brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

Created 02/03/2006 2:54 am

Because humans evolved in Africa, their parasites and diseases
are uniquely prevalent there too. Disease spreads rapidly among
people congregating in large numbers and has been a major
constraint on the establishment of urban centers in Africa. —
throughout the grater part of its evolutionary history, the human
population of Africa has lived in relatively small groups.
demonstrating that people are perfectly capable o living
peacefully in small communities for millennia without establishing
cities and states.

— Subsistence farming in Africa often demands more labor than can
fed with the food that farmers produce, but where conditions have
been amenable, innovative agricultural practices have overcome
this problem and established a highly successful community. Until
comparatively recently recent times, elephants have been a major
constraint on agricultural developments in Africa. — ukara is
an island lying off the south-eastern shore of lake victoria
Bambara-Nuts — Crops, cattle and iron formed the matrix around
which African society and economy developed. A gerontocratic
social order prevailed. Salt probably stimulated the first
instances of long-distance trade between groups, camels
facilitated the exploitation of Sahara deposits. — The ancient
settlement of Igbo-Ukwu in Nigeria was an outpost of West Africa’s
long-distance trade routes. The inroads of the trans-Saharan gold
trade stimulated the inception of centralized states in the Sahel;
environmental constraints predicated their demise. — Chinua
Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart 1958 — The idea that generations
of Africans enjoyed congenial lives in well-integrated, smoothly
functioning societies prior to the era of European exploitation is
widespread but wrong. Few communities had sufficient labour to
satisfy their needs. Life was arduous and unpredictable. Slavery
was commonplace. — A history of slavery in Africa claims that
between 30 and 60 per cent of the entire population were slaves
during historical times. If this is correct, the number of people
enslaved in Africa far exceed the number taken from the continent
by the slave trade. In fact, given the volume of the demand of
slaves within the continent, the shipping of slaves across the
Atlantic should be seen as an extension fo the internal market. —
Bananas and plantains, introduced to Africa from southeast Asia
more than 2,000 years ago, produce high yields with minimal
labour. They revolutionized food production throughout the
equatorial regions and rapidly became a staple food–most
especially in Uganda, where cattle simultaneously became valued as
symbols of prestige and wealth. — Cattle converted grass into
times of wealth that could be owned, exchanged and inherited. In
the extensive grasslands of southern Africa a new order of values
emerged, characterized by a degree of social stratification that
is epitomized at Great Zimbabwe. The gold trade initiated by Arabs
calling on the East African coast introduced a disruptive dynamic
to the region. — Chinese fleets visited East Africa in the early
fifteenth century and took a giraffe back to Beijing in 1415;
Portuguese caravels began exploring the coast of West Africa
during the same period. The Portuguese sought gold, but found
Africans willing to supply slaves as well. Nearly 1,000 African
men, women an children were shipped to Portugal between 1441 an
1446. — The Portuguese outflanked the trans-Sahara gold trade
when they reached the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) in 1472. The first
European buildings in Africa were erected in El Mina (the mine)
with materials imported from Europe; gold and slave-trading
contacts were firmly established in east Africa while the Portuguese
carried European influence around the southern tip of the
continent: the Cape of Good Hope. — Though Europeans first
Visited Ethiopia in 1407, Ethiopians had been visiting Europe since
1306 at the latest. These early visitors told of a great Christian
king, Prester John, who ruled Ethiopia. Portuguese voyages around
the continent were intended to make contact with Prester John and
gain his support for the Christian crusade against Islam. — The
Portuguese harnessed Africa to Europe. The continent and its
people were assessed in terms o their significance to Europe, but
the stress of ecological imperatives on human society in Africa
remains strikingly evident fro documentary evidence, which joins
archaeology as the principal sources on African history. —
European descriptions of rich and densely populated kingdoms
notwithstanding, the exigencies of human ecology kept Africa
thinly populated. Rural settlements were dispersed, urban centres
small, population growth rates low–but the foreign demand for
slaves became relentless. — Over nine million slaves were shipped
across the Atlantic between 1431 and 1870. Another million or more
did not survive the voyage, wile untold numbers died on the
journey from their point of capture to the coast. Europe’s taste
for sugar was the principal incentive of the trade. — island
Goree off-present-dat Dakar stories of white men from the ships
eating their black captives were legion in the slave homelands.
huge copper kettles stood boiling on the foredecks, they had been
told; African meat was salted, and fed to the crew; red wine was
African blood; cheese was made from African brans; the victims’
bones were burned and became the ashlike, lethal grey powder that,
when placed in iron tubes, transformed itself back into the flames
from which it had come and spewed pain an destruction against any
who tried, unprepared, to resist their demands… — African
entrepreneurs grew prosperous on the slave trade; slaves were
exchanged for European goods by barter–a fickle method of trade
to which the cowrie shell brought a standard measure of value when
it was introduced from the Maldives n the 1510s. — African
chiefs and wealthy elites took people whom customary practice ha
enslaved within the indigenous economy, where the practice
bestowed at least a measure of benefit on all parties, and sold
them abroad for goods that brought little benefit ao anyone other
than the traders themselves–the inflow of foreign goods
seriously disrupted the development of indigenous economies. Like
asset-strippers on Wall Street, African slave-traders plundered
the accumulating human resources over which they had gained
control wit no thought for the wider implications and long-term
consequences of their actions. They sold their brothers, their
cousins, their neighbors, the only conceivable justification
being that slaves were a commonplace feature of African
society–chattels, valued less highly than the goods offered by
European traders. — The significance o the slave trade for Africa
lay less in the number of people lost than in the changed social
patterns an reproductive capabilities of those who remained behind.
The importation of firearms had a profound effect on these
developments/ — The slave trade commercialized African
economies; after abolition indigenous slavery kept the economies
turning–throughout the continent the incidence of slavery
increased. — french island of Saint-Domingue

