New York (TADIAS) – In celebration of Black History Month the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture will host a five-month exhibition highlighting the history of Africans in India, which is scheduled to open for the public on February 1st.
“The exhibition will feature the extraordinary achievements of Africans who made their mark on Indian history,” the Schomburg Center said in a press release. “At the Africans in India preview, on January 30th, 2013, Her Excellency Ambassador Nirupama Rao of India will give remarks.”
This historical showcase, curated by Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf, curator of Digital Collections at the Schomburg, and Dr. Kenneth X. Robbins, collector and co-editor of African Elites in India: Habshi Amarat, is the first of its kind that retraces the lives and achievements of the many talented and prominent Africans in India.
“Since the 1400s, people from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and adjoining areas, have greatly distinguished themselves in India. The success was theirs but it is also a strong testimony to the open-mindedness of a society in which they were a small religious and ethnic minority, originally of low status,” says Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf. “ As foreigners and Muslims, Africans ruled over indigenous Hindu, Muslim and Jewish populations.”
Besides the presence of written documents, Africans have been immortalized in the rich paintings of different eras, states, and styles that form an important component of Indian culture.
“Although they were a common sight for centuries, the Africans who were an integral part of the history and culture of the Indian subcontinent have not received, in the present, the recognition they deserve,” the announcement said. “This groundbreaking exhibition brings out of obscurity the lives and achievements of some of the talented and prominent Sidis of yesterday and inscribes their unique story in the fascinating history of the global African Diaspora.”
Related Programs:
First Fridays at the Schomburg
Friday, February 1 at 6 p.m.
Featuring DJ Rheka playing classic Bhangra and Bollywood
Curator’s Talk with Dr. Sylviane A. Diouf
Tuesday, February 12 at 6:30 p.m.
Join Curator Diouf on a tour of the exhibition
Talks at the Schomburg: Dr. Kenneth X. Robbins and Dr. John McLeod
Thursday, March 21 at 6: 30 p.m.
Robbins and McLeod will discuss the history of Africans in India
“In Ethiopia’s rain-starved eastern badlands, livestock is the sole asset for most. Swaddled in robes, pastoralist families traverse huge tracts searching for water and pasture for their herds, uprooting camps as they go. When seasonal rains fail, life becomes a battle for survival,” reports csmonitor.com.
“As aid agencies scramble to feed some 11.5 million people suffering from what is being called the Horn of Africa’s worst drought in 60 years, Ethiopia’s government is enacting a resettlement program that it hopes will be a longlasting solution to a longstanding burden.”
The World Bank Friday unveiled new details of its plan to help victims of drought in the Horn of Africa. The bulk of the effort focuses on Ethiopia and Kenya, not Somalia.
The bank’s Country Director for East Africa Johannes Zutt says over $600 million is being made available to those affected by the drought in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.
But only $9 million is going directly toward disaster relief in Somalia, the worst hit country in East Africa.
Watch New Video: Horn of Africa Famine Puts 11 Million People at Risk of Hunger (PBS News)
— Related: World Reacts to Avert Famine in East Africa
Tadias Magazine
News Update
Thursday, July 28, 2011
New York (Tadias) – The UN’s World Food Program has started airlifting supplies of emergency food into the Somali capital Mogadishu, as relief and fundraising efforts continued for millions of people affected by the looming hunger crisis in drought-hit areas of East Africa.
At an emergency meeting held at the Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters in Rome recently, WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran warned the international community the problem could become a wider catastrophe unless immediate action is taken. “The drought has swept the Horn of Africa where more than 11 million people are in need of food assistance,” she said. “We are particularly worried about Somalia right now and it is vital that we reach those at the epicentre of the famine with food assistance.”
The United Nations says the developing crisis is the largest famine in 60 years. Nearly 12 million people are thought to be at risk of food insecurity in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea and Djibouti. Ethiopians constitute 4.56 million of the current total food insecure populations in the region. According to UNICEF, 2.23 million children in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya are estimated to be acutely malnourished. And nearly 720,000 children are at risk of death without urgent assistance.
“The area straddling Somalia, Ethiopia and northern Kenya, has been dubbed the “triangle of death” as the worst drought in more than fifty years grips the area,” writes Stewart M. Patrick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Director of the Program on International Institutions and Global Governance. “An estimated thirty percent of children are malnourished, many arriving in refugee camps so “emaciated and with skin lesions so deep that you could see their bones showing in their skulls and arms.” According to testimony by State Department official Reuben Brigety, acute malnutrition has reached 50% and 40%, respectively, in Ethiopia and Kenya—far above the 15% threshold for an international humanitarian emergency.”
