Category: Books

intimations.

Intimations: people had lived with this emotion as with something private, not to be carelessly exposed. Everyone – the typist in the office, the black boy or man from St James, Blair, even the master of ceremonies at the Miss fine Brown Frame contest, the mocking crowd there, and some of the self-mocking contestants – everyone had lived with it according to his character and intellectual means. Everyone you saw on the street had a bit of this emotion locked up in himself. It was not secret. It was part of the unacknowledged cruelty of our setting, the thing we didn’t want to go searching into. Now all those private emotions ran together into a common pool, where everyone found a blessing. Everyone, high and low, could now exchange his private moetion, which he sometimes distrusted, for the sacrement of the larger truth.

- From A Way in the World by V.S. Naipaul. A scene describing the beginning of political rallies promoting black rights in Trinidad.

2010 Ugandan Women Poetry Award

More info here: Push Your Pens to the Pinnacle!

Beverley Nambozo Poetry Award is here again this time linking poetry to financial literacy and so we invite you to push your pens to the pinnacle. The theme for the 2010 Beverley Nambozo Poetry Award is Money and Culture.

Criteria:
 Ugandan women residing in Uganda from the ages of 18 to 45
 Unpublished poems between 15 to 30 lines
 Poems must be in English following the theme, Money and Culture. Translations from local languages are acceptable.
 Submit your poems by email to ugpoetryaward@aol.com or by post to P O Box 8470 Kampala, Uganda
 Typed poems must be in Times new Roman size 12 single spaced. Handwritten poems must be in blue or black ink.
 Submissions will be accepted from November 15th 2009 to March 31st 2010
 We accept up to 3 submissions.
 Include the title of poem, your name, phone contact and email address separate from each actual submission.

PRIZES:
The first three winners will receive 250 USD, 150 USD and 100 USD respectively. In addition, all first six winners will receive autographed copies of The African Saga poetry collection by Dr. Susan Kiguli and How to Save Money for Investment by celebrated Kenyan author and motivational speaker Ken Monyoncho. All shortlisted winners will receive writing journals.

JUDGES:
1. Dr. Susan Kiguli; celebrated poet and author of The African Saga
2. Iga Zinunula; returnee judge, entrepreneur and poet
3. Joseph Mugasa; President of Literature Association of Uganda and published poet.

SPONSORS:
WordAlive Publishers, National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU), Uganda Clays Limited and Akamai Global

free jstor.

My heart just skipped a beat! Free access to JSTOR for African organizations. This database ushered me through the hiccups of degrees in anthropology and journalism.

graphic novels.

The beauty of graphic novels continues. “The Photographer” is along the lines of Joe Sacco’s brilliant novels Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde. Haven’t picked it up yet, but read the review here.

A strange book, part photojournalism and part graphic memoir, “The Photographer” tells the story of a small mission of mostly French doctors and nurses who traveled into northern Afghanistan by horse and donkey train in 1986, at the height of the Soviet occupation. The book shows the damage done to bodies and souls by shells, bullets and iron fragments, and the frantic struggle to mend the broken.

The narrator and photographer is Didier Lefèvre. His black-and-white photographs — many reprinted directly from his uncropped contact sheets — are inter­woven with drawings by Emmanuel Guibert. The small sequential frames of the contact sheets merge seamlessly into the panels of artwork. The book, at 267 pages, is long. But its length is an asset, allowing the story to build in power and momentum as it recounts the arduous trip into mountain villages, the confrontation with the devastation of war, the struggle to save lives and Lefèvre’s foolish and nearly fatal attempt to return to Pakistan ahead of the team.

in the narrative.

A rather scathing pick-apart of Mamdani’s new book on Darfur, Saviors and Survivors.

However, Easterly remains a fan and asks us to keep the following in mind:

  • The Save Darfur campaign repeatedly ignored and distorted the facts on the ground.
  • Darfur is an insurgency and an extremely vicious counter-insurgency, but there was never the intent to eliminate any specific group and so the word “genocide” is inappropriate. But the word “genocide” gave the West and the UN a free hand to intervene.
  • The prospect of foreign military intervention encouraged the rebels to hold out rather than agreeing to a peace deal, while hardening and attracting additional support for the position of the government to “defend national sovereignty.”
  • There were also terrible atrocities on the “good African” side.
  • The “good African” side includes one key player, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), that is an opposition Islamist movement that was previously on the “bad Arab” side in the North-South civil war between “bad Arabs” and “good Africans.”
  • There was a sharp decrease in violence after 2005 just as the Save Darfur campaign picked up steam.
  • The ICC is not credible to much of the non-Western world as a judge of war crimes since the US itself does not subject itself to the ICC, and since the ICC seems to selectively prosecute US enemies and turn a blind eye to war crimes by US allies.
  • The Western pressure based on distorted facts has set back attempts within Sudan and within Africa to reach a peace settlement in Darfur, which is the only way the tragedy will end.

ships in high transit.