Climate exercised a major influence on the slave trade, with both
good and bad conditions serving to maintain the trade. The effect
continued in the aftermath, when African economies relied upon a
work force of about 6 million slave in total, and annual
recruitment was ten times the number shipped form the continent
each year while the Atlantic trade was at its height. — When the
Dutch established a permanent settlement at the Cape in the 1650s
the introduction of European land-use strategies clashed with
those of the indigenous population. Conflict was inevitable. —
The British took control of the Cape form the Dutch in 1806, and
in 1820 shipped 4,000 settlers to the eastern frontier as a buffer
against advancing Xhosa populations. The Xhosa wanted land, the
settlers desperately needed labour–a conflict of interest that
was exacerbated by treachery. — Massive population movements
which convulsed southern Africa in the early 1800s have been
attributed to the formation and expansion of the Zulu state in
Natal. The predations of slave-traders shipping captives from
Delagoa Bay to Portuguese plantations in Brazil are a more likely
cause. — Edit | Delete | Back to Notepad

Created 01/27/2006 2:15 am

almost always seven vertebrae in the neck
Pangaea

The processes which created the configuration of the continents
and the prevailing terrestrial landscape are exceptionally well
demonstrated in Africa, where the particularities of ancient
geology have endowed the continent wit immense deposits of mineral
wealth — Some of the earliest-known forms of life have been found
in Africa, and its ancient rocks are the repository of evidence
from all stages in the evolution of life forms. Africa was the
‘keystone’ from which tectonic forces drove the other continents
on their global wanderings. Dinosaurs and the earliest known
mammals were present on the continent 200 million years ago. — A
landscape of tropical rainforest and meandering rivers that
existed 40 million years ago in what is today the Sahara region of
western Egypt was the cradle of the primates from whom the human
line evolved. Tropical rainforests preserve the greatest plant
diversity on Earth, but they never have been permanent
fixtures–their extent and location varies with climatic change.
— Climatic change undoubtedly has a major effect on the
distribution and population size of all living species, but
evidence from Africa indicates that competition for resources has
had more influence than climate on the origin and evolution of
species. — The upright bipedal gait of humans is a unique and
highly inefficient mode of locomotion, but the anatomy of modern
apes, with 60 per cent of their body weight carried on the
hind legs, indicates that the common ancestor of apes and humans
was pre-adapted to bipedalism. Environmental circumstances in
Africa provide an explanation of why and how the fully upright
stance and bipedal gait evolved in humans. — The ancestors of
modern humans were bipedal nomads and scavengers who discovered
that sharp stone flakes were more efficient than teeth at
detaching meat from a carcass. Tools were teeth in the hand.

