kiskeácity daily is out ! Edition of Friday, Jul. 22, 2011

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Topics include more on the monthly salary of Haitian parliament members, reconstruction and the BBB housing fair in Zoranje, a future hotel in Jacmel, Haiti's relatively high literacy rate compared to francophone African countries, a possible hurricane next week and more.

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Folies - Paintings by NOU (Cornell U. Apr. 9 - 20)

Caribbean Poetry Reading and Closing Reception with artist Stéphane Martelly on Apr.19.

"Vive Salnave!": a Book on President Sylvain Salnave

Marcel Salnave is one of the early but short lived Haitian bloggers I covered while I was Francophonia Editor at Global Voices back in 2005.

He has asked me to brief you on his book Vive Salnave! about his ancestor Sylvain Salnave who was President of Haiti from 1867 to 1869.

Reviews: (Click on the screenshot to enlarge.)

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Excellent roundup of blogger reactions to Pierre-Louis nomination

Jen Bréa who replaced me as Francophonia Editor at Global Voices about a year ago has an excellent roundup of blogger reactions to the Michele Pierre-Louis nomination. It highlights an exciting new presence in the Haitian blogosphere, the JMC Strategies blog of Jocelyn MacCalla, formerly Executive Director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights. Le Blog de [moi]'s incredibly well researched post is also quoted.

Remembering

• Languichatte, the late Haitian comedian and father of Lolo and Daniel Beaubrun of Boukman Eksperyans. See the Facebook page dedicated to him, complete with the Haitian TV show's theme song! A treat full of memories of Friday evening laughter. 1,037 nostalgic fans have joined it. I found this joke and this slideshow on youtube. They're in Creole and hopefully someone can translate some to English on DotSUB.

• Aimé Césaire, the late Martiniquan poet and politician. Memories of bloggers from the world over are summarized on this blog post by Jen Bréa at Global Voices. Césaire was one of the theoreticians of the Negritude movement. He passed away last week. He penned La Tragédie du Roi Christophe, a play about an early Haitian statesman.

Technorati: languichatte - aime cesaire

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Ndesanjo Macha on Citizen Journalism

Ndesanjo Macha is Global Voices'Africa Regional Editor. Hopefully what he describes as the beneficial effects of citizen journalism for Africa can serve as an inspiration for would-be Haitian and Haitian-American bloggers. Apparently, he gave the interview while at a citizen media meet in Dakar, namely the 3ème atelier régional sur les médias et les enjeux des TIC en Afrique de l'Ouest : Nouvelles technologies, nouveau journalisme, renforcement de la gouvernance.



For those who are reading via feed or aggregator, here is the video's link.

Technorati: ndesanjo macha - senegal

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New GV en Français badge!

See that nifty little badge saying Global Voices en Français in the right side bar? You too can add it to your blog/site if you are inded a GV Français reader or if you just want to help promote.

Get the code here.

(Sorry BTW if k-city seems to be an extension of GV these days. Needless to say I am swamped with GV Lingua stuff which doesn't mean I am not saving goodies for you for very soon. )

Technorati Tags: Global Voices en Français

I Give You Global Voices en Français for Francophonia Day

March 20th was la Journée Internationale de la Francophonie (Francophonia Day) and I had this to say on Global Voices for the occasion. Please please please check out Global Voices en Français and tell your interested friends when you get a chance. (Lire le billet en Français à ... Global Voices en Français, traduit par Claire Ulrich.) And please contact me in the comment section to volunteer if you are a French-English bilingual.




Today is March 20th was Francophonia Day. About 50 French-speaking countries and territories, some belonging to the Organisation Mondiale de la Francophonie and others not, will reflect on what it means to have French as a language --often alongside others. (Not to worry we will tell you what the bloggers said as soon as they've said it.)

