Black Looks

Well worth taking the time to listen.

There are only two tribes in Kenya [Africa], the Haves and the Have Nots

I look at Kenya, at Africa through the eyes of ordinary person. I measure development not from the view point of those who are at the top of the mountain but from the standpoint of those who are at the bottom.

Writer, academic and activist Ngugi wa Thiong’o on activism, literature, development, politics and elections. Parts 2 and 3 ….

HT: Africa is a Country.

NAIROBI STAGED READING OF SHAILJA PATEL’S BWAGAMOYO (THE FATHER): PART II OF MIGRITUDE
PEN International Kenya Chapter and Wasanii Literary Nights Present:

SHAILJA PATEL

Award-winning poet, playwright, theatre artist, and activist

in a staged reading of:

BWAGAMOYO (The Father) : Part II of MIGRITUDE

Special Guest Actor: MUSIRA

What do Samuel Kivuitu’s neck, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s ribcage, William Ruto’s abdomen, and the hands of a Nairobi “grease monkey” all have in common?

Shailja Patel takes us on a poetic journey, from colonial Zanzibar to Kenya’s post-election violence, by way of the male body.

A powerful, heartbreaking, hilarious exploration of how patriots become patriarchs, muscles queered break down masculinities, and daughters confront fathers.
Read more…

I discovered a treasure of a bookshop yesterday in NW DC called Busboys and Poets – probably the best collection of progressive books I have come across in one single place. With the added bonus of coffee, couch, apple macs, poetry nights and trendy food, Busboys looked like one of the “hottest” places to hang out for DC’s coolist people. After only 30 minutes I already had a collection of a dozen books to buy but had to reduce this down to three for starters – Insurgency Online – a study of web activism using case studies from the Irish Republican Socialist Movement (IRSM) , the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA Peru); Ngugi wa Thiong’o Speaks: Interviews with the Kenyan Writer” and The Aftermath of Slavery: Transisitions and Transformations in Southeaster Nigeria”. My father should have written this one as a quick glance through it reiterates many of the stories he has told me over the years on the nature and form of slavery in what is today the Niger Delta and the immediate hinterland – Igobland, and the impact of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade on those communities and how they adapted to changes.

On my way out I picked up a leaflet about an organised trip and conference to Goree Island with an excursion to Juffre the Gambian ancestral home of Alex Haley. Reading the leaflet and the website reminded me of an article I read a while back by Saidiya Hartman called “Time of Slavery” in which she discusses the commodification of Elmina Castle and collective slave memories from the Diaspora. The plaque on the entrance to the castle reads

“In everlasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity. We the living vow to uphold this.”

I was taken to Elmina Castle as a child but I cannot remember going in – I don’t think we did. When I was older, I remember my first visit to Badagry near the Nigerian / Benin border where there is a small slave museum. The crazy thing was, I went there not to see the slave museum but to attend a birthday party someone had organised at a restaurant near the town. Somehow looking back it seems almost sacrilegious to have a birthday party next door to a slave museum. Also in Badagry is the first Anglican Mission house – slavery ended and the missionaries moved in to wrought more havoc on people’s lives.

In a search for Elmina castle on google, the first site is the Ontario Black History Society which describes the castle as “a tourist attraction”.

Today, Elmina Castle is a tourist attraction and World Heritage Monument in Cape Coast, Ghana. This hasn’t always been the case. Looking at the castle from the outside, nothing can ever prepare the unsuspecting visitor or tourist emotionally to hear about the tales of horror and atrocities that went on beyond those walls.

If one defines a “tourist attraction” as a place people go to visit as part of a recreational activity then how sad and inappropriate is it to describe Elmina as a “tourist attraction”. Looking up tourism on a Wiki page I discovered that under “niche” tourism you have specific types such as “dark tourism – includes travel to sites associated with death and suffering” which seems very appropriate for Elmina Castle and Goree Island. Note the term “dark” as usual used to describe something awful like slavery which in the case of these two “tourist attractions” was the slavery of Black people. At this point I am not sure where I am heading with this post so I am going to stop. If you are really interested in knowing what other forms of “niche” tourism exist then check the wiki

Tags: Slavery; Nigeria; Slavery; Elmina Castle

I woke up this morning to read the following comment on the post “You are a Black man you have to leave”

THIS IS NOT AN INCIDENT OF RACISM. As an employee of the spoken restaurant I am appalled that this can even be considered an incident of racism. This is San Francisco, a city with the worst homelessness problem in the nation. Daily we have people from the street wander in and disrupt service. Crack addicts, prostitutes, etc. disturb people who are paying good money to eat and stay here. Constantly we have to escort disgusting trashy people from our restuarant on the embarcadero in order to ensure a sense of security amongst out guests. It does not matter whether you are black white pink or blue, if you come into our restaurant reeking of body odor, adorning dreadlocks, and wearing filthy clothes, you run the rist of being escorted from any fine dining establishment. Any restaurant in the state of california reserves the right to refuse service to ANYONE. Service was refused to this man based on his appearance not his race. If anyone has strong enough evidence than I to contest this statement I would like to know. We are a tolerant community and a diversely employed restaurant, how dare you try to bring down our good name for an issue that has been dead for years.

