EIS Amnesty Club and The Practice of Vidomegon in Benin: Amnesty International marks 50 years of fighting!!!

I long for the day when Amnesty is needed NO MORE! Human beings inflict on one another uninmaginable horrors!

I have started an Amnesty Club in the Middle school two years ago and I am so proud to see the Middle School and High School students taking their role of freedom fighters so seriously!! Through Socratic dialogues, I try to raise their consciousness and awareness of problems in our society.

Our club has re-energised the idea of the global citizen in our English International School of Cotonou.

The students and I care about individuals and we are all together united in action, standing in solidarity. We care about children and oppressed minorities. We fight torture, campaign against the death penalty, defend prisoners of conscience and the right of refugees, and calls oppressive regimes to account (by writting letters).

We yearn for a world in which every person enjoys the freedom of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This year our play is about the Practice of Vidomegon in Benin. Doxa, one of my students in Year 9, has written a wonderful play script about the Vidomegon problem in Rep of Benin which I promise to put on the blog next time.

Poor, rural families in Benin and elsewhere in Africa often engage in vidomegon, a social practice whereby a child, usually a daughter, is sent to live as a servant with a wealthier family. 

The practice has fallen into the realm of child traffickers, who go from village to village to collect children and sell them to other nations. Benin has become a supplier of illicit child labour. 

The students and I want our cry, STOP THE PRACTICE OF VIDOMEGON NOW, to be heard all over the world.

Through our plays and stories, we hope that our voices will become a worldwide chorus.

"La persistance du phénomène Vidomègon: Les droits des enfants toujours bafoués en dépit des efforts consentis. 

Dètondji Déguénon est originaire de la région d’Agonlin, et âgée de dix ans à peine. Mais, la voilà depuis confrontée à tous les travaux domestiques, voire plus à Cotonou chez sa tutrice, une fonctionnaire du même village qu’elle à qui elle a été confiée depuis environ trois ans par ses parents. 

Chétive, Dètondji Déguénon, toujours habillée en haillons est la première à se lever et souvent la dernière à se coucher. Elle a le devoir tous les jours de balayer la cour, la devanture de la maison, de faire la vaisselle, la lessive." (laraignee.org: http://www.laraignee.org/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=6944)

The students and I called an urgent action to encourage people around the world to send letters and emails to President Yayi Boni who has the power to intervene and stop the practice of Videmegon in Rep of Benin. 

We must stop children abuses, we must stop the practice of Vidomegon in Benin!

Happy Mother's Day Gift :)

The moon has become a dancer at this festival of love. 
This dance of light, this sacred blessing, this divine love beckons us to a world beyond, that only lovers can see with their eyes of fiery passion. 
They are the chosen ones who have surrendered. 
Once they were particles of light, now they are the radiant sun. 
They have left behind the world of defeat-full games. 
They are the privileged lovers who created new worlds with their eyes of fiery passion. Rumi

Peace, Peace, We need Peace!

Peace is needed in the Middle East. Barack Obama is to pursue a peace plan involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders.

Obama wants to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi Peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima Party.

The Arab Peace plan received a boost when President Shimon Peres, a Nobel Peace laureate and leading Israeli Dove, commanded the initiative at a Saudi-sponsored United Nations conference in New York. Peres told King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (who was behind this original intiative), "I wish that your voice will become the prevailing voice of the whole region."

Most of us don't want further procrastination BUT an END to the conflict! Barack Obama should lose no time in pursuing this peace plan.

After 63 years of the Palestinian Nakba, and despite 20 years of unsuccessful peace negotiations, the Palestinian people continue to be denied their most fundamental and inalienable rights to self-determination, national independence, sovereignty and return to their homes and properties from which they have been forcibly displaced.

“By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, all peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development, and every State has the duty to respect this right in accordance with the provisions of the Charter.”

The U.S. president said that an independent Palestine should be based on 1967 borders — before the Six Day War in which Israel occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — as adjusted by possible land swaps agreed upon by both sides. He said Israel can never live in true peace as a Jewish state if it insists on "permanent occupation."

"For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state," Obama said, in a speech in which he repeatedly praised nonviolent protest in other parts of the region in pursuit of national "self-determination."

Livni, the leader of Kadima, which favours the plan, is the front-runner in Israeli elections due in February. Her rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud, is adamantly against withdrawing to borders that predate the Six Day war in 1967.

But Netanyahu, don't be fooled by the applause! People around the world want peace, Peace. 

According to a Washington source Obama told Abbas: “The Israelis would accept this initiative because it would give them peace with the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco." 

Obama is endorsing the Palestinians' demand for their future state to be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war. Israel says the borders of a Palestinian state have to be determined through negotiations.

Then, Please, let us start the negotiations! Palestinian people cannot live anymore in forced exile and they do need a state, a Palestinian state!

