Category: General

On a mission to save Africa’s dying culture

An Africa with abundant resources, where you simply scatter seeds and harvest fruit, and everybody is a friend and a welcome guest. An Africa where stories are told under the stars and songs are sung around the fire, where beer is drunk and wisdom passed on to robust, hopeful young people. That is the Africa Stephen Rwangyezi (58), founder of Ndere Troupe, the biggest cultural group in Uganda, is trying to capture and preserve for generations to come.

Many times, it has been like trying to catch lightning in a bottle. In his quest to preserve culture, he has been thrown out of a wedding where he was scheduled to perform, he and other members of Ndere Troupe were scrapped off the programme list at a presidential event, and he was dubbed the devil by a reverend.

The Africa he seeks to show the world is one many cannot quite fathom. It is in sharp contrast with the images of desperation, hunger, poverty and a hopeless generation that can only pass on the culture of dependence.

“But we are blessed. Beautiful culture, lovely weather,” he says. “When my mother cooks, she always takes into account extra people who may visit unannounced. She can do this because everything in Africa is in abundance.”

Stephen Rwangyezi is intent on preserving African customs and influences. (Pic: Samson Baranga)
Stephen Rwangyezi preaches African culture with conviction. (Pic: Samson Baranga)

Rwangyezi still vividly remembers the day he was called the devil. He tells the story with sad eyes. That day, he was attending the wedding of one of one of his mentees who once performed with Ndere Troupe. Coming from an indigent family and going through primary school only because of his ability to play the flute, Rwangyezi has a special relationship with the young people he trains. He selects those with underprivileged backgrounds and nurtures them in African performance while paying for their education in the best schools in the country. He says they are like sons and daughters to him.

So on this day when he was called the devil, he was really a father attending the wedding of one of his daughters. When she said “I do”, Rwangyezi played African drums that infuriated the reverend.

“Where is that devilish sound coming from?” he asked.

When her husband, an army man, said “I do”, his team played the brass band and the reverend said: “Now that is music!”

A deeply hurtful experience, no doubt. But Rwangyezi says it is hard to blame people like the reverend who preach the gospel of “the colonial church”, for Africa is suffering under cultural enslavement and the continent needs a new liberation. To Rwangyezi, cultural enslavement is even more dangerous than colonialism and slavery because it is perpetrated by African leaders.

“If the World Bank says it will not fund music on the curriculum, the announcement is made by our president. We are blind to the real forces behind.”

Rwangyezi’s mission is to change the notion that all things African are evil, backward and pagan. He has come a long way from 1984 – when he would perform for an audience of three – to travelling the world and being the face of Ugandan cultural music. He laments that Africans are fast adopting the ways of the west – western dress, western religion and western food – without stopping to think about whether or not it is good for them. On the other hand, Rwangyezi says, the western world is doing all it can to preserve its culture because they know how important cultural identity and pride is.

“Our children will never forgive us when they grow up and go to the diaspora and realise that they have no identity,” he says. “We are still slaves in our own land. We are growing tobacco but can you eat tobacco if there is famine? We grow it because the colonialists said so. We must think of ways to find ourselves again.”

An Africa with dilapidated museums, where local languages are forbidden in schools, culture and history is undocumented. An Africa where the young think success means long hair weaves and American SUVs. Rwangyezi is determined to rewrite this script.

“African music was only performed in the dark, now we are putting it on a bigger stage for the world to see,” he says. “We want to show that you can be educated and still appreciate culture. We are documenting African culture so that a Chinese can one day prepare kwon kal [millet bread] with the recipes we leave behind. So that you can know the name and origin of that African hairstyle you have.”  He looks at my short, twisted nappy hair.

(Pic: Ndere.com)
(Pic: Ndere.com)

Rwangyezi believes that teaching culture to the young is the key to transforming Africa.

“I saw my father not being as happy as he would have liked to be, restricted by civilisation,” he says of his upbringing. His father despised African music but his other relatives loved it. They encouraged him to pursue his passion and taught him African culture.

“I saw genuine happiness among these ‘backward’ and ‘primitive’ people. I saw fantastic music but I only saw it in the night. African music was never nurtured and allowed to grow in spite of its beauty,” he says nostalgically.

He preaches African culture with conviction, even if he did get married in a church. He laughs a little when I point this out, saying: “Culture is dynamic. I am wearing a suit even though I am a cultural practitioner.”

As our afternoon together comes to a close, a woman – one of his employees – approaches him, kneels down and whispers something. In some cultures in Uganda, women must kneel when speaking to elders and men. I ask him if he is not concerned about culture being on a collision course with human rights ideals like women equality, pointing out the African culture has been a mask for many evils like female genital mutilation and domestic violence.

