The Donkey that Carried the Cloud on its Back

This documentary feature film is about Lamu, a remote Kenyan island frozen in time. It has just one car and more than 3000 donkeys. Electricity is provided by generators and there is no modern water sewage system. Marginalised economically by mainland Kenya, Lamu relies on tourism.

However, big change is coming: Africa’s largest port is being constructed there. At a cost of 3.5-billion USD, the port will be capable of handling ships of up to 100 000 tonnes –  almost half the size of the island. How will this massive project impact on the locals and the environment?

The Donkey that Carried the Cloud on its Back documents and observes life on Lamu before the “marriage of people and land”, following the story of Fatima as she prepares to get married.

The Donkey that Carried the Cloud on its Back – A Teaser from Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann on Vimeo.

Produced by Philippa Ndisi Hermann and Atieno Odenyo, it received financial support from the IDFA Bertha Fund and a crowdfunding campaign. It will be screened at international film festivals later this year.

Zambian politician charged for calling president a potato

Zambian police have arrested and charged an opposition leader with defamation after he compared the president to a potato, a party ally told AFP on Tuesday.

Frank Bwalya, head of the Alliance for a Better Zambia, allegedly referred to President Michael Sata as “Chumbu Mushololwa” during a live radio broadcast on Monday.

The Bemba term literally refers to a sweet potato that breaks when it is bent and is used to describe someone who does not heed advice.

“The police decided to arrest and charge him with defamation of the president,” Eric Chanda, the secretary general of Alliance told AFP.

If convicted, Bwalya faces a maximum jail term of five years.

Zambia's President Michael Sata. (Pic: AFP)
Zambia’s President Michael Sata. (Pic: AFP)

Bwalya, a former Catholic priest and supporter of Sata when in opposition, is just the latest opposition leader to run afoul of Zambia’s leader.

In September, Nevers Sekwila Mumba of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy was questioned by police after calling Sata a liar.

Ex-president Rupiah Banda has been hauled before the courts on numerous corruption charges.

“President Sata is the same old man who was on all radio stations defaming former presidents Banda and Mwanawasa and nobody arrested him,” said Chanda. – Sapa-AFP

Young landless Ethiopians find hope and security in beekeeping

In the Tigray region of Ethiopia, increasing numbers of young people have no access to the land and its resources. Farming land here is already scarce, and many farms are very small. Many young people risk their lives by migrating to countries in the Middle East to work in domestic servitude, while others are resigned to living in extreme poverty.

With no opportunities to work close to home, Gebre Egzaibher (21) felt forced to take a dangerous job as a traditional gold miner close to the Eritrean border. He would stand for 18 hours a day in a river bed panning gold deposits for the equivalent of a £1 a day, and contend with occupational hazards, such as being shot at by Eritrean militias.

“I had no choice. My father was sick and my younger brothers and sisters had only one meal a day. I needed to work to support them,” he says.

As life expectancy increases the potential for sub-dividing plots of land reduces, leaving many of Ethiopia’s young people with no assets and limited employment opportunities.

The issue of landless youth is fast becoming a national crisis in Ethiopia where 30% of young people are unemployed.

In Gebre’s hometown of Sero Tabia, where 2 200 families live, 560 young people are unemployed and have no access to land for earning a living.

The prospect of earning money in Middle Eastern countries as a domestic maid or as a construction worker has spurred many young Ethiopians to overseas. But for some the dream has became a nightmare as employers exploit them and ignore their rights.

Last month, the Ethiopian government ordered the repatriation of more than 100 000 young Ethiopian migrants illegally working in the Middle East and placed a travel ban on workers going to the region for six months.

To help mitigate this crisis of land scarcity and spiralling youth unemployment, Farm Africa, an NGO, which has directors based in Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, has begun supplying beehives to 900 landless young people in the Tigray region to give them a resilient means of making a living.

Gebre smiles as he proudly puts on his bee-keeping protective clothing for the first time and delicately removes the roofs from two beehives to inspect his new bee colonies.

“I am very happy today because I know these bees will help improve my future security and give me what I never thought possible – hope,” he says.

Ethiopia is Africa's largest honey consumer and producer. (Pic: Reuters)
Ethiopia is Africa’s largest honey consumer and producer. (Pic: Reuters)

In his first year Gebre expects to sell 16kg of white honey after keeping 15% of his harvest for household and nutritional purposes. He stands to earn £150 a year and has the option of increasing production by splitting the bee colonies.

