Dr Susanna's guide to MJoTA sites
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Above, Uganda is in Philadelphia for the Labor Day weekend, and Philadelphia and the Mayor's Commission for African and Caribbean Affairs - chaired by accountant and the Rev Leon Sullivan protege the Hon Stanley L Straughter - welcomes its citizens, its politicians, its ambassador.
Philadelphia Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell presented a citation to lawyer and business administrator Mrs Jennifer Lubwama Semakula Musisi, the Executive Director of Kampala Capital City Authority. Kampala is the capital city of Uganda. Standing to the left of Mrs Blackwell is Mrs Musisi; on her left is the Uganda Ambassador to the United States, to his left is the Chair of the United Uganda Association, which organized this weekend's convention. To Mrs Blackwell's right is Mr Straughter, for his story, click here.
I was explained that the Executive Director oversees the city and all it does, and this is a higher position than mayor.
I also saw her in action. I saw her, elegant, beautifully dressed, immaculate hair. I discovered she can turn on a dime. The reception started at 6pm, her plane was late, and did not land until 4pm, and her luggage did not arrive with her. Between the plane landing at 4pm and her apologizing for arriving late at 6.30, she made the drive from the airport which is between 30 and 60 minutes during rush hour, and bought new clothes, and made herself look like she had spent all day preparing herself. This woman is good, well-deserving her citation, an African woman to watch.
The Executive Director's no-nonsense approach to what must have been a major inconvenience permeated the room. All I felt was optimism. Uganda has a new prime minister, in place since May 2011, the country has pulled through independence looting by the colonial power, bloody wars and genocide, and it is settling down for business.
Today they have a business forum, explaining to investors why building Uganda with Ugandans is a good idea.
You can read the citation and news from Uganda click here.
The president of the Association of African Journalists & Writers is another kick-butt Ugandan woman, Arao Ameny, click here.
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Above, Brooklyn before the Jouvie parade started before dawn on the last day of the American summer, the first Monday in Sep 2009.
I was there as guest of Brother Austin Tuitt, musician and entrepreneur from Trinidad & Tobago who for 27 years has been promoting his message of unity in stopping oppression and joining together under a Caribbean flag.
I remember being cold, and far too exhausted to stay for the big parade of the day, the West Indian parade. I drove my car out of Prospect Park, where the police had allowed me to park as driver to a Grand Marshall, and drove to South Jersey and on the way a tiny tiny pebble punched a hole in my windscreen. Maybe it was a meteorite.
In 2010 during Jouvie, and the West Indian Parade, I was in Lagos, the house-guest of the Police Commissioner of Lagos and attended a press conference where 7 bandits were made to sit on the ground and talk about why they trafficked guns and stole money and why one of them shot another Nigerian dead.
But I was back in Brooklyn in 2011 for the West Indian Parade, and will be again this Monday. I have learned of another Caribbean flag, keep coming back and you will see them both.
So, Jouvie is back in Brooklyn Monday. Come and welcome the sun in Crown Heights, then wander over to Eastern Parkway for the West Indian Day Parade. Drink coffee. Stay away from meteors, or meteorites.
And meanwhile, Dance Diabetes into Health. Keep moving, keep shaking, keep dancing, keep walking, keep running. Dance Diabetes into Hell resources click here.
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Happy birthday Ian Charlton Maclean PhD (Physics, ANU, 1973) in Canberra! Brother to Glenys Hay. I remember your late father Jim taking you and my brothers camping, and your late father taking Glenys and Patrick and me swimming, and shooing off a young man who wanted to take me home. And your mother Nada cooking and talking sense always. We all did a lot of Anglican church. And now the parents are all dead and we are left with what is real: love, prayer, trust and accountability.
Above, black swans swimming in a pond in Centennial Park, which was originally the water supply for Sydney. Sydney got bigger, the ponds became polluted and now Centennial Park is a green buffer between the inner city and the Eastern suburbs including Kensington, where Ian and Glenys and my brothers and I grew up and went to university.
No pictures of Ian then, although I have some. No pictures of Ian now. Then, he was young and tall and thin and very blond and very analytical, and was away at boarding school before coming home to go to the university across the street for his undergraduate physics degree. After that he went to Canberra, on scholarship for his PhD in physics, which he was awarded in 1973. Ian then had a choice, the same choice I had in 1978 when I was awarded my PhD in physiology & pharmacology. He could either stay in Australia, or leave to work in physics in Germany, England, the United States. He chose to stay, and be with his parents in Australia when they died, and he has had a long career as a public servant in Canberra. I chose to leave and work as a scientist in Philadelphia, and I was far away from my parents when I gave birth 4 times in America, and when they died calling for me.
I last saw Ian in 1985, when I was visiting my mother with my 2 older sons, and when his sister was pregnant with her second son. I remember we talked about HIV/AIDS, and how the extremely attractive president of the students union had died from HIV infection.
I don't look like I did when I was in high school in Sydney, or when I was a young mother with my own mother and father still alive and giving medical advice and care. For one thing, my hair is no longer chestnut, now I am blond. Our bodies change day to day because of health, disease and the ravages of the elements and the worst changer and ravager of all, which is time. We are born, we do things, and we die. What matters is what we do and how we do it and who we love and how we love. If we do what matters right, we leave behind what is real: love, trust, prayer and accountability, and that is remembered forever, long after our names have been forgotten.
Two people who have been honored by the Nobel Prize Foundation: Story about a woman whom I adore in death, as I did in life, whose very breath inspired girls to become scientists all over the world and will be remembered forever click here. And a story about a man who has lived a long good life and who inspires me every day click here.
And black swans? Yes, in Australia the swans are black. I remember being told in primary school that the early European settlers could not believe what they saw, they knew swans to be white. Well, I could not believe that swans could be white, because I could not remember seeing any before I arrived in Australia when I was 9. To me, swans are black. What more is there to say?
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Picture above, at the Occupy Nigeria House rally in Manhattan in Jan 2012, after the President of Nigeria increased fuel prices in Nigeria on New Year's Day. On my right is author, academic and journalist Okey Ndibe who writes a column about Nigeria every week for Sahara Reporters.
Nigeria news feeds and videos click here.
When Dr Ndibe was detained on a trip to Nigeria in Jul 2011, I was searching for information and calling for press comment to express outrage. He was released after the outrage became apparent, and meanwhile I had found an article he wrote about being a small child when his country declared war on his region, Biafra. I was 15 when the Biafran War started, and all I knew about it was that babies were starving and journalists were competing with each other to be filmed holding babies that died in their arms.
I cannot wrap my head around the devastation that would spawn such a competition. But now I know, and 42 years after the war ended, the wound in Nigeria that was Biafra is deep, and has not been healed.
Dr Ndibe spoke to Omenihu Amachi for MJoTAtalks, and you can listen to him speak click here. Stories about Biafra, start here.
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I guess we are not going to hear anything
about or by former VP candidate, former Senator John Edwards at the Democratic Convention. Lying to his dying wife, the person closest to him, showed
us all that he would lie about anything to anyone. Three cheers for the
steadfast VP Joe Biden!
However, it is time to forgive John Edwards. He has made his own purgatory, he is the father of a young girl whose mother seems hell-bent on telling intimate things about their relationship that I certainly don't want to know, he has 2 adolescent children, and his wife is dead! He has done a lot of good, he has produced a steadfast loyal daughter, and whether we like it or not, he was not convicted of lying about misusing campaign funds.
