mario balotelli

okay, i'm a bit fucked off at this guy. for those who don't know who he is, he plays for inter. he's turned down a chance to play for ghana [his birth parents are ghanaian] and he's holding out for italy, which, for many reasons, probably won't happen.

if it doesn't happen for the world cup, group f in the world cup will be the only group with no black players. [there's an off chance that someone might make the team in paraguay, but it's unlikely.] maybe someone will read this and marcello lippi will have a change of heart. however, this isn't a plea for lippi to include balotelli; quite the opposite, actually. the shameful way in which he's treated his birth parents should be a good enough reason that he should wait until brazil 2014, at least, to play in a world cup.

see, his birth parents left him to live with other people when he was two. in not-western_europe, this is fairly common practice: you leave your kid with other people if you don't think you can take care of them, and they raise him until such point you can take them back. or, if you can't take them back, you at least see them to check in occasionally -- and the checking in goes both ways, actually.

balotelli feels that his birth parents are only after him for his money. this is a touchy one. can't people just be proud? back when i was in the semi-public eye, various relatives of mine who i never knew were saying "yes, he's one of us, even though his mother took him and disappeared and we only saw him maybe once a year, if that, until he was out of high school."

but see, my mother was really big on the restavek thing [restavek is what this system is called in haiti, from "rester avec" meaning, literally "to stay with"]. there were other random children in my house when i was a kid. i thought it was normal. my parents could provide the right atmosphere, so why not?

another undercurrent of balotelli is the whole race thing. he's fairly routinely racially abused at serie a matches. you know, i'm usually really against the racial abuse in football, but after the way he igged his parents for doing what they thought was best, i'm like... good. maybe he needs to hear it. there's an undercurrent that lippi won't give balotelli the nod because italian supporters won't agree with someone black playing for italy. italy is about the only pre-1997 EU country who hasn't had a black player at the national level. even switzerland, with its ridiculous requirements for citizenship, has had black players.

but i think balotelli needs to grow up a bit more before he can get a nod.

the underlying racism in europe is one of the reasons i don't live there anymore. to this day i refuse to speak french in france, even though it's my first language. if i'm speaking french in france, then i'm an african who must be deported. but if i'm speaking english, it's often american enough that people want to practice their english with me. funnily enough, i get the exact same feeling/treatment in south africa. [it's a shame that my system can't take any more attacks by mosquitoes, or else i'd be gone from here, too.]

i was very much tempted to make a podcast of this, in italian, in the event someone tipped him off to this, but no, i'll keep it in english. for now. we'll see.

but where are you from-from?

so, i woke up first thing this morning and saw this article in the guardian. the second i saw it, i just had a major, major laugh.

but she has a valid point.

to be non-white in britain is to have your right to be in britain automatically questioned. it's really annoying. heh. i could actually do something like "s/britain/any european country" and it would still be true. nothing can ruin a night out more than walking home and seeing some cops who promptly say "can i see your papers?" and of course, they will use "tu" instead of "vous" or "usted" or "você". it's times like that when i speak english with an american accent, since i just can't be bothered with such silly racism from the cops.

of course, if you're light-skinned or look "mixed" then it's not as much of an issue. the assumption becomes "oh, your mother is white, your dad is from wherever" and are you are at least treated like a citizen. even more so if it seems that you plan on lightening the line from your choice of partner.

some people i know get really touchy about this, especially non-dark black americans who relocate to europe. god. i often get to the point where an internet discussion gets so heated that i have to remind myself about what they say regarding arguments on the internet*.

in most places i've lived, people have just assumed i'm nigerian. even other nigerians. i'm actually okay with this. it's funny though, even when i was living in senegal, my boyfriend's father called me obasanjo [and our gabonese friend he called bongo].

in south africa, however, to be considered nigerian is very problematic. funnily enough, there's an apartment that i have my eye on that i probably will not be able to rent because even though it's fantastically renovated, it's in a building that is in the process of gentrification, with a large percentage of its current residents being foreign africans, some of whom are troublemakers, resulting in an "all immigrants are horrible" sentiment, some of which also mean regular raids by the police. oh well. i have until october to figure out how i'm going to do things.

anyway, back to the daily grind.

