Possibly the World’s worst car is in Africa…

Most of my pieces for my blog are serious so I thought I would lighten it up…

Growing up, My Dad wanted to teach us to appreciate things in life. If you wanted better then you had to work hard to get. My first car came from a junk yard; and it was the best running car in the world. If you minus the fact the truck were tied down with an extension cord, it had once been flooded up to the windows with water (inside the car), sometimes you had to kick twice, pump three times before you could turn the key. Everyday something could be patched, tied or twisted together with a non-car auto part to continue to make that beauty run. When I was sixteen, I thought for sure I had the most unsafe car around. Until today…

Possibly the World’s worst car is in Africa…

Traffic policeman Moses Alfonso who told the South African newspaper, Beeld that “In my 40 years as a traffic policeman, it was the worst car I’ve ever seen on the road,” ”It had only two gears, the tires were completely smooth, the shock absorbers had been tied into position with wire, and the driver had been using a leaking five-liter plastic bottle, which he had mounted in the engine, as a petrol tank. Nothing worked. It had no lights, no wipers and only rudimentary car seats”.

The 1976 Toyota Bakkie was purchased last year for 5000 rand ($645.00). The vehicle was taken to the municipal testing station where it was discovered that wires was holding the suspension in place back and front. A plastic 5 liter bottle was the petrol tank kept under a bonnet and as well as no brake booster and handbrake and numerous other hazardous neglected parts

Sad to say, the car was impounded, so as for now we maybe on a new search for the worst car in the World since my silver Nissan has been out of commission for some time and this car is no longer allowed to drive around with its owner.. We will see were the next World’s worst car will show up.

Impoverished South Africans want more from Mining Companies

Impoverished South Africans want more from mines, prompting sometimes violent protests

MATLOU, South Africa — Impoverished and angry South Africans held a marathon march across a platinum-rich corner of the country Friday to demand that a multinational mining company share more wealth.

“They are making millions here, but the community around is getting nothing,” said 21-year-old Olebogeng Tseleng, who rose at 5 a.m. for a march that later started in her village of tin shacks and modest brick or cement homes, none with indoor plumbing.

In Freedom Park Township in Rustenburg, South Africa on Friday 17, 2012 a police officer entered a store that had been looted. This followed the mass layoff at a mine after a strike for higher wages was declared illegal.

In Marlou, a picked line marched about 12 miles and took five hours with protesters in a series of villages strung between the rocky hill to the west and giant platinum mine to the east, the mine is owned by multinational company Xstrata.

Xstrata spokesman Songezo Zibi made statements that the mine once under operation as it transforms from a strip to an underground operation could employee up to 3000 workers by 2016 and those could come from local laborers. But, He did address the inequality that has been focus of much tension in South Africa, and understand that the country has high rates of unemployment and poverty. But, he did address the mining companies could only do so much to help, and changing inequities would take time.

Read the full article at this link.

Article provide by the Washington Post, reported on by By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, February 17, 11:16 AM

Chinua Achebe- Novel, “Things Fall Apart”

Chinua Achebe- Novel, “Things Fall Apart”

This Novel has many different themes that it discusses. We look at conflict on several different levels within this book. One conflict that takes up most of the second half of the book is the struggle between traditional society of Umofia and Colonial new customs brought by the White Europens. Then you have the struggle within the clans of the Umuofia, when members of the 9 different clans turn from their traditional customs of life and adopted the new customs brought to them by the whites. Another conflict is that of one of the main characters, Okonkwo. Okonkwo has a different idea forced by his inward struggles of what a man is within his own particular village. He struggles to be different than his father who has died, who was a lazy, weak, and poor man. His desire to be the opposite of that makes him work hard to strive to be masculine, respected, wealthy, and strong no matter what the cost.

The author, Achebe shows the conflict most when they discuss the various events surrounding the arrival of the colonialist, when you really can understand the colonialism effect on both the white men and men of Umuofians. It is sadness when you see the struggle of traditional values and values that change with influence. I was personally upset about how the white men came and completely disregarded the Igbos sense of justice, and the communication barriers that make this worse as the novels goes one. This just makes it more clear, the unreasonableness of the demeaning unfamiliar customs that are forced on the Umuofian’s people.

