Viva Gil: A Book In The Making By Andre Camara

I’m logistically challenged and it took me about an hour to get to the Brazilian Embassy for the private viewing of the pictures of Gilberto Gil by André Camara.

By the way, in case you ever happen to go there, please note that there’s a lovely garden in Belgrave Square. Don’t follow your instinct - like I did - and enter because it’s actually only for residents.

To get out, I had to run after the only guy who was walking his dog and ask him to let me out ...

The images of Gil are great and the opening was good but I was feeling out of breath in the 'basement' where the pictures are up.

Don’t go when it’s too hot or if you know you can easily have a panick attack.

Non-Art-Related Topics (2)

The varied efforts to end female circumcision

“I don’t believe in the death penalty. My mission is to end the violence against women and children. I am not here to condemn people but to condemn the act of mutilation itself.”

This is how Soraya Mire’, a movie director who has been exposing the cruelty of female circumcision, comments about President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni ‘s proposal of using death penalty as a means to scare off perpetrators of this practice.

Museveni wants to outlaw female circumcision, a patriarchal legacy, and those who continue to perform it would face the death penalty if a girl dies as a result of the procedure.

This move is in line with other countries and organizations that have sought to decrease the prevalence of female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that involves partial or total removal of the external female genitalia. It is traditionally thought to protect a girl’s chastity by reducing her urge for sex.

Since Uganda has a mixed track record of enacting laws to protect women, Museveni is hoping the death penalty will be crucial to end this tradition that remains largely popular among many tribes in the country, particularly those who live at the eastern border with Kenya. The World Health Organization estimates that 3 million girls are at risk of being circumcised every year worldwide. According to the United Nations Children’s Funds, the practice is extremely painful and traumatizing, can result in prolonged bleeding, a higher risk of HIV infection, infertility and even death. The United Nations started discussing this issue in 1953. It took the World Health Organization forty years to announce its resolve to end female genital mutilation. On May 11, 1993 it called for the world condemnation and co-operation in ending this practice.

Soraya Mire’, originally from Somalia and now based in the US, was taken by her mother to be circumcised when she was only 13. She dared to speak up against this practice and was since shunned by her own family.

While Mire’ recognizes that the atrocity of FGM must be publicly acknowledged, she also believes in adopting a positive perspective to face the problem: “Our generation recognized the deep wound created by FGM and the consequent private pain that it causes because we live with the anguish of what has been done to us and our loved ones. With the knowledge and understanding of this pain we can certainly make a difference. We will continue to transform our private pain and suffering by exposing this horrendous act of cultural violence and by bringing it to an end.”

Mire’ highlights how this practice violates children’s basic rights: “It doesn’t matter how deep you stick that sharp knife, cut glass or the scissors. It’s an act that tortures the most innocent souls who need protection. The practice of genital mutilation which I call the “ultimate child abuse” is really a psychological wound – a scar of betrayal. This soul wound gives voice to 135 million women worldwide who have suffered circumcision. I dare to speak against child abuse. This, in particular, that is handed down from mother to daughter like a treasured heirloom while being protected under the name of ‘culture’. “

In her documentary “Fire Eyes” (1994,http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/1554/Fire-Eyes), Mire’ interviewed manySomalis including a woman who tells her daughter: "It is shameful that you are not circumcised. No Somali man would marry an uncircumcised woman." Another man likens circumcision to the protection of his property. "You have to have a door on your house . . . you can't leave the door open. The same with women."

Soraya Mire’says: ”Why, given the advances that women have made socially, culturally and economically, they are still treated as if they cannot think for themselves? A woman is believed to not know right from wrong, that she must be subjugated and controlled by all measures and stripped off her most essential body parts. Women face the social pressure to conform and perpetuate the ritual of female genital mutilation. And betrayal occurs at the hands of other women and even the hands of one’s own mother.”

However, there are alternatives to death penalty.

An example comes from Kenya, where circumcision is already illegal. Here the Catholic Church has come up with an alternative rite of passage for girls. In the town of Meru, a group of grandmothers has started to teach the next generation the secrets of womanhood, like their mothers and grandmothers before them did. The modified traditional training, called the Alternative Rite of Passage, is a project of the Catholic Diocese of Meru and Catholic Relief Services. The girls go through traditional training of how to be a good wife, mother and woman, but with a difference: at the end of the process they have a graduation ceremony and receive a certificate rather than undergo circumcision. The girls are taught among the rest how to serve food and which herbs to use to cure specific ailments. They are also explained the truth about many taboos, included that if a woman is not circumcised she will not get married.