The project will have a ripple effect, says Desta Araya, Farm Africa’s project coordinator. “After the first year of beekeeping and training, the beneficiary will supply another member of the landless youth with one of their bee colonies. If every targeted youth does this the impact is potentially unlimited.”

Ethiopia is Africa’s largest honey consumer and producer. The white honey produced in the Tigray region is widely regarded as a national delicacy and in high demand across the country.

Young landless families in Tigray suffer high levels of poverty and malnutrition. Women in the region suffer in particular from poor nutrition and a recent survey showed that nearly a third were underweight, while more than half of the children under-five were affected by stunted growth.

Letebrahane Gebreegizeabre (28) struggled to feed her family of four, earning just £1.25 a day as a farm labourer. This was just enough to feed her children a single daily serving of injera, a sour pancake.

This year, Farm Africa gave her two beehives. “With my additional income from selling honey I will save enough money to buy a sheep, a goat and more  bee hives,” she says. “I look forward to supporting my family with three meals a day and giving my children an education.”

In Tigray, the erratic rainfall and a population expected to jump from 90-million to an estimated 278-million by 2050, makes the issue of land access seem insoluble.

But small acts can have big effects; Farm Africa’s beekeeping programme gives young people an opportunity to build their own businesses and reduce their dependency on diminishing land access.

Of penises, politics and Pentecostalism in Zimbabwe

We are just past the first weekend of 2014 and here in Zimbabwe, newspaper stands are already brimming with tabloid-style headlines of scandalous news – of the penile sort – to do with former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai and miracle-working Pentecostal prophet, Emmanuel Makandiwa.

Yesterday, Zimbabwe’s news media revealed that Makandiwa, founder of the increasingly popular United Family International Church (UFIC), had performed a penis-enhancing miracle on a man from Namibia at a New Year’s Day service in Harare. The man is reported to have travelled to Zimbabwe in search of help for his penis which he is quoted as saying was the size of a two-year-old’s. He added that the problem was affecting his love life, and therefore his prospects of finding a wife.

“First month grow, second month grow, third month grow, fourth month grow, fifth month ummm stop,” Makandiwa is said to have commanded the man’s infantile penis which, I must assume, is still expanding exponentially as you read this.

On Saturday, the day before this revelation, the press was again teeming with phallic-related news; in this instance, an exposé of trouble in the un-paradise that is Tsvangirai’s love life. Apparently he and his current wife, Elizabeth Macheka, are living separately due to a range of unresolved issues, including those of the “sensitive personal” variety. The public jury is out and judgments ranging from erectile dysfunctional disorder to hexes over the former PM’s “male member” are moving around freely. Tsvangirai has, however, refuted any such claims, stating that he is fit on all counts.

Former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his wife Elizabeth Macheka (Pic: AFP)
Former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his wife Elizabeth Macheka (Pic: AFP)

Ironically, reports suggest Macheka packed up and left the marriage home during a visit Tsvangirai made to seek the counsel of Nigerian megastar prophet TB Joshua, who in 2012 gained cred for his prediction of the death of Malawian leader Bingu wa Mutharika. Well, let’s say he predicted the death of an African leader who was old and unwell, to the silent hopes of many.

And so we, the general Zimbabwean populace, find ourselves having spirited Twitter, Facebook and offline debates, enthralled by speculation about two men’s penises. Actually, make that three men as people are now also seemingly curious about how endowed Makandiwa must be if he can work such miracles on others.

A weekend victory for phallicism, I say. And, I fear, a portent of what is to come in 2014 for Zimbabwe.

As prospects for political change continue to decline, it is the rise of Pentecostalism and tales of the supernatural that seem to have filled the void in the collective imagination of most Zimbabweans. In fact, the myriad problems ordinary Zimbabweans face – such as crippling poverty and lack of access to social amenities – seem to correlate with the growth and popularity of charismatic Christian churches offering instant relief from anything from bankruptcy and HIV to unhealthy addictions… if you only just believe.

Early last year former Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono convened a press conference with Makandiwa and his fellow popular prophet, Uebert Angel, to publicly announce that the two men had not flouted any financial regulations by delivering ‘miracle money’ said to have inexplicably appeared in congregants’ personal bank accounts. And with that controversial move, the already blurred line between the church and the state in Zimbabwe grew murkier.

While a penis-enlarging miracle might seem like child’s play (that pun was really not intended!) for a man of such influence, a man who has even promised to perform the Christ-like feat of walking on water, it does epitomise the vulnerability of so many Zimbabweans who remain desperate for a change in their personal fortunes.  Desperate for hope; for at least one pleasure, one relief.

