If you follow my Instagram account, you know I have a series, “Dogs of Oviedo.” The reason behind this is that dogs are a major part of the social fabric of Ovitense life. Dogs outnumber kids under 15 in Oviedo by a ratio of 3:2.5. Because Oviedo is a small, walking city, dogs are out walking with their humans everywhere (very unusual to see a dog in a car, like in the US), sometimes two or three dogs to one human. Often, dogs, especially the lap variety, join humans at the café table. I've also seen strangers stop to pet their respective canines, which might also prompt the dogs to introduce themselves to each other.
Chow Chow Chariot
Various conveyances can be used to carry dogs, such as the backpack shown above or a stroller.
Of course, dogs have their favorite toys.
Pomeranian Pride
During the winter, humans dress their canines up in sharp outfits, and matching ones if there are two.
Oviedo Rain-Ready (Rat Terriers)
Here's a typically joyous Golden Retriever playing in the dog enclosure in San Francisco Park. I tell you, I have never seen so many happy dogs!
I snapped these Spanish galgos (resembling English Greyhounds but not) who could well have been on their way to a black-tie event. [By the way, "galgo" is not capitalized--Spanish rules: I didn't make them.)
Graceful galgos
You might be forgiven for mistaking this for a St.Bernard, which gentle breed the movie "Cujo" gave a bad name (less so the novel), but this is a Bernese Mountain Dog, another big, gentle canine.
Finally, a young, beautiful Dalmatian I snapped at the mall.
A small disclaimer, though. What I’m seeing in Oviedo is the good half of the story. Terrace dogs are the visible winners: cared for, groomed, and fully integrated into urban life. That skews perception. The other half exists mostly out of sight—in protectoras, in rural areas, in the long afterlife of abandoned working dogs like galgos and podencos. Oviedo may be gentler than many places, but this is a curated slice of reality, not the whole picture.
In my film reviews, I start with the benchmark of five stars and then deduct half or one point if the film falls short in any of the following categories:
· Storyline
· Screenplay
· Acting
· Direction
· Character Arcs
The Night Manager Movie Review: A Must-Watch UK Thriller on Britbox & Amazon Prime Video
"The Night Manager" is a critically acclaimed six-part UK series, available for streaming on both Britbox and Amazon Prime Video. Premiering in 2016, this masterpiece (different from its 2023 Indian counterpart of the same name) is an adaptation of the novel by renowned author John le Carré.
Cast Highlights:
Hugh Laurie (famously known from House) brilliantly portrays the menacing Richard Roper.
Tom Hiddleston takes on the role of the elusive Jonathan Pine.
Olivia Colman (recognized as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown) plays Angela Burr with a depth only she could bring.
Elizabeth Debicki (who mesmerized us as Princess Diana in The Crown) embodies the enigmatic Jed Marshall.
Plot Overview: Jonathan Pine, a war veteran turned night manager of a plush hotel in Cairo, gets entangled in the treacherous world of illegal arms sales. Angela Burr, heading a Foreign Office task force, recruits him to delve deep into the operations of the formidable arms dealer, Richard Roper.
The cast delivers a stellar performance across the board. Hugh Laurie's depiction of Roper, with his sharp British accent, magnifies his character's malevolence. Awaiting Roper's fate, the viewers are held in suspense throughout. Olivia Colman, a paragon of acting, conveys profound emotions with the simplest gestures. The subtleties in the performances of Debicki and Hiddleston, laden with concealed emotions and secrets, keep the audience on tenterhooks, hoping their truths remain hidden from the malevolent characters surrounding them.
Ratings & Review:
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Storyline: A compelling narrative that ensures edge-of-your-seat tension.
Screenplay (by David Farr): An embodiment of sublime writing.
Acting: Undoubtedly top-tier, with each actor bringing their A-game.
Direction: Executed with finesse, making it truly superb.
Character arcs: Consistent and credible, adding depth to the narrative.
Bottom line: "The Night Manager" isn't just a series; it's an experience. If you're looking for a thrilling UK series on Britbox or Amazon Prime Video, you can't afford to miss this.
Next: The Burial, with Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones, based on a true story
Diasporan guilt is the term I've coined to define a pervasive feeling of bad conscience for being fortunate to live in a prosperous country (usually UK, France, USA, Canada etc.) while people suffer with poverty in one's birth country in the global south.
What is the African diaspora?
The word diaspora comes from the Greek διασπορά, meaning "a scattering.” Originally, its most common usage was in connection with the Jewish diaspora, but it’s been extended to other groups, particularly this century. The African diaspora is the global collection of African descendants dispersed throughout the world as a result of historic events, specifically the 16th- to 19th century slave trade from primarily West and Central Africa to the US, Brazil, and Haiti. An aside note, although we hear more about slavery in relation to the US, less than 5% of the total number of slaves were trafficked to the US. More of them went to the Caribbean and South America, particularly Brazil.
