Black Looks has been given permission to publish the remarkable story of Stephanie Adaralegbe, a transgendered Nigerian, that highlights her trials and tribulations as she prepares to attend the XVI International AIDS Conference. As Black Looks says, ”the story speaks for itself. It is special because it expresses a strength and defiance against a society that not only excludes difference but in many cases is determined to destroy it”. Here is an exerpt:

“Man is chemical, man is testosterone, but more significantly Man is nothing but a chemical substance. In the words of Christine Jorgensen, America’s first sex changed Transsexual, the difference between a Man and a Woman is a slight difference in chemical composition. As a result, estrogens basically make a Woman while androgens basically make up a Man. With this knowledge, I have been propelled to write a book titled ‘The beautiful hearts are the beautiful ones ‘, which is indeed a literary explosive, very revealing and simply unputdownable.”

”Defining Myself” is the latest post by Rosemary Ekosso, an anglophone Cameroonian and a translator and court interpreter with the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. She writes that “when I think of how people see me as an African woman, the following words come to mind”: ”victim, mother, whore”. Rosemary deconstructs these definitions and says:

“If I am a whore, then I hope to be the kind of whore that no one can afford. I remember a respectably married woman saying to some fifteen years ago: “we are all prostitutes; that is what we do”. I do not give myself to a man. I share part of myself with him for as long as he behaves himself, mainly by sharing part of himself with me. That is all the exchange I ask, and as it is generally a lot less than what he is asking of me, I am not a whore. If I take money from him, it is because the particular social structure in which we live has given the men almost exclusive custody of the fruit of our joint labour, and it is only by negotiating with him that I can get some of my own back. So I am not a whore. I am a negotiator. But one day, I shall stop negotiating. I shall put my foot down”.

Uaridi, whose name and blog means ‘rose’ in Kiswahili, writes about her habit of stopping to admire people’s gardens and beautiful flowers and asks her blog readers to ”take time to smell the roses and give thanks to God for the beauty that surrounds us and the hearts and eyes to appreciate it”.

Afromusing, the Kenyan Blogs Webring’s resident solar power guru has written a fascinating and information-filled post on how she tested a Solar Ipod Charger I. Although she says her “schedule did not afford me more than 2 hours of direct sunlight”, she has more or less been successful.

”The Five Senses of My People” is the title of a beautifully poetic post by Chereka. The senses are sound, sight, taste, smell and touch. Regarding the sense of touch, she writes:

“It's the touch and feel of my people, that warm embrace with an old friend or a relative, the gentle re-assuring touch and caress of a friend, a loved one, or a lover. It's the warm feel of rubbing elbows and shoulders as you chart your way through a sea of gorgeous faces and huggable bodies, relaxed and not too guarded but not clumsily rude either. It's a touch and feel of brotherhood, sisterhood, fatherhood, motherhood and lasting friendships.”

adefunke tells a funny story regarding a pick up line which apparently is most successful one in current use.

Soul has created a scrumptious-sounding smoothie called Soul’s Citrus Adventure which looks fairly easy to make. Yummy!

More from African women on the African Women's Aggregator……..