South Africa

Hey guys,
For this week posts, I decided to share with you some information about South Africa since my project is based on that country.
According to Wikipedia:
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of Africa. It is divided into nine provinces and has 2,798 kilometers of coastline.To the north lie the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; while Lesotho is an enclave surrounded by South African territory.South Africa is the 25th largest country in the world by area and the 24th most populous country with over 51 million people.
South Africa is a multi-ethnic nation and has diverse cultures and languages. Eleven official languages are recognised in the constitution. Two of these languages are of European origin: English and Afrikaans, a language which originated mainly from Dutch that is spoken by the majority of white and Coloured South Africans. Though English is commonly used in public and commercial life, it is only the fifth most-spoken home language. All ethnic and language groups have political representation in the country's constitutional democracy comprising a parliamentary republic.
About 80% of the South African population is of black African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, nine of which have official status. South Africa also contains the largest communities of European, Asian, and racially mixed ancestry in Africa. South Africa is ranked as an upper-middle income economy by the World Bank. It has the largest economy in Africa, and the 28th-largest in the world. By purchasing power parity, South Africa has the 5th highest per capita income in Africa. It is considered a newly industrialized country. However, about a quarter of the population is unemployed and lives on less than US $1.25 a day.

Here are some sites of interest you could check out on the internet of if you are thinking of visiting the country one day:
- Kruger National Park
- Table Mountain
- Gold Reef City
- Cradle of Humankind
- Two Oceans Aquarium
- Lion Park
- Johannesburg Zoo
- Blyde River Canyon
- Victoria and Alfred Waterfront

Skin

Skin is a British-South African 2008 biographical film directed by Anthony Fabian, about Sandra Laing, a South African woman born to white parents who was classified as "Coloured" during the apartheid era, due to a genetic case of Atavism.

History of Apartheid in South Africa:
Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times under Dutch and British rule. However, apartheid as an official policy was introduced following the general election of 1948. New legislation classified inhabitants into four racial groups :"native", "white", "colored", and "Asian", Residential areas were segregated, sometimes by means of forced removals. Non-white political representation was completely abolished in 1970, and starting in that year black people were deprived of their citizenship, legally becoming citizens of one of ten tribally based self-governing homelands called bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government segregated education, medical care, beaches, and other public services, and provided black people with services inferior to those of white people.

Summary of the movie:
The year is 1965, and 10 year-old Sandra and her parents, Abraham and Sannie, are white Afrikaaners. They are shopkeepers in a remote area of the Eastern Transvaal and, despite Sandra's mixed-race appearance, have lovingly brought her up as their white little girl. Sandra is sent to a boarding school in the neighbouring town of Piet Retief, where her (white) brother Leon is also studying, but parents and teachers complain that she does not belong. She is examined by State officials, reclassified as coloured, and expelled from the school. Sandra's parents are shocked, but Abraham fights through the courts to have the classification reversed. The story becomes an international scandal and media pressure forces the law to change, so that Sandra becomes officially white again.
By the time she is 17, Sandra realises she is never going to be accepted by the white community. She falls in love with Petrus, a black man and the local vegetable seller, and begins an illicit love affair. Abraham threatens to shoot Petrus and disown Sandra. Sannie is torn between her husband's rage and her daughter's predicament. Sandra elopes with Petrus to Swaziland. Abraham alerts the police, and has them arrested and put in prison for the illegal border crossing. Sandra is released by the local magistrate to return home with her parents, but she instead decides to return to Petrus, prompting her father to disown her.
Now Sandra must live her life as a black woman in South Africa for the first time, with no running water, no sanitation and little income. Although she feels more at home in this community, she desperately misses her parents and yearns for a reunion. She and her mother make attempts to communicate, but are consistently thwarted by Sandra's father. Late in his life, when he is too sick to act on his own, he reconsiders and asks his wife to take him to visit Sandra. Sandra's mother, angry that his newfound guilt had surfaced only after he had for 10 years stubbornly ignored her own emotional torment and longing for a reunion, refuses his request and says that neither of them deserves Sandra's forgiveness.
Eventually, Sandra's marriage to Petrus deteriorates and she leaves him, taking their two children with her, when he becomes physically abusive. She looks for her parents at that time, but finds they had since moved from her childhood home. Not knowing where they are, she continues on with her life, raising her children by herself. When the county's apartheid government comes to an end, there is renewed media interest in her story. Sandra's mother sees Sandra interviewed on television and writes to her to inform her of her father's death two years earlier. The letter provides no return address nor any other clue as to Sannie's whereabouts, but receiving it prompts Sandra to renew her search. Eventually, she finds her mother residing in a nursing home and the two are happily reunited.
An epilogue informs the viewer that Sandra's mother died in 2001, while her two brothers continue to refuse to see her.

