winter poem

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
© Nikki Giovanni

[source...]

Poem About Light

You can try to strangle light:
use your hands and think
you've found the throat of it,
but you haven't.
You could use a rope or a garrote
or a telephone cord,
but the light, amorphous, implacable,
will make a fool of you in the end.

You could make it your mission
to shut it out forever,
to crouch in the dark,
the blinds pulled tight—

still, in the morning,
a gleaming little ray will betray you, poking
its optimistic finger
through a corner of the blind,
and then more light,
clever, nervy, impossible,
spilling out from the crevices
warming the shade.

This is the stubborn sun,
choosing to rise,
like it did yesterday,
like it will tomorrow.
You have nothing to do with it.
The sun makes its own history;
light has its way.

Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

Slamming Open the Door
Alice James Books

[source...]

RIP Dennis Brutus

Dennis Brutus, one of South Africa’s most influential activists against the apartheid government, has died at the age of 85.
[source...]

Terrible news has just reached my ears. The lion has died. The lion sleeps tonight. Professor Brutus fought the apartheid regime and helped bring down some of its structures, almost single handedly.

He was a poet whose poems written while in prison on Robben island are mainly why this blog exists, and why I write poetry. Letters to Martha, the book is called.

What do you begin to say when the pillar falls? Do you cry for the empty future (Brutus's "the weight of the approaching days") or celebrate his life? Dilemma. I have celebrated his life on this blog and privately in the rooms of my heart. I choose to mourn, now. So, what are we gonna do?

Who's gonna step into his shoes? What will them think, now that he is dead? That we're weaker? That they're stronger? We must mourn no matter what. He will live through his action and through his words, none of which spoke louder than the other.

Let us mourn, then, this man who has done so much for you and for me, and so little for himself. Let us mourn because orphans mourn, and let us hope that because of this departure, we will soon move from mourning to morning.

Their Behaviour

Their guilt
is not so very different from ours:
—who has not joyed in the arbitrary exercise of
power
or grasped for himself what might have been
another’s
and who has not used superior force in the
moment when he could,
(and who of us has not been tempted to these
things?)—
so, in their guilt,
the bare ferocity of teeth,
chest-thumping challenge and defiance,
the deafening clamor of their prayers
to a deity made in the image of their prejudice
which drowns the voice of conscience,
is mirrored our predicament
but on a social, massive, organized scale
which magnifies enormously
as the private dehabille of love
becomes obscene in orgies.
© Dennis Brutus

A Dry White Season

For Don M Banned

It is a dry white season
dark leaves don’t last, their brief lives dry out
and with a broken heart they
dive down gently headed for the earth
not even bleeding.
it is a dry white season brother, only the trees know the pain as they still stand erect
dry like steel, their branches dry like wire,
indeed, it is a dry white season but seasons come to pass

© Mongane Wally Serote

[source...]

For Don M Banned

View more presentations from Andre Oosthuysen.

Merry Christmas everyone

Molimo, re boka Uena
God, we praise you

repeat...

Hoba tsohle, tsohle li entsoe ke uena
Because everything, everything was made by you

Molimo, re boka Uena
God, we praise you

Some melodious vocals here...

Rea U leboha, Molimo
We thank you, God

Ao, Tau ea leloko la Juda
Oh, Lion of the tribe of Judah

Some melodious vocals here...

Ha hona ea tshoanang le Uena ka boholo
No one compares to you in greatness

Halleluja Ntate
Alleluia, Father

repeat to end...

It Denotes

If you walk by
And find me,
Lying on my side, curled
Like a comma
On a street corner
With no blanket
To cover myself
I am not in a coma
It denotes . . .
Stop briefly
And ponder over these times.

If you find me
Lying on my side
Legs stretched and straight
Head and shoulders
Bent forward, towards my loins
Like a question mark
It denotes . . .
Provide explanations . . .
Why certain people
Happen to sleep
On street pavements.

If you find me
Lying on my back
My whole body stretched
At a horizontal attention
like an exclamation mark
It denotes . . .
I am in shock
Do not bother
I will recover.