“I would never support FGM or violence,” he says. “But when it comes to kneeling, it does not mean that the woman is inferior. Japanese are a world power, but don’t they bow? It is their identity. Culture grows and must be interpreted progressively.”

To Rwangyezi, the real threat to African culture is lack of government commitment and media that have failed to amplify cultural voices.

Walking from Ethiopia to Chile: 1 year down, 6 to go

In Paul Salopek’s first year of his trek across the globe, the reporter walked alongside his camels for days in Ethiopia without seeing glass or bricks or any other signs of modern humanity, ate a hamburger on a US military base and was shadowed by minders in the Saudi desert. He has only 32 000 kilometres to go.

Salopek is walking from Ethiopia to Chile, a seven-year journey that aims to reproduce man’s global migration. Beauty and difficulty filled his first year, which is now nearly complete. In his second he will skirt the violence of Syria but will cross Iraq and Afghanistan.

After about 2 100km on foot, Salopek has walked through five languages (Afar, Amharic, Arabic, French, Somali), filled 40 notebooks full of words, said goodbye to four camel companions and has logged one 55-kilometre day.

Paul Salopek walks across the Afar desert of Ethiopia on January 28 2013. (Pic: AP / National Geographic Society)
Paul Salopek walks across the Afar desert of Ethiopia on January 28 2013. (Pic: AP / National Geographic Society)

Beginning in Ethiopia’s Rift Valley, where early man lived, Salopek walked east into Djibouti, where he ate a hamburger on a US military base, then waited nearly six weeks – because of insurance requirements over piracy attack fears – for a boat to take him over the Red Sea and into Saudi Arabia.

Much of Africa, the 51-year-old noted, is still dominated by humans who travel on foot.

“The Africa segment was remarkable for its kind of historical reverberations, and getting to go through historical pastoral cultures like the Afar, and walking through a landscape still shaped by the human foot,” Salopek said by telephone. “It really has struck me that walking out of Africa, a place that still walks, how fantastically bound to our cars the rest of the world is.”

Salopek’s journey will take him from Africa, through the Middle East, across Asia, over to Alaska, down the western United States, then Central and South America, ending in Chile. That’s about 34 000 kilometres.

This image shows the route of Salopek's planned seven-year global trek from Ethiopia to Tierra del Fuego. (Pic: AP / National Geographic Society)
This image shows the route of Paul Salopek’s planned seven-year global trek from Ethiopia to Tierra del Fuego. (Pic: AP / National Geographic Society)

The walk is called Out of Eden and is sponsored by National Geographic, the Knight Foundation and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. A two-time journalism Pulitzer Prize winner, the American plans to write one major article a year, the first of which appears in December’s National Geographic.

Salopek’s highlight from his first year was his access to Saudi Arabia, a country that maintains tight controls on what outside journalists can see. He noted that the oil-producing nation is 83% urban, a higher percentage than the US.

“I have been moving slowly through Saudi culture, from walking along highways with camels, to the surreal reality of it in some cases is walking with camels by a Pizza Hut with Saudis inside eating pepperoni, who look outside and see a skinny American with camels,” said Salopek, interrupting himself with the observation.

Saudi Arabia made global headlines in October over protests against its effective cultural ban on women drivers. But Salopek encountered many women drivers in the country. “They just happen to be in places where there are no reporters,” he said.

In some places in the country Salopek knew he was being watched by government officials, who explained their presence by saying they were concerned for the American’s safety. But most times he has had unfettered access, he said. He thinks he’s the first outside journalist to walk through Saudi Arabia since 1918.

Salopek doesn’t miss much from the Western world except information because of his limited access to the internet. He also misses his family, but his wife is joining him in Jordan, where he currently is. He says he’s on schedule to complete his seven-year journey, though because of his six-week wait in Djibouti and his boat ride up the Red Sea, he didn’t walk as many steps as he thought he would. He has suffered few physical pains or ailments, save for two blisters.

“This has been very fun and very interesting and I have no indication as I sit that I’m getting bored with it. On the contrary, walking into a new country on foot with your clothes on your back and a shoulder bag stuffed with notebooks was really fascinating.”

Jason Straziuso for Sapa-AP.

Briton to walk length of the Nile on 6840km trek from Rwanda to Egypt

Victorian explorers such as Speke, Burton, Livingstone and Stanley famously tramped around central Africa in search of the fabled source of the Nile. But no one has been known to walk the river’s 4 250-mile (6 840km) length, an omission Levison Wood intends to rectify and hopes he can do it in a year.

Setting off from dense forest in the highlands of Rwanda on December 1, Wood (31), a former parachute regiment captain from Putney, south London, will work his way through up to seven countries – depending which side of the river he takes – some of which have been riven by civil unrest and war.

Wood will face natural hazards, from raging torrents to wildlife; he will traverse forests, the vast Sudd swamp, and desert while taking in, possibly, Burundi, but definitely Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt.

