mweshi

Live jazz is hard to come by in Lusaka on a weekday, let alone jazz being played by one of Africa’s jazz legends for a great cause! Imagine my surprise when I heard that Hugh Masekela was playing at the Lusaka Golf Club on Wednesday night while having drinks with friends over at our favorite spot after what had already been a busy and hectic week.

A couple of friends had been talking about some tickets they had for this “music gig mid-week,” last weekend but they didn’t quite explain the magnitude nor the cause behind it; I figured it would include the regular lineup of guys I’ve heard playing ad nauseam over the past weeks so I wasn’t too bothered about it. The concert was set for 8PM and I was being told about Hugh playing around 8:30PM. Almost shot myself in the foot by thinking he’d be in town for the week, with the SADC summit currently taking place, and I’d be able to catch him on Friday night or something. In retrospect, I can only imagine what insults I would have been hurling at myself had I missed the concert.

After learning that it would be a one-night-only event, I went along with my friends and it was definitely worth it! Hugh played all his splendid hits to a very ecstatic crowd and everyone left the venue on a hump day high when the band finished playing around 12:30AM.

It was only when we got to the Golf Club that I learnt of the nature of “the gig.” The “African Solidarity Concert” was organized by the Darfur Consortium, an African and International Civil Society Action for Darfur of which Mr Masekela is a Goodwill Ambassador.

Proceeds from the concert will go towards

supporting the efforts of the women of Darfur to empower themselves, their families and their communities through support for the Belil Internally Displaced Persons Women’s Community Centre, in South Darfur

The Darfur Consortium

Very glad I went as it was a worthwhile mid-week outing. Good thing I also had my cam handy, more shots of Hugh on Flickr!

There comes a time in your life when you experience some of the really wonderful things life has to offer and non of those moments can be as fulfilling and rewarding as attending a TED conference especially one concentrating on helping Africa to move forward. This is a very exciting time on the continent and it couldn’t be more evident than what I have experienced in this, my very first TED conference.

Where else can one have the wonderful opportunity of meeting so many champions of innovative solutions to many problems that plague the developing world and more importantly Africa? As part of the TED pre-conference tours, we began with a visit to a farm that grows Artemisia annua, a shrub used to extract Artemisenin, a drug used in the treatment of multi-drug resistant strains of malaria. Now, for someone who’s taken the fall to malaria on the continent this was a really worth-while visit as it showed me what sort of plants where used in treating me when I had to bout the disease. As the tour was drawing to a close, we got quite a pleasant surprise from someone really championing the fight to alleviate some of Africa’s malaise when Bono showed up, yes!

The farm was only the first part of our half-a-day long trip. Following the farm visit, we saw how debt relief has helped to bring about improved health care and education in a clinic that provides ante-natal and post-natal services to mothers and would-be mothers as well as two schools located on the outskirts of Arusha. The morning trip was all organized as a package sponsored by DATA (debt AIDS trade africa) and the ONE campaign. Had a very good conversation with Jamie Drummond the Executive Director of DATA on the way to the farm about ways in which Africans can help to bridge the trade imbalance.

Here are a few pictures from the trips, will try to post most of them on flickr once I have enough time.

To cap it all off, the talks in the first day of the conference were amazing these included talks from the likes of Carol Pineau , director of the Africa: Open for Business documentary and a true inspiration to those of us doing business on the continent because she’s given us tools to use when looking for ways in which to develop the continent with real life examples! What followed at the end of sessions one and two was a performance by Rokia Traore, one of Africa’s true musical gems. Her performance was breathtaking and it was evident that she truly touched and moved the audience. It was a dream come true to listen to her live in concert and talk to her after the performance.

So a couple of weeks ago I finally got this Toumani Diabate album I’ve been waiting for the good people at Apple to get onto iTunes and it was definitely worth the wait! So as it goes with most iTunes purchases, I found out that other favorites of mine had released new albums. If you’re a fan of great African Music from the finest African musicians, be sure to check out Toumani’s “Boulevard de l’Indépendance”, one of the greatest albums I’ve ever picked up! Other fine pieces of musical work I got were Salif Keita’s “M’bemba” and Césaria Evora’s “Rogama”, another fine offering from the Barefoot Diva!

Sadly enough though, we lost a great griot in Ali Farka Toure this year, but to experience the genius that was and will continue to be Ali Farka Toure take some time to pick up “In the Heart of the Moon”, his last collaboration album with Toumani Diabate. Farka Toure’s final album called “Savane” is out as well, but I haven’t had a chance to pick it up…