Corona virus and Africa

What I am about to write now can be seen as a conspiracy theory and to be honest I don't care. These are my thoughts on Corona

I am convinced these bio-hazardous health scares from Asia (corona, SARS) or Africa (Ebola) are happening for a reason. 
There is a group of people a small group of people, let's call them globalists or international financiers who have no intention of sharing the wealth. That is not something new but now with the 4th Industrial Revolution at our doorsteps unemployment will be a major concern and only irredeemable optimists believe that the same people who rob and rape the Earth and its 99% blind, will now dispossess the greedy and give to the needy. Universal Income is possible but those who have prefer to let us rot and prepare themselves to live permanently on the hills or better yet the space stations Elon Musk is working on, financed by the 1%.
You may think this is SF but most of the things Jules Verne wrote about like landing on the Moon is very much possible now. All it takes is political will and money. 

Now let's go back to Corona which if we have to believe escaped from a laboratory in China and simultaneously is the result of some let's say exotic eating habits of our friends from the East.
Normally when people in labs toy with viruses they already have the anti-dote. When it comes to eating habits people have been eating bush meat for millennia why get sick now? It's the same story with Ebola. I know for a fact monkeys/apes are eaten in Asia and South America as well but lo and behold in Africa they (the apes) are fighting back by getting their consumers sick....? Tricky that one. 

Why is this important for Africa. It's very important. The Eurasians (Chinese, Europeans and Indians) are those who buy raw materials from African countries so now there will be even less money to go around. Remember that our elites understood the trickle-down principle before the white man coined the expression. 
Second if this disease is going to ravage Eurasia the way it is ravaging this vast landmass with almost 3 Billion inhabitants, we don't have to guess where they will go for succor.... In fact we already have a large Eurasian military footprint in Africa.

Needless to say that Africa is nowhere near what the Eurasians have. Where are our own satellites and drones? Our elite is receiving our enemies with legs and arms wide but it will be the commoners paying the price. All the while our elite is happy with some proverbial mirrors and beads.. 

My own personal chi

I like to call myself a Pan-Africanist . Not because I am an expert on it. I read a few articles and bios, I paid to see a documentary about Marcus Garvey in a cinema in Amsterdam and fell asleep. Not because the topic didn't interest me but for some reason these past 20 years I fall asleep in darkened spaced.
The reason I am a Panafricanist is because I live it.

You see when I was eleven I had my first brushes with what is now called White Supremacy that I recall as such. It was not the name-calling, it was more insidious. I was supposed to do my Holy Communion. My parents were Catholics not even devout ones but it was a "tradition" within my mother's family that you do Holy Communion. To this day I have no idea what is the point of it. I could google it but I choose not to. I got my presents and that for me was the only motivation.
Anyways every Wednesday afternoon, we were trained or inducted towards this great Event.
We were taught about the life of Christ the Redeemer, his many deeds and I was an eager student. Then one day our teacher told us to colour some prints that described his life and deeds.
So colour we did but our neighbourhood was a diverse one and so was our group so when I was colouring the people that were in the background or around Jesus I coloured them in , white, black and yellow. "Of course" Jesus was white or better yet pinky. We were studying in a church building you could not go 2 metres without seeing a statue or a painting of Jesus and all the many many saints and they were all depicting white people. It never crossed my mind that Jesus could be any other colour. It was strange that sometimes he had brown hair and brown eyes, or brown hair and blue eyes or blond hair and blue eyes but the consistent thing is that he is white. I am sure he still is in that church.
Anyway I am colouring my multicultural scenes and the teacher comes by and I can see she doesn't like what I am doing. The scenes were not supposed to be multicultural but I am not imagining things because she asks me why I am using different colours.
Imagine that! It wasn't enough that the main players were white even the bystanders, listeners had to be white. 
I did not budge but from that moment on the relationship with my religious teacher was frosty and even though I understood that it irked her it took me years to understand why. At that moment I thought she just wanted to impose herself on my artistic expressiveness. 

