Image: Here’s me in ethnomusicologist heaven, setting up a microphone while the music gets started.
We are back home. Home in three words is Clean, Cool and Comfortable. The village is none of those things but there’s a lot of great stuff about living in the village.
Video: How often do you get to dance to marimba [...]
I had the privilege of being at a Partners Retreat in Malawi sponsored in part by the Christian Reformed World Relief Council. We were partners in the sense that I teach part time at Hefsiba Instituto Superior Cristão da Igreja Reformada em Moçambique. So our whole family got to load into the Land Rover and [...]
The anniversary of your birth is a complete non-event. I’ve never met an African who does celebrate birthdays. Here on the campus where I’m teaching, our staff is a mix of blacks and whites. The white South Africans are birthday mad. They visit your house at 6AM to sing to you and expect you to [...]
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When [...]
Emeka Okafor on his Africa Unchained blog has a number of articles on the plague that is aid. That’s right. Not AIDS. But aid. Our open-handed generosity leads to dependency. The trick is shaking ourselves free from the “donor-beggar” paradigm and looking for new ways to engage the Third World. We have much to give. [...]
Image: A baobab tree in Dinthi, Mozambique
Nunya, adidoe, asi metunee o. (Akan and Ewe, Benin, Ghana and Togo)
Explanation: This proverb from Ghana, which exists in different forms in many African languages, can be applied to the vast treasure of African oral literature. This metaphor also explains that human wisdom is so great that it would [...]
Image: At our house in the village, well diggers hit water beneath ten meters of clay and hard shale.
You have to get beyond the front page.
If you want to discover the riches and beauty of Africa you have to dig. Because the evening news isn’t going to give it to you. They give you [...]
Choose to focus on the positive in Africa, originally uploaded by mozifoto.
Doodle by David
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Washington Post: July 5, 2008 “Inside Mugabe’s Violent Crackdown” by Craig Timberg
I first caught this article from the Washington Post in a Mozambican newspaper. If you have been curious about the situation in Zimbabwe I highly recommend that you read this entire article.
Here’s a snippet detailing how the ruling party essentially beat the Zimbabwean people [...]
All that is required is our continued passivity and silence.
I am not an advocate of military intervention in this circumstance, but we can at least be present at the polls and speak loudly of the intimidation and shenanigans that are going on.
Why is Robert fighting so hard to stay in power? It’s not just [...]
Previous post: Aid in Africa: Or “Why do all my great ideas keep flopping?!?”
I’ve got a couple of stories running through my head about why doing aid in Africa doesn’t always work out the way you planned. Imagine for a minute some beautiful thing that you’d like to do to help the poor suffering people [...]
Photocopyrights, originally uploaded by mozifoto.
At the school where I’m lecturing most of the textbooks are photocopied. And there is no perception that this is illegal. Last year I selected a big fat reference book from the library for a fourth year student and he wanted to photocopy the entire book so he could take it [...]
