Urban living; The tenant, The landlord and the rent

BY GEORGE kagame

It is said by people who know more about knowledge than me that to travel is to see and to have seen is to have learnt. In my first language it is even more eloquent, it goes; “One that has not eaten elsewhere other than their home thinks his/her mum is the best cook in the world.” As a budding young man I read several books about Italy, I don’t know why but I have always been fascinated by Italy and I have no personal attachment to that country, other than enthusiasm for  AC Milan football club and  Italy in the World Cup. But early in my adolescent life all the books about Italy that I managed to read seemed to tell a story similar to my own African experiences. These stories would be about employment, city living, family and community relations and so on. I always thought that if ever there was a comparison between Europe and Africa, (or anything like surrogate brothers), Italians were the closest to Africans as chimps are to human beings. Yet I am aware of the geography of the world I live in and I know as well that if an Italian reads this article he/she will think of  me as a crazy loser in life. The way Italians marry, conduct business with each other, compete and relate as genders is not very different from our African ways. In old Italy, a family chose the design of their communities by controlling friendships and commerce and even marriage was a calculated step, the way we do it in my culture. Recently I met an Italian landlord. She owns an old town house in my neighborhood and I was interested in renting part of it. She stated her price and we agreed. We had a deal. I paid my rent for two months and like in the old Italian books, when I gave her the money and looked into her eyes, I did not think for a moment that a lady with children as old as I am would later be in a position to play dirty tricks with money. I held her in so much high regard that I did not feel it was necessary to immediately get a receipt for my payment. But alas!!! After moving into the house I found that many of the things she promised were not available, all the amenities mentioned in our verbal and electronic exchange were not there. I decided to inform her that I was leaving her house and considering alternatives elsewhere. As a result, I asked her to return my money. She refused. Switched off her phone and left me with no alternative but to go to her house and demand my money back. At her house, the lady left a small open window at a vantage point from which she could see who was coming into her yard and when she did not like what she saw she would simply just ‘chill’ and no amount of knocking, phone calling or even noise would bring her out. As an African man that has grown up in the urban section of renters I have inbred skills of dealing with landlords in urban centers. So the next day I devised a new mechanism to get my money. I pitched camp in a nearby library and after thirty minute intervals would go to check on my hustling indebtor. It took a whole of 6 weeks to speak with her again and even then I had to connive with the maid to waylay the landlord. Like me, the maid had her own issues with her boss. She had not been paid for services in three months and whenever the topic came up between the two her boss would immediately point out the failings of the maid. This state of affairs ensured that whoever had a bone to pick with the Italian lady would find a willing ally in the home of the Italian. The connection between the Italian and the African is that both have a marginally high propensity to be unfair once they are positioned in places of advantage. There are many maids in my neighborhoods that would identify with the young maid who works for an untrustworthy landlord and the actions of this landlord are very much in sync with what many people renting/living in African urban centres only know about so well. Next week I’ll write you more about the maid and her endeavors to get her three month payment. Till then.

When I turned 26: first birthday Calgary

Today I woke up early in morning took a shower, dodged all the ceremony of a regular sunday and went downtown.
Mission?

I wanted to watch soccer. It was the huge European derby weekend. Everton was hosting Liverpool, Barcelona playing Madrid in a historical El Classico. Arsenal was hosting Chelsea. In Italy, Fiorentina was playing Inter Milan and these days that is a big game too.

But first I have to introduce you to the importance of a day like this one to a person like me. Where I grew up from-there's no one particular place but I like to refer to Kansanga because it is one of the coolest places on earth I have lived. Soccer provided for the most normal entertainment, I lived close to a place called Half London which hosted local concerts regulary. Most of Uganda's musicains made their bones in the industry when I was watching.

Later, I worked for Sabrina's pub on Bombo road in 2001, I was in high school vacation.
Sabrina's pub not only served the best traditional lunch buffet in Kampala, it was also a joint where most of Uganda's biggest music stars started their careers from. The pub/restaurant advertised itself as 'more than just a pub' and its famed Friday night karaoke was a huge hit in the country's low income earning and mildly educated residents of the city from the 1990s to mod 200s.

Current music giants like Bebe Cool, Jose Chameleon and Juliana Kanyomozi started singing in Sabrina's. With Chameleon I was even closer because I happened to have gone to the same seconday school as him in Katikamu. I grew up surrounded by music. The first and biggest show I loved really was Maddox Ssemetimba, the Ugandan-Swedish reggea maestro.


