Hatnews » Culture

Inside Africa

Webmaster — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:27:27 +0000

Afrik- The African International Network is a registered charity operating in the East Midlands. Afrik provides a number of services and essential information to individuals of African descent and black ethnic minority groups in the East Midlands. We provide information on issues relating to education, employment, immigration and housing and are dedicated to educating the community on African culture, history and politics. We also host a variety of African classes, film events and arts/crafts fairs.

We are proud to present our new classes commencing in March 2011

African cookery Class- Learn how to cook some delicious authentic African dishes this promotes healthy eating

Afrik Presents classs on a variety of topics on African music, dance, history and folktales and drumming using the talking drum.

African language class Come along and learn to speak some of the

Regional African languages such as Swahili and Zulu!!

African film event – Showcasing some of the most popular African films accompanied by an arts and crafts stall.

For more details on our classes please contact Moji on -

Phone– 07921623930/07837572871 lets educate you about the African culture! Promoting community cohesion and healthy eating, fun and maximising your potential

Email– Afrik0303@yahoo.co.uk

Website– www.afrik.co.uk

Culture shock for many southern returnees

Webmaster — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 16:29:04 +0000

(IRIN) – Sudanese are returning from the north of the country to their homeland in the south or the border region of Abyei in growing numbers in the run-up to key referendums on 9 January, but many are struggling to adapt to an impoverished, war-ravaged environment.

CLICK ON LINK BELOW FOR FULL REPORT
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91269

‘Money Comes First, Health Second’

Webmaster — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:33:36 +0000

By Phylllis Kachere/IPS

With half her body immersed in a muddy red pond, Esther Nyarambi closely inspects the contents of her wooden panning dish, locally known as zamba. Having spent the entire day pounding gold-bearing rock, she hopes her efforts will be rewarded with even the smallest nugget of gold.

As most other artisanal gold miners in the Nyamahumbe and Chishapa areas of the gold-rich Shamva district in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland Central province, Nyarambi carelessly adds a cap of mercury to the zamba to extract the precious metal.

She knows little of the toxicity of mercury and the huge health risks she exposes herself to. With her bare hands, the 26-year-old mixes the contents of the wooden dish until the fluid mercury wraps itself around tiny particles of gold dust, making a nugget.

Dr Cleopas Sibanda, an occupational health expert, says mercury destroys a person’s nerve endings and causes mood swings. “People exposed to it show signs of irritability, mood swings, a nervous body system and bleeding gums. Failure to concentrate has also been reported on those exposed to the metal,” he told IPS.

“Mercury is a particular threat to pregnant women and their unborn babies.”

Desperate to find gold and a way out of poverty, Nyarambi and her fellow illegal miners are not bothered by potential health risks.

“Mercury is easy and fast to use when extracting gold dust from the ore. After crushing the stones that hold the gold ore, mercury makes the job easier and removes all impurities from the gold,” explains Nyarambi.

“I have heard it causes ill health if you inhale it, but I don’t do that. I only use it to gather tiny gold specks. I have been using mercury for the past five years and never had any problems,” she added.

Thousands of poor and unemployed youths and adults have trekked to Shamva district, which is reported to have rich deposits of alluvial gold, hoping to strike it rich. In the past, a number of illegal panners have managed to accumulate easy wealth here and set up transport and retail businesses from the money made from the gold.

Health risks

Despite the launch of a police operation coded Operation Chikorokoza Chapera (Operation End Illegal Panning) two years ago, police have not managed to stop panners, or makorokoza, as they are called in Shona. With a gram of gold fetching $20, while an ounce, or 23.3 grams, fetches anything above $900 on the international market, panners say they will do anything to find gold.

“It is called making money. Money comes first, health second. It’s simple, either money or health,” said Pfimbikai Mate, one of the makorokoza, who has been making a living from gold panning for the past six years.

In January, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said only six percent of Zimbabweans are formally employed, down from 30 percent in 2003. This sharp decrease is mainly due to the country’s unstable political and economic situation, combined with repeated droughts, which have caused widespread food insecurity.

Mate explains that private gold buyers in Zimbabwe create a market for the panners by smuggling the precious metal to China, South Africa and Angola. They supply panners with mercury to increase production without explaining the health hazards associated with using the metal.

