Global Voices » Blogger Profiles

Kenya: Mark Kaigwa to Global Voices: “The East is Coming to Africa.”

Suzanne Lehn — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:57:07 +0000

Mark Kaigwa is a Kenyan blogger and new media consultant based in Nairobi, whose work is to “help international companies and African brands to connect with each other to develop creativity”. He is also a former film maker and was a judge at the 2012 Kenyan Bloggers Awards that took place on May 5.

His session at the recently concluded re:publica conference, “Silicon Savanna, how African technologies are changing the world”, was dedicated to illustrating the shift in Africa's image - a shift from the clichés of crisis, war, or even wonders of nature, to an Africa that is showing the world a way to foster development in a competitive environment, specifically through the use of mobile technologies.

Global Voices caught up with Mark at the re:publica to better understand his hopes and dreams about Africa's digital future.

Mark Kaigwa. Photo by Suzanne Lehn

Global Voices Online (GV): When and how did you get into blogging?

Mark Kaigwa (MK): I started blogging in 2007 – 2008, first with a personal blog. I wanted to express myself so that someone in the world would listen and hear.

Now I run three blogs : my personal blog mark.co.ke - where I give my personal views about creativity in African technology, afrinnovator.com - with focus on technology, start-ups, who is bringing money and from where and africandigitalart.com - about animation, illustration, graphic design, in one word, all about the combination of art and technology. It features, for instance, artists giving responses to the North African uprisings.

GV: Do you have any links/connections with French-speaking African countries?

MK: I have personal business connections through the Internet, yes, but I have yet to travel to a francophone African country. I am trying to get inputs from francophone as well as lusophone countries, but not because they belong to the non-English sphere (editor's note: The notion of language-based sphere appears pretty much irrelevant to Mark). To give you an example, Angola is interesting to me as a country regardless of the fact that it is part of the lusophone sphere.

GV: The world went through a period in which low-cost labor was the most sought after commodity. Then recently it was low-cost natural resources. In your opinion, is it now a period in which low-cost technologies will be the most sought after?

MK: The 1990's were the decade of China's boom, the 2010's are India's and the 2020's will be Africa's. The West was going to the East, now the East is coming to Africa.

The east has a smart strategy. It brought to Africa what it learned and it does not consider Africa as one entity. On the contrary, eastern countries have understood that Africa is composed of 56 countries. They build the infrastructure in exchange for the natural resources that they are of course in need of. Technology is last on their agenda.

GV: It has been said that Africa's real problems are transport and the banking systems. What is your opinion?

MK: Those problems indeed exist but these are not the only ones.

The African challenges are the infrastructure and the economic climate for doing business, but we as Africans are in the process of solving them; and as a prominent economist of the World Bank noted, Kenya's debt-to-GDP ratio amounts to about 45%, which would make many European countries very envious !

The true size of Africa, an infographic presented by Mark at the conference (CC License. No Rights Reserved, public domain)

GV: So how will the shift of economic power work in favor of Africa?

MK: They know that Africa will compete with them. China's competitive advantages - economies of scale, low costs - are going to shrink, and might even cancel out in the next 10 or 20 years, along with the development there of the middle classes, the rise of wages and consumption. China's low-cost advantages will then probably go to Africa. Once the infrastructure is up to par, Africa will be able to be competitive with the East – provided the political leadership holds its end of the bargain.

At the re:publica 2012. Photo by Suzanne Lehn

GV: Regarding African breakthroughs in technology that came about after the well-known Ushaidi, you mentioned the following in your session - SwiftRiver, CrowdMap, Kopo Kopo, iCow, M-Pedigree, MXIT. However, these are mostly operating on mobile phones. Is technology in Africa over-hyped ?

MK: What we have now is that for the first time, Africa has a way to influence the world. Political leadership permitting, technology is getting some serious attention. Furthermore, the Kenyan government is acknowledging that opening its data will result in better accountability and leadership, and that this is good for their political legacy.

I don't deny there's hype, but it's a good hype and I prefer it to the former one-sided vision of Africa.

GV: A meaningful fact for conclusion?

MK: All of East Africa started to learn Chinese – starting, not from English, but from Swahili.

The interview was conducted by Global voices author Suzanne Lehn. The photos of Mark Kaigwa used in this post were taken by her.

Best of the Blogs 2012: Winners Announced

Leila Nachawati Rego — Sat, 05 May 2012 08:53:23 +0000

Image from The BOBs website

After a month of voting and jury discussions, the awards for this year's Best of the Blogs - the BOBs - have been decided. This annual event held by the Deutsche Welle Media Group aims to award bloggers who contribute to their communities and promote freedom of expression.

In addition to User Prizes (selected by popular vote), a jury of bloggers, media experts and activists have curated the best blogs, campaigns and media projects in six multilingual categories.

Best Blog

Iranian journalist Arash Sigarchi (jury winner and user winner) and the Lebanese author of Mowaten Jou3an (user winner) are this year's “Best Blog” winners. Sigarchi, currently based in Washington, is the author of Window of Anguish [ar], where he writes about social and political issues in his homeland. While in Iran, he was arrested several times for the content he published on his blog and was eventually sentenced to 14 years in prison. The unnamed author of Mowaten Jou3an [ar] covers diverse subjects related to several countries including Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon.

This year’s other Jury Awards went to:

Best Social Activism Campaign: Free Syrian Blogger & Activist Razan Ghazzawi

This campaign was launched after Syrian activist and former Global Voices contributor Razan Ghazzawi was arrested in December as she was on her way to attend a workshop on press freedom in Jordan. After her release she was taken into custody, released and taken into custody again some months later. This Facebook page calls for her release and that of her colleagues from the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, who have been detained since February 2012.

Special Topic Award Education and Culture: Fasokan

Boukary Konaté is the author of Fasokan, where he promotes his local language and culture in both French and Bambara (the most widespread language of Mali). Konaté is a translator for Global Voices in French and also a Rising Voices grantee representing the Ségou Villages Connection.

Best Use of Technology for Social Good: Harassmap

This Egyptian project, using an Ushahidi map, allows victims of sexual harassment to report and map what happened by type and location. Reports can be made via the website, text message and via Twitter hashtag.

Best Video Channel: Kuang Kuang Kuang

This Chinese cartoon series, whose main character goes by the name Kuang Kuang, is one of animation director Pi San’s satirical works that has provocatively evoked China’s social ills.

Reporters Without Borders Award: Abu Sufian’s Blog

Reporter from Bangladesh Abu Sufian uses his blog to report on crimes that much of the mainstream media ignores, such as the recent killing of the journalists Sagar and Runi. He has been vocal against extrajudicial killings in Bangladesh, which take thousands of lives.

User Awards in all categories and languages

In addition to the Jury's Awards, the users have also chosen their favorite blogs in all the categories and languages of this year's competition. You can see the list here.

Congratulations from the Global Voices community to all the Award winners for their inspiring work. We wish to send special greetings to Boukary Konaté for his outstanding work. When we talked to Boukary about what this award meant for him, he answered:

I got the news in a moment when my country is going through a military and political crisis. I consider this Education and Culture Award as an award for unity and peace for Mali.

According to jury member and Global Voices author, Tarek Amr from Egypt who helped review Arabic language nominees:

The FreeRazan campaign is important on its own, but I also see it as symbol for acknowledging the struggle of the Syrian people and showing solidarity with political detainees in the Arab world, whether Abdulhadi Alkhawaja in Bahrain, military trials victims in Egypt, and many other examples. Harassmap is also a great platform to help raise awareness about sexual harassment in Egypt, and help victims to speak up, especially when society often tends to blame the victim before blaming the harasser.”

‘Mujeres Construyendo': Empowering Women, One Blog at a Time

Kathryn Morgan — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:00:34 +0000

“Una bloguera es, ante todo, una mujer valiente, que se atreve y se compromete. ¿Por qué? Porque a través de su blog se expresa, dice lo que piensa, siente, lo que es. Si tiene miedo de hablar o darle cuerpo a sus ideas, enfrenta ese miedo y lo supera.”

- “¿Quién es una bloguera?”, Mujeres Construyendo

A female blogger is, first and foremost, a brave woman, one who dares and one who commits. Why? Because through her blog she expresses herself, she says what she thinks, what she feels, what she is. If she is afraid to speak of or shape her ideas, she confronts this fear and overcomes it.

- “¿Quién es una bloguera?” [es] (Who is a female blogger?), Mujeres Construyendo

Women make up almost half of Latin America's Internet users. However, in spite of their high web-presence, women are mainly content consumers. Mujeres Construyendo [es], the first platform for female bloggers in Spanish, wants to transform Hispanic women into creators, not just consumers, of internet content.

Its founder, Claudia Calvin, answered some questions about this platform and community of Hispanic female bloggers.

Global Voices: How and when was Mujeres Construyendo created?

Claudia Calvin: Mujeres Construyendo surge como proyecto en el 2008, después de un tiempo de haberme hecho bloguera. Su origen se encuentra principalmente en mis andares por internet y después de descubrir una realidad que llamó profundamente mi atención: que las mujeres de habla hispana que participamos en internet seguimos transmitiendo en este espacio una creencia profundamente arraigada en nuestra cultura. ¿Cuál es? Aquella que nos inculcaron de niñas y en la que nos decían que “calladitas nos veíamos más bonitas”. Descubrí que nuestra participación como blogueras era muy distinta a la participación de las blogueras estadounidenses: ellas en la actualidad representan casi un 60% de los blogueros en su país y las blogueras en internet de habla hispana representamos un escaso 27%. Cuando inicié Mujeres Construyendo, la cifra era más desalentadora aún: 15%.

Busqué afanosamente un espacio de convergencia de mujeres blogueras, un espacio que no fuese un directorio, sino un lugar de convivencia, una comunidad como tal. Al no encontrarla, decidí hacerla, y así es como surge Mujeres Construyendo.

Hablé con unos amigos desarrolladores y lograron darle vida a esta idea que tenía en mi mente. La plataforma Mujeres Construyendo surge como tal en el 2009.

Claudia Calvin: Mujeres Construyendo came about in 2008, after a period of establishing myself as a blogger. It came from my internet browsing and the discovery of a reality that really caught my attention: Spanish speaking women who contribute to the internet continue to transmit a profound belief that is deeply-rooted in our culture. What was it? The belief that has been instilled in us since we were girls, the idea that “the quieter we are, the more beautiful we are”. I discovered that our contributions as bloggers were very distinct to that of American women. They currently constitute almost 60% of bloggers in their country and Spanish speaking female bloggers make up just 27%. When I began Mujeres Construyendo, the figure was even more discouraging… 15%.

I frantically looked for a space where female bloggers could get together, a space that wasn't a directory, but rather a place of coexistence, a community, as it were. After failing to find this, I decided to make it myself, and that is how Mujeres Construyendo came about.

I spoke with some developer friends and they managed to bring the idea I had in mind to life. And so the Mujeres Construyendo platform sprung to life in 2009.

GV: What is Mujeres Construyendo's mission? What does it want to achieve with this female blogging platform?

CC: El objetivo de Mujeres Construyendo es que las mujeres aprendamos a hacer uso de las nuevas tecnologías y las herramientas que brinda internet para empoderarnos, crecer, desarrollarnos. Los blogs son una herramienta de empoderamiento para nosotras: nos permite comunicar lo que hacemos, pensamos, visualizamos y participar en un diálogo central en el nuevo espacio público, que es internet.

Hemos participado más como observadoras y consumidoras de contenido que como proveedoras y en este espacio vacío se está perdiendo una enorme oportunidad para construir una realidad que refleje nuestros intereses y manera de entender y participar en el mundo, tanto en el ámbito de lo social, como lo político y empresarial, y ni qué decir de lo personal y familiar.

Las mujeres vivimos muchos tipos de marginación en el mundo, no necesitamos sumar una más a las existentes: la digital.

CC: The objective of Mujeres Construyendo is for women to learn to make use of new technologies and tools that the internet offers in order to be empowered, to grow and to develop. Blogs are empowering tools for us - they enable us to communicate what we do, what we think, what we see. They allow us to participate in a central dialogue in the new public space, the internet.

We have been more involved as observers and consumers of content than providers. We are missing out on a great opportunity to construct a reality that reflects our interests and way of understanding and participating in the world, in a social sense, as well as a political and business sense, not to mention the personal and familial.

Women deal with many types of marginalisation in society, we don't need to add digital marginalisation to those that already exist.

GV: Why is it important for women to have a blog?

CC: Como mencionaba anteriormente, los blogs son una herramienta de empoderamiento en la medida en que posibilitan que las mujeres puedan comunicarse, expresar, proponer y dialogar en internet y con ello contribuir a la definición y construcción de una realidad que refleje sus intereses y visión. Las voces de mujeres en la blogósfera son importantes porque son el reflejo de la mitad de los habitantes del planeta y en el medida en que sean actores sociales, políticos, voten, consuman, tomen decisiones y vivan de manera cotidiana los diversos contextos de su entorno (desde violencia, hasta crisis económicas, pasando por desastres naturales o guerras) su voz es importante. Son actores de la vida cotidiana y su visión y mirada cuentan, valen, reflejan una circunstancia. Su silencio resulta -sin que ellas mismas los sepan- cómplices de realidades sexistas o que marginan y en la medida en que paulatinamente vayan apareciendo y expresando su voz…irá cambiando el entorno. El silencio jamás ha sido socio del empoderamiento.

