I fell in love with a Tuareg man once, a Kel Tamasheq who called me his Tamedrayt (sister).

He had beautiful kind eyes, a wide smile and the smoothest gorgeous skin

I was in awe of him, I’d listen to him talk about this striking, vast and arid land he came from.

A land so colourful, harsh, beautiful that the sun shone so bright it sparkled into the horizon.

He’d speak of his people; strong, proud warriors who loved the land and the freedom to roam it.

I cried the day he left, big sad heaving tears; he wiped them away smiling and said

“Aah… Tamedrayt, One of these days you’re going to love something so precious you wouldn’t be able to trust yourself with it”

I smile through my tears. I, of course didn’t understand what he meant then.

I mentioned this to my therapist; that I believe the Kel Tamasheq man was the love of my life.

She thinks I’m romanticizing again, and a little surprised… “love of your life?, really? – What about the potential French husband”

“Have you considered life living on the desert?” She asks

I ask her if she knew� the Tuaregs were matriarchal.

It’s the men who wear the veil, not women.

I could have been a matriarch; I would have been revered…

Video 1

It was he who turned me on to Tinariwen and they’ve since become one of my favourite bands.

I saw them live for the first time back in February as part of the cultural Olympiad.

There were incredible, like everything I expected.

Their songs are a mesmerizing trance-like mixture of blues, rock and punk set to African rhythms.

Their sound has been described as desert blues, Afro rock, indigenous rock and roll and everything else in between.

Video 2

Their songs evokes magical places I’ve only dreamed of.

Songs that make melancholy sound beautiful, hauntingly beautiful words I don’t understand.

If you ever get a chance to see them live, do it! They are awesome!

I hurried home from work on Friday to catch the opening ceremony of the 2010 Paralympics on TV.

It was a lovely and inspiring show; I look forward to the next two weeks

The Paralympics are going to be a mellow and calmer affair than what the Olympics were

I’m sure this image has been making its round on the internet.

The boss sent this in an email; the first picture is Granville Street on the last day of the Olympics and the one beneath is Granville Street a week later.

Pretty amazing huh?

One other thing to come out of the Olympics is this video for Haiti recorded in Vancouver during games.

A group of Canadian artists dubbed Young Artist for Haiti recorded K’naan’s Wavin’ Flag.

Proceeds from the song will go to Free The Children, War Child Canada and World Vision Canada.

Here’s where you go to find out more about getting the single and contributing towards a worthy cause.

PS: I have a picture and video heavy post coming soon from the K’naan concert last month.

I missed the second series finale of True Blood.

My DVR got too full while I was away on vacation so it got deleted for newer shows.

I still haven’t watched it.

I saw this ad while waiting for the tube at Bank Station, and thought… cool True Blood is on FX here in the UK (I didn’t even know there was an FX UK).

I took a second look at the poster and noticed… ‘That’s not Sookie!’ that’s some random tall blond woman.

And who’s that behind her? Is that supposed to be a vampire? That’s not Vampire Bill, looks more like a zombie.

I wonder who it was that came up with that idea for the poster, wouldn’t be easier to just get a poster with the real characters?

In other True Blood news, I love, love, love the show’s opening credits.

The song in the credits, Bad Things is by Jace Everett, it’s become one of my favourite songs.

Take a look…

Cool eh?

The African Peace Festival has been going on every year for the past four years, and for some strange reason, I’d never heard of it until recently. What kind of African am I?

As luck would have it, I met one of the performers weeks earlier at the jazz festival who promised it’ll be fun.

The festival is organized by the African Peace Forum Society to raise funds ‘for a grassroots humanitarian project in Africa which is selected annually’.

This year’s festival was held at the Roundhouse Community Centre on the 18^th of July. I went there not exactly sure what to expect.

I imagined a peace festival would be a conference style sort of atmosphere with workshops and possibly breakout sessions where there’ll be lots of vague talk about how to bring peace to ‘Africa’. This isn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday afternoon.

Thankfully, it wasn’t anything like I imagined. It was a market place with a performance stage and seating area in the middle. I really liked the set up because I could browse, watch and listen to the performances too.

The market place featured an array of interesting vendors;

Pathfinder Press publishes writings and speeches from revolutionists like Thomas Sankara.

Afri-Pads is a Ugandan based organization that sews and distributes washable menstrual pads to girls in rural Uganda – it’s such an exceptional enterprise.

Performances included a poetry slam, musical acts and an acrobat dancer. Saw the Raging Grannies!

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the whole event because I had to be at the Folk Festival.

It was� overall great fun; I’m glad I was there,� saw some old friendly faces and discovered new ones.

My work colleagues and I stood around the ‘water cooler’ (in our case an old drafting table in the hallway by the kitchen) discussing Michael Jackson’s sudden death.

Most of us remember loving his songs when we were kids; a colleague recalls his Bad album being the first ‘tape’ he ever bought with his allowance. I had the Bad album too; my brother Paul got it for me when he went away to school in California. I knew the words to all the songs.

It’s incredible how one person’s music has affected so many lives, that’s the Michael Jackson phenomenon and hopefully his legacy lives on.

People often ask me why I moved to Canada and specifically Vancouver – I have several reasons, all valid but there’s a one that’s very old and impulsive that I don’t talk about often.

When I a ten year old living in central Freetown I watched a short clip of Michael Jackson (Jackson Five) on tour in Vancouver, BC. I think that was the very first time I heard of the city. It was an old video, probably from a special on his 1984 Victory tour; it had clips from other cities as well. The clip included shots of Vancouver, it’s not anything like I remembered now but the views of the water and mountains were still pretty amazing back then.

Years later when we were presented with the opportunity to live in Canada, I chose Vancouver remembering that video, and was pleasantly pleased after a little research into the city.

By the time I got to my teens, I’d gone from living with my mom, dad and siblings to living with my dad, his new wife and a bunch of strangers. My mom and siblings had all but disappeared from my life, and these new folks were not very nice people.

Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone” helped me through some very turbulent times. I used to play the song over and over again. I still get misty eyed when I hear that song sometimes. Before then, my ‘woe is me’ song used to be Madonna’s “Oh Father” but I could only play that on my Walkman.

If I were to make a compilation of the soundtrack to my life, it’ll include a Michael Jackson song.