Black Looks

Rea Dol is grassroots community organiser and founder of SOPUDEP school in Port-au-Prince. Shortly after the earthquake they had to abandon the school which was being used as a shelter due to the stench of dead bodies and sturtural damage which made the building unsafe.

For the school to continue it will have to relocate. A group of students and teachers are trying to design temporary classrooms on a new site which the school bought through donations last year.
Design for the new school

Here Rea speaks to Kathlene McGuinness of Ryerson University Toronto, about the aftermath of the earthquake and her hopes for the school in the future.

Interview

1. Could you take us through a normal day at SOPUDEP before the earthquake?

Rea: A normal day, all the children come to study at school, as usual, the children go to their classrooms, and when means allow, they receive a hot meal at school. The first group finishes at 1:00pm, and then in the afternoon we help street children to work hard to learn a trade skill. We work, following the pedagogical program of the National Education Ministry that they supply us with—that’s the one we use.

2. What is your vision for the new school? What would you like to see happen?

Rea: As we work with groups abroad, such as in California, with Seth (Donnelly) and the union members, we have been working to try to secure a (new) site (for the school), and we will communicate with Ryan (Sawatzky) as well. The former building, I had a 10-year contract, which is ending in 2012, and I have received many threats, so we were looking at the new school for SOPUDEP. Therefore, we were looking at the possibilities to have a new land and site for the school.

3. What materials are available to you on the ground right now?
Anything you can think of – not just normal building materials – pop
cans, cardboard boxes, etc.

Rea: We do not have available (heavy construction) materials…we can’t recuperate them. Some of the structures have been destroyed. The space where we worked with the small children was condemned after the earthquake, because it structurally cracked, and was damaged; therefore, neither children nor adults would be secure inside. The other building had some things break inside. There isn’t (heavy) material available at this point.
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I never heard of Henrietta Lacks until a few days ago. But I have heard of the Tuskeegee Experiment in which 399 Black men were used as clinical samples for studying the late stages of syphilis. The men who were poor sharecroppers from Alabama, where never told they had syphilis and no doubt died horrible painful deaths for an illness which was treatable but not for them.

Henrietta Lack’s stolen cells is another experiment without consent. In February 1951 Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer at John Hopkins hospital. Nine months later she was dead. During her treatment – what treatment she received is not clear, tissue samples were removed without her knowledge and consent and handed over to Dr George Gey.
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After intensive pressure from members of the National Assembly, the media, trade unions, political activists and the Nigerian people, President Yar’Adua has agreed to hand over the Presidency to his deputy, Goodluck Jonathan.

I think Fela would have loved this – the beginnings of “people power” in Nigeria – here Seun talks about his father and Fela on Broadway…..

Boa Sr, the last speaker of Bo’, “one of the ten Great Andamanese languages has died”. The death of Boa Sr and the language she spoke is the end of 65,000 years of linguistic heritage and culture.

It is estimated that a language dies every two weeks and by 2100 90% of languages of the world will be gone forever. It’s called Linguicide, death of language. There are between 3,000 and 10,000 languages which seems a a huge variable. The top 8 languages are spoken by 2.4 billion people [Mandarin, Spanish, English, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese]. At the other end of the scale 96% of the worlds languages are spoken by 4% of the population. To go on, one quarter of the worlds languages are spoken by less than 1000 people and over half by less than 10,000 people. The chances of survival for many of these languages is therefore very slim given the number of speakers and the domination of the 8 major languages.

There is no great complicated explanation as to why languages are dying and the number of people speaking a language is no guarantee that it will remain. “Language imperialism” or the “invasion of English”, has meant that everyone “needs” to speak English in order to communicate with as many people as possible.

How did this happen? How did a dialect, spoken by a backward, semi-literate tribe in the south-eastern corner of a small island in the North Sea spread, like some malign pandemic virus, across the globe? Should we feel guilty that our way of speaking is obliterating so many other tongues? Is it not a more sinister kind of colonialism than that which we practised a hundred years ago? Once we just took their raw materials. Now we invade their minds, by changing the primary tool by which they think: “their” language.

One area where language imperialism most impacts on our lives is the internet. For African languages of which there are between 1,500 and 2000 , the good news is that Google Books along with East African Educational Publishers is publishing their books in a number of East African languages. The more languages are available online whether as Google searches or online books, blogs and so on the more chance of survival the 21st C.

Boa Sr sings “the earth is shaking as the tree falls with a great thud” – a metaphor for the death of a language and death of a people. Bo sounded like a beautiful language – I feel sad it has gone.

Links:
African Languages
Linguistic Map of African Langauges

From Uganda, Gay Uganda reports on continuing police harassment and roundups of LGBT people – “knock on the door”

Desperate. Distraught.
Now, the knock early morning on the door.

We say we shall run. But, what if we cannot run? We have family, jobs, businesses. We are normal human beings. Common Ugandans. What of when we cannot run?

On his way to Britain, the Pope crawls from under his papal robes hiding years of sexual and physical abuse by Catholic priests and nuns on thousands of children – to condemn the UK’s proposed Equality Law saying “it threatened religious freedom and ran contrary to “natural law>”.

Radio Netherlands presents a series of audio personal stories from Namibia, South Africa, Ghana and Uganda.

