THIS IS AFRICA?

THE OTHER AFRICA YOU DO NOT KNOW

Anytime the continent of Africa is mentioned, we are immediately inaundated by images that are presented to us by the media such as television, newpapers or magazines,etc. A land of jungles and sometimes safaris where people go sightseeing in parks with animals mingling with humans.

A land ravaged by war across the continent,villages plagued by diseases,hunger stricken children running around unclothed while women live under squalid circumstances and oppression.

The side of Africa where development is constantly on-going with great strides being made in economic advancement,cultural progress including science and technology is usually ignored.

Very few people have been able to associate Africa with any kind of good and genuine images like the above picture of South Africa portrays.

This image proved unique to me because it is hardly a part of the effort and intention of the media to present a true and positive image of image of Africa like everyone should know, at least both sides of Africa.

My aim is not to undermine the developmental necessities of Africa but to open the mind of the person who have known only one side of the story of Africa from the media. Whether this is a clandestine effort on the part of the media or unintended consequences of media coverage of Africa, I do not wish to undermine the truth presented by some media both local and international.

makezine.com

Analysing the makezine website

I had the interesting task of analysing the website makezine.com which I found very intriguing with its content and format.

This blog essentially composed of a variety of items which include news items,video, video games,old and new technology and exihibitions. This blog also comprised good things such as how to make items.On this blog is news item about australia which says there is a ban coming up in Austalia to outlaw the use of indecadescent light which will be replaced by flourescent lights.Another attention grabbing news item was how a $10 wok is keeping a television station on the waves in a small town.

Further information on the topics that were being covered under the posts in this blog was easily accessible by the many hyperlinks provided.This made my reading of the blog much easier as I clicked on links to get more information on topic that I felt were not thouroghly dealt with.For example I clicked on the hyperlink regarding the ban of indecadescent lights in Australia and went to the website of BBC to get more information on this news.


The most striking feature of this blog is the use of image to put across information. I found this to be most interesting because it gave the information being portrayed more vivid and digestible to the audience. I found a lot of the posts on this blog easily readable because it did not contain too much text and some post even had fewer text and overbearing images while other texts had no text at all.

In looking at this blog I thought there could be a few concepts I can inculcate into my own blog.
The main reason being that I would be pleased to see my blog give all the things I was offered when I visited makezine.com.

Formost I would like to add more variety to my website by providing interesting things such as news items, my own articles and other peoples articles if that can help provide the variety needed to make my blog appealing while providing something for every taste.

Hyperlinks I found out after visiting this blog that gives more credibility to the information being presented. If I had any doubts about the news on Australia all I had to do was to click the hyperlink and I would be led to the news agency in this case BBC which presented the news.
Based on the foregoing argument I would like to add more hyperlinks to my blogs to make the means of verifying information or obtaining more information possible.

More images will certainly be a good addition to my blog. All the benefits that accrue to images on blogs will be a part of my blog. Some of these include vivid pictures, more comprehensible to the reader as well as providing a memorable experience for some readers. This is because some readers remember stories better with visual images and this will certainly help this kind of readers on my blog.

One other thing from the makezine blog I would like to incorporate in my own blog is the occassional use of videos. This certainly provides a different kind of experience for most if not all readers. Providing a video with all the information contained in it instead of text. Text can be monotonous sometimes and video can be a good break from such monotony.


The content and format of the website was very attractive to me as a blogger but I believe is more attractive to a reader. Incorporating such concepts as the variety, detail,intrigue and fun from this blog onto my own will be more than welcome.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A PSYCHOLOGIST

ALTERNATIVES TO VIOLENCE SHELTER

Laid at the foothills of the mountain in the outskirts of Denver, a Victorian looking house serves as the main building for Alternatives to Violence. The office of the psychologist was no bigger than a room in a standard three-bedroom apartment. Her shiny dark brown desk, which looked almost flawless, was decorated with flower pots on each side of the corner of the table.The light blue colored paint of the room gave it its glow accentuating the smile on the face of the first client that entered that morning. The rear of the room is almost entirely a window overlooking the green grass outside.

“I am emotionally spent” Miss Jacobs, the ten year experienced psychologist at this shelter confides inme. The stories and images she encounters has emotionally drained her and taking much more effort to keep an eight hour shift than she had initially imagined. The pay was not a problem as it turned out more financially rewarding but she had decided it was time to get into another area of psychology, for this shelter reminded her of her own abusive relationship.It was getting more and more difficult to separate herself from her job.