Media and public figures can also help to spread awareness about this issue. “At the time of “The Vagina monologues” a few movie stars supported the battle to end FMG”, says Mire’. The V-Day – until the violence stops (www.vday.org), was among the initiatives launched by the production “The Vagina Monologues” and that raised over $50 millions to end several forms of abuse on women.

In 1994 American songwriter Tory Amos released the song “Cornflake girl”, about an African girl going through the ritual of circumcision. The idea of betrayal between women is at the centre of this piece that back then certainly helped in creating at least curiosity around the theme of FMG.

To begin the social changes and break the chain of pain caused by female genital mutilation, it seems most necessary to raise public awareness of the issue and remove the taboos that surround this barbaric practice.

Employing the menace of death penalty to deter practitioners seem naive, not only because they would probably find their ways to carry on with their cruel task, but especially because it’s the cultural mind set that needs first of all to be eradicated to gain lasting social chang

es.

Non-Art-Related posts (1)

A Calendar For Michael

As the train stopped, I felt as if I had travelled back in time.

Stoke On Trent stands the rough English wind with its five storey buildings painted in a dull yellow and the deserted roads.

If this city will be ever remembered, it might be because it’s the birthplace of Robbie Williams from Take That and because Slash from Guns & Roses used to live there.

However, after meeting Franz Opitz in this place half way between London and Manchester, I now wonder if one day it might be associated with him too.

It’s only now that Franz has left and I’m waiting for my train to London at the grotty café at the station that I start to understand his personality and sense of humour.

I can’t help but smile as I notice the picture on the calendar he has given me as a gift.

“Hey You Sexy Thing! Morning Hygiene Routine in Bukuya“, it reads below the picture of him having a bucket shower in Uganda, where water still remains an issue.

The calendar features pictures taken by Franz during one of his stays in Uganda and can be bought here at £ 6.50 for the slim line version and £ 8.50 for a larger A3 version with more photos and amusing text.

All contributions will help make Michael’s future brighter.

But let’s start from the beginning.

Franz is a man who’s had all most people want from life.

When the company he used to work for as a managing director made him redundant, he decided that the time to give something back had come. He just wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life doing some gardening or sipping wine in a posh restaurant.

“I had no interest in spending my days cruising the Mediterranean in front of a cocktail,” he told me.

This becomes hard to even imagine as he shows me impressive pictures from Uganda, a mix of beautiful sunsets, ugly wounds, poverty and local folklore.

When he’s in Uganda, Franz doesn’t mind waking up to a cold bucket of water rather than floating in a hot tub and he doesn’t mind the conditions he has to take care of in the several clinics he visits.

Most of his patients are kids who get easily burned as hot food is cooked outdoors with no adequate protection and there are many accident wounds too because the streets are unpaved and in terrible conditions.

When Franz tells me about his previous life I truly struggle to picture him as a successful businessman in a suit and tie in a meeting room.

“I have travelled a lot, both for business and independently. I have also always been involved in volunteering abroad,” he explains while we have a coffee at the hotel in front of the station.

“When I was still in work, I used to be an expedition leader for the youth charity Brathay. Being made redundant in 2006 gave me the opportunity to reorganize my life again. “

He was 59 at the time and he decided to qualify as a paramedic. At first Franz, who is originally from Germany but moved to the UK 37 years ago tried to volunteer in Stoke.

“It’s terribly bureaucratic to get involved in England so in the end I chose to volunteer in Uganda. It was one of the few places where I had never been and I had no contacts there unlike in other African countries. Uganda is also one of the most backward nations in Africa.”

Franz was even more stimulated by these challenges and he started from the capital, Kampala to then visit several clinics in the country to help those in need.

When he travels to Uganda, he makes sure he carries a lot of medicines with him.

What strikes me more about him is the way he approaches Uganda and Africa more in general.

He’s not paternalistic but objective.

He’s not a dreamer but a pragmatist.

“Malaria is a disease that could be curtailed simply by having people sleeping under mosquito nets,” he tells me.

“A mosquito net costs 3£; I have calculated that you’d need about £100m to buy enough mosquito nets for the whole of Uganda. If the government over there stopped being corrupted for just a week, this would be enough to solve the problem.”

I can’t help asking him what he thinks about the attention recently given by the media to the fact that Cheryl Cole got malaria.

“Pathetic”, he says.

I guess both if you have common sense and if you have spent the last few years travelling back and forward from Uganda, this is what you’d say too.

Franz takes people at heart.

He has just sorted out the visa for a 22-year-old student, Michael who in a few weeks will fly for the first time from Uganda to the UK to start university.

