All men

I want to say thank you for being so informative and useful and keep it up. You have kept us informed of what is happening across the continent. For people like us who are so busy and travel a lot, it not only makes good reading on the plane and on the road, but also helps to keep us abreast in a turbulent and unpredictable continent.

I was looking at the news yesterday on SABC cable TV . First was the swearing in ceremony in Nairobi of the Somalia Parliament - mostly men. Then there was the signing in ceremony on the three East African Leaders of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania on some protocol - all men. Then came the Sudanese talk in Abuja - all men. Finally I saw the polio and measles inoculations by UNICEF and Ministry of Health staff at the refugee camp for Darfur refugees - all were women and children. The men enjoy and control political, social and economic power, make decisions on our behalf - mostly bad decision - and we suffer the consequences, They fight wars of which we are the victims. We have to fight to create laws like the protocol (on the rights of women) to give us basic rights as citizens of our own countries. We have to be protected against them. It made me sick yesterday of all days.

And coming from Liberia made me even more sick. I spent the whole of last week in Liberia. The country has no electricity, no water. People without any exception have to get their own drinking water and generate electricity. Wealthy people dig wells in their homes, get purifying plants and use generators to pump the water into their houses. There is no building in the country that is intact, including office buildings. There is no oil company. More than 50% of the country's population is in Monrovia. Yet Charles Taylor was proud to call himself a president of a country. How can you be so wicked to your own people? What have they done to deserve such treatment?