Therefre, from a start having worked in a music pub and lived near Kampala's party district of Kabalagala and Kansanga I got bored with the whole shebang of night clubs early in my life.

 Yet as I joined university in 2002 I got a parrt time gig as a theme night promoter at Club Silk. All I did really was go to Silk Royale, meet Andrew Rwakojo or Rwakakoko something like that, he would give me compliment tickets which I would then take to anyone I chose in Kampala and offer them a night of dance and booze on the house.

  In my first year, I used to sell these tickets to my classmates and later friends and later I got bored and giulty that I was leading fellow students to lifestyles where they would get into dangers, there were lots of free/cheap beers that was esecially common on Tuesday Campus nights.

In all this it is only soccer that gave me genuine entertainment, I was not alone, there were other people in my neighbourhood that were addicted to soccer as much I was. Most were young professionals that I liked to call yuppies, there were middle income earning people, the illetrate lot, the Kikubo business people etc.

Soccer for me was not just watching matches on TV, occassionally I actually played in some village teams just for dropping a sweat, but the kind I watched on live TV was mainly for ESCAPE purposes from my daily tribulations of life.

In fact I was not your avarage mad fan, I never shouted in arguments about soccer, I never had one particular team with which to identify-and this is a sin in soccer fellowships like in religions, I LOVED soccer sometimes for giving me an opportunity to drink beer as well.

As I grew and stopped doing pub jobs, my lifestyle changed too.
First my best friend Giusseppe Kizito joined ProLine Soccer Academy as a physiotherapist. I and Giusseppe shared a passionate love for sports, so much that Giussepe, upon admission to Makerere University on a Bachelor of Arts degree course decided to break off after a year and resumed the following year to pursue a Bachelor of Sport Science degree. Upon completing his course and getting his first job with the highly anticipated Proline Soccer Academy by MUjib Kasule, Giusseppe was stabbed by his brother to death on 12 July 2007.

Bu at some point I lost the enthuthiasm for soccer, this is because the English premiership was taking over every avaliable space of commercial radio, magazines and any other social environment. All the time radio presenters outdid themsleves in showing their listners as their competence in premiership analysis.

I feared I was becoming a hooked consumer.

By English premiership however the thing that Ugandans actually watched was only Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. It was the madness between Manchester United and Arsenal fans that made the whole soccer craze become irritating for me. It was even more annoying whenever Arsenal was playing on a particular day, there would be nothing else for alternatives. In case one was not a fan of Arsenal. (Arsenal has a very large following in East Africa,) whenever the club is playing you'd be excused for thinking that some East Africans are actual shareholders to the thing or they are all English from London.

Earleir I had also moved to Rwanda and I had also acquired a regular fixture of my life. I'd work the whole week and spend Saturday and Sunday in a pub watching soccer.
When I moved to Rwanda in 2006 it became quite a puzzle as there were not many sports bars, but James (the tall man from Masisi) had introduced me to a couple of pubs in Remera where I'd watch soccer. After I moved from the Remera part of town to Nyamirambo I lived next to the biggest and only movie theatre in Kigali so I solved my soccer search forays in the city centre, stopped going to PanAfrique in Kigali city centre as well as visiting with Rastaman Seif Bizimana. Oh I remember the torturous days at the Kimironko market pubs and the rude people at Medi's Motel.

In 2008 I moved again from Rwanda to Tanzania and even there I had issues having a decent sports bar in which to catch soccer. The only two exceptional memories I have of Tanzania were watching the 2008 UEFA Champions' League Final between Manchester United and Chelsea at a pub near Diamond guesthouse/Inn in Arusha.
Watching the UERO 2008 Finals at Via Via pub near the ICTR where I worked.
I also cherish the memory of Charlotte Kingsman, but that is a story for another day!!!'

Eerly this year I moved to North America, I arrived here in February when it was time for the 2009 Superbowl. This most important of sports events in North America was pittying the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Arizona Cardinals.
I watched the game at Robin Honderich's apartment in downtown Toronto. Robin is the son of John Honderich, chairman of Torstar Publishing group, the same man that is responsible for my coming to America.

