Mama Shujaa

Last Thursday, I went with two lady friends to view the documentary, A Powerful Noise , an engaging recounting of the lives of three women who overcome hardship to effect change in their communities. Bui Hanh is an HIV-infected widow who starts a self-help group that provides prevention information, support, counseling and health care to HIV/AIDS sufferers in Vietnam. I was surprised to learn that Vietnam has an extremely high rate of HIV infection due to the large numbers of men who use intravenous drugs. In one of the scenes, Bui visits a coal mine to distribute condoms. I found it odd that she had to warn the men “Do not wash. Use only once.” Could this too explain the high infection rate? Jacqueline Dembele fights forced labor and the exploitation of girls who work in the city of Bamako, Mali. She started an organization that provides the girls with a basic education, teaches them how to become seamstresses, and places them in safe jobs. In a male-dominated society where yo...

I keep revisiting a photo album containing pictures of the Paa Ya Paa ruins after the fire in 1998. Maybe it's because I was thousands of miles away, on the receiving end of an international call alerting me of El Nina and her wrath, when it happened. The phone call that put my fears to rest; the news that Baba na Mama were okay, that Baba had been hospitalized for smoke inhalation because he kept running back to retrieve some of the gallery's permanent collection of over 500 works of art, produced in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Sudan. The record of contemporary East African art from pre-independence to the present. Do I wander through remembrances path perhaps because I need (here's the tired word) closure? Or is it simply because I have been slow to recognize the unquestionable life-force embedded in the photographs? Look at the strong facial features that survived. They intrude upon the darkest places of the heart. Baba's lifesong st...

When Baba na Mama founded Kibo Art Gallery on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Moshi, Tanzania in 1963, they called it their African Mango Tree, their mascot was the African tortoise. "It is like a mango tree; too slow in growth to compete with emphemeral fashions of the art world; but with roots too deep in the soil to be uprooted by any shallow wind of civilisation. Its roots sink deep into the earth to reach out for the bones of our ancestry and the sap that is our heritage from God. Its trunk powerful and round like true communal life in unity and harmony. Its branches open up into a generosity of leaves, flowers and colourful fruits to feed the world and inspire humanity with spiritual health, joy, love, peace and humility in eternal wonder." I share this with you today on the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America. Barack Obama, Whose face glows with love and compassion like the sun of Africa. Who brings with him the fertilit...