Black books, African heritage books, mind/body/spirit, The Ancestral Energies Blog by Zhana, author of Success Strategies for Black People and Black Success Stories. African diasporic healing, health and wellness, and success.
It breaks my heart to read of conflicts occurring in African countries such as Burkina Faso, DRC, Nigeria and Sudan, and others, and those among people of African heritage, including in Yemen and Haiti. Plus the conflicts we hear about every day, such as those in Gaza and Uraine. Vast numbers of people are being displaced as a result.
Although aid has a significant role to play, my focus is on preventing and resolving conflicts.
We need to find solutions, and Nonviolent Communication (NVC) can be part of the solution.
NVC is based on empathy.
Please help me to spread the word, helping more people to learn and apply NVC skills to prevent and resolve global conflicts. Please submit a blog post to the Blogging Carnival for Nonviolence 2024.
Conflict often begins in the home, and children who experience violence in the home are more likely to get involved with conflict outside the home. Go here to download my NVC Worksheet for Parents.
What are your thoughts about preventing and resolving global conflicts? Please comment below and please share this with your networks. Thanks.
Mercy Makinde was married in Nigeria at 17 to a man older than her own
father. She eventually managed to escape from her abusive marriage. Mercy then founded her charity, The Amazing Amazon Initiative, which helps other women in similar situations to build new lives.
People
all over the world enjoyed the Black Panther movie. The film
broke loads of box office records – and so it should have. As Lupita Nyong'o states, Black Panther was one of the highest-grossing films of all time. I
personally have seen it three times – so far.
Black Panther featured the Dora Milaje – an army of women warriors whose responsibility it was
to protect the King – the Black Panther.
These
women were amazing – beautiful, fierce, brave – they showed
incredible courage and skill. Lupita Nyong'os character was not a member of the Dora Milaje - she played a spy who was also fierce and beautiful, and
who also displayed some very impressive fighting. In the end, she put
on the Dora Milaje armour and fought the battle for control of Wakanda.
Last night, Lupita presented a programme on Channel 4 as part of their Black history season. She discovered actual, historical African
warrior women who had the job of protecting the King. It is online for the next 30 days, so I urge you to watch it if you have not done so already, or even if you have.
Black
History Walks gave a presentation last year about the
historical basis of the Black Panther movie, in which Brother T. gave several examples of warrior
women in Africa, who protected their monarchs.
In
Dahomey, now known as Benin, Lupita discovered an historical army made up of thousands of women warriors - the Agoji. The Agoji were press-ganged into serving, went through rigorous training and were required to obey the King. They fought the European powers, particularly the French, who had invaded and occupied the area (and many other territories around the African continent). Although the knowledge about the existence of this female army is inspiring, we learned that they were also required by the King to invade other territories, notably the Yoruba territory in what is now Nigeria. They abducted many men and women, and some of the women were enslaved in Dahomey. Both men and women were also sold into Transatlantic slavery under the orders of the Kings. Thus, it is also a shameful history. Again, watch it while it is still available online.
Please
note, I DO NOT
distinguish between Black history and African history, but I have
listed them separately because I know that this distinction matters
to some people.
When
we learn about what has happened, what has been done to people, on
the African Continent and in the Diaspora, it is clear that it is all
the same story. We are one people.
Benin bronze
Please share these with your networks, and particularly with parents,
children and young people, and teachers and schools. Please leave your
comments on the individual posts.
And remember, EVERY MONTH IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH/AFRICAN HERITAGE MONTH.
African History: Invasion 1897
- this links to some of my other African history blogs including
blogs about Kenya, Namibia and the Congo..
You
have probably heard of the Benin bronzes - artefacts which were stolen
from Africa and added to collections around the world. Some of the
Benin bronzes are on display in the British Museum.
The Benin bronzes contain the record of a people and its history and culture.
Invasion 1897 portrays the invasion and colonisation of Benin in West Africa in 1897. Benin was known for being a very advanced civilisation with its own unique culture. It is now part of Nigeria. Click here to read my blog post. Please leave a comment on my blog, and please share this with your networks. Thanks.
The
Sowetan newspaper reports Botswanan women routinely jump the border
with South Africa in order to collect water for their families. You
may be able to access it here at The Sowetan e-edition:
http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx
This
is an artificial border first erected in 1933, which divided a
community called Mabule in Botswana . Now half of Mabule is in
South Africa, but the other half is still in Botswana. And they need
water. They cross the barbed wire border every day to get it.
As
you may know, during the European colonisation of Africa, many
artificial borders were set up and they often divided communities.
There are people in Mabule in Botswana who are now
living in a different country from their relatives – all because of
an artificial border.
Similar
things have happened all over Africa. And this is still affecting
people to this day.
Think
about the devastation that is being wrought by Boko Haram in Northern
Nigeria and reflect on how much of this can be traced to the fact
that areas which are now banded together nationally as Nigeria were
once separate territories, with their own poitical and economic
systems. These existing systems were either eroded or destroyed in
order to facilitiate the agendas of the European colonisers. For
more about this, check out my blog post: Invasion 1897.