And the commonality of the desperation is compounded by Tsvangirai’s pursuit of the same from TB Joshua.

Just think about Tsvangirai’s case a bit more deeply, if you will. Here is a man, aged 61, married as many times as he has lost in his bid to become Zimbabwe’s elected president (three), who makes a trek to a death-predicting spiritual leader in pursuit of answers and solutions to the problems beleaguering his personal and political aspirations. In a continuation of the comedy of errors that is his love life, he returns home to find his wife gone and, a few weeks later, speculations about his impotence all over the media.

What hope should the ordinary Zimbabwean hold onto, therefore?

Tsvangirai’s manhood may have come under literal scrutiny this weekend, but the truth is that it has been inspected – in a figurative sense – since July’s presidential election and his tepid response to a resounding loss, albeit a loss that seems to have been compounded by many factors out of his control.  More and more, Zimbabweans are beginning to feel that he is not the man to deliver them to the ‘promised land’, and that he himself needs to start chanting his MDC-T party’s slogan of chinja maitiro (change your ways) and step away from its leadership.

I will end my analysis with a final irony. It is quite interesting to me that even though much of Zimbabwe’s mainstream press is alight with all these stories about phalluses, few – if any – can bring themselves from the comfort of their euphemisms to actually call the “male member” what it is. A penis.

And this is a perfect metaphor of the times. A fascination with the scandalous and supernatural and yet an inability, a systematised reserve or fear, of calling things as they are. A diversion of the “male member” at the expense of critical, constructive and progressive debate about the male members of society who still very much control the structures that govern our daily lives from the radical prophets to the un-radical politicians.

It should strike us all as unusual that a phallocentric culture cannot bring itself to name the symbols upon which its power is premised.

Indeed, this is the present tragedy of Zimbabwe.

Fungai Machirori is a blogger, editor, poet and researcher. She runs Zimbabwe’s first web-based platform for women, Her Zimbabweand is an advocate for using social media for consciousness-building among Zimbabweans. Connect with her on Twitter

Italy: African immigrants use films and books to fight racism

Seven years ago, Dagmawi Yimer was “between life and death” when Italian navy officers rescued him and 30 others from a skiff in heavy seas between Libya and the island of Lampedusa.

Today, Yimer directs documentary films about immigrants like himself from the home he shares with his Italian partner and their two-year-old daughter in the northern city of Verona.

He is part of the fast-growing immigrant population that is changing the face of Italy, just as it has transformed the populations of more northern European countries such as Britain, France or Germany.

He is also one of many foreigners who are trying – through cultural initiatives such as films and books – to change the racist views of many Italians of the immigrants in their midst.

Contrary to popular perceptions, immigrants are making their mark across the Italian economy, politics and society. African-born author Kossi Komla-Ebri, a 59-year-old medical doctor, has published six books, all in Italian.

“Many immigrants think our emancipation is only economic and political, but we are convinced it’s cultural and that we can have a more profound influence through culture,” he said.

It isn’t easy. Italy’s immigration wave is swelling just as the country is struggling to emerge from its deepest economic downturn in the post-war era.

Nearly eight percent of the population here is foreign born, and in 50 years the number will triple to 23%, according to a projection by Catholic charity Caritas.

To help pay the pensions of an ageing population and to ensure long-term growth, Italy needs to integrate its immigrant population into the workforce, economists say.

Anti-immigrant sentiment
But high unemployment, especially among non-student young people, has fuelled anti-immigrant sentiment among the Italian mostly-white population.

Italy’s one-million strong Afro-Italian community, a fifth all legal immigrants, got a high-profile representative last April when African-born Cecile Kyenge became the country’s first black minister.

It did not take long before she was likened to an orangutan by a well-known politician and had bananas thrown at her at a public meeting.

Cécile Kyenge. (Pic: AFP)
Italy’s Integration Minister Cecile Kyenge. (Pic: AFP)

Politics
Many white Italians view the Afro-Italian community and other immigrants as cheap labour or petty criminals – partly because many work as domestic help and farm labourers or sell counterfeit goods in the streets of big cities.

Moreover, children born to immigrants do not automatically receive citizenship even if they are born on Italian soil, attend Italian schools and spend their whole lives in Italy. They must wait until they turn 18 to apply.

Though Italy was a colonial power in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries and migrants have come to Italy for decades, the country has mainly served as a transit route for the rest of Europe and so remains an overwhelmingly white country.