Then more conflict arises, because of the sense of betrayal that some take on when you have their own brothers in villages that convert to Christianity and consciously and wrongly turn their backs on their “brothers”. While neither is good or bad, in matters that make it clear cut for us when reading this novel, you see the Author Achebe displays where the culture and traditions of the Igbo people are valid. So in the end, we find ourselves not blaming the villagers, but left with the ability to make us clearly think both about the colonialist disrespect for the Igbo customs and some of the clan’s members responses to the colonial pressure and presence. 

Okonkwo is one of the main characters of the book. I mentioned earlier his relationship with his lazy father is the basis of who he becomes. He wants to make his own way as far away from his father and show the true meaning of what it is to be manliness or masculine.

We see this in everything he does, If he believed that his father was lazy, poor, gentle, coward and interested in music and conversation as it suggest early in the book then I read how he wanted what was opposite from those ideals. He strives to be wealthy, thrifty, brave, violent, and opposed music and anything that would be perceived in his eye or the eyes of others as soft like emotions. 

I see him as a tragic hero, to his clan he marries three women, fathers several children, has a large compound, and but he seems to be at constant odds with the values of the community around him. He is most conflicted when compliance rather than violence is shown by his people towards the end of the book. He is no longer able to function in his changing society because of the values and beliefs that make him who he is, is not what the white man who come to live with them believe.

I think that he is a tragic hero, although from the beginning he is superior, his tragic flaw is that he has to be masculine. That results in him showing rash, anger, violence that ultimately leads to his destruction. I think he is most tragic because when he follows his daughter to make sure she is ok, when she goes with another village woman with rank, it shows deep down the tender, worried father that is inside of him that he can’t show on the exterior to anyone else. 

If you would like to get the book today, or PDF format on your electronic device or ebook for those on the go, click here for the link

Myth of Savage Africa

The Myth of Savage Africa is enforced with books like, Heart of Darkness, which led to the abstract view that it is difficult to understand the world around us beyond what we know for ourselves, and the ability of one man to judge another; usually about events, tradition, and society that is different from his own.

In this novel it shows, Marlow and Kurtz being confronted and in conflict with all that they know. It shows that their images of themselves as being “civilized” Europeans, and the temptations they face to abandon morality completely once they leave the complex European society.

One of the best examples, I can use to show the Myth of Savage Africa is in what was founded in the Heart of Darkness, when you have Europeans exploring Africa with Ideas of their own civilization and what that meant; to be exposed to a different type of civilization where he catches occasional glimpse of native villages along the river backs.

In these villages he can hear things, like drums, chants, and howl. The behavior and actions of these sounds cause him to suggest the kinship about these men in the villages is far what he knows, considers and can classify as being human. The Heart of Darkness book that we explored shows how critical colonialism and the ironic stereotypes that it engenders.

It saddens when you see humans, but because of the ideals that you were brought up in teach you that these humans have different beliefs, traditions, actions and behaviors that are different than yours to they couldn’t have a colonial society with structure, but the they are primitive humans that need to be taught how to fit their version of colonial society and until they do so they are not considered potential equals. This is one of many examples that we have explored in class that teaches us that stereotypes engenders is far from what the reality of these villages along the river banks are.

Another, which leaves us with the underlying assumptions about African and Africans, is in another part of our reading;

“On Sept. 8, a hundred years ago, the Bronx Zoo in New York unveiled a new exhibit that would attract legions of visitors — and spark a furor.

Inside a cage, in the zoo's Monkey House, was a man named Ota Benga. He was 22 years old, a member of the Batwa people, pygmies who lived in what was then the Belgian Congo.

Ota Benga first came to the United States in 1904. The St. Louis World's Fair had hired Samuel Phillips Verner, an American explorer and missionary, to bring African pygmies to the exposition”

This picture is one of the reason why people has such an misconception of people; and it very sad when this young man was put on display at the Bronx Zoo; Ota Benga was displayed in a cage, and I am very thankful for those that put an end to this display. As, it shows a human being treated as an animal in a cage.

Another, it because of images, videos, and comment made by people of influence and power, Condrad, Hegel, and even the President of France it shows how the misconception of Africans have been protruded to others.

When you ask people to describe a person from African, you think of those commercial asking for financial support that reinforce the negative stereotypes that all Africans look the same, and usually describe a child not fully clothed, malnourished, and around garbage or dirty water. There are also portrayed of Africans in fur, face painted, and in tribal war like fashions with bones sticking out parts of their bodies. It is almost identical to that of how Hegel described the people of Africa; 'The Negro... exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state (The Philosophy of History)