After reading How To Write About Africa, I picked up one of Binyavanga Wainaina’s short stories. It’s hard to describe his writing style accurately, without butchering it. But, here’s an attempt: Each sentence is thick, pungent. After reading the story, you leave feeling full of words, descriptions, realities that you would prefer to ignore.

There is something about them that Matano dislikes. A closed-in completeness he has noticed in many liberals. So sure they are right, they have the moral force. So ignorant of their power, how their angst-ridden treatments and exposes are always such clear pictures of the badness of other men, bold, ugly colours on their silent white background. Neutral. They never see this, that they have turned themselves into the World’s ceteris paribus, the invisible objectivity.

He puts on a tape. Tina Turner: Burn, baby burn . . .

“Looking for something real,” they keep saying.

Twenty years he has been in this job, ever since he took it on as a young philosophy graduate, dreaming of earning enough to do a Masters and teach somewhere where people fly on the wings of ideas. But it proved impossible: he was seduced by the tips, by the endless ways that dollars found their way into his pockets, and out again.

He has seen them all. He has driven Feminist Female Genital Mutilation crusaders, cow-eyed Nature freaks, Cutting Edge Correspondents, Root-Seeking African Americans, Peace Corps workers, and hordes of NGO-folk: foreigners who speak African languages, and wear hemp or khaki. Dadaab chic.

Not one of them has ever been able to see him for what is presented before them. He is, to them, a symbol of something. One or two have even made it to his house, and eaten everything before them politely—then turned and started to probe: so is this a cultural thing or what? What do you think about Democracy? And Homosexual rights? And Equal Rights?

Trying to Understand Your Culture, as if your culture is a thing hidden beneath your skin, and what you are, what you present, is not authentic. Often he has felt such a force from them to separate and break him apart—to move away the ordinary things that make him human—and then they zero in on the exotic, the things that make him separate from them. Then they are free to like him: he is no longer a threat. They can say, “Oh I envy you having such a strong culture,” or, “We in the West, we aren’t grounded like you . . . such good energy. . . . This is so real.”

ripping into “DOA”

Ouch. Moyo is facing some tough reviews:

The book is sporadically footnoted, selective in its use of facts, sloppy, simplistic, illogical, and stunningly naive.

I’ll show what I mean momentarily. In the meantime, my characterization raises a question: why is anyone paying attention to this book? Well, I admired her pungency about rock stars and movie stars:

the catch-22.

One of the few reasons some Ugandans are hesitant to throw out Museveni:

One also cringes when Moyo embraces the concept of the “benevolent dictator,” arguing that it’s impossible to establish multiparty democracies in undeveloped economies (emphasis added). She seems to forget that African history is littered with messiahs in khaki who turned into corrupt dictators.

It’s hard to argue against her after living in Uganda. Museveni – with his million flaws – has brought some economic development and political stability (well, save up North) to the country. He seems to be the lesser of two evils. Many Ugandans hesitate to elect a new leader, fearing inexperience and even more corruption. However, do Ugandans want to sit back and see the inevitable encroachment of a fat government and its needy public? As of when I left in August 2008, many Kampalans were not yet convinced the main opposition leader was up to the task.

Another option is working with the benevolent dictator. Using international pressure for government reform; assisting in the implementation of civic education in schools teaching qualities of good governance and democracy; equipping the next generation with the leadership skills and education to offer a vocal and educated challenge to the gerontocracy; closing the gap between politicians and the poor. Anyways, these are hardly new ideas. Just ideas that are rarely truly implemented (because of the corrupt benevolent leader).

Another case: Rwanda’s Paul Kagame has established a fairly authoritarian post-genocide state. This (peaceful facade) has enabled him to attract Western donors and start to re-build the broken infrastructure caused by war and corruption. However, unless he begins to address the open wounds of genocide through structural reforms and an (actual) multiparty democratic system, I believe the chances of further violence remain high.

the spoken word.