And when you find me coiled
My head between my legs
Round like a full stop
It denotes . . .
Stop and render first aid
Subject freezing.
© Julius Chingono


Publisher: First published on PIW in a special Zimbabwean edition, 10 June 2008
[source...]
[interview with Julius Chingono...]

"Praise Song" on Colbert

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Elizabeth Alexander
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

African art and literature blogs

Sokari Ekine presents a selection of posts from her favourite commentators on the arts and literature in the African blogosphere.

This is my last roundup of 2009 so I thought I would do something different and cover some of the arts and literature blogs from and on Africa. The blogs fall roughly into two categories – those which publish their own work; and those which review and report on the work of others. As always there are many blogs that started with enthusiasm, but very quickly ended. Few people realise that it takes time and dedication to maintain a blog so I have tried to stick to regularly updated blogs. Here are some of my favourites.
[continue there...]

Read Write Poem prompt...

Repetition is a useful tool. Perhaps one of the finest. Anyone who wishes to make a memorable point uses repetition, be they poet, scholar or person on the street. As poets, we repeat everything and anything: sounds, words, sentences, rhythms and/or ideas.

Some poets use this technique more than others, and a poem I read recently reminded me just how good it can all get. That poem was Albert Goldbarth’s “Marble-Sized Song,” in which he repeats an idea. The overall effect is pleasantly disturbing, like a rubber hammer thumping the same thumb over and over. The effect penetrates, the message reaches in.

Does she love you? She says yes, but really
how do you know unless you undress that easy assertion

It is that very undressing that never leaves. In every possible way, the reader is reminded to take off covers, to get at some underlying truth, something sorely needed and therefore peeled, denuded, uncovered.

A single word, like a lilting rhyme, does the trick as well, as evidenced in Rustum Kozain’s “Kingdom of Rain.” Kozain is one of my favorite poets, and I suggest you read his work at Poetry International and listen to him read it at the same time. He says in the second verse:

At the highest point of the pass
we stop to eat, and he, my father,
this strict and angry, fearsome father,
my father whom I love and his dark face,
he pries open a universe that strangely
he makes ours, that is no longer mine:
a wily old grey baboon, well-hid
against salt-and-pepper rock, eyeing us;
some impossibly magnificent bird of prey
rarely seen, racing to its nest as the weather turns.
And we are up there close I think
to my father’s God, the wind howling
and cloud rushing over us, awed
and small in that big car swaying in the gale.

Dorianne Laux also uses repetition with great expertise, as in “Dog Moon,” a poem in which she describes the moon’s appearance in many different ways. Laux repeatedly depicts the object. Each picture is as forceful as the next, each true about the object under her microscope: It’s “as big as a kitchen clock,” a “manhole cover sunk in the boulevard of night,” a “monocle on a chain,” a “frozen pond lifted and thrown like a discus onto the sky,” etc.

To the prompt for this week: Look through your archive and pick up a poem that doesn’t seem to work. You might have to look over a few. Settle on one that allows you to either do an action repeatedly in different words (as Goldbarth does, going in), or elevate a character or object by repeating the same word(s) (as Kozain does about his father), or discuss something by means of as many appropriate figures of speech as allowable (as Laux and her moon).

If you feel gutsy, go ahead and write a new poem. If you feel gutsier, write three poems, each based on one of the techniques above.

[participate here...]

They feared you

Dear Stephen
You said, “We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man’s mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds.”

They feared you, hence they killed you. The new ideas you were working out jangled their nerves, and you became a problem without a solution, just like we all were. But they couldn’t get the whole black nation to slip on a bar of soap. No. that was reserved for top problems like you.

Why didn’t they just send you to Robben Island, like the other top problems of the day? Perhaps you could have had your own political party, perhaps you could have become president of your land one day. Or vice-president. Or foreign minister. Youth minister would have suited you so!

We miss you, man.

