senduQ

mind entropy of the ethiofrican

Flattery: Fast-tracking Success?

1 February, 2010 | 8 comments | Category: Relationships, Senduq- Semhal, Uncategorized, iPerceive, nostalgia.personal, thinking...

photocredit: tsepeaces

by senduQ blogger Semhal

Schmoozers or Ass-kissers …most of us have been drawn to such crowds at some point in our lives. I don’t know how they do it…become magnets of long lines of insecure ambitious people like myself (every now and then) who get convinced that success is only for those who are expert artists of sucking up. I have to admit, I can be too nice to people at times especially when I’m dealing with people seated higher in the job hierarchy.  But I have recently become more self-aware of this habit especially after I received some veiled criticisms about this from my dad who noticed my tendency to “worship” my boss. This newfound awareness  convicted me every time I gave one of my fake smiles or exaggerated compliments.

So as a new year resolution, I decided to work my way out of this habit even if it means risking the climb up the ladder in the job market. It was a conscious decision that I made. One of the big steps in accomplishing my goal was to choose my acquaintances carefully because you know what they say “evil company corrupts good habits.” I don’t want to boast but I was doing pretty well until…

A few weeks ago, I made a trip to Atlanta for a conference. There were many esteemed people in my field of work, people I would love to work for after graduation. I was fortunate enough to meet some great people who are doing incredible work all around the world. Unfortunately, I also crossed paths with the overt schmoozers: people who would say and do anything to be part of the “IT” crowd. They talk like they have “your back” but they are neither your friends nor confidants. They are polite and politically correct and have the appearance of doing everything effortlessly: but when they get a chance, they will sell you out at any price. I felt obliged to join their group since the person I came with had quickly befriended them (ye habesha yilugntaye:) ~ politeness). So I listened to their gossip about who has more funding or who has more publications or who gave who a face …all day

After 12 hrs of flight and 8 hours of gossip, I was ready to retire for the night so I respectfully declined their invitation to accompany them to the bar. That’s when one of the girls said “You know it is who you know not what you know. If you are not going to come and hang out, you might as well not have come.”

I would normally scratch that, roll my eyes and go on my merry way but I could not help but wonder if there was some truth in this. In today’s society has the value of hard work been compromised? Are people losing faith in the value of hard work? When I think about people who have made significant differences in the world, they have always walked alone, they were even outcasts. Think about Jesus and how he was out-casted by his people, yet isn’t it extraordinary that the life of Jesus thousands of years after his birth should move a sane soul this way? Why do we then roll our eyes to the heavens when we come across people who walk in paths different than ours? I mean let’s get real people…everything is earned…you cannot learn French in 40 hours or calculus in one afternoon no matter how much you click with the teacher. It doesn’t matter if you have the most intelligent conversation with the CEO, at the end of the day if you do not know what you need to know, you may get the job but you can’t keep it. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against networking: you cannot make a difference in anyone’s life if you lock your self in your room all day. But the foundation of success is your ability and confidence to do the work well: At the end of the day it IS what you know not who you know.

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Opposite Sides of the Border

2 November, 2009 | 4 comments | Category: Africa, I.dentity, for.the.love.of.words!, i.mmigration, nation & ethnicity, poetry

by guest writer: Liya

cracked earth

Separated by our connection
Divided by common ground
Enmity no longer needs to be understood
Now accepted the way love once was
From opposite sides of the border
We mirror each other’s DNA
Still found soaking the Earth on both sides
Almond eyes traced in black
Hiding beneath the shadow of
A cliff-like brow
Without words we do not know our enemy
Let us sit in silence
For peace to dare return
Let us make sound only to celebrate
Ilil belu be ye-and-andachu qwankwa (rejoice in each of your languages)
Isn’t it beautiful when joy transcends
Like praise from broken hearts to
Silenced lips
Like music to the Heavens

photo: dreamyourealive

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Murky

16 September, 2009 | 4 comments | Category: I.dentity, for.the.love.of.words!, madness!, nostalgia.personal, poetry, thinking...

fallgreenflybird
by tpeace

floating above
the little balls
solid insolubles
swimming in water
young heroine
skims small solid things
which don’t exist
but burst and smear
a river before her eyes
a world clear as murk
shallow water drowning her mind
sticking her in this dazzling scene
of the real unreal
seething & foaming
subjective froth of a barely
objective reality
draping her
this little bird
whose eyes swim within two-odd decades
lost in the grey ugliness
until she grips hard
what fill the empty cervices & corners of her heart
from the edge of the green hill
she jumps
shrieking all the way down
praying to God that she can
fly skimming the edge of the waterfall
knowing only one single thing -
that she has to jump

—————————————

“I gotta free my mind. I gotta chase my soul. I gotta be myself. I gotta find my glow!”

Ayo’s ‘Slow Slow (Run Run)’
[she calls herself a Nigerian-German gypsy which is all too wicked on its own.]
 

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Kill Aid!

8 July, 2009 | 16 comments | Category: Africa, Current Affairs, Senduq - Nani, book snip, peace & conflict

 

Kill Aid! No more funny paper

(picture courtesy of agent_of.chaos)

by Nani

Finally! Phew! The debate has started… It’s a long time coming. Many Africans have often raised this issue among themselves; it’s a well-known secret.

