From thoughts into words

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/01/lets-get-real-about-africas-burden-of.html   In the past, I have received criticism for my work linking malnutrition to underdevelopment and social dysfunctionality. My critics have suggested that, by identifying problems in African society and highlighting the "stigmata of malnutrition," I am giving racists ammunition for their claims that Africans are genetically inferior to other races. I beg to disagree with my critics. First, race is not a biological category. It is a socially constructed category. I have no essentialist arguments to make about Africans. What I do talk about is nutrition, which can be changed willfully by people who have choices. The point of my intervention is to raise awareness of the kind that will increase the number of nutritional choices available to most people. No reasonable man or woman would dare to claim that the nutritional needs of most of Africa's children were being met...

Today, a status update on the Facebook fan page of the Daily Nation has clarified the guidelines that users are expected to follow when posting on the page. The rationale behind the guidelines is to promote spirited discussions that remain within the bounds of decency and the law. This is not surprising at all. January 23 rd 2012 is an important day in Kenyan history. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has finally made the ruling that four Kenyan men will stand trial for allegedly committing crimes against humanity during the 2007-2008 Post Election Violence (PEV). The four men are William Ruto, Uhuru Kenyatta, Francis Muthaura and Joshua Arap Sang. Many Kenyans have heaved a huge sigh of relief at the ICC’s ruling. They would like to see justice for those who were killed, maimed and terrorized during the PEV, and realize that this would be next to impossible in a Kenyan court of law. Of course the ICC’s ruling is not an indication that any of the men is guilty by law. They st...

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/01/contemporary-africas-implication-in-its.html In early April of 2010, I was hosted at a Public Library for the presentation of my book, A Healthy You: Tame Africa's Child Malnutrition . I was quite surprised at the interest the contents generated: I had assumed the book would primarily interest Africans, but the audience was predominantly American. To cut a long story short,the presentation went well, and gave me fresh food for thought. One issue that came to the fore during the question and answer session was the poor utilization of quality protein maize (QPM) in the place of ordinary maize to tame childhood malnutrition on the continent. Other developing continents seemed to have made greater use of this resource than Africa. One participant in the audience hinted that the African establishment seemed to enjoy "victimhood." The person speculated that they preferred to exploit the sympathy that poverty, disease, the...

http://nutritionafrica.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-africas-maize-turned-white.html A while back, I read James McCann's book Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000 . Beautiful book! Any of you out there who can should grab a copy. My favourite chapter in the book is "How Africa's maize turned white". It opens with the dramatic events that have characterized and shaped modern Africa, starting in South Africa i.e. mining, industrialisation, European settlement and male migrant labour. Maize is at the heart of all these events. However, whereas maize serves as the native South Africans' staple diet (in mealies and beer), for South Africa's commercial farmers, maize is a traded commodity used globally in industry and as cattle feed (and allied feeds). According to McCann, native African maize (originally imported from South America during the Columbian era) expressed itself in very different ways on small peasant farms, ...

Whenever I have encountered American depictions of Native American or First Nations people, I have wondered why their personal names are often given in English. Names such as "Touch the Clouds," "Sitting Bull," "Crow Foot," "American Horse," and "Buffalo Hump" are the ones that typically make it into history books and anthologies. That has often left me wondering, what happened to the original names and languages of the people of these nations? Of course they still exist to varying degrees. However, for some reason, American history has not been kind enough to take First Nations people at face value, seemingly expecting that many translate themselves into English before they are comprehensible. I realize I am generalizing. There are certainly families who have retained names and traditional naming systems, and there have been movements to preserve languages and promote their use in younger generations. But, unfortunately, these efforts ...