I remember one day thinking how things would have been, had you been around to blog. Biko’s Blog. Biko’s big, bad, black blog. A big, black-green-red weblog emblazoned against our consciousness. Whose nerves would that have jangled then? I wonder what brand of soap they conjured up in their imagination as they declared your death. Sunlight? Lifebuoy? Palmolive? What does it matter? I wonder who made the decision to seal your lips with blows, what in your thinking pushed them over the edge, how many of the top brass watched the fatal beating, what they said to their spouses when they got home (”My God, I killed a man today,” or, “Hi honey — killed another kaffir today.”). They needed your consciousness movement, Steve, in order for them to have a consciousness of their own.

Bantu Steven Biko

BTW, they released ntate Mandela and other prisoners a while ago. He became president, then stepped down to let a younger Thabo take the reins. You remember Thabo, don’t you? Well, you probably know his dad, Govan Mbeki, also on the island prison. Man, so much things to say. South Africa is a real nation, now, with tons of problems like any other real nation. There’s unemployment and joblessness and urban violence. But nobody is being beaten to death and announced accidentally dead in detention, or having committed suicide.

After you died, some looked away, as they had for the very longest time. Most of them now have their guns trained on the ANC government. Paradoxal, huh? But others asked questions: “How did Biko receive the injury that caused his death? Who inflicted it, under what circumstances? Why was he kept naked and chained? Why did the doctors who attended him fail to interpret the undisputed signs of brain injury? Why did the doctors and all the police who were with him from the time he was injured until he died, all fail to notice the wound on his forehead which is so clearly visible in photos taken after his death?”

“And even more: why was the brain-damaged and dying man finally sent off on the long, terrible drive to Pretoria from Port Elizabeth, a big city with adequate hospitals? Why did the police give conflicting evidence, often caught out in contradictory statements or outright lies, none of which could explain the head injury? They had the time and the ability to concoct a story that would, at least superficially, account for the wound on Biko’s head. Why did they not do so? Why was an inquest held, why were details of the way he was treated permitted to be broadcast to the world. Why did the inquest find that no one was responsible for his death?”
No answers. There are never any answers to such things. Unfortunately for us, you were right when you told us that, “These guys - the day they get me - they’ll kill me, because I’ll beat up the guy or make him beat me so that I just die. If my hands are tied, I will spit in his face. I’m not going to answer questions that I don’t want to answer.”


Bantu Stephen Biko was born on 18 December 1946 in Ginsberg, a suburb of King William’s Town.
[More]

Poetry Best Sellers Of 2009

Every week, the Poetry Foundation compiles information from Nielsen Bookscan and puts together lists of the best selling books of poetry. There's a list for books by contemporary poets, a list for anthologies, and a list for books of children's poetry. Surprises abound--it's the only place you're likely to see Jeff Foxworthy and Mary Oliver together, let alone Charles Bukowski and Caroline Kennedy--and this end of the year list is no different.

It's a poetry new year's party a few weeks in advance, celebrating the past year's successes and looking forward to more in 2010.

So here, in order, are the best selling books of contemporary poetry published in 2009:


1. Praise Song For The Day: A Poem For Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration by Elizabeth Alexander

"Say it plain," Alexander wrote in her civic ode, "that many have died for this day." While less than a year later that day seems awfully far off, the much-celebrated and much-maligned poem that marked the occasion ends 2009 as the overall best seller.
_____

2. Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni

Bicycles is a companion of sorts to Giovanni's 1997 breakthrough, Love Poems. In this collection, the poet explores the public and private nature of both love an loss -- her mother's death as well as the 2006 massacre at Virginia Tech, where Giovanni teaches.
_____

3. Evidence by Mary Oliver

Mary OIiver's latest book of poems, her 19th, continues in the poet's signature style: meditative walks and epiphanic moments described with breathless clarity.
_____

4. Endpoint and Other Poems by John Updike

The final book of poems from Updike, who reportedly completed the manuscript just months before he died. His poem "Ex Basketball Player" has long been the most viewed poem on the Poetry Foundation site.
_____