At Global Voices, this day has special significance as well. One year ago, I was barely getting my feet wet as a novice Francophonia Editor, translating into English blurbs from the blogs of French-speaking countries who don't get much coverage in other media. Today as Global Voices Lingua team leader, I and wonderful francophones like India-based Haitian blogger Pascale Doresca, French journalist and Le Monde contributor Claire Ulrich and Malagasy blogger and GV author Lova Rakotomalala have been translating in the other direction, i.e. from English to French at Global Voices en Français. The goal is to bring more and more Francophones online into the global conversation. By translating Global Voices content into French, we hope to do just that.

See for yourself, the Global Voices en Français site is a work in progress but volunteer translators have been generating French-speaking GV content for Francophones for over a month. If you are a French-English bilingual, please contact us to join the team at francophonia [at] globalvoicesonline [dot] org.

Flashback. Inspired by Global Voices Latin-America Editor David Sasaki's workshop on GV and language at the GV 2006 Summit in Delhi, a group of francophone bloggers approached Global Voices co-founders Ethan Zuckerman, Rebecca MacKinnon and Portnoy Zheng about starting a Francophone GV page similar to Portnoy's then year old GVO China site over lunch at Delhi Day 2. Other language communities expressed interest and Project Lingua was born.

Lingua, which is still in its infancy, brings you more than just GV en Français. It comes in:

-Bangla http://bn.globalvoicesonline.org/
-Chinese (simplified) http://zh.globalvoicesonline.org/hans/
-Chinese (traditional) http://zh.globalvoicesonline.org/hant/
-French http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/
-Portuguese http://pt.globalvoicesonline.org/
-Russian http://ru.globalvoicesonline.org/
-Spanish http://es.globalvoicesonline.org/

Please join me and the whole Lingua team by contributing your language skills to any of the above groups.

Francophonia Day is truly a multilingual day for us at Global Voices.

Technorati Tags: journée internationale de la francophonie, francophonie, global voices en français, lingua, claire ulrich, lova rakotomalala, pascale doresca, bangla, russski, portugues, french, chinese, español

Zouk Song Opened French César Awards (Videos)

Check out Valérie Lemercier, the hostess of the French César awards this year, performing a boisterous rendition of Zouk Machine's 80's hit Maldón, and in Creole too. The Césars are the French equivalent of the Oscars. Check out francophone blogger reactions to both the zouk performance and the Oscars and Césars in my latest Global Voices post: Francophone Bloggers on Oscars and Césars.

VALERIE LEMERCIER AUX CESAR

Oh and to take some of you down memory lane or for other's viewing pleasure, here is the original's video:

Zouk Machine - Maldon

Technorati Tags: césar, oscars, valérie lemercier, zouk machine, maldón, zouk

Welcome New Members and Other Community News

Welcome to all the new kiskeácity members who have recently signed up either through the feedblitz email newsletter, mybloglog or just through the various blog readers. It is great to know you're reading. I would love any and all feedback you may have, good or bad, so please make sure to speak your minds whether on email (kiskeyacity [dot]19997669 [at] bloglines [dot] com) or just by commenting on the site.

Congratulations to Harinjaka, a kiskeácity reader and fellow blogger from Madagascar who lives in France. In case you are not reading GV (shame on you!) Harinjaka just won the people's choice vote for best poem in the Global Voices Valentine's Day Poetry contest. The poem was in French too! Here it is for your pleasure:

l’Amour “MoraMora”

le soleil m’a prédit
que je croiserai ta route
mais que si tu n’es pas encore là
il ne faut pas que je m’inquiète
car tu entreras dans ma vie
façon doucement doucement

le vent m’a murmuré
que tu seras raffiné(e)
mais que… si tu n’es pas encore là
il ne faudrait pas que je m’inquiète
car tu entreras dans ma vie
façon doucement doucement

les oiseaux m’ont raconté
que tu seras réservé(e), très très soigné(e),
et surtout cultivé(e)
mais que … si tu n’es pas encore là
il ne faudrait pas que je m’inquiète
car tu entreras dans ma vie
façon doucement doucement

puisque tout est écrit
et puisqu’ils m’ont dèja tous dit
j’ai vraiment envie de croire
et même hâte de te voir
ne prend pas trop ton temps
façon doucement doucement

Click here for the full english translation, including an explanation of what Mora Mora means in Malagasy language and life. (View Harinjaka's blog.)