And he knows a lot about the law, about Democratic party, about American politics, and he has put his own money where his mouth is.
Having a man with an extremely ill wife take up with a mistress is not new, not even original. My father did the same thing, and I recently spent 2 months with a man who had done it too. Perhaps this is the obvious path for a man when his support system, the rock on whom he stands, suddenly crumbles and needs him to change to being the behind-the-scenes man from being the center-of-attention, the front-man, the sun in the Solar System.
I believe that John Edwards has some gumption left in him. Some moral code. I am looking forward to his apologizing in a big way with say a hospital in Haiti or Zimbabwe named the Elizabeth Edwards Cancer Hospital, or something along those lines.
American politicians who are sons and daughters of Africa by way of the Caribbean click here.
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Beautiful sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean, at
least it is here, in the north east US. Sounding not good in the south
east. Weather advisories on www.drsusanna.org/anguilla.php
I am in Brooklyn, my eyes and ears are still resonating from the weekend's Afropunk Fest.
I learned something new. You know how we believe that few men grow past 6 feet, and only superstar basketball players are over 7 feet tall? Not true. You just don't see them. They come out at music festivals and plonk themselves in the very front row, and gyrate madly. I have photos to prove this.
Janelle Monáe sang Electric Lady at Brooklyn Afropunk Fest. Electric indeed. Picture of Janelle above, that I took during her concert. She and her band jumped and danced and sang and played, pure energy. Which I like a lot, being of the energetic persuasion myself. Links to pictures and videos of her and other musicians on MJOTAtalks: Music click here.
The Bed Stuy Vollies were out in force for a second day; they dealt professionally with persons becoming unconscious, broken leg, blood pouring out of leg wounds. They would all have loved to be gyrating and dancing with the rest of the crowd, but they stayed by their posts and took care of business.
As the Commander Rocky Robinson likes to say, "While everyone was singing We Are the World, Bed Stuy Vollies was on the ground in Haiti, kicking out locks and setting up a hospital. Way to go Bed Stuy Vollies click here.
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Picture above, Bed Stuy Vollies during their celebrations of 24 years. They were there yesterday at 9am at the Afropunk Fest in Brooklyn. They packed up at 9pm, and didn't leave until nearly 10, after taking a young lady to an emergency room for hospital treatment. She had an asthma attack.
Hey, I don't run advertising on this site, no-one pays to be here. But I am asking you, any time you have a spare dollar or 2, or need to reduce your taxes with charitable donations, send it to Bed Stuy Vollies. Every dollar is accounted for, from the beginning they have had as their vice president corporate lawyer and Harvard law graduate Tamsin Wolfe Esq (she is an Orthodox Jew and mother of twins!) and she has told her story to MJoTA for link click here.
What is it about Bed Stuy Vollies that is under my skin, in my heart, in my soul? The simple answer is that they know what love is. They know that only 4 things are preeminent, only 4 things are real, only 4 things endure long after our bodies have packed up and released our spirits: love, trust, prayer and accountability. The organization is bigger than the individual members, Bed Stuy Vollies embraces everyone, gives everyone a 2nd, 10th, 100th new chance, cares for all needing emergency services like they are their own loved relatives.
They were first on the ground in Haiti. The first. They were there at the World Trade Center. Bed Stuy Vollies would be everywhere in New York, everywhere in every African community of they could. Send them a dollar today, tomorrow. Any time. www.bsvac.org.
Haiti click here. Bed Stuy Vollies click here.
And today, in 1915, a baby girl with blond hair and pale green eyes was born in Belfast to Helen Jane Macmordie Uprichard, wife of lawyer William John Uprichard.
In 1903 Helen hopped on a boat for Nova Scotia to teach physical education, 2 years later she was back in Belfast, and rapidly became engaged to the fiance of her sister, my Great Aunt Mab. Wow. I never ever heard anyone ever say anything nice about my granny, but I adored her, and she adored me. She was always elegant, and after her husband died, was always traveling somewhere; I was told she was always surrounded by attentive men. I was also told she dived for Great Britain in the Olympics. I have pictures of her diving. I loved that my daughter, Miss Patience, her great-grand-daughter spent many summers in a diving camp. Miss Patience does better on the water, she is a rower and she is rowing for Drexel University this fall.
Helen's baby, her only daughter after 2 sons, was born in the heat of World War I, when Ireland belonged to England, and when Ireland was one country. Helen and William named their daughter Helen Patience Uprichard, but she was never called Helen, from day 1, Patience. And in January 1940 she became Dr Patience Uprichard, when she satisfied the medical practitioner requirements of Queen's University Belfast. She immediately sailed and traveled by train to Sheffield, England, because England was desperately short of physicians; most were off with the military patching up wounded troops. Four years later she was in London, and soon caught the eye of my father, who was finishing his medical studies at the University of London.
Dr Patience's story and picture click here.
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Above, in Jan 2011, in Philadelphia at the Kingsessing Recreation Center, the
Moorish Unification Council Of The World, Inc presented Brother Saleem-Abdullah Muwwakkil with
a Community Service Award for Outstanding
Leadership in the African-American Community.
Brother Saleem is a force in the African communities in South Jersey where he has formed an active group called the New Jersey Commission for African Affairs. We meet every month and we focus on business development and education.
A lot of African countries and nearby countries are predominantly Muslim including Sierra Leone click here, Algeria click here; and neighboring countries including Turkey click here.
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Above, San Juan, Puerto Rico. I took this picture as I was walking along the harbor in old San Juan, remembering Dr Richard O Orkand, who loved to make this walk daily.
He was on the faculty in the School of Dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania, I first remember him coming to listen to an hour-long seminar I gave on carbon dioxide handling by the liver at the School of Medicine.
He was the head of the Neurobiology Institute in San Juan when I was being recruited to be Chair of Physiology of University of Puerto Rico from 1994 to 1996. My appointment collapsed, they never wanted a woman, they never wanted a foreigner, and they certainly did not want anyone who was friends with Dr Orkand. Dr Orkand died in 2001, 2 months after I last contacted him about getting Spanish speaking writers for a huge job in Spain. I cannot think of cormorants without thinking about the good works of Dr Orkand.
Puerto Rico click here.
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Anguilla, a Caribbean island nation. Anguilla
is part of Great Britain, its citizens are British subjects. This was
usual for Brutish colonies before 1960, now this is exceedingly rare.
The tiny Caribbean nation of Montserrat has the same status and when its
volcano errupted, half of the British citizens outside Britain had to
go to Britain or migrate elsewhere.
Anguilla
is global warming in an island: low-lying, flat, vulnerable to wind and
rain and tropcial storms and hurricanes and rising waters. It is also
Calypso, and hosts a big festival each year in August, the upper left
video has beautiful sound quality and gives a wonderful idea of the
music the festival attracts. I could find few rss feeds directly from or
about Anguilla, the ones I found I posted, also warnings from the US
National Hurricane Center.
The
population of Anguilla is 90% the sons and daughters of Africa, who came
to Anguilla from other islands, other continents, voluntarily and
forced.
Anguilla calypso videos, other videos, high seas warnings, some news, map, flag click here.
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MJoTA Friday Night Movie:
Movie from Ghana preceded by advertisement
for Chinese restaurant and hotel in Kumasi, Ghana, which is worth
watching all by itself.
