Items by Eccentric Yoruba

Black Looks

• A petition against “corrective rape”

  Posted: January 25, 2011, 6:00 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  
  
  

  According to this site, in South Africa

  In the last 10 years:
  *31 lesbian women have been murdered because of their sexuality
  *More than 10 lesbians a week are raped or gang raped in Cape Town alone
  *150 women are raped every day in South Africa
  *For every 25 men accused of rape in South Africa, 24 walk free

  In the past Sokari has written on the beating and rape of Milicent Gaika, the case which spurred this petition to declare “corrective rape” a hate-crime.

  If you are interested in showing support by signing the petition, please do so here.

  Interview with South African Justice minister on corrective rape.

• The Lost Kingdoms of Africa

  Posted: December 10, 2010, 6:02 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  
  
  

  BBC Four’s “The Lost Kingdoms of Africa” is a series presented by Dr Gus Casely-Hayford a student of African culture and history and an art historian. The four episodes that make up the series start with this refrain;

  The African continent is home to nearly a billion people. It has an incredible diversity of communities and cultures, yet we know less of its history than almost anywhere else on earth.

  But that is beginning to change. In the last few decades, researchers and archaeologists have begun to uncover a range of histories as impressive and extraordinary as anywhere else in the world.

  The series reveals that Africa’s stories are preserved for us in its treasures, statues and ancient buildings – in the culture, art and legends of the people.

  This sets the stage for fascinating and eye-opening insights into the histories of some of Africa’s “forgotten” kingdoms. Dr Hayford travels through several countries including Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Mali and Zimbabwe in search of amazing information on four prominent African kingdoms of Nubia, Ethiopia, Benin and Great Zimbabwe.
  
  Each series starts with Dr Hayford posting a couple of questions which he has answers to by the end. So far I’ve seen the episodes on Nubia and Ethiopia both of which are really stunning and full of information. The one on Nubia, I really enjoyed because it reveals the reasons behind the Nubian empire’s fall something that has been on my mind for a long time. The Ethiopian focus is equally marvelous because of its glimpses into Ethiopian Christianity and architecture. Those

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  Eccentric Yoruba is a really not that strange regardless of what her alias may suggest. She spends her days writing and blogging at Curiosity Killed The Eccentric Yoruba and Dreamwidth.

• Girls’ Sports Day

  Posted: December 8, 2010, 7:00 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  Today is the official Blog to Rally for Girls’ Sports Day hosted by the National Women’s Law Center in celebration of the importance of girls in sports. The idea behind our Blog to Rally for Girls’ Sports Day is simple: “What did you win by playing sports?” You can use this theme to begin [...]

• More on Zheng He

  Posted: December 5, 2010, 5:05 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  Zheng He’s 7th expedition was his last and after years of moving back and forth between the East African coast and China, all contact seized. Some people may look at this and say that the Chinese turned their backs on Africa but if you look at the situation within China in that [...]

• Zheng He’s Star Fleet

  Posted: December 5, 2010, 4:56 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  In 1414 a Chinese fleet heralded by the Muslim Grand Eunuch of the Three Treasures, Zheng He (also known as Cheng Ho) sailed into the western Indian Ocean for the fourth time since his journey to the East began in 1405. In previously, that is between 1405 and 1414, Zheng He and his [...]

• Ancient African Writing Systems

  Posted: October 20, 2010, 7:14 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  I wonder if I am the only one that gets seriously disturbed when I see claims that ancient Africans (excluding the Egyptians of course) were not using any writing systems before Arabs came into the continent bringing Arabic script. I believe such an assumption taken as fact is not only erroneous but is  also one [...]

• Some Images of Funmilayo Ransom-Kuti

  Posted: September 14, 2010, 7:21 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  Yesterday, I came across this album that contains pictures from the private collection of the much loved Nigerian feminist, shero and inspiration to several young girls and women, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. With Sokari’s help, here are some pictures from the album below but make sure to click on the link above to see more pictures and [...]

• The Legacy of Nigerian Feminism

  Posted: September 12, 2010, 1:04 pm by Eccentric Yoruba

  Since I returned to Nigeria earlier this year, I have not met any woman who openly identified as a feminist. It almost seems as though the word ‘feminist’ is blacklisted, that is to say people don’t identify with it regardless of whether their actions and behaviour screams ‘feminist’. Now there may be many reasons for [...]

• The Kunlun Servants & African Merchants in Ancient China

  Posted: September 10, 2010, 12:18 am by Eccentric Yoruba

  In my previous post I mentioned that I had read somewhere that two slaves given as gifts to the a Chinese Emperor by an Arab delegation were the first Africans to enter ancient China. This may have been wrong really because dark-skinned people were talked in China as early as the [...]

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Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes