An evening of charity

I have done one of the things i never thought i would in my life...
I went to one of the charities that are tailor made for africa...you know one of theose ones that advertise the starving children with the thin dry thighs, flies in their mouths and eyes, famine-cracked dry soil, robust vultures and the like of that, charities concerned wiith hunger in africa, aids in africa, war in the continent.
The reason for that thinking?.......that none of those events that are stemmed in western patronising attitudes had any kind of effect on the many african issues that they were not entirely innocent of their causes in the first place.
I would imagine a bunch of western imperialist tut-tutting in their straw hats and mini sandwiches over how "cute", "innocent looking", "really loving life " the African children were........in a way that suggests that they are surprised that african children might be similar to white offsprings in the first place.
It takes a bit sometimes to take a look at how bigotted one does not realise one is.....
But I digress....anyways I went to the charity event of the
Food for hunger, a New York collaboration between bourgeoise resturants and international designers to host a food tasting event, with fashion show and auction at the end of it to raise money, in addition to the ticketing takings.....
So when someone had offered me free tickets to a fund raising charity event, shamlessly i went anyway, to do my part for the continent.....
LOADS of people showed up, cold april weather or not....awoof apparently knows no colour or gender...
In a huge TV screen, greeting me right after the coat check were those same old images of Africa as defined unoriginally as ....flies, kids, and more flies...tried and tested..works everytime
I get in there aand everything is spiffy, art types and lovers of them, models, photographers..all in the room swilring around once again high culture...
The food is amazing and plentiful, red wine is in the house and im happy.
In spite of this I cant help but feel out of sorts, here we are in a cool swanky hall, food, music and even potential couplings...and the skeptic in me wants to keep asking......
Are we doing anything? making the potential difference to the problems of Africa?
Im on the other side now...that part of the fence that had the people who were formerly the targets of my scorn...we wined and dined and made ourselves believe that by merely putting our dollars in a pot for some trite memento, we would be able to sleep easy. (I got an orginal rolled havana cigar, rolled apparently by a famous afficionado who flew in to attend from Cuba. Its still on my dresser, it gives me pleasure just to even LOOK at it)
But there was one thing that i didnt prepare for learning that night, a lesson in spite of myself.
Do-gooders alwayd get bad rap right? and that is because we, the others never are able to see beyond their awkward attempts to do what they consider is the right thing, frankly because its more fun really to laugh at those fumblings than give credit.
sure there were those people who came for the food, photo-op opportunities and shmalzing with the quasi-famous.
But there were other people who came with the fabled heart of gold, who just were looking for the right place to fulfil their calling.
They came to the people like me in the audience, asked questions , wanted to know beyond whats was superficially served as the definition of the circumstances of Africa.
I felt my myself, in spite of myself, thawing to gestures like that, and deciding not to look their gift horse in the mouth any more.
The real charity of the evening, was not in the money, but the giving of the spirit that some of the participants showed that evening.
So the next time there is a charity ball, i shall put that cynical imp inside me to sleep, wear a dress, shave my legs and go and have over-priced food, and hope one of the miracles of the evening will be that a heart that is ready, will meet a cause that is true.
The cause for which we were gathered can be seen here....http://www.resturantsagainsthunger.net

It's still there, my people

The 200 year celebration of the slavery abolition was celebrated about last week everywhere, England held a memorial mass, everywhere else we shed tears....
I was unmoved..who still cares about stuff like that? we have moved from that point as a people, as a world, i said..... we should look at the entire episode as a huge mistake, a blot in the tapestry of our collective experience of the world and only those who had a problem with moving on should remain there....
Well, I was wrong..... I guess the biggest suprise for me shouldnt be that people still have racist views, which naturally can be traced directly to prevalent ideology that allowed the slavery to persist on that scale, for that long anyway....
The terse public stand on views that promote racism still is frowned at in, in official quaters anyway, so I guess that was why I was shocked while watching the TV one night, that a channel as professional as the C-SPAN would allow a hair-ball like a Brian Lamb..otherwise a competent host to display such shameless patrronising when talking to author Ishmeal Beah.
more about him can be found here........http://www.alongwaygone.com/
For anyone to have lived the kind of life that Ishameal has, and to still be here, all bones and otherwise in place to still tell the tale is something that any human should consider nothing less than absolutely miraculous and nearly surreal....
But not to Mr Lamb, no sir...he pummelled into the incredibly intelligent, astute, present best-selling author Ishamel with kindergaten-like questions....
"what will you do with the money from the book" buy bananas..plenty...and eat them all..
"How did you remember all the things that happened to you in the war?" my kodak digital camera,..... and thank good ness for mobile blogging in the sierra-leone jungle in the '90s....
"how many people would you say you killed?" well after the two thousandth notch on the tree, I gave up counting.....
When he learns that an African school boy discovered and developed a love for shakespeare, and american hip-hop......his suprise is not from a nice place of healthy wonder.....
And the incredible, even for a inpet interviwer like Lamb...coup-de-resistance :" where is your country, sierra-leone?" just off Hawaii....you dont need a visa there if you are american...
When will people like this learn, get over it Brian....and the likes of him...its over...black people are free now...thinking they are less intelligent so that it made it easier to sell them, is a defese mechanism that is no longer necessary.....
Im hoping mad..but you know what...dont take my word for it...see for yourself
http://qanda.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1121