CC: As I mentioned before, blogs are tools of empowerment insofar as they make it possible for women to be able to communicate and express themselves, make suggestions and converse on the internet. They are tools with which women contribute to the definition and construction of a reality that represents their interests and vision. Women's voices, in the blogosphere, are important because they reflect half of the planet's inhabitants. Their voices are important in the sense that they are social players, politicians, they vote, they act, they make decisions and everyday they live through different environmental contexts (from violence, to economic crises; from natural disasters, to wars). They are players in everyday life and their vision and perspective counts, they are valued, they reflect a situation. Their silence, although they themselves are unaware, acts as an accomplice for a sexist reality, or it means they are marginalised. As long as their voices continue to gradually appear and be expressed, this environment will keep changing.

GV: How many women have a blog on Mujeres Construyendo?

CC: La comunidad de Mujeres Construyendo está constituida por la plataforma Mujeres Construyendo (www.mujeresconstruyendo.com) y las redes sociales a través de las cuáles se conecta su comunidad. La suma de personas conectadas a esta propuesta y a este espacio suma hoy cerca de 9 mil personas.

CC: The community of Mujeres Construyendo is made up by the Mujeres Construyendo platform (www.mujeresconstruyendo.com) and the social networks that connect this community. The total sum of people connected today is around nine thousand.

GV: What is the profile of the women who blog on Mujeres Construyendo?

CC: Cabe decir que participan hombres y mujeres en nuestra plataforma. Somos un espacio incluyente y consideramos que no se puede hablar de equidad partiendo de un principio de exclusión, por ello, las voces masculinas son bien recibidas. La mayoría, estamos hablando de más del 96%, son mujeres. Su perfil es principalmente urbano, de entre 25 y 45 años, en su mayoría de México, España, Argentina, Venezuela y Estados Unidos. Quiero destacar a una de nuestras blogueras más activas, y que inclusive ha sido entrevistada en televisión: Bertha, una extraordinaria mujer de 82 años que nos enseña que no hay edad para seguir aprendiendo y que las herramientas digitales son poderosas y permiten a las personas seguirle dando sentido a su vida.

CC: I should say that both men and women use our platform. We are an inclusive space and we don't believe that you can talk about equality while at the same time exercising a principal of exclusion, so male bloggers are also welcomed. The majority, we're talking more than 96%, are women. Their profile is mainly urban, from 25 to 45 years of age, and mainly from Mexico, Spain, Argentina, Venezuela and the United States. I want to focus on one of our most active bloggers, who has even been interviewed on television. Bertha, an extraordinary 82 year-old woman who shows us that there's no age limit to learning and that digital tools are powerful and they can continue to give meaning to people's lives.

GV: What will 2012 bring for Mujeres Construyendo?

CC: Empezamos el año con el pie derecho, estrenando nueva casa y nuestro nuevo sitio nos permite interactuar mejor, conocernos y convivir de manera más cercana. Detrás de esto hay trabajo y compromiso y queremos consolidarnos como un espacio central para que las mujeres participen, tengan voz y con ello contribuir con nuestro grano de arena no sólo a su empoderamiento, sino al fortalecimiento de la democracia. Queremos incrementar el número de blogueras participando y vinculadas a nuestra comunidad, estamos trabajando en ofrecer herramientas a las blogueras que les permitan fortalecer su presencia y cumplir sus objetivos, sean estos personales, familiares, profesionales. Detrás de este trabajo hay alianzas y proyectos que podrán ver en un futuro muy cercano y del que con gusto les platicaremos en su momento.

Muchas gracias por su interés en conocernos y ojalá a través de Global Voices más mujeres se animen a sumar su voz a nuestra comunidad. Juntas podemos hacer una diferencia.

CC: We're going to start the year off on the right foot. Opening a new house and our new site will allow us to interact, get to know each other and live together in a closer way. Behind this there is work and dedication and we want to consolidate it into one central space so that the women who participate have a voice with which they do their bit, not just towards their own empowerment, but also towards strengthening democracy. We want to increase the number of female bloggers who participate within and are linked to our community so we are working on offering tools to the female bloggers that enable them to strengthen their presence and achieve their goals, whether these be personal, familial or professional. Behind this work there are aliances and projects that will be seen in the very near future, about which we'll talk about nearer the time.

Thank you very much for your interest in getting to know us and hopefully through Global Voices more women will be encouraged to add their voice to our community. Together we can make a difference.

Claudia is also a blogger [es] and she tweets under @LaClau [es]. You can follow Mujeres Construyendo on Facebook [es], Twitter, [es] YouTube [es], and LinkedIn [es].

Bangladesh: A Journey in Photos with Featured Blogger GMB Akash

Rezwan — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:41:07 +0000

“I breathe in photography. Without photography I have no existence.” - GMB Akash

Gone are the days when any news by the international media on Bangladesh would invariably contain photos of political disturbances and natural disasters. Thanks to many talented young amateur and professional photographers you will find thousands of photos on Bangladesh online, especially in photo sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa, showing the other sides of Bangladesh. There are also a number of photobloggers emerging from Bangladesh sharing their works and photo essays.

I would like to introduce to you the works of one such photographer and blogger who is making quite an impression in the international arena in portraying Bangladesh. GMB Akash's passion for photography began in 1996. He attended the World Press Photo seminar in the capital Dhaka for 3 years and graduated from Pathshala, the South Asian photography institute in Dhaka.

He has received more than 40 international awards from all around the world and his work has been featured in over 50 major international news and media publications. His awards include the World Press Photo award (2006) and the International Travel photographer of the year award (2009). Read an interview at Tiffinbox to learn more about him.

He writes about his photos:

These images are stories of my won experiences. I am displaying a short view about the tour of my life. These journeys blend me with so many characters of my life. Sometimes I run, sometimes I ride on the top of the roof of the train, I sleep in the flooded floor, I swim, I hang on, spend a long time in slums and above all I meet these souls. I become one of them in a while. These adventures lay in the bed of danger. But after reaching to those people, getting entry to their door and when they take me as friend all my hard work and risks become worthy. I will keep walking, touching every face through my lens. I will show the world those unknown stories of sufferings. If a single hand comes to give them a shade that will be the real honor of my sweat.

Riding the Train. © GMB Akash / www.gmb-akash.com

His exemplary works include photography on Hijras (physiological males who have feminine gender identity). Some excerpts from his blogpost on Hijras:

It was 1999, when I first realized I need to focus stories on helpless communities. For that feeling, there was a story behind. As a child, I was a frequent visitor to my uncle’s house at Narayangonj, some 25 kilometers north of Dhaka. My uncle had a hermaphrodite locally called as Hijra, whose name was “Khushi” -meaning happiness, but that is what she very much lacked in her life.

The life of a Hijra. © GMB Akash / www.gmb-akash.com

Hijras get a mixed reception from the people; the middle class thinks them as bad omen even the sight of a Hijra in the morning is regarded as the same and believed can spoil the whole day. Where as among the lower class they are believed to posses spiritual powers as they are deprived of the joys of a normal life, their prayers are believed to be answered.

GMB Akash is sitting with one of the many sisters from the Tangail brothel. By documenting on them he shares their story of pain to the world. Image courtesy GMB Akash

His photoblog contains stories of pain, sufferings, joy and hope of the ordinary people of Bangladesh. In the photo essay born to work he shares the issue of child labor:

Born to work. © GMB Akash / www.gmb-akash.com

Shilu works separating sand and stone. At least 10,000 people, including 2,500 women and over 1,000 children, are engaged in stone and sand collection from the Bhollar Ghat on the banks of the Piyain River. Building materials such as stone and sand, and the cement which is made from it, are in short supply in Bangladesh, and commands a high price from building contractors. The average income is around 150 taka (less than 2 USD) a day. Jaflong, Sylhet

Watch his TEDx talk in Portugal at TEDxO'Porto 2011 where he discussed his long term project, ‘Survivors’ offering an in-depth understanding of the process and motivation behind this kind of work. Survivors: “The invincibility of human determination to struggle and survive against all odds” is a book by Galleria di Porta Pepice of the photographs by GMB Akash.

You can follow GMB Akash at his Website, blog, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter accounts.

El Salvador: Hunnapuh, a Pioneer of the Salvadoran Blogosphere

Betsy Galbreath — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:08:58 +0000

[Translator's note: All links are in Spanish unless otherwise noted.]

Omar Nieto is a pioneer of the Salvadoran blogosphere. His blog Hunnapuh is one of the oldest and longest-running in this Central American country. In his first post, published February 5, 2005, Omar explained that there he would post his “ideas, contributions and comments…until for reasons beyond my control I quit doing it.” During these 7 years, the blog has changed its web address but there haven't been any reasons for Omar to stop blogging. In fact, what began as a personal blog has become a community platform for other Salvadoran bloggers to post their own stories, analyses and opinions.

In this interview, Omar talks to us about his blog and about the Salvadoran blogosphere. He also gives some advice to achieve consistency and quality in a blog.

Global Voices: How and when was Hunnapuh born?

Omar Nieto: Hunnapuh como personaje nació en 1995 como participante en las primeras comunidades de foros hispanoamericanos. Mientras me adaptaba a esta forma de interacción, se me ocurrió hacer una página de orígenes pipiles que titulé “El Arbol Pipil” y con la ayuda de uno de los contertulios que también era salvadoreño (Galileo y su Telescopio). La puse en Geocities y pasó ahí hasta que este hosting de Yahoo cerró. Entonces era algo complicado tener una página propia, pues había que hacerla y editarla uno mismo en html con todo su contenido o utilizar unos editores bastante primitivos.

Los foros originales cerraron, nos mudamos a otros y un día por casualidad vi un sitio llamado Blogcindario que facilitaba el mantenimiento de una página sin más trabajo que escribir contenido con un editor de texto bastante simple y publicarlo, encargándose el mismo sitio de administrar todo lo demás; el concepto me encantó y ahí nació el blog Hunnapuh – Comentarios, en febrero del año 2005.

Hunnapuh as a character, was born in 1995, as a participant in the first Hispanic community forums. As I got used to this form of interaction, it occurred to me to start a page with Pipil roots that I called “The Pipil Tree,” and with the help of one of the forum members who was also a Salvadoran (Galileo and his Telescope). I put it on Geocities and it stayed there until that Yahoo hosting closed. It was somewhat difficult to get one's own website, having to do it and edit it oneself in html with all of its content or using some rather primitive editors.

The original forums closed, we moved to other ones and one day by chance I saw a site called Blogcindario that facilitated maintaining a web page without more work, creating content with a fairly simple text editor and publishing it, while the same site handled everything else; I loved the idea and the blog Hunnapuh – Commentaries was born in February of 2005.

GV: Tell us a little about the name. What does it mean and why name it that?

Omar Nieto. Foto usada con su permiso.

ON: Hunnapuh es una versión modificad del nombre del personaje hunapú o junapú, que aparece en el libro de origen Maya Quiché: Popol Vuh, que es una recopilación de relatos supuestamente de la cosmogonía de los pueblos Maya Quiché que habitaron parte de Centroamérica. Hunapuh junto con Xbalanqué son hijos de Hun Hunapuh y de Ixquic y a lo largo del libro se convierten en protagonistas de muchas aventuras, descendieron a Xibalbá (inframundo) venciendo a los Ajawab, y se convierten en el Sol y la Luna.

El personaje nació porque no encontraba un buen Nick o Tótem que en el foro identificara mi procedencia como aborigen de Centroamérica, y no conocía ningún referente Pipil que hubiese sido más exacto a mi nacionalidad salvadoreña, pero Hunapuh estaba bien y añadí las letras para dejarlo como Hunnapuh, con el objeto de que no se confundiera con ningún otro que tomase el mismo nombre.

Era natural para mí que el blog se llamara del mismo modo que me auto nombraba en los foros.

Hunnapah is a modified version of the name of the character hunapú or junapú, who appears in the creation story of the Maya Quiché: Popol Vuh which is a collection of stories allegedly about the cosmology of the Quiché Maya people who inhabited part of Central America. Hunapuh together with Xbalanqué are the sons of Hun Hunapuh and Ixquic and throughout the book are the protagonists of many adventures–they descended to Xibalbá (the underworld), overcame the Ajawab, and turned into the sun and the moon.

The character was born because I couldn't find a good nickname or symbol that would identify me in the forum as a Central American aboriginal, and I didn't know of any Pipil reference that would have been more precise about my Salvadoran nationality, but Hunapuh was good and I added the letters to make it Hunnapuh so that it wouldn't be confused with anyone else who might use the same name.

