Lopez Lomong story started when he escaped from captivity in Sudan at age six. His story could have been like the unfortunate thousands of the Darfur genocide.
Lopez spent some 10 years in one of the harshest environment imaginable- a Kenyan refugee camp where he made do with a ration of one meal a day.
During the 2000 Olympics, he chose to walk five miles to watch the Michael Johnson run. He got hooked from that day on. His dream was to be an Olympian.
Fate smiled on him and he found new home in Syracuse USA, where a foster parent made a choice to raise him.
When the Beijing Olympics opened several hours ago in China, Lopez, now a professional runner, was nominated as the flag bearer for the American team.
The message is clear.
Watch CNN video footage of Lomong talk about this experience. AfricanLoft has additional coverage:
This is the kind of message members of the [tag]African Union[/tag] need to send to Khartoum:
“On Wednesday May 23, Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed Senate File 1075, a targeted [tag]divestment[/tag] bill which will divest Minnesota’s State Board of Investment from companies that support the genocidal government of Sudan. “Minnesotans can be proud that we are taking action to help cut off the flow of money to Sudan’s military. We’re doing our part to stop the crimes and inhumanities in [tag]Darfur[/tag].â€
This following was insured by folks at Global Voices (GV):
On Thursday May 24, Reuters will be holding another of their Newsmaker events, this time on the subject of Darfur.
The event takes place in New York, staring 930am EST, and the event page is here -
Unfortunately there won’t be a live videocast this time, and we’re still awaiting word about an audiocast/IRC, but you can still participate by:
1) leaving a comment on the entry I’ll be posting on GV by the end of today (EST)
2) sending any questions or comments to Reuters via the “Join the Debate” link on the event website
3) Blogging on the topic of Darfur and sending the link to Sub-Saharan Africa Ndesanjo Macha at africa@globalvoicesonline.org, so he can link you at Global Voices (the event page has a link to a GV feed). Ndesanjo will be attending the event and may also live-blog it.
4) sending any questions or comments to Reuters via the “Join the Debate” link on the event website
5) Blogging on the topic of Darfur and sending the link to Sub-Saharan Africa Ndesanjo Macha at africa@globalvoicesonline.org, so he can link you at Global Voices (the event page has a link to a GV feed). Ndesanjo will be attending the event and may also live-blog it.
“Africa has had problems with its leaders, a majority of whom were elected into power through popular revolution; but found no checks and balances for the misuse of power in place...Leadership is the cornerstone of all processes of revitalization. Leaders are in short supply and must be revitalized and produced. [For example] the unavailability of “good leaders†has led the African continent to develop slowly and languish in the primitive agricultural labour phase.“
Good idea, but who will initiate the revitalization process for those that can be revitalized? God will not save Africans from their devitalized leaders, what several of them need is urgent psychiatric evaluation. Sudanese president, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir is one of them. This is what Al-Bashir says of the Darfur crisis:
“There are no humanitarian crisis…the Western media had exaggerated the problem….aid workers were trying to prolong the crisis to keep their jobs.”
This man, Al-Bashir, is beyond revitalization; he simply needs to be ushered out of power and given PRN doses of antipsychotic medications. That’s what he needs!
It’s encouraging (at least to me) to see Reuters writes about WBD after Grandiose Parlor/Global Voices‘ initial posts on the initiative. Reuters appears to be one mainstream media interested and good in building collaborations with citizen media initiatives if one can use its alliance with Global Voices as an example. I hope the organizers of the WBD project are aware of this, and can play their cards right. The success of initiatives like WBD is strongly dependent on the ability of the organizers to collaborate, and build, but not burn bridges.
After the not-so-pleasant comments made on this blog (I had to moderate some because of the foul language) by one the WBD organizers, and on the Mideast Youth Forum; one entry was particularly heavy with some choice words (now deleted), and a more recent comment where the writer refers to me as a “failed blogger” : http://www.mideastyouth.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=257&view=next&sid=fe182494d6ed41f59f44a08eaf21f413, (Fri. Nov 24, 2006 2:42 pm). I can only hope that others in the WBD initiative have abundant peoples’ skills and good temperament to compensate for the deficiencies of their colleague.
It appears this seemingly harmless post: “Blogging for Darfur“, has ruffled some feathers based on the comments it has received from one of the organizers that goes by the name/handle Esra’a.
While the Esar’a has done a good job of drawing some attention to the collaborative nature of the project – giving the impression that this wasn’t made clear enough in the post – she has also ventured to portray how a good cause as “We blog for Darfur” can easily be derailed by some attention-seeking cravings of project collaborators.
Sudanese president, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir is one of them. 
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