Is Africa Blessed or Cursed?

Is it really true that the U.S.A, India, China, Europe, Argentina, New Zealand can fit into Africa? And that Zambia, Zimbabwe and the DRC have the potential to feed the world?

Someone saw the River Congo for the first time and took long to realize it was a river because of its massive width. I want to see it. And the Niger. And Zambezi. At least I’ve seen the Nile.

Is it true that the DRC has 90% of the world’s cobalt? Is there any country in Africa which has no mineral?

Is it true that Asia and Africa were the first homelands of Judeo-Christianity?

My Favourite Radio Ad Voices

I love these Radio Ad Voices:

1. Hakeem the Dream, Capital FM
Hakeem has a melodious and lively voice that is pleasant to the ears.

2. Dr. Mitch Egwang (Uncle Mitch)
Uncle Mitch has a fast talking and humorous voice. (By the way, even when he is speaking French, Luo and Luganda. Not that he has done adverts in these languages.)

3. DJ Ronnie, Capital FM
DJ Ronnie’s mellow, smooth, deep and powerful baritone voice makes you feel safe.

4. Ernest Wasake, Vision Voice
Ernest (Dennis and Esquire’s brother) has a clear, cultured and silver-tongued voice that grabs your attention and makes you picture a man whose looks would turn heads. If you asked me, he sounds more like Dennis than Esquire because the latter’s voice has some tranquillity in it similar to that of a modest man.

5. Hussein Lumumba
Hussein’s voice is slightly nasal. Like someone with a cold and yet at the same time, it’s with clear pronunciation. He still sounds smooth when he speaks French, Swahili and Lingala in normal conversation.

6. Roger Mugisha, KFM
Roger has a bright and breezy voice that lifts up your spirits on a gloomy day.

7. "Are you ready?" voice behind the Wyclef Jean concert advert if it is not no.4's

8. The voice behind the MTN kwata cash advert is like no.1’s

The 'Obama Times'

Imagine me as a radio news reader, a news tale before me on paper, complex words in teensy-weensy print for the Obama Times.

Create mentally a picture of my face book friend whom I have never met and who owns the Obama Times, turning over pages where I should read since I seem to use so much effort in reading the long sentences. Then I stumble on the word Tsvangirai and pronounce it like I have heard it on the news chang-girr-IGH (-ch as in church; -ng-g as in finger; -irr as in mirror; -igh as in high). The pronunciation of this word has stirred up public and media interest, inside and outside the BBC because of different opinions of how the Shona -tsv cluster should be pronounced in English.

Then I awake.

I send a text message to my friends about the dream and one of them responds, 'Maybe there is something to the dream. Email your face book friend about it and see.'

However, after flipping my mind through the dream, I realised that dreams can be a sham.

There should have been a teleprompter so that I would not need to look down at the print. At least a teleprompter would have helped me appear to have memorized the speech and so speak spontaneously, smoothly, without any hesitation or mistakes.

It should have been a simple, brief and easy to read news report with short sentences that could easily be read with a single breath.

The font should have been average sized and the words written in the present tense since it was broadcast news. This would give the report more of an "action" feel and add more drama.

Names should have been in phonetic spelling so that they are pronounced correctly. For example pronunciation would be pruh-nun-si-AY-shuhn.

There was nothing to this dream. Besides, I am sure there is no newspaper called the Obama times.

Omega

Let me brag today. After all, it is not everyday that I have reason to do so.

My Dolls & Photos
She is one of the few people who met my dolls Sarah and Tina. I still have that photo Daddy took of Noelle (my sis), her, Alpha (her brother) and I holding Tina and my sister’s doll Kate. The photo was taken the day Daddy bought Tina and Kate.

I even have a photo of Alpha and her when she was barely a year old and used to call me Thiamali - a name that her Mom still calls me by sometimes. At the time that this photo was taken, her Mom was a nurse at Kaimosi Friends Hospital in Western Kenya and my Mom a teacher at Kaimosi Girls High School. However, her stay in Kenya was short-lived as her family returned to Uganda a year later.

I have another photo of Aunt Trudy, Clovis, Noelle and I taken at the Ambassadors of Hope children’s home in Luweero when she was twelve.

