For those of you not yet acquainted with the beautiful Nneka, get to know! This Nigerian-German songstress has been making moves for a while now and this is one of my favourite songs off her debut album "Concrete Jungle" (or "No Longer At Ease" as it was earlier known). I'm in a fighting mood today so I'm going to let Nneka provide the soundtrack to my week. Enjoy this live performance from Letterman.

"And now the world is asleep
How will you ever wake her up when she is deep in her dreams, wishing
And yet so many die
And still we think that it is all about us
It's all about you
You sold your soul to the evil and the lust
And the passion and the money and you
See the same ones die, people hunger for decades
Suffer under civilized armed robbers, modern slaveholders"

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Never in my life in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have I heard of such scenes! Voting fever has gripped a nation and a generation which has been mostly apathetic about politics has erupted into arguments about who to vote for. My BlackBerry messenger and my Facebook page have become site's of political slander and all sorts. It's great. The exit polls suggest that for all his 'great work', Nick Clegg's Lib Dem's have actually lost ground. WOW. I didn't see that coming. My girl, Fly-Ass Single Mama, has been calling trying to get some translations of election babble. Things like swing, marginal seats, exit polls, etc....AMAZING.

Ever since I first stepped foot on English soil, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the whole country falls into a two-minute silence in order to honour the British men and women who have died for their country since the First World War. The build-up to Remembrance day is inescapable and on Remembrance Sunday, chapel services are held all over the country in order to give due to all those who have died in the name of Britain and the Commonwealth.

I remember being barely out of primary school when I discovered that other brown faces, aside from South-Asian ones, were also part of the First and Second World War effort. Imagine my shock when I discovered that West Africans, East Africans, Southern Africans, and men and women from the Caribbean had also joined the allied powers and laid down their lives for the good  of the "Great British Empire". Some colonial soldiers voluntary joined the British forces because they genuinely believed they were British and needed to protect their mother country. Others were forced to join via conscription. Whatever their reasons for joining, these men and women fought just as hard as white Brits in the quest to defend Britain and her allies. However, although South-Asian contribution to the wars has been well-documented, with support for Nepalese veterans from famous faces, I feel that African and Caribbean contributions to the two World Wars have been chronically ignored. The number of Africans that were part of the war effort is truly astounding:

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

So, President Obama has won this year's Nobel prize for peace. I must admit that when I saw the headline I thought 'huh?' I couldn't think of any ongoing war he had stopped or any impending war he had avoided, or really anything that showed that he was working towards world peace. You see there's a reason that some people are on the Nobel committee and some (me) are not.


The committee explained his winning is a sign that they want to support what he is aiming for; his efforts in ridding the world of nuclear weapons, the immediate closure of Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay and his push for peace in the Middle East to mention a few of his peaceful pursuits. Now although all these things are true and do represent a goal of 'world peace', critics might well say, "but he hasn't actually done all of it", I mean in winning the prize President Obama is in the company of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, German scientist Albert Schweitzer, Dr. Martin Luther King and Mohamed ElBeradai all of whom were awarded for tireless efforts or lifetime work in the 'field' of peace. Are 10 months as US president and 'good ideas' enough to deserve a place in the often controversial list of Peace Prize Laureates?

I don't know, as I continued to read I agreed with the reasons behind his success, it is very important to encourage and support those who strive for the good, there are too many people giving props to drug dealers - Curtis Warren listed included in the Times Rich List as if he's making an honest living , paedophiles - the furore over Roman Polanski's arrest for drugging and raping a 13 year old, cheats, warmongers and other such unsavoury characters.

Well done Barack, let's just hope that your speeches, good intentions, and awards are not your only legacy.

Ummm, it's late and I really want to go to bed but I am up in arms!