— The demands of stone-tool manufacture were significant among
the aspects of early hominid life which stimulated the development
of cognitive abilities and the evolution of anatomically modern
humans–homo sapiens sapiens–in Africa. — Thermoregulation and
access to water were crucial determinants of human survival in the
African cradle-land–and important preconditions for the evolution
of the species’ highly developed brain and social behavior. —
Genetic, palaeontological and linguistic evidence indicates that
anatomically modern humans existed only in Africa until about
100,000 years ago, when some migrated from the continent and
progressively populated the entire globe. — …a greater
time-depth of mutation was preserved among people in Africa, while
everyone else shared a predominance of mutations which had
accumulated in the relatively recent past. Setting these measures
of difference against the calculations of the rate at which
mutations occur, the geneticists concluded that the entire
population of the modern world was descended from a relatively
small group of people that left Africa about 100,000 years ago.
Extrapolating still further they from the present into the past,
they claimed that the distinctive form of modern humans had
evolved between 140,000 and 290,000 years ago in Africa… —
African environments demonstrate the universal relationship that
exists between soils, rainfall and vegetation in a natural
environment, and the extent to which biological adaptations enable
animals to take advantage of what is available. —

Though the fossil record of human evolution in Africa is unique
and extensive, it is also tantalizingly incomplete. Crucial stages
are still a matter of speculation. — Edit | Delete | Back to
Notepad

Created 02/03/2006 4:25 am

Africa’s colonial boundaries were decided upon in Europe by
negotiators with little consideration for local conditions. The
boundaries cut through at least 177 ethnic “culture areas”
dividing pre-existing economic an social units and distorting the
development of entire regions. — The “thin white line” of
colonial authority in Africa was tested at several points but
never broken. The newly invented machine-gun was formidable
instrument of colonial power, but the devastating onslaughts of
drought, disease, and rinderpest (cattle plague) in the 1890s were
no less harmful. — Oppressive policies inspired rebellions
against German colonial rule in SW Africa and German East Africa
(present day Tanzania). Both were crushed, giving Africans a
sobering foretaste of the ruthless methods they would see employed
in the Boer War (1899-1902) and the FirstWorld War (1914-1918).
— acephalous group -headless

Between the First and the Second World Wars , colonial governments
accepted more responsibility for the welfare of the African
colonies than ever before. Establishing effective administrations
tacitly amounted to redefining the continent, however. The
constantly changing institutions of ono-literate societies were set
in the written word of law; origin myths were transformed into
tribal histories; socio-economic distinctions made one tribe
better than another. — the colonizers claimed that they were
merely confirming the significance of existing traditions,but
traditions in Africa and elsewhere are merely accepted modes of
behavior that currently function to the benefit of society as
a whole. they persist so long as their benefit is evident and fade
away when it is not. no tradition lasts for ever. change and
adaptability is the very essence of human existence– nowhere
more so than in Africa. The paradox is painfully evident: by
creating an image of Africa steeped in unchanging tradition, the
colonizers condemned the continent to live in a reconstructed
moment of its past, complete with natives in traditional dress,
wild animals and pristine landscapes. The paradox could not stand
unresolved for ever, but it hindered development for decades.

ethnic thinking: the perception of unity as the inevitable
outcome of common origin

Education stimulates people “to want what they do not have” In
Africa, those whose aptitude qualified them for education to
university level studied abroad, where contact with political
activists taught them to want independence for their countries.
Their numbers were small, but the gulf that education opened up
between the elite and the majority of Africans was very large
indeed. —

an urban population amounting to 20 per cent o the total is an
average for the entire continent (the precise UN figure is 18.4
per cent)

The second world war foreshadowed the end of colonialism in Africa,
though experts believed that decades of preparation would be
required before self-government was merited. In the event,
nationalist pressure and unrest (such as the Mau Mau rebellion in
Kenya), brought independence much sooner–long before the
proposed[posed standards of preparedness had been attained.

