Africa Blogging roundup 26 February 2009

EthioBlog reports on the release of Binyam Mohammed who was finally released from Guantanamo Bay and allowed to return to the UK.
"I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares. Before this ordeal, "torture" was an abstract word to me. I could never have imagined that I would be its victim.
"It is still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways — all orchestrated by the United States government.
"While I want to recover, and put it all as far in my past as I can, I also know I have an obligation to the people who still remain in those torture chambers.

Odegle Nyang discusses how to survive in the slums of Nairobi or any slum for that matter as they all have commonalities irrespective of their location.
Another reminder and commonality for all shanties is the presence of hope and despair living side by side like siemese twins. you see the hope in the eager faces of young chilren playing without any inhibition or monitoring. if you buy OMO's marketing rider then only kids in the slum truly learn. on the other side, you see the disillusioned faces of young adults resigning to fate and hopelessness including those already in the tight grip of changaa and other cheap drugs

Black Looks publishes photographs from a social photography project which has taken photos of the eyes and faces of women living in Kibera slum and pasted them onto the rooftops of the shanty homes.
The material used is water resistant so that the photo itself will protect the fragile houses in the heavy rain season. The train that passes on this line through Kibera at least twice a day has also been covered with eyes from the women that live below it. With the eyes on the train, the bottom half of the their faces have be pasted on corrugated sheets on the slope that leads down from the tracks to the rooftops. The idea being that for the split second the train passes, their eyes will match their smiles and their faces will be complete.

Digital Immigrant has an interesting post on “what women do / don’t do” to please themselves and confuse others which really speaks to the whole issue of gender roles we adopt irrespective of our sexual orientation. Here’s the list:
I do not over-apologise. I’ll apologise if I bumped into you but not the other way around. And it’s frustrating that so many women feel obliged to apologise to me when they really don’t have to.
I do not qualify my statements. Have you noticed how women use in my opinion and I think? I just don’t do that. I can’t, actually.
I drink my whisky neat with just a dollop of water. My whisky aficionado friend wants me to add a cube of ice but I refuse; I hate watery drinks.
I’m a customer service crusader and I have been known to send an espresso back three times. That intimidates restaurant managers and staff members. I guess they think I’m a ballbusting woman. It also intimidates my dates…
I smoke cigars. And I’m starting to dislike men who tell me they find it sexy: that statement is sexist. Women do not smoke cigars for your pleasure, bru; women smoke cigars because it relaxes them.
I don’t do salads. That might be why I ignore family get-togethers. I just feel uncomfortable around a bunch of women who want me to pass the mayonnaise. And I think this is so ingrained into our various cultures that we do not know how to reject it. It gets even more problematic once you’re part of a couple. You’re expected to go talk women in the kitchen.

Kayode Ogundamisi has been using his Facebook account as a blog and over the past 6 months he has collected nearly 5,000 “friends” and followers of his blog. In this “note” he writes about “Olaudah Equiano the Nigerian "SlaveBoy" Who help end Slavetrade in UK!”
A Nigerian born campaigner involved in the 18th Century abolitionist movement which brought an end to the slave trade was yesterday honoured in the UK. Olaudah Equiano, also known by his slave name Gustavus Vassa, was honoured with a memorial in St Margaret's Church at Westminster Abbey, London. Despite his enslavement as a young man, he purchased his freedom and worked as a seaman, merchant and explorer. He was baptised at St Margaret's Church on 9 February 1759. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, attended the dedication of the memorial in St Margaret's Church. In his autobiography, Equiano wrote that he was born in Qua Iboe in what is now Akwa Ibom State, before being kidnapped with his sister as a young boy, sold by local slave traders and shipped across the Atlantic to Barbados and then Virginia in the US. Today, there are several oil platforms at Qua-Iboe

* Sokari Ekine blogs at www.blacklooks.org

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/