The Bleeding of the Stone

When I first started reading this book, I was worried it would be a boring read. However, after I stuck it out for a while, it started to get pretty good. Asouf begins to tell his story and the visitors arrive.

I was curious about the place where all of this happened. The map on the left is of Libya and I'm guessing of the area near where this book takes place.

After reading about the waddan and the goats, I began to wonder what they looked like. Here is what I found: The picture on the left is of female moufflon and the one on the right is a male.












As I was looking for pictures of the moufflon, Darius suggested that I look for pictures of moufflon meat, which is what Asouf's dad was killed trying to get. I'm not sure that this looks very appetizing, but I guess if you were living in the desert and were hungry, it would taste good.

I also began to wonder about what the desert looks like in Libya where Asouf lives. I looked up some picture of Libya.

Waiting for an Angel

After reading Waiting for an Angel, I decided to find out more about college in Nigeria.

However, as I began my search, I found an article that shows pictures from an oil pipeline explosion in Nigeria. It was quite disturbing and I think gives a good image of what life is like in Lagos where the main character, Lomba, went to school. I couldn't help thinking that this is the kind of town he lived in. It amazed me, too, that this is similar to the picture I had in my head when he was describing Lagos.

I did also find pictures of colleges in Lagos. I think I tried to mention in class that the picture of the college I had in my head as I was reading was different from Western; very simple and sparce. The pictures here again kinda represent what I was picturing in my head. The first picture is of Yaba College of Technology in Lagos.

The next college I found was Freedom Bible College and Seminary. It sounds like they do prison ministry there. One thing that shocked me about this college was the extreme difference in the cost of college. Without textbooks, the cost for an entire Bachelors Degree is only $300!

The final college photo from Lagos that I found was Bowen College. It sounds like this is a newer college that is only in its first phase and plans on expanding.

Political Prisoners & Waiting for an Angel

So as I was reading Waiting for an Angel, I was amazed that Lomba had been in jail for 2 years as a political prisoner without a fair trial. It made me wonder how many other people have been in prison for political reasons and have been denied a trial.

Wikipedia tells us that political prisoners are those who are held in prison or otherwise detained for his or her involvement in political activity.

Wikipedia also says that there is an organization that works for political prisoners as well as philosophical or religious prisoners called Amnesty International.

I found another website that has political prisoners and POWs in the US. It is interesting to look at the names of the prisoners. It also lists those who have died while in custody and those who have been released.

As I kept searching for more information, specifically about political prisoners in Nigeria, I found an article that said that Nigeria freed 47 political prisoners. The date on the article was 1999. The interesting thing is that I found an article from a year before, 1998, which said that Nigeria was supposed to release all of its political prisoners

The Effect of Oil in Africa

After surfing the internet for different topics for my last few posts, I began to find a lot of really interesting articles from online newspapers from all over the world on the general topic of the effect of oil in Africa. The first one that popped up in Google Web was a series of articles from the Boston Globe.

The first thing that in the series is an audio slideshow about the relationship between America and Africa over oil. I wasn't able to upload it to the blog, but it is interesting.

The second item in the series is an article about oil spills in Nigeria. The article is really interesting and tells the story of the people effected by the spills. It also has a some interesting charts that show where Nigeria stands in the production of oil. According to the chart, Canada is the top producer and Nigeria is 5th, under Mexico, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

The third part of the series is an article about how profitable oil is in the Congo and begins with this picture about the fisherman in the Congo. It is interesting to see how this article connects to what we talked about in class today. The Congolese government actually made money from this deal even though the oil was being sent to the United States. It would be interesting to find out more about the oil policies in different countries and how they differ. Maybe the Congo has a better policy than Nigeria....

The final article listed in the series is about Angola. Like much of what we have talked about in class, the article talks about how the people in Angola are not benefitting from the oil wealth. Instead it says that there is a legacy of war and corruption that should not be there. This would be another interesting read.