It took me almost five years before I fully understand what happened. This was because by chance I met a man from Guyana. His name was Gustave. He introduced me to Pan-Africanism and his impact on me could have been a lot greater if it weren't for his more outlandish ideas.
This man introduced me to Walter Rodney (How Europe underdeveloped Africa) and Chancellor Williams (the Destruction of Black Civilization) and if it weren't for this constant cloud of negativity that almost literally followed him, I think that we as in I and other black adolescents would have paid attention to him a lot more. I don't know what personal dealings he had with white people that he thought like that but I always remember that I wondered why he did not go back to Guyana but with hindsight maybe that was politically not expedient. 

Anyway this man to whom I will always be indebted thought me what Pan-Africanism was to him. For me it means that you as a black man are an African wherever you are and that you try to connect with Africans wherever you find them or wherever they find you. It was easy for him to convince me because I could hardly claim Germanic ancestry or history and I already tried helped by my mother to find books about Africa but most books I got were sometimes openly negative about Africa's history and/or made a great concerted effort to extract Egypt from Africa.
This man helped me to understand what went on in my life and why it was happening while at the same time giving me a whole new outlook, a new perspective concerning my African heritage. Suddenly being African was cool! 

When I was twenty I decided for myself that living in Africa would not have to be bad idea despite the negative image of the continent. I just wanted to be somewhere where I would fit in.
 I just had no idea how that was going to pan out practically. Or how to begin. For the next ten or so years nothing happened. Then in 2000 I went to Egypt for a holiday that I would also use to see some ancient Egyptian history with my own eyes. For this reason I visited the Valley of the Kings and Karnak and I was in awe of what the ancients achieved. But it was my interaction with the Egyptians that struck me. I remember talking with some Nubian guides and I enjoyed that for the obvious reasons that they were black. We had different hair types and even our faces were not the same but it was good to see people that shared my melanin. 
On the last day when going back to the Netherlands, the Egyptian (not a Nubian) customs officer refused to give me back my passport until I admitted that I was a Nubian. I don't know why it was important to him. Maybe he really thought I was an immigrant coming back to Egypt to flaunt my newly found wealth or he meant to teach me not to forget my 'roots". I still have no idea.
In 2003 I went to Senegal. This was an important journey because it was the first time I was in Sub-Saharan Africa and I loved it for the simple reason that everybody looked like me and I didn't stand out. As long as I kept my mouth shut I could pass for the real deal.  
I went to Gorée and decided that visiting the slave forts was not for the faint-hearted. I only walked past or around other forts ever since. I could not stomach another visit to the innards of these constructions where my ancestors were kept before the fateful one-way trip.
When I spent three or four days in the north in a town called Saint Louis I was sold. Literally. I decided that I would be in Saint Louis (in Senegal) by 2006 no matter what. I have no idea why I chose 2006 but I knew I had to give it urgency or it would be another 20 years.
Fast forward, it's 2020 I am married to an African woman from Mali and I have son who speaks Bambara. 
My personal quest is as good as over. I don't need to speak Swahili, Peul  (Fulani) or Zulu to be an African. I have a son who carries my family name and is an African who speaks the local language.

Expensive shit part 2

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jan/24/no-privacy-school-respite-mozambique-water-crisis

In my first contribution I talked about why Africans leave the continent. The link above is a link to an article that The Guardian placed online right after the shit-hole comment of Donald Trump. I don't think this was an coincidence but THAT is not what I want to focus on.
What want to focus on is why is it that our so-called leaders take the time to protest a factual though crude assessment.

Again don't get me wrong but I am sure that the president of Mozambique has no problems whatsoever to find a quiet clean place to relieve himself.

