What some of the people I have spoken with are scared of is that this might yet become a major political issue, leading, for instance to the creation of an acceptable right wing party. (There are the crazies, like NPD, the neo-Nazi party, but nobody really takes them seriously.) The fear is that if Ms Merkel is unable to contain the discussions surrounding immigration within her party, it is possible that some members might decide to go with the general sentiment of anti-immigration and form a political party that retains the basic economic policies of the right of centre CDU, but adds to it anti-immigration rhetorics and policies. A party like that, I am afraid, will be appealing to certain segments of the German middle-class.

For a further discussion/problematisation of the concept see ‘Beyond “Identity”‘, by Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper. Ungated pdf version available here.

A friend sent me this story today about a German journalist who goes undercover to discover life as a black person in Germany. Still trying to decide whether I should watch the movie he made from the experience. Wondering why I can’t decide? Read the Der Spiegel article for yourself.

The rapid development of global communications today contains within its movement a far-reaching transformation of world society. ‘Anthropology’ in some form is one of the intellectual traditions best suited to make sense of it. The academic seclusion of the discipline, its passive acquiescence to bureaucracy, is the chief obstacle preventing us from grasping this historical opportunity. We cling to our revolutionary commitment to joining the people, but have forgotten what it was for or what else is needed, if we are to succeed in helping to build a universal society. The internet is a wonderful chance to open up the flow of knowledge and information. Rather than obsessing over how we can control access to what we write, which means cutting off the mass of humanity almost completely from our efforts, we need to figure out new interactive forms of engagement that span the globe and to make the results of our work available to everyone. Ever since the internet went public and the World Wide Web was invented, I have made online self-publishing and interaction the core of my anthropological practice. And recently I have stumbled into what may turn out to be the most powerful vehicle for this project yet: the Open Anthropology Cooperative.

It matters less that an academic guild should retain its monopoly of access to knowledge than that ‘anthropology’ should be taken up by a broad intellectual coalition for whom the realization of a new human universal – a world society fit for humanity as a whole — is a matter of urgent personal concern. Read in full.

The Other Person aka TOP: So, what exactly are you studying?
Me: Anthropology.
TOP: Like Anthology of poems? (Part of the legacy of British rule is that we have to study English poems that are compiled in anthologies in secondary schools.)
Me: No.
TOP: Oh, sorry, that is different from anthropology. So, what exactly is anthropology?
Me: Ehm… It is the study of cultures and societies.
TOP: So you are studying the German culture and society?
Me: No, I am not. I will actually be coming back to Nigeria in some months to do the fieldwork for my PhD.
TOP: If your PhD is about Nigeria what are you doing in Germany?

One of the most notable things about Buchenwald is its relative seclusion. Although it is right in the vicinity of Weimar, the native home of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, it still manages to remain a part of nowhere. Another notable thing is that the place manages to give off the feeling that whatever was done there could be done with impunity, partly because the doer has(d) an absolute right to do so, which in turn could be because nobody would question it. The worst that could happen would be to kill loads of individuals whose lives were utterly in ones hands, and perhaps to peal off their skins and either make lampshades of them or, if they are tattooed, hang the skins on walls as decorations. Or perhaps cut off their heads and shrink them, and exchange their body parts – including the shrunken heads – as gifts with fellow perpetrators.

A Concentration Camp
The Buchenwald Concentration Camp was built in 1937 by the German Nazi regime, and during the course of its existence as a concentration camp – between 1937 and 1945 – prisoners who did not belong to the National Socialist idea of the ‘community of people’ were sent there. During those years, more than 250,000 political opponents of the Nazi regime, criminals, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Sinti, Roma, and homosexuals were sent from nearly every country of Europe to Buchenwald and its subcamps to be imprisoned in the concentration camp. 56,000 of them died there. A trip into the camp quickly turns those figures into individuals, not simply by the fact of their death – one already knew that before visiting the camp – or even their life. They came alive through the scanty knowledge that one got of their life in the camp, and more powerfully, by the knowledge of the ways they died and what became of their bodies. Many dropped dead standing in line for the early morning and evening roll-calls; many starved to death; many were hanged to death; many were shot by their guards at the base of the skull, once the guards discovered that it was a very efficient way of bringing people to their death; and many still died from experiments with all kinds viruses in a secluded part of the camp.

Evil lives among us
Then, slowly, in the midst of learning about this, a thought, nagging and worrying, start forming in ones mind. One starts wondering who the people were who could have done this to fellow human beings. And then it dawns on one that it is very convenient to think of them as monsters, while in fact they were humans like us. That is a very scary thought. They were human beings like us. Although they were heavily indoctrinated to believe that those they held in the camp and systematically murdered were enemies, I still could not get my mind around it that they got to the point of killing off their fellow human beings the way they did. I wonder whether those guards could in any way have thought that they were in danger of being killed by the people they held in their cells, and justified killing them in those terms.

Or was it simply that they killed because there is something in us that could easily turn us into machines that could kill like those people? What did they become after doing these things? But the more one thinks of it the more one realises that they were people like us, human beings who grew up with other human beings and not on special facilities for would-be concentration camp guards. They had families and friends. Just as I was reeling under these thoughts one of my friends pointed it to me that there were some who refused to join the Nazi, and that many of them in fact ended up as inmates in concentration camps. Maybe one should take some solace in the courage of those individuals.