Also, I recently got the wonderful opportunity while in Miami for the WeMedia conference to meet another Mybloglog kiskeácity member and fellow blogger, Marvin Chéry. Marvin came with Karl of Karlito's blog, another member, and took some pictures of our dinner at Shoji Sushi on South beach, including the two yummy ones on this post. (View Marvin's tech-oriented blog and Karl's Haitan Music Industry blog.) Karl is pictured to the very right of the thumbnail.

Congrats also to Nightshift Chronicler and Geoffrey Philps for their lovely submissions to the GV poetry contest. (Geoffrey was the runner up for the people's choice, btw.) Scroll down here and look up their names to read their oeuvres.

Meanwhile, Jenn Carr, another blogger-reader just launched the Griot tour for Storycorps. See her blog WonNsaDaMaa to find out all about the launch and Storycorps Griot.

Special mention also for Lova (those damn Malagasies!) who just started a stint as Global Voices author. Lova will be writing a weekly post on what is taking place in Malagasy, English and French-speaking blogs of Madagascar for GV. He's already cranked out two: one on the recent Malagasy floods and one on French deportations of Immigrants there. Kudos, Lova! (View Lova's blog Rakoto's Rants.)

To Cathy Delaleu: I am reading your poetry and won't forger to invite you to the next (informal) Brooklyn Caribbean blogger gathering. To William Zick: Hope you are reading all of the Chevalier de St-Georges news possible on Jean-Claude Halley's Guadeloupe Attitude blog. (Dust off your French texts!) To Michael Deibert, thanks for the great Haiti reporting and personal comments. To Shel Israel, the kind words you wrote here and on Global Neighborhoods were much appreciated.

Ochan to my readers from Haiti, including my mom and bloggers Roody Edmé and Marcel Salnave. I love getting emails from you!

And to all my other readers who don't blog or whose names I don't know, please check in, email, sign up or send news so I can keep up with you! And of course, if it tickles your fancy, please feel free to comment, comment, comment. We speak, sing, snore and argue in at least three languages here...

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Carnaval Here, Carnaval There, Carnival Everywhere

Trinidad

• Georgia's pictures of the last hours of the trini bacchanal.

Brazil/Lusosphere

• Lusosphere: Reporting Carnival, Jose Murilo Junior's roundup at Global Voices of what local bloggers are saying about carnival in Brazil.
  

Martinique

• Pictures of Miss Carnaval 2007 and more by Amandine.
  

Guyane

• Walking, dancing Mother Natures by Photoblog de la Guyane.
  

Guadeloupe

• Carnaval Beignet recipe (FR).
  

Haiti

• Just in case you haven't been reading this blog in the past couple of days: the whole enchilada.
  

Photo by CaribbeanFreePhoto

Technorati Tags: brazil, carnaval

Blog Your Way to a Better Country?

A summary of how Madagascar, an island nation on the East African coast, has gotten its blogging community in gear, from my GV post on Francophonie blogs in 2006. (Again, something the Haitian government would be wise to emulate, now that it seems to want to invest in country branding.)

Madagascar though lacking La Reunion's aggregator and French ressources, managed to pull together a very cohesive and active blogosphere with a collective blog Malagasy Miray, over a dozen active bloggers (this does not include their growing crop of English and Malagasy speaking bloggers), a blogger's meet January 5th, "Malagasyscopy", a "communal post" on Malagasy identity abroad to which over 20 Malagasy bloggers contributed their 2 cents. One wonders whether this incredible momentum is not owed to the government's recent efforts to refurbish the country's image but active, enthusiastic diasporans probably deserve credit too.