And then more ads and then the movie which is not in English. It may be in Ga or Asante.
Worth
watching anyway, the scenety is lovely and the actors are suitably
outraged and happy at various times. And a chicken chase and waving
around a rifle. And at the end, a number to call if you want to be a
movie star. What is not to like?
Plus, A
long video to listen to while you are enjoying a late summer Friday
evening, drinking cold water, looking at scenery or people or animals or
plants that you love.
MJoTA Friday movie click here.
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Above, page 1 of the first edition of the print newspaper African Reporters. I don't know what has happened to the newspaper; the publisher Chukwuma stopped talking to me when Lady Evangelist Dr Mrs Oluwasolape Janet Ogundipe Fashakin RN, Esq (I am sure she has more letters) sued me for $20 million in Federal Court and threatened him with deportation back to Nigeria if he testified on my behalf.
Anyway, I laid out 2 editions of the newspaper, did all the graphic design, took most of the photos. We did a great job, I am proud of it. However, it was not well received. The first edition the publisher and I collected from the printers on the day of the Nigerian Independence Day parade in Manhattan. I started distributing copies outside Nigeria House: ah, story later. Quite a story.
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I love effort, and dreams, and accountability when dreams are being turned into actions.
That is why I love the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which celebrated 27 years of dreams, action and accountability last night at Brooklyn Borough Hall. Story and pictures to come.
But meanwhile, read about CACCI click here. And listen to the steel drums played by the stupendously co-ordinated and hard-working steel drum orchestra CASYM click here.
Until I went to Antigua Nov 2011, I had no idea that I adored steel drums, did not know steel drums were under my skin, and that my days would number from when I last heard steel drums until the next time. Now I know, and am doing my best to keep guiding MJoTA readers to clean steel drums recordings. Because as much as steel drums opens the windows to heaven, bad recordings with flattened notes open the windows to hell.
Steel drums are on the page for news from the Caribbean click here, as well as the CASYM page click here.
Last night CASYM out-did itself. We heard a Bob Marley song, "No Woman No Cry", a big band song, a rap song, and the players were dancing, swinging, crouching, stretching, playing softly, loudly, quickly, slowly, but always together. Swoon. Heaven indeed.
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Picture above, during my 3 weeks in Nigeria as guest of Captain Okpe and his family, I was the guest of a television producer and a beauty queen at the government-run National Museum of Lagos in March. Lovely museum, well-kept, everything exquisite. The museum deserves its own page, keep coming back.
Meanwhile, Museum of African Art in Washington click here, African American Museum of Philadelphia click here, Aces Museum click here. Biafran Declaration of Independence click here.
According to its Facebook page:
"The National Museum Lagos has thousands of objects and artefacts in its
storage facilities. The Museum also have in its custody and care four
declared National Monuments namely: Old Secretariat, Ilojo Bar, Water
House and Iga Idugaran Oba of Lagos's Palace.
"The collections in Lagos
Museum has a considerable resource representative of the different
ethnic groups in Nigeria and shows the diversity of
the collections in terms of functions as well as in terms of the types
of medium used to create the objects.
:The collections has functional
types such as face masks and headdresses, ancestral figures, door panels
and house posts, stools, musical instruments, household utensils,
shrine objects etc. Material types include: Bronze, Terracotta, Wood,
Pottery, Ivory, Calabashes and Gourds and Wrought iron."
Yo, Nigerian Government, get the museum back online, their web-site no longer works.
---------------------------------------------------------- Algeria. The largest country in Africa, right up in the north next to the Mediterranean Sea, seems like no-one has ever been able to leave it alone or ignore it. A route from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe, if you can get through the Saharan Desert, which many do. The Romans were there, so were the French. I have updated the page on Algeria: news feeds, videos, information click here.
Arao Ameny is a daughter of Uganda and a trained journalist. She organized the Association of African Journalists and Writers, which released a statement on the death of the Ethiopian leader.
Association of African Journalists and Writers click here. Uganda click here. Ethiopia click here.-------------------------------- ”"Legitimate rape" comment in response to a question about pregnancy in rape victims by Mr Akin, congressmen and Republican candidate for senate in Missouri:
From Wikipedia: “In an August 19, 2012 interview aired on St. Louis television station KTVI-TV, Akin was asked his views on whether women who became pregnant due to rape should have the option of abortion. He replied:
'
Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those
things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort
of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors,
that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways
to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that
didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but
the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.'”
Since the Republican party has withdrawn their support for Congressman Akin, things are looking sweet for Senator McCaskill I hope she will be carried on the wings of angels to victory in November.
I remember President Obama was catapulted into the Senate by a scandal in Chicago (3 things are definite: death, taxes, scandals in Chicago). Senator Claire, you have my attention. I am hoping so does the Democratic convention.The fact is, I wouldn't be here if rape didn't result in pregnancy, duh.
When was one of my mother's mothers raped by a Viking, or by a man who used force and political power to claim he owned humans?
I have been seething with rage since seeing how rape is diminished in Sweden and used as a political weapon to bring down a 21st century hero, Julian Assange, and how rape is politicized to somehow make women's rights over their own bodies illegitimate.
I will be posting some pages on rape. I have not wanted to, because I have so frequently seen the discussion on rape deteriorate to pornography, and the MJoTA sites are not about the offer human tragedy for entertainment. We all came from Africa, we are all the products of rape. Come back to keep reading my continuing bursts of outrage.
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Above, picture of dancers at the farewell reception for the United Nations Consul General of Angola Mrs Julia Machado Esq. I have updated the Angola page click here.
Sierra Leone page updated with links and news feeds. Now that the Holy Month of Ramadan has ended (God bless you and your faithfulness Jabati, Abdullai, Salmana, Ahmed, Rugie) cholera is a massive problem as we count down to the November presidential elections click here.
Not a good day for politicians in Africa. The Ethiopian PM has died, and
the Sudanese Government's Religion Minister was killed in a plane crash
with 31 people. And mine strikes in South Africa have been fatal for
34.
News from the countries of Africa click here. News from Ethiopia click here. News from Sudan click here. News from South Africa click here.
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Picture above, crowd in pit watching the reggae band play during the 26th annual Caribbean Festival at Penn's Landing on the Philadelphia waterfront Sunday Aug 18. The little girl paying close attention to the band was dancing, dancing. The little boy and girl examining the little girl's cell phone, she had just photographed the band. The lady in a red and white striped shirt is Cindy. The young girl with the face paint: a lot of faces were painted with the Jamaican flag.
I joined AfriCom Philly president daughter of Liberia and Togo Dr Vera Tolbert and Fox Chase Cancer Center microbiologist and daughter of Jamaica Dr Camille Ragin. I was delighted to see that Dr Ragin's toe-nails were carefully painted with Jamaican flags. The chairman of the Mayor's Commission on African and Caribbean Affairs, son of Africa and honorary consul for Guinea, Hon Stanley L Straughter was there with great-grandkids. He is a huge supporter of the Caribbean and African communities, scroll below to Aug 18 picture and story.
The day belonged to Jamaica, Jamaican flags and sons and daughters and friends of Jamaica wearing yellow, green and black were everywhere.
