Sudanese Lost Boy Returns Home

The Largest Refugee Complex in the World: Dadaad

Dadaab Refugee Camps in Northeastern Kenya pose a critical question for the international community: How does it treat a humanitarian emergency that does not go away?

There are nearly 300,000 refugees in Dadaab, Kenya (composed of 3 refugee camps: Ifo, Hagadera and Dagahaley with a 4th camp currently under construction), making it the largest refugee complex in the world, with 6,000 third-generation refugees according to the United Nations.

Humanitarian officials say building schools and hospitals is the best way to protect refugees, but donors are hesitant to finance projects that will encourage more refugees to come and stay.  The impasse has left Dadaab understaffed and overcrowded. Half of its youth — who make up more than half of all refugees — are out of school and easy targets for militia recruiters.

Refugees queuing for registration with UNHCR

The use of child soldiers has become a major aspect of Somalia’s seemingly inextricable conflict, and the country’s transitional government, which is supported by the United States, has a history of using children in combat.  In 2009, the Kenyan government was accused of supporting recruitment drives among refugees from the camps to fight in Somalia’s army.  Al Shabab, the most prolific rebel group in Somalia, also recruits in the camp and United Nations employees have been approached to serve as go-betweens by Shabab agents.  Somalia’s notorious piracy networks have also been known to visit the camps.  


(New York Times)

Religious values and cultural traditions collide: Life after resettlement and the rise of Somali gang culture in the Twin Cities

In a surprising development, Federal and local Minnesota law enforcement officials are announcing they've arrested 23 people in two states in an alleged Somali prostitution ring.  Twenty-three people were arrested in Minnesota and Tennessee.  The investigation was led by St. Paul Police and members of the Task Force on Human Trafficking, which includes federal, state and local law enforcement.  The case first came to light in September of 2010, after investigators asked a Ramsey County judge for permission to search the cell phone records of a 15-year-old girl. Authorities believe the girl was lured into a large prostitution ring controlled by Somali gangs.


(Minnesota Public Radio)

V.S. Naipaul

Sir V(idiadhar) S(urajprasad) Naipaul is a Trinidadian writer born in Chaguanas, Trinidad on 17 August 1932.  Winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, he is known for his novels set in developing countries.  The Swedish Academy praised his work "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories" noting that "Naipaul is Conrad's heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished."  However, His fiction and especially his travel writing have been criticised for their allegedly unsympathetic portrayal of the Third World. Additionally, he has been criticised for dwelling on some negative aspects of Islam in his works, such as nihilism among fundamentalists.

His personal life was marred by drama and tragedy.  Naipaul's marriage of 41 years to Patricia Hale was marked by frequent infidelities, and he is cited as admitting that his devotion to his writing and infidelities may have hastened her death due to cancer in 1996.  During the marriage, he had a long-term love affair with his mistress Margaret Gooding.  Biographer Patrick French wrote that Naipaul subjected both wife and mistress to regular sessions of sexual and physical abuse.  However, 2 months after Hale's death Naipaul married former Pakistani journalist Nadira Khannum Alvi and abruptly ended his affair with Gooding.  


His first three books are comic portraits of Trinidadian society. The Mystic Masseur (1957) and  Miguel Street (1959), a collection of short stories, are among his first books. His acclaimed novel A House for Mr Biswas (1961), is based on his father's life in Trinidad.  Subsequent novels developed more political themes and he began to write about colonial and post-colonial societies in the process of decolonisation. These novels include The Mimic Men (1967), In a Free State (1971), Guerrillas (1975) and A Bend in the River (1979). The Enigma of Arrival (1987) is a personal account of his life in England. A Way in the World (1994), is a formally experimental narrative that combines fiction and non-fiction in a historical portrait of the Caribbean. Half a Life, was published in 2001 and follows the adventures of Indian Willie Chandran in post-war Britain while Magic Seeds (2004) continues his story.

The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief (2010) is Naipaul's 30th book and 16th volume of nonfiction.  New York Time's book critic Eliza Griswold describes his newest work: "Naipaul is willing to express a new attitude, one of self-doubt. This acknowledgment of human frailty — starting with his own — broadens his observational powers immeasurably. As he sets out to explore what he calls “the beginning of things,” he proves willing to turn his brutally accurate lens back on himself...Naipaul has always revealed a curious admixture of extrovert and introvert on the page. The extrovert enjoys his public political scraps, his voyages and his love affairs — even as he seems to be loathing all three. The introvert demands time for the isolation that reflection requires".  


(Wikipedia), (New York Times), and (Contemporary Writers)

Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethiopian jazz

ONSTAGE 68-year-old Mulatu Astatke is as subtle and understated as the Ethiopian jazz he created. The music, a hybrid of traditional Ethiopian music and jazz, is subdued, somewhat melancholy, and at times psychedelic. Mr Astatke, the originator and composer of songs in this canon, plays his principal instrument, the vibraphone, with a light touch. Between songs, there is no small talk. He thanks the crowd, and coolly introduces the next number.

Mr Astatke has completed a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard and been an artist-in-residence at MIT in recent years. But the seeds of his “Ethio-jazz” were planted in the 1950s and 1960s when he studied classical and jazz composition in Britain and America and honed his techniques while at Berklee College of Music, where he was the first African student. On visits to New York he hung out with jazz musicians such as John Coltrane and performed with the Duke Ellington orchestra in Ethiopia in the 1970s.

Mr Astatke’s name resurfaced in 2005, when his compositions appeared in the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers. A busy time of performing, recording, teaching, and composing has since followed.

(Baobab)

Kola Nuts

                                                

Kola nuts are important in many African societies, particularly in Western Africa. Besides the fact that Kola nuts contain caffeine and act as a stimulant and anti-depressant, they are also thought to reduce fatigue and hunger, aid digestion, and work as an aphrodisiac.

In some parts of Africa, kola nuts are given as gifts to visitors entering a home, usually with some formal ceremony. Offering the kola nut is a gesture of friendship and hospitality.  Elsewhere, before a marriage, a bag of kola nuts are often given by a groom to the parents of the bride. Kola nuts are a used in rituals performed by religious healers.

Besides the ceremonial uses, many Africans consume kola nuts regularly, even daily, for the medicial effects described above. Kola nuts are a common sight in African markets in cities and villages. They are often sold by street vendors at bus and train depots. On a train or bus, a traveler with a kola nut will often offer a piece to the others nearby, whether he knows them or not.


Kola nuts are consumed by breaking them open and into pieces, then chewing the kola nut pieces as one chews gum. Most people find the taste very bitter, especially at first. Sometimes a knife is needed to cut the nut into pieces.

Kola nuts are best known outside of Africa as an ingredient in cola beverages. The stimulative effect is similar to a strong cup of coffee.  There is some evidence that the first kola (or cola) beverage was made by Western Africans who mixed water with dried or fermented kola nuts. Commercially produced cola drinks were developed in the late 1800s, when chemists and inventors the world over used kola nuts (as well as other exotic ingredients) in various drinks and tonics. The most famous of these is Coca-Cola, which has become a truly global beverage.

(Congo Cookbook)