Saturday 25 August 2007

If Anne Frank had a blog


The name mentioned above might sound unfamiliar. But, if you know who this young girl is, you might already know the world she lived in. A world filled with discrimination, persecution, anarchy and abuse of power. I had read of this young Jewish girl called Anne Frank , and I had the chance of getting hold of the book. The book chronicles the life of Anne Frank and her family in hiding. It is based on real life account of Anne Frank and her Jewish family, who hid in an office building for up to two years, due to Hitler's persecution of Jews. The book which is a recreation of her diary, was to me enlightening to what Jews faced due to Hitler's psychotic hate for a particular group of people. Although, the book is really slow and tiring, since it is basically an account of people living a very boring and monotonous life in a building, it still gives its reader a connection to the characters. Fortunately, I was lucky to tune into the movie which was being shown on TV. It was a black and white movie, in fact, the first black and white movie I have ever watched from the start to end. Surprisingly, even if the movie was in B and W, it still was able to give the audience a very visual version of the book. Also, the movie freedom fighters which is about a class of young and irate teens, who get inspired by their teacher, through the help of the book Diary of a young girl. The students get to meet a real character from the book, and this consequently inspires them.
Anne Frank's diary of her last years, helped and saved these teenagers from the anger they felt inside. Still I wonder what this young lass would write if she had a blog, like most people reading this now.

Saturday 18 August 2007

Porn Palaver

I should have updated my blog earlier, but i have been quite busy working. And working at the orientation office isn't that bad, I get to work wiith new students and enjoy their benefits.
My head right now is in a riot of issues to blog about. But, I'm going to take it slow, bringing out these issues slowly.
If you are very conversant with what's happening in Nigeria, you might have come across this news. It talks about an hausa movie star(you didn't know they made movies right?) who is been accused of being in a porn flick. While, her partner is really not featured in the news, he is rather named as witheld. Typical right? I don't like being tribalistic and generalizing, but most people from the north are plain sexist. Surprisingly, they are proud of it, and do not realize any depravity in this sexist culture. Sexism is present in every part of Nigeria. It is embedded in our culture, even if it differs in its gravity from one place to another. The overall fact is that most tribes in Nigeria put men and women into certain roles. Even if the Yoruba culture is one of the few cultures in Nigeria that is less sexist, as every gender is entitled to the same things, but we still subject each gender to certain roles. You can't really argue that it is bad, as men and women are different in many aspects, and it is only human for us to assign them into roles based on these differences. The west that we use as a yard stick for measuring what is fundamentally right also puts people into roles based on gneder. Even if they are at a certain level of gender equality, they still assign people to certain roles, based on gender
Back to the juicier issue on hausa porn. The women are always blamed in such cases by the Sharia system, while we never hear anything about the men. I have gotten to know a few hausa men, and the way they regard women in general is quite appalling. I remeber when we had a gateman, and he got into arguement with me on the way women caress men who are not their husbands all in the name of movies. As for me who even thought the romance and sex scenes in Nigerian movies are crap. I was surprised to see that he was offended by it. It was through him that I saw my first hausa movie (never trying it again). There were no sex or romance scenes. That didn't bother me, but the fact that if there was, this guy was going to be angry not at the couple but the woman. We have heard of various cases of women accused of adultery or fornication, and are to be stoned to death. And most northerners I have met are in support of it.
Well, guys that's Nigeria for you, it's so complex with many problems. Hopefully, there will be an end to all these nonsense we hear.