Although not entirely. The steel drums played as they do every year, and a man in front was waving a huge flag of Trinidad and Tobago. From which, I heard the Ambassador to the United States say in January, he can see Venezuela from his house.
And a beautifully dressed lady from Panama waved a Panamanian flag at me, and a beautifully dressed lady from the Virgin Islands also waved a flag at me. And I saw the lady from Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell's office photographing a group of young people from Guyana.
And I was carrying a bag with a map of Australia. As I tell my friends in CACCI, I migrated to America from a small Caribbean island called Australia.
Jamaica click here. Trinidid & Tobago click here. CACCI click here.
News from Caribbean countries click here.
India is and has for centuries been enormously important to the economy of East Africa, Britain and the Caribbean. In South Jersey I shop weekly at a Sikh-owned supermarket: they have real tea and grains and beans and spices that I cook. Indians mostly control the pharmaceutical industry and many of the hospitals in East Africa.
India news feeds and links to MJoTA resources about India click here.
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Picture above I took from Canarsie Pier in Brooklyn. I love to go there to watch the planes take off and land from JFK Airport, and watch the seagulls. The plane looks invincible, it can go anywhere and fly over all the disasters happening on the ground. This picture is in memory of a pilot who was shot down, Lee Forster, and in honor of the 69th birthday of Captain Augustine De Hems Okpe, who flew over disasters and bombed Russian planes and did the impossible with grace and received the highest decoration Biafra could give. Happy birthday Captain, may your years be blessed.
Captain Okpe click here. Philadelphia salutes military veterans click here.
Julian Assange! Yeah! Australian education at its best! Love the picture in the New York Times of him speaking from the balcony with the British cops enjoying hanging out at the Ecuador Embassy, with orders to arrest him should he emerge. I guess the balcony and the air is Ecuadorean sovereign territory.
News feeds from Ecuador click here.
I lived in Sydney from Oct 1960 until Oct 1978, when I flew to California as a graduate with a PhD in physiology and pharmacology, and started a 3-week tour of the United States which ended with my collection at Philadelphia Airport by Dr Robert E Forster II, who was chairman of University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Department of Physiology from 1959 until 1990. I make a lot of mistakes, but 2 things I did right, get my PhD at 26 and come under the protection of Dr Forster and his social worker-wife, Betsy, aka Elizabeth Hilbert Day Forster.
Dr Forster and I bonded as he drove me past the Philadelphia General Hospital, which was being demolished. He remarked that it looked like St Thomas's Hospital in London after it had been bombed in World War II. I was startled, I told him that was where my father went to medical school, and he was there when St Thomas's was bombed. And that was where he met my mother, who was a young physician.
Dr MCH Dodgson click here. Dr Patience Uprichard Dodgsonclick here. Haddonfield graduates click here.
My credentials and my pedigree were impeccable, and Dr Forster treated me like a daughter from that day until I left the Physiology Department in 1996.
Dr Forster and Betsy had a lovely house in Haverford, in the suburbs of Philadelphia. The house had been the mansion of an executive at Haverford College, and led to a path over the road separating the house from the college. The house itself was filled with antiques and pictures from Betsy's New England ancestors, and from Dr Forster's Philadelphia ancestors. A photograph of a smiling Lee Forster, a World War II pilot, hung in the family room. The smile was shot off him in Italy by a German pilot, whose commander was Goerring: story on his nephew Count von Rosen click here.
I remember seriously examining the gold-framed oil paintings of Betsy's ancestors and making a quiet comment to Dr Forster, "You know, if your ancestors had been any good, they would never have left England." He laughed out loud. I try to suppress it, but sometimes my Britishness bubbles to the surface.
Of course, that comment applies to all of us. Humans have been restless since we first evolved. In any of our ancestors had been any good, we would never have left Africa. The really good ones, the ones who understood the need to keep family together and to work against adversity with what you have, these ones stayed in Africa and built civilizations in Zimbabwe, in Mali, in Egypt, in Eastern Nigeria.
News feeds, videos stories: Zimbabwe click here, Mali click here, Nigeria click here, Biafra click here.
Of course, I never really left the Physiology Department. I have keys, I have access, and Dr Forster is still in the lab whenever he can, which is frequently every day. He is 92, his beloved Betsy died in 2009. Her death upset me so much I could not attend her funeral.
Dr Forster was born 2 months after my own father, whose death in 1988 resulted from prostate cancer. Not a bomb. Not a shot fired in anger. God bless Dr Forster, and may God bless the memories of Betsy Forster, Dr MCH Dodgson and Dr Patience. And the memories of the 3 million who perished in the Nigerian-Biafran War because good, decent, hard-working people were not paying attention to the atrocities committed by the British and American governments that resulted in starvation and bombs and complete violation of every human right I am known to have because of my impeccable pedigree.
MJoTA cancer resources click here.
Julian Assange and his Wikileaks and the free encyclopedia Wikipedia would not have let World War I happen, or World War II which resulted from the mistakes of World War I. Because decent, hard-working professionals like my 2 English great-grandfathers, who were a lawyer and an Anglican priest, would not have let it happen and would not have let their sons die from German bullets.
Julian Assange would not have let the Nigerian-Biafran War happen. He would have made sure all the thievery, evil, hidden agendas were known. Julian Assange understands that every human has the right to free speech and the right to not be starved to death by the British Commonwealth and the United States of America, and the right not to be bombed by Russia.
I love Ecuador. The last bastion of free speech. God bless Ecuador click here, God bless Julian Assange, God bless Wikipedia.
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Above, picture of the incomparable daughter of Africa Councilwoman Hon Mrs Jannie Blackwell today at the Philadelphia Zoo's Echos of Africa annual breakfast celebration for sons and daughters of African and Caribbean countries immigrant to Philadelphia. Looking at her admiringly is the Hon Stan Straughter, honorary counsel to Guinea and the chair of the Mayor's Commission on African and Caribbean Affairs. Story on Stan click here.
When her husband, long-time Philadelphia politician Lucien Blackwell died, Mrs Blackwell stepped up to the plate and has been constantly scoring home runs ever since.
The Universal African Dance and Drum Ensemble is an enthusiastic group of dancers and musicians based in Camden, New Jersey, about 5 miles from my office in Haddonfield New Jersey. They were dancing and singing and drumming and shaking today at the zoo, and I have seen them at every Odunde festival, and in the African American Museum of Philadelphia. I have started a page for them, watch some great videos click here.
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Picture above, Princess Tosin Mustapha and me with the United Nations
Consul-General for Angola in New York in Jun 2011. Mrs Julia Machado was
promoted to Consul General for Angola to Houston, which has a large
population of Angolans and Texas understands oil. Which Angola has. Mrs
Machado is highly interactive with African communities and African news
media, which is how I met her.
News feeds, videos about and from Angola click here.
The Olympic athletes have returned home, and I am hearing about rejoicing gold medal-winners in Bahamas, Jamaica, Grenada. Today I posted a page on the Bahamas, where they take tourism and banks very seriously click here.
Last night I went to a celebration of Jamaica in Queens. Food was from Golden Krust, a huge empire started by a son of Jamaica who thinks positively and has made a huge difference in the economy of his community, and New York click here. I don't drink, but I understand why others do. I tasted their white rum ounch and their sorrel rum punch. Oh gosh.
Jamaica page updated with new videos click here. Grenada click here.
