Africabeat

One Laptop per Child Soliciting Applications from College Students

David Sengeh, a junior at Harvard College studying biomedical engineering and originally from Sierra Leone, has asked me to share the following with you:

One Laptop per Child is beginning a summer grant program in which up to 100 teams of university students from around the world will distribute thousands of XO laptops to children in Africa this summer. Partnering with schools and non-governmental organizations in Africa, undergraduate and graduate students from around the world will provide educational opportunities that facilitate self-expression and exploration for children.

One Laptop per Child is asking for applications from student-led teams who will receive funding to spend a summer in an African country of their choice deploying XO laptops. 

According to the website, student-led teams will:

• travel to one of the 53 African countries of their choosing for 9-10 weeks
• participate in a 10-day orientation in Kigali, Rwanda at OLPC’s office
• receive up to $10,000 (USD) per team to cover operating costs
• deploy 100 XO laptops, including hardware and support
• collaborate with up to 100 other teams as part of a life-long global network empowering a generation of children
• send one representative to MIT/OLPC’s all-expense paid summit from Oct 10th-12th 2009

Applications are due March 27th.  Visit their website for more details.

Obama and America's 'patchwork heritage'

After a some cajoling and loving harassment by friends, I've decided to properly repost an article I recently wrote for CNN.com, "Obama and America's 'patchwork heritage'. 

Thank you to everyone who connected with the piece and reached out via email.  America is a far more diverse and complex place than the stories that usually get told.

*   *   *

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- When I was a small child, even before I had the right vocabulary, I could tell that my parents were different.

When I was with my mother, strangers would gush over me. When I was with my father, I felt a distance.

For reasons deeper than I could explain, it was safer with Mom; I was more special when, as far as the outside world could see, I belonged to her.

I later learned this was because people were reacting to the fact that my mother was white and my father black. Like a growing number of Americans, like our new president, I grew up straddling this country's racial divisions.

Continuing reading on CNN.com

An Inauguration List

1. On Tuesday, I stood on the mall, in the cold, with 2 million of my fellow Americans, because I wanted to be able to tell my kids, when they learn about this chapter of our history in elementary school, that I was there.  Some day, I will take them to the Mall and point to the spot on the high ground on the east side the Washington Monument where I watched a sea of every color extend all the way to the Capitol.

Two CNN links

I was recently interviewed by John Blake at CNN.com on the new first family:

Black first family 'changes everything' - CNN.com

And also wrote this commentary:

Commentary: Obama and America's 'patchwork heritage' - CNN.com

The coolest part, from my perspective, is the opportunity to be a small part of such amazing history.

It's Sunday before the inauguration

If you're still on the fence about whether to make the trek to DC for the inauguration, get your ass down here!

I arrived late at the We Are the One concert.  We filled half the Mall.  There were more music and movie celebrities than the Oscars, and all to fête this man.  Every time Obama's face appeared on the JumboTron, the crowds roared.  He's become Jesus, or Elvis, and the streets of DC, a sort of Graceland, with Obama hats, Obama t-shirts, Obama $100 bills, Obama bags, and Obama buttons with blinking lights.

U2 sang "Pride", and the man in amber shades told the audience, "This is not just an American dream, it's an Irish dream, a European dream, an African dream...a PALESTINIAN dream."  I'm glad someone said it, because Obama has remained frustratingly mum.  (Bono, if you're reading this, I'm sorry for ever making fun of you!) 

I'm no longer worried about braving the cold.  It's amazing the body heat several hundred thousand people huddled together on an open green can make.

At night, I got down at theRoot.com ball at the National Museum of American History with the very talented Dr. Jelani Cobb.  The exhibits were all open, and in between chocolate custards and Obama-themed pomegranate martinis, you could quite literally walk through the past and ponder all the ways the world is about to change.

I'm not the kind to run and up and take pictures with celebrities, but I am also not above the not-so-subtle ogle.  I spent half the night star struck.  Isaiah Washington is just as fine in person as he was on Grey's Anatomy!  Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, Larry King, Alice Walker, and of course Henry Louis Gates, Jr. were also in attendence.

The highlight of the evening was definitely seeing Christopher Hitchens (make a valiant attempt to) get down to the beats of Biz Markie.  Times, they are a changin...

We ended the night at U-street, where revelers were pouring out of bars well after 4am.  There were more street peddlers and makeshift portrait studios.  "Yes, ladies and gentlemen, get your picture taken with a life-sized, airbrushed Obama!"  The only restaurant with the business sense to stay open that late was a Congolese takeout joint, serving pizza and chicken tikka masala.  It was packed, with a line to the door, but the disco lights and lingala rhythms made it all worthwhile.

Mr. Balousha's Five Daughters

Mr. Balousha's five daughters were crushed to death when an bomb, most likely an American bomb, landed on the mosque next to their house.  The Balousha daughters were six, seven, eight, fourteen and seventeen years old.  I've linked to this story not because it is the only one, but because you might be like me.  I am completely incapable of comprehending body counts.  I have to be able to imagine those bodies when they were still warm.  When they had lives and futures and people who loved them.

Instead, I pose two (age-old, enduring) questions.  They are almost too obvious, but I think that every time the world goes insane, we have to keep re-asking them.

1. How much "collateral damage" can a just nation write off as an acceptable cost of enfeebling an enemy?  10?  100?  1000?  The entire population of Gaza?  What is "proportional?"

2. Why do some lives matter more than others? 

I encourage you to check out coverage of bloggers' reactions to the bombings on Global Voices.

Artists in Uniform

I've just been reading an essay by Mary McCarthy, "Artists in Uniform," written in 1953.  She tries to show a much less educated man, a colonel of Irish extraction, the error of his anti-Semitic ways.  He thinks with a name like McCarthy, they should be kindred spirits ("Think back; when you were a kid, didn't the word, Jew, just make you feel sick?").  She never tells him that for all her Irish looks, she is also a quarter Jewish.