The match-to people familiar with the game of American football was a beautiful one, I for one did not know any of the rules, but there was great beer at Robin' house. He had his freinds over as well and so I met some young Canadains in Toronto for the first time and shared the experience of a big match-North American style.
Honderich senior had also prepared very good chilli sauce and though the food was still a challenge for me at the start, I liked his dish. The Steelers won the match. After the match I was informed that what I had witnessed was a big cultural expereince in North America. The Superbowl is a very important fixture in North American life. I have listened to passionate conversations about the thing.
Today I was reminded of a big match, (superbowl) as well as cultural experiences-the way I understand it anyway.

As I mentioned earlier, I had been planning since the begining of November as to where I will be watching the 2009 EL Classico, Merseyside as well as the London derbies from. These are the most important of matches, save for Manchester United-Liverpool for a soccer enthusiast.

Since everything in North America starts with the internet I had earlier researched about soccer pubs in the city and came to the conclusion that Ship and Anchor, a pub in the city's downtown core was it. It would be my place of abode on many weekends.

Today I wake up at 7pm, an anormally on a sunday, and head to the bus stand. I get to the pub when the Chelsea and Arsenal match is left with only 15 minutes to end.
I sit and wait for the start of the big one. The all important El Classico.
Unfortunately, today was a day of the Canadian equivalent of the superbowl, after the London derby the TV was switched off and the pub staff feigned genuine interest in searching the channels that were screening the Nou Camp match. I moved from the pub, but after savouring the very well prepared Ship Burger that cost me a whooping 10 dollars!!!!

I visited four different sports pubs and they were all screening the previews of the Grey Cup where a team from Montreal was playing one from Saskachewan, the Montreal team won the game in a very close final minutes of the match. 27-28.
Hopefully the next derby weekend will be better for me.
Today I turned 29.

Eastern DR Congo: EX Nkunda lieutenant forms new rebel mov't

BY JOSH KRON
Nation Media Correspondent
Great Lakes Region

CONGO - As the rape and death tolls mount in military offensives against Hutu rebels in eastern Congo, a key leader of the military campaign is forming his own paramilitary group, the United Nations has said.

Nearly a year after being installed in a senior position in the Congolese armed forces, former rebel-general Bosco Ntaganda has formed with other the Front for the Liberation and Emancipation of the Congo (FLEC). The group has not started war, but is institutionalizing control over regions of eastern Congo, particularly Masisi territory in North Kivu province.

Unlike some other rebel groups in the Congo – including Mr. Ntaganda’s Tutsi-led National Congress for the People Defense (CNDP) who wrecked havoc on the country last year – FLEC does not appear to be built along ethnic lines.

Violence both against and between Hutu and Tutsi in eastern Congo have broiled the region in an on-again-off-again struggle that, over the last fifteen years, has directly and indirectly led to millions dead.

While it remains unclear whether FLEC will be an armed insurgency or just a way to make more money, the emergence of the group is the latest sign that the CNDP is breaking up, and the Congo’s army is unraveling in its yearlong war against Rwandan Hutu rebels.

“It appears to incorporate other dissatisfied elements associated with some Mai-Mai armed groups,” said spokesperson Jean-Paul Dietrich.

“According to local sources, FLEC was established because of the reported refusal of pro-Nkunda elements and the former political leadership of the party to associate CNDP with the reported Coalition pour la protection et la promotion du Congo (CPPC).”

Mr. Ntaganda, who became military commander of the CNDP at the beginning of the year when its charismatic Laurent Nkunda was arrested by Rwanda, was supposed to lead the group into integration with the Congolese national army, along with a menagerie of other rebel groups and splinter factions.

In the United Nations-backed offensive against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda – Hutu rebels accused of orchestrating the 1994 Rwandan genocide – Mr. Ntaganda is accused of playing a senior role. In South Kivu, where the bulk of the fighting is focused, Ntaganda’s CNDP lieutenants are the ones doing the finding and the killing.

But now, he and other CNDP officers are spending their time organizing FLEC and already control some of North Kivu’s most fertile grounds, including large swaths of Masisi territory that the United Nations says Mr. Ntaganda and FLEC look to control entirely.

“The people are forced to pay exorbitant taxes,” said the United Nations this week. “Officials justify the provision of first by the need to assist the war-wounded ex-CNDP.”

And there’s no much that can be done, saying that the police in the region were “neither equipped nor paid” by the Kinshasa government.

For years, Rwanda and Congo have battled over the presence of Rwandan genocide suspects hiding out on Congolese soil, killers that fled after the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda’s own military has repeatedly invaded the Congo in pursuit and have left behind residual militias to do the fighting for them.