5. In Search of Small Gods by Jim Harrison

The latest collection from the unofficial poet laureate of the American West, In Search of Small Gods takes on nature and aging with Harrison's typical bluntness. It's not "cowboy poetry" by any stretch, but it is poetry by someone who can make more legitimate claims to being a cowboy than most.
_____

6. The Shadow of Sirus (paperback) by W.S. Merwin

When it bestowed its honor on the book, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize committee called Shadow of Sirius, "A collection of luminous, often tender poems that focus on the profound power of memory." Publisher's Weekly called it Merwin's "best in a decade." The paperback edition out from Copper Canyon Press was a hot seller all year.
_____

7. Leavings by Wendell Berry

The latest collection of wise words and back-to-the-land hectoring from Berry, the Kentucky author of fifty books of poetry, fiction, and essays, includes this short gem, called "And I Beg Your Pardon": "The first mosquito: / come here, and I will kill thee, / holy though thou art."
_____

8. Fire to Fire: New and Selected (paperback) by Mark Doty

The 2008 National Book Award winner, Doty's Fire to Fire came out this year in paperback and the poet's avid followers gobbled it up. The collection spans Doty's work from 1987 to the present, including the landmark 1993 release, My Alexandria.
_____

9. Slamming Open the Door by Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno

In 2003, an ex-boyfriend of Leidy Bonanno strangled her to death with a telephone cord. The murder and its aftermath are the subject of this collection of poems from Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, Leidy's mother. David Kirby, in the New York Times, said of the collection, "The note of sorrow dominates the book, but it isn't a one-note book."
_____

10. Face by Sherman Alexie

This is Alexie's first book of poems since 2000, and it didn't disappoint fans of his poetry, his fiction, or his young adult novels. Alexie remains caustic and funny, despite becoming a kind of elder statesmen for contemporary Native American writing. "I'll still resist convention; / Yes, I will disprove the professorial contention / That a serious man is not supposed to be funny."
_____
[source...]

More minaret issues

"It was scandalous that the Swiss voted for the ban. Now we have the support of all the far-right parties across Europe. This is shameful."

Guillaume Morand, a Swiss businessman and non-Muslim who has built a minaret above his company building to protest his country's decision to ban the architectural features.
[more here...] and [some more here...]

[First post]

Sad, really...

Ten poems to read before you die

From The Rushes has posted a list of ten poems to read before you die. I was immediately tempted. But let's meme it, shall we?

I'll do my list, here, and if you care to share with us, do yours at your place, but leave a link here so we may visit and read and discover. Here's my list, in no particular order:

1. You, Therefore, by Reginald Shepherd
2. Epitaph, by Dennis Scott
3. Dark August, by Derek Walcott
4. Stars of Stone, by Rustum Kozain
5. Those Winter Sundays, by Robert Hayden
6. Roses and Revolutions, by Dudley Randall
7. A Girl, by Ezra Pound
8. Confession, by Geoffrey Philp
9. Feeling Fucked Up, by Etheridge Knight
10. Blood, by Naomi Shihab Nye
    

Walcott wins professorship

Nobel laureate chosen by Essex University after smear campaign cost him Oxford job
By Sarah Cassidy, Social Affairs Correspondent

Saturday, 12 December 2009

Derek Walcott, a Nobel laureate, withdrew from the race to become Oxford's poetry professor after a smear campaign linked to his rival Ruth Padel

A Nobel laureate has been named professor of poetry at Essex University after he was forced to pull out of the race for a similar post at Oxford following a smear campaign against him.

Derek Walcott, the internationally acclaimed Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and artist who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992, will give a series of lectures and workshops at the university's campus in Colchester.

In May, he withdrew his candidacy for the Oxford poetry professorship when details of two sexual harassment claims made against him became a dominant theme of the campaign.

Academics and graduates eligible to vote in the election were anonymously sent a lurid dossier accusing Walcott of being a sex pest. It recounted a sexual harassment claim made against Walcott, 79, when he taught at Harvard in the 1980s. Another harassment allegation against the poet dating from 1996 in Boston also re-emerged.