Boats float on the river Nile in Cairo on April 30 2013. (Pic: AFP)
Boats float on the river Nile in Cairo on April 30 2013. (Pic: AFP)

“The old adage is there is nothing more dangerous than between a hippo and the water and that is where I am going to be,” said Wood, admitting it was also as well to ask local people when crocodiles liked to be in the water.”Before you had decent anti-microbials in the 20th century, for most of the Victorian explorers, Speke and Livingstone and all those chaps looking for the source of the Nile, it was much easier coming from the east – [what is now] Tanzania and the coast – than it was to get round the Sudd. Anyone who had ever tried that basically died of malaria,” said Wood.

The Sudanese civil war put much of the Nile off-limits until recently. “For the first time in history, [this journey] is medically, politically and bureacratically possible,” said Wood, who will be seeking to raise money for three charities, TuskSpace for Giants and Ameca.

Unlike Joanna Lumley and the 2005-2006 Ascend the Nile team who employed mechanised transport, Wood will be heading downstream. He will however, have a Channel Four film crew joining him for up to fortnight.

Wood, who served in Afghanistan in 2008 and has more recently escorted film crews into hostile areas, is well aware of other dangers facing 21st-century explorers. The Ascend the Nile team, led by New Zealanders Garth MacIntyre and Cam McLeay and Briton Neil McGrigor, witnessed one member, Briton Steve Willis, killed in an ambush by an armed rebel group in Uganda. McGrigor also broke and burned his leg in an accident that wrecked a motorised raft and a support aircraft.

Wood will not be armed, though will be joined by armed rangers in national parks, not only to protect him from wild animals but from poachers. “Certainly it is not wise to carry arms yourself.”

Wood hopes to complete up to 100 miles a week but said: “No doubt the film crew will slow me down quite considerably and anything can happen. You only need to get a sprained ankle to delay you by a fortnight.”

He insisted that most of the time he would rely on local guides. “In more remote parts of South Sudan, especially swamp areas, and, of course, the desert, it is going to be tough and there are going to be weeks and weeks without a village. The idea is to explore Africa as much as possible. If there are huge stretches where I need to carry my own food, there might be times I need to get a camel or something … I don’t have the budget for a helicopter.”

Wood, who has received words of encouragement from modern-day adventurers including Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Colonel John Blashford-Snell, reckons the trip will cost about £150 000. He is still seeking sponsors and encouraging wellwishers to support his favourite sub-Saharan wildlife and healthcare charities.

“You have to be prepared as much as you can. The key really is having good, trustworthy local guides who have a good understanding of places you are going into. I have done my research as best I can but a lot of it you have to leave to, I won’t say blind faith, but leave to human kindness.”

Kigali fashion week puts Rwanda on the style map

It is normally the catwalks of Lagos and Johannesburg grabbing the limelight, as African fashion industry grows in stature around the world. But the Rwandan capital put in a bid for style glory at the weekend with the launch of the second annual Kigali fashion week.

Designer Sonia Mugabo, who lost grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles and friends in the genocide nearly 20 years ago, was one of 10 local designers whose work was showcased at Friday night’s show with help from the organisers of the New York fashion week.

Although Rwanda does not have a fashion school, Mugabo says the tragic history of her family has made her more determined to follow her desire to be a designer.

“When I was doing graphic design in college, my parents asked what is she doing?” says the 23-year-old, who studied in the US and interned at Teen Vogue. “Fashion is a luxury here, not everyone can afford to be fashionable and our culture is very conservative so people think it’s too showy. But I knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life.

“I think people here don’t understand art as a whole concept. They don’t know what art can do for a country.”

Mugabo and her friend Candy Basomingera (30) launched their women’s range Afrikana Exquisiteness in August.

LDJ Productions, the company that runs New York fashion week, believes Rwanda it has the potential for a strong fashion industry, after the country was recently ranked as the third easiest place to do business in sub-Saharan Africa.

It has provided technical support and training for Kigali fashion week. “It’s not about giving money for us, it’s about giving our time and expertise,” says LDJ chief Laurie DeJong, who’s also worked on fashion weeks in Miami, Toronto, Los Angeles and Mumbai.

“The talent here, no one’s tapped into it. But the designers are so serious and dedicated and so enthusiastic. They really want to learn more than anything.”

A model in one of the creations from Sonia Mugabo's Africana Exqusiteness range. (Pic: by G.R. Vande weghe, Illume Creative Studio)
A model in one of the creations from Sonia Mugabo’s Afrikana Exqusiteness range. (Pic: G.R. Vande weghe, Illume Creative Studio)

For the past two years DeJong has mentored self-taught designer Colombe Ituze Ndutiye, who launched her INCO icyusa label in 2011. Ndutiye’s pieces, which include denim and cotton dresses and skirts teamed with traditional accessories, are made with the help of genocide widows through Canadian initiative Centre César.

