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abibifahodie Kuo (Admin)

Thank you Sis-star for the birthday wishes, stay blessed!

Give Thanks for the Love! I do apologize for the delayed responsed. I have not been here to visit my family in a while, it's been too long. Hope to speak with you soon! Peace and Blessings!

Thanks sis!

OYA
Oya is the powerful Yoruba Goddess of the Winds of Change; the Primeval Mother of Chaos; Queen of the Nine (for the nine tributaries of the Niger River). Using her machete, or sword of truth, she cuts through stagnation and clears the way for new growth. She does what needs to be done. She is the wild woman, the force of change; lightning, fire, tornadoes, earthquakes and storms of all kinds are ruled by Oya. She is also Queen of the Marketplace, a shrewd businesswoman and adept with horses. As the wind, she is the first breath and the last, the one who carries the spirits of the dead to the other world, which is why she is associated with cemeteries. The sculpture on the right is after the Oya Shrine: Female Equestrian by Bamgboye, Odo-Owa, Ekiti region, mid 20th century. The heads on her necklace are from the same piece.

Thank you for the Birthday wishes!

Never thanked you for the earthday wishes.. thank you!

Meda Ase Pa Ara, Goddess, for the birthday wishes. Yenge y Zola (Peace and Love)

Thank you! Sorry so late to respond

(O SE)THANK YOU QUEEN!!!!

I just upgraded the quiz system. It now has the other types. Enjoy!

This is the new contest system. You can add categories in the ModCP http://abibitumikasa.com/forums/vbquiz.php

ashe!

thank you for your valuable posts this month!

Maita basa sis

Asanta sana!

I updated the video section so you should be able to add categories in ModCP now. Also youtube browser is now working allowing you search videos and post them to forums directly

The magic of cinema and pain of nation-building

CHRIS KABWATO - Apr 14 2011 17:24
There is a passage in Shimmer Chinodya’s novel Harvest of Thorns that I love to read again and again:

For those of us who saw the traumas of our country from the doors of township houses, peeking through the restraining skirts of our mothers like young Benjamin, the ’60s are a special period.

Every generation has its sentimentalities, its nostalgias; for us the ’60s were both an end and a beginning . . . those were the days of the mobile bioscope, when the nights belonged to Mataka and Zuze and the Three Stooges and cinema was so alive you could smell cowboys’ gunpowder off the big white screen.

When I first read the above passage I recalled my own childhood and how “firimu” or “bhaiskopo” was central to my life.

I remember one time in the late 1970s we went to watch Charles Bronson in some movie in which he was a blind cowboy.

Rorenz, the enfant terrible of our youth, decided to round up donkeys that belonged to a certain Mr Chipinge and rode one into the Beit Hall hollering “hee-haw, hee-haw”.

We could only watch and admire his chutzpah. But his actions were understandable because for us film-watching was not about listening to the dialogue. We were a participatory audience.

We took sides with the good guy (the “champion”) as he sorted out the bad guys (maguruvha). We shouted to warn the “champion” of impending danger, stood up and clapped when he floored a bad guy and we itched to join him in the movie.

Our “champions”, invariably male, ranged from Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Mars Villa, Terence Hill (Trinity), Bud Spencer, Charles Bronson to Clint Eastwood.

That these movies were telling a one-sided story that denigrated the other (the Native American or the Mexican or the Japanese) was beyond us. All we knew was that our heroes needed to be victorious at the end.

Years later I would work in places that made me understand cinema a bit more.

I watched an old film called Rhodes of Africa (1936) and saw how film could be used to create myths.

In this particular movie, Cecil John Rhodes is depicted as a misunderstood visionary who sought to unite a continent.

Several generations would have grown up on a diet of that particular narrative. The ultimate subversion, the burial of Rhodes at Matopo Hills, the very place Lobengula was supposed to be buried, is interpreted differently.

Now contrast my experience with that of a person born in 1980 who will turn 31 sometime this year. They will also hold their own memories of Zimbabwe.

In a different society their memory would be easy, they would be able to tap into a coherent collective national memory.

But in our polarised and poisoned society atmosphere truth has been exiled. So they will not want to hear more about the past, it’s a strange foreign country that has been reduced to a jingle on government-controlled radio.

In the early 1980s a good friend of mine who is an African national and lives in the US, was invited to Zimbabwe by the powers-that-be to come and direct the definitive film on the liberation struggle.

Eventually, my friend refused to direct such a film
arguing that the story of Zimbabwe’s struggle for independence needed to be told by a Zimbabwean. He went further and advised:

“Don’t make one single film. Instead get seven young Zimbabweans to direct seven films that explore different aspects of the struggle.”

His point was clear: the birth and formation of a nation is a complex and multi-layered story.

But his would-be handlers wanted that meta-narrative, the big movie that opens and closes the story of a people.

