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June 25th, 2006

   

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Latest in French-Speaking African and Indian Ocean Blogs

A small portrait of the translator Alice Backer · 23:56 · Sub-Saharan Africa

PAN-AFRICAN

Homosexuality in Africa Not a Myth
France-based Togolese blogger Kangni Alem reflects on a homophobic movement in Cameroon that sees homosexuality as a suspect new “religion” and concludes:

Evidence des temps, l’homosexualité ne peut plus être perçue comme un mythe en Afrique. même moi je l’ai cru longtemps, jusqu’au jour où je suis tombé sur l’évidence qui me pendait au nez, lorsque j’ai surpris une de mes meilleures amies, dramaturge africaine célèbre, en train de draguer ma copine de l’époque, dans un festival à Cotonou. On a beaucoup ri de l’histoire, nous sommes restés amis, et moi j’ai beaucoup découvert des stratégies des homos en Afrique pour survivre à un environnement hostile, stratégies dont je parle un peu dans mon roman Cola cola jazz, à travers le personnage de la dame Omoneh.

Sign of times, homosexuality in Africa can no longer be perceived as a myth. Even I believed it for a while until the evidence stared me in the face when one of my best [female] friends, a famous African playwright, hit on my then girlfriend at a Cotonou Festival. We laughed, stayed friends and I found out a lot about the strategies that homosexuals in Africa use to survive a hostile environment, strategies I touch upon in my novel Coca Cola Jazz through the character Omoneh.

BENIN

Reforming Education
On Le Blog de Kangni Alem, Roger Kbegnonvi writes:

Pour relever le système scolaire béninois de la ruine, point n’est besoin d’audace ni d’imagination, il suffit, dans un premier temps, de retourner aux neiges d’antan, il suffit de restaurer une année académique de neuf mois, de rétablir le contrôle quotidien pour les élèves du secondaire. Ces deux premiers pas qui consistent à renouer avec ce que le Dahomey avait de meilleur, c’est-à-dire de logique et de rigoureux, entraîneront les autres pour lesquels il faudra peut-être un peu d’audace et d’imagination.

To save the Beninois school system from ruin, we need to return to the old ways and restore the nine-month academic year, reestablish every-day monitoring for seconday school students. These two steps which involve going back to the best of what Dahomey had to offer i.e. the logical and the rigorous, will lead to other steps that will require a little more imagination.

COTE D'IVOIRE (more…)

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Syrian Blogsphere in a Week

A small portrait of the translator Yazan Badran · 10:21 · Middle East & North Africa
lingua → zht

To start off with a rather hot topic, it's politics, with Ammar Abdulhamid asking THE question… How Secure Is the Assads Regime, Really?

To many observers of Syrian affairs, especially in the aftermath of the vaguely-worded report by Brammertz and in view of the growing alliance with Iran, the Assads regime must seem more secure than it has been in many months now, international criticism of its policies notwithstanding. Whether it is the Assads strategy that is working here or whether it is their luck that is holding, it doesn't really matter, the end result is the same, the Assads seem practically untouchable.

Or are they?

A briefing on Tony Badran's The Syria Monitor about the latest wave of intimidation and trials against Syrian dissedents…

Detained writer Ali Abdallah and his son Muhammad were referred to a military court on Tuesday where they face charges of slandering officials of the state. (UPI, 6/20/06)

Nassim Yazji of Middle East Policy calls out to protect Arab, and Syrian Liberals.

The free opinion and expression are essential and effectual prerequisites for change in the Middle East as antidotes to the authoritarianism. The more the freedom of expression exists, the less the political system is authoritarian and vice versa. The freedom of conscience and expression is a real and indispensable foundation of the political reform and progress in the Middle East.

(more…)

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What Salvadoran bloggers are saying - World Cup and d'Aubuisson

A small portrait of the translator Tim Muth · 08:58 · Americas

There is only one subject that almost all Salvadoran bloggers have mentioned recently — the World Cup. Although El Salvador had no team in Germany, that did not matter as blogging fans noted the start of the great world tournament. Ligia at Que Joder has perhaps the best post (es) as she describes the deserted streets when the games are on TV, the necessity of always knowing the score in case someone asks you, and the positive feelings of everyone united in watching the world's favorite sport.

Similar feelings of fraternity are not generated by the newly inaugurated monument (es) to Roberto d'Aubuisson, founder of the ruling ARENA party. Following the Salvadoran civil war, the UN Truth Commission found d'Aubuisson to have been responsible for the 1980 murder of archbishop Oscar Romero. D'Aubuisson organized and directed deathsquads which killed thousands of civillians during the war years. The blogger Hunnapuh responds (es) to news of the monument with disdain and republishes an interview from 2005 with the sister of d'Aubuisson in which she laments her brother's involvement with Romero's assassination. Comments to the Hunnapuh post (es) and on Tim's El Salvador Blog show the depth of emotion which d'Aubuisson still stirs in the country.

A post in Inferno's Underground World (es) puts the monument to d'Aubuisson in perspective:

Now, for those who are bothered by [the monument] the wealthy have constructed, I say to you — But what is a miserable post of cement near a multiplaza and a poorly paved street compared with the great quantity of monuments, statues, images, movies, etc. dedicated to Monseñor Romero? And even more important, the greatest monument that Monseñor left: his memory in each and every one of the hearts of the Salvadoran population. There is no monument that can compare with this.

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