Lupita Nyong’o who purchased the film rights to Chimamanda Adichie's ‘Americanah’ in 2014 has confirmed that work will start soon on the screen adaptation. Photo: Universal Pictures
Lupita Nyong’o who purchased the film rights to Chimamanda Adichie's ‘Americanah’ in 2014 has confirmed that work will start soon on the screen adaptation. Photo: Universal PicturesLupita Nyong’o who purchased the film rights to Chimamanda Adichie’s ‘Americanah’ in 2014 has confirmed that work will start soon on the screen adaptation. Photo: Universal Pictures
Lupita Nyong’o, who purchased the film rights to Chimamanda Adichie’s ‘Americanah’ in 2014, has confirmed to Vogue that fans can expect the film adaptation to happen soon. Nyong’o has been collaborating with fellow Black Panther’s cast mate, Dania Gurira to write the screenplay. Nyong’o will both star and co-produce ‘Americanah’.
The adaptation of ‘Americanah’ will be a TV miniseries, according to Nyong’o.
‘Americanah’ is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s third novel.
A young Nigerian woman, Ifemelu, comes to Philadelphia for college, where she’s continually told things like “It’s so sad that people live on less than a dollar a day in Africa.” With her boyfriend Obinze unable to get a visa, Ifemelu has relationships with two Americans: the Waspy, blithely entitled Curt, to whom she explains the significance of Essence magazine (a scene taken directly from Adichie’s own experience with an ex-boyfriend); and the hip African-American Yale professor, Blaine, who listens to Coltrane, eats quinoa, and refers to his friends as “cats.”
The city of Beira, fourth largest in Mozambique, has been obliterated by Cyclone Idai. Photo: PBS
The city of Beira, fourth largest in Mozambique, has been obliterated by Cyclone Idai. Photo: PBSThe city of Beira, fourth largest in Mozambique, has been obliterated by Cyclone Idai. Photo: Al JazeeraThe city of Beira, fourth largest in Mozambique, has been obliterated by Cyclone Idai. Photo: PBS
Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi said on Monday the death toll from Cyclone Idai could surpass 1,000 in his country alone. 90 percent of Beira, which is the fourth largest city in his country, has been obliterated. Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Madagascar all suffered high levels of rainfall but Mozambique, where the storm made landfall last week, was hit the hardest.
Displaced so far in Mozambique are over 600,000, in Zimbabwe over 200,000, Malawi over 80,000.
If you prefer to give directly to Africa-based relief agencies that are working in the area already well before this disaster, Mshale has compiled a list of those we are familiar with that could use your help, we included the US based Save the Children that already was active in the area before the cyclone:
The AfroPop Showcase artists at South by Southwest on Friday, March 15, 2019. Photo: AfroPop
The AfroPop Showcase artists at South by Southwest on Friday, March 15, 2019. Photo: AfroPopThe AfroPop Showcase artists at South by Southwest on Friday, March 15, 2019. Photo: AfroPop
On Friday, March 15, at the Palm Door in Austin, TX, Afropop is hosting its first ever South by Southwest showcase, presenting six artists from across the African continent. If you’re in town for the sprawling event, it’ll be worth dropping in to the Palm Door at 508 E 6th Street starting around 7:30. Our friends globalFEST will be at the venue’s other stage with a lineup that, judging from the names we know on their list, is also absolute fire. So what can you expect and when?
All-State post Bella Murekatete of Genesis Prep Academy in Post Falls Photo: Michella Davenport
All-State post Bella Murekatete of Genesis Prep Academy in Post Falls Photo: Michella DavenportAll-State post Bella Murekatete of Genesis Prep Academy in Post Falls Photo: Michella Davenport
When Bella Murekatete, a 6-5 forward-center from Rwanda by way of Post Falls, signed her letter of intent to play for Kamie Etheridge at Washington State, she made history. She is believed to be the first Rwandan-born woman who will play basketball not just in the Pac-12, but the entire Division I level.
Wearing her Rwandan heritage on her sleeve and with an undeterred faith in God’s plan, Murekatete came the U.S. at age of 14 and turned her dreams into a reality.