I suppose they wanted something like DW Griffiths’ Birth of a Nation movie, the 1916 American film that sought to tell the story of the American Civil War of 1861-65 with a positive portrayal of slavery and a sympathetic depiction of the Confederate forces and the Ku Klux Klan.

So we still wait for our own films equivalent to Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Gillo Pentocorvo’s Battle of Algiers (1966), a gritty story set in pre-independence Algeria and depicting the beginning of organised urban guerrilla warfare pitting the Algerians against the French.

But we should not hold our collective breath because the signs are not too good. For three decades the government has blown hot and cold over the potential of cinema, welcoming foreign productions in the early 1980s and encouraging co-productions in the 1990s.

But this never translated into a coherent policy and the results are all too visible in the decline and death of our film infrastructure, the closure of the Central African Film Laboratory, the moribund Unesco-Zimbabwe Film and Video Training School and the lack of funding for both the National Museum and the National Archives. Perennial discussions on film policy and a film fund have just been hot air.

Across the country we have witnessed the closure of cinema houses.

And all this in a country where the highest grossing film for decades was Neria, a Zimbabwean film that had a massive audience across Africa.

In countries like South Africa television is the key driver of film and video production through the commissioning of independent producers.

But here we can only await the birth of a genuine public broadcaster and the licensing of commercial and community players.

It seems in matters of arts and culture we have to look to ourselves and to philanthropists.

The African state and its bourgeoisie have constantly reneged on their duties and responsibilities. It’s not kenge.

Chris Kabwato is a media professional involved with ZimbabweinPictures.com and the Centre for Public Accountability

"The events which transpired five thousand years ago; Five years ago or five minutes ago, have determined what will happen five minutes from now; five years From now or five thousand years from now. All history is a current event."
Dr. John Henrik Clarke

2000 B.C. -- Here, eat this root.

1000 A.D. -- That root is heathen. Say this prayer.

1850 A.D. -- That prayer is superstition. Drink this potion.

1940 A.D. -- That potion is snake oil. Swallow this pill.

1985 A.D. -- That pill is ineffective. Take this antibiotic.

2008 A.D. -- That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.

Benjamin Hooks, 1925-2010

by Flyer Staff

Jurist, lawyer, fabled minister, and icon of the civil rights movement, the Rev. Benjamin Hooks was as universally beloved a figure, both in Memphis and in the world at large, as it was possible to be. He was that rare figure revered by whites and blacks alike and claimed by both major political parties. Moreover, in a remarkable act of simultaneous ministry, he was claimed as pastor by congregations in two cities — Memphis and Detroit.

Hooks' death last week at the age of 85 creates an absence that no other single figure can fill. And beyond his massive body of achievements was a personal good will, even a beatitude, that will crown his legacy.

Hooks, who pastored the Greater Middle Baptist Church in Southeast Memphis, straddled the Memphis scene and the world stage and managed always to be a commanding figure in each. In 2007, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.

A native of Memphis, Hooks attended Booker T. Washington High School, LeMoyne College, and Howard University in Washington, D.C. During World War II, he served with the 92nd Infantry Division in Italy. After the war, he earned a law degree from DePaul University in Chicago and, in 1948, began practicing law in Memphis. Ultimately, after being appointed a Criminal Court judge by then Governor Frank Clement in 1965, he won election to a full term in 1966.

Meanwhile, he had become a central figure in desegregation efforts — again, both locally and nationally. In the aftermath of the epochal 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision banning school desegregation, Hooks joined forces with the NAACP's Thurgood Marshall to pursue further advances, and he became a trusted associate of Dr. Martin Luther King in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In 1972, Hooks was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission by President Richard Nixon, becoming its first African-American member. He relinquished that post in 1977 to become executive director of the NAACP, heading that organization until 1992. In 1986, he received the NAACP's highest honor, the Spingarn Medal.

Active at various times in both the Republican and Democratic parties, Hooks was given the rare opportunity to address both national party conventions in 1980. He was the acknowledged patriarch, not only of other members of the extended Hooks family, who achieved local office, but of several generations of African Americans in politics. Nor were his friendship and influence limited to a single race: The outpouring of posthumous accolades from all major Tennessee officeholders and from innumerable other public figures in the nation demonstrated that.

Any statewide politician seeking to hold office in Tennessee knew that a courtesy call on Rev. Hooks was a de rigueur matter. Simply put, Benjamin Hooks was the great conciliator, whose influence derived not primarily from his numerous offices and honors but from his principled and compassionate moral leadership.

After an all-day period of visitation on Tuesday, Hooks' funeral on Wednesday of this week, pending at press time, was due to be attended by the kind of multitudes who normally take note only at the passing of exceptional secular leaders or great religious figures. Ben Hooks was both of those.

"Who will bell the cat?" by Dr. Benjamin Hooks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y7VzlUF03A