(Madagascar is an island nation in the Indian Ocean with a population of about 19 million.)


Two pictures of Anakao, Madagascar sunset, by Daniel Quip


Technorati Tags: madagascar

Split Hairs, Not Votes, in the Epicenter

The New York City Council campaign of Dr. Mathieu Eugene: Taking care not to split the Haitian vote in Brooklyn's 40th council district.The committee that took care of choosing just one Haitian candidate is new and managed to induce one of two Haitian candidates to drop out (!). Will this result in an actual seat?

To stay with the topic of elections, Pelerin 89 (a.k.a Dr. Ferentz Lafargue) explains why he is running for President of the Caribbean despite not actually living in it. Why of course, it's because Brooklyn is the epicenter of the Caribbean, silly. While over there, find out also why he wants to export the Metrocard to the beloved archipelago.

Last but not least, I've added a new section called "Comment Bloguer" to the blogroll for those who want to read blogs about how to blog in French. You can only view the blogroll from the home page, on the lower right of the page.

Photo by dbeery.

Carnival Kickoff & Digicel Soccer Cup in the Tropics

My latest Global Voices post is about carnival kickoff in the French Caribbean Overseas Departments (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane). The post features 3 video clips of Guadeloupean mas bands Mas a Kle and Akiyo that I'm sure you'll want to see.

What's going on in Haiti on that front? Not sure. Bloggers have been preoccupied with other things but I'm sure there has been some sort of kickoff there too. (Update: HaitiXchange has just the answer to this question. Apparently, pre-carnaval festivities in Port-au-Prince have been attracting about as many people as carnival itself due to regained security.)

Not to mention, Kiskeyans are probably too busy celebrating the Caribbean Digicel Soccer Cup Championship title, subject of another post on GV and for which you can see soccerfabulous pictures here.

Photo by Alex DeCarvalho

Technorati: Digicel- Mas A Kle - Akiyo

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A Martinique Christmas

Loulou Boislaville chante nwel
Video sent by matinikphoto

This video was posted on Daily Motion today. It is a biguine Christmas carol performed by some of Martinique's music greats including Ralph Thamar and Loulou Boislaville. The video is dated Dec. 24,2006 on Dailymotion and technically aired on Martiniquan television last night. Why does it look so vintage to me? Could it be that Ralph Thamar looks not a day older than 20 -- not a wrinkle, not a gray hair? I wonder if this was not a re-airing of a 70's recording. Maybe our Martiniquan friends can chime in...

In any event, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.

technorati: Ralph Thamar - Loulou Boislaville - Martinique - Caribbean - Christmas

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A Skypecast for Haiti: Got Aggregator?

A Skypecast for Haiti is taking place this Sat. Dec. 23, organized by the first Haitian Music Industry Blog aka Karlito's blog and two other haitian blogs. Should be interesting, although as I already told Karlito, I think the topic is way too broad... I'll try to join in this time but I hope something more narrow can be done in the future.

The budding Haitian blogosphere could use an aggregator for example and that might be a great future topic. (See, for example, La Reunion's aggregator, Reunion Permanente. La Reunion is a french-speaking country and overseas French department in the Indian Ocean.) Aggregators are a great way to grow a local blogosphere, apparently.


Photo by inju.

There are many different types of aggregators:

• One is to become your own regional blogger.com, as in Afrikblog.com which hosts a number of francophone african blogs such as Le Blog du Congolais and UDPS Liege. Afrikblog offers a way to create a blog but also a blog directory. I think it's a great model but the directory only includes blogs created in Afrikblog. That is a big minus and would not serve the purposes of growing a blogosphere per se. Also, this model is costly and ambitious and would only be worthwhile if the quality offered was up to par with a blogger or wordpress blog.