“Michael used to be my translator in Uganda. He’s the kind of person who’d never ask me for anything. Even when he saw my mobile phone, he never cared about it or about any other of my possessions.

I want him to have the opportunity to study here so that when he goes back to Uganda he will get a good job and make the difference. “

Franz is funding Michael to have a better education that he could ever have in his native country. Not only.

He’s already planning, in three or four years, to go back to Uganda with Michael to be his mentor and help him putting a foot in the difficult and highly corrupted job market of Uganda.

There are parents who wouldn’t do that much for their own son.

“Michael will study IT for business solutions and when he goes back to Uganda his qualifications will mean a lot. He might start his own business or get a good job there.”

At this point the hotel is getting busy for a wedding party and Franz and I have gone from coffee to launch. While Franz is having his meal I can’t stop asking questions so I decide to take a cigarette break at least he can finish his jacked potato in peace.

But there’s so much to ask and he has a lot of stories to share, some hilarious, some upsetting, but all interesting. He makes you truly want to visit Uganda.

But there’s also a lot of anger when Franz speaks about the rooted issues of the country that by now he knows very well.

Franz also talks with resentment about the hypocrite help that the West is giving to Africa while at the same time he’s not afraid of denouncing the laziness that this instigates in the poor populations of most African countries.

“The West must immediately stop aids to Africa,” he says. “We must give Africa access to the EU market, instead. Writing off the debt of Africa is pointless if we continue to block the continent’s access to our market.”

He’s patient when he explains the dirty face of the policies that Western governments have in place to deal with the troubles of Africa.

“Take Tanzania, for instance. Coffee growers are not even allowed to send their finished coffee to Europe. They can only send raw beans. This is all to the disadvantage of Tanzania and to the advantage of the European markets. Because most African countries don’t have agreements in place with EU governments, they would have to pay a very high duty tax to export their products, textiles for instance. Our aid to Africa is actually very self-centred and nothing does but feed local corrupt governments.”

Franz is very clear about what Uganda and the rest of Africa needs:

“We must give Uganda the technical know how, the training and the equipment needed for proper development. We must send trained people over and welcome foreign students in the UK. They can get a better education here and then go back to Uganda and improve their own country. This is where our money should be spent on, other than in ridiculous wars such as Afghanistan. The way poverty in Africa is being dealt with at the moment is a colossal waste of money.”

And what Franz says is a plan that he’s already making happen by helping Michael.

When I listen to Franz, I feel silly about some of my every day petty problems.

I think meeting Franz has meant a lot to me.

It’s given me back a bit of the innocence and trust in the world that I had lost in the past months. I am looking forward to meeting Michael now.

Even if this will mean having to come back to Stoke On Trent.

Non-Art-Related posts (3)

The blurring line between public interest and profitable voyeurism

In the last years media have drawn the attention to public personalities’ private lives with growing frequency worldwide. Especially in the last three decades, such interest appears focusing more intensively on public figures’ sexual habits.

Be it the now remote scandal of ex US President Bill Clinton or the one Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is currently facing, what stands out as unequivocal is the fragile and often conflicting connotation that ‘private life’ and ‘public interest’ have come to assume.

The fact is that not always we are able to tell when we are in front of Peeping-Tom-kind-of-media and when instead conscientious journalists are working in the interest of the public. This becomes an especially urgent matter seen the challenges that our celebrity obsessed culture alongside ubiquitous new media pose to the concept of ‘privacy’, with Facebook being a straightforward example of this.

In the attempt of giving this conundrum a solution, Stephen Whittle, journalist and former BBC Controller of Editorial Policy, and Glenda Cooper, consulting editor at the Daily Telegraph, tried to highlight the right to a private life in their study “Privacy, probity and public interest” published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford (RISJ) in July this year.

For a year Stephen Whittle and Glenda Copper spoke to lawyers, academics, journalists, bloggers, those who have found their privacy invaded by the media and those who have crossed the line themselves. Copy of the research can be downloaded here:

www.reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/.../Publications/Privacy__Probity_and_Public _Interest.pdf

Just after the publication of the research, The Leader World interviewed Stephen Whittle to understand his point of view on relevant current affairs where private sexual habits have been exposed in the name of ‘public interest’.

“I fundamentally believe everyone has a basic right to privacy”, says Stephen Whittle. ”With my research I wanted to stimulate a debate and for people to accept that we are not proposing a limitation of the freedom of press but just greater responsibility in the public interest.”