Celebrating oral literature:

So true is that Uganda needs more scientists than lawyers, more mathematicians than social workers, but the subtle idiosyncrasies that make the fabric of community need not to be underestimated. Issues of justice and fairness, dignity and servitude, performances in human interaction, which sit at the core of progress, are not taught at medical or mathematics schools—they are engrained in oral literature. This is the notion in Aaron Mushengyezi’s Children Play Songs of the Baganda, Cornelius Gulere Wambi’s Riddling and Taboos and Ikoja-Odongo’s Folklore and Conservation of Traditional Wisdom among the Iteso--true to the assumption that children education commences at a mothers‘ knee, often engrained in the knowlegde of the community .

An Informal African Book Drive: From Montreal to Northern Uganda

After the initial three stories, there is a point to this post, a big one. Patience. Read on.

What seem like forever ago, I was sitting on the steps of a school in a small village in Uganda on the way to Rwanda. Our bus had broken down for the second time. There was little else to do, but read and eat mandazi. As I settled in to some pop-culture book about aid in Africa, I was rapidly surrounded by a group of young teenagers intrigued by the lone mzungu. Recognizing the map of Africa on the front cover of my book, they began quizzing me: What is this book about? Is it about us? Who wrote it? Why haven’t I read it if it’s about my country?

Fast-forward to a blissful few weeks on Zanzibar, Tanzania. A young guy approached me while I was sitting on the beach reading. He looked at my book and asked, “Where is Rwanda?” Soon after I explained the jest of the book, “What’s genocide?”

Now, for a third, and last, example. There’s a famous book called the Aboke Girls. It’s about a group of young girls abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Apac, Uganda. I was hanging out with a group of politicians/school teachers in the district’s main village, Apac, and I took out the book. After passing it around, most confessed that they had never even read it. Some of these great people were actually related to the girls who were taken. We handed them the book and we made them promise to distribute it in their classrooms/communities (my apologies to the author). More shocking, I realized after that the writer was the Dutch editor in chief of the New Vision, a widely distributed national newspaper. Go figure.

So, all these stories have a point. I’m organizing a sort of ‘book drive’. I want to pool all the books about Africa or written by Africans we have gathering dust on our shelves and send them to Uganda via the Concordia Volunteer Abroad program (CVAP). We’ll make sure they’re distributed in schools in Northern Uganda, as well as at Gulu University. While I know many people become emotionally attached to books, this is a great chance to spread the word and ensure that the very subjects of these books can read about themselves and turn around the Western-driven impression of Africa. Remember Foucault and Said: “Knowledge is Power”. It’s our responsibility to ensure that our Western-driven impressions do not dominate the intellectual market, and, at the very least, to foster a much needed discussion about issues like aid, micro-finance, development and more.

If you want to help out and contribute, please drop off your books at the CVAP office at 2110 Mackay, right near Concordia (just a quick detour before class!). Please make sure to drop them off between these hours, otherwise the office is closed:

1. Peter’s office hours – 12pm to 5pm on Fridays

2. Jamie’s office hours – 11am to 6pm on Wednesdays.

I’d really like to prioritize with books about Africa / written by Africans. However, if you have some other ones that need dusting off, feel free to drop them off. If there’s room, they’ll go too! As the new CVAP volunteers head out, they’ll bring the books for free. We’ll then ensure that they’re distributed equally among CVAP’s partners and friends up in Northern Uganda.

If you’re not in Montreal, feel free to mail the books to the city. I know it’s expensive, so I’m not surprised if that seems like a silly idea. However, if you’re into it, send me an email and I can send you my address. I’ll make sure they get there.

imperial ambitions.

Spent the larger part of the day on a bus to and fro Ottawa. Skies are blue; rivers frozen; and Canada is flat, flat, flat. Another hour in the Ismaili Imamat Embassy being interviewed by Aga Khan Canada. I am exhausted. In between, I spent the bus ride reading Chomsky’s book “Imperial Ambitions.” A breath of fresh air in the realm of paranoid, uber-complicated academics. I’ve taken out some of my favorite, most relevant bits:

As Chomsky says, the US has consistently demonized those they are threatening. In other words,

As Franklin points out, it’s consistently the case that the people who are about to exterminate us are the ones who are under our boot. We’ve got our boot on their necks, and that means they’re about to exterminate us (p. 165).

This type of genocidal rhetoric seems more familiar to Milosevic’s Serbia, less so the U.S.A. Viva La Vida.

Lyndon Johnson said plaintively, “There are three billion people in the world and we have only two hundred million of them. We are outnumbered fifteen to one. If might did make right they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want.” That is a constant refrain of imperialism. You have your jackboot on someone’s neck and they’re about to destroy you … The same is true with any form of oppression. And it’s psychologically understandable. If you’re crushing and destroying someone, you have to have a reason for it, and it can’t be, I’m a murderous monster. It has to be self-defense. I’m protecting myself against them. Look what they’re doing to me. Oppression gets psychologically inverted: the oppressor is the victim who is defending himself. (p. 167).

