TRADITIONAL VALUES ARE DOING MORE HARM TO AFRICA THAN GOOD

Culture of disgrace in Africa


Some traditional values, such as female circumcision, polygamy, and other outdated customs handed over by ancestors to tribes, are doing more harm to Africa than good. 


Female circumcision has caused more health hazards to females than ever imagined, but this old tradition of female genital mutilation is still widely practiced in many African countries.

Polygamy in royal households in Africa is another factor draining some of the African countries' financial resources. A couple of months ago, King Mswati III of Swaziland caused public outrage by sending his favorite wives on a globe-trotting shopping spree. 

The royal ruler, despite the poverty of his people, used 7 million dollars of state money to send five of his thirteen wives and dozens of their aides to France, Italy, Dubai, and Taiwan on a secret shopping trip.

The Swaziland people are suffering, but they are smiling, even though it is a criminal offense to criticize the king's private life in their country. Campaigners have reacted angrily against the British government, which gives aid totaling 65 million pounds to the African country. Swaziland also receives about 235 million dollars from the US.

The king of Swaziland has a personal fortune of $240 million and also receives money from the national budget for the upkeep of his family, yet more than two-thirds of the country's 1.2 million population survives on less than fifty cents per day, and more than a quarter of the adult population suffers from HIV.

In a country like Swaziland, where education and health should be priorities, he spent $5 million on 20 armored Mercedes-Benz cars. A journalist from the Swaziland Solidarity Network told the British Times newspaper. 

"They shout about Zimbabwe, but they keep quiet about what is happening in Swaziland, even though they are one of its biggest aid donors. They are wasting British taxpayers' money on this tyrant."

Men and women, which of them are the most faithful and sincere?

A cheating man caught red-handed


I write about many interesting issues, but I have never thought of writing about gender faithfulness or unfaithfulness to each other, when one day, someone asked me, "Why do most men die and leave behind their wives?" 

I couldn`t find an answer to her question, then, without a thought, I said, "Because most men are unfaithful to their partners." I was surprised she was satisfied with my answer.

But is it very true that men fall short when it comes to dishonesty? Well, many men lie and cheat on their partners, but also women. 

Most men cheat on their wives and girlfriends for several reasons, including lack of sexual satisfaction, biological problems that the woman is not aware of, but of which the man cannot speak. But with women? I keep on asking myself, "Why do they often cheat on their men?"

Are they also looking for sexual satisfaction or money? On Monday, 28 September 2009, whilst waiting at London`s Victoria Coach Station to join my bus to Dorset, a sad story caught my attention in an entertainment newspaper called "London Lite." 

The story was about a woman who was allegedly strangled by her own husband after discovering that she was having an affair with another man.

The husband, after having enough evidence, including a secret taping of 127 hours of his wife's conversations with her lover, confronted his wife, who asked for a divorce. To me, that was a very good wife. 

She did not deny her unfaithfulness but quickly asked for a divorce of which her man should have accepted the request and given her freedom.

Instead, he did the most stupid thing a man could do. Fearing the loss of his home, two children, and fortune, the jealous husband chose to kill his wife, pretending he did not know of her death. 

The court heard of his wife`s previous adulterous adventures. Marriage always turns to a different angle of diverse problems when there isn`t any transparency, honesty, and faithfulness.

Even though I know that most men die leaving their partners, I can`t really say it is because of their unfaithfulness to their partners, since women also cheat on their husbands. But it is a fact that a greater percentage of men cheat on their wives than women.

Bijlmer is beautiful but is it a dangerous place to live in Amsterdam?

The Bijlmer in the South-East of Amsterdam


In the southeast of Amsterdam lies a nice, lively neighborhood called Bijlmer. Bijlmer is always in the news, firstly due to the big firms and industries that have created thousands of jobs for the Dutch people and secondly due to the wave of crime that has soured the image of its inhabitants, mainly foreigners. 


Bijlmer has also situated the magnificent modern Ajax stadium, which has hosted thousands of international matches, conferences, and concerts.

The influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal, has made Bijlmer a dangerous place to live in Amsterdam. With diverse immigrants, mainly from Surinam, Antillean, and Curacao, former colonies of the Dutch and West African immigrants, Bijlmer is now a commercial center for drug trafficking and harbors the most hardened criminals.

How do we call this? Holland dream or Dutch dream? Like the American dream, inviting many Latin Americans and Mexicans into the country, Suriname came in their numbers to the Netherlands. 

Without any basic education, the majority of Suriname is stagnant, without any future. Feeling dejected and frustrated, the only means to survive the material world of Bijlmer is to resort to drug trafficking, crime, and violence.

With the desire to study the background of Africans living in the Bijlmer, I have never seen merciless, hostile, and aggressive people like Suriname before. 

They even think the police fear them and they would not like to come their way. But what makes these people so aggressive and violent? 

My opinion is that the free smoking of marijuana is. In public, the metros running Gaasperplas and Gein, from the Central Station and the lifts of apartments, are always choked with heavy smoke and the odor of marijuana.

Some of the drugs they smoke and use have taken their toll on them. Junkies are a common sight in the Bijlmer. The effects of drugs on users are disastrous. Horrible creatures like people acting in horror movies. 

An investigation conducted recently by two Dutch journalists, Jan-Willem Navis and Joris Polman, in the neighborhood of Bijlmer revealed that for between two and three hundred euros, someone could own a gun, and they fear that, within a short period, guns would overflow in the neighborhood of Bijlmer. Young boys move around everywhere with knives hidden on them.

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Is the crime wave in Bijlmer too much for the police to handle, or bring the situation under control? Over the years, the police force has demonstrated how good they could be by catching many criminals, and those who wanted to resist arrest jumped to their deaths. 

They have tried everything to make Bijlmer a safe place to live, but from every angle, it seems the police are losing the battle.