Asked to comment on Silvio Berlusconi’s latest sex escapades and his proposal of sending an escort as a candidate to the European Parliament, he explains how his opponents and the press in this case are just using the opportunity given by a scandal to accuse the Prime Minister:

“People are trying to find anything to attack Berlusconi and reduce his influence. Finally they have got some evidence, so this becomes the means by which they can attack him. The scandal is just being turned against him.

The racist comments that Berlusconi made (*with regards to Milan being an African city*) are not enough to remove him because such comments actually reflect a view that Italy holds. Added to this, the role of the Catholic Church in traditionally giving support to governments in Italy is well known so it’s simply unwise for a Prime Minister to behave like Berlusconi is doing.

The situation is made even more difficult by the fact that he owns most of the media. It’s a very compromised environment, and a corrupted one where the Prime Minister has passed laws for his own good.

We are also talking about possible misuse of state resources that is most relevant and we may be talking of people under the age of 18 involved.“

Moving away from the disgraceful and under several aspects anomalous Italian case, Whittle makes his opinion clear:

“I agree that the only case when something as private as sex should matter is if it can be shown that politicians are so distracted by a certain sexual practice that they cannot perform their role properly.

Kennedy allegedly confessed to a British Prime Minister that he wouldn’t be able to govern the country did he not have sex every day. But this came out only years after his presidency, and so did his use of drugs. Clearly today the attitude towards public figures is completely different, politicians are not on a pedestal anymore and there is a less reverential attitude altogether.“

If this may be for the good, however newspapers are using sex scandals not only to pursue their political goals but also to survive keeping their sales float in a market that has become insanely competitive with the risk of affecting the independence of the press.

“What I consider hypocritical is that newspapers are exposing these scandals but at the same time they are clearly celebrating and glamorizing them. People’s attention is just drawn to these behaviours that are made appear more attractive that they would normally be.

Paul Dacre, editor of The Daily Mail, says that newspapers have to features these attractive stories in order for them to survive and get on with the other important stories within their pages.

It’s also hypocritical the fact that newspapers purport family values and at the same time they report love tangles of celebrities and indeed pictures of undressed or anorexic women. Especially if you look at the website of The Daily Mail you will find this, an entire space where everything is about the body featuring paparazzi-type of pictures. However no newspaper is expected to be fair and impartial: they are free to pursue their opinion and they just have to be accurate.“

But there’s still a gap between what newspapers try to sell as morality and what actually happens out there in the real world, where certainly pornography and prostitution remain very profitable in Western society:

“If you go to the States media are different as it’s officially a pruder society where you are not even supposed to talk about sex in public. But the reality is that most child pornography comes from there. Hotels make their major revenues on their sales of adult movies too. You will not find much discussion about sex in media at all and even where you find it, maybe in the New York Post, it’s different from the British way.”

The case of Max Mosley, as pointed out in “Privacy, probity and public interest”, epitomizes the type of attitude that the British press is often prone to assume. But it also shows how journalists don’t always get it right and when this happens they have to pay the consequences.

Max Mosley is the president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile(FIA) that also is the governing body for Formula One. Son of former leader of the British Union of Fascists Sir Oswald, in March 2008 he sued the News of the World when they revealed that he had taken part in sado-masochist orgies with five prostitutes.

Because the FIA counts 125 million members and Mosley was elected five times since 1991, Mosley’s high-profile public figure was a justification enough for News Of The World to investigate on his sexual habits, with claims that the context of his sexual games included a Nazi element of role-playing. In July 2008 the High Court concluded that nothing pointed at the possibility of the participants mocking the Holocaust and Mosley won the case.

This makes a good point according to which at least lawful sexual practices conducted between consenting adults must remain a matter of privacy. Indeed they touch an intimate sphere that everyone has the right to withhold, no matter how unconventional or repulsing any of us might judge the above said practices. And no matter how important the public role of the characters involved may be.

It is up to the media, possibly helped by better regulations, to define when action is required and when intrusion is unnecessary therefore best avoided.

The frenzy focus of media on intimate relations of public figures, highlighted by pictures seen the world over in matter of minutes, rings the bell of ‘voyeurism’ rather than public interest.

As defined by Dr Robin Lenman, previously Senior Lecturer on Photography and Society in Europe at the University of Warwick, voyeurism “can be straightforwardly defined as the pleasurable, illicit observation of someone else's intimate acts, usually but not necessarily sexual”.

And the duplicity of the figure of the voyeur lies in the fact that it’s not only a person who gains pleasure from watching other’s activities, but also enjoys seeing the pain or distress of others.

The press is cashing in on this, in the context of a culture where the “freakish” and the human-interest story make news (and money) while politics turn into the personalized stories of its increasingly telegenic and apparently sexually deviated protagonists.