— The Belgian Congo was among the least prepared of th nations
that became independent in the 1960s. Chaos and rebellion erupted
within days of the independence ceremonies. But the Congo was
strategically important, and America’s meddling in the Congo’s
affairs typifies the manner in which African countries thus became
pawns in the Cold War. CIA agents planned to assassinate the
Congo’s first prime minister, the Soviet-leaning Patrice Lumumba,
and US support for Joseph Mobutu was designed to frustrate Soviet
ambitions in the region. — The dreams and Africa becoming a
continent of peaceful democratic states quickly evaporated. More
tan seventy coups occurred in the first thirty years of
independence. By the 1990s few states preserved even the vestiges
of democracy. One-party states, presidents-for-life and military
rule became the norm; resources were squandered as th elite
accumulated wealth and the majority of Africans suffered.
Nigeria an Rwanda exemplify the nightmare; South Africa preserves
a flickering hope of transforming dreams into reality. — People
live behind a mask, which the winds of history
occasionally blow aside,

October 20, 2005

More than one million Kenyans face starvation. In the Ukambani region, five MPs yesterday
warned that about 800,000 people were threatened with starvation.

The legislators said most parts of Ukambani had recorded poor harvest in the past two seasons
due to rain failure.

The alert comes after reports that three people had died of hunger in Mandera District, among
them an eight-year-old girl. The deaths occurred barely a month after eight people died of an
undiagnosed disease in Dandu division, the worst hit area in the arid district.

In Rift Valley Province, three districts have been hit by drought leaving more than 200,000
people threatened with starvation. They include Samburu, Turkana and West Pokot.

The districts did not receive adequate rainfall and residents are forced to depend on rations
of maize, beans and cooking fat supplied by the Government.

Kajiado, Koibatek and Nakuru districts have also been hit by drought. MPs Daudi Mwanzia,
Moffat Maitha, Itwiku Mbai, Mwangu Ivuti and Kiema Kilonzo said Machakos, Makueni, Kitui and
Mwingi had been affected by drought.

“We are now sounding an alert that our people are threatened by hunger,” said Maitha.

In West Pokot more than 60,000 people are threatened with starvation following prolonged
drought. More than 80,000 people required food in Samburu District as the consignment
delivered by the Government runs out.

Elsewhere, scores of people were yesterday injured when two Somali clans clashed over a
watering dam in Banissa division of Mandera District. The skirmishes pitted the Degodia
against Garre herdsmen.

Area acting OCPD Robin Keter said five of the victims were slashed and were admitted to
Banissa Dispensary. Others sustained minor injuries and were treated and discharged.

Elsewhere, the Government pledged to distribute relief food to Mandera District after an
assessment indicated that more than 156,000 people faced famine and severe water shortage.

Assistant minister in the Office of the President, Dr Wilfred Machage, said the Government
would distribute 2,000 bags of maize, 1,000 of beans, 5,000 cartons of cooking oil.

Another 1,000 cartons of powder milk will be distributed to area residents in the next two
weeks, he said.

NAIROBI – Drayton Maina looks sharp behind the wheel of his car in a grey suit, colourful tie and shiny leather shoes.

It would be hard to tell that the Kenyan driver — like millions of his fellow Africans — is dressed from head-to-toe in second-hand clothes brought in from the West.

