A few Weeks ago i named her Africa's Sweetheart..
Noella Coursaris Musunka of the Georges Malaika Foundation at the UN and U.S. Chamber BCLC forum on women and entrepreneurship.
Friday, April 1, 2011
From Africa With Love
The Contrast...
Namibia
Sudan..
I had no Idea there were Pyramids in Sudan as Well...i thought was the only country with Pyramids was Ethiopia...mmmh..something to think about
Image Credits: The Africa They never show you facebook group..check it out... breathe-taking images they got!!
Namibia
 |
| Namibian Desert |
Sudan..
 |
| Isoke, South Sudan |
I had no Idea there were Pyramids in Sudan as Well...i thought was the only country with Pyramids was Ethiopia...mmmh..something to think about
Image Credits: The Africa They never show you facebook group..check it out... breathe-taking images they got!!
Hiding the Real Africa, For Foreign Aid Purposes?
Sometimes I get almost shocked about how little people know about Africa, and how masked it is of this image of extreme poverty upon the whole of Africa like a disease...And then is there a reason why Africa in general and not specific regions are being portrayed in such a way? When you say Africa the first that comes to mind, dying babies, Charity, Famine, war torn areas, epidemics, altered statistics... Yes... Thats the only thing that comes to mind...to most people...sad... then we grasp the real Africa, but does the 'Real Africa' exist, these things do happen though statistics are altered, and images are enlarged do these things not happen? they do....but so do other positive things... but... Read the Article below from Columbia Journalism Review....you can read the rest of the article here
Is the Media Hiding the 'Real Africa'
A good dose of Good news from Africa,
Poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The death rate of children under five years of age is dropping, with “clear evidence of accelerating rates of decline,” according to The Lancet.
Perhaps most encouragingly, Africa is “among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions,” according to the McKinsey Quarterly.
Yet US journalism continues to portray a continent of unending horrors. Last June, for example, Time magazine published graphic pictures of a naked woman from Sierra Leone dying in childbirth. Not long after, CNN did a story about two young Kenyan boys whose family is so poor they are forced to work delivering goats to a slaughterhouse for less than a penny per goat.
Reinforcing the sense of economic misery, between May and September 2010 the ten most-read US newspapers and magazines carried 245 articles mentioning poverty in Africa, but only five mentioning gross domestic product growth.
Reporters’ attraction to certain kinds of Africa stories has a lot to do with the frames of reference they arrive with. Nineteenth century New York Herald correspondent Henry M. Stanley wrote that he was prepared to find Zanzibar “populated by ignorant blacks, with great thick lips, whose general appearance might be compared to Du Chaillu’s gorillas.”
Since the Biafran War, a cause célèbre in the West, helped give rise in the late 1960s to the new field of human rights, Western reporters have closely tracked issues like traditional female circumcision. In the 1980s, a famine in Ethiopia that, in fact, had as much to do with politics as with drought, set a pattern of stories about “starving Africans” that not only hasn’t been abandoned, but continues to grow: according to a 2004 study done by Steven S. Ross, then a Columbia journalism professor, between 1998 and 2002 the number of stories about famine in Africa tripled.
In Kenya, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s and where I returned to live four years ago, The New York Times description of post-election violence in 2007 as a manifestation of “atavistic” tribalism carried echoes of Stanley and other early Western visitors.
The reason of such negative stereotypes on Africa
But the main reason for the continued dominance of such negative stereotypes, I have come to believe, may well be the influence of Western-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid groups like United Nations agencies.
These organizations understandably tend to focus not on what has been accomplished but on convincing people how much remains to be done. As a practical matter, they also need to attract funding. Together, these pressures create incentives to present as gloomy a picture of Africa as possible in order to keep attention and money flowing, and to enlist journalists in disseminating that picture.
Africans themselves readily concede that there continues to be terrible conflict and human suffering on the continent. But what’s lacking, say media observers like Sunny Bindra, a Kenyan management consultant, is context and breadth of coverage so that outsiders can see the continent whole—its potential and successes along with its very real challenges. “There are famines; they’re not made up,” Bindra says. “There are arrogant leaders. But most of the journalism that’s done doesn’t challenge anyone’s thinking.”
A good dose of Good news from Africa,
Poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The death rate of children under five years of age is dropping, with “clear evidence of accelerating rates of decline,” according to The Lancet.
Perhaps most encouragingly, Africa is “among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions,” according to the McKinsey Quarterly.
Yet US journalism continues to portray a continent of unending horrors. Last June, for example, Time magazine published graphic pictures of a naked woman from Sierra Leone dying in childbirth. Not long after, CNN did a story about two young Kenyan boys whose family is so poor they are forced to work delivering goats to a slaughterhouse for less than a penny per goat.
