Butterfly Magazine - Issue 18

Finally a Black-owne d fish & chip s hop!

Vol. 1 Issue 18 21th August 2020

Tongayi Choto

Connecting

A f r i ca n Professionals In collaboration with

Inside Trinidad & Tobago

Credit: Yofoot Explores!

Trinidadand Tobago

Trinidad & Tobago 58th Independence Day 31 August 2020

20 Things to do in Trinidad & Tobago 10 Trinidad Sayings

Discover Trinidad and Tobago In Two Minutes!

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Credit: Tarique Eastman

Happy Song College Boy Jesse

I RISE You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the dirt But still, like dust, I rise.

Kamala Harris

Obviously Jamaican Watch the moves

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes, springing high, Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries.

You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes.

You may kill me with your fatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave, Credit: Maya Angelou I rise...I rise...I rise.

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Credit: IRIS

profile

Dr. Melissa Freeman 94 Year Old Woman Breaks The Glass Ceiling Dr Melissa Freeman is a Bronx-born medical doctor who finished medical school in 1955, and has practiced medicine since 1961. Her grandfather, Albert B. Walker, was born a slave in the 1850s.

She attended Howard University College of Medicine. She is one of the first doctors to treat women with opioid addiction.

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And she still rides the subway

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Bakita: KK

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iChurch: Angie Le Mar

Contents Cover: Tongayi Choto Credit: Contributed

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Anne Lowe

Trinidad and Tobago

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Kamala Harris Obviously Jamaican

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What’s on the Screen?

Dr. Melissa Freeman

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Grenada Heritage 6

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Freedom is Mine with Fayida

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The Disruptor

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Tongayi Choto

EDITORIAL TEAM Karen Ferrari Simone Scott-Sawyer Editorial Researcher Tasina J. Lewis Marketing Team Marvin Osemwegie — Marketing Director Michael Brown — Social Media Analyst

Regular Features Rhea Delaney (London) Joshua Grant aka Sports Arrow (London) Fayida Jailler (UK) Bakita Kasadha (UK & Uganda) Chi-Chi Osemwegie (London) Design Editor Rusdi Saleh

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The First Juneteenth

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Laughter, Good For The Soul

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I Am Masterclass Dean Okai

The Library

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Editor-in-Chief Beverley Cooper-Chambers

Financial Strategic Advisor Nastassia Hedge-Whyte, MAAT, ACCA,ICAJ

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THE BUTTERFLY MAAG TEAM

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Multi-Cultural Family

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Coming Next week...

Graphics Butterfly logo by Wayne Powell (Jamaica)

Submit a story: communications@butterflymaag.com Advertising enquiries: ads@butterflymaag.com Ad copy should be submitted Friday for the following week’s publication.

Butterfly Magazine published weekly on Fridays.

Butterfly magazine is published weekly by BUTTERFLY MAGAZINE LIMITED, 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE, UK. Tel: (44) (0) 203 984 9419 Butterfly ™ 2015 is the registered trademark of THE LION AND THE LAMB MEDIA HOUSE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited without written permission from the publishers BUTTERFLY MAGAZINE LIMITED. Advertising enquiries: communications@butterflymaag.com Address all correspondence to: communications@butterflymaag.com No copyright infringement is intended

Grenada Heritage

Inside Grenada

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The powerful stories that shaped Africa Gus Casely-Hayford

I

n the vast sweep of history, even an empire can be forgotten. In this wide-ranging talk, Gus CaselyHayford shares origin stories of Africa that are too often unwritten, lost, unshared. Travel to Great Zimbabwe, the ancient city whose mysterious origins and advanced architecture continue to confound archeologists. Or to the age of Mansa Musa, the ruler of the Mali Empire whose vast wealth built the legendary libraries of Timbuktu. And consider which other history lessons we might unwittingly overlook.

Sylvia Arthur opens

The Library of Africa and the African Diaspora 8

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Credit: Ted

THE LIBRARY

Zimbabwean Queen

Dr. Arikana Chinombori Quao

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ORN in a village in Chivhu, Zimbabwe, Arikana Chihombori Quao had her early education in her home country before emigrating to the United States of America in 1977 in pursuit of higher education.

She attended Fisk University and Meharry Medical College. She holds a bachelor’s degree in General Chemistry, a master’s degree in Organic Chemistry, and a doctorate in medicine. Upon graduation from medical school in 1986, she did three years of General Surgery at the State University of New York in Brooklyn, NY, USA, and another residency in Family Medicine at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.