I am appalled with this response. The comment totally contradicts the offfical reponse of the hotel by the CEO as posted in Naijablog.

Prejudice still exists in America. It is real and palpable. While we’ve all witnessed superficial changes in America over the past four decades, the reality is that people “pre-judge” each other way too much, whether it’s based upon skin color, religion, sexual orientation, age, economic status, or some other factor that makes one “the other.”

Obviously the so called “diversity” training has not impacted on this employee who by his words does not agree with the CEO that this was a racist incident. Instead he claims the Professor was removed because he “appeared” in such a way that he was associated with the following: “crack addict, prostitute, disgusting dirty people,reeking of body odor, adorning dreadlocks, and wearing filthy clothes”

The most significant aspects about this comment are first that he denies that racism exists yet his statement is so loaded with prejudice and discrimination not to talk of lack of humanity. Secondly is his more emotional reaction which is the manifestion of his attitude towards other human beings and basically boils down to making judgements about people which includes one’s skin colour and any other “visible statement of difference” because that is what this is about. It’s about not respecting and accepting difference in a land where wearing “no brand name” clothes is seen as subversive, dreadlocks as seditious and deviant and “prostitutes” sex-workers, the lowest of the low – he obviously has no thought on the punters who presumably are the “clean shaven, baldheaded, beardless, Tommy Hilfiger dressed white” acceptable guests in his hotel.

This person is clearly used to dividing the world into people who belong in this hotel and those that dont belong and in this case that includes the professor. A very respected writer, an African gentleman of a mature age and someone who this employee will never even in his dreams reach in terms of humanity and richness of mind.

I am sending this comment to all those listed on the original comments including the CEO – with my own response – I hope others will do the same.

General Manager Hotel Vitale: David Curell: dcurell@jdvhospitality.com

Chip Conley
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
cc@jdvhospitality.com
415.248.5940

Jack Kenny
President and Chief Operating Officer
jfk@jdvhospitality.com
415.248.5958

Fred de Stefano
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
fd@jdvhospitality.com
415.248.5941

Peter Gamez
Vice President of Sales and Marketing
pg@jdvhospitality.com
415.248.5945

Jane Howard
Vice President of Employee Development
jh@jdvhospitality.com
415.773.1078

Tags: Ngugi wa Thiong’o Racism

The post on Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o racist incident at a hotel in San Francisco has been picked up by a range of blogs including Gradiose Parlor and Naijablog who with a number of other bloggers and people took up the call to write to the management of the hotel. They have replied via Naijablog that a public apology will be published:

On Friday I met with key members of PAN (Priority African Network) and we came up with mutually-acceptable means of making amends to the community. This will include a public apology ad in a local newspaper, a donation to an anti-racism local non-profit, and deeper anti-racism training of staff (beyond just normal diversity training).

Thank you for expressing your sadness, anger, surprise, and anguish. We are using it as a continuing “wake-up call” to assure that every one of our employees respects every single person they come into contact with – whether they are a customer or not. Every human deserves to be respected and acknowledged.

Reading Grandiose Palor’s post led me to a piece on blogging over at Renegade Eye: WHY BLOG which was a piece originally posted on Annotated Life
From Renegade Eye’s post I came across The Red Bolivian (a good source of Black nationalism and colonial history of the Americas) who blogs at Black and Brown Power, COMITE UNIVERSITARIO DE IZQUIERDA (in Spanish) and S.A. S.L.C. His reasons for blogging….

I am a young Xicano militant who is sick and tired of all the eurocentric and racist shit I see and hear everyday. I want to show the peeps that Latinos see the world differently and that our way of looking at things is in no way less correct or valid as anyone elses. Its a way for La Raza to get its voices heard. Thats also why so many young gente do the myspace thing.

I blog for La Raza and for liberation. Para un mundo Socialista. I blog to get the ideas of my indeginous ancestors a place to be heard. For the Carnales and especially for the Xicanas who struggle through so much. Viva La Causa!!! Hasta La Victoria Siempre!!! Venceremos!!