Her Early Songs & Humour
We always loved it when she and Alpha visited us. She was only three years old but I looked up to her in spite of the big age difference between us. We all loved her singing voice and her nursery rhymes made us happy. I remember us asking her to sing E je lino over and over again even when we could not speak Luganda. We would often ask her to recite:

Rat-a-tat-tat! Who is that?
Only grandma’s pussy-cat.
What do you want?
A pint of milk.
Where is your money? In my pocket.
Where is your pocket? I forgot it.
Oh, you silly pussy-cat!

I used to love how she sang with the African Children’s Choir. I still remember Lee William’s Jesus is Alive and well which she sang at many music concerts in various churches when she was about ten years old. I liked the way she sang ‘he he he he’ after this part:

Right now he's sitting on
right hand of the father
pleading for you, you, and I
Tell for me and everybody you see
Jesus is alive and well

She is Omega Bugembe Okello…

I remember that whenever she would be asked to introduce herself, she would say, “Nze Omega Bugembe Mukyala Subi...Alexi!" The musical lilt she would use after the pause was hilarious and to think that she was only three years old! There is a story behind how she got the ‘Mukyala Subi Alexi’ name but I do not remember it.

She taught my sister how to dance maganda when my sister was in P.6 and she was in P.4.
Nowadays
Aunt Trudy was in Uganda a few months ago and she told me that Omega is putting on a benefit concert on August 29, 2008 at the Serena Hotel in Kampala to aid the maternity ward for Mulago Hospital. The proceeds from the concert will go directly to purchasing surgical beds for high-risk pregnancy women who often need surgery in order to save mother and baby.

For more information about her read:
http://www.omegaworldmusic.com/
http://kabiza.com/OutofAfrica-Too-Ezine-Omega-May2007.htm
http://www.jamati.com/online/music/omega-bugembe-okello-the-singing-health-advocate
http://www.ugpulse.com/articles/daily/Entertainment.asp?id=662
http://allafrica.com/stories/200707091357.html
http://simplelight.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/new-cd-from-omega-okello

Why Dogs are Amazing

Yesterday, at the Wandegeya traffic lights crossing, I noticed a stray dog beside me. I was amused at the way it stopped patiently with the rest of the pedestrians and crossed the road together with them at the right time.

That left me thinking, ‘Was the dog just copying what the pedestrians were doing or was it aware of the dangers of crossing the road while vehicles were still moving?’

According to research by Friederike Range and Ludwig Huber, of the University of Vienna, and Zsofia Viranyi, of the Eötvös University in Budapest, dogs like human infants, do not simply copy an action they observe, but adjust the extent to which they imitate to the circumstances of the action.

Normally, dogs prefer to use the mouth when faced with a task of opening a container by pulling a rod. However, in the study, a female dog was trained to open the box with her paw. When the other dogs observed the female's action, they imitated it in order to get the food. However, the dogs imitated selectively. They used their mouths instead of their paws for manipulating the rod when they had seen the demonstrating dog using her paw while holding a ball in her mouth. However, when the demonstrating dog's mouth was free, the dogs imitated her action completely and used the paw themselves.

The dogs sensed that the female dog was unable to use her mouth because she had a ball in it so they chose the easier, more preferred way to achieve the goal. But when the mouth was free, there seemed to be a reason for the demonstrating dog not to use her mouth, and so the dogs imitate the action.

Do you have anything to share about what dogs can do?

I saw a documentary yesterday on NTV on many amazing things about dogs especially their sense of smell. I remember my late father narrating to my mother and I a story he had heard on BBC about this dog that kept sniffing, snuffling and becoming agitated whenever he sat at his master’s leg or something. Indeed, when she checked with her doctor, it turned out she had cancer.

ScienceDaily 27 April 2007. 22 May 2008 http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2007/04/070426145103.htm

Photo by www.petplanet.co.uk/.../news_story13_old2.htm

Life’s Woes

I can’t sleep, 

My thoughts deep 

Stunning, shocking, 

How all sin, 

Even the saint. 

I can’t sleep, 

With qualms deep, 

Hush-hush tales, 

Not to trail. 

I can’t sleep, 

On loads deep, 

Feeling sadness, misery 

For life’s tests, 

For life’s woes. 

I can’t sleep, 

I can’t alienate, 

Life’s woes.

What Makes Him Wise

He loves to be captain,
To take risky commissions,
Ponder all solo,
Solo finding life that will keep him lured,
For passion’s in being lured.
He’s useful here,
He’s useful there,
Then conducts lone speeches for later.
It is called relevance
It is called astuteness
To think of next
To think of dawn.

Inspired by his post.