After visiting Pen Powder's blog the other night, I started thinking (yet again) about the plight of mother Africa as a whole. How can the most resource rich continent be so abjectly poor, governed by dynasties of despots who reinforce the illegitimate actions of their fellow tyrannical despots through lavish gifts the likes of which most of their countrymen will never see? I know it's nothing new and has been going on since we started to gain our independence but it came upon me again, and I was enraged (you will start to see a pattern with me, I get enraged and then I feel you must know about it! Sorry!).

When I was still in school and the term 'third-world country' was still politically correct (if you don't know, it is no more, instead we now have LEDCs - Less Economically Developed Countries - get to know!) I learnt that Africa was the ONLY continent on God's good earth that was 100% third-world. Yes, people the WHOLE thing including the likes of Egypt and South Africa, who were not classed second-world like Brazil was (the mind boggles...). Anyhoo...after President Obama (Omama) came to Ghana and spoke to the people about Africa solving her own problems many Africans were outraged. How can our brother come and say such things to us? Does he not realise that our continent was ravaged and pillaged by the colonial powers and they still have us in chains?

Now, don't get me wrong I have sympathies with the neo-colonial arguments. There is barely anywhere in Africa you can look without seeing American, British or French neo-colonialism, you only have to look at Liberia, Angola or Sierra Leone (to name a few) to be slapped in the face with it. And in much the same way that African-Americans can still complain about the effects of slavery crippling their people the same can be said of Africa's neo-colonialism.

However, just like I feel African-Americans use slavery as an all-encompassing excuse for social degradation and low achievement so do Africans. Firstly, Obama is your brother? Really?!?!?! His Dad originated from Kenya, he is half-white and fully American, is it so surprising that he came out with that view? Think about it, as a high-achieving black American I'm sure he's heard all the complaints about 'the white man keeping us down' and has decided that a lot of the time they are excuses. But just as the whole 'Cambridge officer acted stupidly' incident indicated, he is not unaware of what black people face in his country. In the same way with his connection to Africa, I doubt he is unaware of how thoroughly his country has colonised his father's continent.

However, he did see it as an excuse for Africa to blame their plight on other people and I think to some degree he is right. We are all too ready to blame other people for our problems, while we are in in a position to do something about it. I'm a firm believer that its the little things that we do which create the stage and pave the way for bigger movements and change. This is no less the case when we are dealing with the mammoth task of making out continent more self-sufficient. Tell me how on earth can we complain about Africa begging for handout's when on a local level we perpetuate the very same type of behaviour. Are we (as in Africans abroad) not in anyway responsible for this 'give me, I want, I need, you owe me' attitude when many of us are killing ourselves over here to feed and clothe those who are more than capable of doing it themselves?

Now before I am inundated with personal attacks about not understanding poverty, blah-de-blah, consider...I know a family of six living in a teeny, tiny flat, in a bad area who are really struggling for basics. A 2 bed flat and one of the rooms is a half room really, can't make ends meet and merely existing exacerbates their poverty. Yet they are in abrokyrie (tr. abroad) and so life is great? Hmmm, so supporting 8, 9 people in Ghana who claim to want need, etc. new laptops and mobile phones to show off with is understandable? Repeatedly sending 'school fees' only to be told school fees have not been paid and now are desperately owing or else poor little Kojo can't finish school? They do not live in shoddy housing and many do not work because abrokyrie will provide? Consider, my mother's younger sister in Ghana has four kids and a husband, a shop my mum got for her and a house abrokyrie money built for her. All her children will be able to go to school to the highest level. But she doesn't work and yet when she needs things and abrokyrie should provide?

If we do not stop such fuckeries on a local level then Africa will never stop it on an international scale either. Since cutting off my Aunty's requests for 'needs', the woman has been slowly learning self-sufficiency. It's long, painful and at time she makes damn silly decisions but she must make them in order to grow.

So do you agree that:

• We (as in Africans abroad) are in part responsible for this 'give me, I want, I need, you owe me' attitude?
• Effecting a change in abrokyrie-relatives-back-home dependency will benefit our continent?