brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

A maintaining dynamic provides stability, while a modernizing dynamic forces change. We tend to be satisfied with a view of the world as a theatre of conflict between stability and change. Collecting a congeries of phenomena under the rubric of modernization, we project a future that will be purified in a certain direction. With only the craven desire for stability to overcome, the victory of modernization seems assured, and the world must progress toward the mechanized, the artificial, the commercial, the secular, the individual, and the international. There is, however, an oppositional force of self-conscious resistance on behalf of the bodily, the natural, the creative, the sacred, the collective, and the local. This countervailing force is underestimated because we have not yet learned, as we have with modernization, to gather its disparate signs under one label.
Oppositional actions do not connect directly; they align independently in negative response to modernization, the force also called, depending upon context, progress, development, secularization, industrialization, westernization, or colonialism. The goal is not maintenance; the orientation is progressive, but the dynammic is recursive. The mind scans the past to imagine the future. Consider the popularity of hobbies involving handicraft, the concern for environmental conservation and historic preservation, the profusion of civic festivals, the resurgence of ethnic identity, the escalation of nativism, and nationalism, the institution of reactionary values in politics and education, the convergence of alternative ideology and spiritual yearning in religious revival, the new age cults, in Christianity and Judaism, in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. In detail it is too much to encompass: The Mahabharata in ninety-three installments on Indian television, mosques destroyed in Bosnia and built in Afghanistan, powpows in Oklahoma, martial arts in Japan, new music in Colombia, glass painting in Poland and Romania, rosemaling in Norway and Wisconsin, political order in Iran, rebellion in Chechnya, separatism in Quebec, fundamentalism in Christianity, the Mao cult in China, Kwanzaa in Philadelphia, the Eid parade in Dhaka city, Saraswati Puja at Jagannath Hall. But take it all together, name it revitalization, and it is a power to balance modernization.

St Claire’s Orphanage in the western Kenyan city of Kisumu also shelters widows who do not wish to follow the traditional practice of being ‘inherited’ by their husbands’ brothers.

“When a man dies, his wife will be inherited by his brothers or close cousin – if she refuses, she is chased away. To them the disease that killed the man is immaterial, but what matters is that the wife is ‘cleansed’ [by remarrying] so that she can be allowed to mix freely with the rest of the community,” Sister Philomena Adhiambo, the home’s director, told PlusNews. “This has added to the spread of HIV/AIDS in the Luo community.”

Caroline Atieno, widowed at 23, commented: “After the death of my husband, the family made sure I had nothing; nothing to eat, and my house was falling down. My daughter didn’t attend school. Here I can eat, I have shelter, I can wash my children’s clothes and my daughter will attend school.”

The orphanage, open for only a year, houses five widows and their eight children who share the home’s three small rooms with 40 orphaned children. Helena Ogada, 50, and widowed two years ago, came to St Claire’s with her two grandchildren, whose parents both died from AIDS-related illnesses after her in-laws refused to acknowledge her, but she wishes for a house where she could take care of her grandchildren.

The widows have become ‘housemothers’, helping to run the orphanage and attached nursery school that caters to an additional 30 fee-paying children, with a daily schedule that sees them feed, wash, dress and play with 70 children while keeping the home and school clean, but this is still preferable to being inherited.

Constalata Atieno, 32, has also been living and working at the orphanage since she refused to be inherited by her husband’s family a year ago. “They wanted me to continue with a husband, but I did not want to as already I knew that I was sick. When I refused to marry again they forced me to leave,” she said. “I stayed with my brother here in Kisumu, where I met Sister Philomena – she invited me here to help her.”

Three housemothers and five children are HIV-positive, but they all receive life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) medication from government hospitals nearby. Kisumu has a prevalence of 15 percent, more than double the national average of about six percent.

“I have been taking ARVs for one month and am already better, but there are some problems here and there – I feel sick sometimes and dizzy,” Constalata said. She earns no income at the home and often struggles to find money for medicines to treat opportunistic infections.

