Archive for 'Gender Masala'
A spiritual gift
Posted on November 23, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, arts, children, culture, human rights, religion, stereotypes, violence, women, men and more.
What drives a 17-year-old girl to enter a monastery? Today she is 30, and still happy about her choice. Her eyes sparkle and her laughter comes easy. She exudes peace.
I will call her Gabra (gift, in Amharic), for our conversation was private. I met her at a monastery near Lalibela, the mystical city of rock-hewn churches in northern Ethiopia.
Monastic life has a long tradition and prestige in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The oldest monastery dates from the 6th century. A monastic renaissance between the 13th and 16th century brought great moral and political authority to clergy.
Gabra’s rock-hewn monastery dates from the 12th century. Her room is excavated in the pink tufa rock. Two built-in-the-rock platforms, covered with a thin mattress, do as couch and bed. An old cupboard holds a few plates and cooking utensils, three of the long green robes worn by Ethiopian peasants, the white headscarves that nuns wear, and two pairs of sandals.
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Family health managers
Posted on November 20, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, children, culture, health, women, men and more.
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Children’s health and the invisible Ethiopian men
Posted on November 17, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, children, culture, health, stereotypes, women, men and more.
Guest posting by Gifti Nadi. After ten years with the International Women in Media Foundation in Washington DC, she is back in her home country, Ethiopia.
This was not an ordinary polio vaccination day for the children of Babile and Kombolcha, small towns about 500 km East of Addis Ababa. Ferenjis (foreigners in Amharic) had arrived!
About 100 Rotarians from the USA and Canada paid their way to Harar and Dire Dawa in Eastern Ethiopia to join local health workers in a massive drive to vaccinate 11.5 million children under five nationwide.
In recent years, 24 cases of polio have been detected in Ethiopia, likely coming from Sudan, says the World Health Organisation.
We travelled in small groups to the towns nestled against the backdrop of stunning mountains. We went door to door and were warmly welcomed by the primarily Muslim, Oromo and Somali families. (more…)
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Gone with the wind…
Posted on November 9, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala.
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Being male was the cameraman’s bad luck
Posted on November 3, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, culture, human rights, media, stereotypes, women, men and more.
Guest blogger: Suad Hamada, IPS correspondent in Bahrain
A Saudi woman journalist escaped punishment last week but her cameraman wasn’t so lucky.
Rozana Al-Yami, 22, was pardoned by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah after the court sentenced her to 60 lashes for her work at the talk show Red Line in LBC, a Lebanese satellite TV.
She made international news. He didn’t. No one mentioned that he has to serve a two-month jail term. His name remains anonymous in press reports.
Some would call this positive discrimination in favour of women but to me iit s a general bias. Women have been striving all over the world for equality, not favoritism. (more…)
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Jacaranda watch final days
Posted on October 28, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala.
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Jacaranda Watch
Posted on October 26, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, arts.
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Jacaranda Watch
Posted on October 22, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala.
White jacarandas are few, and a treasure to find.
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Purple rain, purple dreamscape
Posted on October 21, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, arts, culture.
I just have to do it. This posting is not about gender, politics, foreign aid or photoshopped models.
It is about beauty. The beauty of nature: the splendid jacarandas blooming just now that turn Pretoria into a lilac-purple dreamscape.
It s said that 50,000 jacarandas line the streets. When the blossoms drift to the ground, carpetting sidewalks, it’s like a magical purple rain. Awesome.
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Beauty as an optical illusion
Posted on October 12, 2009, by mercedes, under Gender Masala, adolescents, arts, children, culture, media, stereotypes, women, men and more.
Fashion models in ads are optical illusions and the award-winning video Evolution of Beauty, from the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty proves the point eloquently. Watch it at:
http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.ca/bblank.asp?id=6895
Digital cosmetic surgery - nip-and-tuck, botox and liposuction, on the screen, with a click - render these models picture-perfect (excuse the pun) and thoroughly unreal.
There is no way a non-photoshopped woman can attain that perfection. Hey, we are human. We have flaws.