Lorenzo’s story
Lorenzo is a hairdresser in Cameroon. He met a man in a bar and they clicked and they decided to live together. That’s when the police got involved. Lorenzo spent seven months in prison without trial.

Ian’s story
Ian Swartz founded the Rainbow Project in Namibia at a time when its president began to hound gays and lesbians. The home affairs minister called for their elimination and became known as the minister for homophobic affairs. Ian talks about the abuse he experienced and why it increased his determination to create change.

Prince’s story
Prince Macdonald, in his own words, is gay, proud and African. He lives in the Ghanaian capital Accra and talks about how, despite homosexual acts being illegal in his country, he’s still determined to enjoy life as much as possible.

Steve’s story
Her real name is Mapaseka, but everyone calls her Steve. She was young when she came out to her family. It wasn’t easy, but they eventually accepted her. But when she was 15, She was raped by a family friend who believed she should be shown what it’s like to be a ‘real’ woman. Despite a constitution protecting gay and lesbians, she still feels unsafe.

Nigeria soldiers shooting defenseless civilians Jos, Plateau State one year ago. Viewer Discretion is Advised – Sahara Reporters.

By late tomorrow dozens of Nigerian asylum seekers will be deported from the UK

Why do people flee Nigeria?

In its 2009 World Report, Human Rights Watch maintained that Nigerian state security forces “continued to commit extrajudicial killings, torture, and extortion. Intercommunal and political violence, often fomented by powerful politicians, claimed hundreds of lives.” But while state and ‘inter-communal’ violence in Nigeria are well documented, what is less known, or less talked about, is the role of multinational oil and arms companies in maintaining this violence.

Between June and December last year 76 bodies were left at the morgue in Enugu by the Nigerian Police but some estimates are double that. Some of the men are listed as “armed robbers”, “suspected armed robber” or “unknown thief”. The police commander claimed they dont excecute people “we are in a democracy now” – it’s a wonder he did not choke over his words.

In August 2007 Damien Ugwu then of the Nigerian Civil Liberties spoke about the “endemic police torture in the Nigerian justice system”. CLO estimated that five people a day are being extra-judicially killed by the police with young unemployed men being the most vulnerable. He went on to say that torture chambers exist in most Nigerian police stations and torture is routinely carried out. From the reports above it seems police executions are not only on the increase but take place in full glare of the public. In June last year soldiers of the JTF were caught on camera executing two militants in the Niger Delta – two of hundreds if not more over the years. No single soldier or member of the police force has been held accountable for these and thousands of other murders and rapes – again even when caught on camera as in Choba in November 1999.

The Weapon
for Nelson Mandela

As you took up arms, ntate,
we stood by and admired your guns
and your uniform, while you prepared
to mount the country to kill railways
and post-offices, we nodded agreement,
we acknowledged how the continent
was a pistol facing earthward, with the trigger
right at Nigeria’s oily wars of religion between
once-peaceful regions, the left hand now hacking
and being hacked by the right.
From out in the cold you made sense
of lives the way a bullet never can,
our poetry on the shore, washed up on the rocks;
doves came and sat on the eaves.
We thought it was a mistake – I am prepared to die,
but it was in your voice, carried to our door
by the choice of words, joined by others
from village to village, where cold and hot
scuffle for the light of dawn, east and west,
the chill of night when the wind is still
and stars are out. Somalia’s hammer
is just now falling into place on land and sea
where ghosts whimper your name, on the island
where no one is, save webbed gulls and dolphins
that know your tribe, and seek us among
painful rocks. From then on the smell
of gun-powder covered the world. Yes, and
we rubbed the struggle into our hair,
our jeans, our black mining boots, walked
to the freedom of our lives, leaving a thin curl
of smoke rising from South-Africa’s
steel muzzle, into the crisp, morning air.
© Rethabile Masilo

Victor Mukasa’s presentation to the UN on “Grave Human Rights Violations Against LGBT People in Africa”

Governor General Michaëlle Jean, Canada
Via, Women and Beyond

Interview with Pierre Labossiere of Haiti Action speaking on Haiti two weeks after the earthquake.

Pierre raises a number of very important points in relation to the relief itself, the many NGOs, organisations, groups and individuals that have descended on Haiti – aptly described as “social vampires”. He also speaks on the role of President Clinton in pushing neo-liberal policies on the country, such as privatization which led directly to the weakening of both Haiti’s government structures and economy.

M.O.I. JR: Since the earthquake in Haiti, 20/20 and a whole bunch of hip hop media journalists have highlighted Wyclef Jean, a popular rap artist who is Haitian, and many people are star struck into giving to his organization, Yele. Can you give us a history of who Wyclef Jean is, as well as who his family is in Haiti?

Pierre: Wyclef Jean is – everybody knows his background – he’s a talented musician, an artist with the Fugees. At the time he had a powerful message, and he has a foundation called Yele Ayiti, so he is out there. And his uncle is a person who has a different set of politics (from ours) opposed to the people’s movement of Haiti, and his uncle really did welcome the coup d’etat (on Feb. 29, 2004, that deposed democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide, beloved by the vast majority of Haitians, who lives in exile in South Africa) and its aftermath. And Wyclef had taken a position in support on that as well. That is what I know about his history.
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