As previously mentioned, I’ll be presenting at the ASA’s in Baltimore this Friday (that’s the only day I’ll be there – no one came through with housing support). If anyone would like to meet, discuss, or chastise me, I’d love to connect with new faces.
I’ll be presenting on Belgian Refugees who fled the Congo via Kenya, following the independence of the former country in July 1960. I don’t know a lot about either country and I’ve never been to the Congo, but I’m counting on the fact that my topic is sufficiently unique that there won’t be anyone able to call me out on any weaknesses in my paper.
I think that this topic is fairly novel (though it was of great import in Nairobi in July 1960) and mirrors what I try to do on this blog, which is to take full advantage of my personal soapbox to call things out that upset me, praise those that please me, and trying to (somewhat) gently remind others about a few of the important currents that are getting overlooked in the mainstream.
After covering a series of Afrobeats shows and querying why many of my young professional peers with academic African interests do not seem to match their professed love of African culture with the appropriate corresponding actions, I’m looking forward to examining ‘white Africans’ of Belgian origin, a short-lived phenomenon if ever there was one.
Africa in DC 