Category — Observations

It has been interesting to read the controversy regarding Jane Fonda’s recent use of the C-Word on telly in America while discussing the V Monologues with the author, Eve Ensler.

My late grandfather regularly insulted us – his granddaughters – using the Gikuyu translation of the word. The Gikuyu version sounds 10008 million times worse than the English version. We were not special. My grandfather was an equal-opportunity abuser; any real or perceived slight (spilling his beer unintentionally which was what I did once constituted a colossal insult where my grandfather was concerned) was enough to get the old man swearing at one and all. I have subsequently learned that that side of the family are universally known for their bulls-eye insults.

I have one friend who swears all day long using the F-word and yet cannot bring herself to use the C-word – she calls it C U Next Tuesday. Interestingly, my friend is the most morally upright person I know.

I don’t swear and don’t know how to swear. I sometimes wish I did.

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The UK government is planning to re-introduce the ‘sus’ law which allows police to stop and search people at random. The move, apparently, is an attempt to bring down the knife and gun crime numbers on London’s streets.

Along the years, the overwhelming majority of people stopped have been from black and ethnic minorities while the numbers of youth from these communities killed by guns and knives have also risen.

There is no empirical evidence that proves that ‘sus’ laws deter crime and in fact, they exacerbate the tension already existing between the police and ethnic communities, in my opinion. Most people I know who have been stopped have been filled with rage at the humiliation of being stopped and searched when they have done nothing wrong. I am also very worried about my teenaged nephews – what would happen if they are stopped.

Since the news was announced, I have been thinking about and have re-read Sonny’s Letta (Anti-Sus Poem) by the world’s premier reggae poet and the legend that is Linton Kwesi Johnson. Of course, this poem is best listened to, in the poet’s own magnificent and emotive voice, rather than read

Sonny’s Letta (Anti Sus Poem)
Brixtan Prison
Jebb Avenue
Landan south-west two
Inglan

Dear Mama,
Good Day.
I hope dat wen
teze few lines reach yu,
They may find yu in di bes af helt.

Mama,
I really don’t know how fi tell yu dis,
cause I did mek a salim pramis
fi tek care a likkle Jim
an try mi bes fi look out fi him.

Mama,
I really did try mi bes,
but nondiless
mi sarry fi tell yu seh
poor likkle Jim get arres.

It woz di miggle a di rush howah
wen evrybady jus a hosel an a bosel
fi goh home fidem evening showah;
mi an Jim stan-up
waitin pan a bus,
nat causin no fus,
wen all af a sudden
a police van pull-up.

Out jump tree policeman,
di hole a dem carryin batan.
Dem waak straight up to mi an Jim.

One a dem hol awn to Jim
seh him tekin him in;
Jim tell him fi let goh a him
far him noh dhu notn
an him naw teef,
nat even a butn.
Jim start to wriggle
di police start to giggle.

Mama,
mek I tell yu whe dem dhu to Jim
Mama,
mek I tell yu whe dem dhu to him:

dem tump him in him belly
an it turn to jelly
dem lick him pan him back
an him rib get pap
dem lick him pan him hed
but it tuff like led
dem kick him in him seed
an it started to bleed

Mama,
I jus coudn stan-up deh
an noh dhu notn:
soh mi jook one in him eye
an him started to cry
mi tump one in him mout
an him started to shout
mi kick one pan him shin
an him started to spin
mi tump him pan him chin
an him drap pan a bin

an crash
an ded.

Mama,
more policeman com dung
an beat mi to di grung;
dem charge Jim fi sus,
dem charge mi fi murdah.

Mama,
don’t fret,
don’t get depress
an doun-hearted.
be af good courage
till I hear fram you.

I remain
your son,
Sonny.

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I am not racist; I can assert to the highest degree
some of my best friends are black so how can I be?

I am not racist, non-white people fill my work place
yellow, red and of course, the black race

I am not racist; you must see this isn’t an attack
after all, my boyfriend is black

I am not racist but it really is just a question of reality
black people simply have a different mentality

I am not racist, I had just gotten on stage
was heckled, took it badly and went into a rage

I am not racist but why do blacks sometimes act so odd
why are they always so slipshod?

I am not racist, racism is a common malaise
and we are all racist in many ways

I am not racist, together with their sporting agility
I admire black people’s natural musical ability

I am not racist! I am not being nasty or even unkind
I am just outspoken and like to speak my mind

I am not a racialist; another word I’ve noticed
is that different from being a racist?

