Personal photos from Tanzania

Hey for those of you subscribed to facebook, follow updated photos of my travels through Tanzania in this public photo album. Please seek permission to repost or share these images -- or use correct copyright and source where you got them. Unfortunately, the internet (currently too expensive) and electricity--and even water too often (sidebar)--are too inconsistent for me to update videos or re-upload hundreds of photos. I will do when I revamp the site in a couple of months. The entire blog will get a makeover (yay)! In the meanwhile, please bear with me and sign up for regular updates or via RSS feed.

Award winning German Obama documentary now on tour in US

GO-BAMA between Hope & Dreams (HDV, 79 min). View trailer 

On an epic journey around the US, over the course of one year, we experience the historic political paradigm shift that led up to the Obama Presidency through the eyes of Afro-German filmmaker Satti.

Winner of the Indie Award of Merit and Silver Ace at the Las Vegas Film festival, the film is currently on tour across the US, Europe and Africa. Feel free to connect and invite screenings in your neighborhood!

The first DVD home edition of the award winning documentary "GO-BAMA between Hope & Dreams" is ready for sale via the web! 

The (PAL) DVD includes the feature documentary, the movie trailer, chapter selections, story information and an inspiring slideshow. The chapters are graced with jamming sounds from Nigel Asher, Zubin Zainal & A. Attala Quezada. 

Another (NTSC) DVD double release is planned for later this year, which will feature footage from the Obama events in 2008, in depth interviews with experts, campaigners and quirky people on the streets.
For further information please check out facebook: sattiandsatti or visit the official website: www.sattiandsatti.com

About the filmmaker A.Rahman Satti works as a filmmaker and multi-media producer. He is passionate about stories that transform people’s lives and believes in developing quality content that serves as an inspiration for personal growth. Satti credits the following artists among others as influences: Rumi, D.Diop Mambeti, Haile Gerima, Andrej Tarkowsky, Wim Wenders, Spike Lee. 

Adding the following advice to filmmaker hopefuls: “Work from your inner pilot. Do not listen to anyone. Follow your dreams relentlessly to create a new world.”

After filming the history making Obama campaign during the 2008 US election, Satti decided to study for a Master in Public Policy at Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance in Berlin, Germany. He currently dreams up a laboratory for global citizenship that combines edutainment, research and multimedia for online education. The goal is raising global awareness through exchange with like minded individuals for our planetary transformation. 

The Nature of The Threat: Neoliberalism and Swedish National Identity. The Times Square ‘would-be bomber’ and other musings

I have often remarked to others in casual conversation that—well one could call it a conversation starter or finisher, or downer… ah’hem—race doesn’t exist. It’s socially constructed, yet real enough that I consider it woven into the very fabric of my existence. Well, I view myself racially and ethnically as the physical and cultural extension of my ancestors, both ancestral lineages having been influenced by colonization and subsequent resistance to exploitation. Hence, the conundrum of someone like myself both wanting the notion of race (in particular racism as the derisive tool of subjugation and marginalization) to cease, when I simply can't or don’t want to fathom a world without this particular spectrum of identity. Being an African-American is partially about being proud of challenging the stereotype (when otherwise embracing those more benevolent racial attributes) or fighting against the establishment, aka the mythologized ‘Man’. One can always draw inspiration or eek out blame to others by pointing out the existence of the very real ‘glass ceiling’.

Like countless others, I have been following Faisal Shahzad, the naturalized American citizen of Pakistani descent who allegedly failed to detonate his homemade bomb in Times Square, mid-town New York City last week. He has been described as a sort of New Age terrorist, one who is ‘assimilated’ but fluidly living in two technologically interconnected worlds, ‘ours’ and ‘theirs.’ Literally, the next person committing crimes of mass destruction can be your neighbor or classmate or…friend?. How is that for a scary bedtime story? Do you still have an appetite? 

Ethnic/racial lines can be drawn or redrawn by multiple actors and by increasingly diversified and accessible means—the Taliban on youtube seeking to forge a real and deadly network among a virtual community of believers, or unwitting politicians that inspire anger among racially profiled citizens. The media too has been charged with playing up, or in some instances, conjuring up rogue differences among otherwise would be kinsmen (patriots by birth or by naturalization). 