It worked for me to name the blog the same as I called myself in the forums.

GV: Who contributes to the blog?

ON: Al principio lo hacía yo solo, pero logré entusiasmar a Jjmar (Juan Martel). Luego se fueron añadiendo otros personajes de los cuales solo conocemos personalmente a MArjuna, quien es sicólogo. Tuvimos un poeta, Demander, que hacía versos satíricos del acontecer nacional; emigró a los Estados Unidos y no hemos vuelto a saber de él, lo conocíamos solo virtualmente.

Actualmente colaboran activamente:

Raul Fuentes: Creo que es licenciado en filosofía, que escribe excelentes artículos formadores en esa disciplina madre.

Mariposa: La legendaria locutora de la Radio Venceremos, una de las radios clandestinas del FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) durante el conflicto armado, que trabajó junto a Santiago Consalvi, actual director del Mueso de la Palabra e Imagen en San Salvador.

Deux ex Machina: Un joven iconoclasta y de ideas muy claras y definidas que nos colabora también con relativa frecuencia.

Francisco Quintanilla: Un profesional de la educación que también toca muy buenos temas en el área de la gestión educativa.

Joralgue, que nos colaboraba mucho con recopilaciones y referencias muy puntuales y útiles a interesantes artículos internacionales.

No conocemos personalmente a ninguno de ellos.

Tuvimos espacio para otros reconocidos blogueros Salvadoreños, como Virginia, Víctor, Queith, Aniuxa y Ligia (Placebos), quienes tienen sus propios blogs pero ocasionalmente escribieron en Hunna.org

ON: At first it was just me, but I managed to interest Jjmar (Juan Martel). Later other people were added, of which we only know personally MArjuna. We had a poet, Demander, who did satirical verses about national events; he emigrated to the United States and we never heard from him again, we only knew him virtually.

Currently actively posting:

Raul Fuentes: I think he has a degree in philosophy, and writes excellent articles based in that original discipline.

Mariposa: The legendary presenter for Radio Venceremos, one of the underground radio stations of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) [en] during the armed conflict, who worked with James Consalvi, current director of the museum of the Palabra e Imagen (Words and Images) in San Salvador.

Deux ex Machina: A young iconoclast, who has very clear and definite ideas who frequently contributes.

Francisco Quintanilla: An education professional who also touches on very good themes in the area of educational management.

Joralgue, Collaborates a lot with us on very useful and timely information and collections of international articles.

We don't personally know any of them.

We had room for other well-known Salvadoran bloggers like Virginia, Víctor, Queith, Aniuxa y Ligia (Placebos), who have their own blogs but occasionally wrote for Hunna.org

GV: What is Hunnapuh's mission?

ON: Realmente no tenemos como que una misión o visión formalmente definida. Al principio la idea era rescatar la lengua pipil y eso se ve en los primeros post, pero luego el espacio se convierte en un lugar para expresar nuestros pensamientos y sentimientos sobre la situación actual de cualquier tópico que nos interese. Al final buscamos tener un espacio en donde podamos expresarnos sin restricciones, pero respetando los derechos de los demás.

We don't really have a mission or formally defined vision. At first it was to save the pipil language and you can see this in the first posts, but later the space becomes a place to express our thoughts and feelings about the current status of any topic that interests us. In the end, we're looking to have a space where we can express ourselves without restrictions, but respecting the rights of others.

Hunnapuh-http://hunna.org/

GV: What do you think about the Salvadoran blogosphere? What are its strengths? What needs to be improved?

ON: La blogósfera salvadoreña es variada y de gran calidad, predomina la creatividad, la calidad de contenido, la coherencia de su mensaje ya sea que defienda una ideología o que exprese la visión particular de sus editores acerca del arte, la cultura, la televisión, el cine, la música, la política, etc.

Quizá lo único que necesite mejorar es la constancia y frecuencia de publicación. Pero lo cierto es que para hacer un buen post, un bloguero puede tomarse varios días en escribirlo, revisarlo y corregirlo porque no tenemos “blogueros profesionales”, es decir, a nadie de los que yo conozco personalmente le pagan nada por escribir en un blog, todo se hace por puro corazón y ganas.

The Salvadoran blogosphere is varied and of high quality, creativity prevails, quality of content, consistency of its message whether it defends an ideology or whether it expresses the particular vision of its editors about art, culture, television, film, music, politics, etc.

Perhaps the only thing that needs improvement is the consistency and frequency of publication. But the truth is that to create a good post, a blogger can take several days to write, review and correct it because we don't have “professional bloggers”, that is to say, nobody I know personally gets paid to write a blog, it's all done for love and the desire to do it.

GV: You publish Hunnapuh almost daily, and sometimes more than once a day. What advice would you give other bloggers to achieve the consistency and quality of Hunnapuh?

ON: Para lograr la constancia, solo es de fijarse la meta de postear algo diario. En nuestro caso resulta sencillo ya que son varios colaboradores o lectores que nos envían sus escritos y los distribuimos en al menos una publicación diaria. Una forma sería preparar más de un post y programarlos en días diferentes y horas diferentes que es como lo hacemos, dedicamos un rato en la noche a prepararlo y que se publique en horas predeterminadas.

En cuanto a la calidad, no creo que pueda dar ningún consejo ya que eso es algo muy relativo y depende de la percepción del lector. De tanto escribir se llega a tener cierta soltura para expresar ideas, pero eso no necesariamente devuelve un producto de calidad. Los amigos que escriben en el blog cuidan un poco su redacción y revisan antes de postear, pero siempre se escapa uno que otro error. Es normal, no somos un periódico y no tenemos jefes de redacción, ni de edición. Creo que el único consejo que puedo y me atrevo a dar a los blogueros es que escriban sin presión, ni temor; las críticas son gratis y no solicitadas, no hay problema en eso, siempre deben ser bienvenidas.

To achieve the consistency, one just has to set the goal of posting something every day. In our case, that's easy since we have several collaborators or readers who send their writings and we distribute them in at least one publication daily. One way would be to prepare more than one post and schedule them for different days and times which is how we do it. We spend awhile at night preparing them to be published at predetermined times.

As far as the quality, I don't think I can give any advice about that since it's very relative and it depends on the perception of the reader. Writing for so long gives one a certain freedom to express his ideas, but that doesn't necessarily produce a quality product. Friends who write on the blog do some drafting and review it before posting, but errors always manage to get through. I think the only advice I can and I dare to give other bloggers is to write without pressure or fear; critiques are free and unsolicited, there's no problem there, and should always be welcomed.

GV: What keeps you motivated to keep up the blog?

ON: Las ganas y la necesidad de decir algo son un gran impulso a seguir. Pasan tantas cosas en nuestro entorno que es difícil no tomar postura y para nosotros es la forma perfecta de expresar nuestros sentimientos o los de los amigos que nos colaboran. Pero creo que la parte más motivadora para continuar son nuestros amigos lectores que fielmente siguen el blog y sus publicaciones, gracias a ellos es que decidimos tener dominio propio y un formato más adecuado.

The desire and the need to say something are great motivators to keep going. So many things go on around us, it's difficult not to take sides and so for us, it's a perfect way to express our feelings or those of our friends who collaborate with us. But I think the biggest motivation to keep going is our readers who faithfully follow the blog and its publications. Thanks to them we decided to have our own domain and a more adequate format.

Omar has also contributed on Global Voices. You can find a list of his articles on his profile on Global Voices en Español. You can also follow Hunnapuh on Twitter and Facebook.

Nicaragua: Discovering ‘1001 Tropics' with Blogger Mildred Largaespada

Kathryn Morgan — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:54:21 +0000

In the same way Scheherazade tells her stories, I am going to tell the thousand and one, sometimes interlinking, stories that emerge and that interest me, using the tools of journalism.

This is how Mildred Largaespada introduces [es] her blog 1001 trópicos [es], which will turn one year old this week, on February 9, 2012. The well-known blogger and journalist was interviewed recently by Conexiones.com.ni [es] about being the first Nicaraguan woman to participate in the Premios 20Blogs [es] blog competition run by the digital newspaper 20minutos.es.

Mildred explains the context of this interview in her blog [es].

Esta entrevista me la hicieron porque apunté al blog en el concurso Premios 20Blogs VI edición del diario digital 20minutos.es y Angélica Fajardo, la periodista de Conexiones.com, me hizo varias preguntas relacionadas al quehacer del blog, al trabajo como bloguera. Son preguntas que la gente me hace porque se muestran interesadas en el fenómeno de cómo ciudadanas comunes y corrientes abren un espacio para expresarse.

En la entrevista contesto varias de las preguntas. Interrogantes parecidas me hicieron para ser parte del corpus de la extraordinaria (por buenísima) tesina La blogosfera literaria nicaragüense, cuyo autor Martín Mulligan, es también bloguero y escritor, y su blog Jugados de cegua tengo enlazado aquí abajo.

They did this interview with me because I submitted the blog to the digital newspaper 20minutos.es Premios 20Blogs VI edición [es] competition. The Conexiones.com [es] journalist Angélica Fajardo asked me various questions about the blog and working as a blogger. They are question that people ask me because they show an interest in the phenomenon of how ordinary citizens open spaces to express themselves.

In the interview I answer several of the questions. I was asked similar questions as part of the extraodinary and excellent thesis La blogosfera literaria nicaragüense (The Nicaraguan Literary Blogopshere), whose author Martín Mulligan is also a blogger and writer. I have linked to his blog (Jugados de cegua [es]) below.

You can watch this video subtitled into English at Universal Subtitles.

Mildred adds five questions to the interview, amplifying the discussion about her blog, the competition and what it is like to run a blog like hers:

¿Para qué abrir un blog? No tengo una respuesta clara a esta pregunta, y sólo se me ocurre decir: por puras ganas de comunicar “algo”. En mi caso, era la necesidad de comunicar asuntos que no miraba que atraían el interés de los medios de comunicación tradicionales y que consideraba importantes como noticia, es decir, como algo que está ocurriendo. Con un blog tenés una agenda periodística propia.

Why start a blog? I don't have a solid answer to this question and the only thing that comes to mind is for the simple desire to communicate “something”. In my case it was the need to communicate subjects that didn't seem to attract the attention of traditional media and that I considered to be important news, I mean like something that's happening. With a blog you have your own journalistic agenda.

¿Para qué apunté al blog al concurso? Mi obligación como bloguera es promover al blog porque a su vez promuevo a la comunidad que apoya al blog. Es decir, todas las lectoras y los lectores del blog son un tipo de gente que encuentra algo en los textos y artículos, se identifican con los temas e interactúan intensamente. De modo que el blog en sí mismo no tiene vida sin esa gente. Esa interacción se aprecia en mi perfil personal en Facebook, aunque en enero de este año ya le abrí una página en esa red social al blog.

Why did I submit the blog to the competition? My duty as a blogger is to promote the blog because at the same time I'm promoting the community that supports the blog. In other words, all the blog's readers are a kind of people that find something in the texts and articles, they identify with the issues and they interact intensely with them. So the blog itself is not alive without these people. This interaction is seen on my personal Facebook profile, even though in January of this year I already opened a page for the blog on this social network site.

Mildred Largaespada. Image used with permission.

¿Cosas feas que genera tener un blog? El blog 1001 trópicos sólo me ha generado satisfacciones inmensas. Pero tengo que decir que también me ha generado un fenómeno feo: las amenazas. Cuando escribo artículos sobre política nicaragüense y le hago una crítica al gobierno de Ortega los amenazadores empiezan a funcionar. Se lo conté sin querer contárselo a la periodista de Conexiones.com. Quienes escriben las amenazas no quieren que yo siga respirando aire puro en la faz de la tierra. Sólo quieren el aire para ellos. Pero las intimidaciones no han dado frutos, porque aquí seguimos.

Anything unpleasant about having a blog? The 1001 trópicos blog has only given me great satisfaction. But I must also say that it has generated an unpleasant phenomenon: threats. When I write articles about Nicaraguan politics and I criticise the government of Ortega, the threats begin. I told this unintentionally to the Conexiones.com [es] journalist. Those who write the threats don't want me to be breathing this earth's fresh air. They only want the air for themselves. But the intimidations have been fruitless because here we are.

¿Por qué este blog a veces se expresa en inglés? Porque en Nicaragua se habla español e inglés, y miskito, sumo y rama, y náhuatl. Uno de los intereses de este blog es reconocer que esa realidad existe en el país. Y sigo esperando el día en que los medios de comunicación tradicionales inauguren sus ediciones en inglés para todo el caribe nicaragüense. Además, el blog tiene lectoras y lectores allá. Y porque estoy aprendiendo miskito y náhuatl.

Why is the blog sometimes written in English? Because in Nicaragua we speak Spanish and English and Miskito and Sumo and Rama and Náhuatl. One of the intentions of the blog is the recognise this reality that exists in the country. I keep waiting for the day that traditional media will inaugurate its English editions for all of the Nicaraguan Caribbean. Also, the blog has readers there. And because I am learning Miskito and Náhuatl.