I am not racist but…

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To say ‘I love you’ is easier than to say ‘I am sorry’.

Saying ‘I am sorry if I offended/hurt/annoyed (etc) you’ is not an apology. The insertion of ‘if’ after ‘sorry’ negates the apology.

Food cooked without love is inedible.

I am not a very good cook and I have gradually learned to cook passably well over the last five years. I get bored by the process; slice this, chop that, boil this, fry that. Yawn. I am very good at making three things though, i.e. banana bread, mayonnaise and fudge.

Lies are like dominos. One lie can bring about the death of a relationship and destroy many people’s lives.

[Read more →]

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There was a period in October when my blog name was mud among a coterie of bloggers. Although the visitor statistics of my blog did not show a marked increase (damn!) as a result, I received a couple of what I can only call bizarre e-mails. On a poem I had written on the object/asteroid previously known as planet Pluto, a bright spark whose path I back-tracked to the blog where the mudslinging was taking place also left this gem of a comment:

Write more on why its not a planet.
just cuz it downsized??

You what, you degenerate jughead?

Then there was the post I had written – Pale is beautiful? – questioning the use of skin lightening creams and the apparent preference of light over dark skin by some black people which had found itself on a forum. I looked up the forum – its description was ‘a racist online news paper catering to white people’ and basically, they were using my post as perverse justification as to why black people don’t like themselves and would in reality prefer to be white.

Aarrgghhhhhhhh!!!

On the poem below – The Night of 1000 ‘1’s – a person who does not leave a name, unless you can consider ‘USA, Japan, Western Europe ALL disfavoured’ a name, left a comment 9,379 words and 18 pages long. To save you the hassle of reading the comment, here is a brief summary:

They’ve employed so many tactics to hurt black people.
Never doubt your gross disfavor.
“Black power” envoked the anger of the gods.
The gods are ancient and powerful and angry and they love to hurt disfavored people who think they are great.
Disfavored blacks have been misled into thinking they are great instead of recognizing their gross disfavor.
The don’t want black people finding the path.

And there you have it.

This commenter is truly deserving of the ‘Terminal Lack of Irony’ award.

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Thank you to all the lovely people who sent e-mails, cards and telephoned us after our beloved sister, Wanjiru, passed away. These messages of condolence and support did and continue to comfort us at a most stressful time. Thank you Daudi
and jp for brilliant tributes.

Our family is deeply grateful. I am in the process of responding to the e-mails if you have not received a reply – rest assured.

Thanks also to the people who have left messages on the Wanjiru’s tribute site. We soon shall be adding more material to the site i.e. photographs and obituaries, etc. The most recent obituary was in the Guardian and it can be found here.

One way of dealing with grief and loss, I am told, is to get back to a routine. Quite a few women have joined KBW since October; kindly send me an e-mail if you wish to be included on the African Women’s Blogs Aggregator. Thanks Sokari for holding the fort and for your condolences.

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We have Madonna building a clinic in Malawi while never having been to Africa and the wretched Jolie/Pitt enterprise adopting African children like they were fashion accessories not counting other numerous Hollywood folk going to Africa for any number of causes.

And here’s Gwyneth Paltrow posing as an African.

There is something particularly infuriating and also disturbing about this image where Gwyneth Paltrow is featured as part of a campaign by an AIDS charity, Keep a Child Alive.

The Keep a Child Alive organisation could be raising millions of much needed dollars for children affected by AIDS in Africa for all I know; however, aspects of their campaign are highly dubious and abjectly wrong on two levels at the very least.

The reason why Ms. Paltrow has the lines on her cheek and the words – I AM AFRICAN on the image – according to the Keep a Child Alive website, is because ‘each and every one of us contains DNA that can be traced back to our African ancestors’. This sounds great and obviously meant to be a trigger to get people donating funds for AIDS orphans as we are all one big happy family. Read their website though, and you can detect an uncomfortable and clear separation between ‘them’ and ‘us’ in their literature.

Ms. Paltrow may or may not have African DNA, however dressing and making up in what passes as ‘African’ in Hollywood i.e. the jewellery and the lines on her cheeks do not make her an African. If she is African, I am Plutonian.