Before her appointment as the AU ambassador to the US, Dr. Quao was a renowned family medicine doctor in Murfreesboro, Tennessee where she has been practising medicine for nearly 30 years. She has also been actively involved in various programmes and projects of the African Union. Since 2012, she was the Chair of the African Union-African Diaspora Health Initiative (AU-ADHI) where she was involved in mobilising the African Diaspora health professionals to assist in addressing the healthcare crisis in Africa.

In a dramatic display of strategic, activistic philanthropy, she purchased the historic Durban Manor Hotel – once a whites-only all-male hotel and club – now a place for cultural heritage tourism and intellectual engagement. In another ironic twist, Dr. Chihombori-Quao, who is averse to the use of such terms as ‘Francophone’ and ‘Anglophone’, bought a former Tennessee slave plantation from White owners and christened it ‘African House’ and turned it into a cultural sanctuary with the goal of revolutionising health care in African countries.

Story credit: Guardian.ng.

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What’s on the Screen?

The Screeners’

TV Choice

Illustration by Wayne Powell (Jamaica)

WELCOME TO THE VIRTUAL LIBRARY

Welcome to our Virtual Library !

Feel free to browse around and choose any book to read, all you have to do is click on the book cover to get the link.

Enjoy!

Credit: Netflix

Man

Credit: BBCiplayer/BBC 4

Credit: ComedyCo.uk

Project Power

African Renaissance:

The Knot

When Art Meets Power Transform your viewing...

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Credit: Netflix

woman

Credit: Netflix

Credit: Searchlight Pictures

The In Laws

OJO’s in d’ house 12

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Baggage Claim

Credit: Kids Black History

small child

Credit: Ubongo Kids

Kids Black History – Africa is Rich

Circuits and Electricity Transform your viewing...

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Credit: IFC Films

OLDER CHILD

Credit: Netflix

Our Song

FIRST MATCH 14

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Credit: Netflix

young adult

Credit: HBO

Credit: Trailers PlaygroundHD

Dérè An African Tale

Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland

Dreamgirls Transform your viewing...

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Credit: Movieclips Trailers

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Credit: Netflix

gen z

Skin

Dope

Credit: Netflix

grandPA

The Millions

THE MILLIONS tells a story of some con artists coming together to work on stealing a huge sum of money as a failure with the operation puts their lives in the way. The mission leads to betrayal, friendship and true love

25 Moments If It Were Not Filmed, No One Would Believe Transform your viewing...

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grandma

Credit: Netflix

Ask A Slave – Web Series

Furlough 18

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The Chosen trailer

The Chosen is a 2020 television drama based on the life of Jesus Christ, created, directed and co-written by American filmmaker Dallas Jenkins. It is the first multi-season series about the life of Christ, and season one was the highest crowd-funded TV series or film project of all time.

We would love to hear from you!

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Freedom is Mine

Dominican Republic

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BY FAYIDA JAILLER

s you know, Haiti and the Dominican Republic share an island called Hispaniola, which is located in the Caribbean Sea. The Dominican Republic occupies the Eastern Dominican Republic Congos majority of the island, and Haiti occupies a of Villa Mella. third of the island, to the west. Because the two countries share an island, much of their Boyer. Haiti ruled the history is deeply intertwined…and not always Dominican Republic olution.

Dominican Republic Haitian rev in a good way! More on this to come, and for 22 years. On the look out for next week’s video on the African 27th of February 1844, diaspora in Haiti. the Dominican Republic declared independence It was in the Dominican Republic that the Spanish from Haiti and every year on the 27th of February, conquistadors, led by Christopher Colombus, Dominicans celebrate their independence from Haiti. founded the first Spanish colony in the New World, Today hostility from Dominicans towards Haitians in 1493. The Spanish first began trafficking enslaved in part manifests itself in rampant colourism. Many Africans to Hispaniola in the early 1500s. Enslaved Dominicans seek to distance themselves from their Africans on Hispaniola predominantly worked in darker-skinned Haitian counterparts as well as from mines and on plantations, cultivating sugar, tobacco their own African roots and heritage. and livestock.