“The first thing they tell us is make sure everywhere you go you present one thing about our country — even if it’s just saying I’m from Rwanda,” Murekatete said. “I want to represent, and represent well. We have our own traditions and I don’t want to forget them. So I am definitely representing wherever I go.”
Murekatete isn’t a household name for women’s basketball fans in the U.S. but in her native country – where basketball is a huge deal – she is associated with the future of Rwandan basketball.
Since 2015, the WSU commit has been a part of the Rwandan junior national team and has dominated the international circuit. She has been selected to the All-Star Five at FIBA’s Africa Championship tournament twice (2015, 2018). At the 2015 FIBA Africa Championship she averaged a mind-boggling 22 rebounds a game and even had a game where she brought in 37 rebounds against Tunisia
The day Murekatete signed her LOI with WSU she was up until 4 a.m. doing phone interviews with Rwandan media. Everyone back home wanted to hear from her.
For now, she is Rwanda’s — and the state of Idaho’s — best-kept secret in or around the college hoops world. Murekatete isn’t just a dominating presence in the paint. With help from her head coach at Genesis Prep, Brandon Haas, and the staff of her AAU team, North Idaho Elite, Murekatete has diversified her game to fit the mold of a stretch-forward.
“She’s got guard skills, man. She’s legit,” Haas tells Cougfan.com. “So when she gets up to that level where she needs to bring the ball up the court, she can do that. You need someone to score inside, she has incredible post moves. She’s also one that when it comes to playing against someone that is taller or more skilled she is going to rise up to that challenge.”
Last season Murekatete averaged 20.6 points and 18.6 rebounds per game and earned first-team all-state recognition. Statistics for this season were not readily available at press time.
So how did a rising star from Africa end up in Post Falls, the old mill town of 27,574 between Coeur d’Alene and Spokane?
MUREKATETE CAME TO the U.S. on an F1 visa, a nonimmigrant visa specific for education. However, a school must have permission from the state to allow F1 visa students, which eliminates the vast majority across the nation. Genesis Prep had previous experience in taking F1 visas for student-athletes, first in hockey and then via a veritable basketball pipeline built by their boys’ basketball coach, Marsell Colbert.
The son of the late Erastus Onchwari, Michael with his mother Damaris (center) and sister Judith listen as pastors Eric Mokua and John Manani preach at the memorial service on Sunday, March 10, 2019 in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Photo: Erick Oenga for Mshale
The son of the late Erastus Onchwari, Michael with his mother Damaris (center) and sister Judith listen as pastors Eric Mokua and John Manani preach at the memorial service on Sunday, March 10, 2019 in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. Photo: Erick Oenga for Mshale
BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. – A late Kenyan-American Minnesota businessman who died in his sleep was remembered as a “visionary” by family and friends during an open-casket public memorial service on Sunday.
Over two hundred people, including over a dozen from his previous states of residence in Texas and Arizona, gathered Sunday to honor Erastus Ondieki Onchwari who they described as not just a visionary, but a loving family man that was generous with time and advice.
The service was held Sunday at the Park Center High School gymnasium where Destiny Faith Ministries holds weekly services, a location convenient to the sprawling Kenyan community in the northwest suburbs. The 58-year-old Onchwari was among the first Kenyans in the state to start a multi-generational business that he was able to pass on to his daughter.
Family and friends took turns saying goodbye to the Onchwari in their own special ways. They spoke from a podium just a few feet away from his open casket, where he lay dressed in a tailored light brown suit, an ode to his sartorial prowess. An arrangement of flowers adorned the bottom half of the casket, whose gold trimming shined and sparkled under the bright gymnasium lights.
The Kenyan Community SDA Church choir offered a selection based on Jesus’ Parable of the Ten Virgins while retired pastor, John Manani, who for years preached by crisscrossing the Gusii highlands where most of the Kenyans in Minnesota are from, delivered a well-received sermon in Ekegusii, the language of the majority of Kenyans in the state. Pastor Mokua of United SDA Church translated for the benefit of non-Gusii speakers.
The selection by the family, and the organizing committee, under the chairmanship of Ben Muko to have pastor John Manani offer the sermon turned out to be the antidote to the solemn occasion. The mourners, mostly Kenyan-Americans, appeared still stunned with the passing of Onchwari without much warning.
