Two not so new blogs but definitely worth regular visits. The first is Dogonland which was started by one of my best friends, Del Hornbuckle about a year ago but was shut down due to technical difficulties. She has now relaunched the blog and it is looking good! Neat and beautifully presented with some excellent commentary. Her last post is on a flim called Lomo about a Congolese woman, Lomo Sniai who survived rape by soldiers and as a result developed traumatic fistula. Del watched the film on PBS wrote a review here.

The second blog is one I discovered on MySpace by Nigerian writer and poet, Chinwe Azubuike - “African Writers”. This poem is on female circumcision

Our Dilemma

You, our gods of immortals and living
Of seas and lands
Of all visible and not
we beseech, hear our cry this day
and come to our rescue.

Our sacred weapons of pleasure
are being destroyed by the day
rendered useless by our overseeing Lords and Ladies
of ancestral descent.

They perform a barbaric operation on our ‘flesh of honour’
and call it ‘Female Circumcision’
in the white man’s language.
They mutilate our pride and say it is ‘tradition’
“The initiation to womanhood.”

They cut us!
Oh yes, they cut us with the blade……… Continue.