Smuggling rings

Mercury is listed as a highly hazardous substance by Zimbabwe’s Environmental Management Agency (EMA). Agency director Phillip Manyaza acknowledges that the agency has so far failed to control and regulate the import of mercury from South Africa and Europe, identified by the United Nations Environmental Programme as the major points of origin for mercury used in Zimbabwe. He says existing legislation against the unsafe use and unlicensed import of the metal has not been easy to enforce.

The law calls for imprisonment of individuals and companies that bring mercury into the country without a license, but smugglers find it easy to bring in the toxic substance, he explains.

“We have good legislation against use of harmful substances, but the enforcement has been difficult. Police do not have adequate expertise and equipment [and enough vehicles] to police these rampant gold panners. It is a problem,” admitted Manyaza.

Gold panning also has a negative impact on the environment. Just a few kilometres from the main digging site in Shamva district, Chief Bushu, the cultural custodian of the area, says entire homesteads have been collapsing because panners dig up soil and boulders in search for gold, excavating unstable underground caves.

The devastated environment is testimony to the makorokozas’ handiwork, which creates deep craters from collapsed caves that have become deadly traps for livestock and human beings. The panners also destroy a variety of protected flora and leave soil vulnerable to erosion.

According to UNEP, small-scale gold mining and panning is the second highest source of mercury environmental pollution globally.

Even the culturally-revered fig tree, the cutting down of which is taboo in Shona culture as it is regarded as the dwelling-place of ancestral spirits, has not been spared. Its trunk is used to carve the wooden panning dishes, mazamba.

Drumming Solstice – 21 June 2009

Webmaster — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:48:56 +0000

Engaging Refugees and Asylum Seekers Arts and Museum Service will host a closing event for Refugee Week on June 21 2009 from 2-9pm at Newarke Houses Museum and Garden.

The Drumming Solstice event promises to be an exciting mix of a cultural offer to include: African Dancers, drummers from around the world, local and national artists from different genres.

There will also be an assortment of snacks from all over the world to sharpen your appetite in readiness for the musical extravaganza.

For more information contact:

Brian Booi
Project Officer
Engaging Refugees & Asylum Seekers
Arts & Museums Service
A12 Welford Place
Leicester
LE1 6ZG

T: 0116 252 7367
M: 07976 347 104
E: brian.booi@leicester.gov.uk
www.leicester.gov.uk/outreach

Cultural aspects of working with refugees and asylum seekers’

Webmaster — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:38:49 +0000

One day course – 29 June 2009

This course looks at the misunderstandings that can occur between service providers and refugees and how these can be avoided by gaining a greater understanding of the way culture shapes behaviour and perceptions.

The course will help participants to think through their own assumptions and preconceptions by examining their own culture and that of others, before looking at the impact on service provision.

The course is suitable for front-line staff working with refugees and asylum seekers, and anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of the issues.

What does the course cover?

- What it means to be a refugee or asylum seeker and the differences between the two groups
- Why they may have left their own country and are now in the UK
- The effect of cultural differences on the refugee’s experience in the UK and the delegate’s own contact with refugees

Who should attend?

Front line staff working with refugees and asylum seekers, Police, prison services staff, detention centre staff, primary health care workers, social services and anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of the issues.

This course will be held at the Refugee Council, Brixton, London

Lunch and refreshments are provided.

How to book:

To book please contact the training department at training@refugeecouncil.org.uk

Fees: £99 reduced rate (NGO or voluntary organisation), £160 standard rate (statutory/educational body/business)

Upcoming dates:

Working with refugee and asylum seeking children in Schools – 23 June

Age assessment awareness and working with age-disputed young people – 2 July

Working with Interpreters – 14 July

An introduction to working with unaccompanied children – 8 September

Key Issues in asylum – 16 September

An introduction to asylum support – 17 September

Emotional wellbeing of refugee children and young people – 18 September

The Refugee Council therapeutic casework model: Supporting clients with mental wellbeing needs – 21 September

For more information on training and events at the Refugee Council click here:
http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/eventsandtraining/training/service/fulldetails.htm

‘Viva Siva’: Director of IRR

Webmaster — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:38:41 +0000

By Arun Kundnani|Red Pepper

Now in his eighties, A Sivanandan remains an important figure in the politics of race and class, maintaining his long-held insistence that only in the symbiosis of the two struggles can a genuinely radical politics be found.