That said, African-influences are still clear to see In 1697 the Western portion of the Island in some aspects of Dominican culture, and small (known as modern-day Haiti) came under French pockets of Dominican society proudly maintain their rule. Inspired by the French revolution, Black and African roots. Once such example is the Congos of Afrodescendant inhabitants of Hispaniola, both Villa Mella, a collection of communities based in free and enslaved, were inspired to take up arms in Villa Mella, a suburb just outside of Santo Domingo, 1791, led by Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint descended from the Congo region in Africa. In Louverture. Although he died before the conflict 2001 the community was declared an expression of ended, his second-in-command Jean Jacques intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO. Dessalines led the rebellion to victory in 1804, and African heritage in the Dominican Republic slavery was formally abolished in Haiti. can be seen in traditional food such Slavery resumed in the Dominican Republic, due as Mondongo, concón, ñame and to Spanish intervention, but was abolished again in Mangú, as well as the Dominican 1822 when the Dominican Republic came under musical genre Bachata, and AfricanHaitian rule, under the Haitian president Christophe influenced religions such as Santería and Voodoo which are practiced on the island. Slowly but surely there is a growing movement among the younger generations to acknowledge and take pride in Afro-Dominican identity.

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Welcome to the Disruptor

To be a disruptor in business is to create a product, service, or way of doing things which displaces the existing market leaders and eventually replaces them at the helm of the sector. [`the disruptor]

Less Talk More Action

Credit: United Nations

Rosemarie - Zimbabwean - Gold Miner

Zimbabwe’s billion dollar gold-mining industry is crucial for the country’s struggling economy but, traditionally, more than half the country’s population has been excluded from taking part. But now Zimbabwean women are breaking barriers to share in the wealth, following in the steps on one extraordinary entrepreneur.

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Credit: Wode Maya

From the UK to Ghana Black Owned Retail Needs Black Consumers The High Street is losing an average of 10% year on year, because our spending habits and the way we shop has evolved, being enabled by technology.

This is why we need you to shop locally and shop Black owned first. It is a principle understood and practiced by all other races, however we are shamed into believing and therefore practicing different

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Black-Owned Fish and Chip Shop

ITAL VITAL

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Credit: Channel 4 News

Why Black Americans are deciding to resettle in Africa Ghana’s Biggest Solar Panel Company

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For more information communications@butterflymaag.com

lead Story

Butterfly Magazine in conversation

Connecting

Professi

At 28 years old, Tongayi Choto is making waves across the continent of Africa as he reaches out to the world. He describes himself as first a software developer who is passionate about connecting African professionals with the global market, and second as an enabler that makes things happen.

Tongayi (left) with Dr Arikana Chinombori Quai (right)

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with Tongayi Choto

African

onals

T

ongayi was born and raised in Zimbabwe and is, as he says with pride, the product of an excellent Zimbabwean education.

Since 1982, Zimbabwe has had one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, at 88%. This was because the new government after independence placed the education of its people as the highest priority. The government decided to invest in education and built schools all over the country. Beaming with pride he says, “We have over 13 universities for a population of 16 million people”. There are approximately three million children of school age. The process of educating the population developed over time but Tongayi was quick to point out that, “My great grandfather was educated and literate..” He set an excellent example for his children, his grandchildren, and his great-grandchildren, and the generations that followed. Tongayi added, “what that did was make everyone want to go to university and that made our education system really strong and our literacy rate very high”.

TC: One of my mentors, Mr. Sinclair Skinner, Co-founder of BillMari a Pan-African Fintech startup, taught me two things that we have to do as African professionals to secure Africa’s future.

Cultural competence and technical competence.

Cultural Competence means you should know your history and who you are as a person so you can create sustainable solutions. I had to know what happened before our countries’ independence in 1980 so that I could make better decisions with the work that I am doing. If you build something in the context of two years or even ten it might not last for the next 30/40 years. If you know where Zimbabwe and the African continent came from you no have a better context of how we got where we are. You would then understand what colonization did to this continent and gain a greater appreciation of Africa’s current predicament and why it appears to be lagging behind the rest of the world.

TC: The reality is we have had hundreds of years of colonisers looting the natural reserves of the continent from its mineral resources to its labour force and it continues today as neo-colonialism.

This is where technical competence comes in.

Software developers, like me, must remain aware of who we are as a people. We must remember that we are a highly literate, highly skilled people capable of great engineering feats like Great Zimbabwe, that have endured the test of time and stand today as a permanent reminder of our ancestors’ ingenuity and technical competence.

We must remember that our ancestors and the 1.5 billion people from Africa and people of African descent that are scattered around the world are capable of producing amazing things. I asked myself how can I apply my technical competence to rebuild a great Zimbabwe and an even greater African continent.