Manani’s sermon delivery in Ekegusii was biblical in a hilarious fashion, sticking true to the word in the bible but parsing his message with witty Gusii expressions that despite pastor Mokua’s solid translation skills, some expressions just could not translate. He had the mourners in prolonged laughter at many a time.
Part preaching and part social commentary, Manani’s sermon was one for the ages. At one point as he preached, he called the late Onchwari’s two children, Judith and Michael, to the front.
“Are you married,” he asked Onchwari’s son in Ekegusii to which the son replied in the negative. “Then you are late, you need to get married soon.”
He said according to the culture of the Abagusii, Erastus is not dead since he was blessed with children and thus lives through them “that is why you (mike) should marry so that the lineage continues.”
God is the only one that knows how long one will live, the pastor said, warning them not to take life for granted. He said in Job 14, the bible says the world is “full of evil and our days are numbered.”
Smiling at the congregants, he said “Even I who is ninety sometimes I find myself asking God if he can give me another ten so I can make it to one hundred,” as the gymnasium erupted in laughter.
He also admonished the planning committee for only allowing one woman to the podium to pay tribute to the late Onchwari. “Don’t you know without a woman you will not be here?” he asked, as the crowd roared in approval. Other than the one woman allowed to give tribute, earlier, Pastor Mokua had also invited Pastor Zipporah Bogonko of International Outreach Center to offer the prayers before the sermon.
“I will leave that one alone however, as we are not focusing on that today” pastor Manani said as he moved on to preach from the book of Job and Psalms.
Onchwari’s youngest sibling, Hezron Onchwari, broke into tears as he described a brother dedicated to nurturing and keeping his immediate and extended family united, even as he spread out to serve the community. He recalled his brother once hosting a Christmas party and Hezron brought his now wife Irene, that he was dating at the time and the advice his older brother gave him.
“Since that advice he gave me, telling me I have a good woman I have been with Irene for 22 years” Hezron said, providing some of the few lighter moments in the somber occasion as the crowd laughed out loud. “He helped me get married, I don’t know where I would be without him.”
Gideon Onchwari, another brother of the late Erastus, when it was his turn to speak praised Damaris, the ex-wife to the deceased who was seated in the front row with Judith and Michael, the two children they conceived during their marriage.
“We are here because of this woman, if she had behaved like other women I know, there is no way we would have made it to America, she sacrificed a lot,” an emotional Gideon said. He said Damaris made the ultimate sacrifice in allowing their late brother to house them while they settled into their new country.
When it was Damaris’ turn to speak, she said “Erastus did not just for success for himself or his family, he wanted it for the whole community. If he could be here right now, he would be asking why all these speeches when there is work to be done. He was a great man.” Onchwari, she added, wanted a prosperous Kenyan community.
At the time of his death, Onchwari was engaged to Dorothy Mckaney-Scott who was also given an opportunity by the master of ceremony, Henry Mogire, to remember the man she described as a partner and “more than just a businessman that I am honored to have known and loved.”
Onchwari’s business acumen, vision and concern for others gained him respect among colleagues and his community, his family and friends said Sunday. Onchwari loved community building and would take every opportunity he would get to interact with it even if it meant taking his young children along, according to son Michael.
“one of the attributes I really appreciate about my dad is that he was futuristic, like me. He moved across continents to America to find a better life for his family,” his emotional son Michael said as he took a few pauses to compose himself. “That means he had big dreams.”
“One thing I hope for myself is that I can pull something off with such a magnitude. His dreams and efforts impacted a lot of people in here and I hope to do the same,” said Michael.
Erastus Onchwari will be laid to rest at his place of birth in Kisii, Kenya.
Habib Koite will perform without Bassekou Kouyate at the Vieux Carre in St. Paul, Minnesota on Saturday, March 9 2019 as Kouyate and his group were not granted US visas despite turning in applications weeks in advance. Photo: Courtesy Vieux Carre
Habib Koite will perform without Bassekou Kouyate at the Vieux Carre in St. Paul, Minnesota on Saturday, March 9 2019 as Kouyate and his group were not granted US visas despite turning in applications weeks in advance. Photo: Courtesy Vieux Carre
Bassekou Kouyate and his musicians were scheduled to join Habib Koite for two shows at the Vieux Carrè in Saint Paul on March 9 but Kouyate and his group have not been granted visas to enter the United States, a statement from Vieux Carrè said.