Per AFP: “Officials said the UN had received about $US1 billion ($A924.56 million) since first launching an appeal for the region in November 2010 but needs a billion more by the end of the year to cope with the emergency. The World Bank on Monday pledged more than $500 million, with the bulk of the money set to go towards long-term projects to aid livestock farmers while $12 million would be for immediate assistance to those worst hit by the crisis. However charities have slammed low aid pledges and say not enough is being done.”
Read more.
— Cover image: A woman from southern Somalia struggles to build a makeshift shelter from tree branches at a new camp in Mogadishu, Somalia, on July 13. (Mohamed Sheikh Nor / AP)
New York (Tadias) – A humanitarian crisis of historic proportions is unfolding in drought-hit areas of East Africa, including Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya. The United Nations says the pending disaster is the largest famine in 60 years.
The UN warns relief is needed urgently and should not be ignored or the world will once again be witnessing the repeat of history, this time on a much larger scale. Unless quickly prevented, nearly 12 million people are thought to be at risk of food insecurity in the Horn of Africa this year. That’s an alarmingly large number of people affected in contrast to the widely publicized 1984 famine that killed approximately one million people. Ethiopians constitute 4.56 million of the current total food insecure populations in the region.
Sadly, the familiar images of hungry children with skinny, malnourished bodies on television screens and front-pages of newspapers around the world, conjures depressing sense of déjà vu for the international community. According to UNICEF, in total 2.23 million children in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are estimated to be acutely malnourished. And nearly 720,000 children are at risk of death without immediate assistance.
Dr. Reuben Brigety, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, said in a testimony before the House Subcommittee on Africa earlier this month that “in Ethiopia, global acute malnutrition rates close to 50% have been reported among newly arriving refugee children.” Dr. Brigety added: “This situation is substantially worse than when I last visited the Dolo Odo refugee camps in Ethiopia in February of this year. Newly arriving children are now dying in the refugee camp at the rate of two to three per day.”
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization held an emergency meeting in Rome on Monday to discuss campaign strategy to moblize and deliver aid to the region. The meeting was attended by representatives from the G20 countries, ministers and senior officials from UN’s 191 member nations, other U.N. bodies, NGOs and regional development banks.
The UN has officially declared famine in parts of Somalia and it has designated large areas in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya as a crisis or an emergency zone.
Watch: UN Declares Famine in Somalia, Channel 4 News
“This summer has been an unspeakable nightmare for millions of children in the Horn of Africa,” said President and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF Caryl Stern. “We cannot control the weather patterns that have led to drought and famine, but we can do something about helping those who suffer from it. The sooner we act, the more children’s lives can be saved. As little as $10 can feed a child for 10 days.”
UNICEF estimates it will need $100 million over the next six months for a massive scale up of operations to reach children in the drought affected areas with emergency and preventative assistance.
“UNICEF is using every means possible to reach every child. There simply can be no compromise on the objective to keep children and their families alive,” said Elhadj As Sy, Regional Director for UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa. “We appreciate the generosity of the international community and those contributions are already making a difference. We urgently need more funds to meet the enormous need.”
————- For more information or to make a tax-deductible contribution to relief efforts in the Horn of Africa, please contact the U.S. Fund for UNICEF: Website: www.unicefusa.org/donate/horn. Or call toll free: 1-800-4UNICEF (1-800-486-4233). Text: Text “FOOD” to UNICEF (864233) to donate $10. Mail: 125 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038.
Cover photo: Aden Salaad, 2, looks up at his mother as she bathes him in a tub at a Doctors Without Borders hospital, where Aden is receiving treatment for malnutrition, in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab, Kenya, on Monday, July 11. (Rebecca Blackwell / AP)
Video: East Africa Food Crisis – Somalia Faces Famine as al-Qaida Threat Halts International Aid
Above:Arkan Haile, a candidate for the vacant at-large D.C.
City Council seat. The special election is set for Tue., Apr 26.
Tadias Magazine
By Tadias Staff
Published: Wednesday, February 16, 2011
New York (Tadias) – We were recently contacted by the campaign of Arkan Haile, a candidate for the vacant at-large D.C. City Council seat, which will be decided through a special election on April 26. He is among at least 17 candidates running for the seat, which became vacant Jan. 2 when Council member Kwame Brown (D-At-Large) was sworn in as the new City Council Chair. The Eritrean-born attorney is seeking the support of the Ethiopian-American community, one of the largest African immigrant populations in Washington D.C.