“We are full, but if I see that there is a need I can take more. They can even squeeze here,” Adhiambo said, pointing to a space on the floor of her room. “I have just heard of two children who are HIV-positive – their parents are dead, their grandmother is very old and blind. Their uncles will not care for them and chased them away. I must take them.”

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]

Kenya Post cannot be trusted! After paying 200 ksh for a customs-form(!), and paying exorbitant postage rates for slow (3-4 months to USA!) surface package delivery… your insured package will not arrive — stolen by postal employees! Queries regarding the theft do not get a response!

(Email-me for comments on Wildebeeste Workshop accommodation.)

Nyayo-footsteps

in Africa I felt: no achievements, no successes, the place
is only bigger and darker and worse. I began to fantasize that
this world was often like a parallel universe, the dark star
image in my mind, in which everyone existed as a sort of shadow
counterpart to someone in the brighter world

Goziba Island: no police, no government people, No taxes. Just in
the middle of nowhere.

Some governments in Africa depended on
underdevelopment to survive– bad schools, poor communications, a
feeble press, and ragged people.. The leaders needed poverty to
obtain foreign aid, needed an uneducated and passive populace to
to keep themselves in office for decades, A great education
system in an open society would produce rivals, competitors, and
an effective opposition to people who only wanted to cling to power.

The friction had been necessary, the challenges had made people
think harder, the pluralism had forced people to become
considerate. doris lessing the grass is singing r.k narayan jorge
amado v.s. pritchett shusaku endo naguib mahfouz yasar kemal his
sense of history was immediate and aggrieved you go away a for a
long time and return a different person–you never come all the
way back. Like Rimbaud you think, I is someone else

Created 02/03/2006 3:46 am

The white group which could have become most closely integrated
with Africa chose a destiny that made it the epitome of racism on
the continent. — The modern era of African history was
inaugurated by the discovery of diamonds at Kimberly and gold on
the Witwatersrand. Unimagined wealth awakened imperial dreams,
while the mines intensified labour demands and polarized racist
attitudes. Labour compounds and pass laws were just two aspects of
official racial segregation instituted under British rule during
the 1880s which established precedents for the apartheid laws
formalized by South Africa’s white government in the 1960’s. —
reka, reka. mona mtskeka (buy buy a gun)

Leopold II of Belgium started the European nations’ “scramble” for
territory in Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. While
France, Britain, Portugal, and Germany established colonies,
Leopold proclaimed himself King-Sovereign of the Congo Free
State. Rubber brought great wealth to Leopold and Belgium;
harvesting the crop inflicted terrible hardships upon the
Congolese. —

African leaders were not invited to attend the Berlin Conference
in 1884-85 at which Africa was carved out among the colonial
powers, nor were they consulted. The colonial history of the Lozi
people of western Zambia exemplifies the manner in which African
polities were taken up, manipulated and discarded to suit European
interests. —

whether by coincidence, convenience, or connivance

MANY KILLED IN KENYA FEUD
13.7.2005. 19:21:55

Up to 66 people, around 22 of them children, have been killed and dozens wounded in a bloody raid on a remote village in eastern Kenya.

Residents said the raid was an inter-clan attack sparked by long-running disputes over water and pasture.

Witnesses who ferried some of the most seriously injured to hospital spoke of a grisly attack with dead bodies lying on the streets of the remote village of Turbi.

They said members of the Borana clan invaded and shot the victims, all of whom are believed to belong to the rival Gabra clan.

In Nairobi, police said at least 19 people — 15 villagers and four attackers — had died in a raid on one compound or manyatta in Turbi, about 580 kilometres northeast of the capital, but said the death toll could rise.

However, residents of Marsabit, the nearest town to Turbi about 150 km south, said between 21 and 23 people had died in the attack.

Others, including a local businessman who has radio contact with Turbi said at least 23 people, the majority of them children, had been killed but his death toll could not be confirmed by independent sources.