*you know the one -- arguing on the internet is like being in the special olympics: even if you win, you're still retarded.

cape town, south africa's whipping boy...

every so often, there's someone who write a something  about the lack of "racial transformation" in cape town.  after a while, it gets tired and annoying because, well, the black south africans with money are not putting it where their mouth is, and the non-black ones aren't going to put up their money to do it until the black people go first. that's pretty much the real reason. 

in today's episode, we have ryland fisher asking why there are few streets in the cape town city centre named for anti-apartheid figures? of course, there's the normal pro- and anti- cape town crowds have given out their R0.02 about the whole thing. one person actually has a good point in this thread: most central cape town streets are neutrally named -- strand [beach], long, loop, bree [broad], buitenkant [outer bank], buitengracht [outer canal].  riebeeck? not so major. darling? not really.  adderley street is about the only "major" street named for a person in the city center, and even the lower end of that street has its original name of heerengracht. 

granted, there are streets in the city center which are named after prominent afrikaner nationalists: henrik verwoerd, df malan, hans strydom -- but their location in the city center is pretty much reduced to the foreshore -- which is reclaimed land that in reality are basically used for highway on-/off-ramps and parking lots. if you come into cape town via train or most bus routes, you don't even see these streets -- much like most people don't see the streets in the townships named for struggle vets. if you come in via minibus taxi, you do have do deal with oswald parow. but cape town is unique in south africa in that most people do *not* come to the city center via minibus taxi, but by bus and train.

the comments have quickly deteriorated into the normal "cape town is racist" slugfest. this gets really annoying. i really hate defending cape town on this subject. i don't exactly defend cape town, i don't think -- i point out the blinders of the "cape town sucks" crowd in what they say. 

what they want to say is "xhosas aren't well-represented in the heartbeat of cape town." and that's a very true statement. but instead they say "africans" meaning "all black people" and that is very thoroughly wrong. most foreign blacks in cape town live fairly centrally here. as a result, most nights you're more likely to hear yoruba or kimbundu or swahili than you are to hear xhosa or zulu or sesotho.

but of course, foreign black people don't count -- and that is what annoys me about any thread regarding the lack of black "representation" in cape town. 

click on that link and you'll see my comment. cape town [and the country] have much bigger fish to fry rather than the name of a street. someone will ultimately bring up "dignity" and i will pre-emptively respond with "which gives a person more dignity? living on a street named for someone who died in the struggle or working and eating every day?"

reading is fundamental

so there has been an incredible amount of fail since i last posted, much of it having to do with the president and his state of the nation address, but a few other things related to the franco-german axis's complete lack of desire to prop up the euro by saving greece. 

they will end up saving greece, because letting it go down the tubes will mean that the euro will take a nasty knock, which would be great for me, money-wise, as the rand will take a knock right along with it. bah.

so, back to mzansi. last thursday -- the 20th anniversary of mandela's release from prison -- the president made his state of the nation address.  while his wives were there, his girlfriends and babymamas were not. 

the speech he made was typical campaign-speech and had nothing really to write home about. if he tries to enact half of these things, i should really have no trouble getting a teaching gig here once i get my certs in order. if i were still to have this house, i would have no problem teaching in du noon informal settlement [it would be an easy commute]. from almost anywhere in cape town that i'm willing to live, there are no schools in easy commuting distance with large EFL populations. 

oh, wait. there's langa. i suppose i could make that happen. reverse commute, too, if i lived in town [which i would]. langa is also doable from here, in a stretch. hm. 

anyway, the president really struggled reading in english. i nearly mentioned this on crackbook but chose not to. my thought: okay, it's not his first or second language, i should give him a break. and then he read a bit in sotho. same thing. and then he was reading in zulu. oh, god, this man is really illiterate. when he gives extemporaneous speeches in zulu, he's actually quite inspiring. but actually reading from prepared text? i was actually embarrassed for him. eish. 

it makes me want to make sure that people here read and write well that much more.

but we'll see. after earnings season is done, i should have some downtime, even though i'm working on getting more clients now in an attempt to have less downtime. but i definitely need to crank out this TEFL cert so i can get in the classroom. 

