Nigerian Literary Icon Buchi Emecheta Passes On At 72

One of Africa’s most celebrated writers, Buchi Emecheta has passed on.

Buchi, born on July 21, 1944 passed on in her sleep on Wednesday in London.

Buchi, who has also written plays and an autobiography, published more than 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979).

Following her success as an author, Buchi travelled widely as a visiting professor and lecturer. From 1972 to 1979 she visited several American universities, including Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From 1980 to 1981, she was senior resident fellow and visiting professor of English, University of Calabar, Nigeria. In 1982 she lectured at Yale University, and the University of London, as well as holding a fellowship at the University of London in 1986.

She earned a BSc degree in Sociology at the University of London.

Among honours received during her literary career, Buchi won the Jock Campbell Award from the New Statesman in 1979, and was on Granta magazine’s 1983 list of “Best of the Young British Novelists”.

In September 2004, she appeared in the historic “A Great Day in London” photograph taken at the British Library, featuring 50 Black and Asian writers who have made major contributions to contemporary British literature. In 2005, she was made an OBE.

Condolences to the family.

https://www.bellanaija.com/2017/01/nigerias-literary-icon-buchi-emecheta-passes-on/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

PRESENTATION SCH ...by chukbyke

Presentation Sch Awgu (Enugu State of Nigeria)  cultural group ...welcoming visitors with a dance

RESEARCH........HUMPHREY B. AKANAZU

9:38pm

Dear Friends, please do me a favor answer the questionnaire and help me forward it to your friends. It is for the fulfillment of my research on Nigerian students' global entrepreneurial competences: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HMXJWJ8Entrepreneurial Attitudes and Values Surveywww.surveymonkey.comEntrepreneurial Attitudes and Values Surveywww.surveymonkey.complease help me spread it in ur network

DR NNEKA EKWE

 The message  below arrived  as SMS (text) on my phone  some days  ago. The  Chukwubikes and Ekwes thank God  for this  and congratulates the young Doc.. probably he youngest i have ever seen.
I cannot be happier.
Charlie MBC
________________________________________________

 

".......Uncle, join me in thanking God and celebrate wit me as I Nneka officially

turns  becomes a Doctor registered  with d veterinary Council of Nigeria come Saturday,

30th June 2012......"

DELIVERANCE

'...YOU NEED DELIVERANCE.....!!!!!'

Many times while discharging my duties as a mediator I have heard this phrase from quarrelling Nigerians and Ghanaians, sometime even directed to me.

Nigerians take it for granted and strongly believe that you must understand all they say and all jargons from Nigeria since you are a Nigerian and they get irritated explaining further.

‘Dis one pass me oo anyway’;

My questions are:

Is it being recommended that I be DELIVERED FROM or TO, WHERE ? Second, by who?

Someone heeeeeeeeeeeeelp!!!

SAINT PAULS' LETTER TO NIGERIANS.....

A KIDS REFLECTION TODAY AFTER THE CHURCH SERVICE:

"....It is not correct that San Paolo (Saint Paul) had to write so many letters to many people and countries even twice to some people and non even replied him but he did not write to Nigerians nor the Igbos............ 'Non è giusto cosi eeeh' = It is not right that way eeeh. "

"You said once your great grand father was one of the first christians there and spoke some english, then he (san Paolo) would have written them..."
-------------------------------------

What are the correct or appropriate answers to these 'innocent' questions and reflections? HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

Presentazioni di oltre Babilonia Roma, Firenze, Mestre 17-18-19 NOV

. IGIABA SCEGO presenta il suo romanzo OLTRE BABILONIA Dalla Roma multietnica di oggi alla Somalia del colonialismo italiano lunedì 17 novembre - ore 18.00 Firenze - Libreria Feltrinelli - Via de' Cerretani 30/32 Intervengono Clotilde Barbarulli, Domenico Guarino Daniela Lastri e Leonardo Sacchetti Letture di Chiara Brilli martedì 18 novembre - ore 18.00 Roma - la Feltrinelli Libri e Musica - Piazza Colonna 31/35 Intervgono Goffredo Fofi e Alessandro Portelli Letture di Laura Sampedro mercoledì 19 novembre - ore 18.00 Mestre - la Feltrinelli Libri e Musica Piazza XXVII Ottobre 1 Intervengono Luigi Barbieri e Alessandra Sciurba www.donzelli. it Donzelli editore __,_._,___

All Saints From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia All Saints From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from All Saints Day) Jump to: navigation, search For the British girl group, see All Saints (band). All Saints Painting by Fra Angelico Official name Feast of All Saints Also called All Hallows Day Observed by Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Churches, Eastern Catholic Churches, Anglican Communion, Lutheran Church, Methodist Church, among other Christian denominations Type Christian Date November 1 (Western Christianity) Sunday after Pentecost (Eastern Christianity) Observances Church services Related to All Souls' Day All Saints' Day (also called All Hallows or Hallowmas[1]), often shortened to All Saints, is a feast celebrated on November 1 in Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. In terms of Western Christian theology, the feast commemorates all those who have attained the beatific vision in heaven. Specifically, in the Roman Catholic Church, the next day, All Souls' Day, commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven. All Saints' Day (also called All Hallows or Hallowmas[1]), often shortened to All Saints, is a feast celebrated on November 1 in Western Christianity, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Christianity in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. In terms of Western Christian theology, the feast commemorates all those who have attained the beatific vision in heaven. Specifically, in the Roman Catholic Church, the next day, All Souls' Day, commemorates the departed faithful who have not yet been purified and reached heaven.