Yes that's because he hangs out in the presidential palace I have no idea whether that is the old or new one built by the Chinese (and not for free) recently. 
Now I don't want to resort to cheap effects by negative imagery but isn't it strange that people in Mozambique die of water-borne diseases due to poor sanitation yet the president and his cronies have to put with humble digs like those shown in this link?

http://www.presidencia.gov.mz/por/Presidencia/Palacio-da-Ponta-Vermelha

Mozambique is not alone a few months ago I had the pleasure of being shown a certain neighbourhood of Nairobi on Twitter accompanied by some blistering comments by the poster. I almost wept not because of sadness but shame and anger. I don't know Mozambique well nor do I know Kenya but there is a pattern here. An African pattern.

Forget the toilet issues for a moment. This is about mentality. 
I live on and off in Africa since 2006. My first prolonged stretch was from 09/2006 till 01/2008 and it gave my ample opportunity to reflect on why things are they way they are in Africa.
Mentality I said I mean mindset or outlook by this. 
When I left to establish myself in Senegal in September 2006 I didn't go there to show what little money I had saved. I went to Africa to re-invent myself. Even though I never learned any local language I made sure I would eat what the locals ate, drink what the locals ate and move around like they do. In Dakar that meant loads of mini-buses and city buses. I did not necessarily enjoy the mini-bus experience, I still don't anywhere (I am in Asia now) but I coped.
I was 37 at that time and even though I say it myself I am an emotional man but not given to extremism. One experience though made me understand that any man or woman has a breaking point when it comes to accepting situations. Here I am waiting for a bus in the sweltering heat of Dakar getting more and more agitated by the noises and the traffic that just didn't move for what seemed a lifetime but must have been two hours. I could actually see the bus but it couldn't move. It was stuck like everything else on wheels. 

Anyway suddenly I hear the sound of blaring sirens and I thought it was an ambulance trying to get through but it was a politician escorted by two police men on motorbikes. The traffic was parting like the Red Sea for Moses while this dickhead was probably just going to see his "on the side wife" for a quickie, then the Red Sea closed once more. When seeing this I felt the raging urge to buy a bottle of car petrol. You can buy those for like $1.50 add a wick, light the wick and then throw the bottle at the smug mofo in his government wheels. I was absolutely consumed by rage: I could picture myself gleefully break-dancing around the car while it was up in flames with the guy screaming and no-one able to help him. You like toast for lunch nah?

No money for upgrading your country's roads except in those areas where you live or only for those roads that can take you out of the capital to your house on the beach or in the countryside but hey at least you got an escort and people willing to make way for you... No money for quality and sustainable public transport but I kid you not money and time planning for a city for the political elite so that they could take care of the needs of the population in peace and quiet, undisturbed by noise, fouls smells and 24/7 power-cuts...

It was then and there that I understood the "fakery" of our leaders. They talk about being on equal terms with the EU when they meet at AU summits but it's a public secret that the EU is paying the budget to keep the AU somewhat operational. Now you could wonder why this matters. Well it matters because if I pay for something it better be good. If I pay an employee he works for me and I expect a job well-done. Well the AU is working for the EU. If anybody thinks otherwise he or she needs to go to the AU building (built by the Chinese and NOT for free) take the elevator to the top-floor or the roof and jump head first just to clear his/her head from the shit that has acquired too much space where brains should have been.

Our African leaders are programmed to sabotage Africa.

The French are known to push these capers on us. 

Take Blaise Diagne a black African careerist from Senegal who recruited his own to get slaughtered in the trenches in France to get ahead himself. He married a white woman called Marie-Odette Villain and when you look at her you know why her last name was exactly that. (You will need a french dictionary). Nevertheless according to Blaise himself he had now reached the pinnacle of assimilation.

Now the first President of Senegal Leopold Senghor was a prince and was chosen to study in France. He later fought in the french army as a private soldier 2nd class (despite his superior education he could not be an officer and claimed to be in the french resistance once the French lost the Battle of France.