Over the past two decades, another factor has thwarted attempts to develop a comprehensive and inclusive immigration policy: the anti-immigration Northern League, once a key ally of Silvio Berlusconi’s former coalition governments.

Backed up by TV images of overcrowded boats being rescued off Italian shores, Northern League politicians portray migrants as invaders coming to steal jobs – rhetoric that neglects Italy’s history as a country of immigrants to North and South America in the 19th and 20th centuries.

It was high-ranking Northern League member Roberto Calderoli who likened to Kyenge to an orangutan last year.

Members of the neo-fascist Forza Nuova, or New Force, party were suspected by police of throwing bananas at her during a public round table on immigration. It denied responsibility.

The party also left mannequins covered in fake blood outside a Rome administrative office, urging her to resign because “immigration is the genocide of peoples”.

Kyenge seems to have taken it all in her stride, never losing her calm in public and sticking with her goal of making it easier for immigrants’ children to gain citizenship.

Only last month did the 49-year-old she reveal that she too had been a “badante”, or house servant, for six years to pay her way through university, saying it had been one of the most difficult times in her life.

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo to a tribal chief with 38 children and four wives, she ended up an eye surgeon until she became a lawmaker and minister earlier this year.

“I’m not coloured, I’m black,” she told Reuters in an interview in her office in central Rome, rejecting the phrase “di colore” or “coloured”, which many think is the politically correct Italian term for blacks.

“It’s the proper term because it forces everyone to face the reality of a multi-ethnic Italy.”

‘Boiled elephant knees’
Italy’s immigration policies are ill-equipped to deal with the thousands of immigrants who show up – with scant identification and on rickety boats – on its southern shores.

Rules dating to 2009 and Berlusconi’s then conservative government make entering without proper documentation a crime, requiring officials to report clandestine migrants.

As a result, those who survive often treacherous journeys – at least 366 Ethiopian migrants drowned while crossing to Italy in October – often linger for months in makeshift immigration centres and then disappear withinItaly or eleswhere in Europe.

During the first 11 months of this year, 40,244 illegal migrants reached Italy by boat, almost four times as many as a year earlier, according to Save the Children.

The number living in Italy is not known with any precision, but the OECD has estimated that, alongside the 5-million legal immigrants, there could be as many as 750 000 illegal ones.

One of the community’s oldest cultural initiatives is the “African October” festival inaugurated 11 years ago in the northern city of Parma and now celebrated in Rome and Milan, showcasing African artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers.

“The meeting between Africa and Italy is very important,” says festival founder Cleophas Adrien Dioma, who was born in Burkina Faso. “Culture is born out of such encounters.”

Komla-Ebri, who came to Italy in 1974, is a doctor in a hospital north of Milan and writes in his free time. This year his book Imbarazzismi – an Italian neologism merging the words “embarrassed” and “racism” – was printed by Edizioni SUI, a publisher owned by an Eritrean-born Italian.

In the book, Komla-Ebri writes about when his white Italian wife took a walk in the park and a stranger complimented her for adopting two “African orphans”, or the time her friends ask her what he eats, “no doubt with the chilling thought of a menu of smoked snake or boiled elephant knees”.

“My irony is a defence mechanism,” he said.

The anecdotes capture the often naive quality of racism in Italy, infamously exemplified by Berlusconi’s 2008 remark – made in jest, he said – that the newly elected Barack Obama, was “young, handsome and suntanned”.

Yimer (36) harvested grapes in the south and later handed out fliers to university students in Rome until he took a video production class offered to immigrants by a non-profit group.

His fifth documentary film – released this month – is about three Senagalese men recovering from racist attacks.

Entitled Va Pensiero, after the chorus of an opera by Giuseppe Verdi about an immigrant’s nostalgia for home, the film follows the men as they try to come to terms with the hate and violence they endured.

The first man was stabbed and left for dead by a skinhead at a bus stop in Milan. Passersby ignored him for more than an hour. The other two were randomly shot by a radical right-wing thug who hunted down and murdered two other Senagalese men on the streets of Florence in 2011, and then committed suicide.

At an early screening of the film for possible distributors, the reaction was that of having been “punched in the gut”, according to one representative of the state-owned TV network, who suggested softening the tone.

Yimer and his Italian partners on the film, who have founded an association to collect the testimony of immigrants called the “Archive of Migrant Memories”, stood their ground.

“I’ve experienced a lot of prejudice,” he said, “and I see a worrying trend in Italy where racism is becoming more ideological.”

Steve Scherer for Reuters