INTERNATIONAL AFRICA DAY
On May 25th we celebrate the international day of Africa, honoring a 25 May 1963 when the OUA (Organization for African Unity) was established, and since 2002 replaced by the UA (African Union).
And one more year we echo this day starting with the same header to contextualize the appointment of this celebration.
Youth Meeting in Nikine (Senegal)
Because we always have reasons to celebrate, or very often. We can celebrate life, today the life lived with joy of millions of Africans. Many millions: from the north, from the west, from the south (from the east) to the centre. We can celebrate the music, today the one that is made in Africa, which is a lot of it as it can not be otherwise in such a large territory. We can celebrate gastronomy, today the "African gastronomy", a semantic aberration that we forgive to call the kitchens, dishes, flavors, smells, textures and infinite colors of the immense diversity of diverse landscapes. We can celebrate the festivities, today the festivities of each village, of each ethnic group, of each region of Africa. We can celebrate clothes, fashions, styles, today those of every corner of every place in Africa. We can celebrate the arts, today the fertile arts in African lands, with their peculiarities, their visions, their magnetisms. We can celebrate literature, today the literatures that are the voice of African mouths, who speak to us on paper with their languages. We can celebrate because we are and feel part of a whole where Africa has its place, with us (with everyone). And we celebrate being there, to share everything they offer us from each place of villages, cities, deserts, savannahs, mountains, beaches or forests that feed the fraternity among human groups.
Beach in Diembèring (Senegal)
From the Kassumay Foundation we remain firm in the purpose of celebrating by keeping our gaze on the south, complicity, admiration, recognition and shared effort. And we celebrate the positive work with a proverb of African origin that reflects a symptom of the perception that we often have of events and that prays:
When a tree is tomboy, where it is understood; whend la forêt pousse, step a bruise seul.
And we celebrate the stubborn push that should guide us through the steps with a quote from the Senegalese writer Fatou Diome:
Chaque miette de vie doit serve à conquérir la dignité !
Sea entrance to Nikine (Senegal)
A day in Africa.A day where we will get this name out,AFRICA, to blogs , articles , tuts , photos , posters , and even in some daring news. And the rest of the days of the year? Will it return to partial oblivion or sometimes almost total to what we subject the continent that saw humanity born? Or perhaps we will talk about it a little by taking advantage of the migratory phenomena that currently affect us as a receiving country – rather than welcoming – with the open fronts of the Canary Islands and more recently Ceuta and Melilla as a result of an upset of the government of Morocco ? Or looking at Lampedusa with the arrival of good weather and the most frequent departure of boats from Libyan hell, African hell? And so perhaps also, from time to time, some official and unofficial media will bring us closer to other African hells, this time traveling beyond the great Sahara desert, where conflicts of various kinds – real and regrettable – reach increasingly vulnerable populations. But the whole photo should also contain stories of success, celebration, overcoming and light that are also there – real and admirable – and have a more accurate view of a continental globality arising from an immense mosaic of local realities. From the FUNDACIÖ KASSUMAY with our sensitivity towards the great neighbor of the south – we should say the many neighbors - we try to get closer every day of the year to this AFRICA that fascinates us and always surpasses us. It is our small contribution to the construction of a world that we dream better, one that they say is possible and that, at least, is so necessary and urgent in the face of the outrageous increase in hate speech and clearly xenophobic and exclusive policies that always point to the other as a source of all evils. We want free to choose where to live, to decide where to go, to share with people from all over the world. From Sant Boi to AFRICA....from AFRICA to Sant Boi.
And one more year we echo this day starting with the same header to contextualize the appointment of this celebration.
Youth Meeting in Nikine (Senegal)
Because we always have reasons to celebrate, or very often. We can celebrate life, today the life lived with joy of millions of Africans. Many millions: from the north, from the west, from the south (from the east) to the centre. We can celebrate the music, today the one that is made in Africa, which is a lot of it as it can not be otherwise in such a large territory. We can celebrate gastronomy, today the "African gastronomy", a semantic aberration that we forgive to call the kitchens, dishes, flavors, smells, textures and infinite colors of the immense diversity of diverse landscapes. We can celebrate the festivities, today the festivities of each village, of each ethnic group, of each region of Africa. We can celebrate clothes, fashions, styles, today those of every corner of every place in Africa. We can celebrate the arts, today the fertile arts in African lands, with their peculiarities, their visions, their magnetisms. We can celebrate literature, today the literatures that are the voice of African mouths, who speak to us on paper with their languages. We can celebrate because we are and feel part of a whole where Africa has its place, with us (with everyone). And we celebrate being there, to share everything they offer us from each place of villages, cities, deserts, savannahs, mountains, beaches or forests that feed the fraternity among human groups.
Beach in Diembèring (Senegal)
From the Kassumay Foundation we remain firm in the purpose of celebrating by keeping our gaze on the south, complicity, admiration, recognition and shared effort. And we celebrate the positive work with a proverb of African origin that reflects a symptom of the perception that we often have of events and that prays:
When a tree is tomboy, where it is understood; whend la forêt pousse, step a bruise seul.
And we celebrate the stubborn push that should guide us through the steps with a quote from the Senegalese writer Fatou Diome:
Chaque miette de vie doit serve à conquérir la dignité !
Sea entrance to Nikine (Senegal)
A day in Africa.A day where we will get this name out,AFRICA, to blogs , articles , tuts , photos , posters , and even in some daring news. And the rest of the days of the year? Will it return to partial oblivion or sometimes almost total to what we subject the continent that saw humanity born? Or perhaps we will talk about it a little by taking advantage of the migratory phenomena that currently affect us as a receiving country – rather than welcoming – with the open fronts of the Canary Islands and more recently Ceuta and Melilla as a result of an upset of the government of Morocco ? Or looking at Lampedusa with the arrival of good weather and the most frequent departure of boats from Libyan hell, African hell? And so perhaps also, from time to time, some official and unofficial media will bring us closer to other African hells, this time traveling beyond the great Sahara desert, where conflicts of various kinds – real and regrettable – reach increasingly vulnerable populations. But the whole photo should also contain stories of success, celebration, overcoming and light that are also there – real and admirable – and have a more accurate view of a continental globality arising from an immense mosaic of local realities. From the FUNDACIÖ KASSUMAY with our sensitivity towards the great neighbor of the south – we should say the many neighbors - we try to get closer every day of the year to this AFRICA that fascinates us and always surpasses us. It is our small contribution to the construction of a world that we dream better, one that they say is possible and that, at least, is so necessary and urgent in the face of the outrageous increase in hate speech and clearly xenophobic and exclusive policies that always point to the other as a source of all evils. We want free to choose where to live, to decide where to go, to share with people from all over the world. From Sant Boi to AFRICA....from AFRICA to Sant Boi.