Do you ever wonder why the boogeyman lives closer and closer to home? Why s/he might really be living in the closet? What is the hidden agenda by obvious fear mongering? Is there a precedent for this sort of thing—say, like the War(s) on Terror—and the nagging suspicion among conspiracy theorists that these were Petrol/Exxon/Revenge Wars of a magnanimous scale. Is it paranoid to simply wonder…aloud, that our notions of race are not intuitive or simply passed along from generation to generation, but that they are constructed, or were constructed at their conception (yes race didn’t always exist as a distinguishing characteristic of people the way that it does today)… and then for what means? Or rather…for whose purposes?

I am contributing a third self-authored article for critique and commentary on this topic. 

Johnson, Christie (2006)The Nature of the Threat of Racism…Even In Sweden. (click link to read)

To purchase this item, please do so by clicking the link on this page! 

MP3 Audio Recorder by Sony works in heavy duty field work

You can rely upon this tiny piece of equipment (approx 3.5 inches in length, an inch wide, and a centimeter thick and weighs mere ounces!) to house your precious audio data. It stores data after the battery has run low. (Uses 2 AAA batteries). Without any delay you can record something and quickly transfer to your computer in mp3 format--which means you can play it in media software such as Itunes without difficulty. There is no port for external microphone, but it records decently. I have only used it to record voices, singing, piano, within 6 feet due to this concern. The speakers are not good but I am able to hear clearly the sounds recorded by using headphones or by playing content on Itunes or Windows Mediaplayer. I recorded the sound of live piano in my home and the sound quality was very clear--albeit not studio quality, of course. I enjoy keeping this tiny thing on hand at all times, ready for random interviews or other ethnographic/qualitative data collection, and playing immediately upon plugging into standard USB port. It is a little tricky with the settings (time, date, folders) which I still haven't completely figured out. It was a good value purchase. I recommend.

To purchase this item, please do so by clicking the link on this page!

Reproducing/Challenging Nationalistic Discourses of Race in Peru and Colombia

I am sharing with blog readers an article which I wrote in 2006 entitled, Hybridity, Assimilation & Nationalistic Discourses of Race (click on link to read) where I discuss the ways in which individuals reproduce or challenge nationalistic discourses of race in Peru and Colombia. Publishing this article online is one way that I am fulfilling my obligation to share resources with the community, for free, to allow greater participation to global debates and theories.

As a professor of social work at the Newman Institute of Social Welfare in Kigoma, Tanzania, the urgency to share resources online becomes increasingly apparent. The first post secondary school located in Kigoma region, Tanzania, my students at Newman Institute have poor access to online journals and other pay-per-access online content. I must say that our school library and general student/faculty access to resources improved 100% following the receipt of donated books from Catholic University located in Washington, DC this year.

I hope that others will follow my lead in facilitating dialogue.

Christie

To purchase these items, please do so by clicking the links on this page! 

New Web Resource Base of Original Content: First Edition Featuring "Maroons to Black Panthers"

I am developing a web resource base to feature an archive of free texts reflecting the themes of justice, participatory/democratic process, and empowerment. I will incorporate links to countless other websites who explore these themes.

The following is the first article of many which I wish to share.

Johnson, Christie (2006) Kathleen Cleaver speaks from Maroons to Black Panthers: A Discourse Analysis. (click on link to read)

It has been a longstanding interest of mine to explore methods of conflict and peace analysis, anti-poverty strategies, empowerment and participatory-community development modeling. I am developing a framework from which to explore parallels between modern freedom movements, anti-poverty movements, so called terrorist movements – and the denigration of antebellum Africans who used violent (and non-violent) means to resist enslavement in the Americas. Specifically, to develop and expand the notion of Maroonage as a metaphor for a more humanistic approach to modern conflicts: a sophisticated analysis for using the African American experience to contextualize modern freedom movements, civil rights, human rights, and global anti-poverty movements.

In this vein from 2004 to 2007 I worked on the The Maroons Documentary Film Project ©  a multi-part documentary film addressing maroonage as active and passive resistance throughout antebellum American history. 