¿Qué podemos esperar de la participación en el concurso? Desde el principio todo ha ido bien: las lectoras y los lectores han comentado sus ideas sobre el blog y hemos estado en el top ten de la categoría de Actualidad durante todas las semanas, eso significa apoyos e identificación con los temas que se abordan en el blog. La participación del blog 1001 trópicos es parte del movimiento bloguero que se vive en Nicaragua y El Salvador. En Nicaragua es donde está más fuerte el blogging y están participando buenísimas bitácoras. Esa es la idea: participar en todos los eventos para llevar los temas que se abordan en los blogs para la mayor difusión.

What can we expect from the participation in the competition? From the start everything has gone well: readers have contributed their ideas about the blog and we have been in the top ten in the Current Events category during all weeks. This means support and identification of the issues that are dealt with in the blog. 1001 trópicos' participation is a part of the blogging movement that lives in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Nicaragua is where blogging is stronger and there are some excellent blogs taking part [es]. The idea is to participate in all the events to spread the issues dealt with in the blogs as widely as possible.

Mildred belongs to an active community of Nicaraguan bloggers who use the internet and citizen media to communicate, inform and share their ideas. In September 2011 they organised a Blog Carnival, with the support of Global Voices in Spanish, about migration. To find more Nicaraguan blogs you can visit the Nicaraguan Blog Carnival blog [es] that includes a list of the blogs [es] that took part in the festival, including Mildred's 1001 trópicos.

Beatriz Arze subtitled the video in this post.

Elizabeth Rivera, Global Voices Author and Translator

Daniel Cooper — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:44:40 +0000

Elizabeth Rivera arrived to Global Voices in 2011 and since then has not stopped translating for Global Voices in Spanish, writing her own articles both for Global Voices in Spanish and Global Voices Online and also translating for Global Voices in English. Curious to know more about her, I decided to send her a few questions which she answered willingly. The end result is this interview that I share with you today.

Hello Elizabeth, tell us about yourself, where are you from, where are you and what do you do?

Hello! I am a citizen of the world that by chance and fortune was born in Mexico City a little over 30 years ago. I live in a multicultural family and I come from one. I have lived in 6 cities in 3 countries and I hope to be fortunate enough to increase that number. Today I am in Santiago, Chile and day to day - as well as collaborating with Global Voices - I earn my bread as a marketer.

How did you hear about Global Voices and what encouraged you to get involved in their work?

With the birth of the Arab Spring, I reactivated my Twitter account. I started to follow interesting people who post regularly, including @JustAmira. I was struck by the Twitbon you had on her profile, so I came to Global Voices. I immediately fell in love with the site, reading the posts they had and their reason for being. I saw the link to work as a translator and said, “here I am.” On the same day you contacted me and the rest is history. Now not only do I translate but I have the opportunity to write my own pieces. I am very proud to be part of this community and hope to remain so for a long time. I have learnt a lot and I have met very valuable people.

Elizabeth Rivera with her little girl. 2011.

How do you have enough time to translate and write?

A little discipline, that is all. When I take a translation I give myself a date or time limit to complete it by. I do not take another until I have finished it. When I'm writing a post I don't do translations. In any case, I am a quick typer on the keyboard and I'm used to doing many things at once (you know, working, being a mother, wife, writing, friends, etc, etc.) :)

You said you have lived in 6 different cities, tell us about your travels!

Now that I remember, there are 7! In Mexico I have lived in Mexico City, Cuernavaca, San Cristóbal de las Casas and Cancún. In the United States I have lived in Irvine and Chino, both cities in California. In Chile, only in Santiago. Mexico City is the city where I was born and where I have my roots, my people, my identity. I studied in California for several years and it is also a place where I feel at home because my mother's family lives there and I spent my childhood summers with them. In San Cristóbal (or Sancris as it is affectionately known) I had the opportunity to work with a Tzeltal community producer of coffee helping them start a business that allowed them to keep the village in a sustainable way. It is a community, tucked amid the Zapatista zone, poor in material terms, but extremely rich in culture. It was one of the most enriching experiences I have had in my life. So, of all the cities I mentioned, Sancris has a special place in my heart.

Elizabeth Rivera in Dublin, Ireland.

Changing topics, how do you see the Chilean student movement? Will the negotiations between them and the government reach a conclusion?

The Chilean student movement of 2011 is the second part of the “revolución pingüina” (”penguin revolution”) of 2006. In fact, I'm sure many of those who participated in those protests are the leaders of the current movement. I think that, despite many genuine causes, this is what the Chilean society has chosen to express their discontent with inequality and I believe it is right. Education is the foundation of any society. The current system does not seek access to quality education for all of society, from financing to evaluation, training and support for teachers in all schools, especially public ones. It is not just a problem at the university level, the system begins to affect children since preschool.

I think if Chile wants to keep growing and it aspires to be a developed and inclusive nation, it must have an education system that accompanies these objectives. I think both sides, government and students (or rather, society in general) want the best for the country. This must be what prevails in the negotiations. Now, if you want to reach a true solution, the government should stop providing “patch” answers as increasing grants or lowering interest rates, which help, but do not attack the root of the problem; and the students must understand that change does not happen overnight and must be open to options. The youngsters have lit the flame of change, now it's up to the current government to seize the golden opportunity that is in front of them to leave a positive mark in the history of Chile.

And why do you think the government does not want to compromise on the core of its educational model?

There can be many reasons. Both personal and ideological. I think many in the government really believe that such a thorough reform is not needed (we think this is a neoliberal model of education, which is consistent with philosophy of the Right). Others are “afraid” to change the tax laws or think that a reform would be too complicated and/or expensive. Others simply see it as an affront against the government rather than a necessity that is independent of the party in power. And some do not want to budge. The status quo is easier and more comfortable. Maybe that's why for many years of leftist government nothing has been done to change this system. Well, at least this time, the protests have succeeded in bringing the discussion to deeper issues and has not lost the level of pressure, which is already a gain on the previous movement.

How do you evaluate the use and impact of new media in the student movement?

The new forms of media have been key to elevating the discussion and involving all citizens in this matter. Whoever wants to, can comment, discuss, propose. That is always good for a democracy. Also, citizens' forums and journals have been available to Internet users to analyze other events beyond the traditional media, which have focused mostly on covering the excesses of the protests more than anything else. Even at the beginning of this movement, they were not even covering the protests, instead giving news of anything else, while in the streets there were thousands of people demonstrating. As in the rest of the world, the new media has opened many doors of conversation that did not exist before.

Elizabeth Rivera in Angelmó, Puerto Montt, Chile, 2010.

Why are you volunteering for Global Voices and not another NGO?

For me connectivity is important in every sense. It was the reason I chose my career and why I like to travel. The more we feel the interdependence with our fellow man and our environment the easier it will be to put ourselves into the shoes of others, understanding, respecting and opening ourselves to possibilities. Global Voices has allowed me and allows readers to understand cultures, ways of thinking and news from other perspectives, which is very rewarding making ties stronger, and borders - starting with the language - are gone.

Finally, tell us your favourite activities when you are not working?

I love traveling so I'm always imagining and planning the next “break”. It is normal that my husband, my daughter and I take the bag on a Friday and return on Sunday with no problems. We like to discover places from the “local” point of view, so we explore the markets, we ask the taxi driver “where to eat where the tourists don't go” and if there is a friend in the place, even better! For us it is the best thing to spend money on. In fact, I live intensely by my favourite phrase: “The world is too interesting to stay in one place all the time.” I also like reading, especially historical novels but since my baby was born I have not had much time to devote to reading. I like playing with her and showing her new things, seeing how she learns. Also, as a good Mexican, I organize outings and plans with friends quite often. It is common to see people in my house at lunch or in the afternoon having a beer. Everyone knows that they can just come round.

Thanks Eli! And to show you how true that is, our Latin America Regional Editor Silvia Viñas hopped over to Elizabeth's house for a brief chat:

Make sure you follow Elizabeth on Twitter: @elimaguire.

Global Voices in French: Translators' Choice 2011

Marvin Vann — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:10:03 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage 2011 on Global Voices.

With now more than 500 volunteer authors and translators, Global Voices is a unique global media network that keeps track of current events via social media conversation. Global Voices in French [fr] is one of the 20-plus sites of the Lingua translation project, and one of the most read Global Voices Lingua websites.

Since early 2007, when the French site launched, nearly 200 volunteers [fr] have translated or continue to translate articles and posts from various languages into French, every day. Our “family” lives on every continent: Francophonia is truly worldwide!

Global Voices French logo

In 2011, French-speaking translators carried out the challenging task of covering the many historic revolutions and uprisings throughout the world for the Francophone world by translating hundreds of blogsposts (with our co-editor, our Suzanne Lehn, on the front line!).

But, like our friends the Spanish translators at Global Voices in Spanish [es], when we asked volunteers what translations struck them most in 2011, “The Arab Spring” was not their automatic response. (Global Voices has been following and translating bloggers from the Arab world since 2004.)

Our translators' picks for 2011 demonstrate how much they approve of the Global Voices philosophy: shining light on countries, places, people, ignored by traditional media (for now, at least).

From left to right, upper row: Samantha, Abdoulaye, Fabienne, Ange, Lou. Lower row: François-Xavier, Noële, Gaël, Thalia, Stéphanie. Greetings and thanks to everyone involved!

Abdoulaye Bah, a Guinean United Nations retiree living in Rome, naturally pays particular attention to Africa:

I really liked translating the post about the mayoral opposition win in Mozambique. That victory teaches how it's possible to win elections in an African country, without fraud by those in power and without spending large sums of money.

Noële Belluard-Blondel, a professional translator living in France, was the first to refuse to choose only one translation:

My last translation in 2011 made me daydream…. ‘USA: Has NASA Discovered a Life-Friendly Planet?‘ I love astronomy, and space travel fascinates me. These are today's exploratory expeditions, and we're only at the beginning. I find that fascinating, gripping! I must say two other subjects struck me: ‘Bangladesh: A Bold Protest Against Dowry.' The courage of some women makes you wonder. It made me wonder. And China: ‘Do You Have Memories From Before You Were Kidnapped?‘ In this case, I was moved by the life of these women. A disturbing topic, deeply moving.

Fabienne Der Hagopian, who lives in Normandy, makes it a principle to translate what she most likes to read:

There is a lively diversity in our tastes and interests, which means that almost all the posts published in Global Voices in English get translated into French. In 2011, the posts that most struck me were those concerning the women of Yemen and their courage, such as this one on revolutionary women. It's sad that the traditional media don't talk about this more. It reminds me of [French singer] Daniel Balavoine's song, ‘Revolucion.'

Teacher Ange Pambou's pick illustrates the diversity of topics covered by Global Voices:

For 2011, my favorites are: the blogpost about the “Bidun” in Koweit (I was unaware of both the term and the phenomenon), another on homosexuality in Ghana (which, in addition to demonstrating the difficulties of being homosexual in Africa, deconstructs rather methodically the arguments generally advanced against homosexuality), the letter by a young Chinese woman to the Norwegian killer after the massacres in Norway, the gripping testimony of a “nuclear gypsy” in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, a post about the prohibition of water fights in Tehran last summer, and finally, — without a doubt, my favorite among favorites — an astonishing post about the daily life of a blind person who happens also to be a film critic.

Stéphanie Camus, who runs an e-commerce site, takes the time to “listen to the world” by translating:

I think it was my translation of the anniversary of the Sabra and Chatila massacre that had the greatest impact on me. I had just watched the film, ‘Waltz with Bashir.' The full meaning of “We must never forget,” becomes clear when one observes such an event, I find. It's the account of a horrific episode in a long war that symbolises, in my view, the horror and absurdity of all armed conflicts, whatever form it takes…

Lou F., currently studying in the United Kingdom, is a fan of world languages and met interesting people while translating:

In 2011, I loved translating the profile of Julie Kertesz, because she is one of those people one would like to come across more often: passionate, active, and above all, very human. I also really liked the article on the Welsh-language blogosphere. Global Voices allows us to discover voices from throughout the world, and I think it's great that regional languages are now joining the international choir!

Samy Boutayeb, our specialist on net freedom and the free software culture, refuses to choose:

As far as I'm concerned, it's impossible to make a choice, because I loved not only reading but also translating *all* the posts I translated.

Tahlia Rahme, who works for the Global Road Safety Partnership with the International Federation of the Red Cross in Beirut, Lebanon, is addicted to our short “updates”:

Once I got started translating those, I found it difficult to stop. This year I tried to translate every update about the Middle East. I considered it my duty somehow to familiarize the rest of the world, especially the French-speaking world, with the Middle East and its news, and above all to help change its image and the prejudices attached to it.

François-Xavier Ada Afana is a young, enthusiastic translator from Cameroon who is studying in Cyprus:

The post I most enjoyed reading and translating, by far, was the one about Independence Day in Tanzania: A good overview of the situation in the country.