‘In a sense, before I became black, I became white.’ It is a surprising comment from someone who has been widely regarded as among the fiercest of black radical thinkers in Britain. A Sivanandan (he has long used only the initial of his forename), director of the Institute of Race Relations and founding editor of the journal Race and Class, is sitting at his desk at home surrounded by handwritten drafts of his second novel. Now in his eighties, for much of the past 40 years Sivanandan (‘Siva’ to his friends) has been one of the major influences on black political thinking in Britain.

A pamphleteer and an organiser, rather than a writer of books of theory, he is best known for a series of trenchant essays published from the early 1970s onwards, each focused on the immediate political priorities of the day. But implicit in all of his work has been a set of coherent and powerful ideas on culture, imperialism and political change.

Sivanandan has been receiving renewed attention since the recent publication of a collection of his non-fiction writing, Catching History on the Wing: Race, Culture and Globalisation (Pluto). At the heart of it is a visceral sense of the painful experience of racism and imperialism.

‘There is all sorts of personal pain in a colonial society,’ he says. ‘Especially when you have an English education and you come from a poor village where hardly anybody speaks English.’ Yet the absorption into European culture that at first alienated him from his people also provided the basis for his political activism. ‘I was able to articulate the pain of imperialism with the language that the Englishman gave me. I have taken the tool from the system to fight the system with.’

Sivanandan was born to a Tamil family in a small village in the north of Sri Lanka, then a British colony and known as Ceylon. His father had risen from a poor, tenant farmer background to become first a postal clerk and then a postmaster. But his Gandhian politics got him into trouble with his British bosses, who punished him by assigning him to one malaria-infested country post office after another.

To avoid this disruption, Sivanandan, the eldest of five children, was sent off to stay with his uncle in the capital Colombo, where he was able to enrol at a top Catholic school on discounted fees. ‘My uncle lived very close to the school but in a more or less slum area. So I played around with the slum boys and went to school with the petty bourgeoisie.’

Encountering Marxism as a student in 1940s Colombo, Sivanandan felt a resonance with some of the things that his father used to say. ‘Anything that is bad has a good side. Anything that is good has a bad side. In other words, there are contradictions. Nonetheless, life moves in terms of those contradictions. Life examines you and that is how knowledge grows.’

Still, activism with any of the Marxist sects did not appeal and Sivanandan was soon working as the manager of a large bank, firmly ensconced in the elite society of newly independent Ceylon and somewhat notorious for marrying across ethnic and religious lines – he was a Hindu from the minority Tamil community, his wife a Catholic from the majority Sinhalese. Then, in 1958, state communalism led to an eruption of anti-Tamil pogroms – the first salvo in the civil war that has continued on and off to the present day (see pages 43-47).

Disillusioned, he came to London. Soon afterwards, his marriage fell apart. And racial discrimination relegated the former bank manager to the lowly status of a tea-boy at a north-west London public library. Double baptism of fire

These two experiences – of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and racism in Britain – became the twin poles of his politics, his ‘double baptism of fire’. One inscribed in his soul the dangers of ethnic separatism, the other brought home the need for a black politics autonomous from the established left.

It was these, potentially conflicting, demands that drove his political creativity in the following decades. A perennial question would be how to steer a course between an inward-looking separatism on the one hand and oppressive absorption into another political culture on the other. Because that same question lies behind current debates on multiculturalism and globalisation, even his early work still has continued relevance.

For Sivanandan, culture is a vehicle for political and personal growth and ‘no culture grows except through bastardisation – a pure culture is a dead culture’. As he says of himself, ‘I am a bastard – culturally!’ Through colonialism, ‘the Portuguese have messed me up, the Sinhalese have messed me up, and so have the Dutch and the British. And I find myself a rich man because all these cultures are sitting inside of me.’

