African First Ladies In Hollywood

Thirteen African women travelled to Los Angeles last week for a two-day conference on something that had to do with health matters. Imagine, going to a 21st century hospital to seek cure for 17th century ailments! 

It would make sense if those ladies went to Hollywood to learn the latest art in make-up, the latest breast implant technique or similar cosmetic stuff; but how on earth does anybody expect Los Angeles to know anything about Malaria, child and maternal mortality, malnutrition etc? 

Mungo Park was Scottish, so nobody in LA would care that malaria, the disease that killed his son Thomas, almost 200 years ago is still killing the people he helped to enslave. Even the local newspaper (The Los Angeles Times, no less) was understandably suspicious of such senseless

 incongruity. 

Its edition of 22/04 carried the story of the arrival of thirteen wives of African leaders with a very telling headline: “For African First Ladies, health issues are a chance to remake their image”. Or in African English, “A chance to show off”. Alexandra Zavis, the LA Times reporter described them as dressed in sleek suits, eye-catching robes, spiky shoes and designer glasses.

 And inside their heads they carried enough ignorance to turn Harvard into a zoo. 

Oh, there were some smart ones among them such as Queen LaMbikiza of Swaziland who defied tradition and qualified as a lawyer, but you need more than degrees to be educated; otherwise why should Sia Nyama Koroma, the Sierra Leonean First Lady and a London-trained psychiatrist nurse at that, assume that African First Ladies are loved, adored and even respected by Africans? 

Hear her: “As First Ladies, people listen to us, people want to see us, the crowd goes with us” Really? In my country many people will describe that statement as very, very stupid. 

But Koroma, 51, did come close to something more factual. 

She said: “We are very close to these Presidents…whatever we tell them sticks in their heads”. Now that is something, in my country, that we can all understand. So ladies, how about telling them this simple message: Stop stealing our money, stop rigging elections, and we won’t have malaria, malnutrition and other scourges no more. 

About the roll call that you must no doubt be itching to hear, our own Turai was there, as well as other elegant names such as Chantal Biya (Cameroun), Adelcia Pires (Cape Verde), Hadija Tanja (Niger Republic), Ana Dos Santo (Angola), etc, etc. 

But then in spite of their powerful marital positions, they still needed the presence of Holly power ladies like Sharon Stone and Diane Lane to attract the press. See? One other thing: Michelle Obama didn’t even know they were in town. African First Ladies indeed.