A few other highlights, this one mentioned the ridicule behind hyper-religious America:

The teaching of evolution, which is just normal in every other country, is extremely difficult here. And it has been for a long time. I remember when my wife was in college in the late 1940s. She was taking a sociology course, and I remember her telling me that the instructor said, “The next section is going to be on evolution. You don’t have to believe this, but you just ought to know what some people think (p. 186).

And last, but not least, a thunderous statement, inverting our ‘traditional’ knowledge of failed state:

The United States is basically what’s called a “failed state.” It was formal democratic institutions, but they barely function. So it doesn’t matter that approximately three fourths of the population think we ought to have some kind of government-funded health care system. It doesn’t even matter if a large majority regards health care as a moral value. When commentators rave about moral values, they are talking about banning gay marriage, not the idea that everyone should have decent health care. (p. 198).

And then, though it’s hard to stick to this truth with all that’s around,

Many of the basic institutions of our society are totally illegitimate. Do corporations have to be controlled by management and owners and dedicated to the welfare of shareholders instead of being controlled by the people who work in them and dedicated to the community and the workers? It’s not a law of nature (p. 201).

There Will be Blood.

Niall Ferguson is a fabulous author and his book, “The War of the World: History’s Age of Hatred” is a great starting point. He was interviewed for today’s Globe and Mail on the recession. His “There Will be Blood” comment stole the title, understandably.

“There will be blood, in the sense that a crisis of this magnitude is bound to increase political as well as economic [conflict]. It is bound to destabilize some countries. It will cause civil wars to break out, that have been dormant. It will topple governments that were moderate and bring in governments that are extreme. These things are pretty predictable.”

As he says, the above is a pretty basic assessment. But, here comes a key observation:

“The question is whether the general destabilization, the return of, if you like, political risk, ultimately leads to something really big in the realm of geopolitics. That seems a less certain outcome. We’ve already talked about why China and the United States are in an embrace they don’t dare end. If Russia is looking for trouble the way Mr. Putin seems to be, I still have some doubt as to whether it can really make this trouble, because of the weakness of the Russian economy. It’s hard to imagine Russia invading Ukraine without weakening its economic plight. They’re desperately trying to prevent the ruble from falling off a cliff. They’re spending all their reserves to prop it up. It’s hardly going to help if they do another Georgia.”

“I was more struck Putin’s bluster than his potential to bite, when he spoke at Davos. But he made a really good point, which I keep coming back to. In his speech, he said crises like this will encourage governments to engage in foreign policy aggression [emphasis added]. I don’t think he was talking about himself, but he might have been. It’s true, one of the things historically that we see, and also when we go back to 30s, but also to the depressions 1870s and 19980s, weak regimes will often resort to a more aggressive foreign policy, to try to bolster their position. It’s legitimacy that you can gain without economic disparity – playing the nationalist card. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of that in the year ahead.

And to defuse the weight of the above:

“Property ownership is something that our societies, particularly English-speaking societies, seem to be drawn towards. The notion that the majority of people should own their own homes dated from the 30s. It didn’t really become a reality until the 50s. We’ve sort of pushed the home ownership rate up to what seems to be its maximum, and beyond. It will clearly come down. The lesson of the subprime crisis is that you shouldn’t give mortgages to people who can’t afford them. Duh …”

And, while it looks up for Canada, perhaps not the same elsewhere:

But the good news is only as good as this: the United States, which is Canada’s biggest trading partner, is not going to suffer as badly as many other economies around the world. And that means that from Canada’s point of view, it’s not standing right on top of the biggest fault lines in the global system. The biggest fault lines in the global system are in Asia. They may also be in Eastern Europe. That’s where things are going to be really unpredictable.”

As I mentioned with Bosnia, the recession can only aggravate ethnic tensions still simmering after the war. Which, in retrospect, was not that long ago. Moreover, areas like Kosovo are wholly dependent on international aid. The area has little to no industry; a shaky government populated with Kosovo Liberation Army ex-soldiers; and an aggressive Serbian government to the North. Aid is bound to decline over the coming years; hard-work is bound to unravel as weak countries fight for a piece of the global pie (unsuccessfully), and poverty will be on the up.

However, Ferguson seems pretty confident that we’re not heading towards a WWIII, so perhaps it’s time to stay positive, celebrate, and, as Bush might have put it, go shopping!