Story is here.

My first reaction: That can’t be possible! Who gave Kenya the right to import more used cars than Nigeria (well, actually Benin)?

On second thought: Oh yea… Japan and Kenya drive on the left.

The theme of the Canadian Association of African Studies conference that will hold between May 4 and May 7 reads:

Striving for community is at the heart of ubuntu, the African philosophy that stresses mutual obligations and responsibility. From far-flung kinship networks, artisan guilds and women’s informal associations to regional or pan-African political movements, Africans across the ages have looked to communities to give meaning to their lives and to resolve conflict or find protection. Community is also close to the heart of Africanist scholars and activists outside of Africa who seek to support each other and to express solidarity with African colleagues. Yet dysfunctional communities such as gangs, cliques, and tribalist groups have been a bane to efforts to develop and democratize. New media are rapidly changing the ways that communities cohere and the ways that scholars and activists relate and research them.

This is wrong on so many levels that I do not even know where to begin to write about it. Do I start by asking when Africa ? all 53 countries of it ? adopted Ubuntu as their philosophy, or by asking whose paternalistic point of view this is? Do I ask what the writer means by tribes? Or do I simply ignore that and ask what they mean by the sentence ?Yet dysfunctional communities such as gangs, cliques, and tribalist groups have been a bane to efforts to develop and democratize?? This statement in itself is full of so many presumptions ? for instance about development and democracy ? that to begin to unpack it would require an entire essay.

One would think that an association of people who study Africa(ns) would at least be a lot more sensitive than this, if not rid of these kinds of attitude. The sting becomes even more biting when one imagines that the writer could be advising some government agencies or development organizations. Is anyone then surprised that Africa is a country, that Africans live on trees, and that they are dying of starvation and/or AIDS?

The only consolation at this moment is that there is currently an on-going discussion on the listserv of the association.

last night we were driving to a restaurant when my friend who was driving realised, almost too late, that he was supposed to turn left not right. he had to hurry over to the lane that led left. he smiled and said that since he had a numbe rplate from a small city and not berlin (this was in berlin) he would be described as a person from a small town and excused. switching lanes that way is definitely not beyond those villagers.

flashback to me and my aunt driving in lagos, nigeria. the car has a lagos number plate, and whenever any of the public bus drivers tries to get ahead of her in a crawling traffic she yells at them to draw their attention to the numberplate of her car. they should know better than to try to get ahead of her; can’t they see that she is a lagosian? of course, her reaction only emphasises – at least to my mind – that she is not a lagosian, or at least that she had been using cars that did not have lagos number plates. and whenever i was in the car with my mother she would warn the driver to take it easy since the car does not have a lagos number and so the drivers would think it nothing to harass those in the car.

thinking about these leads be to wonder how we attach meaning to things. when we see a car that is from a particular part of the country it conjures images of our stereotypes of that place and then we watch to see the confirmations of those stereotypes. and even when we don’t watch for confirmations we are prepared to excuse their behaviour because of that/those sign(s). or we are prepared to cheat or bully them because of those signs. the same signs could take on different meanings at different points. dealing with number plates could be as harmless as it was last night, or as dangerous as to be markers for acts of violence. imagine a crisis in which people from a particular part of the country are targets. then imagine that someone drives over in the car that is marked as being from that part of the country. i don’t think i need to complete that picture.

of signs and actor-network-theory
so, while we imbue signs with meaning signs are things that sometimes go on to live a life all their own and in turn influence us. we love to emphasise the control of humans over things, and when we act based on impetus from things we quickly run ahead of ourselves to assert that we are not reacting to those things themselves but to the thoughts and imageries that humans have laid in them – to the social that has been put in them. but i wonder whether we realise that without that initial thing that sparks off a reaction we would not act or react or even think the way we did. we enjoy the tyranny of humans, who am i to think that we would be willing to give it up? that is the hardest thing to swallow in actor-network-theory.

I saw an advert by the British Army: In the Army you start with 16k. Notice the word start?

And I thought to myself, Someone finally got rid of the idea of appealing to nationalistic ideals?

The UK – Tiny cities that somehow promise you that they would get bigger for you once you get used to them, or once you grow to love them.

The US – Large cities that promise that the huge impersonal cities will narrow down to become smaller and more personal for you.

In other words, the cities in one get larger while in the other, they get smaller. Perhaps this has something to do with the roads?

I should first of all say Happy New Year. I wish you all a great 2009.

This year, I have to get into my dissertation, so much into it that I would only have a few loose ends to tie by the end of the year. I know, it is going to be hard, but no one said it was going to be easy when I signed up for a doctoral programme. No, it does not mean that I will not be blogging, actually, I want to blog much more than I did last year. I have found that blogging offers a good way of clarifying my thoughts and dealing with issues I probably would not deal with if I did not blog. Yea, I live in real life, and though my dissertation is not entirely theoretical, I would not exactly describe it as real life either. So, blogging is going to offer a balance of sorts in my life. To show that I mean what I am talking about, I will let you into a secret that a friend and I have been working on. It is a blog review project, and most of you will be contacted soon to take part in the project. It is collaborative, it is interesting, it is informative, and it will draw a lot of people together. That is the much I can say without getting permission. It is something to look forward to.

Oz recently tagged me on Why I Blog About Africa.

Because I am African
I blog about Africa because I am African, because I have lived in Africa most of my life, because most of my family live in Africa, and because there is no other place that has contributed to my formation as much as Africa – at least so far. It is only logical that if I want to blog about a place – or collection of places – and I want to restrict myself to issues that I understand, I would have to blog about Africa. I also know much more about Africa because my research largely concerns two African countries.

Because I get angry…
I suppose I could write something very poetic, something about how much I love the continent, about how there is so much potential, about how the continent throbs with so much energy. But the reasons are more down to earth: I blog about Africa because I get disgusted by actions of leaders of African countries, and by assumptions and assertions about African countries by both Africans and non-Africans.

I tag Akin, Szavanna, and Akinlabi.

See this presentation on CNN. When we think of the Niger-Delta region and the movements we should remember that the region is one of the most environmentally degraded areas in the world, that this degradation happened in the recent past, and that it is still ongoing. We should not lose sight of that when we condemn the movements. Don’t get me wrong, this is not to show my support for the kidnapping of oil workers and their families, it is to provoke you to think about how life might be living under the conditions. Empathy has a serious role to play in understanding, and so proffering solutions to, the situation in Niger-Delta region.