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Scopri la community di Io fotografo e video
Il nuovo corso di Gazzetta dello sport per diventare veri fotografi!

Charlotte Brontë

Homosexuality in Africa

Among Swahili-speakers on the Kenya coast, particularly in the port of Mombasa, mashoga are
transgenderedtransgendered prostitutes who have all the liberties of men and are also welcome in many contexts in which men are prohibited. The paid partner usually takes the receptive role during intercourse, but it is likely that his inferiority derives from the fact that he is paid to provide what is asked for, rather than from his undertaking a particular sexual role. The one who pays is called the basha (derived from "pasha," a high-ranking official and the local term for the king in packs of playing cards).
Among the Fon, the predominant people in Dahomey (now Benin), Melville Herskovits in the 1930s reported that, after the age at which boys and girls may play together, "the sex drive finds satisfaction in close friendship between boys in the same group . . . . A boy may take the other 'as a woman,' this being called gaglgo, homosexuality. Sometimes an affair of this sort persists during the entire life of the pair" (though he earlier referred to homosexual relations as a "phase" through which adolescents pass).
Egalitarian Homosexual Relations
Most of the reports of homosexual relations not involving differences in age or gender status involved young, unmarried men's sexual relationships with each other. Kurt Falk wrote about an especially intimate bond of association, soregus, among the southeastern African Naman that included sex both between men and between women (with mutual masturbation the most common form of sex, but also males taking turns at anal penetrations and females using dildoes on each other).
An "exceptionally reliable" Nykakyusa (a people living around what is now the Tanzania/Zimbabwe border) reported to Monica Wilson in the early 1930s that male friends, who live in villages of age-mates when not out herding cattle, generally sleep together. The Nykakyusa accepted that male friends who danced together would have sexual relations. "Even if people see them in flagrante delicto, they say it is adolescence (lukulilo), all children are like that: they say that sleeping together and dancing is also adolescence," according to Wilson's elder. He reported that interfemoral intercourse is "what boys mostly do" and also reported anal and oral sex, ("some, during intercourse, work[ing] in the mouth of their friend, and hav[ing] an orgasm").
Female Homosexual Relations
Controversy continues about the purported chastity of female husbands in various African cultures. An Ovimbundu (in Angola) informant, told an ethnographer, "There are men who want men, and women who want women. . . . A woman has been known to make an artificial penis for use with another woman." Such practices did not meet with approval, but neither did transvestite homosexuals of either sex desist.
Among the Tswana (in addition to homosexuality among the men laboring in the mines), it was reported that back home "lesbian practices are apparently fairly common among the older girls and young women, without being regarded in any way reprehensible." Use of artificial penises was also reported among the Ila and Naman tribes of South Africa.
There is more surmise than documentation of sexual relationships in female compounds in various African societies, though there are attestations of female homosexuality in some of the same places in which male homosexuality was more intensively studied (including Mombasa and among the Azande).
The most extensive discussion is of "mummy" and "baby" (that is, age-differentiated) roles in Lesotho. Relationships are initiated voluntarily by one girl who takes a liking to another and simply asks her to be her mummy or her baby, depending on their relative age, according to Judith Gay. "The most frequently given reason for initiating a particular relationship was that one girl felt attracted to the other by her looks, her clothes, or her actions. . . . Sexual intimacy is an important part of these relationships." Over time, a Sotho may undertake both roles (with different partners) or play the same role with different partners.
Conclusion
With reports from hundreds of sub-Saharan African locales of male-male sexual relations and from about fifty of female-female sexual relations, it is clear that same-sex sexual relations existed in traditional African societies, though varying in forms and in the degree of public acceptance. Much of this same-sex activity was situational or premarital, though there were long-term relationships, too. The special Christian animus toward homosexuality was carried to Africa by Europeans and stimulated denials that "the sin not named among Christians" existed among "unspoiled" Africans.


Many forms of ambiguous sexuality can be found throughout the traditional arts of Africa, including images of androgyny, hermaphroditism, and transvestism; and much of erotic sculpture and theater can also be seen as homoerotic.literature
The treatment of same-sex relationships in African literatures has been influenced by the traditional belief systems of various African societies, the imported views of Christianity and Islam, and the political and legal legacies of European colonialism.social sciences
Anthropology, the first of the social science disciplines to take sexuality--and particularly homosexuality--seriously as a field of intellectual inquiry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has achieved a new impetus in the post-Stonewall era.
social sciences Beginning in the 1960s increasing numbers of ethnographers have conducted research on glbtq issues, spurred by the premise that studies of diverse sexualities are crucial to understanding human behavior and culture.
social sciences "Indigenous" is a concept important in the history of anthropology, particularly as it regards anthropology's treatment of same-sex sexual relations.
social sciences
Santería, Vodou, and related belief systems comprise a complex of religious ideas, practices, and imagery whose origins can be traced to West African traditions.social sciences sciences/situational_homosexuality.
Situational Homosexuality
Situational homosexuality is same-sex sexual activity that occurs not as part of a gay life style, but because the participants happen to find themselves in a single-sex environment for a prolonged period.social sciences
Although evidence of his own homosexual leanings is inconclusive, in his lifetime Sir Richard Burton was regarded with suspicion because of his knowledge and understanding of same-sex sexual activity.