This movie is a great way to learn more about what happened in South Africa during the Apartheid era. Hope that you will take the time to watch it and share with others.

Perception of Men by Oprah Winfrey

Hi all
At the beginning of the class, I decided to make this blog about African culture. However, while I was on Facebook yesterday, I came to read these ideas of Oprah on my friend's wall. At that moment, I knew that I had to share it with the world. By doing this, I hope that relationships would be saved, and more importantly, women would know that they are all beautiful in different ways, smart, strong and capable of taking care of themselves.

So, be yourself ladies because anyone who wants you,will love you for who you are with the good and bad not for who he or she wants you to be.

Be ambitious: whatever you want to do, Do It. You want to be a President, create a party, study politics. You want to be an engineer, be it. You want to be a housewife, stay home then. Just be whatever you want to be because there is nothing painful more then regret.

Love yourself more than you love him: It is good to be selfish sometimes.

Learn to forgive but Know your limit: enough is enough.

Have some self esteem: You are better than he thinks.

More importantly, let be women: what is the purpose of being equal to men when we know that we are stronger. Just because they have physically more strength than women or that most of them do not cry does not mean that they are stronger. Being strong is not only physically but also emotionally and mentally. We are for all 3. We are their rock. So, do not let them break you.


Here are some advices to women from Oprah :

If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away.
If he doesn't want you, nothing can make him stay.
Stop making excuses for a man and his behaviour.
Allow your intuition (or spirit) to save you from heartache.
Stop trying to change yourself for a relationship that's not meant to be.

Slower is better.

Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy.

If a relationship ends because the man was not treating you as you deserve then heck no, you can't 'be friends'. A friend wouldn't mistreat a friend.
Don't settle.

If you feel like he is stringing you along, then he probably is
Don't stay because you think 'it will get better'
You'll be mad at yourself a year later for staying when things are not better.
The only person you can control in a relationship is you.

Avoid men who've got a bunch of children by a bunch of different women.

He didn't marry them when he got them pregnant, why would he treat you any differently?

Always have your own set of friends separate from his.
Maintain boundaries in how a guy treats you. If something bothers you, speak up.

Never let a man know everything.* He will use it against you later.

You cannot change a man's behaviour.* Change comes from within.

Don't EVER make him feel he is more important than you are...
Even if he has more education or in a better job.

Do not make him into a quasi-god.
He is a man, nothing more nothing less.
Never let a man define who you are.
Never borrow someone else's man.
A man will only treat you the way you ALLOW him to treat you.

All men are NOT dogs.

You should not be the one doing all the bending...
Compromise is two way street.

You need time to heal between relationships...
There is nothing cute about baggage...
Deal with your issues before pursuing a new relationship

You should never look for someone to COMPLETE you...
A relationship consists of two WHOLE individuals...
Look for someone complimentary...not supplementary.

Dating is fun...even if he doesn't turn out to be Mr. Right.

Make him miss you sometimes...when a man always know where you are, and you're always readily available to him - he takes it for granted

Never move into his mother's house. Never co-sign for a man.

Don't fully commit to a man who doesn't give you everything that you need.*
Keep him in your radar but get to know others.

Scared of being alone is what makes a lot of women stay in relationships that are abusive or hurtful.

You should know that:
You're the best thing that could ever happen to anyone and if a man mistreats you, he'll miss out on a good thing. If he was attracted to you in the 1st place, just know that he's not the only one.

They're all watching you, so you have a lot of choices.
Make the right one.

Ladies take care of your own hearts....

Hotel Rwanda

Ten years ago some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind took place in the country of Rwanda--and in an era of high-speed communication and round the clock news, the events went almost unnoticed by the rest of the world. In only three months, one million people were brutally murdered. In the face of these unspeakable actions, inspired by his love for his family, an ordinary man summons extraordinary courage to save the lives of over a thousand helpless refugees, by granting them shelter in the hotel he manages. Hotel Rwanda is a movie that shows the differences between the ethnics groups in Africa and how Africans feel about these differences.