As a result the 8pm and 10pm shows have been consolidated into one 8pm show by Koite and his percussionist.
“The entire group was granted their work permits and proceeded to apply for visas to enter the country several weeks ago, normally more than sufficient time. However, there have been unexplained delays by the consulate where visa applications were made,” the statement said.
Habib Koite in Concert @ Vieux Carré
Saturday, March 9, 2019 @ 8PM
408 St Peter St., St Paul, MN 55102
Box Office is at 612-332-5299 or Ticket Link.
Rosemary Ugboajah, President of Neka Creative, a Minneapolis based advertising company, was awarded the Multicultural Marketing Achievement Award at the 23rd annual Multicultural Marketing Conference & Awards. Rick Aguilar on the left is the president of Aguilar Productions that produces the conference. Photo: Aguilar productions
Rosemary Ugboajah, President of Neka Creative, a Minneapolis based advertising company, was awarded the Multicultural Marketing Achievement Award at the 23rd annual Multicultural Marketing Conference & Awards. Rick Aguilar on the left is the president of Aguilar Productions that produces the conference. Photo: Aguilar productions
One of a handful Minnesota women that run their own full service advertising agencies, Rosemary Ugboajah, was honored with the Multicultural Marketing Achievement Award at the 23rd annual Multicultural Marketing Conference & Awards held recently in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The Multicultural Marketing Achievement Award is given annually during the conference to someone or a company that has exhibited commitment and excellence to multicultural marketing.
Ugboajah is the founder and president of Neka Creative, a brand development agency that describes itself as having a “soaring purpose – to reveal the wild brand promise in every organization with progressive authenticity.”
“This is a wonderful surprise that I am grateful for,” she said while accepting the award.
Prior to founding Neka Creative, Ugboajah had stints at Cargill and Target, among others and has also served on a variety of nonprofit boards including Art Buddies.
Ugboajah studied art and design at West Kensington College of Arts in London and advertising at the University of Minnesota. Her Neka Creative agency has been involved in many strategic and creative projects including Merwin LTC Pharmacy, Penumbra Theatre, Swanson Flo, The Commons, and branding the workforce system for the State of Minnesota.
“We were proud to honor Rosemary for her outstanding achievements in Multicultural marketing” stated Rick Aguilar, President of Aguilar Productions which produces the Multicultural Marketing Conference & Awards.
Carson Brooks, longtime Minneapolis real estate broker whose firm EXIT Realty shares office space with Mshale, accepting the 2019 Realtor of the Year award at the recent Minneapolis Area Realtors Installation and Awards ceremony event. Photo: Courtesy MAR
Carson Brooks, longtime Minneapolis real estate broker whose firm EXIT Realty shares office space with Mshale, accepting the 2019 Realtor of the Year award at the recent Minneapolis Area Realtors Installation and Awards ceremony event. Photo: Courtesy MAR
Longtime Minneapolis real estate broker, Carson Brooks was presented with the prestigious 2019 Realtor of the Year Award at the recent Minneapolis Area Realtors’ Leadership Installation and Awards. The award is given each year to one of Minneapolis Area Realtors’ over 8,000 members to recognize “outstanding volunteer service and commitment to community and homeownership causes.”
Brooks is the broker and owner of the ten year old EXIT Realty Metro which shares office space resources with Mshale. He has served on the City of Minneapolis Real Estate Advisory Board and was part of the Minneapolis Area Realtors’ first trade mission to Thailand. He has also served on MAR’s Governmental Affairs Committee and the board of directors.
“From assisting local government with real estate matters to personally helping non-profits, he’s always going above and beyond the expected,” said Pat Paulson, a realtor and manager at EXIT.
Editor’s note: This editorial first appeared in the March print edition of Mshale.
The formation of the United Black Legislative Caucus in Minnesota is long overdue but also comes at the right time. We applaud this development and look forward to it being a defining moment in not just Minnesota politics but in our Upper Midwest region.