bibliography

Besmer, Fremont E. Horses, Musicians, and Gods: The Hausa Possession Trance. South Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1983.
Donham, Donald L. History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Epprecht, Mark. "The 'unsaying' of Indigenous Homosexualities in Zimbabwe." Journal of Southern African Studies 24 (1998): 631-51.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. "Sexual Inversion among the Azande." American Anthropologist 72 (1970): 1428-34.
Falk, Kurt. "Homosexualiät bei den Eingeborenen in Südwest-Afrika." Geschlecht und Gesellschaft 13 (1925): 209-11.
Gay, Judith. "'Mummies and Babies' and Friends and Lovers in Lesotho." Journal of Homosexuality 11 (1985): 97-116.
Herskovits, Melville. Dahomey. New York: Augustine, 1937.
Murray, Stephen O., and Will Roscoe. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Shepherd, Gill. "Rank, Gender and Homosexuality: Mombasa as a Key to Understanding Sexual Options." The Cultural Construction of Sexuality. Pat Caplan, ed. London: Tavistock, 1987. 240-70.
Wilson, Monica. Good Company: A Study of the Nyakyusa Age Villages. 1951. Rpt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963.

TIMBUKTU'S MANUSCRIPTS

The Rush to Save Timbuktu's Crumbling Manuscripts

By Matthias Schulz and Anwen Roberts

Fabled Timbuktu, once the site of the world's southernmost Islamic university, harbors thousands upon thousands of long-forgotten manuscripts. A dozen academic instutions from around the world are now working frantically to save and evaluate the crumbling documents.

Susan Vogel / Icarus Films

The Grand Mosque at Djenne, Mali. The area's rich cultural heritage is only being slowly discovered.

Bundles of paper covered with ancient Arabic letters lie on tables and dusty leather stools. In the sweltering heat, a man wearing blue Muslim robes flips through a worn folio, while others are busy repairing yellowed pages.

An astonishing project is underway in Timbuktu, Mali, one of the world's poorest countries. On the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, experts are opening an enchanted Aladdin's Cave, filled with hundreds of thousands of ancient documents.

The Ahmed Baba Library alone contains more than 20,000 manuscripts, including works on herbal medicine and mathematics, yellowed volumes of poetry, music and Islamic law. Some are adorned with gilded letters, while others are written in the language of the Tuareg tribes. The contents remain a mystery.

Manuscript hunters are now scouring the environs of Timbuktu, descending into dark, clay basements and climbing up into attics. Twenty-four family-owned collections have already been discovered in the area. Most of the works stem from the late Middle Ages, when Timbuktu was an important crossroads for caravans. It was home to gold merchants and scholars, and it even boasted a university with 20,000 students. The old saying "the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu" summed up the ancient city's appeal.

But the legacy of the oasis, written with ink made from gallnuts, is beginning to fade. Roughly a dozen academic institutions are now involved in saving and evaluating the documents. The French are developing a database, while the United States has donated a device to digitize the damaged documents. The Norwegian cities of Oslo and Bergen are training locals to become conservators. Shamil Jeppie, a Cape Town historian charged with managing the multinational effort, recently published a book, "The Meanings of Timbuktu," in which he describes the current status of the project. European colonialists suppressed the "intellectual history of West Africa," Jeppie writes, and now it is time to rediscover the site that some have referred to as an "African Oxford."

Hunting for Mali's Hidden Documents

This is an astonishing assessment, given Timbuktu's status as a desert town in the middle of nowhere. In 1825, a European managed to navigate the difficult route down to a bend in the Niger River, south of the Sahara. By the time he reached the oasis, he had run out of water and was barely alive. Shortly after entering the city he was murdered. Timbuktu was taboo -- off-limits to Christians.

Even today, Timbuktu is not an easy place to get to. From August to February, local riverboats called pinnaces bob their way up the Niger River, landing at the port town of Kabara, 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Timbuktu. The landscape is dominated by sand dunes until shortly before the city's suburbs. The desert wind known as the Harmattan is about as pleasant as a dragon's breath.

Harlan Wallach/NUAMPS

Teams digitize rare works in the new studio in Timbuktu.

And yet the old section of the city is blanketed in an odd, heavy magic, filled with mosques topped by bulbous minarets and wealthy citizens' opulent houses, cube-shaped buildings with meter-thick walls made of baked clay.

According to an employee at the Ahmed Baba Library, Mali was overrun by the French colonial army after 1880. "The French didn't want us to have the manuscripts, and they tried to steal them," says the library worker. The documents were hidden to protect them.

But now the hunt is on. The house of Ismael Haidara, a historian whose ancestors include the Visigoths and jungle kings from southern Mali, has proven to be a treasure trove. Haidara, a private citizen, horded more than 2,000 bundles of papers, passed down through 11 generations of his family. "This is our family history," he says, pointing to a leather slipcase from the year 1519.