Aid, as we know it today, is it hurting or helping Africa? Does it really reach the people it’s meant to? Does it even reach the continent at all, or is it true that it simply goes from one bank account to another, from the West’s to the Swiss belly of the African elite? … Well there are enough cases to purport that Aid has very rarely achieved its objective – i.e. to alleviate poverty, achieve long-term economic growth, and create jobs. Think of a country that owed exactly the amount of money its president had tucked away in the Swiss banks. No, Aid as it is implemented in Africa today has never, and will not ever achieve prosperity.

My first encounter with the now famous and rightfully acclaimed economist Dambisa Moyo was when I watched her interview on Charlie Rose of March 25th. I accidentally run into the interview online a day or two later while I was aimlessly wandering on the web. That same night I bought Dead Aid from Amazon.

This book is an absolute MUST read. Niall Ferguson who wrote the forward for the book gives us the perfect reason for why we should seek out and read the book, “The simple fact that Dead Aid is the work of an African black woman is the least of the reasons why you should read it. But it is a good reason nonetheless.”

Ferguson is quoted saying …“ It has long seemed to me problematic, and even a little embarrassing, that so much of the public debate about Africa’s economic problems should be conducted by non-African white men. From the economists (Paul Collier, William Easterly, Jeffrey Sachs) to the rock stars (Bono, Bob Geldof), the African discussion has been colonized as surely as the African continent was a century ago.” — The author herself thanks organizers of her recent debate at The Munk Debates in Toronto, Canada for ‘allowing (her) to say a few things about the state of (her) continent, even though (she)’s not a celebrity

;) Loved her feistiness there!

One particular country she likes to pick on is Ethiopia, -- and rightfully so. Some statistics show that about 90% of our annual budget is based on Aid, and our government does not seem to have any intention of changing that any time soon. Why should that be a problem? The simple fact that it (Aid) removes the basic incentive in a society is the simple answer. As Moyo put it – we all live in a world of incentives, individuals, governments, policy makers all are incentivized to do the right thing. Remove that and you lose the basic motive that binds all elements together. In an Aid system governments have no incentive to respond to their people. You vote, so what? The government does not rely on tax money for its existence so what its own people say has no bearing whatsoever on its agenda. Moyo points to the startling fact that NO country on earth has ever recorded meaningful economic growth or reduced poverty on an Aid based system. Yet, our government seems to support the notion that more Aid is the only way that the country can survive, (and I’m left thinking – when are we ever going to think beyond survival?) and is seen asking and insisting on getting more donor money year after year. Since the famine that preceded Haile Selassie I’s overthrow we have been known as the begging bowl of the world. But will that change anytime soon? Likely not.

What is also persuasive about Moyo’s argument is that she points to specific facts of how and when Aid has been effective, for Aid has its place. But like everything else, when it’s in check. She also offers specific alternatives countries should consider if they’re serious about developing, which is really what is lacking in most African governments. And despite all the rhetoric, the donors themselves are not really serious about being agents of development in Africa. They have chosen to ignore all signs and evidence that Aid does more ill than good, but they still choose the easy way out, offer and when given accept little band-aid solutions to shut quibbling rumors that the rest of the word does not give a whit. — And so they only give us funny papers, papers we’ve never seen, but are supposed to be thankful for, and are worth nothing! ‘Cause the harsh truth is ‘Africa is to development, what Mars is to NASA. No one really believes that Africa will ever develop, and no one really believes that we can live on Mars’

This post is to thank Ms Moyo for her outstanding work, for attracting attention to the subject and showing the true character of Aid – that it is really ‘the disease of which it pretends to be the cure’ (Karl Kraus).

 

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Dark Spirits

31 May, 2009 | 16 comments | Category: I.dentity, Senduq- Semhal, madness!, nostalgia.personal, prose.tales, thinking...

img_480222

by Semhal

My parents and siblings have had more effect on my development as an individual than any other experiences in my life. My mother’s stoicism and generosity & my father’s devotion to his work and to his family have allowed me to view the world in a way that I would scarcely dare.

My father’s sacrifices and sufferings especially stimulate me to wake up every morning with a positive spirit. Although my father never had the opportunity to go to college, he has always had the wisdom to understand the workings of the Universe. When no one else knew how I felt, and when I can’t foist my distress on my friends … you know one of those days where practically nothing happens your way and you feel overwhelmingly discouraged or betrayed, he understood the reasons.

“This is what the world sometimes is… dark spirits …but you should never let it make you bitter or depressed ” he says. He told me how Mother Theresa suffered from this for decades of her life. When I have my dark spirit days, I am obsessively agitated, restless, impatient, mean and I spend too much money shopping…oh the lengths I used to go to resist the calls of my dark spirits! These obsessions are often born out of avoidance. Whenever there is something else looming that I don’t want to think about or deal with or don’t know the answer of, I sink in to my obsessions: I feed them and cloth them without understanding their purpose, cause or origin.

It is my father who helped me understand that my dark spirits are the hammers that shape me …they are what make me who I am. Without them, I cannot understand and appreciate the joy of living. He says the only way you can overcome life’s darkness is through love, forgiveness, and hope. These are things you could give and share for free and repeatedly. Although they may not diminish your pain all the way, they will surely bring you a sense of its value.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. – Kahlil Gibran

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