So Why Blog? I cannot come up with anything that answers this better than Annoated Life

“Blogging is oppositional because it is an alternative vehicle for the dissemination of information. It represents a small but significant cultural evolution of the working class without the sanction of the ruling elite….The most politically developed within the working class have a tremendous responsibility set out by history to lead society in a new direction. The Internet offers us a wealth of potential which would be foolish and even tragic to forgo.”

The main reason I wrote this piece is to point out how little we in the Nigerian, African blogsophere link to each others stories which reduces our voices and the power of those voices in the blogosphere. Conversations do not just take place via comments but also by building and commenting on our blogs about what other bloggers are saying. There is a whole global space full of a huge variety of voices – we in Nigeria and other African blogospheres need to come out of our own houses and connect with our neighbours and our community. Once we begin to do that we will be a much stronger force than the lone voices we are at present. The great thing about blogging is it is or rather can be a form of social netowrking and not just a space to write for yourself – write for others as well.

Some of you may by now have listened to the Pambazuka broadcast interview with Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o (If you havent, please do as it is well worth the listen). Below is his experience of staying in a hotel in the Bay area of San Francisco on the 10th November. This incident has come to light because of the promience of the Professor but incidents like these happen regularly in the United States and in the United Kingdom to ordinary Black men and women.

___________________________________________________

Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o is one of the most celebrated Kenyan authors whose literary works explore issues of Black identity globally and in the U.S. He came to the Bay Area as a guest of Priority Africa Network and the African American Museum and Library in Oakland. The story as the Professor tells it, is that he was staying at the Hotel Vitale in the Embarcadero on November 10th on a visit to promote his new book “Wizard of the Crow”.

After a relaxing morning of a good walk and breakfast, he returned to his hotel to sit in the veranda section of the Hotel restaurant reading his newspaper. What happened next could have been a scene from a pre-Civil Rights Era of a Black man caught in a “White Only” section of a hotel. A hotel employee approached the Professor and said:

“This place is for guests of the hotel. You have to leave.”
Read more…

This week on PAMBAZUKA BROADCASTS:

Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o talks to Robtel Pailey from Pambazuka News about the importance of language and culture.

Congolese poet Omékongo wa Dibinga shares three of his poems

Sokari Ekine explores violence and rape in South Africa with emerging rapper PlanBe and he performs his rap “I Stand Against”

Pambazuka News and partners Carbon Trade Watch were in Brazil on the day a community reclaimed land from a destructive monoculture eucalyptus plantation.

Tags: Africa Literature Sexual Violence Brazil

Ngugi wa thiong’o is a controversial man! I read some chapters from his Decolonizing the mind and it was deeply thought-provoking. It made me think especially about what I want to call myself. Let me explain. Most bloggers consider themselves authors, writers. I call myself a writer (a soon to be published one at that ), an African writer. Am I?

I suppose the answer to that would depend on how I define an African writer. For me, anyone who writes and is African, is an African writer. We will not go into what it means to be African because that is a whole different kettle of fish. So if I am African but set my story in space with a Marsian protagonist, I am still an African writer. But if Bill Gates wrote a novel set in Accra with a spear-wielding “native” that would not make him an African writer. I think this explanation would go down well with most. It’s simply a question of geography and/or race. Or is it? Ngugi doesn’t think so. Indeed according to him, I am not an African writer at all! Read more…

On the 11th of August Njeeri wa Ngugi was raped during an attack against her and her husband Ngugi wa Thiong’o. According to various reports the crime rate in Nairobi is very high and rapes are common. After being away for 22 years the couple have stayed in Nairobi and Njeeri has spoken in public about her rape. Why I Will Not Hide My Pain She spoke of the fear of contacting HIV, her husband’s struggle with the rapist. In speaking out Njeeri wa Ngugi has showed tremendous courage and hopefully has equally encouraged other Kenyan women to speak and report their rape in a country where to speak of rape is taboo.

At first the Kenyan media tried to play down the rape by saying it was “attempted rape”. However Njeeri came out and said “no it was not.attempted rape.. I was penetrated.” Ngugi wa Thiong’o has linked the rape of his wife and brutal assult on him to the soon to be released translation of “Wizard of the Crow”. He believes the attackers were sent by someone “because their actions were unhurried and deliberate……(they) were meticulous in the action and appeared to read from a script prepared by people he does not know………….It is difficult to believe these four were acting alone or that theft was their main goal”

Tags:
Sexual Violence; Kenya;
Njeeri wa Ngugi;