“My conclusion is that being a journalist means that occasionally you are required to perform an intrusive action but still you must know how to do it, being proportionate and able, if required, to defend all you did along the way”, says Whittle.

And the debate is open.

Save Middlesex Philosophy!

I have just taken these pictures in front of the University of Middlesex where students are protesting against the closure of the department of philosophy ...

Philosophy = from the Greek φιλοσοφία [philosophia], which literally means "love of wisdom" ...

Best Author Blog

Talking to Emily is like having a jab of optimism injected when you least expect it.

We meet at a café near Southwark Cathedral and she smiles while we order latte in the sunny patio.

Last Christmas, my friend Tony gave me as a present her book 'Shop Girl Diaries' fresh from the print.

“I didn’t think I’d still be working in my Mum’s chandelier shop at 24.” is the incipit.

I have been wondering how Emily, who was in one of my journalism classes, had gone from being a shop assistant to giving talks at the university, publishing a book and film a TV pilot for which she has co-written the script.

All this while getting engaged to The Date and more …

Last month Emily won the overall award for the inaugural Best Author Blog.

She was with Paulo Coelho and Neil Gaiman among the 28 authors shortlisted for the competition, run by CompletelyNovel.com and ex-SYP chair Jon Slack, in partnership with publishers including the Random House Group, Simon & Schuster and Penguin.

I thought I’d better interview Emily before she becomes a celebrity.

“I have kept a diary since I was a kid. I was reading one just recently: ‘This is the idea for my novel and I am going to publish it’, it reads at one point. I was only 9 at the time!” she says.

I follow Emily’s blog and her stories are entertaining and light but never banal.

Mine are usually entertaining and obsessed but never stupid, which might as well work at some point...

“Shop Girl Diaries might sound a bit like Sex & The City but it’s totally the antithesis of it. It’s me in a chandeliers shop, eating a sandwich in a messy stock room in South London. Not really glamorous. “

But the editors at Salt Publishing loved the insights in the real life of a normal girl working in a ‘light shop’, as they saw how this was a reflection of London and how it's dramatically changed with the recession.

They also saw how the blog really spoke to people’s hearts, touching on their everyday experiences - from the customers’ need for some retail therapy to the evolving of a sweet love story.

“In our journalism classes they always tell us to write about what we know best so my parents’ shop was the ideal choice for me. I had written my blog for about seven months when I left a post on the publishers’ website and they got back to me in just a week. We started talking about making a book out of it pretty soon.”

From this point of view Emily’s story is different from that of other bloggers, as she managed to get attention from an editor even before having tons of followers and friends on her blog.

“Pretty soon Facebook became very important to get friends and other people to read my blog but it’s not a question of quantity: I don’t have a huge amount of followers but they all are loyal readers.”

Emily was also supported, and still is, by her brother, who is very good at advising her while her mom is usually the first person to read her blog entries and give her tips.

“I work really hard and I don’t find it easy to write”, says Emily, and by her expression I can picture her grumpy and tense in front of the laptop.

“I complain a lot but then there’s a moment when you slip into writing and you forget you are there. And that is beautiful.”

Things are moving fast for Emily. The day after she won the Best Author Blog award, she found an unexpected email in her inbox.

Subject line: Literary Agent.

“I am meeting her tomorrow,” she says with a slightly worried look in her eyes; but it only lasts a second before she starts telling me the plot and the working title of her next project.

Seeing her enthusiasm, I ask Emily to give me some advice on how to become a writer.

“Value your writing. Create a space in your life for writing. Stick to it. When your writing gets too serious, it’s not good. Find support in people around you. Share your writing. Don’t be precious about it. Let your writing rest, then go back to it and do the editing; that’s the most important part.“

The best advice she gives me is to write my blog as if it was going to be published on a national newspaper.

At that point, I feel like pressing ‘delete’ on my entire blog.

As it’s time to go, a girl dressed entirely in black walks by our table and I ask her for the bill.

“I don’t work here,” she says with contempt while Emily pretends she doesn’t know me. Damn.

Where’s the real waitress gone then?

I ask Emily for a last comment and she says: “I once read that ‘life shrinks or expands in relation to how much courage you have’."

While for sure she is brave, what counts most is that Emily is able to pass her confidence, serenity and optimism on to other people - even in a day when she is stressed about something that can’t be revealed, as it would spoil the book...

If her meeting with the literary agent goes well tomorrow, Emily might soon realize her ultimate dream of being in the windows of Waterstones - with her book of course, not literally.

For now, if you need a genuine laugh, you can buy Shop Girl Diaries at SaltPublishing - this will also help to keep independent publishing alive...