I cannot see my friends!!

I do not know what happened today...but I cannot see my friends anymore! I cannot see the list of the followers in my Blogger dashboard! Who can help me? I cannot see my friends anymore!! I need help!

Refugees by Suheir Hammad

Suhair Hammad: "I was born a Black woman"

Brooklynite Hammad may be the first Palestinian-American to make it big in the spoken-word or performance poetry scene!

She writes, Home is within me. I carry everyone and everything I am with me wherever I go. Use my history as the road in front of me, the land beneath me. Paths are many, but essence is one and eternal.

But what does Suheir Hammad mean when she says she is "born Black?" According to Kazim Ali, Black, in her case, not being mere ethnic marker but a political position in relation to a dominant power structure.

As Hammad herself explains in her book, the word has numerous historical and political meanings that she embraces.

In "Jabaliya" Suheir Hammad writes,

a woman wears a bell carries a light calls searches

through madness of deir yessin calls for  afah for bread 

orange peel under nails blue glass under feet gathers 

children in zeitoun sitting  ith dead mothers she unearths 

tunnels and buries sun onto trauma a score and a day rings 

a bell she is dizzy more than yesterday less than 

tomorrow a zig zag back dawaiyma back humming suba

back shatilla back ramleh back jenin back il khalil back il quds 

all of it all underground in ancestral chests she rings 

a bell promising something she can’t see faith is that 

faith is this all over the land under the belly 

of wind she perfumed the love of a burning sea 

concentrating refugee camp 

crescent targeted red

a girl’s charred cold face dog eaten body 

angels rounded into lock down shelled injured shock 

weapons for advancing armie   is clearing forests sprayed onto a city

o sage tree human skin contact explosion these are our children

she chimes through nablus back yaffa backs shot under 

spotlight phosphorous murdered libeled public relations

public

relation

a bell fired in jericho rings through blasted windows a woman 

carries bones in bags under eyes disbelieving becoming 

numb dumbed by numbers front and back gaza onto gaza 

for gaza am sorry gaza am sorry she sings for the whole 

powerless world her notes pitch perfect the bell a death toll

Suhair Hammad "Language is power, politics."

Through strong meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choice, Hammad's poetry evokes on us emotional response.

In this column, which takes an intimate look at diverse cultures, a Palestinian poet, Suhair Hammad, who was raised in Brooklyn discovers that her mother's dreams once mirrored her own.

THE HANDS WITH WHICH I WRITE are a gift from my mother. Of course, my life is a gift, but these hands, specifically, have her spirit in them. long fingers, delicate wrists, a child's ring size. So much of Mama is evident in me. Her voice travels from my throat. My body is beginning to settle into her shape (though I'll never have her wonderful backside). 

I talk to myself and look in the mirror when I miss her. And there she is.

Mama is a survivor. Born in exile, she and my father moved from Jordan to New York in 1978. Mama was 25 years old, with three daughters, and a son in her belly. She raised five children in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, a neighborhood of Puerto Rican and Black and a handful of White families. My father worked as a street vendor, car-service driver and neighborhood grocer. Baba made sure we never went hungry, but it was my mother who made a nickel into a dime. 

Mama had strict rules. No short skirts, tight clothes or makeup. No hanging out and no boys. I was the original homegirl--as in "keep your butt at home." Like many immigrants, my parents saw education as key to a better life and demanded that we study hard. After all, this was America; anything could happen. But this was also the America that didn't take kindly to others. 

A Palestinian who had never seen Palestine, Mama was familiar with the label other. Her whole life she'd seen Palestinians portrayed as terrorists and fanatics, so she understood what her children faced from kids who ridiculed our religion and teachers who expressed racist views about Palestine. 

But I didn't realize back then how much Mama really understood. I just knew I was different from my peers, that I didn't fit easily into categories of Black and White. My response was to challenge the world around me, taking as my own the realities of all those groups historically excluded from the mainstream. 

In particular, I found myself drawn to African and African-American culture, including the Yoruba faith, which I quickly learned was not so different from Islam. For example, there is a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad: Heaven is under the mother's feet. And Yoruba believers bring flowers and gifts to Yemoja, the ocean orisha (goddess) who is "the mother of us all." Both faiths honor the wisdom and the blessings that flow from the archetypal mother. 

And yet I never thought to look to my own mother as I tried to figure out who I was. Instead I embraced my otherness as a kind of liberation from my parents' expectations. They told me often that I was to become a doctor, and indeed as a child I was taken with the idea of saving lives. But during a hip-hop adolescence in which I explored my otherness among mostly Black and Latina girlfriends, I began to understand that what I wanted to do most was write our stories. 