Last year, things began to get out of hand, when one of these generals, Mr. Nkunda went on a strong offensive in North Kivu, taking important parts of the province and coming within a few kilometers of the capital Goma. The Congolese military didn’t stand a chance, instead fleeing with civilians from the oncoming rebel group, looting, killing and raping in the process.

It all changed, investigators have argued when Rwanda and Congo struck a deal that placed Ntaganda in the drivers seat and Mr. Nkunda supposedly behind bars. Now, the Congolese army was no longer fighting the CNDP, but the Hutu rebels, and in the process Ntaganda and his troops took command of the war.

It’s been a sweet role of reversal for Mr. Ntaganda. According to the United Nations Panel of Experts report leaked Tuesday, he is making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in illegal tax revenues from the lands he patrols. His elite CNDP that follow him; 60,000.

But as the atrocities mount, Ntaganda has been losing friends. The people who put him in power – including Rwanda – have not gone out of their way to keep all the soldiers below him in line and, as the The New York Times has reported, much of the region has descended into ‘warlordism.’

From Mai-Mai generals to FDLR splinters, new groups have sprung and popped, since the beginning of the year, feeding off each other like water wheels. 

A spokesperson for the United Nation in Congo said that the latest developments reflected a “possible division within the CNDP itself,” those working with Ntaganda, and those loyal to the arrested Laurent Nkunda, who remains in Rwanda, somewhere. 

“He is our man, he always will be,” says Claude Mutebutsi, a Congolese Tutsi originally from South Kivu. He insists Nkunda wasn’t simply sponsored by Rwanda. According to him, “95%” are still faithful to Mr. Nkunda, who has acquired a Che Guevara-like mystique with his constituents.

The political arm of the CNDP – Nkunda had said he was fighting for the protection of Congolese Tutsi – has accomplished little on paper since peace agreement that culminated integration into the army. Two party members are in parliament.

Mr. Ntaganda’s new group is the latest manifestation in a breakup of the CNDP that has been ongoing for months. The first incarnation was the Coalition for the Promotion and Protection of the Congo. Initially built around Ntaganda and other CNDP soldiers, it fell apart due to deteriorating support for Mt. Ntaganda.

Now, it seems, he is making shrewd utilitarian choices with his supposed enemies as his traditional friends dwindle.

Rwanda joins the Commonwealth

BY JOSH KRON
Nation Media
Rwanda

Rwanda has been formally accepted into the British Commonwealth, becoming the 54^th nation to join the post-colonial group after a two-year bid, Rwandan government officials were told this weekend.

The Commonwealth members summit, held in the Caribbean island-state of Trinidad & Tobago, reportedly admitted the Central African country after it applied for membership in 2008.

News of the admission was first made public by a spokesperson for the Rwandan government late Saturday night, ahead of announcement from the Commonwealth itself, who had given the Rwandan government formal news of the admission.

“The government sees this accession as recognition of the tremendous progress this country has made in the last 15 years,” Rwanda’s government spokesperson Louise Mushikiwabo said in the capital Kigali.

Rwanda’s foreign minister, Rosemary Museminali, said a longer statement to the press would be made available later Sunday.

Announcement from the Commonwealth itself is due this evening, but Rwanda’s envoy to the conference had been given formal notice of the admission. 

Along with Mozambique, who joined the group in 1995, Rwanda became the second nation without any formal historical ties to Great Britain to join the group, came under scrutiny due to criticisms of its human-rights policy.

The country’s ascension to the club marks an acme for its post-genocide development and President Paul Kagame’s drive to sharply redefine Rwanda’s orientation towards the English-speaking world. In 2007 the country, along with Burundi, joined the East African Community. :Last year, all sectors of government and education adopted English as the official, operating language.

Rwanda was first colonized by Germany in the late 19^th century and then by the Belgians. The country later held close ties to France, which were severed after the 1994 Rwandan genocide by President Paul Kagame’s current government. France is accuse of playing a key role in the build up and arming of the genocidal government that killed 1 million Tutsi.

Much of the current government was raised as refugees in Uganda and since then, Uganda has been one of Rwanda’s biggest backers to join the Commonwealth group.