The Oxford election descended into farce when the eventual winner, Ruth Padel, was forced to quit nine days later when she was implicated in the smear campaign.

Professor Walcott, who is often decribed as the greatest West Indian writer and intellectual, divides his time between St Lucia and New York and does not often travel to the UK. He will arrive in April for student workshops and a public reading at Essex University, which gave him an honorary degree in September 2008.

[continue there...]

Minaret questions

"The peoples of Europe are welcoming and tolerant: it's in their nature and in their culture. But they don't want their way of life, their mode of thinking and their social relations distorted."

French President NICOLAS SARKOZY, defending Switzerland's ban on building minarets
[source...]

That's what president Nicolas Sarkozy said. I say: But the European will distort the way of life of others, won't they? The mode of thinking of others, and the social relations of others. And that's perfectly alright.

Who wants their shit distorted, anyway? Was the African happy when the European launched the colonisation campaign and cut Africa up?

Why is the European scared when Moslems build a prayer house? How many churches did the European erect outside his borders? Do you remember anyone complaining about the spires being too high, too dominating, too distorting. Or was that because even then, the European Christian had the firepower to extinguish any complaints?

The immigrant goes where life is easier and more accessible, when his own mode of existence has been compromised. The coloniser went to other places not because his mode of existence was in jeopardy, nor because life was easier there, but because he wanted to conquer and to exploit and to subdue. Full stop. And he did.

Ruth Padel gives interview

Ruth Padel sat down for an interview with Aida Edemariam of The Guardian, her first since she resigned her post as Oxford Professor of Poetry after it was revealed that she had alerted the media to allegations of sexual harassment against her main rival, St Lucian poet Derek Walcott. Here are some excerpts, with the link to the entire interview below:

More revealing is the way she describes suggestions, a year ago, that she be considered for the post of poet laureate. (“I would like to start a steady, syncopated drumbeat for Ruth Padel as the next laureate,” wrote Bel Mooney in a letter to the Observer, describing Padel’s achievements, then, betraying the embattled elitism of a small world, “she would bring vivacity to the ancient honour, as well as being tough-minded enough to withstand the philistines.”)
[continue there...]

Poem for Barack Obama

YES

we can he said, and something in his voice
drew listening silence to it like a day
draws history; a gathering of hope and hurt
within the human music of his words.
This is what language asks of us, to hear
the truth’s full rhyme; and why the millions came
to where he spoke, the air they breathed a canvas
for his living speech. We read his lips: a prayer
for bitter faithlessness to learn, a blessing, vow,
a spell which banished lies and greed and harm
into the endless, generous sky. In his voice,
global and intimate, the voices echoed back –
a black woman’s insisting on her seat,
another man’s who said he had a dream.

© Carol Ann Duffy

[source...]

Poem of the week: "Feeling fucked up"

To me, this poem is effective for several reasons. Perhaps the first is that it’s spoken, by which I mean it uses language that sounds normal and natural, and un-poetic, which is always a good thing for a poem to strive for. “Lord, she’s done left me, done packed up and split” is something you might hear in a bar, or at a summer cookout. And Etheridge takes it down that way line by line, till he says, in lines 6,7 and 8:

drove
her away made her take her laughter and her smiles
and her softness and her midnight sighs—

which immediately sounds different, like something from a textbook of nineteenth century poetry. I have striven (and continue to do so) in my attempts at poetry, to shed poetic language in favour of my language, of how the people of Lesotho and southern Africa speak. Trouble is, most of us start off thinking that in our poems we have to speak in a certain, artificial way. Not so. Your way of speaking is usually best for your poems.

Etheridge then launches his assault again in the second stanza.

I like this mix of now and then, as far as language is concerned, and I like the meaningful things he "fucks" in the second stanza. Fuck Coltrane is a drastic attitude to take, when you know the man and his music. Fuck Fidel and Nkrumah, too. Oppressed peoples looked up to those two in a big way. The mention of Joseph, Mary and Jesus cries out the desperation of the speaker. I hope it does not hurt anyone, as I doubt Mr. Knight meant it to. Although the poem is about the fact that she done packed up and split, it is infused with the political and philosophical turmoil of the 1960s and 70s.

