Many who are familiar with the Kenyan Afro-fusion scene have discovered a gem in the sultry vocals and lyrics of Sarah Mitaru. If you have not yet heard her music below is a track that urges peace in Africa called: Stop the War
Just so you can hear what the buzz is about Sarah, here are a sampling of reviews
Drum Magazine, a leading commentator on African artistes and events noted:
The first time Sarah Mitaru got a lot of publicity was on January 19, 2007 when she performed at the launch of Eric Wainaina’s album Twende Twende at Alliance Francaise Gardens. Sarah was backed by Wambu Mitaru and 2005 Kora Award winner Neema Ntalel (who along with two other backup artists have been fondly nicknamed The Spectaculars because they all wear glasses). Sarah and her backup team recently performed during Urban Legends, a monthly concert held at the Carnivore that showcases various Kenyan artists.
Sarah is a gifted vocalist whose range and command of her genre are enviably the most striking parts of her performance. She has performed in Kenya, the UK, and soon, is set to travel more sharing her music and her passion.
For those of you who are fans of Papa Wemba, she captures the track ‘Rail On’ LINK HERE
Have not seen this songstress in concert yet? Watch “Stop the War” below.
a. Women and Mental Health
b. Young women’s health
Celebrating Kris Carr, who challenges people to face their adversity bravely!
crazysexycancer.blogspot.com
Kris Carr (moi) is the director, producer and subject of The Learning Channel (TLC) documentary film “Crazy Sexy Cancer.” I’m also the author of “Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips,” an advice from the trenches girlfriend’s guide to the LITTLE “c.” My blog is chock full of information, how to’s, hell yeah’s, and secrets for anyone dealing with adversity, not just cancer. It’s loaded with funny stories, moving reflections, and awesome education. Hope you enjoy!
“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”
Hellen Keller
In a country such as Kenya, where the majority of the women are illiterate or semi-illiterate and where a mere handful complete school, there are a disturbing array of problems facing the women in our homes and communities. The main thought across the country is survival, and undoubtedly the reason why so many pairs of feet find themselves walking to market at the crack of dawn. Often, the few who are educated fail to connect with their sisters who are not. We may blame busy schedules and, in my case, geographical distance, however, while we are away, there are unique sisters back home holding the country together by their might and determination to survive. This project is intended to preserve their stories and share them with women overseas and at home to honor their resilience and ensure that we never forget their sacrifices.
This past summer, I was trained as a web developer and acquired a broad array of experience in web development and in particular, multimedia applications. During the training, I worked on sponsored projects to document the renovation of a landmark building on campus, partnered with another student to learn how to produce quality video and other multimedia presentations. Thrilled with my new found skills, I am eager to combine them with my interest in urban studies and document women in the communities I grew up in back home. I have a few disposable cameras and a notebook or two to start off this project. I hope to meet more women and share their stories as I travel in East Africa.
I heard about the tireless work that women in indigenous communities are doing in Kenya and realized that more people need to hear about them to promote cultural understanding and community partnership at home and abroad. I was born at the tail end of the first United Nations’ Decade for Women, and reaped the benefits of the initial goals of equality, development and peace because more young women such as me went into start school. Growing up, there was little resistance if any to my education, as both my parents wholly encouraged me to attend school and excel at studies.
As the second generation of women in my family to pursue higher education, the barriers to progress such as early dropout by peers and the inequality as I moved to the next level became apparent to me. I watched as witty, intelligent girls, many without role models or supportive families fell behind and even left school entirely. Most recently, as I prepared to leave Kenya for further studies abroad, I visited many of my relatives’ homes and met many girls from surrounding villages who had no such plans to study, although they definitely held the ambition close to heart.
Amidst the women who wished me a safe journey in my home city, I saw the wives who were raising children whose fathers squandered whole salaries on illicit liquor and girls who were barely in their teens picked coffee all day while their brothers studied at school. I had mixed feelings about leaving my country with these contrasts. I realized, that the point of leaving was to marshal my resources into being an effective ambassador for Kenya and give the world an accurate picture of women and progress in African homes, such as mine. With this project, I hope to compel people on both sides of the camera to work to a better understanding of how to survive adversity through real stories show how these attempts engender lasting change in a community.