TC: And what my company, AfriBlocks, is doing, is “Building Africa’s Future of Work.” Connecting all of that history and knowledge with the present professional skillsets in Africa; and providing those highly sorted skills to the rest of the world. Using technology we are able to get more jobs for these amazing educated, skilled, and talented African men and women.

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BM: How does it work?

TC: Well, you are in London and I am in Zim and we are connecting and getting work done. African professionals are able to register on the platform, AfriBlocks.com and they go through our vetting process. Clients across the world request services from graphic design, software development, marketing, and more. We connect professionals with service seekers through our matching technology and project managers. It is important to talk about the history and where we are, but we need to discuss solutions, create those solutions, and execute them which is what, with your help, we are doing. We have established ourselves as the Global Pan-African Freelance Network, currently with professionals from over 7 African countries. We enable you to hire professional African freelancers for any job online.

BM. What do you say to those of us from the Caribbean, or are Black British, or African-American or simply from the Black Diaspora where the ability to know our history has been stolen, hidden, disguised, or our names have been destroyed and we have inherited the slave-owners names, which in some instances leads to an identity crisis? Who are we and where do we belong?

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TC: This is unfortunate that our history was stolen from us, however, connections like the work we are doing are real and that is the purpose of the AfriBlocks. We pride ourselves on connecting people, cultures, and ideas. Our ultimate aim is that through this connection, people will eventually want to come to Zimbabwe. What I anticipate will happen is that you, for example, will call me because we have worked together as professionals and ask about visiting. So whether you want to come on vacation, or just to learn more about the country we have created a platform that facilitates professional relationships.

Freelancing is the lowest hanging fruit and from it, you can connect with someone in Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, or any of the African countries.

Everyone on our platform goes through a rigorous vetting procedure through which we build relationships of trust. As a software developer, I make the contacts and guide you through the process to the best resources. These relationships build and become stronger over time.

BM: Are Zimbabweans from the Diaspora coming home?

TC: Yes, slowly I have seen a few come home. Obviously, this has stopped now because of the COVID-19 virus but people have said they want to come home to stay. Some are not Zimbabweans but having visited, they like the feel of the country and decide to put down roots. I know someone based in the UK who wants to relocate to Ghana so this is a trend that is starting to happen.

BM: When you were on Sis. Shanice’s radio show she asked you about setting up car factories in Zimbabwe? How do you free about that?

Credit: Rethinking the future

Like I said before, these professional relationships get you closer to someone saying I am going to move to Ghana or to Zambia for a month, then come back and establish a business there, and once that business takes off I can stay there for half of the year, potentially, and then relocate permanently. So it has to start with infrastructures built on relationships that enable you to move.

I think it is difficult for you to move your whole life all of a sudden without careful planning.

TC: For us as AfriBlocks, I think that is something that is further down the line because we have a road map that starts with what we are able to achieve right now with the few resources we have.

I guess with my background of being a software developer I’ve seen how you can build businesses online and use those resources to build more businesses like a factory. With over 200 million people living and working in the African Diaspora for me to be able to reach those people, I won’t be able to do it with a car plant-based in Zimbabwe.

On the other hand, a car plant would be beneficial to the people of Zimbabwe, which is about 16 million people, as it would create employment and trade. I do not have that expertise and it is our vision that our platform will help someone else be able to do that and more. I am trying to connect the entire globe and the way to do that is through software that is scalable and grows fast. So much so that it is difficult to stop because everyone is now plugged and connected to this network. That is where relationships, like building power plants, working in farms, investing in education will start to build because of the foundation that we are building.

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Credit: History Time

Great Zimbabwe & The First Cities of Southern Africa

BM: Is there a place for a Black-owned global media network in Zimbabwe that services the African continent?

TC: Yes, because now I see people watching Netflix, Youtube. If you look at it, Netflix has started to invest in Black content. I think they announce a fund to be placed into creating more Black content; so they know that the market is huge. The demand is there for our own content and I don’t think there is a single platform that is dominating that space and it is a space that is still open.

The History of Zimbabwe

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‘Great Zimbabwe’ museum preserves ancient city BM: Do you think we should control that network and content?

TC: I think it is difficult to say control. It goes back to cultural competence. If you are culturally competent you will not accept what happens now, cases where actors are paid to portray themselves in a certain way which is not necessarily positive to our culture.

