Café Culture – café life – and now, café death?

Café Culture – café life – and now, café death?

I consider myself lucky [for once], to have been born about five years after the end of World War Two. Going by what several early writers, I have read, did say of the fifteen years after WW II – those fifteen years were said to have been “baby boom” period worldwide. Populations began to explode – and life style came to be definable. Moreover, among them was the “café culture”.

Sidewalk café had become a big thing. In other words it was the new ‘café life’ style.

Journalists and photographers spiced their newspapers and magazines with [life] loaded pictures that gave business to the sidewalk newspaper stalls. Even here in Africa, where I write from – the sidewalk café became the point of popular contact making…

The spot where deals and multi-million businesses were hatched and clinched. The café was a living place – many marriages were sparked at the café.

Out there in the greater world - the dress code also came to be known as pacesetting fashions. With designers often, scripting or doodling their design outlines on the sidewalk café. Landscapers and architects visualized their concepts from the sidewalk cafes.

Great Novelists, men and women, were often spotted candid, brooding over their many-many book plots on the sidewalk café… in all the leading cities of the World.

The compact American suit, Stetson and cowboy boots – were dropped for a pair jeans and T-shirt [James Dean & Marlon Brando] ‘50s looks changed everybody – as we were growing up – to later consume all that in vast literatures of the world and, the Hollywood movies created out of them throughout the 1960s and 70s. We read and watched them all.

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The Internet Café – did not emerge out of the blue, as the younger generations born after the 1960s seem – not to imagine!

The ‘Café Culture’ has a history… it is therein that writers, authors, thinkers, designers, artists, architects and later software engineers evolved.

In the early days of the [personalized] computer, was the [Java script] – the first time I became aware of that software. I was reminded of Java, which is a place somewhere in the vast Indonesian Islands.

Many fantastic ‘Java [movie] Scripts’ shot by Hollywood groups in Indonesia with lead characters like ‘Brad Harris’ sent us lining up the box-office in Kampala Cinemas – that time run by Asians.

So when some two years or so ago, when I re-visited Kampala and, there it was [Café Java] – where now Kampala’s young enjoy each-other’s company, I was amazed in a different kind of way!

Meaning that, I see a lot more than the average – though I am sure, my type of fellows do exist around the world. Those who have lived and survived through the entire post WW II evolution - that characterize the milestones our contemporary civilizations are actually made of or hooked to.

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I am sure though that if ever they exist anywhere in the world [I don’t want to Google out] – anything called [Café Death or Death Café]. Or even enter into or sit on the sidewalk table of one.

Because I believe completely that, the “Café Culture” has always been pro-life. The World’s Arts and Sciences were thought-out and written by very creative writers and authors who were consumers of the Coffee. If ever there was anything called so… then at the background of the founding mind – is HIV/AIDS. I say this without any disrespect to entrepreneurship ideas and principles. Though, even the mad-mad scientist who created the virus might have been or is a consumer of Coffee. Which perhaps to a certain point - justifies the existence of the ‘Death Café’.

       

The African politics of the stomach… can the AU ride this crazy buffalo herd!

The African politics of the stomach… can the AU ride this crazy buffalo herd!

IDEOLOGY - is an old and odd herd to fathom. In the African context, this factor is complexed-by the ‘eating’ phenomena; Africa is hungry. Insufficient. Capacitiless, Wanting and largely bizarre!

 Preys to the aggressive foreign avians, as it were… because Africa might actually never unite.

The Pan African dream, as conceived by the fore-bearers of the ‘African dream’ lived and died with unfulfilment! Generation of the African Independence leadership peers, thought that they had the African vision and, what remained was only ‘good leadership’ – but hardly had they experienced the sunrise morning, than, the old “Wind of Change” was to blow them away - As a British Prime Minister was to once upon a time, see it, back then!

The Independence politicians knew nothing or very little of ‘security’ beyond the guards outside the gates. Mostly they were outsiders! Furtively at the head of anti-colonialism struggles whose [labor   union] up-rise motivations were triggered by the bully-man-ship of white rulers of Africa that time.

The post Independence ‘wind of change’ was unavoidable, since the category of men that headed the forces and security generally – knew and talked directly to the colonial powers that be, most of them had fought in the Whiteman’s World War Two - so that the figures at the head of the states throughout Africa, were flanked by a variety of forces and security heads, whose attentions were very much progressively divided.

The political leaders became ‘rhetorical’, loud and sentimental… whatever Pan African dreams they had, were to eventually be construed, as unifying Ideologies. In some Anglo-phone countries like Uganda, Prematurely, they – the post Independence administration cut-off from the Cambridge Examination and system of education. Between primary and HSC, they created new curricular-combinations. The exams were suddenly marked locally.