Photo from MTVu.com Photographer: MTVu Team
I first read about Stephanie when I was learning about the MTVu show,
Translating Genocide: Three Students Journey to Sudan that took three students to Sudan to learn first hand about the horrendous acts that were committed against the citizens in the countryside who have to live with the daily horror of living in war. Below is her picture of a woman at the malnutrition centre in 2004. Stephanie is part of the
Genocide Intervention Network, an organization dedicated to stopping the genocide in Sudan through intensive activism, lobbying and broad campaigns.I met Stephanie briefly at a dinner held to celebrate Black History Month at my college, which is in the Swarthmore neighborhood. She has appeared in Glamour magazine for her efforts and I was in transit a few weeks ago when I noticed that she was in the March 2007 issue speaking of her personal losses in the Rwanda genocide and the passion with which she pursues ending this genocide. Lest we forget 1994, I hope that each one of us will speak out against the horrors in Sudan, and be the generation that did not forget.Here is further coverage about Ms Nyombayire: ( Source: GI-NET.net)
In 2006 she wrote to fellow students:
Eleven years ago, I lost one hundred of my family members. My grandparents were shot and many of my uncles and aunts were killed along with their children. In one hundred days, Hutu extremists armed with machetes any weapon they could find slaughtered half of the Tutsi population as the international community not only chose to stand by and watch but also pulled out all peacekeepers, leaving 400 unarmed men to stop a mass campaign of genocide. The images of countless dead bodies floating down rivers were only granted a few minutes of attention. Instead people chose to go back to their daily lives as thousands of Rwandans were abandoned to their fate. Despite the promise of “never again” proclaimed after the Holocaust, the world had turned its back on the Rwandans.
Today, as you read these lines, another genocide is happening in the Darfur region of Sudan. More than 400,000 innocent men, women and children have been victims of systematic killings and rape and three million have been displaced. In March 2005, I traveled to Chad with MTVu where 200,000 Darfurians have taken refuge. In one of the camps, I met one young girl whose story I will always remember. At 15 years old, she had seen both her parents getting killed before being raped by the Janjaweeds. She then had to walk for 50 days across the desert to reach safety in Chad. She was now living on her own in the refugee camps with no hope that tomorrow will be a better day. Her story is only one in millions.
We must refuse to let Darfur become another Rwanda. It is my hope that I can one day look into the eyes of the children I spoke to and show them that we have heard their voice and we did not stand by and watch their pain and sufferings. Take action today by becoming a member of the permanent constituency against genocide. There is no more time for excuses. You must speak out.
Coverage of Stephanie Nyombayire
- “Telling the stories of Sudan’s horror,” Delaware County Times, March 20, 2005
- “Students take action to aid Sudan,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 11, 2005
- “Rwandan teen, excelling in U.S., now lobbies for Darfur aid,” Associated Press, June 14, 2005
- “Learning from the tragedy of the past,” The Dallas Morning News, July 2, 2005
- “A student, 16, confronts the unthinkable,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 14, 2006
As one activist to another, I salute Ms Nyombayire for her courage and resolve to let the world do its duty to protect those with no peace.
Author:
Monique Maddy
Year of Publication: 2004
Publisher: HarperCollinsThis is a story about a unique woman, Monique Maddy, whose heritage, education, experiences and achievements to date are admirable and worth a second look. She leads the reader through a series of life events that call her to look within herself and try everything that she can to succeed. Her trip to the point of Harvard Business school is a witty account of her birth and early childhood in Liberia, English schooling and American collegiate exposure. my dear Uncle, an avid reader, encouraged me to read her story sometime, and I thank him dearly for his advice.There is more to this lady than just her studies. She illustrates in lucid detail the sacrifices that her family made to ensure that she was a recipient of the best opportunities that life can afford. In her welcoming style, she pays homage to her late father, Emmanuel, whose vision for his children transcended the borders of Sierra Leone, where he was born, and Liberia, where he raised a family. Her story about her father is a doorway to the acumen and sterling business traditions of his ancestors. This insight is reinforced by the description of Ma Kema, Monique’s maternal grandmother who was a stoic example of the strength that people in rural Africa possess in the midst of upheavals and changing culture.Monique was sent at the age of six to boarding school in England as there was no other British education available, to her father’s specification. Her feeling of alienation is tangible as she navigates the all-white system. Her family returns her and her brother to the fold after a few years, as the separation proves daunting for their normal life together.
Later, however, the same feelings of belonging to Africa prevail in her high school and college studies in the United States of America.
Monique provides us with a familiar backdrop to the developments in Liberia that led it to its present turmoil. Lacking the strong government needed to drive infrastructure development, Liberia arms itself with multinational investment in the form of companies such as LAMCO, a mining company with which her father works. LAMCO is the sole provider of school, hospital, road and job for many of the employees and residents of Yekepa, their small village. The small village echoes the growth of other company towns in Africa and other developing countries. However, tribalism mars co-operation in the village as the growing discontent between the indigenous people and the Americo-Liberian population.