Introducing Ship&Anchor Pub Calgary

Pubtalk: A bizarre soccer week mares Commonwealth debut spirit

GEORGE KAGAME

There’s a story, true or false withstanding, about one of several Taifa Stars coaches in the 1990s. It is about a dramatic incident in which the coach tantalized Tanzania's press with carefully chosen English terms, a language he knew would attract few questions during the press conference. Therefore downplaying the controversy raised by the issue of dismal results after a series of friendly matches played by the team on a special and rare visit to Brazil.

Witnesses to the press briefing, which was dubbed as 'the exclusive English interview' organized to coincide with his team's arrival at Dar International Airport was even rarer in the comedy that is Tanzania's football.

The friendlies themselves had been organized as a step forward in the country's timeless-and ongoing unsuccessful attempts to- develop the standards of the game in East Africa's largest and most populous country.

AT the time the trip to Brazil, (the equivalent in Soccer as Mecca is to Islam,) was organized following another in the series that is the disastrous performance of Taifa Stars-going by the extremely high expectations of the average Tanzanians which have now stabilized at mocking the team and laughing it off as a comedy series.

In this era, the tour gave the Stars an opportunity to participate in, and loose in all friendly matches between them and their Brazilian hosts. In the circumstances, the Taifa Stars lost in huge margins that upon their arrival at Dar International airport, an explanation was demanded of the coach in a press briefing. The national coach was asked why his team had lost in all the matches and whether the team had learnt anything at all in their training camp.

Asked in Swahili about the dismal performance of the team and knowing fully well that just a handful of journalists present at the press conference would ask many other questions in English, he excited the crowd when he decided to address the journalists in English. The event is also said to be his first interview exclusively in English, an uncommon language in football circles at the time.

It is further said that at the end of the interview journalists present were left in wonder and amazement. Apparently, the team had more than undertaken soccer training, they had also learnt language skills. Shooting two birds with one stone!!

You may ask where the resident of the Hammock is going with this mambo jumbo about soccer, especially Tanzanian soccer, when the newspaper has enough pages and columnists dedicated to sport/soccer.  Well, there’s the issue of the ‘hand of God 2009’ Version featuring Thiery Henry that made it hard during the week to think of anything else of national importance to discuss at the local pub. Note. In this pub, known as the Ship and Anchor, soccer has provided some hilarious moments for its patrons over the times. And as such the game is a very serious affair to which women of wisdom-no women of any calibre-are invited in equal numbers as men.

There was one such moment last year when French national football coach Raymond Domenech was asked  a simple question in a live interview about his team and the nature of tactics it had used to fail so embarrassingly at Euro 2008.

Domenech responded to the question by proposing to his girlfriend (a journalist herself) in a press conference broadcast on all major news networks and media houses. Now put this into persecutive, a press conference involving France’s national soccer team is an important national issue. Sometimes even the president of the country is watching the thing.

In the spirit of celebrating Rwanda's entry in the Commonwealth as well as announcement by all the five presidents to launch the full EAC Customs Union on 1 July 2010, (just days before the World Cup final in South Africa in 2010.)

I’ll save you the details about statistics and all, that was way after the pub closed.

"We are in the Commonwealth today, from now, we are going to adopt English as the language of drinking in this pub."

One patron announced after his third beer and staring at the barman as only a man that has drunk three Mutzig bottles plus eating two zingaro brochete can stare.

This pub is a serious one, it is important to be discussing national matters. 

In fact so important and heated was the discussion on Friday that it was agreed unanimously on many issues surrounding Rwanda's commonwealth debut. The members again agreed that in order to further the country's English competence, "We are also signing up seriously with the East African Community. We shall get rid of the Franc one day and if change does not come, we will will seriouly consider taking on Swahili as the first business language. And as if that is not enough, we will abolish the Rwandan passport and adopt an East African one. Yes, with a little foresight, Felicien Kabuga can officially and legally operate his business on Kenya.

We intend one day to become like the EU, in fact we shall have our own serious version of the UEFA Champions’ league. Have you not heard of our preparations for this year's CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup?"

Continue to the next page!

Africa needs to enter the highway of history or risked being blurred

BY GEORGE KAGAME

In a week during which memorial ceremonies commemorating the defeat of Hitler's axis and the end of the second World War were held I watched two movies of peculiar interest but with a slightly similar violent story. One, an oscar award winning performance by Kate Winslet chronicles the legacy of the gas chambers in which millions of Jews were burnt by Hitler during the Holocaust, the other is about the conflict in Sierra Leone which ended in the early 2000s after claiming more than 50,000 and was fueled by one of Africa's curses; the diamond.