I am mightily tired of Hollywood actors and actresses who evidently do not have enough to do with their lives adopting one African cause or the other because they want to either

a) to give a lift to flagging careers
b) to feel good about themselves
c) to look like caring people,
d) to fill a spiritual need.
e) what Professor William Easterly, author of “The White Man’s Burden: How the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good,” says about “Africa as filling a sort of existential vacuum for Americans struggling in a post-Sept. 11 world”. In other words, people like Americans like Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna, etc just want to be loved.

There is something rather obscene about these rich, overpaid and over-indulged people championing poor people as one cannot help but feel that what they are doing is for publicity’s sake and the current fashionable thing to do, reasons f) and g).

The founder of the Keep a Child Alive organisation may say that ‘these people actually care about poor people’ nonetheless, I demand to see a track record of Gwyneth Paltrow’s previous efforts. What did she do for poor and vulnerable people 5, 10 years ago? What has she done for the poor in America, charity beginning at home and all that?

Africa, Malawi, AIDS

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I come from a family whose skin tones vary from very dark to very light and a variety of shades in-between. We are all proud and happy with our skin colour. My sister reminds me, however, that people (ignorant, foolish people) used to fawn over my lighter skinned little niece and ignore the darker one whilst she was taking a walk with the two toddlers on the streets of Eldoret. Truly shocking, quite awful as they are both quite lovely and potentially, a way of guaranteeing that children grow up with warped ideas regarding their looks.

This article from Reuters AlertNet which highlights why more value is placed on lighter and paler skin as compared to a darker one is quite disheartening.

What the women interviewed in the article say to justify using skin lightening creams, reminds me of a seamstress I met while in the Gambia for an extended vacation some years back. Although it was evident that she had used skin lightening creams, she was still gorgeous and stunning. I remember going to her house to visit whereupon I picked up her photo album that was lying on the table and started perusing while waiting for her to finish with another customer. One photograph had a woman who could have been her twin sister; the only difference being that the woman in the photo was dark skinned and in my opinion, much more beautiful.

When I asked about the uncanny resemblance, my seamstress informed me she was the person in the photo prior to lightening her skin. Before I could ask her anything else, she told me she was tired of being reprimanded by ‘light-skinned people like you’. She said that there was no way I could understand what she had gone through and what she had had to put with as the Creator had given me a lighter skin. Attempts on my part to say that ‘black is beautiful’ or to voice the detrimental effects of skin lightening creams were met with cold rebuff (and mild contempt, I dare say).

At the visit’s end, my seamstress said something that echoes what the Sudanese women are saying in the article: “Here, all men want to sit with or marry a woman with light skin. If any man wants to marry, he says the first choice is for a woman with light skin …”. I made no response but in hindsight, I should have said something similar to what the doctor in Khartoum who has been treating women suffering the harmful effects of skin lightening creams said: “…rather than ask why women use the creams, men should be asked why they prefer pale skin.”

Putting aside marriage and the skin tone Sudanese men prefer, the dark versus light skin tone argument in Sudan is of course, quite specific as the political crisis and civil war between Northerners (majority with pale skins) and the darker Southerners in Sudan makes the situation far worse. As the article states: ‘During civil strife, skin tone often meant the difference between life and death’. Although this situation, as dire as it is, cannot be comfortably used as justification, it is possible to see how one’s view regarding their skin tone can become distorted.

What then is the problem with the rest of us? Why do we feel the need to make ourselves pale (or white as this can only be the true underlying need)? Not just with our skins but also with our hair? Reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, I always laugh wryly at the section where Malcolm wanting to make his hair straight, applies lye, which begins to burn his scalp forcing him to dunk his head in the toilet bowl when he realises there is no water coming from the taps to wash off the lye (this was just as the Police burst in to arrest him).

I smile wryly dear reader, because I used to be one of those misguided people who believed the only ‘good hair’ was artificially straight hair and although the products currently in the market are arguably more sophisticated than the lye used in Malcolm X’s time, it is still possible to fry your hair and scalp while trying to create ‘more manageable hair’. Of course, Malcolm X evolved and saw the light and thankfully, so did I.

The BBC is currently running an interesting discussion (some contributions that have been made are fairly sexist, others plain weird while others are thoughtful) on beauty – Does beauty empower or exploit?. For this feature, the BBC have used the photograph of Agbani Darego, Miss World 2001. Would it be right to say that Agbani Darebo, as beautiful as she is, won the title due to her skin tone and straight hair? Needless to say, I am no fan of beauty pageants and only use this competition as an example. What about the lovely Alek Wek above? Isn’t she just as stunningly beautiful too?

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