And today is Friday! Our MJoTA Friday Night Movie is from Nollywood, and if you need cheering up, it will do that click here.I love Ecuador click here.
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Picture above, my daily walk when I am in my house in South Jersey, 4
miles from and an easy 15-min train ride Philadelphia Town Hall, I walk
through an old growth forest and around 2 lakes. We had a hurricane last
year, incongruously given the peaceful name Irene. Irene dumped water
on us, a lot of water, and Leo the lion-cat sat on my bed beside me and
ate through the wire needed to download pictures into my computer. So
much for hurricanes, so much for lion-cats.
Was it global
warming? Was it God's judgment on us? I don't know, I don't care. I do
know the earth is steadily warming, and it is our fault because not only
are we fighting wars over oil, and young people dying in these wars,
but oil is bad for us and for our environment. While some are running
around saying the root of all evil is teaching science and sex education
in school, that the communists have planted the idea that oil burning
and spewing particles and carbon dioxide into the air could possibly be
affecting anything; others are quietly saying we don't care. And quietly
installing solar panels and solar systems that turn on lights without
the need to burn an oil well or a single soldier.
Positive thinking can and will save us, if we can be saved. Positive thinking made my town convert all its street lights to solar-powered, made a nearby town apartment building convert all its common space electric needs to solar powered. Positive thinking means caring about the future, and I am so excited to see that all around me where I live.
Global warming in countries in Africa and the Caribbean click here. And here is some lovely music, 24/7 from Antigua & Barbuda click here. News from Antigua & Barbuda click here. The power of positive thinking click here.
I added another country, Cape Verde click here.
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Picture of Santos when I was in Haiti after the earthquake. Look at the wide-open grins of the 2 boys in the clean, pressed shirts. They took me for a walk that lasted several hours, all the time smiling, laughing, pulling down mangoes, treating me like their honored guest. The world belongs to positive thinkers like these 2, who did not look at me suspiciously like a stranger, but as a friend who wanted to bear witness.
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The power of positive thinking. I have been swimming in positive thinking since I first walked past the Marble Collegiate Church and looked at the bronze statue of Pastor Normal Vincent Peale smiling sunnily over the black wrought iron fence hung with ribbons and the names of the American dead in foreign wars.I have been listening to his talks, you can too, click here. But this is not the first time. In the late 1960s, my world collapsed horribly at a time when the Pastor was everywhere in popular magazines, in church sermons. The Pastor was huge, Australia was in the Vietnam War, young people were openly rebellious with sex and drugs, and Norman Vincent Peale was preaching hope and love and the power of understanding that the future matters.I have always called myself an optimist, I believe I may have the same form of mental illness as Winston Churchill, who was preaching victory when Britain was under attack by the superior forces of Germany, or Monty Python's Jesus hanging on the cross and singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life".
I am now thinking that my optimistic attitude largely resulted from instantly understanding what Normal Vincent Peale was saying, and his sayings formed my life and made me believe in my future so that I was a trained scientist with a PhD in physiology and pharmacology on my way to America when I ws 26.So what is positive thinking? Simply, it is the understanding that you are a child of God, a child of the Universe, and if you have a good idea and a pure heart, you can make it happen. Fundamental, unshakeable belief in a Higher Being is the core. Africa is filled with children of God who do not know who they are. Nigeria's children of God do not believe in their own power, do not believe in Nigeria.
I remember a talk in which a professional was explaining how Nigerian train conductors collected fares and handed the money over to their supervisors and at the end of the week, received salaries. The audience laughed. Any money given to a train conductor would immediately be appropriated, because the train conductor does not believe he will be paid, and believes that any money he hands over will immediately be appropriated by his superior. So much for the glorious railroads that connected African countries and ran throughout Nigeria. Chickens run across the lines in Lagos and stalls sell cows feet and cell phones on either side.In Sierra Leone, I was shown a long sandy road, and told that was the rail line. Every piece of the rail line has been lifted and sold as metal scrap.
The message of positive thinking is to think positively yourself. Make changes within yourself, believe in the future, and never compromise.
The organizations and the professionals I report on the MJoTA sites, I endorse because I believe they are good and honest. If I find out later that I have been mistaken, the pages will be taken down immediately. I have rarely had to do that.
The power of positive thinking click here. CACCI click here. Sierra Leone click here. Nigeria click here. MJoTA Photo and Print click here.
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Above, son of Haiti, Kings County Hospital physician Dr Gaston Valcin visiting Haitian vendors at Flatbush Caton Market in the days after the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti on Jan 12, 2010.
I knew Dr Valcin from my membership in the United African Congress, which is a small group of dedicated professionals doing everything they can to encourage sons and daughters of Africa living in African communities in Africa and the Caribbean.
In the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake I called every Haitian I knew to find out how I could get to Haiti, to dig out people with my fingernails, to cart away waste, to photograph and bear witness, anything. Dr Valcin invited me to the wonderful union for health workers in New York, 1199, who immediately put in place a volunteer program that is still running. His directions bewildered me, and I arrived late to the meeting, but early enough to understand that I was in a hall with good people who labored for others away from the lights, away from recognition. God bless 1199 and your good work, and may your good work continue forever, amen.
After the meeting, Dr Valcin drove me back to Brooklyn, to Caton Flatbush Market where I had parked my car. I asked him to please come to the market, walk through it and greet the Haitian vendors. Because he is a gentle man, and a healer, and I knew that just his being there could be a positive sign to the vendors that professionals were working hard to find their relatives, working hard to get medical help to Haiti. Dr Valcin, like all Haitians I know, lost family members. Every Haitian was touched in an instant by the earthquake that lasted less than a minute and killed 10% of the population.
In the next few days, Dr Valcin discovered that the Bedford Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Association were sending health professionals to Haiti in a plane flown by John Travolta, and invited me to a meeting. I walked in, was immediately sworn in as a lieutenant by the charismatic Commander Rocky Robinson, and within a month of the earthquake, was on the ground witnessing both the enormous devastation and the enormous good of humans whose primary motivation is love. Bed Stuy Vollies click here.
CACCI (Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry) runs the market click here. News feeds and videos from Haiti click here. The Haitian American Veterans Association run by Dr Fritz Fils-Aime click here. Printing services run by son of Haiti click here.
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So why am I remembering Haiti today?
First, because every day Haiti haunts me. Seeing the devastation that was so vast and so sudden brought back my memories of sitting on a train platform in Bologna in 1980, hearing the bomb explosion and seeing and smelling the smoke and immediately understanding that 80 souls had been released from their bodies.
The trigger for the story today was the grief expressed since yesterday by professionals working with ABC news in New York.
One of their members, a behinds-the-scenes man of enormous talent, energy and intelligence, on a glorious late summer Monday morning, had come from the dentist and was a few yards from the studios next to Central Park on 67th St, on the sidewalk, when his life was crushed out of him. In an instant.
I learned he was a son of Africa, a man in his prime of life, a devoted husband and father, and a consummate professional. And the pain expressed by his colleagues is raw, agonizing.
No words of comfort exist. Not in any language I know. What can anyone say to a man or woman who depend professionally or privately on a life force that ended so suddenly.
What can anyone say to a country that lost 10% of its population in an instant? Or to those who witnessed the simultaneous murder of 80 train passengers, patiently awaiting a train while siting in the 1st class and second class waiting rooms? Or to Biafrans who lost 25% of their population in the 30 months the nation of Biafra existed separately from Nigeria? Nigeria click here. Biafra click here.