Albrecht Hofheinz, an Arabist from Oslo, estimates that there are up to 300,000 forgotten manuscripts in Mali. Insect bites have discolored the pages, he says. "The paper disintegrates, is destroyed by mold or eaten by termites." Time is of the essence. Some of the volumes are being photographed using a digital photo studio provided by the University of Chicago. The first of the documents are expected to be available on the Internet by the end of the year.

The contents of astronomical documents are already being analyzed. "So far 112 texts on astronomy have been discovered," explains Petra Schmidl, a historian of science at the University of Frankfurt am Main. They include calendar calculations, astrology and a depiction of the Ptolemaic world system.

Researchers are now looking forward to studying the tattered archives that contain reports on ancient oases and nomadic societies. The manuscripts also include lists of goods transported by caravans. Will the documents finally shed some light on the mysterious caravan trade?

There are many questions on how the trade thrived in the desert. The world's largest desert stretches 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from north to south. How did the caravans make it through? Archaeologists have not even scratched the surface at the caravans' destinations in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

But they have uncovered new finds in the Sahara, including traces of an ancient infrastructure. Water storage facilities have been found in the middle of the vast desert, as well as places fed by underground wells. Desert palaces once built by the Tuareg were unearthed in the Essouk oasis in northern Mali.

It is now clear that the Arabs were the first to conquer the inhospitable arid zone. While Rome's legions ventured no further than the edges of the desert, they penetrated far deeper into the Sahara.

There is evidence of a Moorish influence in Ghana by as early as 800 A.D. Vast gold deposits were found in the Ghanaian rain forest. Their owners, the Soninke kings, ruled a realm that stretched to the banks of the Senegal River.

Point of Departure for Desert Journeys

According to Arab accounts, the black rulers lived in tents guarded by large dogs wearing gold and silver collars and manacles. According to Arab geographer al-Bakir, one of these kings commanded an army of 200,000 soldiers.

Alyssa Banta

A private family library in the Tuareg village of Ber, 40 miles east of Timbuktu.

The country provided cola nuts, ivory, cotton and semiprecious stones. Local traders loaded their goods onto cargo boats and transported them on the Niger to Timbuktu. The city was the point of departure for journeys into the desert.

Camels stood at Timbuktu's water troughs. Its residents included Arabs, light-skinned Berbers and dark-skinned members of the Malinke tribe. The oasis smelled of lamb dung and fresh spices, and muezzins called out from its minarets. Gold, a form of payment, glistened everywhere -- as dust, nuggets and fist-sized lumps.

In 1324, when Kankan Mussa, one of the kings of Mali, went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, via Cairo, with his ostentatious entourage, he was so generous with the precious metal (he had brought along two tons of it) that gold prices on the Nile plunged. News of the wealthy black monarch even reached faraway Europe. A Catalan map of the world depicts him with thick lips and holding a scepter.

Kankan was so impressed by the palaces of the Orient that he brought home an architect, who created malleable mud-brick imitations of the Arab mosques in Timbuktu. The Djingerber Mosque, with its sugarloaf-shaped towers, still stands in the city today.

DER SPIEGEL

The historical trans-Saharan trading routes.

There is an even larger mosque in nearby Djenne, part fairytale castle and part termite hill. Each year after the rainy season, when cracks have formed in the outside walls, hundreds of workers participate in what has become a national pastime cum religious service. Men climb up along wooden scaffolding in the outside walls, praying as they climb, to apply fresh mud to the structure.

For many years, such customs were all but unknown in Europe (US ethnologist Susan Vogel filmed the annual mud plaster ceremony last year for the first time). In the past, those traveling to Timbuktu had to traverse seemingly endless volcanic plains and rocky plateaus -- at temperatures of up to 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit). The area south of Murzuk, an oasis notorious for its role in the slave trade, consists of a vast, shimmering sand bowl measuring 90,000 square kilometers (34,700 square miles, or about the size of Portugal).

Anyone who lost his way there was literally baked.

The Arabs only managed to complete the journey through the desert with the help of camels. A camel can drink 200 liters of water at a time, and its kidneys retrieve large amounts of water after urination. The Arabs also enlisted the help of the Tuareg tribes, which lived on ridges in the central Sahara.

Even there, surrounded by hyper-arid sand pans, volcanic basalt chimneys and pinnacles, life was possible. The Tuareg drilled deep wells, and they had their black slaves excavate long underground canals with slight inclines to bring in ground water.

Archaeologists have shown that an incredible system of underground canals up to 20,000 kilometers (12,422 miles) long once existed at Wadi al-Hayat in Libya. Thanks to such hydraulic marvels, the desert blossomed and crops sprouted in the fields of the Tuareg. In Essouk, they ate gazelles and dried perch, imported from the Niger River, 240 kilometers away. Murzuk, with its large slave market, was surrounded by a massive wall with seven gates -- in the middle of the Sahara.

A Source of African Pride

But nothing worked without the blue-robed Tuareg. They provided provisions for the caravans and led them to the oases. At times, they turned to blackmail and looting, and Timbuktu was attacked several times.