Reinforcing the sense of economic misery, between May and September 2010 the ten most-read US newspapers and magazines carried 245 articles mentioning poverty in Africa, but only five mentioning gross domestic product growth.
Reporters’ attraction to certain kinds of Africa stories has a lot to do with the frames of reference they arrive with. Nineteenth century New York Herald correspondent Henry M. Stanley wrote that he was prepared to find Zanzibar “populated by ignorant blacks, with great thick lips, whose general appearance might be compared to Du Chaillu’s gorillas.”
Since the Biafran War, a cause célèbre in the West, helped give rise in the late 1960s to the new field of human rights, Western reporters have closely tracked issues like traditional female circumcision. In the 1980s, a famine in Ethiopia that, in fact, had as much to do with politics as with drought, set a pattern of stories about “starving Africans” that not only hasn’t been abandoned, but continues to grow: according to a 2004 study done by Steven S. Ross, then a Columbia journalism professor, between 1998 and 2002 the number of stories about famine in Africa tripled.
In Kenya, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s and where I returned to live four years ago, The New York Times description of post-election violence in 2007 as a manifestation of “atavistic” tribalism carried echoes of Stanley and other early Western visitors.
The reason of such negative stereotypes on Africa
But the main reason for the continued dominance of such negative stereotypes, I have come to believe, may well be the influence of Western-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid groups like United Nations agencies.
These organizations understandably tend to focus not on what has been accomplished but on convincing people how much remains to be done. As a practical matter, they also need to attract funding. Together, these pressures create incentives to present as gloomy a picture of Africa as possible in order to keep attention and money flowing, and to enlist journalists in disseminating that picture.
Africans themselves readily concede that there continues to be terrible conflict and human suffering on the continent. But what’s lacking, say media observers like Sunny Bindra, a Kenyan management consultant, is context and breadth of coverage so that outsiders can see the continent whole—its potential and successes along with its very real challenges. “There are famines; they’re not made up,” Bindra says. “There are arrogant leaders. But most of the journalism that’s done doesn’t challenge anyone’s thinking.”
Foreign Aid Making a Difference in Zambia
You know How I'm always talking about Aid and hating it and then defending it, then hating it, then saying more could've been, then saying its not good for economies..the 'Aid business'.. Well, heres one example of Aid being put to good use, If all aid was put to good use like this, I would be all for it!...
Miyon Kautz, World Vision Zambia
I have been paying taxes my entire adult life. But I never saw those tax dollars put to such good use until three years ago, when I moved to the large, land-locked African country of Zambia. The 12 million people here are beautiful, generous, caring and, tragically, 1.1 million of them are living with HIV. An estimated 600,000 children have lost at least one parent to AIDS.
Zambian families and communities have always cared for those in need -- the sick, the dying, the orphans. It's ingrained in their culture. But over the past few decades, AIDS has challenged the capacity of Zambians to provide this care. There have simply been too few healthy adults to care for so many in need.
That's where my tax dollars stepped in. Under PEPFAR (the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), established by President Bush in 2003, the U.S. Agency for International Development funds a World Vision-led consortium to help people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. I have the privilege of working in that program.
The innate generous spirit of the Zambians has been a catalyst for the success of the program. Some 20,000 volunteer caregivers have been recruited, trained and equipped to care for 300,000 sick and vulnerable children and adults. These caregivers give sacrificially of their time and their meager assets and food to care for the sick... and care for children who are left alone because their parents have died.
These caregivers are not alone. The project is supported not just by the U.S. government, but by the Zambian government as well as private donors in the United States. Corporations and foundations have provided funding, along with mosquito nets so that caregivers can help protect their clients from malaria. Churches and businesses in the U.S. have "Caregiver Kit" builds, filling orange boxes with simple yet vital supplies like cotton balls and soap so the caregivers can do their job. We've even received donations of bicycles, to help the caregivers travel long distances to see their clients.
I wanted to see what it was like to be a caregiver -- so I cycled with Rodney and Mary to visit their clients in a rural area part of Southern Zambia. I thought I was in pretty good shape, but Rodney took off and kept up a strong pace. I jokingly said "Wow, where did you get all that energy?" And he proceeded to tell me how he once was nearly dead. But through his caregiver, he is alive, thriving, able to take care of his children -- and wants to give back to others because of what his caregiver did for him. He was one of many people I've met whose life has been transformed because of this program. Dead to very much alive. Amazing.
The program is working. Before the program started, the HIV prevalence rate was 15.6 percent; recently, that has dropped to 14.3 percent.
