic) video clips of part of some of the presentations by the AIDS orphans (yes next year I’ll be sure to carry a camcorder).
Clip 1 (avi file)
Clip 2 (avi file)
Actually maybe there is something I can say
- Only one politician has publicly taken an AIDS test in Kenya and that was Senator Obama. None of “our” politicians has publicly taken an AIDS test. I feel it would do a whole heap of good if some high profile politicians publicly walked into a VCT centre and took an AIDS test. They do not and should not have to tell us the result of their AIDS test. It is the testing part that is important. It will help remove the stigma/paranoia of taking an AIDS test.*
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When people talk of AIDS orphans we think of very young children under 5. AIDS has been around for 25 years now. I have met AIDS orphans in their late 20’s, early 30’s. Many of them raised their siblings alone. Imagine being a 15 year old in charge of raising your four brothers and sisters.
*I wait to be gladly corrected on this. If you know of any others please let me know.
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Sunday, December 3rd, 2006 at 6:42 PM