w o r d s

Happy solstice to all you Wiccans!

Many years ago, I spent several intense, fun summers in Morocco. Besides biking through the Atlas and hanging out at various beaches, I spent weeks roaming the Médina of Fès with my Fassi friends Mammoun and Mohammed.

Samir at A View from Fès posted some great accounts - and wonderful pictures by Suzanna Clarke - about the ongoing Festival of Sacred Music in Fès. Boy - I wish I could be there! The Sufi Nights sounds amazing! Maybe next year …
photo copyright Suzanna Clarke 2006

For many citizens of Togo, this must be a bittersweet day. On April 27, 1960, the French administered UN Trusteeship and former French colony became an independent nation. But today also marks a year and a day since the ruling party, the RPT, declared victory in the so-called “election” of April 24, 2005. This rigged fraud of a vote handed control over the country to Faure Gnassingbé, the son of Togo’s brutal former president of 38 years, Gnassingbé Eyadema.

Amnesty International issued a statement (fr) yesterday, denouncing last year’s “election” as marred with irregularities and violence. Thirty years of a culture of total impunity for the military and the RPT regime caused the violence that left several hundred dead - mostly unarmed civilian protesters. AI deplores the fact that nothing has been done to find and prosecute those responsible for last year’s violence, despite concrete recommendations in a United Nations report from August 2005.

IRIN has a pretty good status update on Togo, and while it covers the whole mess, the violence, the thousands of refugees in neighboring countries, the distrust among the Togolese, the bleak economc outlook, the need for a reform of the military, etc … the article also points to some encouraging signs:

Togo’s original Independence Day from France - 27 April 1960 - is to be literally re-written back in to the history books. Under Gnassingbe Eyadema, Independence Day was celebrated on the 13 January, the day he seized power in a 1967 coup. Independence Day celebrations on the 27 April are due to take place Thursday for the first time in nearly three decades.

And Lome residents feel more at ease speaking their minds these days. “My colleagues and I discuss the newspaper headlines in front of the news kiosks and we are not frightened to do so,” said Leo Kpakpo, who explained that it wasn’t like that under the late Eyadema. His regime was marked by repression of the opposition, according to the media watchdog NGO Reporters Without Borders.

Now, all journalists jailed for speaking out against the government have been released, a move guardedly welcomed by Togolese Media Observers (OTM). “There is much still to be done,” warned Francis Amouzou, president of OTM. “It is important to remember that at the beginning of Faure Gnassingbe’s regime, journalists were physically assaulted and there have been no enquiries into this harassment.”

Togo: Outward Calm Belies Continuing Problems, UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, posted to allafrica.com April 26, 2006

LeTogolais celebrates this occasion with a story about one of the heroes of the struggle for Togo’s independence: Pa Augustino de Souza (fr). De Souza was born in Agbodrafo on Oct. 15, 1877 and went to school in Aneho. He later worked for the Deutsche Togo Gesellschaft, before he became an independent plantation owner. During the Independence movement, he was President of the Elder Council, next to Octaviano Olympio, Jacob Adjallé and Thimoty Agbétsiafan, and a member of the Committee for Togolese Unity. De Souza was instrumental at laying the foundation that made possible the referendum for independence of 1958 and finally Togo’s independence. Sadly, he died on April 25, 1960, just two days before Togo became independent. (info via leTogolais)

The Nicholas School at Duke had a great Earth Day Celebration. Matt and I manned the Piedmont Biofuels booth.
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Ready for March Madness? This was a good weekend for TarHeel basketball - the boys beat the Boohoo-Devils in Cameron and the girls secured the ACC Championship!

After last year’s championship men’s team scattered to the winds, coach Williams seems to have managed to put together a brand-new top-notch team. Looks like they are fast and have nerves of steel.

And congrats to coach Sylvia Hatchell’s women’s team. They totally dominated the ACC this year.

This year’s NCAA tournament should be another good one. That is, if the sports writers restrain themselves a bit: “The game had that sausage casing-tight feel as most any other Duke-Carolina game.” (Luciana Chavez at the N&O) C’mon! I don’t know what’s sausage casing-tight here, but the editing ain’t it. Granted, I have never been to a basketball game, let alone to a Carolina-Duke game at Cameron. But sausage casing-tight!! Wow - you’re really pushing my imagination here. Maybe the Camoron Nutcases (or whatever they are called) are sausages in Dork-blue tights. Oh - whatever …

Congratulations to the Togolese soccer team for that coveted ticket to Germany next year! The other qualifiers from Africa are Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Tunisia.

With the exception of Tunisia (1978, 1998, 2002), all African teams are newcomers to the World Cup, which leaves most of Africa’s soccer giants like Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon on the sidelines in Germany next year. The biggest surprise probably was Côte d’Ivoire’s squeezing by Cameroon:

The major drama came in Group 3 as Cameroon’s Pierre Wome missed an injury-time penalty against Egypt, which would have taken them through to Germany. His miss allowed Cote d’Ivoire, who won 3-1 in Sudan, to qualify for their first-ever finals.
Four first-timers reach FIFA World Cup™ finals 8 Oct 2005, by FIFAworldcup.com

The team from Togo had been at the top of Group 1 and it needed only a draw against the team from the Congo, so at this point this was not a huge surprise. This is a huge accomplishment for Togo. And maybe the excitement over the World Cup participation of The Hawks will help unify the deeply divided West-African nation as the Togolese gather around TV sets and transistor radios next year to witness their boys face off with some of the giants in World soccer next year.

Today is Nelson Mandela’s 87th birthday. Happy birthday, Madiba!

Today is World Fair Trade Day and we spent a good part of the afternoon at One World Market in Durham, where Laura works. To celebrate, they offered refreshments and snacks, and they had Fair Trade quizzes and contests with prizes. The point of Fair Trade Day is to educate people and to “promot[e] fairer trade with marginalised and small scale producers in the majority world.”

The Fair Trade movement is globalization at its best. It focuses on the human connection in global trade and ensures that when I purchase a product that improves my quality of life by its beauty and function, I also know that it improved the life of the person or family that produced it by putting food on the table, helping to educate the children, or purchase products they need. Usually, this exchange also has educational value. I learn about the community where the product was created and the producer learns about the needs in the target markets, usually via sales feedback from the wholesale middlemen.

The integrity of this relationship is critical to the success of the Fair Trade concept. The buyer has to be able to trust the seller about this relationship. That’s why the middlemen have to be certified by an organization like the The International Fair Trade Association or the Fair Trade Labeling Organization. The Fair Trade Resource Network has a great FAQ about Fair Trade and the standards and principles.

So if you buy for example a Persian rug for your living room and you care whether the people who made it were working in good conditions and paid a decent wage, or whether they were chained to the loom in a dim sweatshop and paid with a bowl of rice, then Fair Trade is for you.

There are many things Europeans in the US complain about, especially these days: No local public transportation systems (outside NYC); no decent bread; no sidewalks; awful roads; houses made of sticks; etcetera. And I live in a state where the sale of beer with more than 6 percent alcohol is illegal, but the natives make 200 proof moonshine in every other backyard!

But every year on April 15 we stop complaining for a moment and open a bottle of champagne, or rather some of that yummy California bubbly! Considering that in most of the EU we’d stand a pretty good chance of getting taxed 40-50 percent on our income, we just have to tell ourselves that “you get what you pay for.” A 25 - 30 percent income tax rate is a pretty good deal.

The Tar Heels are National Champions!!!