What can I say but thank you God for giving me the ability to care, the ability to weep, the strength to love.
This Sunday I stayed in Manhattan to re-connect with Norman Vincent Peale's teaching of the power of positive thinking click here. Pain does not go away because we think positive thoughts, oh no, that is not his message. His message is that if we see only victory, and work towards it, we shall be victorious. Jealousy, pride, lack of accountability, lack of trust, thieving: these are all negative and will make us fall. Marble Collegiate Church click here.
I have long liked to express the power of positive thinking in simple terms: with a pure heart and a good idea anything is possible. Which means if you want to succeed in business, have a good business plan, know the steps, and be true to yourself. Wharton Small Business School click here.
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Picture above, the Marble Collegiate Church on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. I took this picture at about 3am Saturday morning. New York is always busy, the city that never sleeps, and the church is always open.
Marble Collegiate Church was the church of the late pastor Norman Vincent Peale, who articulated the concept of positive thinking. I wanted to find out more about the church, so I took pictures when I was visiting the 5th Avenue office of the printing company associated with MJoTA, click here.
I was so excited at finding the church and seeing the ongoing testimony of peace that I stayed over in Manhattan from Friday to Sunday, so I could worship at the church on Sunday. Marble Collegiate Church click here.
What is their peace testimony? That was the first thing I saw, anyone sees, when walking past the church. Yellow ribbons tied to the black wrought iron fence. Each ribbon has the name of every member of the armed forces that was killed in conflict zones in the past week. Look carefully at the bottom of the picture, you can see them. You will see them better in the page that will be published this week.
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Updated page on news from Caribbean countries with the best recording of steel drums I have found immediately above the video of the Brooklyn West Indian parade in 2011 (I was at the parade) click here.
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Beautiful Sunday morning in Manhattan on 6th Avenue. Every building has something interesting, every building has a history. Walking down 28th Street got me thinking about the institutions we set up to celebrate things and objects and people and events.
The mother of all museums is the Smithsonian based in Washington DC is the Smithsonian with 19 museums, 9 research centers and more than 140 affiliate museums around the world. The museums in DC include the Museum of African Art, whch I have visited twice.
Museum of African Art click here.
In Philadelphia we have a meeting place for members of the African community in the downstairs auditorium in the African American Museum of Philadelphia. This space is big enough for an audience of 250, and is a non-religious, non-government space which clearly belongs to citizens of African descent. I watched the Wiz there during the 2011 35-hour celebration of 35 years of the museum; I have also been in the audience when the Mayor's Commission on African and Caribbean Affairs brings in political candidates to talk to us about what they want to do for our communities. The picture above was taken at such a meeting in Apr 2011.
African American Museum of Philadelphia click here.
In Philadelphia we also have a museum that celebrates the lives of veterans of the US armed forces. The Aces Museum of Philadelphia is run by physician internist Dr Althea Hankens in the building that also holds her medical practice. The Aces Museum organized 2 days of celebration of the Buffalo soldiers, who were the sons and daughters of kidnapped Africans in the segregated arms forces in the shameful days of American apartheid.
Aces Museum of Philadelphia click here.
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A new page devoted to news feeds from the Caribbean and the Americas click here.
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Picture above, construction of luxury houses in Lagos State which I took during my 6th visit to Nigeria, in Mar 2012. I keep coming across an economic theory that is far away from mine. I was brought up with the "display of wealth is vulgar" model. This theory I sucked in with milk from my Belfast Protestant mother who in turn sucked it in from her Irish Quaker and Irish Presbyterian ancestors. The idea behind the theory is that we are all God's children, and that wealth does nit make us better than anyone else, and lack of wealth does not make us lesser. It is also a good economic theory to have if you want to accumulate wealth. Because the goal is to conserve what you have. I do a lot more with my limited funds than most because I conserve them for unavoidable expenses. Like buying computers and food for my children; the younger 2 are still studying. I keep coming across potential business partners who have the economic theory that "display of wealth is Godly", which I have heard from some pastors in the Nigerian Christ Apostolic Church. The idea behind this is that the more you flash money around, by, for example, driving new Mercedes cars and buying first class airline tickets, the more faith in Gid you are seen to have, because when you have faith, God will shower you with blessings, and money, and Mercedes. Many Nigerian pastors live on this theory. As an aside, since I first was welcomed into the Christ Apostolic Church in Philadelphia in Aug 2007, I have known the most evil of humanity in the Christ Apostolic Church, and I have known the greatest saints. The "display of wealth is Godly" practitioners may conserve cash and only spend it on obvious flash, like the Mercedes. Some feel the need to give cash wings the minute it hits their pockets. I see this in businessmen who have great business ideas, great skill in marketing, great skill in selling, great skill in everything: but their businesses will fail. Because they are chronically short of cash even when it is falling on them from everywhere. Such are the thoughts I have on this Saturday morning, sitting in a Macdonalds on 4th Avenue in Manhattan. The Macdonalds is decorated so that I feel I am sitting inside a zebra, and through the glass windows joggers and cyclists are circling a route that takes them down 4th Avenue and back. Joggers want to jog, the city closes off city blocks. Gotta love New York! --------------------- I added another country page, Mauritius. Tiny nation more than 500 miles from Madagascar click here. Is still considered Africa. Map, flag, videos and news feeds from Mauritius, click here.
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Above, picture of CASYM, the youth steel band, playing before the baseball game on Aug 8, 2012, when the Marlins defeated the Mets 13 to 0.
During the game I kept looking at the steadily increasing number next to the Marlins, and the constant zero next to the Mets and wondered what the numbers meant. Not until the end of the game, when most of the audience had left and the commentator in the stands was describing how great the die-hard fans were who stayed until the end, did I realize these numbers were the score. Gosh.
The real winners were the young people in the steel band, and the sons and daughters of the Caribbean who were honored by CACCI before the game. Look at the top left hand corner, you can see a man photographing the group. You can listen to them perform, as well as other musicians featured by MJoTAtalks click here.
CASYM pictures and videos click here. CACCI click here.
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Today at MJoTA Friday Night Movie, a delightful movie from Gabon. Ah. Delightful. A wonderful story of a man who lost his way, his wife's revenge, and then enlightenment by the man when he understood the effects of his actions. Love conquers all. To watch click here.
And because the movie came from Gabon, I published a page of news feeds and videos. French-speaking country in West Africa, a lot of oil which I understand is coming to an end. The only thing I remembered about Gabon was that it stood with Biafra and was one of a handful of countries that recognized the sovereignty of the nation of Biafra which existed between 1967 and 1970. The other countries that recognized Biafra were Tanzania, Haiti, Ivory Coast and Zambia.
Gabon was tremendously important for Biafra in its resistance to genocide by Britain, Russia and America. Because a Swedish count, impossibly but in fact a nephew of Nazi Air Marshal Goerring, first opened an air passage into Biafra to bring Red Cross food in, and then flung aside his neutrality and re-organized a tiny attack airforce for Biafra in Gabon.
Captain Okpe was one of 2 Biafra pilots in this group, and the only pilot that flew missions constantly on the Biafran babies until the war ended 8 months later. To link to stories about Captain Okpe, the Red Baron, Biafra, Count von Rosen click here.