“The only thing you can’t get in a Kenyan second-hand market is a wife!” he jokes, picking out a fleecy top to counter Nairobi’s morning chill for a mere 200 shillings ($2.64) at the vast Gikomba street market.

Maina is proud to tot up the modest cost of his smart work attire: wide-collared suit 500 shillings, white shirt 150, cartoon tie 100, black leather shoes 800.

Despite widespread poverty across the east African nation of 32 million people, that sort of price is affordable for many and underpins the roaring success in the last two decades of the second-hand clothes trade known in local Swahili as “mitumba.”

Popular as the clothes may be among the poor, Kenya’s mitumba explosion has annoyed many in the former British colony.

Textile manufacturers say it has helped decimate their industry, while cotton-growers are equally aggrieved.

And the mass use of second-hand Western clothes has given a sometimes drab look to Kenyan streets — at least in the capital Nairobi, where colourful traditional African dress is rare.

Shipped into Kenya in enormous quantities, vast piles of clothes are shifted at Gikomba, a teeming labyrinth of makeshift stalls, boxes, carts and barrows full of clothes and shoes in a densely-populated, pot-holed suburb of Nairobi.

“MITUMBA FEEDS MANY MOUTHS”

Many of the sellers sit on top of their wares, as buyers rummage through the garments. Some clothes are sold by item, others by weight. Bargain boxes sell women’s underwear and children’s clothes at 20 shillings an item.

Many come to Gikomba to pick up large quantities to take out to the countryside and sell on at smaller markets.

Middlemen buy the clothes in bags known as “bales” from a handful of major importers who draw on charity stores, out-of-date stocks or over-runs in the West or in Asia.

Most importers and middlemen are reluctant to talk about the exact origin of the clothes, whether they pay for them and whether the donors are aware that the clothes are sold on again.

Some people in the business believe traders get the clothes for free by saying they will be donated to poor people in developing nations. Others think they pay a nominal fee to charities, or to Western firms to take seconds off their hands.

Jas Bedi, chairman of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers’ textile and apparel group, says the mitumba industry is exploiting goodwill in richer countries.

“People in Europe and America have sent clothes in good faith to Africa for the under-privileged and the poor, not to be turned into business by unscrupulous traders.”

The source of the clothes may be as muddled as Gikomba’s market but all agree that the clothes are prized.

“Everyone prefers mitumba in Kenya,” said John Omare, 25, next to his pile of boys’ T-shirts in Gikomba. “This is one of the largest open-air markets in east Africa. The mitumba industry is feeding a lot of mouths.”

“NAIL IN THE COFFIN”

Bedi estimates the mitumba trade employs some 30,000 people. That dwarfs the 12,000 left in the formal textile industry, which used to employ around 100,000 in the 1970s and 1980s.

In that heyday, Bedi says, there were some 100 major factories, compared to 7 or 8 now. Cheap Asian imports also played their part in the decline but mitumba gets most blame.

“Allowing imports of mitumba obviously had a negative impact on the industry. Mitumba is sent free, then sold, so with zero procurement costs, how can we compete?” Bedi said.

Between 200 to 300 containers of mitumba, each holding about 10 tonnes, enter Kenya’s Mombasa port each month, Bedi said.

“If you think a shirt weighs about 4 grams, then you can see just how much is coming in. It’s dumping basically. The people (textile manufacturers) who are surviving are barely surviving. They are waiting for the final nail in the coffin.”

Textile firms that have struggled on have done so by virtually abandoning the mass market to diversify into niche areas like school or factory uniforms, or the fashionable local “kikoi”: a colourful cloth worn around the waist or shoulders.

Lobbyists for the textile industry want the government to level the playing-field by raising taxes on mitumba imports — or just by ensuring taxes are paid at all at the ports. But in fact in the last budget in June, Finance Minister David Mwiraria halved tax on a kilo of mitumba.

“We have tried to fight this battle for the last 20 years, we’ve even taken it up at (World Trade Organisation) levels, but we have not won,” Bedi said.