Gaël Brassac lives in South-East France but will soon move to Japan, and opted to go with a “Top 3″ format:

1. ‘Global: Bloggers Take Issue With Anti-Niqaab Punditry,' because this article is a model of sort to expose ethnocentric self-righteousness, feminist extremism, and religious intolerance. 2. ‘China: Reflecting on 100 Years Since the Xinhai Revolution,' because I love history and China, so putting the two together could only please me! 3. ‘Mozambique: Behind the Detention of MC Azagaia,' because this is the kind of articles that makes me love Global Voices, covering countries never talked about in the traditional media.

Samantha Deman began translating for Global Voices while she was living in Singapore and offers a nice panoramic view of her years with Global Voices.

I choose my very first translation, published in 2008: ‘Humanitarian Crisis in South Philippines,' simply because it represents the beginning of my adventure with Global Voices. I like the idea of being able to inform others about what's happening in the remotest, often forgotten locales, thus helping weave ties between people living in the four corners of the world.

This post is part of our special coverage 2011 on Global Voices.

Egypt: Diaries of a Cancer Patient

Tarek Amr — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:25:27 +0000

“Cancer is a big business and I refuse to be a client! Please see my blog for more info on natural ways to prevent and cure cancer,” wrote Heba Mitkees in her Twitter biography. Heba blogged about her life as a cancer patient, and when I decided to interview her about her experience, I was shocked to find out that it was too late for an interview. The least we could do now is to ask the questions and let her blog answer them on her behalf.

Hi, can you please introduce yourself to us?

Heba Mitkees: I’m 23 years old, turning 24 in July. I’m also a Cancerian. =)
I was born in Montreal, and brought up in the UAE. My mother and I moved back to Egypt in 2002 after my father’s death. I finished my last 2 years of high-school and went to college in Cairo. I studied Broadcasting, specializing in video editing.

What's your story with cancer?

Heba Mitkees: Given that I’m an only child who came after 10 years of marriage, I’ve always held a very special place in my family’s heart. My father was a scientist/inventor. He was an intelligent, kind, loving, and hardworking man, who did everything within and beyond his power to make his family and loved ones happy. My father was diagnosed with lung and bone cancer in 2001. He did 3 chemotherapy sessions and died only 1 month later due to sudden Septicemia.
…
My father had always been a very strong man. Even at the peak of his illness, he never gave up or showed any sign of worry or fear. He laughed it off, made jokes about it and made us really believe that he was ok. He ALWAYS had a smile on his face. However, that day at the airport was different. It was heartbreaking. Chemotherapy had destroyed him. Even though he tried really hard to pretend he was fine, there was too much to hide underneath that beautiful smile.
…
The doctors in Egypt said that he was responding to chemo and that he was making significant progress. If that were true, what went wrong? Back then, I was too shocked to question his death. I was also too young. Deep down, I knew something went terribly wrong but I couldn’t pin point the source of this feeling.
For some reason, I completely blocked out the true cause of his death (Septicemia). I chose to believe that it was cancer that killed him. I believed that Septicemia was only a result of his illness. It was easier.
This went on for several years until I was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer on the 13th of March.

How did you discover your illness? And how did your mother receive the news given that you are her only child and your father had died of the same illness?

Heba Mitkees: On the 12th of March, I was speaking to a friend on the phone and I told her about my lump. She insisted that she should take me to an oncologist on the same day and so she did …

Heba Mitkees, the weekend before she was diagnosed

Dr. M asked about my age. When I told him I was 23, he looked at me and said “23? You have nothing to worry about! You start worrying about these things when you’re over 30, but let’s get it checked”.
…
As he was examining the lump, I could tell by the look on his face that there was something wrong … I asked him if there was something suspicious. He couldn’t give me a straight answer, but he asked me to get a breast ultra sound and a mammogram, and return to him no later than the next day.
…
Only 2 nights before my diagnosis, I was out having fun with my friends and now I’m being faced with a life threatening disease. Too many decisions had to be made. Too many people had to be informed. I kept thinking about my mom. I didn’t know what to tell her. I was too worried that she would break down.
…
I saw almost 6 doctors altogether. All in one week. They all said the same thing with different approaches. All the oncologists suggested chemo prior to surgery and the surgeons suggested the other way around. A few days later I told my mom and I thank God that it went much better than I expected. She was shocked just like me, but didn’t break down.

From here, I think it's better to let Heba continue telling her story without interrupting her with questions.

Heba Mitkees: I eventually decided to proceed with treatment with Dr. M. My mom and I went to see him at his clinic and he scheduled my first chemo session for the next day (21st of March).
…
I got dressed when it was time to leave the house. On the way to the hospital with my mom and her friend, I kept thinking about my father. I kept thinking about how weak and helpless he looked during chemo and how painful it was.

Two months later, she decided to go for alternative treatment. She discussed in her blog why she doesn't consider chemotherapy a cure, and believed it kills more than cancer.

Heba Mitkees: Four days before my ‘last’ session, my uncle’s wife from Kuwait called my mom and told her that she knew someone in Egypt who could help. She said he was a Reiki master who’s had experience with similar cases. My mother asked if I was interested and I thought to myself, why not? I have a friend who’s a Reiki practitioner and she’s cured my headaches before.
…
Reiki is meant to stabilize and balance the energy fields in our body. It helps maintain a healthy energy flow, which is believed to promote healing and clear energy blockages in main energy centers in our body called chakras. It’s based on the idea that an unseen ‘life force energy’ flows through our body. If this energy is low, we are more likely to get sick, and if it is high, we are capable of being healthier.

She then went to describe her first meeting with Dr. Fahmy, the Reiki master.

Heba Mitkees: He totally lost me when he very bluntly and in confidence said that if I solely relied on orthodox treatment, I would most likely have a recurrence within a couple of years. He could tell by the look on my face that I didn’t like the sound of what he was saying.
…
I told him that I knew people who have been cured and haven’t had any recurrences so far, but then again, my argument was based on the limited number of people I’ve heard of and at the same time, disregarding the other number whom I know have had recurrences.

She continued.

Heba Mitkees: At that stage, I had no intention to stop chemo; the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. I had no information about all the chemotherapy risks and side effects. I hadn’t done any research about cancer and the different treatment options. I trusted my oncologist, and ignored everyone else.
….
At first, I thought Dr. Fahmy was a Reiki master, but then I realized that the amount and quality of knowledge and information he had about cancer required a person to have some sort of medical background. I was fascinated … He said that Reiki was only a small part of what he does. He explained that over the past 30 years, he has been researching and incorporating different healing methods which promote the curing process of a person … He said that rather than following one treatment technique or protocol, he found it more effective to integrate different techniques, which have been proved to work effectively together … Rather than merely dealing with the physical symptoms of a disease, holistic treatment acknowledges the significant effect of our mental and spiritual state on our body. It’s based on the idea that any physical symptom of a disease is nothing but a sign of imbalance in our system (Mind, body & soul) … It all started making sense. This specifically explains why we have very high recurrence rates in the world of cancer. The way orthodox medicine deals with cancer is by suppressing the tumor through chemo or removing it with surgery (the physical symptom) and disregarding the disease itself.

He then told her a list of do’s and dont’s. She blogged everything as far as she remembered:

He told me that the only fabrics I was allowed to wear were cotton and linen since other types are chemically treated and the toxins eventually make their way through our body.

He told me that I should only see positive friends and cut out all the negative people from my life in order to avoid any negative frequencies or vibes which could affect my health.

Wearing a lot of the color white was highly recommended. Black was a big no.

He told me that I should stop going to parties and avoid loud music, which is also believed to weaken the body’s energy level and therefore affect my health.

I wasn’t allowed any sugar, caffeine or protein. I had to become vegetarian.

I was only allowed to eat alkaline forming foods, which meant that tomatoes and oranges were a big no.

I wasn’t allowed white wheat or dairy (except for cottage cheese).

Heba Mitkees: The list goes on forever, really. The whole idea behind his way of treatment was to turn my body alkaline in order to fight off the disease. He said that cancer lives in a highly acidic and de-oxygenated environment;
Along with this nutritional system, he told me that I had to see him around 4 or 5 times a week for energy sessions. I didn’t bother ask what these sessions were like or for.

At the time, she was still having orthodox chemotherapy treatment in parallel. But one day her doctor wasn't pleased with the results of the usual blood test she used to have before here chemotherapy session and the White Blood Cell Count (WBC) there. So, he decided to add an extra day of a drug called Neupogen for her. But then when she had another blood test, the results shocked her.

Heba Mitkees: I made a blood test and when it came out, the results were shocking. My WBC count was 27,700 this time. Closer to Leukemia. She immediately called Dr. M to ask him about the major count fluctuation.
…
He told her that it was an effect of Neupogen and that it was normal, but it didn’t make sense to her. Neupogen is meant to boost the WBC count, but what if it sustains it at its highest level? What would happen then?
…
I started researching chemotherapy and what it does to the body. Everything I read was terrifying! Something inside me told me that chemo was going to kill me. I felt so violated after everything I had read. Only then, I understood the true cause of my father’s death.

A book her friend's mother gave her and internet research made her think more about her best treatment options.

Heba Mitkees: ‘Knockout‘, a wonderful book written by Suzanne Somers. In this book, she interviews doctors who are curing cancer. Most of the interviewed doctors do not use any chemotherapy or chemicals. They are curing cancer without chemo! The book also exposes the Food and Drug Association (FDA) and the pharmaceutical industry, which work together to generate billions of dollars a year, especially off ‘the cancer business’.
I also read that, Tamoxifen, one of the drugs used to prevent the recurrence of breast cancer, increases the risk of developing uterine cancer by 30%.

She faced her oncologist with her findings.

Heba Mitkees: I asked Dr. M about this shocking piece of information; he told me that ‘unfortunately’, I had to take it in my next chemo cycle.
No I wasn’t!
He thought it was unfortunate, but why do I HAVE to take it?

She didn't like her Reiki doctor at the beginning, but later on she wrote why she thing she wasn't comfortable. She also described the struggle she at this stage between the two schools of medicine.

Heba Mitkees: Dr. Fahmy opened my eyes to everything I needed to see. Discovering all the scary, negative things about orthodox medicine was very hard to deal with. It was too much for me to comprehend. I blamed him for my own confusion and for my personal struggle.
At some point I was torn between my love and loyalty to Dr. M and the strong belief that chemotherapy was not a cure and that I needed to stop. I didn’t want to upset him.
I was only able to make that decision when I put myself first.
I’ve been off chemo since 18th of April 2011. I can feel my tumors shrinking and I’m still alive! :)
My hair hasn’t started to grow back yet but my eyebrows and eyelashes have!

The last post in her blog was in June, and in it she seemed to be comfortable with her choice.

Heba Mitkees: Even though I have strong faith in my current treatment, I cannot advise people to follow my path. It’s too much of a burden and responsibility on my side to make such a call before I’m 100% cured.
However, this does not mean that I am questioning the effectiveness of alternative medicine. On the contrary, I am positive that I made the right decision and that I will soon make this call.
Such a decision has to be well informed, and this is exactly why I strongly advise people to do their own research and then decide, just like I did.

She didn't publish any more posts into her blog, but she tweeted every now and then, her latest tweet was on the 23rd of November, and she died about a month later.

@MizMitkees: In #Amman… Wish I was in #tahrir right now! #noscaf

Despite the fact that she is not going to post anything on her Twitter account again, after writing this post I decided to follow Heba Mitkees (@MizMitkees) on Twitter.

Battery dead! Bye bye

— Heba Mitkees (@MizMitkees) October 20, 2011

Kuwait: Online Advocacy for the Stateless Bidoun

Onnik Krikorian — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:35:29 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage on Refugees.

Since hundreds of Kuwait's 100,000 strong Bidoun were attacked by police for protesting in support of others detained earlier in the year, a number of bloggers and international organizations have been stepping up their support for the stateless people in the hope of drawing attention to their plight. The United Nations, for example, launched its own campaign to end the ‘limbo” facing stateless people in August.

Bidoun may be lacking certain legal documents or may have failed to register as citizens when Kuwait became independent in 1961.

“Apart from the misery caused to the people themselves, the effect of marginalizing whole groups of people across generations creates great stress in the societies they live in and is sometimes a source of conflict,” Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, was quoted as saying in reference to the Bidoun.

Since then, many have also paid tribute to Bidoun activist; Refugees International reports that Global Voices Author Mona Kareem recently spoke at the US Institute of Peace in Washington DC:

[…] it was the testimony of three female statelessness advocates that most moved participants. Mona Kareem, a member of Kuwait's stateless bidoun community, told the audience that despite the hardships she had faced because of her status - harassment, legal troubles, travel restrictions - she was “the luckiest of my community.”

“Many of my friends could only hope to marry a good husband,” who might provide them with Kuwaiti citizenship, “or for death to take them away by committing suicide.” She added, “None of them have hope. None of them even use the word ‘hope'. Bidoun women have to confront both the conservatism of their community and the injustice of their country.”