Like every morning assigned victims of violence in this shelter will come in and go over the assignedchores for the day and the progress of their treatment. Alternatives to Violence have been in operation for over five years. In its span of operation many women have gone through here and received treatment for all kinds of problems from drug abuse and addiction through violence against them.Violence usually from their partners such as husbands,boyfriends and to my surprise lesbian partners in somecases of homosexual women.

Tameka in her mid twenties who entered the room this morning is a victim of violence who had been impregnated by her own stepfather. The baby had been taken away from her after testing positive to cocainedue to drug addiction. For such a person the healing process is going to take a little longer that thenormal forty-five day period for an average program.The office is not the only venue where treatment takes place.

On a typical fine morning like this one, when the weather permitted, the bench outside the window that sat under the tree in the middle of the perfectly mowed lawn provided an attractive canopy for a session. The shade under the tree provided a perfect temperature unusual of wintertime in the mid-morning sun for what promised to be a depressing conversation between a psychologist and her client.

At the age of twenty-five she was at the prime of herlife but years of violence from her ex-husband chippedaway all the cheer off her immaturely wrinkling face. Marks of tears from years of crying seemed part of her facial lines. A smile cracked through the sad looking face of Tameka as she gracefully walked to the bench in the middle of the carefully cutgrass. I could tell she had more weight on her mind than she could bear. Her two children had been taken away by the social services department and she was in and out of courtfor the last one who seemed more likely to be taken away if her parenting classes do not go well.

Deep in her hazel brown eyes hope did not seem too far away. As she sat down on the bench her eyes is fixated on amoving and restless black ant in the grass. The conversation, which was about to begin, did not sound like her favorite subject as her eyes were becoming misty with tears at the first word that came out of her mouth.

Like many of the women at this shelter Tameka grew as an inner city child in a working class home. As achild she had aspirations of being a nurse. Dream notrealized but the Alternatives to Violence shelter,which now housed many women of her caliber,represented the hope of healing. This is the story of many of the women here. The chronicle she relates in her beginnings in life to the shelter is heartwrenching. The man who married her mother when she was ten had sexually violated her for years while threatening to kill her if she said anything to her mother.Like many victims of such circumstances Tameka blamed herself for her situation.

Her mother ignored her complaints for years and she found solace on the streets, which landed her in bad company andconsequently drug abuse. The man who fathered her first two children has himself been abusive. She had put herself in harm’s way many times than she can count for him during days they sold drugs together. He finally ended up the penitentiary inCanyon City leaving her helpless to cater for two children.

“I did everything I could but had no choice but to return to that house” referring to the place her mother and her stepfather shared. “He came down there anytime he felt comfortable as ifI was his second wife,” she stated with a straightface forcing a well of tears back. Tameka occupied the basement with her two children in the house. When hermother left for work or anywhere, her stepfather came downstairs and exploited her. He took her childhood away from her and continued to exploit her at the most vulnerable time of her life. Her credibility with her mother had been deeply smeared with constant trouble with the law and drugproblems.

Her mother was in no position to trust Tameka’s word over that of her husband of fifteenyears. The pregnancy was the final straw that brokethe camel’s neck. The child is his, she made sure she told him but the mother does not know because she would not believe her even if she told her.

Many times she had contemplated suicide and when she was living in the basement, maiming this man for lifeor even taking his life has crossed her mind manytimes. The look in the innocent faces of her kids has pushed her thoughts away from such choices.Her self-esteem was at its lowest ebb and trust for men had vanished with thin air along with hope.

The psychologist listened with rapt attention even though she was already accustomed to this story as Tameka pours her heart out during every session.When Tameka finished talking Miss Jacobs the psychologist told Tameka that,“ we are almost at light at the end of the tunnel” making the problem a shared one and not of the client alone.

Miss Jacobs ended the session by scheduling for another meeting with this client in two days in her office. This session was over and the next person was Joyce Edwards. The pressures on the amenities and opportunities came into sharp focus when she remembered that there was a fund raising event late that afternoon for the shelter.

Community organizations such as churches, business and individuals were coming to help raise the much needed funding for the Alternative to Violence Shelter. It was going to be a break for her after she takes care of the last session with Joyce. This was Joyce's last section with Miss Jacobs before her next stage of the healing process.

In such places as this shelter lay the much needed ray of hope for all people who are in situations like Tameka.

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PSYCHOLOGIST IN A SHELTER

Taking a look into the life of a psychologist who works in a shelter for the downtrodden in society.The shelter is made up of people of all walks of life from the abused woman,a drug addict through abandoned elderly people.

A typical day in the life of a psychologist would cover the different people who this psychologist deal with.The interesting part of this is that all these people have different stories to tell about how they ended up overthere at the shelter either throgh their fault or other people's making.