He was groomed to become the first president of Senegal but to make sure he worked well the French pushed a white secretary upon him and Leopold could not resist. He divorced his African wife who couldn't understand him and married his "Jeanne". Exit Genitte Eboué.

I am not here to judge a man who claimed to be French before anything else. I mean if an African can make statements like that we can expect anything. It doesn't stop here. The next president of Senegal also married a white woman but this fact could not save him when he decided to stray away from the clutches of France. He must have seen the truth when one day he woke up to his wife, saw that she aged pretty badly and decided to redeem himself but alas he had the temerity to parachute his son in power and the French wouldn't have that. Of course that is A-grade bovine manure.
The presidents of Togo and Gabon (ELF and TOTAL anyone?) are "sons of" and the French couldn't care less: it was just so that President Wade of Senegal took away lucrative key businesses from French companies like Bolloré and that was just not "criquet". Needless to say that he is now without employment.

To finish the high-roller swirling theme: the President of Ivory Coast Alassane Ouattara also has a wife who just happens to be white courtesy of the French. In fact she found her Mr. Goodbar thanks to the French Secret Service or so rumour has it.

OK let's go back to mentality.
I don't know any white European statesman or woman with a black wife/husband. Please do not start the Harry and Megan shit with me because I will find you and slap you silly. Mentality...  I am not against swirling... MLK swirled, Malcolm X swirled it happens but when swirling becomes a WMD as it is in Africa we need to understand why and how. 

I just explained how and why but in short our brightest are brought to study in Europe/US where they immediately forget why they came in the first place (study and bringing back knowledge/expertise) because they can't remove their heads from between them lily-white titties and that's just what goes on above the waist. 

Now when they come back to Africa they still got that swirling mentality with them and this goes further than coveting white women.
No... nothing African is good anymore accept maybe the food but even then it will be eaten with mustard (moutarde). So French...

Forget our leaders for a moment even though they are responsible for this:
Black Africans making fun of other blacks because they do not master French as "they should". 
Black Africans going to schools/universities using schoolbooks printed in France published in France that do not do us any service.
Black Africans being exposed to French television and radio 24/7.

Everything linked to the former colonizer who actually never left.

In Senegal the water company (SDE) is owned by the French (Eranove) 
In Senegal telecommunication is mainly owned by the French
Senegal's army is equipped with french hand me downs
I even suspect that the power company SENELEC is french-owned (it used to be until 2001)

The three major banks, SGBS, CBAO and BICIS are french-owned and I could continue.
In fact all national banks of former French West-Africa have to report to the French national bank and whatever money or gold reserves they have stay in France.

This situation of political but especially economic dependency exists all over former French Africa and that includes Madagascar. The same goes for former British possessions and I am sure the  Portuguese and the Spanish are not faraway either.

Mentality: we are convinced we can't do anything without the guidance of the white man. Our minds are corrupted and filled with self-hate: we force our own to cross deserts and seas to go to a most-sunken place but at least we speak French or English like the Queen.

That's why we have no right to complain when a fomented turd calls our countries shit-holes. We need to clean-out our minds first and educate ourselves properly. I have never seen a Chinese president or Japanese Prime Minister show up at the White House or Palais de Versailles with a white woman.
Again I have nothing against swirling but it's their mindset that differs from ours. They (the East Asians) took the expertise and knowledge only, and made it into something superior. Now look at us and weep.

Expensive shit part 1

Now that the furore about the President of the United Shit-holes of America has died down a bit let's try to analyze what it is that he said.

Sometimes a negative experience spurs you on to create something positive. I mean I wanted to start this blog like 4 years ago and nothing happened. I just could not commit myself to it.

I think I know why. You see in order for someone to be creative in any field not just the arts he or she needs to be at ease. Or better yet at peace.

I was not at ease then and at that particular moment I was in Africa, in Senegal. I love Senegal, mind. I love the people I love the women, I love their joie de vivre even though their elites make their live a living hell on Earth. There are also many things I don't like about Senegal and it's not just the leaders, be they politicians, spiritual leaders (marabouts) or business men/woman.