However, by far the most significant role that Monique has played was as the initiator of the ACG Company, later named Adesemi, whose role in defining entrepreneurship in Africa leads the field of developing country investment initiatives in the late 1990s. Monique’s Harvard Business School experience came after five years’ experience in the lower ranks of the United Nations organization. Maddy, who had firmly believed in the development mandate of the organization, becomes disenchanted with its bureaucracy and results, thus she decided to return and obtain a Harvard MBA with her memories of the business needs of the developing world as her eventual emphasis.
Starting a business in Africa is not for the faint hearted. Monique Maddy marshaled some of Harvard’s most brilliant minds and watched them abandon the project midway for safaris. It was only after this mutiny that she linked up with Come Lague as her saving partner in the initiative. His enthusiasm for the project and his commitment spurred a longer commitment, renewed enthusiasm in Monique, and went on to be the beginning of their commitment to ACG and a lifelong friendship. While the project did not last, the lessons of its development from investment to local partnership did. The lessons continue to feature in classrooms at business schools over the world.
Of interest to sports afficionados is that Ms Maddy has actually trained and ran marathons. She trained with some of the great Kenyan runners of the last decade and even credits Paul Tergat, a Kenyan indoor athlete turned marathoner for inspiration.
This is a book not to be missed by any, whether or not you have ever been to Africa.
Ever since I was a young girl, the single motivation for women in my wider circle rang with a single two vowel name, Wangari. I knew then that this woman was the one who stopped the grabbing of Uhuru Park, who was beaten at Karura Forest and who was so well read and outspoken, that the Establishment of the time saw fit to call her names in public and humiliate her to no end. I knew she was my preferred woman candidate in 1997. At that time when I, like other Kenyans was inundated by the usual mudslinging and dirty politicking that is so prevalent in Kenya, she ran on a Green platform pledging then as she does now, to commit to preserving resources and good governance.
I was overjoyed when she won her prize in 2004 for her over 30 years’ work with the Greenbelt Movement. As an admirer and budding activist I attended her lecture last October at the University of Pennsylvania’s Green City Symposium organised by UPenn’s Institute for Urban Research. There, for the first time, I heard her speak and I gained a better perspective of the issues that challenged her early on to fight for the better use of resources as a tool for democracy and good governance. I also picked up a copy of her book ‘Unbowed’. I was wowed!
Professor Wangari Muta Maathai’s name is mentioned in the same breath as Mahatma Gandhi and other luminaries as a pillar of change for her generation. In her book she outlines her upbringing in Central Kenya, and her experiences within an environment where people, by tradition revered and cared for the environment. Her education was supported by her family in an era where few women reached high school level and of those who did, a handful went on to professions other than teaching and clerking. However, her dream to study something else together with her top performance put her in line to receive a scholarship with the Kennedy Airlift, prompted in part by the late Tom Mboya. Sadly, she returned to a Kenya where already fuel shortage was becoming a problem and water catchment areas were drying up.This state of affairs was to give impetus to her later activism.
Her studies in the US followed by her return home may ring a bell with women in the sciences who still do not get enough respect for their academic achievements. She returned home to meet and marry her husband, with whom she later separates. She categorises this time in her life under ‘Difficult Years’. She went from her relatively stable life to that of a single broke mother and recalls being unable to buy her kids even a plate of chips. I grew up knowing that chips on an outing was something to be had, however, I digress.Many women have reached the point where they are the sole breadwinners for their homes. Wangari is no exception to the rule, especially as she chronicles the stigma she experienced as a divorced woman in Kenya of the late 70s and 80s. Our society is still so unforgiving.
The book outlines a few key roles that women in the public in Kenya have played over the last few decades as powerful political figures. Naturally, those who remember the National Council of Women of Kenya and the Maendeleo Ya Wanawake triumphs and debacles will refresh their memories. Wangari stood by her husband as he ran for Parliament in the 70s and her own political debut in the late 80s. The contrasts in campaigns illustrate why then as now, Kenya is still not ready to accept women leaders in official capacities.
No story about Wangari Maathai is complete without a mention of the brutality she was dealt by the government to the point of hiding and the injuries she sustained whose scars she bears to date. There is a story that sits in the background of her description, that is, that of her children who saw all that their mother underwent while dealing with her occassional absences as a result. I salute them.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I could go on and on about Wangari Maathai. The better advice for you, dear reader is to order your own copy of Unbowed. In a world where we shy away from reading about other people, her memoir is a portrait of a Kenyan we can tell, ‘Well lived, Aluta Continua’ and truly emulate. A few years ago we had a segment in the local TV stations that said, “So-And-So, A truly great Kenyan. She is one truly great Kenyan.
For me, I say to Dr Maathai what the women said to her, “Wangari, you shall never walk alone, and (my own words) your example shall never be forgotten”
Picture: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai before entering Oslo City Hall to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Copyright © Pressens Bild AB 2004*
Photo: John McConnico
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