Amadou Hampathe Bah

Amadou Hampâté Bah was a Malian writer and ethnologist. He was born to an aristocratic Fula family in Bandiagara, the largest city in Dogon territory and the capital of the precolonial Masina Empire. After his father's death, he was adopted by his mother's second husband, Tidjani Amadou Ali Thiam of the Toucouleur ethnic group. He first attended the Qur'an school run by Tierno Bokar, a dignitary of the Tijaniyyah brotherhood, then transferred to a French school at Bandiagara, then to one at Djenné. In 1915, he ran away from school and rejoined his mother at Kati, where he resumed his studies.

In 1921, he turned down entry into the école normale in Gorée. As a punishment, the governor appointed him to Ouagadougou with the role he later described as that of "an essentially precarious and revocable temporary writer". From 1922 to 1932, he filled several posts in the colonial administration in Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso and from 1932 to 1942 in Bamako. In 1933, he took a six month leave to visit Tierno Bokar, his spiritual leader.(see also:Sufi studies)

In 1942, he was appointed to the Institut Français d’Afrique Noire (IFAN, French Institute of Black Africa) in Dakar thanks to the benevolence of Théodore Monod, its director. At IFAN, he made ethnological surveys and collected traditions. 

For 15 years he devoted himself to research, which would later lead to the publication of his work L'Empire peul de Macina (The Fula Empire of Macina). In 1951, he obtained a UNESCO grant, allowing him to travel to Paris and meet with intellectuals from Africanist circles, notably Marcel Griaule. With Mali's independence in 1960, Bâ founded the Institute of Human Sciences in Bamako, and represented his country at the UNESCO general conferences. In 1962, he was elected to UNESCO's executive council, and in 1966 he helped establish a unified system for the

 transcription of African languages.

www.worldwisdom.com/public/authors/Amadou-Hampate-Ba.aspx

African Poem

Sweet mom

It began with a kiss of love
graduated to nine months of
mixed feelings which ended
in hours of horrible pains and
regrets.
In the sight of your babe came a
sincere smile of success.
You didn't know how strong you
were Mom.
No shock absorber could have been better.
You stayed strong like a giant Iroko tree
in the midst of turbulent winds of life
You are my hero mama.
You patiently carried on the tedious
job of nursing regardless of burdens
and pains,
Denied yourself comfort to make me happy.
Your baby I will always be.
Mummy you are sweet, tender
and loving.
You are indeed a blissful bridge to the paradise
I know.
Sweet mom.
© 1997, Chidi A. Okoye

African Proverbs

One thing I respect deeply about Africa is the treasure of wisdom our ancestors have handed down to us. While some of our leaders may have forgotten them, the rest of us don’t need to. From prudent sayings on wisdom itself, to judicious encouragements, warnings and even quirky advice on learning, patience, unity, wealth, poverty, community, family, love and marriage, these quotes will inspire you to be the best you can possibly be.

Wisdom is wealth. ~ Swahili
Wisdom is like a baobab tree; no one individual can embrace it. ~ Akan proverb
The fool speaks, the wise man listens. ~ Ethiopian proverb
Knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand. ~ Guinean proverb
If you are filled with pride, then you will have no room for wisdom. ~ African proverb
Nobody is born wise. ~ African proverb
A leader who does not take advice is not a leader. ~ Kenyan proverb

Unity is strength, division is weakness. ~ Swahili proverb
It takes a village to raise a child. ~ African proverb
Cross the river in a crowd and the crocodile won’t eat you. ~ African proverb
Where there are many, nothing goes wrong. ~ Swahili proverb
If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. ~ African proverb

It’s much easier to fall in love than to stay in love. ~ African proverb
If you are ugly you must either learn to dance or make love. ~ Zimbabwean Proverb
A happy man marries the girl he loves, but a happier man loves the girl he marries. ~ African proverb
If you marry a monkey for his wealth, the money goes and the monkey remains as is. ~ Egyptian proverb
Love never gets lost it’s only kept. ~ African proverb
Love has to be shown by deeds not words. ~ Swahili proverb

One who plants grapes by the road side, and one who marries a pretty woman, share the same problem. ~Ethiopian Proverb
Ugliness with a good character is better than beauty. ~Nigerian proverb
If there is character, ugliness becomes beauty; if there is none, beauty becomes ugliness. ~Nigerian Proverb
You are beautiful, but learn to work, for you cannot eat your beauty. ~Congolese Proverb
The one who loves an unsightly person is the one who makes him beautiful. ~Ganda Proverb
Having beauty doesn’t mean understanding the perseverance of marriage. ~African Proverb
A beautiful thing is never perfect. ~Egyptian Proverb
Judge not your beauty by the number of people who look at you, but rather by the number of people who smile at you. ~African Proverb