With control you can implement measures, to begin with, content guidelines, to say that we will not distribute content that portrays Africans or Black people in a negative way, or anyone on the platform that violates the guidelines. Having community guidelines is the first step.

Nollywood is a huge market, although I am not an expert. I have watched its movies while I was growing up and I know it is a rich market in terms of content but its been a while since I researched.

BM: Who is Tongayi?

TC: I have been immersed in the software technology industry for the past five years since graduating from the University of Zimbabwe doing Computer Science and Mathematics. I am interested in Blockchain technologies and I was fortunate to work in Washington DC where I was a product development manager; developing a remittance platform to transfer funds to Zimbabwe. Afriblocks keeps me busy. I am single with no children yet!

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Photo: contributed. Bakita Kasadha

Bakita: KK

SPEAK YOUR

TRUTH Meet Bakita: KK

Overcoming self-stigma to achieve your potential

[

Bakita Kasadha is a writer, researcher, health activist and poet better known as BAKITA:KK.

[

“No one can tell our stories like we can� underpins her why.

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Click for video

faith on tv

Credit: Angie Le Mar

iChurch

r a M e L e i g n A

Going all the Way

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(Jamaica time)

Anne Lowe

Fashion

a Negro can become a major dress designer

girl in the Jim Crow South, but from an early age she recognized her dreams. Her path would not be easy, and any success she might have was certain to be achieved only with steadfast effort and fortitude on her part.

Armed with a great inner strength and natural talent, she rose above all obstacles and forged her own future. When she designed and produced Jacqueline Bouvier’s wedding dress, very few knew her name. No one but her staff knew of the disaster that preceded the delivery of that now-historic wedding dress to the home of the bride. Even fewer knew that she was the granddaughter of a former slave. Even today, few know her story.

Credit: The Riche Life

F

or any designer, designing the wedding dress to be worn by Jacqueline Bouvier, future First Lady of the United States, for her marriage to John F. Kennedy would be a lifetime achievement. For Ann Lowe, it became a statement.

The iconic gown would become the most photographed wedding gown in American history proving that (in Ann’s own words), “a Negro can become a major dress designer.”Years earlier, as the sun rose on the morning of Ann’s birth, no one in the small town of Clayton, Alabama could have dreamed of the heights she would achieve for she was born a squirming, scrawny, little black

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Credit: Dean Okai Senior

Going Forward

I Am Masterclass

Dean Okai

The road to building a better economy will take a progressive view and destruction of many old stereotypes.

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Credit: Vertical

The First

Juneteenth “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

—General Orders, Number 3; Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, June 19, 1865

What Is Juneteenth?

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Relax

LAUGHTER GOOD FOR THE SOUL

Kojo

Kojo Anim 38

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Kamala on being Jamaican

They will never know what hit them !

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Sports Multi-Cultural Arrow Family

INDIA MEETS GHANA Michelle & Amit we are a Blasian family Get over it!

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A

mit says: “Some of the things that people were saying to me: ‘Oh, we don’t marry black people. Black people are known to be violent, loud, aggressive… Why would you want to marry someone from that community?’ My mom was probably the one person who we faced quite a lot of backlash from. In the Asian community and particularly in the Indian community, there’s a caste system and a lot of time, the caste system is also linked to your skin complexion. A large emphasis

issue with me, it could have been any other black person and they would have reacted the same way and it’s also because of what they’re used to, what they know. It’s not necessarily that they don’t like me as a person, they haven’t even got the chance to know me yet.

After our wedding went viral, many other interracial couples reached out to us & were like: ‘Oh congratulations, we’re also in an interracial relationship. I’m black, my husband is Asian, we’ve been together for 30 years, but we just haven’t been able to speak out about it, because people still have certain views towards it.’ Young Asians need to do more to combat racism. When their parents make those passing comments, they should try and pull them up on it and say: ‘No mum, I don’t like the way you’ve said that’ or ‘I don’t think it’s nice to say that about someone of a particular race.”

is placed on how other families perceive your family. People throughout our journey have said to me that I’m a bit of a sellout in the Indian community or I’ve chosen to step away from the Indian community or paint the Indian community in a bad limelight.

Michelle says: White and Asian people are more accepted than black, because when I was growing up a lot of things I heard was that black people are seen as the bottom of the barrel. If you’re going to marry out you marry up and black people is marrying down. I think I had to wait in two hands because I didn’t want to take things too personally because it wasn’t necessarily the

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Coming Next week...

‘English Ghal’ not so English ...Sister Audrey speaks out...