• Another, my favorite for now, is the Reunion Permanente model. In terms of blogosphere expansion, this is the best model. It features blogs from any blog services so long as the blog deals with La Reunion (it also transcribes local newspaper columns that it thinks should be on the internet.) It comprises blogs written in La Reunion but also blogs by the La Reunion diaspora, whatever language they use. It subscribes to RSS feeds from these blogs and offers reverse chronological updates. So it is a blog itself. Anyone who goes to the aggregator can see what the latest updates are in the blogs of La Reunion. For a blogosphere to grow, bloggers have to come together and this would be a great first step.
  

(The same would be a good idea for the Caribbean as a whole too or for individual caribbean countries other than Haiti.)

Update: 12/29/06
Skype was down on the day of the Skypecast so it didn't really happen. But I got to chat with Marvin Chery of Reveiled Networks extensively and he promised we'd get to talk about Haitian blogs and internet in a future one. Here are Marvin's live updates that he posted on his blog while attempting to patch the call together. Judging on the number of people who attempted to make the call, it would have been quite well attended.

Technorati: haiti -caribbean -blogs- La Reunion

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From Delhi Dweller to Brooklyn Baller

After visiting the city of a dozen tombs, I am headed back to the city of the lone fort, Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Some friends (okay, Georgia and Nicholas, that is) think I've become a Delhi "walla" (sp?) aka a Delhi dweller. That is because during the last 12 or so days here I have not left India's capital city though I had every intention to all along. Yep, I passed on the Taj Mahal (just 5 hours away), and Rajasthan's jewel cities of Jaipur and Udaipur.

Now it's time to go. (My flight is in just a couple of hours.) My non-platonic oh-so-tactile exploration of the Delhi markets has come and gone. The Global Voices summit has come and gone. (Check out the Global Voices 2006 Summit Live Blog for all your questions about what happened.) And obviously Delhi and fellow Delhi dwellers (native or not), have rubbed me the right way. I had dinner on the brilliant National Highway, and was graciously and elegantly hosted by the three members of Delhi's Haitian community: the D. family. I'd like to think my presence helped launch a great new blog: Pascale D.'s Natif Natal: L'inde Vue par une Haitienne which I've added to my blogroll under Haitian diaspora. I have tons of pictures. I have even more unformulated thoughts. Most shall be revealed to you soon.

I am not just bringing home the satisfaction of now owning beautiful, authentic Indian Kashmiri shawls purchased in dusty authentic Indian markets. Out of the conference came the idea of www.francais/globalvoicesonline.org, a French-language page for GV that is in embryonic/experimental stages. Ideally, selected GV posts will one day be featured in French on it, with the help of volunteer translators. (Raise your hands, my bilingual blogging friends.)

Delhi did right by me, and hopefully also by the Francophone online community.


gvdelhi2006 - delhi - india - Global Voices - brooklyn -
fort greene

A Lesson in Branding from Madagascar

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the government of Madagascar, an island country of about 19 million off the east coast of African, succesfully took up a branding campaign for its country in the past few years, according to blogger Aiky at Madagascar Croissance:

Depuis que quelques hautes personnalités ont persécuté les photographes et cameraman qui ne filmaient que la misère et la décadnce du pays, il était devenu à la mode de filmer les jolis paysages : les tsingy, la plage, la mer , ...

[Translation:] Since certain high profile individuals have taken to harassing photographers and cameramen who were filming nothing but the misery and decadence of the country, it has become fashionale to film nice landscapes: "tsingies", beaches, ocean ...

Haiti could use some of that, I think. Not sure that our officials, in their usual fatalistic outlook, care or even know that this type of campaign is possible. But obviously it is. Madagascar was able to manage this without being a first world country.


madagascar - haiti - caribbean

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Global Voices Won the Knight-Batten Award!

Photo by Georgia Popplewell.