In addition, the African diaspora often refers to Africans who have migrated from the continent but maintain a deep interest in the “motherland” and a willingness to contribute in different ways to the development of the continent. In fact, the African Union defined the African diaspora as "consisting of people of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union."
An estimated 11 million Africans were dispersed by the Atlantic slave trade. The modern-day African diaspora numbers about 140 million while the African continent’s population is 1.4 billion.
The African diaspora and politics
The African diasporan phenomenon digs deep into sensitive issues of racism, colonialism, and global domination. Slavery was a system that reflected all of those things and along with slavery came internecine warfare on the African continent. The partition of Africa , also called the “scramble for Africa,” a divvying up of the continent by Europeans in their own interest and not Africa’s, occurred from 1881-1914, during which time the colonization occurred at full speed. In 1884 the German chancellor Otto Von Bismarck held a Berlin conference the purpose of which was essentially to prevent Europeans from fighting each other over territory--who cared about the Africans?
No one knows what Africa would have been like without the slavery and colonization. The African geographic divisions imposed by the Europeans often ignored natural landmarks and political ethnic histories. Could there have been more African unity and development without all these partitions? Whatever the case, Americans and Europeans and Africans came into contact with each other and account for the mixed ethnic nature on either side’s countries to the extent that it exists. In response to a British person’s objection to Indians coming to the UK, standup comedian Russell Peters retorted, “Wait a minute, you started the whole thing!”
We know many Africans in the diaspora in general do extraordinarily well in their adopted countries, some becoming highly skilled individuals like neurosurgeons. There’s a cruel irony that Africa is suffering from brain drain, and the continent’s best brains are successfully living in the same countries that continue to exploit Africa, particularly in the extractive industries like gold and oil. Foreign aid goes largely into the pockets of the elite ruling class, and I agree with Dambisa Moyo that foreign aid, which arose out of colonization, is not an effective solution to underdevelopment in Africa. It perpetuates the dependency relationship Africa has with the west, and now, with the Chinese.
How diasporan guilt affects me
I have a theory that the dependency relationship Africa has with the west extends to individual Africans. In Ghana, there’s an odd preference given to “asking/begging for stuff” than working to get it--both governmentally and individually. My three brothers and I have family in Ghana on my father’s side and the requests for funds and phones etc. are common. Carlos, the ex-caretaker of our family property in Ghana is barely making it, especially since unemployment and inflation are soaring in Ghana. I’ve covered Carlos's family’s hospital bills, rent, school for the kids, and so on--apart from the expensive phones and tablets I take for them on my visits. Two of my brothers are quite firm in not getting involved with any such “charitable deeds.” They just don’t see the point, and in some ways I think they’re correct; and like Dambisa Moyo, this giving to the poor can generate a dependency that never ends. Indeed, in a way, my supporting Carlos, his wife, and four kids is a little ridiculous, not to mention unsustainable. But I still do it. Why? Diasporan guilt. I live in a nice house and buy sh*t on Amazon while they suffer in Ghana. Rational or not, it’s a strong sentiment.
Maybe the diasporan guilt was born of my leaving Ghana decades ago when the going got rough with the then-military government and the country’s accompanying economic collapse. Perhaps I felt I had deserted or abandoned friends and family members. My late father was Ghanaian, and even though I don’t even have a Ghanaian passport, the ties to Ghana are clearly still strong. But my always matter-of-fact Black American mother pointed out that even though I was born in Ghana, I’m American through her (jus sanguinis), so I have every right to live in the States. And think about it: if I had never moved to the US, I might well not have created Darko Dawson and Emma Djan. Isn’t life strange?
Whereas in the USA we have the luxury of arguing futilely about whether to ban the masterful Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Beloved, by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, children don’t have a single book to their name, and/or they cannot read a book even if they had one.
Literacy
What is literacy? On its face, it is the ability to read and write. It is, of course, more complex than that. Underpinning its 2030 Sustainability Goals, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) defines literacy in the modern age as “a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication."
While literacy rates in the highly industrialized countries tend to be 95-100%, developing nations have much lower levels, with some exceptions, e.g. Cuba, which has 100%. Literacy rates in sub-Saharan Africa average around 65.5%, with some of the highest levels in Botswana (87%), Zimbabwe (84%), Gabon (82%); and in the next tier, Kenya, Egypt, Eritrea (all 72%); Ghana, Cameroon, Angola (all 71%).
