Clothing in Africa

Africa's culture is so different compared to the United States, of course they would have different traditional clothing than America. Since at times it can get extremely hot in Africa, you would expect everyone to wear little clothing. However, most women wear beautifully colored dresses in many styles. Some styles are called a kanga, djellaba, or gomesi. Many of these women, too, wear head wraps with a piece of cloth. Males in Africa wear a dashiki, which is a long colorful short sleeved shirt. They also wear a grand boubou, which is a dress-like robe for a man. When seeing the grand boubou, it looks as if royalty from Africa would wear it. It looks very luxurious.

GOMESI

KANGA

DASHIKI

GRAND BOUBOU

These traditional African clothing are very beautiful, and come in all sorts of colors and amazing patterns. I have seen many of these outfits before hand, but I never knew what they were called. I think it would be very fun to try a couple of these outfits on to see what they would look like on me, since they look so natural on the Africans themselves. Overall, I love these dresses and shirts and they are very beautiful and full of life with tradition. 

Music in Africa

In Africa, they have a whole different look on music with a different sound and everything. Even though I'm not sure what they are saying in their songs, it gives me a happy and traditional vibe. Africa has many famous singers as well, and their music is very popular. A few of these famous singers include Amadou & Mariam, Miriam Makeba, and Yossou N'Dour. These singers have amazing voices that make you want to dance and sing along. The beat to their music is kept by using a lot of a conga drum (Jembe), Shekere, and the Kora. This also adds to the mood of the music, with wanting to dance and the tradition behind it. These singers also have music videos to their songs, which shows many different ways to look upon the African tradition.

Click the following links for videos/songs of the following singers:

Miriam Makeba

Yossou N'Dour 

Amadou & Mariam

I wish I could explain in more depth of the feeling I get when listening to this music, it's just powerful and makes me feel great inside. There music just really relaxes someone and makes an individual feel like sitting around a camp fire while listening to these singers. I encourage everyone to at least listen to these songs at least once, and think about the feelings inside.


JEMBE                                                                                           SHEKERE

KORA

Education Disaster in Africa

Since Africa is such a big country, it has many people. Of course some of these people are school aged children that need to attend school. There are 128 million school aged children in Africa, and 17 million of these children will never attend a school. However, 37 million children who do attend school will barely learn anything that they end up just like the ones who never attended. These kids who aren't learning anything are going to be Africa's future, and it's not looking so good.

The education system has gotten better in the last few years, but it doesn't help so much when the children are not actually learning while in school. Half of the sub-saharan children who attend school will grow up to adolescents without the basic skills to live adequate lives. In 3 countries, over half of the children attending school will not learn the basic skills by the end of primary school.

Click here for more information.

The question is, what do they need to do to fix this education crisis? Many people say they need more books to have proper teachings, but from the readings it seems as if they already have a great amount of these books. My personal opinion is that the teachers need help in class, and they do not have the proper techniques to teach these children and keep them on track at school. What's your opinion?