We still have not learnt
Immediately I twittered that I was at the camp, Akin replied that we still have not learnt, citing the cases of Bosnia, Rwanda and Dafur. How many more people are going to die before we learn?

If you ever have the time you can explore more from him at his website – www.wouterhamel.com

When I got off I walked towards the Charing Cross station, and then crossed over to Trafalger square. I made a mental note to visit the National Gallery sometime later. At that point my friend called me to come over to Russel Square. I decided to walk it. I turned up from Trafalgar square towards Charring Cross Road, to Tottenham Court Road, and then I crossed to New Oxford Street. From there to the British Museum. Russel Square was not so far from the museum.

Some pictures are below, before someone says I am boring.

Big Ben at a little past 6 in the evening

Still Ben

In all its nightly glory

The London Eye

From up the eye

Higher up

Even higher up

A bit of the capsule that took us up

Now, installing an OS on a netbook that does not have any optical disc drive wasn’t exactly a piece of cake. On the Ubuntu website, I checked to see whether it was possible to install Linux straight from the hard drive, and I got a link with instructions on how to do that. I downloaded a .iso file of the Ubuntu software on the netbook, and I proceeded to unpack it with UNetbootin. Well, I managed to run the live version, and then I decided to install it. I started the installation and ran into problems when it asked whether I wanted to partition the HDD. It was a pretty new computer, and I had absolutely no files saved on it, so I could afford to be a bit reckless. I accepted that the hard disc be partitioned, but it ran into problem midway. It said I would have to restart the computer in order to continue. I did, but I got an error message that said that no operating system was found. You probably should understand that this happened to a guy who does not know what BIOS means, and whose dalliance with techy stuffs does not go beyond that of a good user. I was a bit alarmed, but I reminded mysel that I had the recovery CD for Windows, and that if things got too bad I would get a removable drive and reinstall it.

But then
I decided that since things had come to that, maybe it might not be a bad idea to actually see whether I could still install Linux anyway, since it didn’t seem like I had much to lose anymore. I decided to go over to the friend of everyone who had ever been in want of knowledge, but who has internet connection: good old Google. I started googling to find out how I could install from a USB stick, and I found that I would first have to change the boot sequence of the netbook from the BIOS settings. I had no idea how to do that, but someone already wrote something about that on their website so I pressed F2 and I was able to get into the settings and changed the sequence. The next thing was to do turn my USB stick into something that I could install from. In other words, I had to create a bootable USB stick.

I guess things might have been a bit easier if it were not that most of the websites that had information assumed a measure of familiarity with computers. I rambled around a bit until I discovered that what I needed to do to be able to create a bootable stick was to install syslinux on the stick. I then proceeded to fool around a bit more, before I found that I had to install it on the stick from DOS. I had never used DOS, save for formatting floppy discs. You see, back in Uni I had a room mate who was a computer science student – actually, he graduated with a first class – and I learnt most of the things I knew about how to use a PC from him. Well, I saw him formatting a floppy disc once with DOS so I normally formatted with it. I also still remembered how to get into DOS from XP – type cmd into run. But then, I still needed to learn DOS commands, so I googled for that too. I got a DOS command tutorial online, learnt the basics. I then installed syslinux on the USB stick from DOS, before unpacking the Ubuntu .iso file onto it with UNetbootin. Actually, all the info is here, but for a person who is not so familiar with computer, it could still be daunting.

It felt so good when I plugged in the USB stick, and the netbook booted from it. I installed Ubuntu and started exploring the OS. I can proudly say that I am now moderately familiar with the use of the Terminal in Ubuntu, up to the point that I can actually create folders and move files around using it. I know that knowing these things is not much in itself, and that I could continue using computers without actually learning to use DOS, or to run commands on Linux, but it is one of those things that make you feel great once you get it right. I got it right, and I still feel great about it.  After I described this to a geek friend, he told me that I better than Google for these possibilities. So, I offer my thanks to the guys at Google for creating and maintaining a great search engine.

Getting used to it
I will be going on a trip soon, and I am thinking of taking the netbook instead of the laptop. The first thing I had to get over is the fact that there is no iTunes for Linux. But there are great tools for managing iPod on Ubuntu. I am currently trying out gtkpod. I was also able to fix a problem that I had with using wireless lan on the netbook, because Ubuntu refused to recognise the W-LAN card. I fixed this by installing a windows wireless driver (learnt how to do this, too, by googling). The main problem now is that I cannot use a Sony digital recorder on it. Sony has made it so that the programme that comes with the digital recorder can work only on Windows, not even on Mac.

This, I hope, is the beginning of a lasting relationship with Linux.

Then sometime later, we heard that Orlando had become a born-again christian. It was not too long after Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey became a born-again. Orlando did a song that still makes me laugh out loud each time I remember it…..

I probably should add that I grew up in the town where Orlando spent a large part of his time, not too far away from his hometown, and I was quite familiar with the sight of his Peugeot 505. He even paid for palm wine for some of my friends at some point.

My friend sent me an email a couple of weeks ago to tell me that Dr Orlando Owoh was dead. I really loved that guy, really. He was a great musician. I am not going to make any biography. The current edition of The Guardian has a pretty nice editorial on him, but it probably cannot even top the story already done by the same newspaper in 2006.

Those who are not familiar with his music can have a feel of it here.

Here is the current editorial
Here is the old story, from Molara Woods’ old blog.