Researchers are anxious to discover more about the haggling between ethnic groups and how they divided up the spoils. In the late Middle Ages, Cairo was sending 12,000 camels a year to Mali. There were plenty of fortunes to be made.

The slave trade was especially lucrative. Guards carrying whips drove the slaves through the hot desert. "Only the youngest and strongest survived the two-month desert trek, and they were walking skeletons by the time they reached the Fezzan region, where they were fattened up," writes Austrian geographer Hans Weis.

The Koran also made its way into sub-Saharan Africa along these torturous routes. In its heyday, Timbuktu had 180 Koran schools. "A large library was built, where the fundamental theological and philosophical works were copied," explains Thomas Krings, an Africa expert at the University of Freiburg in southwestern Germany. The many documents that were penned then are now emerging in Mali as crumbling volumes. "Many people consider Timbuktu to be the end of the world," says Mahamoudou Baba Hasseye, the owner of a valuable private collection, "but it was an important center of Islamic scholarship."

Calligraphers once plied their trade in the desert. Some of the manuscripts uncovered in Timbuktu contain gold lettering, and some are written in the unusual Songhai and Fulfulbe tribal languages.

These treasures are still a long way from being saved. The libraries are filled with bits and pieces of paper, evidence of crumbling manuscripts. The government of South Africa promised to build a library in Timbuktu years ago, but nothing ever came of it.

But at least there are many who have come to Timbuktu to help save its ancient manuscripts. The project, which historian Petra Schmidl characterizes as being on the "extreme fringe of the Islamic academic community," is a source of great pride for Africans.

"Africa has repeatedly been portrayed as culturally inferior," says Essop Pahad, South Africa's Minister in the Presidency. "In Timbuktu, we are proving that the opposite is true."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,569560,00.html

IN RICORDO DI NICOLA MEROLLA(AMBASCIATORE CISTERNESE IN ARTE

Apprendo ora che il ns illustre concittadino ci ha lasciati.
CISTERNAONLINE desidera ricordarlo con una delle sue ultime apparizioni pubbliche durante la consegna del Premio Città di Cisterna 2007 a Mauro Buccitti.
Ai familiari tutti vivissime condoglianze dalla redazione e mie personali.
Giuseppe M. Belli

Note biografiche:

Nicola Merolla è nato a Cisterna di Latina il 14 gennaio 1932. Primo di quattro figli, la sua infanzia è stata caratterizzata dagli eventi bellici della seconda guerra mondiale, lo sbarco degli alleati ad Anzio, le bombe che devastano il paese, l'esodo forzato da Cisterna, la grande fame, la povertà, l'essere costretto ad abbandonare la scuola per aiutare la famiglia, sono elementi fondamentali che segnano la sua vita, per fortuna su di lui hanno un effetto positivo, rafforzano in lui la voglia di emergere, di lavorare per migliorare la sua condizione sociale. Si dà da fare provando tutti i mestieri, dal ragazzo di bottega al panettiere, dal sarto all'idraulico fino a trovare il lavoro che sarebbe stata la sua vita il "Fabbro". All' età di quattordici anni già capeggiava una squadra di quindici persone fino ad arrivare nel 1955 a 23 anni ad aprire un'attività tutta sua.

Il 2 giugno del 1975 è stato insignito del titolo di "Cavaliere al Merito della Repubblica". L'amore per il suo paese e per un riconoscimento verso la vita lo spingono ad impegnarsi nel sociale. Nel 1963 è stato Vice Presidente del Pro Cisterna nell'era Orsini, per poi riprendere la squadra nel 1973 retrocessa in 1^categoria, fino alla vittoria nel campionato di Promozione del 1975/1976 per il ritorno in serie "D".
Per molti anni è stato lo sponsor della corsa ciclistica intitolata alla Madonna del Divino Amore, divenuta un appuntamento classico per la categoria cicloamatori, è stato consigliere comunale dal 1975 al 1985 assumendo anche la nomina di assessore, è stato membro del comitato per il monumento del Carabiniere Salvo D'Acquisto, ha costruito personalmente e donato il cancello monumentale artistico della collegiata S.Maria Assunta di Cisterna, è stato promotore e sostenitore di molteplici attività sociali e culturali.
Nel 1989 ha ricevuto il "Premio Simpatia" in Campidoglio a Roma. Presidente dal 2004 della commissione del "Premio Cisterna", socio fondatore e Vice Presidente dell'Associazione Culturale "Oasi dell'Antica Ninfa".

La vena poetica di Nicola Merolla si scopre quando per conquistare la donna che amava scrive versi d'amore e vista la capacità di trasformare in parole i propri sentimenti iniziava a scrivere per gli amici poesie e scritti da dedicare alle proprie amate. Questa vena poetica col tempo si assopiva, ma nel 1988 dopo un delicato intervento di neurochirurgia che lo costringe ad una lunga convalescenza, si risvegliava in lui la voglia di scrivere le proprie sensazioni, le proprie emozioni ritrovate per il timore di perdere la vita e le capacità intellettive. Trasmettere i propri sentimenti, descrivere momenti di vita vissuta, i ricordi d'infanzia, spaccati di vita del dopoguerra, i giochi di una volta, riflessioni su persone e cose, l'amore che prova per sua moglie, per i figli, per i nipoti e la sua grande fede cristiana, era ormai per lui, dopo aver lasciato il lavoro, l'attività principale. Nel 2000 ha pubblicato il suo primo libro "L'Allegra Sassaiola" con la casa editrice Pagine di Roma.
Nel 2007 ha pubblicato il volume "San Rocco e le sue statue a Cisterna", volume distribuito in forma gratuita e donato alle parrocchie Santa Maria Assunta e San Valentino, e che lo scorso 20 maggio, è stato al centro di una lezione alla Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, cattedra di Storia Moderna, all'Università Roma Tre.
Ha partecipato a varie manifestazioni culturali piazzandosi sempre ai primi posti.