We take this opportunity to congratulate the elected leaders who have taken this step. It also shows unity by people of African descent in harnessing their numbers to be more effective. The unity we are specially talking about is that of black people born here and are not of immigrant stock and the unity with their immigrant brothers and sisters that are now part of the elected body.
This is indeed a very special moment for all black people in our state. That the caucus launched on Black History Month is noteworthy. Not only was the month of February Black History Month, the caucus was formed just a few weeks after we celebrated a visionary leader in the name of Martin Luther King Jr., and in February we celebrated the birthday of another visionary and fearless leader called Rosa Parks. We also recently saw the first black person born on African soil sworn into the US Congress – Ilhan Omar.
We applaud the legislators for taking note of the fact that black people are no longer monolithic but that we share a common interest in advancing the agenda of people of African descent.
Minnesota, a high achieving state income wise, standard of living and educationally ranks at the top of the nation in most of the scores but when it comes to black people, it is considered the worst state to live in if you are black.
This year also marks 400 years of black people being sold in Virginia as slaves, ancestors by the way both African-Americans, other blacks and African immigrants share.
Blacks in Minnesota are trying their best to achieve but face a myriad of obstacles for what is supposed to be a good state to live and raise your children, a fact except when you happen to be a black person. Even the Minnesota legislature shares the shame of inequities. Black form just over 6% of Minnesota’s population but there are only 6 legislators in the legislature or 3%. The state can do better than this.
The launching of the caucus comes at an opportune time as just a few days later after launching; the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage was also set to release the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage 2019 Legislative Agenda.
One of the agenda items the Council is working on is the Restoration of Voting Rights (HF40). This particular legislation if passed would re-enfranchise over 50,000 Minnesotans, including over 20,000 people of African descent, native or immigrant. As part of its priorities, the Council called on the entire Minnesota congressional delegation to support continuation of Deferred Enforcement of Deportation (DED) that affects mostly the Liberian people in Minnesota.
The Black Legislative Caucus and Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage should therefore be commended for working together to advance the interests, and wellbeing of people African descent in Minnesota.
The African Union ambassador to the United States, Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao (left) and Brooklyn Center mayor Mike Elliot share a laugh at a luncheon in the mayor's city to discuss the AU's vision of Wakanda on Monday, February 25, 2019. Photo: Rory Barigayomwe for Mshale.
The African Union ambassador to the United States, Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao (left) and Brooklyn Center mayor Mike Elliot share a laugh at a luncheon in the mayor's city to discuss the AU's vision of Wakanda on Monday, February 25, 2019. Photo: Rory Barigayomwe for Mshale.
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. – Less than 24 hours after the movie Black Panther took home some Oscars, the African Union ambassador to the United States, Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao, was in Brooklyn Center to share the AU’s mission to build a real Wakanda in Africa. Brooklyn Center in November elected the first mayor in the metro area born in Africa when it elected Mike Elliot.
The ambitious project, dubbed Wakanda One Village Project, will consist of five African Centers of Excellence in each of the five regions of the African continent, the ambassador told a rapt audience. She first unveiled the project a year ago.
How to fund the ambitious project was the focus of a lunch meeting with African immigrant community and business leaders on Monday. The goal is to have one center of excellence going in the shared Victoria Falls border between Zambia and Zimbabwe where both countries have pledged land to that effect, the ambassador said. The first center is projected to cost $5billion and will comprise a state-of-the-art teaching hospital, a university, five-star hotels among others which will be replicated at the other centers of excellence on the continent. Other news reports have indicated that in addition to Zambia and Zimbabwe, Kenya and Tanzania are the other African countries that have pledged land for a center of excellence.
In a wide-ranging address at the Minnesota luncheon the ambassador said the African Union Mission to the United States and Industrial Bank, an African-American owned bank in Washington reached an agreement last year to have the bank act as the depository and the starting point for what she referred to as the African Diaspora Global Bank.
“Nasibu (Nasibu Sareva of African Development Center) has all the information on how to open your account,” Chihombori-Quao said, adding that with a minimum monthly internment of $10 into the Industrial Bank account, the individual’s $100 per year goal is easily attainable. The African Development Center and the African Nurses Network co-hosted the luncheon on Monday.