The last two lines do it again. They tone it all down, and remind us that this is all about her, and that without her my soul can’t sing, that without her my soul is ugly. Great poem. Lyle Daggett from A Burning Patience (great blog) says:

I have many recollections of Etheridge sitting at a table in that basement, or on the steps outside, letting his mind meander through talk about poetry and reading poems out loud. He was one of the best out-loud readers of poetry I've ever encountered, his calm deliberate voice feeling its way around the syllables and words and lines with way fingers will quietly curl around a stone.
[source...]

How I would have loved to hear Etheridge read!


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Meet the authors at David Krut this Saturday

This December David Krut Bookstore offers a novel shopping idea. Their sumptuous spread of literary and creative works will be complemented by an eclectic conversation with writers and poets hosted by performer and writer Phillippa Yaa de Villiers.

The programme includes poets Makhosazana Xaba, Myesha Jenkins, Natalia Molebatsi and Antonio Lyons, as well as novelists Zukiswa Wanner, Louis Paul Greenberg, Siphiwo Mahala and Jo-Anne Richards. These accomplished writers will be reading and talking about “giving” – it is a “festive event for the season of generosity”.

After feasting on cerebral food, shoppers can saunter through the olive and lemon trees to Canteen, which will satisfy more corporeal desires.

David Krut Publishing will also be sharing their wares at the Design Indaba Expo from 26 to 28 February 2010.

Date: 5 December 2009
Time: 11 for 11:30am to end with book signings at 1.00pm
Address: David Krut Bookstore @ Arts on Main, corner of Main and Berea Rd, Doornfontein
Tel: 011 334 1209

Happy birthday, ntate Sobukwe!

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe was born on 5 December 1924

Cotton Socks

I wished we'd run the Soweto Marathon together
just as we did the 702 Walk.
Although I knew you wouldn't come
I still bought two pairs of cotton socks
just as you did last year. ... Afterwards I massaged my feet
rubbing in the foot cream you helped buy.
Then I lay naked on my bed,
the second pair of cotton socks cuddling my feet.

© Makhosazana Xaba

[source...]