The main thing I hate about Senegal or Africa from Cairo to Cape Town is the idea that when you can do something without facing the consequences (impunity): you might as well do it or someone else will do it for/to you.

This idea is ingrained into most people’s heads on this continent.

An example from Senegal:

Why is it that you complain about the low wages you get paid (between $35 and $150) a month which is low compared to any standard… only to do the same to someone else when you can actually put your money where your mouth is.

A friend of mine worked for his uncle who was then at the head (and owner) of one the biggest construction companies in West Africa (A real black owned business) Not Lebanese or Syrians no real Africans.
This friend had to work every day of the week if he wanted to get about $120 a month. Any day off would result in deductions.

He decided to start a chicken farm it actually worked and well yes black people loooove chicken and we loooove watermelon too but that's a different story altogether. Anyway Senegal is like Joe Tex once sang Chicken Crazy so money was rolling in.  Alas my friend became a victim of the many power cuts that plagued and plague Senegal but back then I talk about 2008 or around that year it was baaaaad. 

What was also bad was that he had to store the chicken in freezers that were no longer working so his chicken were rotting away but it didn't have to end that way if he had a motivated employee who cared about the chicken and got them out of the water before they went off.

And that is the point I want to make here. His sole employee was not interested in saving the chicken. The last good ones were also no longer live and thus frozen… because demand was high. He was paid to make sure they stayed in the fridge once processed and make sure the live ones were not running away and that's ALL that he did.

Here is why.... My friend who felt so offended by his boss-uncle did the same to his employee. He literally paid him chicken-feed. I just asked him why he thought the employee should have warned him or done something about the problem. Explained him why I wouldn't: That employee was the field Negro and my friend though black was the evil masta who needed to see his house burning. And burn it did, well it stank but you get the point I hope.

In 2010 I worked almost a year in Ethiopia. The elite there have an idea how they are going to catapult Ethiopia into the 21st century but it would be mean to say it's just the elite because like in Senegal everybody thinks impunity is OK as long as you are on the good side of impunity...

I love Ethiopia. Here we have a country with black people and most of them (I say most of them) know they are black AND African, with its own alphabet and therefore according to white men's definition a history that goes way past anything people in Holland or England or the US can boast of. Because of this history they are not easily indoctrinated by foreigners (ferengis). I am proud of these people who are not easily pushed into accepting white men's (economic) dogmas. It also means they have NO excuse for their actions.

One day I was reading either Capital or Fortune one of the two leading English medium Ethiopian newspaper. Their news coverage gave me an insight however limited of what went on. One day I was less happy because already I was struggling to keep my Pan-African feel-good bubble floating and now I had to read the following:

Some Ethiopian men who worked for a transport company and a retail company got 25 years of hard labour because they had stolen the content of some truck. Twenty five years of hard labour for stealing a truck with stuff in it? Yes you read that right. According to the judge or the prosecutor this punishment had to be meted out because… these criminals were sabotaging the development of our beloved Ethiopia.

However… whatever was in the truck was Chinese and whatever comes into Africa from China is junk in every sense of the word. So I don’t understand how stealing a truckload of Chinese trinkets equals an insidious act of heinous destabilization of our beloved Ethiopia. In fact had they burnt the truck on the border with Eritrea or wherever this truck came from it would have been an act of national liberation.

I for one almost quit smoking because of the “quality” of Chinese lighters anywhere in Africa. Ok just Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia, and Sudan. These are the countries I lived in long enough to “get” Chinese-African development so I know Africa is NOT developing in the way/direction it should/could.

Hold on… I am not blaming the Chinese for the men getting 25 years for stealing a truck. I just can’t get my head around the fact that someone could sentence his fellow human being to 25 years for stealing a truck, a damn truck! Probably Chinese as well… That’s nasty on many levels.