20 maggio 2008 - Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, cattedra di Storia Moderna, all'Università Roma Tre.
Ultima immagine pubblica

Domani, 15 luglio, alle ore 11, si celebreranno i funerali nella Chiesa Santa Maria Assunta in Cielo.

articolo originale. http://giuseppe-m-b.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/

Shailja Patel

Questa poesia fa parte della performance della bella indo-africana-kenyota Shailja Patel
L'ho conosciuta in Svezia ed è bravissima!!!
Ve l'allego in inglese e nella traduzione di Marta Matteini; nel file prima c'e' l'italiano e poi l'inglese.

SCROLL DOWN FOR THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION

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3. La vecchia con il tamburo: un tributo a Bi Kidude

1.

La donna posò il tamburo sull'erba, di fronte a sé.

Si avvolse un morbido telo intorno ai fianchi.

Come se stesse per lavare i panni, tagliare le verdure

legarsi sulla schiena il bambino per andare al mercato.

Nessuno di noi le fece caso.

La donna si imbrigliò il tamburo ai fianchi.

Un tamburo msondo che le arrivava all'altezza del petto, due palmi di diametro

Lo inclinò e se lo infilò tra le gambe.

Si sistemò per bene.

Tirò su la schiena.

Le spalle e il collo, pronti a scattare.

La bocca con le gengive in bella vista.

Dal lembo rialzato del telo spuntano le gambe magre e forti.

I piedi ben radicati a terra

Come se fosse arrivato il momento

Di darsi da fare.

Come se stesse andando

A lavorare.

All'improvviso, ci troviamo

Sul pianeta Kidude.

Dove gli uomini si muovono rapidi sulla stuoia:

piazzano i microfoni, sistemano i fili, si agitano per puntare le telecamere.

E la vecchia non si cura di nessuno.

Perché sono ottant'anni che suona il tamburo

Ben prima che esistessero le telecamere e i microfoni.

Anni e anni in cui ha trasportato il suo tamburo

incespicando tra la polvere

in tutta la Tanzania da cima a fondo

Per suonare.

Anni e anni in cui ha affrontato

La paura, gli insulti, le beffe

Il silenzio che ti distrugge l'anima

Sopravvive soltanto il fuoco più resistente.

Anni e anni in cui si è spinta sempre più nel profondo

Fino a toccare il centro del suo ritmo.

Questa è Bi Kidude.

Una virtuosa di musica Taraab, iniziatrice di Unyago.

Una donna che a novantacinque anni

Ha percorso più miglia a piedi

Di quante ne abbia fatte chiunque di noi in macchina.

Rivendica un lignaggio

Musicale radicato

Nelle vite di chi non ha niente

Storie raccontate nel linguaggio della strada e del mercato

Poesia sepolta nei corpi delle donne.

II.

Non ho mai visto una donna a cavallo del tamburo

Come una dea che cavalca la tigre

Come la creazione che cavalca il cosmo.

Non ho mai visto una donna a cavallo del tamburo.

Non ho mai visto un artista

Né uomo né donna

In nessun posto al mondo

Possedere il proprio strumento

Come se uscisse dal suo ventre

Come se fosse saldato

Alle sue cosce.

III.

Poi arrivano le danzatrici.

Le danzatrici si muovono lentamente.

Posano i cellulari, scuotono i loro teli.

Gioielli d'oro alle orecchie, al collo, ai polsi;

l'oro luccica nelle loro bocche.

Le danzatrici risucchiate dal movimento

Come un pezzo di verdura scivola nell'olio bollente

Poi risale in superficie

E inizia a friggere.

Adesso le danzatrici muovono i fianchi

Con precisione ed equilibrio, controllano

la propria forza, ogni singolo muscolo

gli atleti olimpionici morirebbero d'invidia.

Ondeggiano i fianchi

Per tutte noi

A cui è stato insegnato, imposto

Di rinnegare i nostri corpi. Per tutte le donne

Che sono state

Derubate del proprio corpo.

Spingono i sederi spumeggianti all'indietro

con democratica generosità.

Si burlano di un'anziana avvolta nel buibui nero.

Scherniscono il turista bianco con i dread locks

Che si finge distaccato

Dietro gli occhiali scuri

Mentre vedo che il collo gli diventa rosso

E si riga di gocce di sudore.

Le danzatrici agitano i fianchi

Per le cameriere

Dell'Africa House Hotel. Intrappolate

In disgustose, orribili, scadenti e soffocanti

gonne nere e camicie bianche

di un tessuto che fa sudare

mentre servono cocktail alle turiste in short e bikini.

