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.

Dissecting a line from Ancestor Stones

So far I really like Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna. I like the different perspectives that each chapter are written from and I'm excited to get to know how the characters fit together and what their story will be.

One quote that has kept me thinking is this one from page 21. Asana is describing the new job that her father has and their new village. At this point she is talking about the people who are beginning to arrive in the new village. She mentions the blacksmith, the carpenter, te herbalist, the coffee harvestors and growers. Then she says this and I am still wondering what the significance is:

"A big man casts a long shadow and many people build their lives in the shade."

At first I thought she was talking about the blacksmith, but then I realized that she could be talking about any of the others who joined the village. Then as I'm writing this I wonder if maybe it's her father. He is supposed to be the leader of the village and maybe she is talking about his shadow or governance over these people. This seems to make sense to me. In order for his business to grow and flourish, he needs all of the other villagers, especially the workers to harvest and plant.

I never thought I would think so much about one line in a novel, but it's good to identify these challenging lines because they can hold so much information. It just takes a little time and a little thought, and for me, the chance to write a little, because it is then that I can begin to really understand something.

Xala

Literally meaning the curse, the reader who knows this term would be much more enlightened going into reading this short novel than the reader who doesn't know.

As I began reading Xala, I was shocked at the content. From announcements in class, I knew that this novel was about polygamy, but I never would have guessed that it would have been about the impotence of a man with several wives.
When I began looking for more information on Xala for this class, the first thing that came up on a Google search is the Wikipedia page that tells about the movie of Xala. Talking to another student in the class, we decided that it would be interesting to watch because now we know the content, which we both decided is quite uncommon and would probably make an interesting film.

I decided to look at the author of Xala, Ousmane Sembène. Wikipedia says that he grew up in Senegal, learned three languages (French, Arabic, and Wolof) and served in the French army, among other things.

It was interesting for me to learn about Sembène so that I could understand more about him as an author. When I know more about an author, it helps gives validity to his work and helps me to better understand when there may be significant information in a work. For instance, in Xala, it is important for me to know about his experience with the languages of Senegal and his experience in the army for me to understand why some scenes are more important than they seem at face value. One particular scene was the one where Rama is pulled over by a police officer and she speaks to the officer in Wolof while Pathe speaks to him in French.