Image from International Calamity: Human Rights Policy Tumblr

The IbishBlog went further by not only interviewing Kareem, but also by praising her use of Twitter to draw attention to the issue:

One of the most interesting people I've come to know through Twitter is Mona Kareem, a poet, journalist, blogger and tweep who also happens to be bidoun jinsiya - “without citizenship” - from Kuwait. First, it's almost impossible to follow events in Kuwait quickly and efficiently in English — and in many cases at all — without consulting her Twitter feed (@monakareem), which does the work of 20 typical Middle East journalists. I'd go so far as to call it indispensable. More significantly, through her tweets and blogs she's introduced me, and I'm sure a lot of other people, to not only up-to-date information but background details on an issue we either didn't know about or, in my case, knew about only very vaguely: the plight of the stateless of Kuwait. […]

Given this extraordinary combination, I sought out the opportunity to interview Mona in person […] about a variety of issues, particularly that of the bidoun in Kuwait, Kuwaiti politics, and the tweeting and blogging scene in her country. […] It began in a most extraordinary manner: she showed me some documents, the like of which I've never seen before. First, there was her silver Kuwaiti travel document, as opposed to the normal blue Kuwaiti passports issued to citizens, which literally identified her as an “illegal resident” of the country. The visas in it were equally interesting, and in some cases almost as horrifying. […] I'm used to seeing the “travel documents,” “permits,” “IDs,” and other inherently insulting documents issued by some Arab states to Palestinian refugees, particularly those in Lebanon. But I've never seen these, and in themselves they told quite a horrifying story.

And, as I write, today the bidoun in Kuwait are again protesting, and again facing not only severe repression which is not meted to out those deemed “citizens” by the Kuwaiti government, but also facing the added insult of continuously having to show their IDs since protesting is, as she points out, a “right” at best reserved for Kuwaiti “citizens.” It's all being barely covered by the media, particularly in English, but this ongoing outrage deserves serious consideration by all of those who care about human rights, particularly in the Arab world. In Mona, the stateless of Kuwait have, as you'll quickly note, a remarkable young advocate.

Refugees International has also been active on Twitter and this week published an eye witness account of the attack on Bidoun protesters on their blog:

We sat down on the ground, with our backs to the police force. There were at least 30 vehicles from the police and Kuwait intelligence force - more than I have ever seen before.

They attacked us without any notice. Some of us stayed where we were, while the rest ran away. I ran away with my friends, and the police force were followed us into the residential area, in between the houses. I ran for almost eight kilometers and was followed by dark-colored GMC Yukon cars.

They arrested and beat many of those who remained at the protest site, and used cattle prods, smoke bombs, tear gas, and hot water cannons against them.

Another major issue was that they refused to send the injured to the hospital only few steps away. Instead, they sent them to the police hospital in order to cover up their mess.

The issue, of course, is not new and activists such as Kareem and others have raised the problem of statelessness before, but in June 2011, Global Voices reported on how Bidoun and their supporters were increasingly turning to social media to advance their demands for citizenship rights. Mona Kareem can be followed on Twitter at @monakareem while Refugees International is at @RefugeesIntl.

Kareem's most recent post for Global Voices on this week's dispersal of a Bidoun protest in Kuwait is here.

This post is part of our special coverage on Refugees.

Egypt: Romanian Netizen Lavinia Dieac Shares her Egyptian Experience

Tarek Amr — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:09:09 +0000

Romania and Egypt are two distant countries. They have many differences and many things in common as well, such as the fact that they both had revolutions against dictatorships. Romanian netizen Lavinia Dieac, who lives in Cairo, tells us more about her life in Egypt, particularly the days of the revolution.

Lavinia in Giza Pyramids

Lavinia Dieac is a Romanian digital marketing professional, currently living in Cairo. She has been living in Egypt for the past two years ago. Lavinia likes to blog and regularly tweets about her experience as an expatriate living in Egypt. She has also had three articles published in the Egyptian English language newspaper Al Masry Al Youm.

Following is my interview with her.

Hi, can you please tell us more about yourself? What do you do? How long have you been living in Egypt? Who do you normally blog about?

Hello Tarek, it is an honour to get the chance for this interview, hello everyone. I came to Egypt more than two years ago for a three to six month internship that has become a real job since then. I work in digital marketing and I spend a big part of my time looking into the human nature and at the cultural differences between the people in this part of the world and the one I come from.
The blog started out of the will to share these experiences, so I am trying to write about issues that influence my thinking or my world view.

Have you been to different parts of Egypt? Which parts of it do you like most?

I’ve visited Siwa Oasis, White & Black Desert, Abu Simbel, Luxor, Aswan, Dahab, Ras Abu Gallum, Alexandria, North Coast, Sharm El Sheikh, Hurghada and of course the Cairo touristic places and I’ve yet to see much more.
They all offer such different things (different types of desert, oasis, temples, historic places, snorkeling and diving, sea side chilling, clubbing, fresh fish dishes, camping in the desert vs. luxurious hotels, Bedouins vs. Russians), all very enjoyable, but the most I liked was the desert and the oasis (Siwa, Black and White Desert). Actually it is hard to not include Ras Abu Gallum too.
I like them the most because they very much represent Egypt and its people now, and they are not super touristic like Sharm El Sheikh. Also, it was charming to camp in the desert over night, sleep in such openness under the clear sky, listen to the Bedouin songs, enjoy their food, tea and stories, do sand boarding, bath in the cold oasis during a super hot day and in a hot spring at night, visit the temple of Oracle of Amun Ra, see the white formations and climb the volcanic mountains, walk for an hour along the shore of the Red Sea in the shadow of the rocks of the Ras Abu Gallum National park and then snorkel to see the amazing corals.

You usually tweet about the cultural differences between your country and here in Egypt. Can you please tell us more about those differences?

This could be a long story with many examples about differences.
For me, this world here is many times upside down compared to what I’ve got to know back home: the way people live, work, sell, walk on the street, celebrate, dress, the way they relate to religion, not to mention the way they drive! And the men-women relationship is really different too!
An embarrassing moment was in my first three months since I was here before leaving to Romania for vacation I wanted to say bye to a close male colleague at work by hugging and kissing, as we do in Romania usually. He pulled himself back and kind of said “no-no”, which shocked me and embarrassed me so much. Right away I remembered a similar story shared by another foreigner and I quickly remembered that some people choose to limit the physical contact with people of the opposite gender, some of them during Ramadan only. I didn’t think it was the case with my colleague. I guess that shocked me the most, you never know who is open to this kind of interaction and who is not. This incident made me decide for a while to not even shake hands with guys any more. The decision didn’t last long though cause it is against my natural behaviour.
The gender segregation here makes everything much different than how it is in Romania. The experience of walking on the streets is greatly different. Besides the lack of side-walks and pedestrian crossings, there are the looks and the harassment. I usually like looking at people’s faces on the streets, smiling at them sometimes, but here I have to put on the bad, tough kind of face and walk straight ahead, fast to avoid looking at anyone because I most of the time find them observing me, starring, ogling or harassing. During my recent vacation in Romania I was looking at people on the streets but couldn’t find anyone looking at me as every one was minding their own business. This is funny, but it felt weird I don’t have any more the ‘attention’ I usually get on the streets here. Jokes aside, it felt well actually.
The public display of religiosity is another key difference. In Romania, religion is somewhere in the background; you don’t hear much about it; you don’t see it around too much. It never attracted my attention to it and to its insights as it did since I have been here, where I could observe it everywhere, in all aspects of life, with most of the people. It is even so embedded in the culture that some religious practices are now just cultural practices.
Then, there is the part about being late. I had meetings for which people were late even one and half hours. Imagine that! It is hard to handle it. But it is part of the Egyptian culture, as they themselves proudly say.
But at the end of the day these differences are the ones making the experience here more interesting, and nurture my self-discovery.

Sometimes you tweet about stuff like not being able to eat in public during Ramadan. And not having the choice to tell a taxi driver to switch the Quran recitation off. Is this also a part of the cultural difference? Do you think the Egyptians are more or less acceptable to other religions? Or do some Islamic traditions became a cultural part of the country, such as saying Inchallah (if God wills), you have no problem with them being used, especially that Copts do use them too?

They are part of the cultural difference, because these things define how life is here. The level of acceptance towards differences and diversity is part of how people are.
I am not sure if you ask me to compare this level between Romania and Egypt. Unfortunately in many parts of the world people’s level of acceptance towards other religions or other types of differences is not very high.
From some studies I read, youth in Romania are quite racist against Jews, Muslims, and gypsies. In Egypt, there isn’t a high level of acceptance either, in my opinion. Just the fact that it is not accepted that girls here wear short skirts or sleeveless tops on the streets says a lot about the acceptance towards diversity.
I could also notice many times double standards and hypocrisy, especially when people here say that foreigners coming to Egypt should respect the traditions and culture, but when they themselves go abroad they don’t respect the traditions and culture of the place they go to, they still keep their own and expect the foreign country to accept them.

Have you been to other countries in the Middle East other than Egypt? How different, and how similar are they to Egypt and Romania?

I have been to Lebanon before. I loved the mix of Arabic and European flavour there, and the variety: both ladies wearing veil and wearing short skirts, both places that sell alcohol or pork and ones that don’t, beautiful.

I know you refused to leave Egypt during the revolution, although some foreigners might have been afraid with all the attack the media made on them then and calling them spies? How were your feelings when Mubarak stepped down?

I did stay in Egypt all the time during revolution but strongly felt like leaving when people were divided between agreeing or not with Mubarak to stay until September and to call the protests off.
I wasn’t going to stay if Mubarak would’ve been let to stay because I didn’t trust it would be safe and also because I was feeling that I won’t be able to work with and accept people around that let go of their main goal “down with the regime”. Happily the protests continued and finally Mubarak stepped down.
I stayed in the house in down-town during all that time, for 18 days, just went out twice: once during the bloody Friday when I quickly noticed things are not alright and hurried up back home to see in 30 minutes on TV the camels and the horses attack on Tahrir (goose bumps). The second time was during a peaceful day in Tahrir.
I was following every detail on Twitter and on Al Jazeera and being very close to Tahrir I could experience the reality from my balcony too: seeing the protesters and the police up and down the surrounding streets, been hit by tear gas and been terrified by the gun shots and gas bombs (A video I shot from the balcony).

My mom would tell me over the phone to leave Egypt, and to take care of my health, to sleep and to eat well. I would assure her that I am fine, and that I am just staying in the house, following the news online and watching TV, so it is not a big deal. I didn’t realize until Mubarak stepped down, when I cried for half an hour, that I was under a big amount of stress and emotional pressure during the 18 days, so mom was right about taking care of my health. The crying was of happiness and relief, of surprise that Mubarak was finally out.

As a Romanian, you witnessed a similar revolution more than 20 years ago. And now you are living the one taking place here in Egypt. Can you please compare the two revolutions?

I was only five years old when the ’89 revolution happened in Romania, and we didn’t study much about it in school in the upcoming years, at least until 2003 when I graduated from high school. They say that the truth about what and why it happened will be released after 50 years, when no living people could be directly affected by truth any more.
In Romania, there weren’t this communication tools that Egyptians had, the turmoil started in the west of the country with a small incident in a neighbourhood and took a while to spread across the country, only some big cities were greatly involved in protests, and more than 1,000 people were shot (not commonly agreed yet who shot at people back then – the army or foreign forces).
I am no specialist in politics and history, but from my experience I can say that the two revolutions are quite different due to the foreign interests and due to the communism factor (Romania had closed borders, people had money but didn’t know what to spend it on, had to stay for hours in line to get bread, meat, milk and other commodities, sometimes not getting them even because they were finished), but alike due to the dictatorship.
The revolution ended with the Ceausescu couple being executed by the army after having a brief trial and with an immediate transition to civil rule, unlike in Egypt. The ones taking over were ex-communists indeed, and this lasted for many years with high levels of corruption.
After 1989, Romania started transforming greatly with the introduction of privatization and foreign investment. In a few years it became a country under development with lots of economical potential. There have been improvements registered since, less corruption for example, but now Romania is facing other types of problems and democracy has not really been achieved.

As a marketer, how do you view the spread of graffiti in Egyptian streets after the revolution? And don’t you consider it the revolutionaries’ way to market their ideas, and also artists’ way to market their skills? Can the same thing be applied to those musicians who used to sing in Tahrir as well?

I admire people's use of graffiti to express their revolutionary ideas, and I see it as a communication channel competing with state TV. If only we could have more and more graffiti! Besides that, it brought color to streets and improved the look of many walls.
Indeed some graffiti is very artistic, and much appreciated, but I’m not sure if the artists that made them have any consequential benefits out of it.

Board Game making use of the Egyptian Revolution to sell more

Photo by @lisang

On the other hand, we have seen companies and media producers making use of the revolution to market their goods or movies? How do you see this?

There has been an exaggerated point of using the revolution as a marketing theme. It all became unnatural, while the graffiti and other forms of art seem always genuine and natural. Take a look at what may be the most shameless capitalization on the Egyptian Revolution: January 25 Monopoly.