But for me only one level counts: If you get 25 years for stealing a (Chinese) truck brimming with Chinese junk what does it take to take a government bullet in the head?

So this is Project Fear the Habesha way (Amharic for brown face) and this is why people get the same kind of silly wages working as a teacher.

I worked as a teacher in Ethiopia and got $500 that got less and less worth because we got actually paid in Birr which was losing value as you watched the seconds ticking by. But the locals got paid in Birr as well and got $150 at most. Now this was a real school from hell. The teachers were nice, most students were really nice, the rest of the staff was nice but the owner (an ethnic Somali) and his white American wife were true scum off the earth. I am not going to discuss my personal business with them even though as a Muslim I prayed for their downfall (on very hard times) and had to be told by some shifty non-believing lady that that was not really what faith was about…

I digress. This owner and his wife had the temerity to do a James Brown routine on their staff: If you made a mistake - and they decided what that mistake was, they would just cut into a part of your salary. I saw a cleaning lady cry because he withheld her “transport money” for being late. He found out what I said about him and told me it was his God-given right because he, out of the goodness of his heart (I quote) gave her 350 Birr travel expenses PER MONTH (that was about $17). It was also half her “salary”… Maybe I am wrong and it was less (Iike 150 Birr) for travel expenses but definitely not more. They did not get more than $35 PER MONTH for their work.

The cleaning ladies, some of them walked THREE hours to get to school and THREE hours back because that was food for them and their families. Not money for some crappy minibus.

Because of the JB (“I have got a bag of my own”) routine the cleaning ladies were never allowed to sit (neither were the teachers during lessons) from 7 am to 5 pm they were cleaning except during their 45 minute break. I swear in the name of Allah never anywhere in Africa have I seen such clean public toilets! They were clean and smelled nice. I have no shame to admit that if I had no time to finish my lunch in the teacher room which was also the lunchroom, even though there was NO room, I would continue to eat there and have some quiet time. Yes they were that clean that I could see the reflections of my face on those tiles. In Africa! In a public toilet, yes sir/ma’am!

I have seen quite a few African public toilets: I can honestly say that you would not even wish your worst enemy to visit them without the devil showing up pleading on their behalf, I shit you not.

So this was Project Fear on a personal level, no government involvement whatsoever in fact it is the absence of government that allows private citizens to behave in such an egregious way with their fellow human beings.

In Ethiopia I met a very nice police inspector who invited me to his house. We walked to save money as most people do in Ethiopia and on the way to his home he showed me his previous home. When he entered that place I asked him why we were entering this contraption and he said this is where he lived before he became an inspector. I could not believe my eyes I doubt if it even had an outhouse somewhere in the backyard. There was not even a proper door to enter the “house”.

This is the reality of many but not ALL Africans. Now if a police officer in Ethiopia lives like that you can imagine why a lot of Africans anywhere in Africa want to leave Africa. It’s not because they are lazy opportunists. In general these people believe that hard work is what you need to succeed but if there is no work or hard work gets you nowhere while a happy few is living the life you know it’s time to leave that shithole country.

Yes there you have it. I wrote it I am not happy but it has to be said. I don’t know if Trump meant to say black and brown people are shit and coming out of a hole. I am black and I am not shit. if one thing I am THE shit. It may hurt because Donnie Trump is a fat fomented turd who said it but there’s a reason why Africans are dying from thirst in the Sahara or drowning in the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea.

Any African citizen and especially our so-called political, business and spiritual leaders should just reflect about that cold hard truth.

Motivation for this blog

So why another blog? Aren't there enough of these already? Probably, yes.... But I think that I can offer a nice insight into Senegalese (or African) society not hindered by any journalistic or objective pretence!
The name of this blog is derived from a regiment of black slaves that were to hunt runaway slaves in the Dutch West Indies aka Dutch Guyana aka Surinam.

I took this name because I feel kind of like a traitor but I do feel the need to be "honest".