Imhotep: The Collective African Blog

Niyi Osundare Wins the Tchicaya U'Tamsi Award for African Poetry

The Nation Online

Niyi Osundare, storyteller, a poet, dramatist, and literary critic whose mastery of English in its local fecundity brings life to mere words is not one for keeping silent. His personae has set a trailblazing path for Africa and Africans.

Osundare speaking in Buea on July 18, 2008 during the EduArt awards for Cameroon Literature in English

And come 7th of August 2008, in Assilah, Morocco, he will be setting yet another mark. This time, at the official presentation as the 2008 Laureate of the Tchicaya U'Tamsi Award for African Poetry.

Video: Breast Ironing in Cameroon

Warning: Video may be too graphic for some.

African Literature in Mourning: Cyprian Ekwensi is No More

From Uduma Kalu, Literary Correspondent, Enugu (The Guardian November 5, 2007)

DARKNESS fell again in the Nigerian literary firmament yesterday when veteran novelist, pharmacist and public commentator, Cyprian Ekwensi passed on. He was 86 years old. The author of the popular Jaguar Nana series of novels was said to have died at the Niger Foundation in Enugu where he underwent an operation for an undisclosed ailment. It was not clear as at press time yesterday if he died during or after the operation.

Earlier this year, Ekwensi released Cash on Delivery, a collection of short stories, which turned out to be his last book. When he turned 86 last year, the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Lagos State
chapter and the Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA), feted him.

The New York Times Sells Cameroon for $250,000

By Sofia Jarrin Hurtado (Originally published on IndyBay)

On a silver platter this past Sunday, The New York Times magazine featured no less than eight pages towards the liberalization of the economy in Cameroon.
 
Showing off its excellence in corporate media advertising, the NY Times magazine sold prominent space to Cameroon business traders so they can in turn sell their country’s resources to U.S. investors, no doubt to the demise of many of its citizens. “Cameroon ready for growth, ready for investment,” reads a headline on page 59 which goes on to explain the country’s “quest for sustainable growth...”

Africa’s Storied Colleges, Jammed and Crumbling

By LYDIA POLGREEN (Originally published in the New York Times)

DAKAR, Senegal, May 19 — Thiany Dior usually rises before dawn, tiptoeing carefully among thin foam mats laid out on the floor as she leaves the cramped dormitory room she shares with half a dozen other women. It was built for two.

Sitting on cinderblocks at Cheikh Anta Diop (c)Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

In the vast auditorium at the law school at Cheikh Anta Diop University, she secures a seat two rows from the front, two hours before class. If she sat too far back, she would not hear the professor’s lecture over the two tinny speakers, and would be more likely to join the 70 percent who fail their first- or second-year exams at the university.

The Hard Queries Asked on Cameroon Plane Crash

By Patrick Mathangani and Cyrus Kinyungu (FromThe Standard- Kenya)

In the wake of a muddled rescue effort and puzzling inconsistencies in information officially released on the Kenya Airways crash, questions have emerged over the handling of the disaster in which 114 people died.

Piece of Wreckage from Kenya Airline Boeing (c) AFP

Several aviation experts and pilots raised queries over the discrepancies and questioned Cameroon’s competence in handling air disasters.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Critic of Islam or Opportunist?

A young African woman, raised in Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya decides not to go ahead with an arranged marriage to someone in Canada. So, on her way to North America, she absconds in Germany, and escapes to Holland, where she succeeds in obtaining political asylum.

While in Holland, she starts working as an advocate for immigrant women mostly from Muslim countries. She partners with a Dutch director to develop a movie that some Muslims find offensive. The director, Theo van Gogh is murdered on the street and a death threat to Ms Ali was pinned to his chest with a  knife.  She  obtains  Dutch citizenship and runs for elected office.

She is elected into parliament. While in parliament, she changes party affiliation in a move that was the political equivalent of leaving Ralph Nader's Green Party to join the Republicans. Her application for political asylum is challenged by the Dutch Justice Minister, who questions the truth of some details in her asylum application.