I warmly welcome comments and feedback. 




       To purchase these items, please do so by clicking the links on this page! 

Thirteen Months in Tanzania... and Going...

Seeing as I haven't written on this site in many many months, so many things have happened... It's hard to start. Well, I guess I don't need to rush the story. I'm still living in Kigoma, TZ where I took the photo of the Dala Dala with Obama's likeness emblazoned across the back (shown at the right) on my way to work. Just another day in my neck of the woods. It's rainy season now, again, with days of heavy rains as frequent as of the dry searing sun. I stay indoors mostly now. On the surface it would seem that I've simply gotten used to living in paradise. Yet, the reality of the situation is that for me life in Kigoma has been as turbulent as it has been placid. I've witnessed a man suffering from late stage AIDS crawling on the dirt floor of his home--the former breadwinner of  a household containing 7 minor children. Sigh. I wish that I was able to do something about this man's dilemma. Kigoma has a relatively low (some estimates put less than 2%) HIV prevalence rate, among the lowest in the country. Although no one I know who is actually from Kigoma thinks this is anywhere near accurate. For as much progress as has been made in recent years in overcoming stigma, this is still a powerful deterrent to seeking treatment. Despite the presence in Kigoma of The International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP) of Columbia University, which provides ARVs and Counseling and Testing, we have an uphill battle to fight. I want to save some of this for later as I share my current position as consultant on an initiative to expand Home Based Care for persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) by peer caregivers as well as the research I conducted assessing all the maternity wards in Kigoma Municipal. For now, check out my new site, nag me if possible to stay on it, and feel free to share your thoughts and inquiries.

Christie

The Self-Help style audiobook 'The Now Habit' by Neil Fiore is actually...helpful

This audiobook by Neil Fiore has been immensely helpful for me at various points in my life... At this point I have been trained so well, just hearing his voice makes me feel comforted in times of stress and panic. I am prone to bouts of depression and thankfully I know that one of the frequent sources of my discontent is chronic procrastination. Although I usually pull it all together in the nick of time, there are those pivotal heartbreaking moments when I simply am unable to do so. The very notion of failure is heartache enough for the perfectionist. Without going into too much psychology he does provide some real life examples of people who led lives of deprivation as punishment for not getting some task (there are always 99 in the to do list awaiting) rather than living lives filled with reward (for undoubtedly accomplishing several major feats in a day). I do heartily recommend this audio-book for the neurotic sufferers who need a bit of pick me up after chronicling chore after unfilled chore in their overstuffed 2 page/day organizers!

To purchase this item, please do so by clicking the link on this page!

Featured Item: Mi Trompito

Mi Trompito Children's Playclothes and Playthings, 
Designed in San Diego, 
Sewn in San Diego,  

Played in Everywhere…

Mi Trompito Children's Playclothes and Playthings


You can find these environmentally friendly kid-wares locally…and I mean locally, at the farmers market and at other home-style venues. However, if you don't live in San Diego don't fear, you can shop these affordable clothes through the secure website www.mitrompito.com. Gina Engler, the Owner/Designer, should be proud that her successful clothing line is values-driven. As the website explains the production process… there is no driving other than to get the essentials and the clothes are made from fabrics designed to be durable and eco-friendly. Additionally, the business relies upon empowerment business strategies -- parents can apply to promote the ecology-centered clothing line in their favorite stores. 

Although Mi Trompito is a for-profit; proceeds go towards programs that aim to bring happiness to children in various ways. Engler aims to raise awareness of child abuse through her work and business practice.


Engler who additionally holds a Masters Degree in Public Health from Yale University, shares the following for those seeking to follow a similar path, "That although you may know what you want to do for the rest of your life, be open to experiences outside of that goal; you never know when life can take you in a different direction that can make you just as, or even more happy than original path you had envisioned.  Also, definitely definitely travel the world and spend more than a few days getting to know the locals; and going off the beaten path.  For me, two months in different places was the best experience, and I still cherish the fond memories of living instead of visiting places around the world."


Engler's former work includes grant writing, grant monitoring, program management and research in public health and infectious diseases.