Kenyan born Ali Mazrui of the University of Binghamton in the United States of America who has died at the age of 81 was one of those academics every campus could do with. At every campus in which he taught Mazrui was the glue that held together at the level of intellect and intellectual life the diverse and divergent community typical of academia.
All cultures have traditions that mark important occasions in life, promote unity and transmit values to new generations. These traditions may be based on such factors as age, gender, stage in life, social status, or may arise out of disasters (natural or man-made).
Throughout Africa as population increases so does the speed of urbanization. With urbanization come many changes that deeply affect culture and the old way of life in many communities, whose rich and valuable knowledge, including artifacts face danger of imminent disappearance.
In the wake of Boko Harum and its campaign of violence it‘s common to hear many Nigerians speak of their country as going to the dogs. It is true that Boko Harum has inflicted an enormous damage on the national psychic, perhaps equal in scale to those inflicted by the civil war more than forty years ago.
Running out of gas is a phrase commonly used but only figuratively. For us on June 28, 2014 at about 12.35 pm coming off a bridge on Interstate 10 West, Louisiana, USA, running out of gas was literally true. I heard my wife asked, “Why is the car slowing down?” when it was supposed to be moving at 70 mph.
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