Haiti click here. Zambia click here. Gabon click here. Biafra click here.
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Picture above, sons and daughters and friends of Grenada gather in a school in Brooklyn to listen to Grenadian prime minister Hon Tillman Thomas and other elected and appointed officials speak about the state of Grenada. More pictures, videos, news feeds click here.Last night flags were flying from all Caribbean nations during the 2nd Annual Caribbean Heritage Day with the Mets in Citifield. The Mets did not appear to be sleeping, they appeared to be lifeless. They were walloped 13 to 0.
However, the night was fun and I learned a lot about the efforts of Healthfirst in getting people healthy. The vicepresident of Healthfirst is son of Belize George Hulse, who is an enthusiastic CACCI supporter and advocate of long, healthy lives. His picture and a video of him speaking on the page on the nation of Belize click here.
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Above, sons and daughters of South Africa performing in concert at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia in Jul 2011. The group is called Freshlyground.
Page on South Africa, which includes more pictures from the concert plus a video of Freshlyground in concert click here. Page of bio, videos of Mandiba, share-ware photograph from Wiikipedia (I didn't have my cameras when I heard him speak in Barcelona in 2002) the great President Nelson Mandela click here.
Updated page on Mars, with music for Mars. I saw a cartoon on Facebook, with a crowd of Martians on Mars holding 2 signs, one said "Mars for Martians" and the other said "Yankee Go Home." Gulp. No flag was planted claiming Mars for America, was it? We don't do that any more, do we? Mars click here.
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Grenada is the country of the moment, with a son of Grenada, Kirani James, winning a gold medal in the men's 400 meters run. I went to a town hall meeting of Grenadians in Sep 2009 in Brooklyn at the Mahalia Jackson School, and listened to the Prime Minister and other politicians and emissaries with an audience of abut 300, who were mostly Grenadian. During a break I asked ladies around me how many Grenadians were in Grenada. I was told variously 120,000; 100,000; 140,000. Small. But it has a medical school in St George's, which I visited in 1990 during a small scientific conference.
During that trip in 1990, on which I brought my 3 sons who then ranged from 2 to 9, I remember the beaches, the lizards, the nutmeg ice-cream.
In 1990, Grenada was recovering from a horrible war in 1983 that somehow had the US Army involved evacuating medical students.
In 2012, Grenada is a peaceful paradise, its main threat is from hurricanes, and it has produced an Olympic gold medal runner. Congratulations. Global warming click here. Grenada click here.
We will be seeing a lot of proud faces tonight at the annual Caribbean Heritage - Mets game. Because the founding president of the Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry is from Grenada. Dr Roy Hastick. CACCI click here.
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Picture above I took on a sunny day in winter during a walk around a lake in Staten Island, New York.
In North America, the seasons change, but global warming is threatening even this order. Global warming is threatening the life underneath the water, swimming on the water, walking, running and scurrying around the water, drinking from the water and flying through the air. African communities frequently live in the least hospitable places in lush countries: global warming is threatening us all but African communities are being hit harder.
Videos about the effect of global warming in African communities in Africa and in the Caribbean and news feeds about climate change click here.
Mars, the red planet. NASA landed a car on Mars on Sunday, and I watched the jubilation, the hugs, the photographs live. When anything happens on Mars you can watch it on this site. And read automatically updated news from NASA. Mars click here.
Why do we care about Mars? Because we need to dream, we need to stretch, we need to love. Our mothers mothers and our fathers fathers looked up at the skies as soon as their eyes opened, and the skies became part of our dreams and our futures. Scientists need to know what happened to Mars, where did the water go, why did it vanish, did Mars have life that vanished in an instant? Can that happen to us? Boys and girls need to know that they can study and become engineers and pilots and astronauts. And we need to believe in peace, and spend our money on peace, like the Olympics Games, like the Mars Lander.
Chasing a golden balloon click here. Mars click here. Global warming click here.
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Updated page: MJoTAtalks: Music. Link from this page to individual pages of artists and groups click here.
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Happy birthday Jamaica on this lovely Monday! I was looking for the best possible picture that I have taken over the years, and this has to be it. I took it in Apr 2009, at the Penn Relays, the annual athletics meet for high school track and field, and it was published in the defunct New York Echo newspaper.
Jamaica is always well-represented in the competitions, and on the winners stands, and in the cheering section. May the green, yellow and black flag wave proudly over many successes in the years to come!
Jamaicans showed how fast they can run at the Olympics this weekend: a daughter of Jamaica won the women's marathon on Saturday; a son of Jamaica won the 2000 meter run on Sunday. Many more successes Jamaica!
MJoTA has several pages devoted to sons and daughters of Jamaica, they can all be linked to from the main page on the Commonwealth of Jamaica click here. Where you can listen to Bob Marley sing.
A picture of me with son of Jamaica Huey Robinson who runs a store in Caton-Flatbush Market, click here and scroll down. He sells music that can be played, and also selects and plays the music you can dance to while you are at the Market. And I do. The minute I arrive at the Market I start dancing, and I enjoy greeting my friends, the ladies from Haiti who lost so much in the catastrophic earthquake. Haiti videos and news feeds click here.
The sons and daughters of Jamaica have been breathing huge sighs of relief this weekend as Tropical Storm Ernesto thought about making the 50th birthday of Jamaica miserable, and then thought better of it.
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Yesterday was the annual African festival at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia. This was organized by ACANA (African Cultural Association of North America) which is a non-profit organization in South West Philadelphia doing a lot of good for a lot of African immigrants. Pictures and music of the Nigerian 2-man group Bracket click here.
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Madagascar is the world's 4th-largest island and I have read 85-90% of its plants and animals are not found anywhere else on earth. Music, stories, videos about Madasgascar click here.
I witnessed a non-violent protest of Iran's governing methods in San Diego in Jun 2009, I have added a page of videos and newsfeeds from Iran click here.
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Above, picture I took in San Diego in Jun 2009 on the same day that sons and daughters and sons and friends of Iran were protesting the governing of Iran.
Iran: news feeds, videos and a picture I took of the protesters click here.
Why Iran? Because what happens in Iran affects us all, including all who live in African communities.
I was watching a movie about the most famous picture of a girl since the Mona Lisa, the picture of a daughter of Afghanistan who was a refugee in Pakistan. She is wearing red and has huge green eyes. In 2002, bombs were falling on Afghanistan again and the photographer was looking for the girl he had photographed in 1985 in a refugee camp. Things had improved slightly for her because she had a loving husband, but she was living in poverty and could not afford to send her children to school.
On New Years Day 2002 I took a phone call from a man who wanted to publish his mother's letters and his father's pictures when he, his parents and sister all lived in Afghanistan for 2 years from 1949 to 1951.
I published the book, "We Felt Their Kindliness" through my company Emerald Pademelon Pres LLC in 2003. I am very proud of this book: it is beautiful to look at and the letters and photographs transport the reader to that time, to that country.
The editor of the book, Dr Os Cresson (he is a psychologist) put huge effort into marketing his book through Quaker circles and Afghan cooking evenings. With his Quaker monthly meeting he raised enough to build a school in Afghanistan, with the single condition that girls were to be taught.
The school was built, girls were quickly excluded, and then the building was bombed.
If you would like a copy of the book, or have a story to share, contact me through the registration page. I am on Facebook, Wanjiru Susanna J Dodgson.