Roba Eleme, a mechanic with Kenya’s water ministry who brought 12 seriously wounded Turbi residents to Marsabit for treatment, said he had seen numerous dead bodies outside one large house and several in the street.

“I could not count, but there are very many people dead as many as 30 or even 100 and most of them are apparently children who it appeared were running out of the house,” he said.

The two clans have feuded persistently over water and pasture in the region.

Condemnation after closure of websites and community radios

Reporters Without Borders protested as Thaksin Shinawatra’s
government demonstrated a toughening stance towards critics, closing
several community radios and two alternative news websites in the
space of a week.

The organisation said it was particularly concerned at the closure on
21 June of two controversial websites http://www.fm9225.com and
http://www.thai-insider.com, apparently on the orders of the Ministry
of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

“Thailand already blocks access to thousands of sites considered
‘inappropriate’, particularly pornographic, but also some
publications exposing ‘cases’ implicating the authorities,” the
organisation said.

“However this is the first time to our knowledge that the minister
has ordered a host to close a news website. It sets an extremely
serious precedent, all the more so since the government refuses to
justify its decision and even pretends not to have made it.”

“We would like to remind it that the closure of an online publication
can only be decided by a court; it cannot be justified by an
administrative decision.”

According to the English-language daily Bangkok Post, the ICT
ministry directly contacted the web hosts companies to get the
websites removed from the Web. The ministry has so far denied being
behind this censorship.

The website www.thai-insider.com carried articles exposing corruption
and implicating the government. Its head, Ekkayuth Anchanbutr, a
fierce opponent of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has already
moved his site to another host. Thai Insider can now be accessed on
www.akeyuth.com.

The site, www.fm9225.com posts broadcasts by several community radios
such as FM 92.25, which is critical of the government. According to
Thai daily The Nation, a manager of the site said he had received a
letter from the department of the ICT ministry responsible for the
Internet saying that the site was endangering “the country’s unity
and security”.

For more information on Internet censorship in Thailand, see:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=1074

The website closures come at a time when the government has begun a
trial of strength with a number of community radios. The authorities
have talked about wanting to regulate the sector, which comprises
more than 3,000 stations, while some of the radio’s management see it
more as a bid to bring them to heel.

At least two such radios have been closed since a deadline was passed
on 15 June by which all community radios had to register and to
resolve their “technical problems”.

Reporters Without Borders is asking the government to try to find
negotiated solutions to resolve the technical problems. “The rapid
development of community radios is good news for pluralism of news
and information in Thailand. It is regrettable that the government
should be tempted to snuff out these fledgling radios,” said the
organisation.

Agents of the Public Relations Department (PRD) and the regulatory
body the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) closed two
Bangkok community radios Huay Kwang and Bang Khen on 17 June 2005.
The transmitter of the first and the antenna of the second were
seized. The authorities said they had been using non-regulation
equipments which was interfering with signals from other radios and
with aviation.

The new regulations governing community radios limit their output to
30 watts and a range of less than 15 kilometres. It also bans the use
of antennas higher than 30 metres. Operators say they need 500 watts
and 60-metre aerials.

Radio controllers who fail to comply with these technical rules could
face up to five years in prison and a fine of 100,000 baht (about
2,000 euros).

The government issued two warnings in May to the station FM 92.25
that its antenna was too high. To avoid closure, FM 92.25 took down
its antenna and launched the website www.fm9225.com.

Thai journalists contacted by Reporters Without Borders said that the
summary sanctions taken by the PRD against community radios could be
explained by the authorities’ determination defend its own position
in the sector. The PRD in fact manages nearly 200 stations. The army
has two TV stations and 120 radios.

Island studies is not the mere study of events and
phenomena on sites which happen to be islands;
islands do not merely reproduce on a manageable scale
the dynamics and the behaviour which exist elsewhere.
Islandness is an intervening variable which contours
and conditions physical and social events in distinct,
and distinctly relevant, ways.
— Godfrey Baldacchino,
UPEI Canada Research Chair in Island Studies