One of the subjects that is being discussed a lot in Egypt is the Palestinian Israeli conflict. I know you have your own opinion about how it occupies a significant part in people’s daily discussions on and off-line. There has been demonstrations in front of the Israeli Embassy lately, add also Dr. Norman Finkelstein came to Egypt right after the revolution to give a lecture in the American University in Cairo about the same issue, which you were not very pleased with. Can you please tell us more about all this.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a very important matter, for all humans, not only for the involved parties, including Egypt, as it has a complex mix of situations that don’t respect human rights which we shouldn’t turn our views away from.
But what bothers me is to notice this naïve, deep hate towards Israel, and a naïve support for Palestine without being aware that the situation is not just black or white, and before being preoccupied with the urgent matters Egypt is going through first. It is like trying to help someone else before helping yourself first.
Egyptians can’t really help Palestinians if Egypt itself is weak. I thought it is very inappropriate to talk about Israel around 16th of May when Egypt’s situation was problematic enough to give all our attention to, instead of giving it to Finkelstein and to his speech at AUC.
It is also interesting how Egyptians choose to unite under the idea “Israel is our enemy”. I think it is a very thin line between supporting the Palestinian cause and being racist towards Israelis. I find many Egyptians that hate Israel, and they are actually racist too.

One final question, can you compare the ongoing parliamentary elections here to the ones you had in Romania right after the fall of your dictatorship? You think elections is the right thing to be done now, or are there any tips or cleansing to be done first to ensure better democracy? Did you suffer for example for the remnants of the former regime entering the the parliament after you got rid of your dictator?

First of all, I’ll repeat that ‘theoretically’ Romania is a democratic country, but on the ground democracy has not been really achieved. Romania unfortunately has been moving really slowly in the past 20 years, hasn’t achieved much and not many significant improvements can be noticed. In return, it seems that few people got really rich and politicians were corrupt while corporations benefited from Romania’s rich resources.
Secondly, of course there will be remnants of the old regime in the new corridors of power. In Romania we had it too.
I am not sure about how the electoral process in Romania went through in ’89-’90, but it is important to move fast. In Egypt there was a dictatorship (Mubarak’s) changed with another one (military); it is good to see Egyptians not settling for it! That says a lot about how they will accept things to be like in the way forward! I wish them the best with getting a civilian government as soon as possible and am keeping an eye on what they do with the country’s potential. Peace!

Global Voices Podcast: Technology that Empowers!

Jamillah Knowles — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:24:59 +0000

Hello world!

In this edition of the Global Voices podcast you can hear how women in Egypt are using technology to fight harassment, and what our Global Voices authors and editors got up to at the Mozilla Festival in London.

We also mark World Aids Day by speaking to HIV/AIDS activists in Kenya and Egypt about the special work they do.

Technology to empower women

First we take a look at harassment of women in the streets of Egypt. Engy Ghozlan in Cairo is a young woman who took matters in her own hands to fight social acceptance of sexual harassment by using mapping technology and the voices of women who speak up about what happens to them on the street. The result is Harassmap. Global Voices author, Maria Grabowski Kjær spoke to Engy about her work in support of women's safety and comfort in public.

World Aids Day

December 1st is World Aids Day. A time to think about the many people who living with HIV or AIDS and consider what can be done to support them and their carers. I had a chat with a two people working hard to improve conditions and raise awareness.

Ahmed Awadalla is in Egypt. He has worked with Cairo Family Planning and Development Association and is now with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. He talks about stigma and how the current uprising in Egypt is actually hindering support for communities at risk.

Leah Okeyoh is a community activist, blogger, author, and World Pulse correspondent. She is co-founder of two women's organizations, Jacolo Rural Women Response to HIV/AIDS, and Positive Action for Change (PACHO). She is also a participant in the “Blogging Positively” project of Rising Voices. We talked to her about the Kenyan health care system and her hopes for the future.

You too can be involved with Blogging Positively if you're interested in citizen media related to HIV/AIDS. If you're on Twitter for World Aids Day, use the hashtag #BlogPos so we can find you.

Global Voices out and about

Mozilla Festival Science Fair by Mozilla in Europe on Flickr (CC-BY-2.0)

London was host to the Mozilla Festival on “media, freedom, and the web” in November. Global Voices was represented by an awesome team at the Science Fair. With so much GV-goodness in one place, I had to ask them what they were up to.

Emma Brewin is our Deputy Editor of citizen media organisation. Marta Cooper is an author who is also on the Board of Global Voices. Paula Goes is our Multilingual editor who was showing a colleague around the event via a live video connection. Amira is possibly the youngest interviewer so far on the Global Voices podcast at 10 years old. She interviewed our Iraq author Salam Adil.

Emma Brewin, Marta Cooper, Salam Adil, and Paula Goes

Well, that’s all we can squeeze into this edition of the Global Voices Podcast. Thank you all for listening and thanks to all of our contributors and interviewees. We’ll be back next month but you can always drop by on any of our social media spaces like Twitter or Facebook and say hi!

Music credits

In the podcast you can hear lots of lovely Creative Commons music. If you want to find out more about these artists here are the links. Thanks to Orb Gettarr for the atmospheric Return of the Atlanteans Lemurian Candidate, to Mark Cotton for his Spiritualized Homage, to Superbus feat. NS for Fujjad! Most of the music was found via OpSound.Org, The Free Music Archive or direct from the artists. Thanks also to all of the wonderful voice over performances and clips that help to glue the podcast together.

Interview with Izumi Mihashi from GV Lingua Japanese

Tomomi Sasaki — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 06:43:58 +0000

Izumi Mihashi has been a profilic member of the Japanese Lingua team since early 2009 and currently splits editor duties with Hanako Tokita. With “Japan: a case of an exposed online pseudonym”, she published her first English post on Global Voices this September. Izumi tweets in English at @en_izumi.

In this interview, we learn about Izumi, her success in leading recruitment and team building at Lingua Japanese, its next steps, and thoughts on the Internet landscape in Japan.

Global Voices (GV): Please tell us about yourself!

Izumi Mihashi (IM): I recently quit my job of two years at a major electronic manufacturing company, which I had started after getting my master’s in mathematical engineering. I plan to go back to school next April to research the world of human perception.

Izumi Mihashi

GV: How did you get involved with GV?

IM: I graduated from university in September but had a bit of time until I started my job in April. I was working on a translation job for a book on mathematics, but was looking for another project. I saw an entry on the Uncategorizable Blog [a popular Japanese blog by GV contributor Taku Nakajima] that introduced Global Voices, and was attracted by its concept.

GV: What is your current role?

IM: I used to be in charge of the communication with new volunteers [Note: The Lingua Japanese team has a trial process to screen for quality.], but I’ve passed that role to someone else now. I guess you could call me a cheerleader for our team now!

I have a lot of ideas for improving operations for the Lingua Japanese team, but haven’t had a lot of time to execute them. So that’s what I’m working on right now - implementing the improvements.

GV: Can you share some of your reform ideas?

IM: I have lots of ideas! They can be split into two categories: promotion and sharing tasks.

We’re not very good at promotion at the moment, and I think we’re missing out on readership even though the content is compelling. For example, it’s a bit difficult to tell on the Lingua sites that Global Voices is amplifying voices that are not picked up by traditional media… maybe it looks like a translation site for foreign media sources? I’m always thinking about how we can improve the presentation so that we can effectively communicate GV’s concept.

I also feel that the content can be a bit “distance” from our Japanese audience. In the Japanese blogosphere, there are a lot of articles concerning accessible topics that heavily feature the author’s opinion. GV is the opposite, in that the author is neutral and introduces many facets of the discussion. Also, many of the happenings covered in GV articles occur in a place that’s physically distant from Japan. I believe that Lingua translators can play a bigger role in bridging Global Voices and our Japanese audience.

Last but not least is how to split tasks within the team. We tweaked our messaging to bring the call for volunteers upfront and as a result, our team welcomed a sharp increase in numbers. Management becomes more complicated though, so the Japanese Lingua team is testing out new processes.

A recent meetup in Tokyo

GV: What do you enjoy most about GV?

IM: What makes me happiest is for the members of Lingua Japanese to enjoy translating articles! Recently, we started doing translation reviews on the internal mailing list. In the beginning, people were more interested in translating than reviewing, but now we have a good rhythm. Everyone can follow the communication between the translator and review on the mailing list, and I think people have started to enjoy this part of the work as well.

In September, I made my author debut on GV and look forward to exploring this road, too.

GV: Here’s a crazy question for you - if GV Lingua won the lottery, what would you do?

IM: Hmmm, actually I don’t think that the Lingua project and money really go well together. I’m especially against financial aspects having a place in the translation work itself.

It might be nice to have a bit of cash and have someone handle the administrative work such as responding to inquiries, tending to Facebook, starting a newsletter etc. but that’s not really an issue of money. I’m also interested in doing a comparison analysis of GV and other media to explore future opportunities for Lingua Japanese but this is also more a matter of time!

There’s something I’d love to do with the web in general, though.

Japan is an affluent country, at least in terms of materialistic wealth. Even if someone can’t afford Internet access at home, they can get it for free at the public library. The Internet can be a saving grace if you’re isolated in your school or workplace. On the other hand, it can be a dangerous place, with flame wars and personal information leakage.

I believe that we can change many lives by creating a safe place for people with lower Internet literacy skills to get together online. The system would need to be designed to preempt problems and have community managers that can intervene and facilitate. It’s a very complex problem to tackle but it would be fantastic if we could accomplish this!

Thank you, Izumi!

Algeria: A News Site's Founder on the State of Citizen Media

Thalia Rahme — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:01:41 +0000

Note: all links are in French, unless otherwise stated.

Launched in November 2008, Algérie-Focus is an online interactive site. Following the basic premises of Web 2.0, Algérie-Focus features a wide range of multimedia offerings, allowing its readers to interact in real time with each other as well as with the guests of the site. Algérie-Focus provides members of the local Algerian community as well as those of the Algerian diaspora and the Maghreb with a platform for exchanging and sharing information, and also for debate.

Thalia Rahme of Global Voices interviews Fayçal Anseur, founder of the site, in order to gain a better understanding of Algérie-Focus's goals and to review the state of citizen media in Algeria.

Fayçal Anseur from'Algerie Focus

Thalia Rahme: How and when did the idea for Algérie-Focus arise? And what makes Algérie-Focus's distinctive and different from other similar media?

Faycal Anseur: Algerie-Focus was launched on November 1st, 2008. We had a tremendous challenge to take up: proving that we were able to create an online Algerian journal with few financial and human resources (150 euros as start-up capital, five journalists and one webmaster). Still, we believed we could succeed against all odds in attracting readers with fresh and original content, produced according to the premises of new technology.

Given that from the start our editorial choice rested upon reporting news in a similar fashion to traditional media outlets such as newspapers and magazines, i.e. with analyses, interviews, etc., we managed to secure the loyalty of a diverse readership, ranging from students to executives.

We offer decompartmentalized news, i.e. less “Algero-Algerian” news and more “globalo-Algerian, if I may put it that way. We try to offer content that is in line with the spirit of online philosophy, a window open to the world, with its interconnections and transformations. Algerian netizens are gradually acclimatizing to this reality, i.e. that Algeria is not an isolated village but rather part of a whole, and therefore that decisions taken by some (in the developed world), impact directly or on indirectly on the future of others (mainly in developing and Third World countries).

Algérie-Focus also presents exclusive news as well as about 40 or so special topics illustrated with interviews, guests, cartoons and surveys. We have offered a platform to well-known personalities who might be considered controversial or even censored or banned elsewhere. We might not necessarly agree with our guests, but our main goal is to inform, to trigger debate and resolve crises. In short, to promote freedom of expression by humbly performing acts of traditional journalisn while encouraging citizen journalism. The reader becomes a player by being offered the opportunity to pose questions to our guests via our interactive forums and to participate in the editorial process and contribute through our op-ed section.

Nevertheless, given the lack of financial support, since the site is boycotted by most advertisers—a predictable consequence of its independent editorial line—our staff today is only composed of two journalists: myself, writing from France and a friend living in Algeria.

TR: What is the current state of the Algerian blogosphere and social/citizen media in Algeria? Were those media influenced by the Arab Spring? Are we witnessing their emergence?

FA: The Algerian blogosphere is expanding; however, its growth remains insufficient and centered on certain mainstream media outlets at the expense of others. According to a new report published by a group comprising Tunisian researcher Yamina Mathlouthi of the Institut de recherche sue le Maghreb contemporain, and others, Algeria is ranked 6th in the Arab world with regard to Facebook use. 2.1 million Algerians are subscribed to the service, which puts Algeria in 52nd place in its network of users, according to a study by Younes Grar, an Algerian ICT expert. It is obvious that the Arab Spring acted as a catalyst and that this wind of liberation created a dynamic in the Algerian population who, like their neighbors, yearn for change, progress and openness.