This morning in DC, Rebecca McKinnon, Georgia Popplewell and I (pictured in that order) represented Global Voices Online at the Knight-Batten award ceremony in DC.

We won!!! Our 6 co-finalists were all amazing and came from all over the country so it was quite an honor to go home with the main prize. They included an impressive hurricane information site by the Sarasota Tribune and several interactive community-based news sites. (See Knight-Batten press release.)

It was both exhausting (we each made a presentation) and exhilirating but in the end all the emotions were worth the while. I talked about starting my blog to amplify a more complex set of voices from Haiti than usually featured in mainstream media. Then I showcased three of the bloggers in Francophonia: Tony Katombe from the DRC, Pierrot Dupuy from La Reunion and Le Blog de [Moi] from Martinique. Hopefully video of the presentation will be up soon on the Knight-Batten site.

Georgia live-blogged the conference over at Caribbean Free Radio here, here and here. The Global Voices community is ecstatic! Rachel Rawlins, our Managing editor, posted this on the GV website to announce the news.

It is great to see all the hard work that gets put into GV rewarded.

See more photos from this morning.

global voices - knight-batten

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Reunion's Blogging Eruption

Reunion is a Creole-speaking island in the Indian Ocean, to the east of Africa near other creole or french speaking islands such as Mauritius, Mayotte and Madagascar. It is also a French overseas department, like its Caribbean counterparts Martinique and Guadeloupe. It's got a very active blogosphere relative to those counterparts and to many francophone countries for reasons I am not entirely sure about. I am cross-posting here what I wrote about it on Global Voices yesterday.

(Pictured Left: 2004 Volcano Eruption, Reunion, by Hugo aka Hughes Leglise.)

###

Alongside the Democratic Republic of Congo, Reunion a French Overseas Department located in the Indian Ocean to the East of Africa has one of the most active blogospheres in the francophone world. Its portal Reunion Permanente either explains the bustling activity or illustrates it. The portal even keeps track of overseas Reunion bloggers such as Sandy of Reunion-USA2 who lives in the United States; her blog seeks to explain her reactions to American culture. One particularly prolific island-based netizen, Pierrot Dupuy, keeps a blog updated several times a day that focuses on the island's and nearby independent Mauritius' current affairs. Another blogger, Jean-Paul, summarizes the island's main news on his blog Dijoux.re every sunday.

Recent preoccupations in the country's news and blogs have included a local Chikungunya fever epidemic and its effects on local tourism, frequent mostly scenic lava flows of the local volcano of which France-based blogger Audrey from Reunion Passion consistently shows pictures. A recent alleged corruption scandal involving local official Samia Badat was also widely blogged by Zarabes, the blog of the local Indian moslem community. (Ironically, as the blog's header explains, the creole word Zarabes which is used on the island to designate the mostly moslem Indian population actually derives from the French word for Arab.) And it should come as no surprise that the sometimes tension-filled relationship to France, including a successful fight against housing discrimination practices perpetrated in mainland France against overseas French citizens from Reunion, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyane and other French overseas departments and territories, constitutes a recurring theme.

Among the week's highlights, Jean-Paul at Dijoux.Re, offered (Fr) the latest on the local volcano, namely that it is still erupting but that local authorities have been preventing locals from admiring its spectacle in the last couple of years. On the Chikungunya front, the blogger explained (Fr) that two biologists have linked an anti-rubeola vaccine to a possible cure. Meanwhile, on a lighter note, US-Based Sandy at Reunion-USA2 explained (Fr) the significance in America of the interracial romance movie Something New.

###

For more daily La Reunion blog updates, visit the La Reunion page at Global Voices or subscribe to its RSS feed. For those who blog La Reunion, Global Voices also has available a nifty JSS Feed i.e. live headlines that will look like the live Haiti headlines I have running to the right of the home page at the top of the "Links" section. (See right side of the La Reunion JSS feed page for what the headlines will look like.)


la reunion - blogs - blogging - indian ocean

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