Anti-neocolonialism slogans and words like ‘comrade’ or ‘cadre’ or ‘elute’ now decked their rhetoric and conversations – suddenly, the recipe for the ‘wind of change’ was on the enormous menu. With it, things began to fall apart. The story differs though - from one African country to another… but the underlying thematic was the same or at least similar.

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The African is a miserly character – we shamelessly celebrate when the others sleep hungry! We insult, when we are begged! [Why don’t you work hard, you can’t beg all the time – go and work!] Yet, even the little that we pride ourselves of having achieved – were actually foreign donations. We do not stop to think, that everything we have - come as welfare - from a consortium of donors. This factor hardly ever seem to makes sense to most Africans - even leaders.

The African is a jealous character – we interfere with progressive activities of those members of our country who may hail from faraway places we don’t relate to easily. We summarily regard and dismiss them as either ‘the enemy or the poor’. It is just as well, that political systems and the laws actually curtail our meanness. But, by and large, we are tribalists. However, the cynics of our individualism perforate our tribalism.

In our ‘stomach thinking’, we promote productivity with one hand and, meddle-up productivity with the other hand. So that year in and year out, the story of development is a kind of merry-go round! War and Hunger is permanently on the front pages of African Newspapers. Our domestic animals are charred by the sun-rays – due to cultural practices and behaviors that interfere with our root management!

We are perennially experimenting with a variety of Aid/Grant based activities that seem never to solve the problem of ‘lack’ – Africa still lack so much – so that the negativity of African politics will forever remain in the ‘negative celluloid’ form  – like in the ancient photographer’s studio work. Production of the ‘positive picture’ remains an elusive challenge. That challenge is actually, what shows AU as an in-effective entity. Composed of this group of African [diaspora] minded men and women – designer suits, weird and nice everything theorists.

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If the AU were ever effective, foreign engineers wouldn’t be independently manning Africa’s infrastructure constructions. AU might have taken over direct management of especially, sewage in all the cities and towns around Lake Victoria – to allay the enormous contamination of the fresh water lake.

The AU might also have directly taken over management of solid waste throughout Africa. That is how the ‘negative celluloid’ would be washed [as in the ancient photographer’s studio]. To produce the clean ‘positive picture’ of the African environment and expose the cleaner path to the continental development.

It is safe for us who dare think, that current African Head of States, are direct signatories to all the protocols that engender the AU – they too might have to contribute in creating and cash-supplying some ‘African Bank’ that fund the activities directly managed by the AU.

So that, these African Political Heads remain what they are – Political Head of African States. Even then, the AU protocol they sign, actually take a minute bit of what their executive power is country to country.

In view of the status quo otherwise, the AU officials at their Head Quarters in Addis, might instead cause some of us Africans to hold them suspects for aggitative-indecision and inactivity also – I think it is not far from likelihood that, they, the AU officials may have poured, one too much crude Oil cartel into the fires that eventually [for example] burnt South Sudan – and nearly created difficulty for Ethiopia.

To some of us African indigenous free thinkers, the AU has to pull-up and be properly mobilizing the African Engineers and Economists – for the more committed trans-Africa infrastructure management. I mean the real hardware jobs.

It is not right – hearing of an AU official work-shopping limited ideas… advising [for example] the Nile referral – or Lake Victoria basin countries to [somehow] work towards bettering the hazardous environmental conditions inherent there-in… consultants can talk such vagueness, but not the AU. They are by virtue of their many-many mandates – planners and implementers. At least some of us readers into the purposes of the Union – believe so!   

Individual African countries are struggling… barely scratching for survival of populations. The AU cannot perennially be large [AU] painting on military trucks that are run by a group of sacrificing African countries taming [some] rebellions of the continent.

Uganda [for another example] is almost caught-up in the neediness of war-torn South Sudan! The meager agricultural output by some regions of Uganda disappears into the whirlwind of the current South Sudan situation. It is true that we cannot even [freely] afford tractors to help us roll one or two acres… and how do the experts sit around talking shop! When more than two countries have to share-in on the meager subsistence resource of one country.

Africa is vastly stranded in the politics of political change… leadership change, social services dogmatism - even with all the Universities that have mushroomed all over the continent. The job market [even at AU level] seems to be a pin-hole intake affair…

At the AU level, what are the continental planners doing? Where is the Continental Central Bank, what about the Continental Development Bank  – and, how much do African countries contribute to Africa’s collective financial weight Annually? And what is AU’s Annual Budget.. beyond secretariat funding. 

Otherwise, we can’t avoid the worry – that Africa might be massively contaminated by the sweet-toothed and threatening ‘Fifth Estate’ and the fanatic criminals within the African governments – who are actually by-products of corporate life style and the sweetness of extravagant nightlife – those laughing and ‘dancing’ ones former Apartheid President Botha talked about!