Umshini wethu weSex

*translation: our sex machine

that's the title of a blogpost on thoughtleader.co.za -- and it refers to our philandering president. or rather, the philandering south african president. he's not my president; i can't vote for him (and wouldn't even if i could). 

now, jacob zuma has three current wives, and has paid lobola [bride price] for at least two other women. there were two other women who were once married to him: one of them is the current home affairs minister, who divorced him; the other one killed herself to get away from him (if the context of her suicide note is to be believed). 

he also had 19 children, some of whom are from his wives; others are from miscellaneous other women, including the sister of the first judge who was to preside over his rape trial (the judge recused himself) -- and an insider says that there are many, many more out there, including a zimbabwean born while zuma was in exile in mozambique who is trying to get to the family compound but the police aren't having it, even though the police themselves say that he looks just like the prez (the poor bastard; zuma is not easy on the eyes).

we now have an admission from the president that he has recently fathered yet another child -- this one from the daughter of the head of the world cup local organizing committee, who is allegedly one of his closest friends. um, ew? having sex with the child of one of your oldest, closest friends is... nasty. 

this is a man who had unprotected sex with a woman who was hiv+ [oh yes, he knew] and took a shower to wash off the aids. his words. 

oh yeah, he was the president of the aids strategy council at the time. oops.

anyway, he's finally paid damages to the khoza family. isn't that grand of him? 

how about he keeps his dick in his pants and runs the country? apparently that is too much to ask for. 

five years

i was supposed to have left this place a few days ago, but since i didn't --- i've lived in this place for five years, as of today. 

a lot of stuff is going absolutely wrong [starting with no longer having internet access at home, so i can't update the way i want to], but i'll try to find the time to update properly when i can get this all sorted out. 

but, man. five years. eish. 

catching up ; also, why am i here, anyway? i don't have the "africa bug" that people keep talking about.

i will try to make more than one post today, largely because the things i want to talk about are just so different. 

first of all, it doesn't look like india is going to happen. i lost so much money on the sale of my house, and there were a few unexpected costs and expenses that arose, which not only will put india on hold, but also my plans for the uk, as well. it's more and more likely that i will be here through the world cup at least. color me unhappy. 

that said, there is something i really want to put out there with regard to why i'm living in south africa in the first place. the racial attitudes where i attended both high school and university wanted me to live somewhere that black people just weren't expected to be second-class citizens. this killed almost anywhere in latin america, which is kind of sad. i actually like latin america, but having to speak in english to the police in order to show i'm not "a local black person" gets real tiring real quick. both my spanish and portuguese are good enough, still, for me to have lived almost anywhere in brazil or the bits of latin america touching the caribbean. 

secondly, i wasn't going to live anywhere with regular snowfall. sorry, no. the winter of 1993-4 has put me off of snowfall for life. 30cm of snow every wednesday for 10 weeks... as the mtn commercials says, this is not ayoba. washington is tolerable, but not a place to stay forever due to this. london's having two major snowfalls in ten months is starting to worry me. eish. 

thirdly, i was not going to get trapped on any island that i would be trapped on during a hurricane. not only does this eliminate most caribbean islands, but it also eliminates places as seychelles and mauritius. 

fourthly, no mosquitoes. i'm not doing malaria or yellow fever again. this eliminates most of west africa and/or any country where i have to get the yellow fever jab. 

finally, i need to have a favorable exchange rate, and to have a place to live with internet access and easy access to nightclubs. that's it. sadly, this eliminates my preferred choice -- senegal -- as it is eurozone. the west african franc is hard-pegged to the euro, and the last few years have been painful. it had gotten down to nearly 400 cfa to the dollar. god, i can't afford that. horrid. 

and so, this is how i ended up in south africa. it essentially fit all of those criteria. none of this "africa bug" that people keep talking about; it was the only place that met most of my criteria. cape town fit it better than johannesburg did -- cape town doesn't get cold enough to snow, while it has snowed twice in joburg while i've been here, not to mention the beach being down the street from my house -- and so i'm here. 

what i haven't expected is the level of official xenophobia that exists here. it's been so hard to secure a residence permit without marrying anyone or knowing someone or being a dollar millionaire that i'm basically giving up. it's a major reason i'm upset that i'm basically stranded here for another year. 

i'll get over it, but eish. 

going, going...

so, my house is sold. since it sold for far less than i wanted/needed it to sell, i get to live for free in my house until it is technically no longer mine. [this should mean sometime in january] i'll still have to pay my ridiculously high telephone bill and electricity bills, so. 

it looks like i'm going to india [i can fly via doha to amritsar for not that much money] for a bit. for the indian visa you need to provide a birth certificate. for some strange reason, i've been carrying around a copy of my birth certificate for, oh, the last 13 years. serious. [it's easier to get a new passport in a foreign embassy when you've got the birth certificate, i've been told. of course, i have my last two passport numbers memorised as well, so...]