The first, The Reader is about the story of an illiterate female prison officer that falls in love with a young supposedly Jewish law student that later participates in the trial of the gas chamber guard. The story shows the blind hand of fate and the innocent clash of two other-words irreconcilable worlds. The other movie, The Blood Diamonds tells Africa's miserly in dealing in its natural resources and its failure simply to connect source to market without a war. The story is told in the simplest of terms that only Hollywood knows and wants to understand about Africa and our confilcts.

As is expected, there's wielding of sharp machetes here, grosteque images of Africans butchering each other there and the occasional whiteman baffled by the exercise. The whiteman is on the beaches holidaying, holding a photo camera, sometimes writing the next big humanitarian story from Africa for a major media house in the US or Europe and other times it shows the businessman unconcerned with a 'dark' people who cannot coexist peacefully while he is doing business.

From my simple write up you can tell one thing, the way that I grasped the stark contrasts in the two movies. The complicated nature of the legacy of Nazi German and the simple 'good bad' guy in the African story.
The European story is told in such a way that tells of sophistication, it is a civilized encounter among human beings that are innocent. On other hand, the African story is told in such way that its actors are simple blood thirsty vampires bent on eliminating each other by virtue of greed for resources whose value they cannot grasp as the diamonds are shown to be traded far away in Europe.

And thats the story of Africa. Since most people out of AFrica never read about the continent in books or in newspapers, they know most things about the continent from movies, and some times (honourably) wildlife features about the animals on the continent. (It is my opinion that Europeans and North Americans know more about the animals in Africa than the people living in the continent.)
So since movies tell their stories in terms of good and bad guys, most people outside Africa know of the continent in terms of good and bad guys too-recently, an acquaintance introduced me to his North American girlfriend, "he is among the good guys", and I was baffled by what he meant.

If one comes from Rwanda and travels to another part of Africa or the world, they will once in a while be asked a question or two after the proverbial; 'Where do you come from?" Having established that one is from Rwanda the next question or conversation will be probing to establish whether one is Tutsi or Hutu, in order to place you among the good or bad guys of Africa. And people in developed countries know about conversations and getting information when they want to. They thrive on information afterall.

To many, this probing is humiliating, some foolish people are quick to point out that they are Tutsi as this is likely to win any sympathy votes, (In a related idea and also as part of this paradox, every Rwandan that goes outside Africa automatically gets the Tutsi tag and plucks it on a pedestal.) There are categories of bad and good in other parts of the world as there was during the holocaust but their differences were not recorded on obvious structures as ours.

In the same way, if you were asked to describe the bad guys of the European genocides, (they have had a couple there, have they not?) This description will pit one particular idea against another. No particular specifics, these are civilizations after all. It is not really popular how the Jews were identified for extermination by the Nazi for example, but there's a wide collection of variables that the Hutu used to butcher the Tutsi in Rwanda. If the identity card never gave one a particular designation of tribe, you could look at the neck, the mouth, demeanor, the hair, complexion and particularly the nose.

The good bad guy analogy is a simple one in the Rwandan context, this is because of the fact that as as you answer innocent queries about your Hutuness or Tutsiness ( such that one can approve whether what they watched is true) They have a set of givens and trademarks as established by anthropologists. It is an attempt to show the blur on the African story.
Closer to home, the story of Rwanda's genocide-in its most famous script as told by Paul Rusesabagina and his book; "An Ordinary man" way after he left Rwanda, and more eloquently in Hotel Rwanda is the moral of this rambling.

When a local story is told in the eyes of a foreign audience and acted out for that audience the people affected by actual events of the story become figures, graphs and theories. And in this way Africa misses out in the real story of the world, our story is told only when a powerful entertainer visits and we take advantage of the photo ops or a charity organization makes a video asking for sponsors of this or that cause. (Hotel Rwanda is off a book written by a Hutu man, and acted by an American and a Nigerian plus a couple of Ugandans.)

The people that are living the events are reduced to appear as extras. It is with this hindsight that French president Nicholas Sarkozy remarked in 2007 at a Senegalese University ‘Africa has never entered history.’ Africa needs to find a way to help real African story tellers to get into mainstream media outlets. Or even easier to develop our own media where we will not be fed on other people's impressions of us.
donuwagiwabo@gmail.com