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Above, the Ambassador from Botswana to the United States chatting after her presentation to the African and Caribbean Business Council in Philadelphia in Jan 2012. She is speaking with son of Liberia Vickson Korlewala who is a trained chemist and President of EcoPower Liberia LLC.
I met Mr Korlewala at an information session at the Wharton Business School a few days before I took this picture: he has a plan to bring electricity to African countries and investors are listening. He is currently working on site; when he comes back the MJoTA sites will feature him and his successes. Wharton Small Business Development Center click here.
To listen to the Ambassador speak, find out what is going on in Botswana, click here.
Daughter of Ethiopia left other runners behind in the dust yesterday, and today a son of Ethiopia has a good chance of doing the same thing.
News feeds and videos from Ethiopia and a picture I took of a group of daughters of Ethiopia at a Senegalese party that was a celebration of Senegalese women and an information session about HIV/AIDS click here.
Resources and news feeds about prevention and treatment of HIV infection click here.
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Above, 2 ladies from Sierra Leone who are nurses and who had a harrowing story about women and babies in Sierra Leone at a Town Hall meeting to meet with members of the ruling political party. The lady on the right is Zainab Sesay-Harrell who is wearing a shirt saying New York Black Nurses Association. I followed her to Washington in Jan 2011 to the annual Black Nurses Association Day on Capitol Hill, and I followed her around New York and New Jersey last year for the 50th anniversary celebrations of Sierra Leone.I watched Ms Zain be given a prestigious award at the New York Black Nurses Association for her work in that organization, and her work in the Sierra Leonean Nurses Association.
I have started a page on the Sierra Leonean Nurses Association click here. More stories, more pictures will appear. Please keep checking back.
Updated news on Sierra Leone and the gateway to all things Sierra Leonean on the MJoTA sites click here.Ms Zain is a daughter of Sierra Leone, through her mother, and she is also a daughter of America through her father. She is young, she is on the move, and she is a leader to be watched.She is not alone in her passion for bringing health to Sierra Leone. In 2010 I traveled to Sierra Leone with another Zainab, Zainab Wai-Lansana who collected 99 boxes of donations and sent them to her village near the border with Liberia, for those stories click here.
And other New York City nurses who are leaders and are working with Ms Zain are Rugiatu Bahr and Ahmed Kargbo. On the Sierra Leonean Nurses page I have included a picture of Ahmed at the same function as Ms Zain. Pictures and a story about Ms Rugie will follow. And more about Mr Ahmed, army officer turned nurse.
I am often asked if I am a nurse, if I am a physician. I am neither, but I am greatly appreciative of these toilers for humanity. I am a trained scientist who worked in the laboratory for more than 2 decades, and loved eery minute of it, and who has written about clinical and preclinical science. About me click here.
I am also the daughter of Irish and English physicians who met in the heart of the British Empire while bombs were delivering death and destruction in what turned out to be a fatal blow to the Empire. I have told this story in an essay I wrote a decade ago about Florence Nightingale. If you read this story you will understand why I love nurses click here.MJoTA Friday Night Movie: 2 great movies from Nigeria. I love Nigerian movies, and these ones are great morality plays. I am enjoying the facial expressions of the wronged and misunderstood, and the backdrops. Watch these after you have watched Michael Phelps swim and the East Africans run.
MJoTA Friday Night Movie click here. Kenya click here.Page on Nigeria updated click here.
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Picture above, young people dancing in the rain in the annual spring parade of Sierra Leone through Franklin Township, New Jersey in 2011. Last year, spring was late, the dogwood tree at the left is just starting to bloom white flowers.
Apr 27 every year is Sierra Leone Day in Franklin Township, and sons and daughters and friends of Sierra Leone from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland go out to parade past the flags of Sierra Leone and America.
Sierra Leone news feeds and videos click here. The story of Sierra Leone by a civil engineer who worked on the African Burial Center in Manhattan click here. Milk for Sierra Leone and other stories from Sierra Leone click here.
I am thinking a lot about Sierra Leone because the citizens are electing a president on Nov 17. They will either return the current president, of the red party, or elect a new president, of the green party. My friends in the US are evenly split, some quite passionately, and I hear praises and accusations for both candidates. I am also split, split down the middle, one half is red and one half is green.
During a 51st anniversary celebration in Brooklyn I heard the liaison to the African communities Mr Siddique Wai, appeal for debates between candidates, a discussion of how all in Sierra Leone can work to unite Sierra Leone. I am hoping this will happen, and am offering MJoTAtalks as a neutral platform. I will keep you posted.
I have updated the page for Mali. Read the newsfeeds, the feed from the United Nations Refugee agency, UNHCR. And while you are reading, listen to great music from Oumou Sangare click here.
I also added a page on Niger, in honor of the musician from Niger featured yesterday click here. News feeds and videos (more music, yes) from Niger click here.
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Last night I took this picture at the final concert of the 2012 season of the Washington Square Music Festival in Manhattan. The performers were the Deep Sahara Band, a group pf 9 musicians including 4 drummers, 3 guitarists, a violinist. The lead guitarist is Abodoulaye Alhassane Toure. You can watch him in concert and see other pictures I took last night click here.
Today is the first day of August, the 8th month, the month of lengthening shadows that chase us indoors back to work by September. August was th emonth that the leaders in Europe in 1914, and again in 1939, condemned 2 generations of mothers to grief. August is the month my mother was born, and died, and in between the month she gave birth to my 2 older brothers a year apart. Dr Patience click here. War speeches click here.
In August MJoTA is celcelebrating African musicians, you will see more pages like that for Mr Toure click here.
Gospel singing star daughter of Biafra Chisom click here. Rap star son of Haiti I.R.V. click here.
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New
York is very good at making us all know that we are very, very small,
and that we all are here for a time that is so short that it is not
recognized in time measures for space or turtles or hardwood trees.
I walked through Greenwich Village to listen to Abdoulaye Alhassane Toure
and his band play beautiful music, and the first thing I saw was the
Washington Arch. Under and around the arch were young
women in flowing pants and colorful shirts, whose heights had been
elongated by stilts. Next to other young women, they were twice as tall,
but when I photographed them next to the arch, from inside and outside
the park, they looked like ants.
When I was enjoying the concert I saw them walk past, out of the park. They did not stop to listen to the music, or to dance.
Pictures, scroll down on page click here.
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The mission of Medical Journal of Therapeutics Africa is to celebrate African professionals, and create health in African communities.
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Click on any picture and you will be taken to another page or document on MJoTAtalks.org or MJoTA.org
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Click here to register to access free locked pages on mjota.org, mjotatalks.org and drsusanna.org. I will email you only when passwords change. Would you like mjota.org or mjotatalks.org to link to your news or business site? Want to talk? Email publisher@mjota.org or chat on Facebook Wanjiru Susanna J Dodgson click here or Linkedin click here.
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Read the constantly updated news on health from the CDC, FDA and NIH, click here.
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Biafra was the eastern third of Nigeria that tried to become its own
nation on May 30, 1967 because other Nigerians were murdering them, on Jan 15, 1970 the
rest of Nigeria stopped murdering them and they became again part of
Nigeria. At the end, 3 million were dead from a population of 12 million. Do not forget Biafra.
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Biafra audio. Listen to speeches by General Ojukwu and the Biafran national anthem. Click here.
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