i have a young relative in india who is travelling the world finding himself. i know i could meet him in amritsar and we could go to the taj mahal together. between his hindi and my punjabi, we should be okay. [what? you're black? how did you learn punjabi? um, it's a helpful language to know if you live in birmingham. think west midlands, not alabama.]

speaking of alabama, though, i talked to my dad the other day, and he wants to know when i'm going to start writing this book. forty is staring at me, he says. i don't know why he brought this up because my turning 40 will mean that very shortly he will be 65. i think he wants to read my book, i guess. 

after the trip to india, though, i think that i will be in the uk for a bit, and then i will have to do my sentence in my mother's hillbilly town. ugh. people i know who grew up there and live in dc and chicago and london still say that it's stuck in 1980s race relations. god, i so will not be able to handle this. i think i'm going to be catalog-ordering everything. 

i've decided that i will come back to south africa for my stepson's final year of high school. that's 2012. that's also the olympics, and i plan on being in london for that. [birthday present to myself.] i'll probably be in the uk from may to about mid-august. if he doesn't come up for the olympics, we can just go through his homework on skype to make sure that everything gets done. 

at some point i need some roots. yeah, okay. whatever. this vagrancy thing is really me. i like it. 

it looks like i will be in the united states from june to september next year. i am not happy about this at all, but i suppose i just have to suck up and deal.

[there's a reason that few black people who attend high school in the city in which my mother lives that go on to university actually return to the city. once you get out into the real world, there are few reasons to come back, short of family issues.]

i'm really going to need to get a new driver's licence, as said city has no real mass transit system. [how are you a state capital in the northeast without transit? ugh.] my mother doesn't have a car, but few places in that rinky-dink town actually accept a passport as valid ID for things like buying booze or going into nightclubs. i shit you not.

after 16 years of not *needing* a car [i've had four cars, but i arguably did not need any of them], though, this is going to be a bit of culture shock. a friend of mine from high school is a cab driver in the town though. i might just say "plaz, here's $100, take me everywhere i need to go this weekend."

where i go after that? i don't know yet. i have a few idea, but i'm open to suggestions. south africa is not one of them as it's about to become just another expensive african country -- and if i am going to live in an expensive african country, i want to at least feel welcome *without* waving around an american accent.

i may end up in senegal again. on verra.

obama worship continues.

i've been a bit lax with posting lately -- finding kid a new school, looking for a new place to live, selling my current digs, interviews for teaching, things like that -- but i'm interrupting the silence with the mention that obama has won the nobel peace prize.

my first notification of this was when reading the crackbook feed of someone with whom i went to high school. i was like, lolwut? no, really, this cannot be. but the crackbook feed pretty much summed it up "joe scarborough just said marisa tomei did more to win her oscar than obama did to win the nobel prize". i almost agree with that. he should have said judi dench -- she was only in shakespeare in love for just eight minutes -- but the sentiment is about right. [that said, i don't expect joe scarborough to have seen shakespeare in love.]

then i looked it up, and was just amazed. as much as i don't like slick willie or the head of micro$oft, either of them is, in my opinion, more worthy of having won the nobel prize than barack obama on things accomplished thus far. they say that for the peace prize, unlike the other prizes, you can win for things you are in the process of doing, but given that the nomination deadline was all of 10 days into the obama administration... spending the last 9 months to ride it out to see how it goes was just not on. i'm not saying tsvanigirai should have gotten it [he was also nominated], but like i said, there were a few people who i think were better placed.

personally, i didn't vote for obama. this post explains why, if i must refresh your memory. [for the record, i voted for one of the other black people running for president -- obama wasn't the only one, believe it or not.]

but this is a bit much, a bit soon. it's as if the northern europeans wanted their own person with an "islamic" name to worship in the way that the southern europeans make pilgrimages to fátima. the nobel committee is worshiping at the shrine of hussein. whodathunkit? clinton might have had lewinsky under his desk blowing him, but it seems that obama has an army of well-placed wipers [qv the opening scenes of coming to america].

everyone i know who has met him personally says he's a nice guy, but this barack-means-luck thing is going a bit too far. [in arabic, baraka, from which the swahili word barack derives, is the kind of luck that is like finding a dollar on the street, using that dollar to play powerball and then winning. the chance of that is less likely than being struck by lightning, which is what the hebrew word barak means.]