A is for April...A-Z...and Africa!!

is for

'Appy Easter Sunday to all who are celebrating! I'm glad I'm starting on a major festival day, because in India that's how all big projects are begun, with the advice of astrologers - on an auspicious moment/day to ensure success. I know I'll need all the help I can get :)  To those who do not observe Easter specifically - 

Sannu Abokai! which is Hello, friends! in Hausa, a Chadic language spoken in West Africa. 

Amampondo – a South African percussion band, listen to them perform as you read the rest.

And of course, there's Akon. Here he is with Angel. He's an American singer of Senegalese descent, one of the super-successful A-grade celebrities of African origin with his name on the Forbes' List and everything. Bet you knew that already, see I told you he's uber-famous.

Amazigh – meaning ‘free peoples,’ a.k.a Berbers, are a group of peoples indigenous to North Africa, predating the Arab, or even the Phoenician and Roman conquests. They stretch from Morocco and Western Sahara to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. Ethnically 60% of the population of Morocco and around 2% of Egypt is Amazigh. They have a different language, customs, and way of life from the Arabic speaking populations of these countries. Though they are the majority in Morocco and Algeria, they remain politically marginalised. They have been fighting for their rights since 2011 and have made some space for their voices. Read more about them here, and watch a glimpse of their culture in these clips.

From the Safaris

Amboseli National Park – is an ecosystem and a wildlife conservation park on the Kenya-Tanzania border. It covers a core area of roughly 39,000 ha in the wider ecosystem of 8000 km². Amboseli is the most visited park in Kenya after Masai Mara, and it is known for its elephant populations and its birdlife. Here's a clip made from some of my photos taken in Africa, in Amboseli and elsewhere.

~ Thanks for watching! ~

Books n stuff

Kofi Awoonor (1935-2013), a poet from Ghana, his poems were part of my literature syllabus at school. I remember reading his Weaver Bird, and immediately connecting the metaphor to colonisation of Africa. I still have that anthology, first published in 1967, when independent Ghana was just ten years old. The spine has faded from purple to sky blue, I have problems locating it on the shelf because I am still looking for that purple, though I know it's no longer that colour. Oh, the quirks of memory!

Kofi Awoonor was published as George Awoonor Williams in this book. (He used both names which were truncated versions of his full name). He was not just a poet but wore many hats – literary critic, professor, spoken word artist, novelist, cultural historian, ambassador to UN and several foreign countries. He was tragically killed in the terrorist attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013, where he was scheduled to perform at a literary festival that evening. Distressing that terrorists can snuff out an artist’s voice so easily – who knows what he had left to articulate?

Chinua Achebe (1930 – 2013) – the granddaddy of African literature, his “Things fall Apart” published in 1958 was the first African novel to gain worldwide attention. Also a staple of school syllabi in the 70’s West Africa, but this book I no longer have, a Heinemann edition, lost in the various country moves. Not that it matters, because a 50^th anniversary edition was reissued and I read TFA again and then the entire trilogy. Always hugely rewarding to reread as an adult something which one read as a school text - a totally different perspective. Definitely a book that stays with one long after the last page is turned. Achebe bagged the Man Booker International in 2007. 

As you can see, 2013 was a sad year for African literature, two stalwarts gone. While their passing is tragic, one particularly because it was untimely - it must also be said and celebrated that there are others, an exquisitely competent younger generation of contemporary writers, such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who are carrying the tradition of African literature forward and keeping it as vibrant and spell binding as ever. Thoroughly recommend her Half of a Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus, both are superb reads and milestones in African Literature.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2018