“Open the account now as the money remains yours,” Chihombori-Quao exhorted those present. “If 1,000 of you just deposit $100 each year at this bank, we have $100,000 to start and double that if its $200 a year.’
“I found out every Sunday black churches (in the US) are collecting $50 million and every Monday they make a beeline to white-owned banks to deposit that money, how stupid are we?” She reiterated the importance of people of African descent supporting each other’s business by patronizing each other to ensure money circulates within the global African diaspora.
Chihombori-Quao said one of the urgent matters her mission in DC is working on is the establishment of active working regions in the Americas. “We are not sleeping no more, we are waking up.” She revealed that Texas has a regional group organized and she is hopeful that Minnesota will follow in that part soon.
Ambassador Chihombori-Quao also spoke of the challenges the soc0alled Sixth Region has had in gaining traction and being effectively operationalized. In 2012, during the African union’s Global African Diaspora Summit, a declaration was issued that called on the African diaspora to “organize themselves in regional networks and establish appropriate mechanisms that will enable their increasing participation in the affairs of the African Union as observers and eventually, in the future, as a sixth region of the continent that would contribute substantially to the implementation of policies and programs.”
The Sixth Region has however proved difficult to operationalize, Chihombori-Quao said on Monday. “We are just not organized here in the diaspora, and you cannot blame the AU heads of states.”
The African Union over the years since that 2012 Global African Diaspora Summit formed the Citizens and Diaspora Organizations Directorate (CIDO), to try and operationalize the Sixth Region. At Monday’s meeting, the head of CIDO, Ahmed El Basheer, flew in from the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa to urge those at the meeting to respond to the call to organize. pointing to the influence of the Pro-Israeli lobby in American politics, El Basheer said “you and I know you cannot be elected to the White House in this country without their (Jews) support.” He called on Africans in the US to follow the same playbook.
Present at the luncheon was the mayor of Brooklyn Center, Mike Elliot, Minneapolis Council member Abdi Warsame, Brooklyn Park Council member Wynfred Russell and Honorary Consul of Liberia in Minnesota Jackson George. Elliot made opening remarks to welcome the ambassador and her delegation to his city. Also present was Ian Oundo, the DFL’s Civic Engagement Director. The luncheon as moderated by the president of the African Nurses Network, Lyna Nyamwaya, a rising star within Minnesota’s African immigrant leadership circle.
Habib Koite and Bassekou Kouyate, both from Mali, will perform Saturday, March 9, 2019 at Vieux Carre in downtown Saint Paul. Photo: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Habib Koite and Bassekou Kouyate, both from Mali, will perform Saturday, March 9, 2019 at Vieux Carre in downtown Saint Paul. Photo: University of Wisconsin-Madison
One of Mali’s most renowned musicians and great guitarists, Habib Koite, makes a return visit to the Twin Cities on March 9, albeit to a venue less familiar with many Mshale readers. Koite will perform at the Vieux Carré in downtown St. Paul. Vieux Carré is owned by the same folks that own the more familiar Dakota Jazz Club in downtown Minneapolis (downstairs from where last year’s African Awards Gala was held at Target headquarters), which has hosted the likes of the late Hugh Masekela and other high profile African musicians.
Koite will be joined on stage by fellow Malian Bassekou Kouyate in what promises to an exciting evening. They will perform at 8:00PM and 10:00PM.
In addition to being an accomplished guitarist, Koite is known best for the revival of the ngoni, the precursor to the banjo. That he is performing on a weekend should be welcome news for some and can expect the usual socially-conscious lyrics that Koite has become known for. Kouyate on his part is referred to as the King of Ngoni and bs band is called appropriately as Ngoni ba.
Koite is among the most commercially successful African musicians and on stage usually sings Bambara,English and french. He has his uncle to thank for his music career. As he describes it, he was headed to a career as an engineer when his uncle who had noted his talent encouraged him to enroll at Bamako’s National Institute of Arts and within six months was made conductor of INA Star, the school’s prestigious band. He eventually graduated top of his class in 1982.
Habib Koite & Bassekou Kouyate in Concert @ Vieux Carré
Saturday, March 9, 2019 8PM and 10PM
408 St Peter St., St Paul, MN 55102 Ticket Link.