However, there are many challenges. The numbers of netizens remains relatively low, compared to the overall population (there are more than 36 millions inhabitants in Algeria). Internet penetration in Algerian is low due to the high cost of the service (approx 2300 DA or US$31/month, compared with a minimum monthly wage of 15 000 DA or US$201), and the state holds the monopoly on Internet service provision. The Internet is a new medium in a Algeria that is closed to the world. Algerians need time to adapt and make up for lost time and above all to demand the basic right to free expression that's been denied them until now.

That said, the new generation of 20- to 30-year olds, which forms the majority in Algeria, is catching up and assimilating the tools for optimal use of this media, especially through observing their contemporaries in Egypt and Tunisia.

TR: What do you think distinguishes Algerian social media from others in the Arab World? What are their topics of interest? Are they are focused on local news or do they also address the latest developments on the regional and international scene? What is their language of choice?

FA: Algerian media are newborn, they are still in the apprenticeship phase. Algerian netizens speak a lot, which is normal when one has been deprived for so long of outlets for expression. Topics are varied but revolve mainly around Algeria and its problems. Some are are already speaking out, and with time, everyone will learn to listen to each other so as to get along and then, one day, act.

Arabic language is the primary language in Algeria and Arabic-speaking sites are the most visited ones. French-speaking netizens are mainly present on Facebook, the ”in” place for the time being.

TR: What are the challenges facing citizen and social media? Is there any form of pressure from the government on bloggers or Twitter users? Has anyone been arrested because of online activity? Do politicians also use those platforms to communicate with the public?

FA: The first challenge lies in continuing to express ourselves and most of all in organizing ourselves in a way that will prevent political manipulation. Abderaouf Madani, a member of the national committee to protect unemployed people's rights, was arrested last September in Ouargla, a city in the south of Algeria, while shooting a video of protests in support of the unemployed held in the city's administrative complex. Updates posted via smartphone and the Internet have so far been able to circumvent censorship but the authorities are aware that, one way or another, the information is going to end up online.

With the Arab Spring, the Algerian government has become conscious of the importance of the Internet as a free medium and of the potential risks. The government created legislation in attempt to contain it, restrict it and even control it. Others countries have tried that before (Tunisia, Egypt, Syria) and it didn't work. However, the state retains the monopoly on Internet access to and can resort to filtering of certain opposition sites. One can cite many cases of ”technical censorship”.

Deprived of access to national media, and even sometimes to private media, the opposition is trying to organize itself on the web. Government politicians, as well official opposition are not too fond of this medium, the workings of which they don't really understand. They still use the mainstream media that reach the majority of Algerians.

TR: What is the attitude of traditional media toward those sites? Are there journalists that also use those media? In other countries, for instance, newspapers have their own blogs where their journalists are invited to contribute?

FA: Algerian journalists are not the ones who have driven the dynamic of online media. They have been overtaken by their readers. There are perhaps 20 blogs run by journalists; the majority are merely following the movement. Journalists are present on Facebook, but they rarely interact with their readers. We often slam the Algerian intelligentsia for its resignation, and the Internet is increasingly highlighting their absence.

Further reading (in French):
Quand algerie-focus.com inaugure le journalisme interactif (El Watan)
Algerie-Focus.com sur El Watan. (Interview)

Entretien (censuré) avec Fayçal Anseur, fondateur et rédacteur en chef du journal électronique « Algerie-Focus.Com »

Presse en Algérie : la liberté passe par le Net

Malawi: Meet Global Voices Author Steve Sharra

Linda Annan — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:22:29 +0000

Linda Annan talks to Malawian Global Voices Author Steve Sharra. Sharra is a blogger, freelance journalist, lecturer and educational editor. He blogs at Afrika Aphukira. He has published poetry and fiction, radio plays (Malawi Broadcasting Corporation) and a radio short story (BBC); and authored a children's book, Fleeing the War, which won the 1995 British Council Write a Story competition. In 1997 he became Honorary Fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa (USA), after Prof. Emeritus Steve Chimombo (1983), and the late Edison Mpina (1984) and in 1998 he was writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa (USA).

In this interview, Steve Sharra talks about the Malawian social media space, his professional background and his interest in education, teaching and writing.

Linda Annan (LA): Can you briefly tell us about yourself?

Steve Sharra (SS): I was born in a place called Bawi, in Ntcheu district, Malawi. At the time my father was attending a police training college, so my mother went to live with her parents. My grandfather, a reverend, was teaching at Bawi Primary School. We moved to Zomba Police Camp when I was about a year old. That’s where I grew up. Zomba was the capital of Malawi going back to the colonial days in the 1890s, until 1975 when Malawi’s first president, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, moved it to Lilongwe. I attended Police Primary School, St Stanislaus Prep School, Nankhunda Seminary, and Police Secondary School. After secondary school I went to Lilongwe Teachers’ College, from 1990 to 1993, where I qualified as a primary school teacher. In 1994 I left teaching at became an editorial assistant of educational materials at Malawi’s national curriculum centre, the Malawi Institute of Education. In 1998 I went to graduate school, first the University of Iowa, and later Michigan State University, both in the United States. At Iowa I studied English Education, while at Michigan State I studied Teacher Education, and wrote my dissertation on curriculum aspects of peace studies in education. My doctoral thesis argued for the adoption of a concept in the school curriculum which I termed uMunthu-peace, a type of social justice based on African definitions of being human, and our interdependence as human beings. I returned to Malawi in May 2010, after spending three years as a visiting assistant professor of peace and justice studies in the Department of Philosophy at Michigan State.

Malawian blogger and Global Voices Author Steve Sharra. Photo courtesy of Noelin Zawazawa.

LA: What’s the meaning of your blog name Afrika Aphukira? Is there a particular reason why you chose that name?

SS: Literally “Afrika Aphukira” translates as “Africa will be reborn.” I chose that Chichewa name for my blog as my way of expressing optimism for Africa; optimism for an African Renaissance.

LA: What is the state of Malawian blogosphere?

SS: I think the Malawi blogosphere, in the narrower sense of just blogs, is lagging behind the larger Malawi social media sphere. I wonder if that’s exclusive to Malawi alone. On a number of times a Malawian blogger has broken big impact news, for example Boniface Dulani who was the first person to write about the University of Malawi academic freedom struggle just hours after it broke. That was February 12th, 2011, when the Malawi Police Inspector General, Peter Mukhito, summoned a university lecturer, Dr. Blessings Chinsinga, to question him about a lecture in which he had used the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt as an example to illustrate a point. More recently, Mabvuto Jobani has been blogging breaking news about police involvement in the murder of University of Malawi Polytechnic student, Robert Chasowa, on September 24th. Otherwise, it’s facebook mostly, and twitter to a lesser extent, that’s the most thriving form of new media in Malawi.

Steve Sharra dancing at a wedding. Photo courtesy of Mpatso Chabwera.

LA: You seem to be a big advocate of Malawi. Besides the fact that you’re Malawian, what else could be the reason?

SS: That’s an interesting question, Linda. We have a Chichewa proverb that says “Nankununkha saadzimva.” It means something like one doesn’t detect one’s own smell. But I think my conspicuous advocating for Malawi comes from a particular personal history and identity politics. A number of my early classes in graduate school, 1998-1999, required us to do serious intellectual self-reflection. Once I started looking back to where I was coming from, I started noticing a number of very peculiar aspects of what it meant to be a Malawian and an African. I had never had occasion to do so when I lived in Malawi. I guess leaving your country and going outside your continent seems to do that to a number of us. That’s when being of Malawian and African identity started taking on a big significance. It made me very conscious and sensitive to any suggestions of identity deficiency and racial denigration. I think it was tied to being a black person, and an African. That’s when I also began reading Pan-Africanist theory, so it all started coming together. I have come to see it as part of my responsibility, as a Malawian, a black person, and an African, to promote and advocate for a more complex understanding of Africa. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza calls it the imperative of every African intellectual. I see much of what ails Africa today as originating in the image that has been constructed for the continent in the 500 years that Europe has enjoyed global supremacy.

LA: Why do you choose to approach your musings from an “African epistemological perspective” as your blog suggests?

SS: Somewhere along my studies, I read about ways of knowing, knowledge systems that mediate the process of producing knowledge. It dawned on me that what was categorized as school knowledge was a product of a particular way of knowing, a European epistemology. Much knowledge is human knowledge, but Europe has developed a way of producing and consuming knowledge that privileges European heritage and civilisation. This would not be a problem, were it not for the manner in which that privileging process undermines and denigrates other societies’ ways of knowing. In my doctoral research I read Malawian philosophers such as Harvey Sindima, Augustine Musopole, and Gerard Chigona, who have worked on uMunthu as an African epistemology, and political scientists such as Richard Tambulasi and Happy Kayuni who have argued for uMunthu as an African political ideology. I learned from these scholars that what ails Africa is a direct consequence of being at the receiving end of Eurocentric epistemology. In order to address that problem, I think we need to learn African epistemologies, so as to understand the world from an African perspective. It’s what Mahmood Mamdani calls “dealing with the global from the perspective of the local.” Right now we are doing it the other way round, and Africa is suffering terrible consequences. But things are looking up now, I think. I see more and more people realising why Africa must develop self-confidence and deal with Europe, America and Asia from the vantage point of Africa. But it will take a lot of intellectual effort and political will; a radical change in the leadership.

LA: Tell me about “Fleeing the War.” I know it was a children’s book but what was it about and what inspired it?

SS: Fleeing the War was a children’s story I wrote in 1995. It is about a group of Malawian adolescents who are hunting along the Malawi-Mocambique border, which is where their village is located. They are surprised to meet two little children, a boy and a girl, who are apparently lost. They have been fleeing from Mocambique’s civil war. They set off in the night, with their parents, but soon they get lost. The parents go one way, and the children go another. The Malawian children take the Mocambican children home, and make them comfortable. After six months of searching, the children’s parents make their way to the Malawian village, and find their long lost children. The story was inspired by true events. There was civil war in Mocambique between 1976 and 1991. A million Mocambicans fled into Malawi and settled down. Many of them spoke Chichewa already, a common language along the border between the two countries. Many of them returned after the war, but many also stayed behind and became Malawian citizens. The first school where I taught in Ntcheu district served as a rationing centre. UNHCR officials came and delivered supplies to the refugees. They came from far, and on their way to the rationing centre they would sit down to rest under a huge tree next to my uncle’s grocery store in the village. I would sit down and talk with them about their experiences. I crafted the story from those encounters.

LA: You are involved with the Malawi Teacher Professional Development Support (MTPDS) project aren’t you? What is it and how did you get involved?

SS: It is a project of the Malawi Government, through its Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. We are establishing a teacher professional development system for primary school teachers, most of whom have no such opportunity once they graduate from teachers’ college. I got involved through my participation in a prior, related project.

Steve Sharra at work. Photo courtesy of Speaker Nkhonjera.

LA: Why the interest in education and teaching? Why not something else?

SS: The teaching came rather by accident. I failed to make it to the University of Malawi, the only university operating in Malawi at the time. About 36,000 students sat the secondary school leaving certificate examination in those days, but there were 700 spaces in the University. My father suggested teaching. I was away vacationing in my my father’s home village when the government advertised for a teacher training programme. He mailed me the advert, and I applied. I realized I had a passion for teaching. It gave my life meaning. I particularly enjoyed being in control of the process of learning new things, and helping children learn. Since then, I look at the world through the eyes of a teacher.

LA: It’s obvious that you’re drawn to academia. Why is that?

SS: I was initially drawn to creative writing; that was my first intellectual calling. One of the earliest lessons I learned, in secondary school, was that literature provided powerful ways of making sense of complex realities. I learned this from Malawian poets Jack Mapanje, Anthony Nazombe, Garton Kamchedzera, Frank Chipasula and Steve Chimombo, among others, and their influence rubbed off on me. They all wrote poetry, but being literary scholars, their writings, both the poetry and the scholarship, opened a window through which I saw Malawi quite differently. Particularly, it was the political oppression, social injustice and inequality that made me realize that a better Malawi was possible. All of this happened as I transitioned from being a secondary school student to being a student-teacher. I became a teacher, and together with the passion for writing, academia became a compelling interest.

LA: What do you do now as a profession and where are you currently based?

SS: I am a teacher educator and educational researcher. I’m based in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital.

LA: If you had an empty schedule one Saturday, what would Steve Sharra be doing?

SS: Ha ha. Saturdays don’t come empty anymore, as they used to. I would probably be reading some really good fiction, or creative non-fiction, which I haven’t done in years. Or I would be playing chess with my kids.

LA: Did you get accepted into the Shuttleworth Fellowship? What did you wish to accomplish with that?

SS: I was very disappointed when I didn’t get accepted for the 2011 Shuttleworth Fellowship. It’s such a unique fellowship where somebody asks you to describe what you think is wrong with the world, or at least in your society, and then gives you as much money as you require to go about addressing that problem. I was hoping to design a project whose sole aim would be teacher empowerment in Sub-Saharan Africa, through global dialogue with teachers elsewhere, and through teacher-led intellectual production. I still hope to get funding to do this one day.