In the future, I will be writing a more politically orientated blog in addition to this and maybe who knows a podcast...
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The story of Africa is filled with many tragedies and fuck ups. Nothing encapsulates this more than the story of Rwanda. People know that this was the most well organized genocide in history, 800,000 people in 100 days. I say this bearing in mind the Nazi holocaust. The final solution was that a final solution (at least arguably) whereas in Rwanda the Hutu elite had planned and organized it for years in full view of the world. Yet no one did anything.
The UN sent less than 3000 troops and ignored calls for reinforcements, ignored intelligence coming from diplomats, ignored a 100% annual increase in machete imports. I haven't cried in a long while. I am fully sober, sat on a crowded public train, yet I wept while I read the story again. What makes me sad is that despite all the talk of reconciliation. I find it hard to believe people just forgive and forget
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Got home in the pouring rain. I was determined to have a bath, I even turned on the hot water. I didn't. I smoked in front of the tv and forgot all about it.
After watching a bunch of prerecorded programs I stumbled unto channel four's how the other half live: nine months on. I had watched one of the original episodes and remember thinking what a pretencious load of tosh. The rich people gave the poor people some money and some stuff and let them visit their house. The poor children feel bad about being poor, the rich children feel bad about being rich. The poor parents get some material rewards and the rich parents get moral rewards. We got an hour a tv and everyone walks away.
But watching the 9 months on episode was very interesting. Not because the patronizing tone had disappeared. It hadn't in fact It was worse because this time the poor family was black and inner city. The original show had raised such emotions in the watching public that the headmasters of 2 private school decided to sponsor the 3 black girls' education till they turned 18.
What amazed me was not the grand act of generosity, nor the gulf between private and state education. Rather it was the rate at which the two girls who had just started at the private school changed. With the younger one who was maybe 8 or 9 you could see and hear her mannerisms and accent change over the course of the filming (maybe a term). She became more confident and more well spoken with a public school accent. The older one who was maybe 11 or 12 the change for the older one was instantaneous. From the first shot at the school she spoke almost deliberately posher and by the second or third day it was natural.
This made me remember when I was 12 and first went to private school in England. I felt the immediate need to assimilate. I was going through puberty still trying to form my identity, processes I had started in Nigeria, so what resulted was in this definite split into two cojoined and overlapping identities that while eventually I felt confident in both I felt comfortable in neither. I contrasted this with my younger sister who was maybe 6 or 7 when she joined the fold. By being a full time boarder in that environment from such a young age she never developed the nigerian identity. the English public school girl is her primary identity in which she is both confident and comfortable and when she is forced to take on the African personna she is ill at ease and (perhaps deliberately) not all that convincing.
I don't know which is better
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PS. I am still trying to find the right android app to do this with minimum stress. At the moment I am using diaro which I have used for a while, but its a bit shit at synching with the blog and so i cant put times and dates yet. If anyone knows a good app even if its paid let me know.
Thanks your humble blogger