Another poem by Ms Xaba: Come

Her latest book: Tongues of their Mothers

World Cup buzz: Sloppy journalism

MAGNIFICENT: Lesotho’s Thaba-Bosiu [Qiloane] Photo: Tladi Khuele PICTURE PERFECT: Maputo Photo: Sydney Seshibedi MAIDENS : Swazi reed dance Photo: Simphiwe Mbokazi South Africa and her neighbours are ready and able THE word is all over the place, from Soweto to Gugulethu to KwaMashu to Seshego to Siyabuswa and even the small towns and villages too. The buzz word is 2010 and how one can benefit from converting two-bedroom homes into Bed and Breakfasts. People are filled with hope. Small and big businesspeople all want to cash in on the soccer showcase. At a macro level, multi-million stadiums are being built and others are being upgraded and money splurged on almost everything to do with 2010. This upgrading of infrastructure, from hotels, B&Bs, roads, rail and air transport, bridges, airports, communication facilities, easing of travel restrictions by relaxing visa requirements and a battery of carefully designed travel packages are taking place in South Africa. But South Africa is not the only country in the grip of this soccer, economic and tourism euphoria. Neighbouring countries are doing exactly the same. Owners of two-bedroomed houses in Maseru in Lesotho are exploring possibilities as are people in Mbare in Harare, Gaborone in Botswana, Maputo in Mozambique and Manzini in Swaziland. In the hope of benefitting from the soccer jamboree, neighbouring countries are also in a state of readiness to host visitors. Realistically, countries that stand to benefit the most from this soccer feast are those closely sharing a border with South Africa, mainly Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique, and to a certain extent Lesotho and Swaziland. The big question is, what can they offer and are they ready? South Africa is rich in mineral resources, has the biggest economy in Africa and is certainly the economic powerhouse of the region. Its tourist attractions include the famous Table Mountain in Cape Town, Kruger National Park – home to the Big 5 that fascinate visitors from abroad. Each province has its own attractions . The country is accessible by air, road and sea. Its financial institutions are rated among the best in the world. Its accommodation, ranging from B&Bs in Soweto and other townships, to five-star hotels in Sandton and other leafy suburbs, is huge. As the host country, South Africa certainly stands to gain the most. But competition for tourist dollars in neighbouring countries is certainly a reality. Zimbabwe, for example, in October, through its Zimbabwean Tourism Authority, hosted a successful tourism indaba called Shanganai- Hlanganani that was linked to trade that attracted 44 deal makers, 17 international media houses and trade agreements estimated at billions were concluded. The unity government of Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tswangirai has brought both economic and some measure of political stability to that country. This, coupled with the introduction of multi-currencies, has been a relief to the population and tourists. Its financial sector is also stabilising, with almost all the banks back on their feet, offering good financial services. Though ZTA admits that its infrastructure, such as its airline, roads, accommodation and communications need serious recapitalisation if it wants to compete seriously for overseas currency come 2010, the mood seems to be that they are ready to host two or more visiting soccer teams. A flight from Harare to Johannesburg takes about one and a half hours. Tourists will be able to fly to Harare, spend a day or two there and not both since as they can use the dollar or rand to pay for anything from accommodation at the Rainbow Towers, a cold beer at the Harare Sports Club or just chill at Hwange, Kariba Dam and the famous Victoria Falls. And contrary to popular opinion, according to the ZTA, the Zimbabwean side of Victoria Falls is open for business. In fact, South African Airways has two daily flights there. And according to the authorities, South African travel agencies and South African Airways are responsible for 75 percent of visitors to Victoria Falls. There is also a connecting flight from Johannesburg to Harare, and then to Victoria Falls. So you see, that country is very ready to cash in on dollars, Euros, pounds and all other international currencies. Mozambique, just like Zimbabwe, will certainly compete for foreign currency too . It is one hour by air from Johannesburg, is politically stable, has beautiful beaches, sea access, accommodation is top class, including the famous Polana Hotel, countless beach cottages and also a vibrant night life. In fact, I was angry when I could not make a trip to that country with friends recently who returned with exciting accounts of their night-life experience in Maputo. Botswana, with its economic and political stability, will also certainly attract many tourists as will Swaziland with its famous Reed Dance and Lesotho with its good reputation for peace and the famous Thaba-Busio [Thaba-Bosiu] Mountain. I was there not so long ago and as I climbed this mountain [Then you should know that the one in the photo isn't Thaba-Bosiu, but Qiloane], where Swazi kings [Basotho Kings, Swazi kings have no business being buried in Lesotho] are buried, I felt proudly African. So, is the promised wealth in the region in 2010 a reality or just a dream? I believe the southern tip of Africa is ready, willing and able. [source...]

El Numero Uno

{An original Caribbean fable with music about a little pig captured by two greedy Beasts who threaten his island with starvation. If he is to save the day, El Numero Uno will need big-big help from his neighbours – and a magical soup!}

presented by:
Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People

Starts: January 31, 2010
Ends: February 25, 2010

By Pam Mordecai

Directed by ahdri zhina mandiela

World Premiere!

Recommended for Grades 3-8, Ages 8andup

An original Caribben tale about a little pig captured by two greedy Beasts who threaten his island with starvation. If he is to save the day, El Numero Uno will need big-big help from his neighbours - and a magical soup!
Tickets:
Adults - $20
Child/Youth/Senior - $15
(service charges extra)

For more information contact:
Phone: 416-862-2222

Address:
165 Front Street East
Front St E and Sherbourne St
Map to this event

TTC: Take the #504 King Streetcar to Sherbourne Street. Exit and walk south to Front Street.

www.lktyp.ca


email: online@lktyp.ca