“When I started the fashion industry was not there, people were confused,” says the 25-year-old. “Now there’s a lot of awareness.”

Friday night’s show featured Mugabo and Basomingera’s creations, which the former described as “vintage and Victorian-inspired”.

“My pieces are fully covered because I don’t feel like a woman should have to reveal too much to be beautiful,” says Mugabo, who is hoping to find local shops to stock her designs but also plans to sell online.

A model in one of the creations from Sonia Mugabo's Africana Exqusiteness range. (Pic: by G.R. Vande weghe, Illume Creative Studio)
A model in one of the creations from Sonia Mugabo’s Afrikana Exqusiteness range. (Pic: G.R. Vande weghe, Illume Creative Studio)

LDJ is also helping to build an arts school in Rwanda with local firm House of Fashion, which was set up to develop the Rwandan industry. But its chief executive, John Bunyeshuli, also has his sights on Rwanda’s neighbours. He hopes to stage Burundi’s first fashion week next year in the capital Bujumbura.

Amy Fallon for the Guardian

Linguistic adventures: Learning Mandarin in Botswana

My friend Sedimale recently signed up for Chinese language classes at the University of Botswana, figuring it would be an interesting challenge to add another language to her multilingual ambitions. “I might even wind up as a Mandarin teacher, go on a work exchange programme and move to China and find myself a nice Chinese husband,” she told me half-jokingly. Several lessons later, she seems to be having the time of her life. Apart from the empowering experience of learning a new language, she has made new friends from diverse backgrounds and her world has opened to a different culture.

A decade ago no one would have imagined that Mandarin Chinese would be a popular language to learn in Botswana. Nowadays it is fast gaining popularity in urban areas, with both the young and old vying for a place in the evening and weekend classes at the University of Botswana in Gaborone.

Due to China’s evident growing economic influence and the large number of Chinese in the country,  many Batswana are opting to learn more about the country, its culture, history, lifestyle and of course language, especially as there are many opportunities for cross-cultural exchanges.

(Pic: Flickr / ilamont.com)
(Pic: Flickr / ilamont.com)

Botswana and China share good economic ties and a cordial friendship. China is Botswana’s third largest trade partner and one of the country’s big diamond consumers. In 2009, it was an estimated that about 6000 Chinese have made Botswana their home, with most of them settled in urban areas where they operate their businesses from. The Chinese are major players in the local construction, manufacturing and service provision industries.  In the past, China, through the local embassy, has constructed two primary schools and a multi-purpose youth centre. Earlier this year, China donated R100-million to Botswana for the implementation of various projects. One of them is the Community Natural Resource Management programme, which offers community-based organisations training, mentoring and coaching on resource management.

But away from official visits and trade agreements, the ties between the locals and the Chinese who live here aren’t that clear. There’s often a communication breakdown as many Batswana are not fluent in English, while the Chinese here only speak Mandarin. The language barriers have made it difficult for both parties to establish friendships and easy relations. Although they are often accused of selling cheap products, most of the Chinese-owned stores target low-income earners, and prices are often linked to the quality of the sold product. Even neighbouring Zimbabweans who work and plight their trade in the country regularly purchase goods from the Chinese stores here to re-sell at home.

There’s no shopping complex or mall in Gaborone that does not have a Chinese store. Most of them sell everything from green tea to hair pieces, clothes, shoes, bags and beauty products. There’s a local joke that the only thing you can’t get from a Chinese store is a baby!  The prices are usually low but bargaining is the order of the day. I have often bought my son toy cars and dresses for myself after negotiating a discount of 5 to 10 bucks per item.

The Confucius Institute at the University of Botswana, where Mandarin lessons are taught, opened in 2009. It now has 10 teachers, several volunteers and over 2000 students. To date, it has awarded 60 scholarships and a further 260 are expected to be rolled out between 2013 and 2016. Chen Zhilu, director of the institute, has confirmed the high demand for Chinese language lessons. Chinese is also a language option in the university’s BA Humanities programme and is one of the 25 top-ranked courses.

Learning Chinese in school is also an option – the institute has sites in two revered private schools, Westwood and Maru-a-pula, and there are plans to open sites in public schools too.

I will be taking up Chinese lessons next semester. In the meantime, my friend Sedimale has been teaching me the basics every time we meet. A few days ago, I caught my partner off guard when I clasped my hand to my heart and declared: “Wo ai ni” (“I love you” in Mandarin). He gave me a blank stare but this could all change in the next few months if I can convince him to join me in this linguistic adventure.

Keletso Thobega is a copy editor and features writer based in Gaborone, Botswana.