Coming from the north of Sri Lanka, where, as he puts it, ‘nothing grew, except children’, he has made ‘organic’ growth the touchstone of his thinking. He introduced the idea of ‘disorganic development’ to refer to the imposition of a capitalist economy on a feudal society, which is thus unable to produce the kinds of ameliorating social democratic tendencies that emerged with European capitalism. Breaking with the left dogma that took the western class struggle as the sole, legitimate progressive politics, he argued that, in conditions of disorganic development, political struggles emerge that take the form of mass resistance to the state and to imperialism with culture and religion rather than class as the rallying cries. Moreover, new technology had dispersed the hard edge of capitalist contradiction from the European factory floor to the imperial periphery.

In the process, the western labour movement had lost its political radicalism and become vulnerable to racial prejudice. The then common practice on the left of subsuming the question of race to that of class – on the grounds that once you have a classless society it will also be a raceless society – needed to be rejected. ‘We had to have a different politics,’ he says.

A different politics
The creation of that ‘different politics’ – carving open an intellectual and institutional space on the left for anti-racism – has been Sivanandan’s most important contribution to this country. Ironically, with the waning of the class struggle itself from the mid-1980s, he was forced to defend that space from more narrowly conceived forms of ethnic identity politics, which effectively piggy-backed on the opening up of left dogma that he himself had helped foster. Throughout, Sivanandan maintained his insistence that only in the symbiosis between race and class struggles could a genuinely radical politics be found.

Ultimately, what has remained constant in Sivanandan’s thinking is its morality rather than its politics. ‘It is a faith that you have in human beings. I love human beings. I hate the power they have. But they are necessary for me. All the contradictions, the hate, the love, the quarrels, the coming of wisdom, the losing of wisdom – all that comes in the process of growing. That is organic. We don’t need great philosophers to tell us all this. It’s there in what a village boy who became a postmaster had to tell me.’

Arun Kundnani is author of The End of Tolerance, Racism in 21st-century Britain and editor of Race and Class

Catching History By The Wing: Race, Culture and Globalisation is published by Pluto

Somali Cultural & Parenting Seminar

Webmaster — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:18:22 +0000

Does your work involve working with Somali community/families and children? Want to know about more community’s culture and parenting issues? Need ideas on how to develop culturally sensitive approach? Want to know how best to support the community? Then come to the Somali Culture & Parenting seminar to be held on Tuesday 05 May 2009 at Ileys Development Centre, 39 Abingdon Road, Leicester, LE2 1HA from 10:00am to 5:00pm.

Places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment. Lunch will be provided for £70 per person.

This programme has been designed to further enhance the skills of professionals, practitioners and other services providers with no or some experience of working with Somali families and children. The programme provides an opportunity to:

- Enhance your working knowledge of Somali families and their children and issues affecting them in relation to parenting.

- Gain useful insight and understanding of cultural and religious issues of the community in respect with the subject

- Develop further skills and gain practical advice for use in day-to-day work with Somali families and children.

- Network and share knowledge and experiences with others in related issues

- Identify and develop specialist in-house training for your staff to meet the families’ specific needs.

For a booking form and more information please contact Maryan or Jawaahir on 0116 285 5888 or e-mail admin@somalidevelopmentservicesltd.co.uk

Stranded – (Poem by Julius Sai Mutyambizi-Dewa)

Webmaster — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 14:51:06 +0000

By Julius Sai Mutyambizi from Preaching to Priests Anthology

* Publisher: Timeless Avatar Press (12 April 2007)
* ISBN-10: 0978156730
* ISBN-13: 978-0978156732
* Order from Amazon.co.uk

Stranded. no more caution
Not knowing where to go
Oblivious of what to do
The earth upside down
The world upside down
Life unyielding
Death unyielding!

Stranded no more action
suddenly the lion stands still,
pondering the next move
All energy drained from his muscles
From a night of luckless hunt
All zeal strained from the misfortune
Of being chased away by a mightier competitor
All hope lost to shifting prey
So where is his next meal?

Stranded, no more option
Suddenly the manager sweeps the floor
No more job to do
This place is new and this culture is not his
Unfamiliar face after fairness in an unfamiliar land
Why is he not shaken by the intriguing face of his unwelcoming host?
The lion suddenly shifts his appetite to grass
As the antelope here is for the local tiger!

Stranded, little alternatives
All these resources must be harnessed
Yet all the fortunes have not been realised

Click here for Julius’ profile

New book on Mental health in a multi-ethnic society

Webmaster — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:46:42 +0000

The experience and treatment of minority groups using mental health services is the subject of a new book by practitioner and academic professor Suman Fernando.

