“No More No Vernacular, Teacher No Teach Me Nonsense”: The image is painted on the gate of a private school in Lagos. It’s sad and annoying to read and see images like this. We’ve been brainwashed by a colonial educational system that is is still very much in place. Children are flogged or fined for speaking so called “vernacular”. We have to stop this miseduaction of the Nigerian/African child
Say “Mushin”: Nigerian designer Deola Sagoe, Singer Adesiji, Painter Chidi Kwubiri, songstress Nneka and i at the Whip Not Child exhibition in Lagos, Nigeria
Secondary school students from Tolu School Complex Ajegunle, Lagos performing their spoken word pieces at the Whip Not Child exhibition held at Civic Center Lagos. I conducted a weeklong Spokenword Workshop with them. The results where amazing. It’s the first time this teenagers get to talk about their experiences with corporal punishment. The texts and poems are insightful, painful and full of life. Thanks to Nigerian painter Chidi Kwubiri for inviting me to be part of this unique experience.
Whip Not Child workshop with secondary school students from 9 schools in Ajegunle, Lagos. The spokenword workshops where conducted by teacher & poet Dagga Tolar and myself.
Just got this mail. And i feel elevated. It’s good to know young and old Germans are not sitting back while right wing extremist hijack and distort historical facts. We must never forget!!!!
GERMAN PROTESTERS STOP NEO-NAZI MARCH IN DRESDEN
13/2/2010- At least 10,000 Germans formed a human chain in Dresden on
Saturday and stopped neo-Nazis staging a funeral march to remember victims
of the Allied air raid that flattened the city 65 years ago. About 5,000
neo-Nazis, clad in black, had gathered at Dresden’s Neustadt station —
where Nazis once packed trains with Jews bound for the Auschwitz
concentration camp — hoping to stage Germany’s biggest far-right march
since 1945. In the past few years, the February 13 anniversary of the
destruction of Dresden, in which 25,000 people were killed, has become a
focus for neo-Nazis who describe the blanket bombardment as a “bombing
Holocaust.” But large numbers of anti-neo-Nazi protesters, who turned out
despite freezing temperatures, stopped the far-right sympathizers from
getting into the town center. “Stopping the Nazi march was a great success
for the Nazi Free Alliance Dresden,” said Alliance spokeswoman Lena Roth.
“It wasn’t easy — there were people injured in Nazi attacks and it was
horribly cold, but it was worth it,” she said.
Police reported isolated clashes between the two sides and at one point the
5,000-strong police force, with reinforcements drafted in from across
Germany, used water cannons. A spokesman said officers had made seven
arrests but the violence police had feared appeared to have been avoided
after organizers declared the far-right gathering over in the late afternoon
and supporters gradually dispersed. Some waved black, white and red flags
and wore T-shirts with militaristic symbols. Others wore garments with
pictures of Lancaster bombers with the slogan “Saviours of Democracy?” “We
are gathered here to remember one of the biggest war crimes of World War
Two,” Kai Pfuerstinger, deputy head of the far-right JLO Youth Corps East
Germany, told the crowd earlier. A debate about whether breaking public
morale through the raids was justifiable has rumbled since the bombing,
which started on the night of February 13, 1945, and flattened the city. The
defeat of Hitler’s Nazis was imminent.
The wave of attacks, by British and U.S. bombers, used incendiary bombs
which created an inferno that ripped through streets, burning and melting
people and buildings alike. Although a mainstream debate has taken place in
the past few years about the extent to which Germans can view themselves as
victims of a war they were responsible for, there is little sympathy for the
views of militaristic neo-Nazi groups. “February 13th, the day of the
bombardment of Dresden, is abused by the right as a myth of sacrifice,” said
Wolfhart Goll of the Nazi Free Alliance. Dresden has only in the last decade
been restored to its former glory, complete with its trove of cultural
treasures. Senior politicians from Dresden and the state of Saxony and a
representative of the Central Council of Jews laid wreaths at a cemetery
where the victims of the bombardment are remembered.
© Reuters http://www.reuters.com/
Chilling with my man Adesiji in Abeokuta. Spent Chinese New years there climbing the Olumo Rock, visiting the tie and dye market and bush hiking. Ain’t nothing like kicking back outside Lagos. I need the break from the noise pollution. Abeokuta is so calm and quite no generator sets harassment.
Special thanks to Bola for making us come see the city under the rock.
“No Man Stand Alone” Exclusive Track from the forthcoming Bantu album “No Man Stands Alone” due to be released in March 2010. The song features Lord of Ajasa doing his Yoruba rap thing.