Imhotepean: Percy Julian, Chemist Extraordinary and Mentor

PBS TV series NOVA presents a fitting tribute to Dr. Percy Julian, one of the greatest American research chemists of the 20th century. Born in Jim Crow Alabama in 1899, a child of former slaves, Percy rose above unimaginable racial discrimination to obtain a Bachelors in chemistry at DuPauw University, a Masters at Harvard and a doctorate at the University of Vienna. Following that his name is associated with numerous breakthroughs in the science of chemistry, including progesterone used in reproductive medicine, physostigmine used in some eye diseases and anesthesia and corticosteroids. He was also an expert in the soya bean, identifying over a hundred patented processes and compounds. This man is such an extraordinary example that we should all watch this documentary, available HERE.

Imhotepean: James Brown transitions to the higher funky nation

Emil I Mondoa, MD

The first time I heard James Brown was in 1968, belting out, "I'm black and I'm proud" with a chorus of children no older than myself. God knows we needed to hear that, us African children all over the world. Brown's music immediately appealed to young people worldwide as the hippest, baddest, funkiest sound ever, totally in a class of its own. Some parent types disparaged the sound as "noise", because they could not find coherence in the lyrics, but they could not help but move their bodies to the infectious beat. James Brown was such an innovator that to many of us, there are two kinds of pop music: music before and music after JB. People who did not did not experience that transition, might hear a lot James Brown innovations in pop music and not realize it. Trust me, James Brown, the avatar of funk changed everything.

In traditional western music, melody leads rhythm in defining music. Brown's innovation is a quintessentially African idea, that rhythm can and does lead music. This idea, packaged professionally, backed by a crack band and spiced with disciplined and unprecedented energetic floor performances propelled him to world wide superstardom in the 1960s-1970s. His impact on popular music on the African home continent is everywhere to be found for those who know how to look.


Excellent Tribute Video from James Brown's 2006 Induction to the UK Hall of Fame:

When A Teacher Dies: Remembering Femi Oyewole

By Canute Tangwa

I am not a celebrated pamphleteer/essayist like Kevin Mbayu who wrote a matchless-stellar tribute to Bernard Fonlon, the teacher and Mbayu's intellectual sparring partner. Arguably, the late Mbayu was the one and only Cameroonian who took Fonlon to task in a philosophical debate on morality and the Godhead. Did the revered Fonlon buckle? That is another matter for polemicists.

My focus here is on the death of an educationist and teacher of another cast: Femi Oyewole, a Nigerian. Perusing a copy of The Guardian Newspaper of November 9, 2006, I learnt of the death of the 'eminent teacher', Femi Oyewole. 

Yet another plane crash in Nigeria

By Funmi Iyanda

Almost a year to date, we killed over 60 children in the Sosoliso crash, months after the Bellview crash... Once again, Nigeria mourns in her spectacular, head grabbing, chest clutching, God outsourcing way, then she will return to status quo until the next major disaster.

My friend Bose is screaming down the phone…no no, no not Dr. Ola, God he is one of the good ones no no. My mentee Tayo and l are dejectedly channel surfing searching for something, anything. NTA has dark, blurry shaky pictures of the Sultan of Sokoto, leader of Nigeria’s huge Muslim population being buried. He, his son and grandson died in the crash.

Human Trafficking: United States Vs. Theresa Mubang

Culled from USDOJ Anti-Trafficking Bulletin, 2(2), August 2005, p. 2.

In November 2004, a federal jury in Greenbelt, Maryland,convicted Theresa Mubang of holding Evelyn Chumbow, a young woman originally from Cameroon, West Africa, in involuntary servitude and of harboring her for commercial gain. The evidence revealed that Mubang had convinced Chum-bow’s relatives to send the eleven-year old Chumbow from Cameroon to the United States with Mubang. Mubang assured Chumbow’s family that she would care for Chumbow as her own daughter, sending her to American schools and giving her the opportunities of an American life.

Far from home, a Nigerian journalist finds Fela's legacy alive and well in art

By Gbemi Olujobi (culled from the San Francisco Chronicle)

Tuesday May 4, 2004: It is in San Francisco, thousands of nautical miles from my Nigerian home, that I learn for the first time that Fela was born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun. This gaffe is not usual for someone who comes from a culture that places a high premium on names. But many things were not usual about Fela. He was simply Fela to everyone, and you didn't bother to find out more. He was just there, all over the place, sort of ubiquitous, and you felt like you knew him inside-out.