Guide on race, culture and mental health

Offering a comprehensive guide on issues around race, culture and mental health care, this latest publication is the second edition of Fernando’s book, which has been updated to reflect the changes in this sector over the last ten years.

Featuring new chapters by over twenty authors, Fernando’s latest book broadens the range of issues covered to include women, family therapy, and the mental health of refugees and asylum seekers.

Co-edited by Dr Frank Keating, this new title is aimed at professionals working in this sector as well as those who generally want to learn more about the issues of ethnicity and racism that is still prevalent, within mental health services today.

‘The book is very varied, it brings up to date the problems faced by black and ethnic minority communities in mental health services. There are chapters about the good work being done in the voluntary sector and there’s also a section looks out the failure of the statutory sector to meet its obligations when treating patients from ethnic minorities’ Fernando told Black Mental Health UK.

Sadly the failures of mental health services in its treatment and care of African Caribbean patients has got steadily worse over the last ten years that Fernando reviews in this book.

10 years on from David Bennett’s tragedy

Indeed this year marks a decade since the tragic death of David ‘Rocky’ Bennett an African Caribbean patient, who lost his life while in psychiatric care in 1998. Bennett died after he was forcibly restrained by a team of five nurses for 25 minutes. The nurses only released him once they realised he had stopped breathing. No attempt was made to resuscitate him. The public inquiry into his death concluded that mental health services are institutionally racist.

The government responded with the introduction of a five year programme, which began in 2005, to address the poor treatment an unfavourable outcomes of black and minority patients who use mental health services entitled Delivery Race Equality (DRE).

Sadly, ten years after David Bennett’s death research indicates that deaths of people detained under the Mental Health Act have skyrocketed.

Also findings from the lastest ,Count Me In Census 2007 , also shows that detention rates for people from African Caribbean communities are also at an all time high, even though black people do not have a higher prevalence to mental illness as any other ethnic group.

Analysis and sector updates

This new title offers an analysis and update on the developments within this sector looking not only at the continuing discrimination faced by minority patients using mental health services but also the impact the of the government’s Delivery Race Equality Programme to being to address this issues.

Fernando says: ‘the book looks at the failure of the statutory sector to meet its obligations. It also analyses the statutory service in delivering DRE and the impact that it has had in changing the way services work.’

‘The basic approach was too academic and too detached from what goes on and explains why DRE isn’t coming up with anything. The structure of this programme wasn’t directed at attitude change but more administrative structure and it might have got lost in the structure,’ Fernando adds.

Divided into four sections the book covers issues around mental health service provision for black and minority ethnic (BME) communities, including refugees and asylum seekers.

Chapters include firsthand accounts of how issues for organisations working the Black Voluntary sector have been confronted with examples of projects working to address the inequality in treatment and care.

An excellent introduction to those wanting to learn more about the minority ethnic experience of mental health services over the decade. Fernando has also written this book for inform researchers and academics in this field, of the importance of having a grounded understanding and knowledge of the voluntary sector, as this is where services minority groups trust are based, and where the best outcomes are found.

‘The statutory services could learn from the lesson highlighted and start to encourage and support of programmes in the black voluntary sector. Right now there are a lot of problems in the black voluntary sector, there needs to be a reversed. There is a tendency that is leading to community projects being squeezed, in spite of the good work that they are doing.’

Grassroots and academia

The first edition of this book was well used in academic circles as it was one of the few publications with detailed information on the grass roots work done in this sector.

‘The connections between academia and grass roots don’t meet very much. This is one of the books that tries to bridge this gap and looks at both aspects from both sides,’ Fernando adds.

With chapters on training, service user involvement, policy development and service provision Mental Health in

a Multi-Ethnic Society this book will appeal to academics, professionals, trainers and managers, as well as providing

up-to-date information for a general readership and those in the community wanting to learn more about the recent history of mental health services and their treatment of minority groups.

Source :Black Mental Health UK

Available at a 10% discount if you order direct from the publishers online at www.routledgemental health.com

This new title is priced at £21.00 paperback adn £60.00 hard pack (£3.20 postage and packing)

Visit Prof Suman Fernando’s website