“I know my personal story is not ordinary for a local politician. Frankly, I hope nothing about me is ordinary where politics is concerned,” he says. “We can’t afford the usual politics – not in our schools, not in our neighborhoods and not in our elected officials. That’s why I’m running as an independent, beholden to no one but the people, ready to find creative solutions and prepared to make hard choices.”
Arkan is a successful lawyer and father of two children. He immigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 1981 when he was 10 years old, and became the Co-Founder of Gray Haile LLP, a corporate law firm which specializes in mergers, acquisitions, and securities with offices in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York.
He was born in Eritrea in 1971. In 1975, his parents came to the US on his father’s graduate school scholarship to study Economics at Colorado State University. But they left behind their three young children, including Haile (the oldest at four) as insurance against defection. In 1978 his mother returned to Ethiopia and three years later, in December 1981, after a difficult journey that included a trek through Sudan on foot and mostly at night, the family was reunited in Ft. Collins, Colorado — the state where Haile grew up and attained his education. He says: “I was born in Asmara and spent three years in Addis before our family settled in Colorado in the early 1980s when I was ten years old.”
Haile currently lives on Capitol Hill with his wife, Nazrawit (Naz) Medhanie, and their son and daughter, ages four and one. His wife is a performance monitoring specialist with an international development firm. She graduated from Duke University, where she was a shooting guard on the basketball team and member of the school’s first women’s Final Four team in 1999.
“As a parent of a public school child, Co-Founder of a district-based law firm and a home owner, I’m fully committed to our city,” he says. “As a lawyer and former financial analyst, I have the skills and work experiences ideally suited for the job of a City Council member.”
On his campaign web site, the candidate also acknowledges the uphill battle he faces in the upcoming poll: “My background is not typical of a city council candidate. I’m not backed by a particular party, power broker or interest group. I’m running as an independent because that is how I make decisions. I know that makes me an underdog in this race, but that’s ok. I’ve been an underdog my whole life and it hasn’t stopped me yet.”
Young Arkan Haile with his siblings. (Photo courtesy of arkanfordccouncil.com)
The candidate with his family. (Photo by IWANPHOTO.COM)
But he also notes that his professional experience in finance and law, coupled with his experiences as an immigrant, will help him bring a fresh perspective to solving the District’s budget woes, as well as ability to focus on matters confronting the city’s struggling communities.
“There are several issues but on top of the list are education and fiscal responsibility; education because it is so central and fundamentally important to our existence as a city, and fiscal responsibility because it is the biggest and most immediate challenge facing the city and the City Council,” Haile said in a recent Q & A with Tadias Magazine. “As a parent of a public school child I’ve got a little more “skin in the game” than most…we’ve made great strides in education over the past several years and I want to ensure to my best abilities as a member of the Council that we don’t lose momentum.”
And how is his professional skills suited to solving D.C.’s economic problems? “Fiscally, my skills and professional experiences are especially well suited to tacking it in the most efficient and responsible manner. I’ve either worked in or studied law and finance over the course of my entire 20-year, adult life. Before law school, I earned an MBA and worked as a financial analyst for a large corporation.”
“What separates you from the other candidates?” we asked. “Why should people vote for you?” “I see the two questions as being virtually the same,” he said. “In other words people should vote for me, at least in large part, for the reasons that separate me from the field.” He adds: “First, I will bring 20 years of technical financial and legal expertise that I can apply from day one. It is all the more important now given our city’s financial mess. Second, I’m fully invested in our city. As a home owner, parent of a public school child (with another set to enroll next year), owner of a District-based law firm and DC Bar licensed attorney, there is little that goes on in the city that doesn’t directly affect me. Third, as an immigrant and somebody with a relatively unique personal history, I’ll add diversity to the City Council and serve as a sympathetic ear to immigrants in our city.”
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If you have additional questions or want to get involved in Arkan Haile’s campaign, please contact the candidate via his website at www.arkanfordccouncil.com
New York (Tadias) – A little over a year ago, on March 28, 2008, we featured an upstart clothing company called Bernos, founded by young Ethiopian and Eritrean entrepreneurs and artists in the United States. And this morning, when we checked our inbox, we discovered an exciting short video in which Rayzak, a member of the Somali-born rapper K’naan’s crew, is shown wearing the Bernos Made in Africa shirt. Enjoy!