Perché non sia mai detto che chi serve

senta la brezza leggera sulla pelle

non sia mai detto che chi serve

possa muovere i fianchi e il busto

in abiti comodi

di colori che vibrano.

Dimenticheremmo che sono personale di servizio.

Potremmo

Accorgerci di loro.

Le danzatrici agitano i fianchi per le donne

Quelle cameriere intanto servono. Turiste

In bikini dalle facce slavate

Sul bordo della piscina del Serena's.

Donne che controllano i loro corpi quotidianamente

A caccia di un po' di grasso in più

Di un'abbondanza da condannare.

Donne che condividono la tragica sorellanza

Della liposuzione, della chirurgia estetica

la silenziosa epidemia delle morti da anoressia.

Donne a cui hanno insegnato che essere belle

significa cancellare se stesse.

Queste danzatrici ruotano i fianchi

Per le seimila bambine che oggi stesso

Sono state tenute ferme, con le gambe divaricate, le mani legate,

imbavagliate, bendate, torturate

oltre ogni sopportazione, violentate

oltre ogni limite, circoncise

per colpa

di un clitoride.

Agitano i fianchi per ogni donna

Che ha preso il virus dell'Hiv

Da un uomo che ha dato più valore al suo piacere

Che alla vita di lei.

Queste donne che circondano Bi Kidude

Come pianeti intorno al sole

Le si agitano intorno come le vipere dello Snake Temple

Come pantere sinuose

Intorno alla primigenia fonte del suono;

si agitano per riportare nel mondo

la generosità

dei corpi femminili.

Con i fianchi e i sederi dicono SÍÍ!!!

SÍ

All'abbondanza che non si vergogna.

SÍ

Al potere, alla conoscenza

Che non si mascherano più.

SÍ

Al piacere,

rivendicato e conferito

ai nostri bei corpi mortali.

IV.

Non ho più paura di invecchiare

Dopo aver sentito Bi Kidude

Cantare forte

A novantacinque anni

Senza microfono

Onde sonore macchiate di tabacco

Cartavetrate fino a diventare sottili come la fibra di cocco

Più resistenti dei cavi d'acciaio.

Non ho più paura di invecchiare

Dopo aver visto Bi Kidude –

un viso non mai sfiorato da

Una crema antirughe,

da un peeling antiage con acido glicolico,

un viso che trangugia whisky e sigarette

per ogni grammo di idratante che uso io –

ipnotizzare centinaia di telecamere.

Ho sentito la forza del collo di questa donna,

i muscoli delle sue spalle

un tuono che si innalza

e il braccio che scende e poi la mano sul tamburo;

scatena più elettricità

di dieci Madonne

di cento Fela Kuti accompagnati da sedici musicisti

ci riporta al centro della creazione

dove nasce il suono.

V.

Credo in Bi Kidude

Come non credo in dio.

Ma se dio fosse una donna di novantacinque anni, nera come l'ebano

Una donna swahili

Che dice di avere centoventi anni,

con la bocca piena di denti rotti e di buchi

con le mani percorse dalle vene come i tronchi di banyan

il tamburo in mezzo alle gambe

la sigaretta tra le labbra sagge e insolenti

una banconota che sventola dalla scollatura;

se dio cantasse versi taglienti e maliziosi

sui pericoli del rotolino di tabacco

che tiene in bocca;

se dio fosse anche ironia, lussuria, contraddizione

sofferenza, imperfezione;

se dio sbandierasse le sue battaglie come un mantello di velluto,

se orchestrasse gli atomi dell'universo

secondo il ritmo del suo ventre

allora forse sì crederei in quel dio.

Quel dio che è solo il nome

Del genio che sta dentro tutti noi

Che fa di noi il nostro imam e il nostro profeta

La nostra divinità.

Esorterei i fedeli a pregare:

Sia lode a Kidude! Kidude urrah!

E loro risponderebbero: Urrah!

Risponderebbero: Urrah!

Risponderebbero: URRAH!

E tutti noi diventeremmo

dio.

Shailja Patel, 2006

Drum Rider: A Tribute to Bi Kidude

I.

The woman planted a drum on the grass before her.
Twisted a soft worn khanga round her hips.
As if she was going to wash clothes, chop vegetables;
hike a child to her back to go to market.
None of us really paid any attention.

The woman harnessed her hips to the drum.
Chest-high, foot-in-diameter msondo drum.
Rocked it aslant between her straddled legs.
Settled into position.
Sunken chest erect.
Shoulders, neck, at the ready.
Mouth set over gaping gums.
Khanga hiked up skinny strong legs.
Feet grounded in the earth
like it was time
to do business.
Like she was going
to work.

Suddenly, we are on
Planet Kidude.
Where men scurry across the mat:
place mics, arrange wires, jostle for camera views.
Where the woman ignores them all.
Because she did this for eight decades
before there were cameras, mics.
Decades she hoisted her drum
trudged rich dirt
the length and breadth of Tanzania
to perform.
Decades she fought off
terror, insults, mockery
the soul-destroying silence
only the strongest fire survives.
Decades she t ravelled deep and deeper
to the heart of her own rhythm.

