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Book Club: Things fall apart Chapter 1

THINGS FALL APART 1 The first chapter of this book is striking, it starts off sounding like a folktale. We are firstly informed "Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond." Okonkwo had just conquered Amalinze, the strong undefeated man with a funny nickname: "THE CAT". The village description feels like a small neighborhood that sees wrestling as a form of recreation. Old men sat, watched the fight between Okonkwo and Amalinze and agreed it was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and seven nights. So The founder of the village himself conquered with wrestling little wonder the villagers see it as a sport of interest. At this point you might ask yourself, how many African sports do we still play? Wrestling, Ayo and our make-belief games seem to be going extinct. Although most have been modernized into Boxing, Chess, D&Ds nevertheless, these games played in our local way foster...
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Saba Saba Day in Kenya

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Monday marked the 35th anniversary of the historic Saba Saba – meaning "seven-seven" in Swahili – protests of 7 July 1990, which fought for multi-party democracy in Kenya. At least eleven people were killed during the anti-government protests and 567 were arrested, according to police reports. History seems to keep repeating itself. Saba Saba in Kenya dates back to June 1982 when the Kenyan constitution was amended to transform the de facto one-party rule in the country into an official, de jure one-party state. In July, a London-based organization of the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya (CRPPK), came forth as a ‘ solidarity organization ’ for those arrested, detained or harassed for their political beliefs and activities in Kenya. The organization was committed to exposing Moi’s ‘systematic attacks on intellectual, political and cultural life’. Soon after, the attempted coup in August 1982 gave Moi the perfect excuse to turn Kenya into a ...
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Liberation on the 4th of July

Liberation doesn’t look the same everywhere, or to everyone, but its heartbeat? The feeling of relief and fresh air that comes with it? That’s universal. The 4th of July (I'm sure the way that I said it allows you guess exactly what comes next, but I promise, there’s a bit of a surprise information for most of you, just hang on), is a date that most of the world recognizes as the United States’ Independence Day – the day the thirteen colonies declared freedom from British rule in 1776. Yet, another equally significant liberation happened on the same date, 218 years later, in a totally different part of the world: Rwanda. On July 4th, 1994, after 100 harrowing days of genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) took control of its capital, Kigali, effectively ending one of the most horrific massacres in modern history. Over 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were murdered. The Rwandan Liberation Day, otherwise known as Kwibohora , marks the end of that nightmare and the beginning of Rwa...
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