I tried to explain this to Mama. She wasn't convinced. "What kind of life does a woman writer live?" she admonished. "Traveling, meeting strangers, no stability." Mama didn't realize that those things tempted rather than discouraged me; I saw them as opportunities to explore who I was. Mama and I continued to be at odds, and relations between us were strained. During one of our tearful debates, my mother blurted out, "You think you're better than everyone? Where do you think you get this desire to write? I was a writer first, and I made you." 

Mama a writer? I was stunned. I had never considered that Mama might once have harbored dreams that had nothing to do with me. But after she came to America with my father, she found herself with five children like the fingers of her hand, and she chose her family over her art. Hands which once wrote out her heart's secrets now signed report cards, braided hair, cooked meals, paid bills and spanked unruly behinds. 

I began to understand Mama's love of ballads in a new way--as a passion for poetry. And I can still see the tears in her eyes as she recited Islamic scripture, calling God's word "the original, perfect literature." Even her dedication to watching soap operas was an attempt to get stories into her life. 

These days Mama is resigned to my "impractical" dream of writing. She does not know that I keep photographs of her on my desk, to remind me of my purpose and of the fact that she made my life possible. 

Mama, you were my first inspiration. I see you not only in my hands but also in my heart and in my work. You are God's perfect poetry. I love you.

Suheir Hammad

I have been a huge admirer of Hammad's work since I first read her book of poems called Born Palestinian Born Black. Suheir Hammad has given us a collection of poems that have their roots in a land near the edge of the sea.

 Here is the voice of a woman who has not forgotten the plight of her people! Born Palestinian Born Black is about culture, conflict, and culture.

The author preface's says, "I was born a black woman / and now / I am become a Palestinian / against the relentless laughter of evil / there is less and less living room / and where are my loved ones? / It is time to make our way home."

Poet Suhair Hammad was born in Amman, Jordan, to refugee Palestinian parents. She immigrated with her family to Brooklyn, New York, when she was just five years old inspired by poet-performers such as Nikki Giovanni.

Barbara Jane Reyes wrote

"I have been a huge admirer of Hammad’s work since I first read her poem, “Of Woman Torn,” in the anthology The poetry of Arab Women, edited by Nathalie Handal. 

Hammad’s “Of Woman Torn” addresses the so-called “honor killing” of an eloped young woman by her father in Cairo in 1997"

palestine’s daughter

love making can be as dangerous

as curfews broken

guerillas hidden

you join now those who won’t leave

the earth haunt my

sleep who watch my

back whenever i lay

the forced suicides the

dowry deaths and

nora

decapitated by

her father on her forbidden

honeymoon he paraded

her head through

cairo to prove his

manhood this is 1997

and i can only hope

you had a special song a

poem memorized a secret

that made you smile

this is a love

poem cause i love

you now woman

who lived tried to

love in this world of

machetes and sin

i smell your ashes

of zaatar and almonds

under my skin

i carry your bones

According to Jane Reye, Hammad's syntax is broken, her lines are clipped, and her poems are bombardments of images and words, demonstrations of brokennes and piecing togetherof selves, of languages, histories, and geographies.

We depart one after another more quickly than the dewdrops...

I have just got a phone call a minute ago...my friend lost her husband. He was 49 years old.

It is a sudden tragic loss that no one was prepared for. 

I am truly saddened by your husband's death but his memory will always remain deep within my heart.

I wish I could be there with you, my friend to comfort you...May your memories bring you comfort. Do not cry my friend, Death is not the end, Death can never be the end. Even though you and I are thousands of miles apart right now, please know that I am praying for you, my sincere thoughts and prayers are with you.

Rumi writes,

When I die...

When I die

when my coffin

is being taken out

you must never think

I am missing this world

don't shed any tears

don't lament or

feel sorry

I'm not falling

into a monster's abyss

when you see

my corpse is being carried

don't cry for my leaving

I'm not leaving

I'm arriving at eternal love

when you leave me

in the grave

don't say goodbye

remember a grave is

only a curtain

for the paradise behind

you'll only see me

descending into a grave

now watch me rise

how can there be an end

when the sun sets or

the moon goes down

it looks like the end

it seems like a sunset

but in reality it is a dawn

when the grave locks you up

that is when your soul is freed

have you ever seen

a seed fallen to earth

not rise with a new life

why should you doubt the rise

of a seed named human

have you ever seen

a bucket lowered into a well

coming back empty

why lament for a soul

when it can come back

like Joseph from the well

when for the last time

you close your mouth

your words and soul

will belong to the world of

no place no time

~RUMI 

There is no knowing whether I will die first or others, whether death will occur today or tomorrow. We depart one after another more quickly than the dewdrops on the roots or the tips of the blades of grasses. 

Do not cry my friend! Don't grieve because anything we lose comes round in another form. I know how close you and your husband were and I can only imagine what you must be going through  right now. I know that you have the strength in you to move on and I want you to know that I am here for you. 