Bernos Tees blend hip and culture
By Tadias Staff
New York (Tadias) – It all started with a boring job that left graphic designer Nolawi Petros itching to do something artistic.
Designing test booklets for No Child Left Behind at his day job did little to satisfy Petros’ appetite for artistic creation.
“The truth is, I was at a job where I didn’t have a lot of creative things to do,” Nolawi says.
So he decided it was time to launch Bernos, an online t-shirt vending company that now doubles as a sort of virtual Ethiopian community center through an active blog.
He had been kicking around the idea of starting a t-shirt designing and making venture for some time.
“If it works, it works; if doesn’t, it doesn’t,” Petros said at the time, but he thought it was at least worth a try.
It did work.
In May 2005, launched Bernos with three designs: Addis Ababa Classic, a red shirt with the words “Addis Ababa” written in a font resembling Coca-Cola’s, an Abebe Bekila shirt, and a shirt featuring Desta Keremela, the staple candy brand found in pretty much every souk in Ethiopia.
Above:Bernos shirt with the words “Addis Ababa” written in a font resembling
Coca-Cola’s. (Photo: Bernos.org).
Above:A shirt featuring Desta Keremela, the staple candy brand found in pretty
much every neighborhood shop in Ethiopia. (Photo: Bernos.org).
The business is named after the heavy wool cloak that became a status symbol after being introduced to Ethiopia by the Arabs.
“Wearing the Bernos in Ethiopia was a lot like wearing a sheriff’s badge in the American West,” Bernos says on its website.
“Today, anyone can capture and celebrate some of Ethiopia’s history and the status of the Bernos by wearing one of our unique t-shirts.”
And if the fact that they’ve sold out of many of their designs is any indication, the Bernos t-shirt is a status symbol that more than a few people have bought into.
Petros says that for the 13 designs that the website has now, he’s probably designed another 30 that he’s decided to toss out or hold on to for later.
While Petros handles much of the design work, he has business partners handle the other elements of running a business: Dawit Kahsai handles finances, Meron Samuel is the head of marketing and sales, and Beshou Gedamu is Bernos’ t-shirt model and photographer.
So far, the venture has been built on volunteer labor—the partners view their time as their primary investment in the business, Petros says.
The Bernos site gets about 500 hits a day, mostly Abeshas on the East Coast, Petros says, but although the Bernos team are Ethiopians (Dawit Kahsai is Eritrean), they don’t see their venture as an “Abesha” or even an “African” brand.
Most orders do come from major U.S. cities with big Abesha populations: Oakland, Seattle, Washington, DC, and New York City, some order have popped up from more far flung locations—everywhere from Fargo, North Dakota to Mississipi.
Even though they’ve cornered the internet-savvy Abesha market that likes hip T-shirts, Petros says a little number-crunching reveals that market is still pretty small.
“Let’s say there are 500,000 Ethiopians in the U.S.—out of those, 20 percent use the internet, (and of those, some) are into fashion or T-shirts. So, when you think about it, we don’t have a big market,” says Petros.
About 30 percent of the T-shirts go to non-Ethiopians, and Petros says they’re trying to expand that number. That trend has been reflected in the shift in designs from the “Addis Ababa Classic” that launched the site to more recent designs named “Roots,” and “d’Afrique,” which have more pan-African appeal.
Above: “d’Afrique”, a more recent Bernos design. (Photo: Bernos.org).
Above:Another recent design named “Roots,” which has a more pan-African
appeal. (Photo: Bernos.org).
But Petros says he wants to branch out of that niche too.
“These t-shirts have mass appeal for all black people but also for white people,” Petros said.
With t-shirts that garner a broader following, Bernos hopes their line will eventually be carried by a national clothing chain like Urban Outfitters.
Cairo – The age-old tradition, also known as female genital mutilation (FGM), is primarily performed on girls ages four to 14, though in some countries it is done on infants. It involves removing a girl’s clitoris and sometimes other external genitalia.
FGM is done out of beliefs that it controls a woman’s sexuality, enhances fertility, initiates her into womanhood or is required by religion, although both Muslim and Christian leaders have spoken out against it.
FGM is also performed for hygienic and aesthetic reasons in some places where genitalia are believed to be dirty.
Countries where more than 50 percent of girls and women ages 15 to 49 are mutilated include: Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan (north).
Countries where 10-50 percent of females aged 15 to 49 are mutilated include: Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Yemen. – Sapa-AP
— This article was originally published on page 2 of Cape Times on August 05, 2008