Included in the lowest tiers are Côte d’Ivoire (41%), Chad (38%), Burkina Faso (29%), Guinea (25%), Niger (15%). Significantly, these are all ex-colonies of France, which is quite satisfied with the status quo of poverty and illiteracy in those countries because it makes it easier for them to be exploited, a prime example being Niger.
Literacy continues to rise in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and although the increases year on year have been small, at least they’re going in the right direction.
Twenty-year literacy rates, sub-Saharan Africa (World Atlas)
Unfortunately, a sharp gender gap exists in literacy, so while literacy trends upward for women and girls 15 years old and over, rates among male counterparts are 1.2 - 1.4 times higher.
Why are the literacy rates low in sub-Saharan Africa?
According to UNESCO, 27% of the world’s illiterate people live in SSA. It is stunning and appalling that in Niger and Burkina Faso, 90% of women and girls are illiterate. On the whole, in SSA, here are a couple of facts:
• More than 1 in 3 adults cannot read.
• 48 million youth (ages 15-24) are illiterate.
• 22% of primary aged children are not in school, about 30 million kids.
A number of factors contribute to this status, and while I won’t delve too deeply into all of them, some are worth mentioning.
Poverty, obviously, is the major factor, relating to literacy in a chicken-and-egg fashion. In much of SSA, people are too poor to send their children to school, because, make no mistake, school fees, tuition and books are rarely free.
Child labor, a politically loaded term because it’s sometimes used in the sense of indentured servitude. In the SSA context, however, children may be asked to help their parent(s) or other relative(s) with their trade, whether it be farming or other livelihood.
Generational illiteracy means the passing down the inability to read from parents to offspring. An illiterate parent will not have personal knowledge of the advantages of being able to read in the world at large, and they may not realize what their kids are and will be missing.
Government inadequacies lead to problems of distribution and supply, particularly to remote rural areas. In his article, Tony Read (an appropriate surname indeed) of the World Bank Group writes, “. . . despite decades of funding by governments and DPs [development partners], few low-income SSA countries have been able to establish sustainable systems for providing textbooks and other essential TLMs [teaching and learning materials] on a regular basis.
The efforts of NGOs
Several NGOs are attempting to compensate for the gaps and deficiencies in the provision of TLMs to schools and school libraries, particularly in rural areas. One is the African Library Project, another is World Reader, which focuses on both digital and hardcopy reading.
During my travels to Nigeria, I serendipitously discovered an NGO called African Rural Volunteers (ARV). This encounter came about because it turned out my Nigerian travel guides, brothers Evans and Confidence Aguiyi, who run their own company You Come Africa also run ARV. I hadn't known this before my journey, but I was immediately interested.
Aguiyi brothers, Confidence (L), Evans (R) and me (Photo: Kwei Quartey)
Evans Aguiyi, who is very passionate about his cause, points out that, “In most rural communities, there are not enough teachers, quality of education is low, and the schools lack or in most cases don’t have functional libraries. Most families are poor and can’t afford good quality reading books, textbooks, novels, or story books."
ARV partners with UK's Book Cycle, which in turn partners with Thrive Africa, a Ghanaian charity whose vision is to improve children’s education and women’s empowerment across Ghana, and who engages in library building and other projects.
ARV is a very comprehensive NGO with a number of different facets. Apart from donations, there are opportunities for volunteers to sign up for orphanage care, teaching, soccer coaching, construction, and so on.
ARV’s Book Project includes distribution of the books provided by Book Cycle with the ultimate goal of building mini-libraries stocked with these books. But this takes money. Book Cycle provides the books but not the funding for the clearing them from the ports and distributing them. Without that, the books are more or less useless.
Anyone who has traveled in SSA knows how difficult access to many rural areas can be. Invariably, tough off-road SUVs must be used to get through bush and bad roads. Gas isn’t cheap, either; in Ghana, for example, fuel prices run around the same level as here in the US, but unlike the US, those prices only ever go in one direction: up.
Evans Aguiyi relates a story of Sade (pronounced "sha-DAY;” yes, like the singer), a teenage Yoruba girl he met in Ilara-Akaka, which is a town in Ogun State, Nigeria. Sade was without a home after her family abandoned her for unknown reasons. She had no financial means whatsoever, but what she wanted most wasn’t money, it was a book of her own. ARV was able to provide her not only books, but a solar lamp for night reading. In the midst of an awful circumstance in her young life, Sade looked to reading for solace. What a poignant and heart-rending story.
Young students clamoring for books (Photo: African Rural Volunteers)
For an idea of the monumental task at hand, check out this video starring Evans Aguiyi.