Black History Studies recently screened the documentary "Sweet Crude", about the Niger Delta.
I am going to say up front that I was upset by this film, although I was aware of the situation in the Niger Delta, having seen a film produced by the BBC a few years ago which covered much of the same ground.
It is vitally important that Black History Studies continue to screen these kinds of films and provide us with the information we need about the experience of African people all over the world.
It is equally important that we remember we can transform the situation. More about this later.
Oil was discovered in the Niger Delta in 1956. Once international oil giants Shell and Chevron moved in, they devastated the region, with the complicity of successive Nigerian military regimes. For more about modern Nigerian history, see Naij: A Film History of Nigeria.
The natural life expectancy in the Niger Delta is in the sixties; today, the life expectancy is 40. Forty. Four-zero.
During the enslavement period, the Niger Delta was known as the "slave coast". Many thousands of people were taken down the river in chains, to be sold in the West.
There is a long history of resistance in the region.
Today, because of the constant illegal burning of natural gas released by the oil drilling, toxic chemicals are released which pollute the air and the water and destroy the wildlife. The rain that falls in the Niger Delta is toxic enough to destroy metal roofs.
There are few, if any, schools in the Niger Delta. The Nigerian government and the oil companies want to drive the locals off their ancestral lands.
You can view the trailer below.
One of the most disturbing episodes covered by Sweet Crude was when Director Sandy Cioffi, having cultivated a relationship with MEND (The Movement to Emancipate the Niger Delta), arranged for a member of MEND to be interviewed on Nightline.
MEND wanted the international media to cover the situation. A member of MEND courageously agreed to be interviewed on camera, but the interviewer repeatedly asked him if he was a terrorist and if M\END were holding hostages. When the MEND member answered "no", the interviewer appeared bored and looked at his watch, and when the MEND spokesman began to explain the situation, the interview was terminated.
The subject was broadcast with a screaming headline about "Africa's New Terror Crisis" and references to a threatened increase to the price of oil for Americans.
Although we know the media often manipulate stories, and manipulate us, it was still shocking to watch this.
The Joint Task Force (JTF), a branch of the Nigerian military, maintain a presence in the region with brutal violence. The U.S. government under George W. Bush agreed to supply intelligence about activists in the region to the Nigerian government. Thus, in a way, we are all complicit in this scenario.
The author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned and killed because of his involvement in the Niger Delta protests.
Sweet Crude is heartbreaking. As I said above, it is vital that we remember that we can transform the situation. We have amazing energy inside of us and we can use it to transform situations like these. For more about this, see Your Inner Wisdom. Thank you once again to Black History Studies for screening Sweet Crude. For more information and to buy a copy on DVD, visit Sweet Crude.
I saw this documentary on the BBC last week. "Breaking into Britain" tracks people travelling into Britain from two parts of the world: Afghanistan and Nigeria.
They are people who would not be able to enter the UK legally, so they have to find various means, dealing with shady people, journeying through war zones, and doing whatever they can to get here.
The documentary depicted the ordeal they go through.
People leaving Afghanistan may have to pay a people smuggler several thousand pounds to get them here. The journalist, himself from an Afghan background, met fellow Afghans everywhere he went. They often have to travel via Iran and Turkey, sometimes taking serious risks. Some have no money and no food. Many, having made it into Europe, find themselves stranded in Athens, sleeping rough and relying on charities to feed them and their children.
I guess they did not realise that Greece was in economic meltdown.
Those coming from Nigeria may have started their journeys anywhere on the continent. They travel through the desert to get to Morocco, where they try to get into Italy.
The documentary did not really explain or depict the reasons why these people are so desperate to get into Britain. It mentioned that Afghanistan has been at war for over 30 years, so life is difficult there. And seeing the risks they take shows us how determined they are to get into Britain.
People smugglers often demand sex from the women relying on them to help them get into Europe. A woman from the Congo described how she was raped at knife-point by a smuggler in the middle of the desert.
African people often travel via Niger. The journey through the Sahara is so dangerous that they have to travel in armed convoys.
Again, the documentary did not mention why Niger is so dangerous, although, coming from Congo, the woman, like many others, is seeking to escape an area of conflict.
People travel via overcrowded buses, lorries and boats; climb over fences, and cling to the bottom of lorries. They dodge the authorities and meet with hostility from from locals.
They are looking to find a better life for themselves and their children.
Some of them, however, once reality strikes, just wish they had enough money to go home.
People from Africa often talk about the corruption in their countries, the corrupt governments. But they rarely mention the fact that it was European intervention that allowed corrupt governments to rise and flourish.
People from the Diaspora talk about slavery and the effects of Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. But we are often unaware of what happened in Africa.
How many people know that the first German death camp was built in Namibia in 1905?
Or that the British in Kenya slaughtered thousands of people, stole their land, and relegated the remaining Kenyans to menial jobs? Or that Teddy Roosevelt said that the same people who did well in the old West would do well in Kenya?
How many people know that people in Nigeria were enslaved and forced to work for the British armed forces during the Second World War?