This is Bi Kidude.
Virtuoso of Taraab, Unyago.
Woman who at ninety-five,
has walked more miles
than most of us have driven.
Claimed a lineage
of music rooted
in the lives of the powerless
stories unfurled in language of street and market
poetry buried in the bodies of women.

II.

I have never seen a woman ride a drum before
like a goddess rides a tiger
like creation rides the cosmos.
I have never seen a woman ride a drum like this.
I have never seen an artist
male or female
anywhere across the globe
own their instrument like
it grew out of their belly,
like it was welded
to their thighs.

III.

Then, there were the dancers.

The dancers moved lazily.
Dropped their cellphones, shook out their khangas.
Gold at their ears, their necks, their wrists;
gold gleamed in their mouths.

The dancers slipped into movement
as a bhajia slips into hot oil
rises to the surface
starts to sizzle.

Now the dancers work their hips
with a precision of balance, control
a potency of strength, of muscle isolation
Olympic gymnasts would envy.

They shake their hips
for all of us
who have been taught, coerced
to disown our bodies. For all women
whose bodies
have been stolen from them.

They thrust their succulent buttocks out
with democratic largesse.
Tease the old woman in the black buibui.
Taunt the white-boy, dreadlocked tourist,
who feigns coolness
behind his wraparound sunglasses,
while I watch his neck turn scarlet

drip with sweat.

The dancers work their hips
for the waitresses
at Africa House Hotel. Caged

in the most godawful
ugly, cheap, confining
sweat-producing black skirts, white shirts
to serve drinks to tourists in shorts and bikinis.

Because heaven forbid those who serve
should ever feel breeze on their skins
heaven forbid those who serve
should move their hips and torsos
freely in clothes that flow
colours that hum.
We might forget they are servants.
We might
see them.

The dancers shake their hips for the women

those waitresses serve. Waxy-pale
bikini-clad tourists
at Serena's poolside.
Women who check their bodies daily
for criminal fat
outlawed abundance of flesh.
Women of the tragic sisterhood
of liposuction, surgical alteration
silent epidemic of anorexia deaths.
Women taught that beauty
equals self-annihilation.

These dancers swivel their hips
for the six-thousand girl children who today
were held down, legs spread, hands tied,
gagged, blindfolded, tortured
beyond screaming, violated
beyond horror, circumcised
for the crime
of a clitoris.

They move their hips for every woman
infected with HIV
by a man who valued her life
less than his gratification.

These women who circle Bi Kidude
as planets orbit the sun
circle like temple snakes
sinuous panthers
the source where sound begins;
they are shaking the bounty
of women's bodies
back into the world.

Their hips and butts are saying: YESS!!
YES
to largeness that does not apologise.
YES
to power, knowledge,
that do not disguise themselves.
YES
to pleasure,
claimed and vested
in our mortal beautiful bodies.

III

I will never fear aging again
because now I have heard Bi Kidude
belt out
at ninety-five
without a mic
tobacco-stained waves of sound
sandpapered down to coconut fibre
stronger than cables of steel.

I will never fear aging again
because now I have seen Bi Kidude -
whose face has never touched
an anti-wrinkle cream,
an age-defying glycolic acid enzyme peel,
who knocks back whisky, cigarettes
for every ounce of moisturizer I consume -
hypnotise a hundred cameras.

I have felt the power of this woman's neck,
her shoulder muscles
surge thunder
down arm to hand to drum;
generate more electricity
than ten Madonnas
a hundred Fela Kutis with sixteen-piece bands
take us back to the center of fertile creation
where sound begins.

IV.

I believe in Bi Kidude
the way I don't believe in god.

But if god were a ninety-five-year old, ebony black
Swahili woman,
who claims to be one hundred and twenty,
with a mouth full of broken and missing teeth
hands veined like banyan trees
a drum between her legs
a kijiti at her defiant, all-knowing lips
a shillingi-mia-kumi note flapping out of her neckline;

if god chanted wickedly satirical shairi
about the dangers of the very deathstick
she sucks on;

if god embraced irony, lust, contradiction
heartbreak, imperfection;
if god flaunted her struggles like a velvet cape,
rearranged the atoms of the world
with the rhythm of her gut

then maybe I would believe
in that god.
That god who is only a name
for the genius in all of us
that makes us our own imam and prophet
our own divinity.

I would call the faithful to prayer:
Bomba Kidude! Kidude Saafi!

And they would holler back: Saafi!
They would holler back: Saafi!
They would holler back: SAAFI!

And we would all be

god.

- Shailja Patel, 2006, www.shailja.com

Glossary:

taraab - traditional music of Zanzibar
unyago - Swahili women's drumming and music, used to educate young women into adult sexuality and prepare them for marriage
bhajia - deep fried batter-dipped lentil / vegetable dumpling
buibui - head-to-toe black garment worn by conservative Muslim women on the East African coast.
kijiti - cigarette
shillingi-mia-kumi - ten thousand shillings. In the taraab tradition, audience members tuck money into the clothing of musicians as a tribute
shairi - swahili lyrical poetry
saafi - literal translation is 'clean' , but the word is used as a public accolade, shout of audience approval

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