A chilling African perspective

Yesterday I translated into Dutch a poem by an African poet and learned about the almajiri... I must admit I have also been thinking about the 200 girls boko haram took and cannot possibly imagine their life, if they are still alive... We know also about the horror of Baga.
A friend of mine, Arlette, has lived in Senegal for almost nine months and she told me about the marabouts forcing the young boys to beg... So I recognised the cruel fate of the boys in the poem... I guess it is a sad Pan-African image. I hope that once the translations are published in Dutch that tons of people will get the education I am getting by doing this work. I gain a deeper understanding. The news isn't just a snipped of news but another injustice, another violence from one human being to an other.  I learned from a friend that in Nigeria, the casualty figures from the past 72 hours run as high as 2000 dead and countless injured, several people now refugees in their own country. I guess this is what the mass murderers want, for peaceful people to be speechless. It is obvious that Europe is in shock at the barbarity of this outrage in Paris. The far right xenophobes will make some gains no doubt and there will be repercussions on otherwise innocent people, that is the human reaction to outrage. What I hope emerges from the ruins of the world as we knew it to be, is a better awareness of the evil now roaming the world. It seeks to kill inquiry, humour, pleasure and dissent. It has no sense of proportions for, if the four terrorists in Paris had access to an atom bomb, we all better believe that they would have used it. The same is true for the ones in Nigeria and Sudan.
That reason and balance will win eventually, my friend is sure of. It may take some time but reason will prevail. My friend has gone back to reading Karl Popper (The Open Society and its Enemies) and is actively campaigning for a change of government (the  president went to a wedding this weekend).
The poem I referred to:

In Sokoto‘s kitchens, ecstasy staggers the pulse
With rare legumes, ricemeal, cabbages and roasts.
Outside, suya, peppered over with panache in the false
Light of paraffin lanterns where every evening boasts

Fresh kills and the kindness of instant noodles
Served garnished with lettuce and a choice of eggs.
A youth, almajiri, receives a serving of tea and huddles
With the waiting troop, all standing on spindly legs

And their chatter continues into early morning
Going over happenings and also boko haram.
There is no consensus, a few cigarettes burning,
And each hoping to be the famous last Imam.

One does, out of that horde, become
The priapic king of that harmattan evening.
He won‘t tell the story; he has made it home,
His store of memories, his final swan-offering.

A desert‘s diaspora whispers in scattered gardens
Where plants like kept women swoon with watering
And the aseptic present bearing dark burdens
Conspires to kill the renegade seed. There is muttering

In the wake of vanished arbors, the plains
Playing dead like Sahara‘s volcanoes. Windborne
Charms are balms to the earth‘s perpetual pains,
Her stripping and rape, her hope forlorn.

Dress rehearsal...

I have been mulling over the dress rehearsal for the bachelor's degree dance in the Singel. Two renown choreographs and the people from Ultima Vez helped the young dances on their way. As usual WIM Vandekeybus works with power, the strength of the body and complex relationship body mind and body. I must admit that I was deeply impressed with what the dancers gave to the audience. Serialize movements, falls, shots punctuating the the movements, impressions of a mass grave on stage... To me the first part was the War in Syria... the randomness of life and death. Of course a work of art, and it definitely was one, is open to different interpretations and so I felt free to accept my feeling about the performance as a  possible reading. The physical hardness of the movements and the scenes are going to one's core. There is a couple for instance where the girl wants to touch the boy. He says: Ne touche pas! Don't touch... and hits her on the arm. She reaches, he hits her, in a rhythm that is chilling. She starts hitting back... What an insight in the escalation of violence...

To me the first part was an anti war statement and the second part a suggestion to think about personal violence.

There was a welcome break and  under the guidance of Emanuel Gat. Totally different:more romantic, more gentle it seems... Yet the girls, the woman are thrown around, thrown away by the male dance partners... Women behaving doll-like, strangely surreal.

Worthwhile. two dancers got hurt and might not dance on opening night.

Thanks for making me feel and think.

Kathe Kollwitz and her contemporary artists

 Jan is architect and my preferred partner to visit exhibitions. He doesn't only look at the objects shown but notices the relationships of the objects to their environment and comments on how they are placed. The statues on the black pedestals are by Kollwitz, those on the natural wood are by 19 contemporaries some working in different styles. Avant-garde as in the work of Jean Arp, piètas as the one by Ivan Mestovic' a sculptor whose work I have admired because of the large Prophet - preacher in Split in Croatia, Emiel Jespers, Zadkine....

 Kathe Kollwitz's son fell in Flanders fields on the first day of World War I. She then created the statue 'The grieving parents'. And spoke out against war and violence. Many of the pieces shown at the Bream Pavilion in the Middelheim museum in Antwerp are militant. The artists show us that war brings suffering, that it is filled with mass and personal  suffering. This composition of artists and work shown is a true pacifist statement.  I find the small statue with women and children wave at husbands and fathers who are going to war very moving. The women had to keep the family together, feed the children, work and make money... They also lost their jobs after the war because work was for returning soldiers in all war torn countries. I love the light in this pavilion. The war in sculptures is to me deeply moving and a fitting reminder to work for peace. Some sculptors created work in the trenches with the material the enemy fired at them applying all their craft to turn battle field objects into civilian objects. Another great exhibit at the Middelheim museum.