“The politicians say we’re a poor country, we can’t do anything. OK, fine, so why not just give it away then?

Meanwhile, mitumba is every season’s must-have across Kenya, with some estimating that between half and two-thirds of the population wear second-hand items from the markets.

“This is an important service we provide for our nation,” said mitumba middleman Justus Malila in Gikomba, hustling a delivery through a muddy backstreet as the cheers and chants of a religious meeting next door rang out.

Nairobi – Since gaining independence in 1963, Kenya has held four elections. But,
perhaps the most decisive ballot of all has been cast by citizens who voted with
their feet — leaving Kenya for countries that seemed more promising.

Concerns about corruption, economic decline and insecurity have prompted an exodus
of teachers, doctors, nurses and other professionals.

“The economy has been badly mismanaged, reducing the purchasing power of highly
trained and skilled people,” Michael Chege, an economic advisor to the Ministry of
Planning and National Development, told IPS. “You cannot expect them to remain
earning low salaries when their skills are in demand outside, and at a high salary
scale.”

Chege himself is an exception to this trend. He returned to Kenya in 2003, five
years after having fled political repression under former president Daniel arap Moi.

According to authorities, most skilled migrants head for Southern Africa, the United
Kingdom (UK), Australia and the United States.

The results of a survey by the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research
(IPPR) issued earlier this month (Sep. 7), showed that Kenyans made up the
eighth-largest group of immigrants in Britain by 2001. After South Africa, Kenya
sent more nationals to Britain than any other African country.

Kenyan officials say they do not have figures for the number of citizens working
abroad; but, organisations which recruit professionals say these number in the
thousands.

As those wishing to take up residence abroad frequently have to be screened for HIV,
centres which test for AIDS also have an interesting tale to tell. Moses Otsyula,
who owns the Nairobi-based Pathogen Diagnostic Laboratories, says he has screened as
many as 2,500 professionals in one month alone – most of them nurses.

Salaries for nurses in Kenya range from about 200 to almost 530 dollars a month. In
the United States, these medics can earn up to 6,000 dollars per month – perhaps
even more, says Nancy Akinyi, an office coordinator for Hamsdel Professional
Services. This agency recruits nurses from across the country to work in the United
States.

In addition to being paid low salaries, nurses face a dispiriting lack of equipment.

“There is a shortage of resources at government hospitals, especially the ones in
remote areas,” says Mary Muli, a nurse in Nairobi. “This is also part of the reason
why nurses leave for other destinations.”

Similarly, lecturers who earn between about 200 and 400 dollars a month can earn 10
times that in South Africa, notes Chege: “The purchasing power of a lecturer in
Kenya is estimated to have declined by 40 percent between 1980 and 2000.”

Others do not fare as well once they leave. The IPPR’s report notes that just under
a quarter of settled Kenyan migrants in the UK are unemployed. For new migrants,
this figure is about 40 percent.

Atieno Ndede-Amadi, who heads the Nairobi-based Africa’s Brain Gain, also warns that
Kenyans living overseas may find themselves exploited.

“Once they go, they are on their own — they have no bargaining power,” she told
IPS. “The pay they are being given might not be the actual market rate. It may be
lower, and since these people are desperate they just accept it.”

Africa’s Brain Gain conducts research on migration issues. It also lobbies
governments to find ways of assisting people who seek their fortune abroad.

As with migrants from other countries, Kenyans working in foreign countries send
remittances home — although government does not know how much these amount to. The
country’s central bank is now trying to assess this.

However, remittances mean little to patients who find there are too few nurses to
care for them in hospitals – or to parents obliged to put their children in schools
which don’t have enough teachers to give pupils personal attention.

This matter was brought into sharp relief recently during a tribal clash in northern
Kenya, the worst to occur in the country since independence.

Almost 100 people were killed in the massacre, which took place in July when members
of the Gabra ethnic group were attacked by the Borana clan.

Scores of severely wounded people were rushed to a district hospital after the
incident. However, only one doctor was on hand to attend to them.