Read More
Miyon Kautz, World Vision Zambia
I have been paying taxes my entire adult life. But I never saw those tax dollars put to such good use until three years ago, when I moved to the large, land-locked African country of Zambia. The 12 million people here are beautiful, generous, caring and, tragically, 1.1 million of them are living with HIV. An estimated 600,000 children have lost at least one parent to AIDS.
That's where my tax dollars stepped in. Under PEPFAR (the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), established by President Bush in 2003, the U.S. Agency for International Development funds a World Vision-led consortium to help people infected and affected by HIV and AIDS. I have the privilege of working in that program.
The innate generous spirit of the Zambians has been a catalyst for the success of the program. Some 20,000 volunteer caregivers have been recruited, trained and equipped to care for 300,000 sick and vulnerable children and adults. These caregivers give sacrificially of their time and their meager assets and food to care for the sick... and care for children who are left alone because their parents have died.
These caregivers are not alone. The project is supported not just by the U.S. government, but by the Zambian government as well as private donors in the United States. Corporations and foundations have provided funding, along with mosquito nets so that caregivers can help protect their clients from malaria. Churches and businesses in the U.S. have "Caregiver Kit" builds, filling orange boxes with simple yet vital supplies like cotton balls and soap so the caregivers can do their job. We've even received donations of bicycles, to help the caregivers travel long distances to see their clients.
I wanted to see what it was like to be a caregiver -- so I cycled with Rodney and Mary to visit their clients in a rural area part of Southern Zambia. I thought I was in pretty good shape, but Rodney took off and kept up a strong pace. I jokingly said "Wow, where did you get all that energy?" And he proceeded to tell me how he once was nearly dead. But through his caregiver, he is alive, thriving, able to take care of his children -- and wants to give back to others because of what his caregiver did for him. He was one of many people I've met whose life has been transformed because of this program. Dead to very much alive. Amazing.
The program is working. Before the program started, the HIV prevalence rate was 15.6 percent; recently, that has dropped to 14.3 percent.
Read More
Whats Michelle Been Upto?
Michelle Williams, I've been wondering whats been keeping you busy....
well she's doing Plays now...she talks about her new play on KTLA "What My Husband Doesn't Know." She will be performing at the Pantages Theatre with several productions. Michelle also talked about the Women's Health Forum that will be at the L.A Convention Center.
Watch here
Watch here
Tanzania's Cure All Potion
SO I've seen this New York Article going round and round being shared like crazy,people applauding how its nice to see Tanzania's 'Babu wa Lolliondo' on NY times, I really Didn't know what that was about till I Checked it out.. Blame my curiosity, I just had to see what they said.. To my Amazement.. there was nothing on the article that signifies Praise or howsoever... Infact I dont think its something to be proud of at all... Our Weak belief. loss of hope...that is what we're ridiculed of, from killing Albinos to retired healing pastors with magical potions,to the bad roads and sleeping under trees along the way (??)... No...is there anything else I Missed?
Crowds Come Over Roads and by Helicopters for Tanzanian’s Cure-All Potion
Ambilikile Mwasapile, a 76-year-old retired pastor in rural Tanzania, has been offering a herbal concoction that he bills as a miracle potion that can cure just about any illness. In the past few weeks, tens of thousands of sick people have scrambled for a sip of his homebrewed drink. Some, apparently, have even flown in by helicopter.On Monday, Tanzanian officials said that several dozen elderly and sick people had recently paid the price for joining the throngs.
“They died from the long queues,” said Isidore Shirima, a local official in Arusha, a town popular with tourists about six hours’ drive from the pastor’s village. “We’re not going to stop this, but we want to organize it better.”
Mr. Mwasapile, a former Lutheran preacher, lives in Samunge, a village in the middle of the savannah near the Kenya-Tanzania border. He began administering his miracle potion several months ago, and charges about 30 cents a cup. He says it can cure AIDS, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure — you name it.
According to The Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest newspaper, Tanzanian officials have tested the herbs in the concoction and have verified that it is safe to drink. Mr. Mwasapile even has a Facebook page, listed under “Doctor, Arusha, Tanzania.”
Traditional healers are not considered fringe elements here. Sometimes, their teachings take macabre directions. In Tanzania, so many people believe, for example, that the body parts of albinos carry good luck, that dozens of albino people have been killed by thugs, who then sell their bones, hair and skin for thousands of dollars.
Mr. Mwasapile’s village is remote, with no good roads, and is hard to reach from any sizable town. It can take people from either side of the border days to reach him, with the elderly and sick camping out under trees on the way. Read More here
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