Voter Fraud in Africa

I decided to look up voter fraud in Africa because of the upcoming elections here in the U.S.. I found an interesting article from the New York Times about how opposition in Ethiopia stopped inquiries into voter fraud there. After reading the article it sounds like there was a lot of violence both on the part of the political parties involved and the police that were trying to investigate the actions of the political parties.

I found another article about voter fraud in Zambia from the Fairfax Digital and the Sydney Morning Herald. This article mentions the opinions of voters in Zambia and tells about their suspicions that the police are involved in rigging the elections. The article also talks about the fears that people in political parties have about what will happen when the polls close, fearing that there will be violence. It alsos quotes one of the men running for office and he says that he will not accept a loss if he suspects vote fraud.

A final article that I found is about the elections in Zimbabwe from CNN. It has pitures of the current president (on the left) who has led the country for nearly three decades and those running against him: his former finance minister, Simba Makoni (second image on left); and Morgan Tsvangirai (bottom right)of the Movement for Democratic Change. After explaining Mugabe's position in Zimbabwe from the time that it was called Rhodesia, the article then continues to talk about how Mugabe plans to rig the election so that he can stay in power until he dies.

*If you want to see Mugabe on the campaign trail via CNN, check out the video.

Polygamy and Ancestor Stones

Because Ancestor Stones tells the stories of several children who had the same father with many wives, I was interested in finding out more about polygamy in Africa. I ended up finding a really good article through Google Scholar about Polygamy and its relationship to HIV and AIDS in Africa. I was surprised to find that the article at the beginning says that "regions with high rates of polygamy have significantly lower rates" of HIV and AIDS. It seems that it would be higher because the man is having relations with more women, however, if the families are loyal because of their religious reasons, like we saw in Xala, then it does make sense. The article says that the areas with the the greatest number of cases of HIV and AIDS are in the urban areas and then spread to rural areas. Another interesting thing that the article mentions is the different ways that HIV and AIDS are spread in patterns. One pattern talks about the spread being from homosexual or bisexual men, while another way is through heterosexual relations.

The article also has some really interesting graphs and graphics that I couldn't post up here because they are part of a PDF file, but they are definitely worth checking out. There are maps that show the spread of AIDS and HIV in certain areas and among certain tribes, and also a chart that shows the number of women affected and the number of men affected, with the number of women being much greater than the number of men.

Because I couldn't upload anything from the PDF file, I decided to find another source that shows the impact of AIDS in Africa. I thought this one was good.

I would definitely suggest checking out this article to find out more about the topic. I know that I learned a lot in the little bit that I was able to read and feel that I could learn a lot more if I was able to read it all.

African Women as portrayed in "Ancestor Stones"

As I started thinking about the topic of this blog being about African women and how they are portrayed in Ancestor Stones, there was a certain part of the book that caught my attention again, like the last post, and made me think more about African women and what they deal with.

Here is what stood out to me this time: Mariama is talking about her mother's illness and the effect it had on her family. She makes this comment:

"When a person dies our people cry and sing. The drums sound. The house is home to many visitors. When my mother went away there was silence. My father's house was still. The silence slid down the mud walls. Great drops stretching slowly down the eaves, smothering the thoughts that hung in the air. I clotted every crevice. It rose in the back of my throat when I tried to ask about my mother, and threatened to make me retch. It filled the house until we could no longer open our mouths for fear of drowning in it."

This quotation really made me consider for the first time how African women felt. I felt that Mariama felt like she wasn't worthy to talk about her mother, not only because she was a child, but also because she was a female. The "father's house" really made me think this. I also think that she wasn't allowed to talk about this because her mother's illness was rare and considered as embarrasing.

The descriptive language in this paragraph also caught my eye. The description is rare and unique and helped me to understand the situation. I could almost see the scene and feel the frustration of wanting to talk about a hard situation and not being able to.

It is interesting, too, to think about the difference between the relationships of the daughters to their fathers and their mothers. Here, Mariama is definitely frustrated with her father and I think that she has the right to be. It is interesting to look at her relationship to her mother as well because she held great respect for her even in this time of her illness and especially when others lost respect for her mother.