May his soul rest in perfect peace. Your husband has passed on to a better place.

The Guest House by Rumi

The Guest House by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

 Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

~ Rumi ~
  (The Essential Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks)

 I like to have a conversation with Rumi. The universality of his message is important to me, especially in our comtemporary society!!! Rumi's moderate attitude provides many aswers to the social and psychological problems of our time.

In this modern world, we are facing depression, irritation, hateful thoughts, anxiety, worry, ....all this "stuff" get on our way and we do not know how to deal with them (most of the time...)

In order to get rid of all these stuff, Rumi suggests that we must climb a spiritual ladder of love! Rumi understood that the cause of every religious conflict is ignorance.Real belief is apparent only on the inside of a person, which is not visible. Therefore, it is clear for Rumi that the religion of love involves loving the eternal and invisible source of existence. 

Religious insight and the spiritual search for a safe haven are a part of faith in all religions. Rumi said, "Whether love be from this side or that side, wordly / Or heavenly, in the end it leads us yonder." Rumi's spiritual ladder is LOVE. Climbing the steps of this spiritual ladder, Rumi attains wisdom. 

He realizes that music is an inseparable part of life and he says, "We are as a harp, you are playing us; / We are as a flute, and this is your voice breathed into us." Rumi said that" God is so generous that He may accept the counterfeit coin of me." 

Rumi believed in a type of universal faith belonging to all religions. A real believer may only be recognized by his inner state, which is not observable to anyone else. The religion of love involves loving the eternal and invisible source of existence...

He wrote, "Every prophet and every saint has a way of religious practice / But, as all those ways lead us to God, they are one." Rumi believes in the unity or religions. Rumi says, "If there was a man of esoteric knowledge, a man of hundred languages, there wouldn't be any disagreement." 

"If there had been a candle in each one's hand, / The difference would have gone out of their words." The cause of religious conflict and terrorism is ignorance! Therefore, in our comtemporary society, Rumi's message is even more important to fight malfeasance. 

According to Rumi, "someone who does not keep score / who is not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing / who has not the slightest interest even / in his own personality. He is FREE"

"Don't Believe in War"

Bulat Okudzhava (1924-1997) said that one way of encouraging peace is by discouraging war. 

Don't believe in war Osama,

You can never win a fight

War constricts the heart, Osama,

A pair of boots too tight.

Your mighty horses swift and true

will be no use at all

as exposed upon a giant's palm,

beneath musket shot you'll fall.

Sadi, the 13th century Persian traveller, storyteller, poet and Muslim mystic, said that once a war is started, there is no going back. Fighting is a common instinct that we all share. But only humans take it to a higher level of organization that leads to total warfare. 

Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy said that

My personal revenge will be your children's

right to schooling and to flowers.

My personal revenge will be this song

bursting for you with no more fears.

My personal revenge will be to greet you

'Good Morning!' in the streets with no beggars,

when instead of locking you inside

they say, 'Don't look so sad'.

When you, the torturer

daren't lift your head.

My personal revenge will be to give you

these hands you once ill-treated

with all their tenderness intact. 

We all think that the death of any human being is not to be joyfully celebrated but it is true that justice has to be done in this life. When our enemy falls, we should not rejoice and we should not let our heart be glad when our "foe is outstretched beneath the tree." 

The malfeasance "bestirred itself / then suddenly someone suggested ... / It would be kinder to show it kindness." But it is difficult to show kindness to a terrorist. 

Mark Twain said that "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."  

But let us try to sow love, only love can undo evil, only love can undo malfeasance. With our ink, let us spread love. The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr!

Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin

I recommend this book!! if you are a glass-half-full reader with an interest in Africa, then read this book :) If you are interested in the political and social life of African countries...

Angel Tungaraza runs a cake business from her apartment in the multicultural Rwandan city of Kigali. Angel is a businesswoman and wife, neighbor and confessor, matchmaker and righter of wrongs, and grandmother and mother to her five granddchildren since the deaths of her son and daughter. Angela sells cakes in order to keep the family afloat. She decorates her cakes with bright colors and fanciful designs. Her skill has brought her a wide array of customers, including an ambassador and her neighbor Ken, a Japanese American who works for the United Nations.

Parkin's novel is not without moral complexity, a story of hope and recovery for a country torn apart by genocide and aids. Angela is privy to the most intimate stories, some as horrific as those victims of the 1994 genocide. 

It is really touching to see Angela as a surrogate mother in a wedding of truth and reconciliation between a Hutu and Tutsi. 

This book conveys charming images of spicy sweet tea and mouthwatering cakes and humorous explanations such as how to deceive a dishonest tailor which are juxtaposed with heartbreaking accounts of child hobos living in dumpsters.

All the story takes place against a backdrop of social change, as African women in particular struggle to improve their lives and obtain education.