The effects of such social cankers in society as drug abuse, wife battery,child neglect early teenage pregnancy and political and economic neglect and discrimation for political and economic instutions in government or private entities are all factors I would consider in looking at a typical day of a shelter psychologist.

The personal life of the psychologist would be very important to consider in terms of how they see themselves in society.A lot of the times people are easily able to detach themselves from the jobs they do which makes them more capable of being objective.I wonder however that the life of the psychologist and the people they deal with seems to have the tendandy to wear off the "professionalism" and rather look at their jobs with subjectivity.

It has to do with the personal stories of other people which is not very easy to detach from so much unlike working for marketing company in which your goal is to sell and make money and nothing else.

Individual lives of such workers like their families spouses brothers and sisters and parents for example would to interesting to cover because it will go a long way to show that the qualities required to be a mental psychologist or any other kind of pychologist may be easy to apply to clients in a shelter but is it easy when it comes to applying the same principles to their own personal lives.

UNIVERSAL RELIGION:ISLAM





The essential motive of this video is Islam and very often contorted image presented to the world. Recent events in the United States and other parts of the world have created an image of Islam which is not always the truth about the religion. To a large extent, some of the images and resulting perceptions created about Islam are justifiably appalling. The central issue at hand is if the behaviors and attitudes of people who call themselves muslims can be necessarily construed as Islam itself. The premise is that if you define others by what their actions are, how do you define them when they are not engaged in those acts? My point is, there is the need to clearly seperate the perpetrator of the act from other acts the perpertrator partakes at other times.

This video on youtube chronicles the universal quality of Islam on all the continents of the world. From the foothills of mount kilimanjaro in East Africa, the uraban city of London in the United Kingdom, the countryside of rural Nigeria in Africa, to towns of Pakistan through the streets of Harlem in New York, Islam polishes the face of the earth with the its human and spiritual elements.

This video uses image very well to explain the nature and form of Islam across the face of the universe.It used children, literacy, family life, politics, economy, old age, worship, war, peace, architecture of a place to vividly explain what Islam is truly about. It is about human development through the ages and what people really mean to each other. Essentially we came from nothing and will return to a source we all share. The Prophet of Islam urges Muslims to see themselves as travellers who will finally return to their origins. But while here make the best use of the place and do not be carried away by the things that adorn it. No one really worships God for God's benefit but for the benefit of their own souls.
As we remember that God is independent of anything from mankind it becomes even more important to appreciate the fact that servicing humankind is the ultimate form of worship in Islam.

Watching this video on television would not be too different from the computer because it uses images that can be used in both media. Picture clarity is also an advantage for the blog much more than on television. It must be stated that it will be truly great to see this piece on television because it will help shed light of true Islam and challenge some of the stereotypical images that saturates the viewpoints of many about Islam.

Another advantage of watching this video in the comfort of the home is that it goes beyond being something put together for the sole purpose of entertainment to a documentary that seeks to educate by arousing the senses through vivid images of, for instance, dressing in all those different cultures and yet reflecting Islam.

The fundamental aspect of this video that I thought makes it unique is commonality shared by all the people which is the religion of Islam, in spite of the varied racial backgrounds of the people. The strenght and character of a person according to Islam is not judged by the color of the skin or eys but by the faith of the person. How much are we willing to give up and protect one another regardless of whether we share the same religious orientation or not. Islam is about neighborliness and what we are prepared to do as we would like others to do unto us.

Sound recorded in the background in this video also contribute significantly to the video.The song that is played in this video is arabic which is the main language mulsims around the world use in most of their worship and ritual prayer. At the end of the day, intentions are what matter for every act of faith. The goal is to be peaceful and submissive to the will of God. The way to do that is to be peaceful to your neighbor regardless of who they are by respecting their differing opinions on all aspects of life.

Image is everything accompanied by sound. It is no surprise to send subliminal messages through sound and image to the senses and successfuly entrenching those images and perceptions created in the bedrock of human thought. This is why this video is even more important in clearly communicating the importance of Islam and the application of its universal principles to living at all times of the human experience.

The goal is to urge folks to be critical of what they read and see about different religions. As justifiable as it may sound and look, it is critical to go beyond what appear before us and get close to it in order to truly know. For example take a day or two to visit a mosque or ask muslims questions that buggle your mind about Islam. You could be surprised what you discover.

Keep an open mind because the views we have today are not perfect. If you do not keep an open mind, you can not absorb any more views because the door to the mind is closed. Keep an open mind and you may discover that there are some viewpoints you might need to refine and modify to put you in a better space of understanding.

At the end of the day the fear of the unknown is very detrimental to any knowledge base. The line between closed mindedness and ignorance with fear is very fine.