hat tip-The Obama Diary:
The First Family visited Goree Island while in Senegal.
U.S. President Barack Obama (2nd L) and his daughter Malia (L) arrive at Goree Island, a former slave trader’s port, June 27, 2013 in Dakar. Obama’s trip, his second to the continent as president, will take him to Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama receive a bouquet as they arrive on Goree Island near Dakar, Senegal, June 27, 2013. Obama visited the island on Thursday where African slaves in past centuries were shipped west.
—REUTERS/Jason Reed
US President Barack Obama (L) and First Lady Michelle Obama look out from the Door of No Return while touring the House of Slaves, or Maison des Esclaves, at Goree Island off the coast of Dakar on June 27, 2013. Obama and his family toured the museum at the site where African slaves were held before going through the door and being shipped off the continent as slaves.
—AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB
U.S. President Barack Obama greets well-wishers during his visit to Goree Island near Dakar, Senegal, June 27, 2013. Obama visited the island on Thursday where African slaves in past centuries were shipped west.
–REUTERS/Jason Reed
The wonderful zizi wrote some words about the people of Senegal.
A Note About the People of Senegal
Teranga means “Welcome” in Wolof, the predominant language. And the people living on this Westernmost bulge of the African continent truly are some of the most hospitable people you’ll ever know. Climactically, however, Senegal is the Western Hemisphere’s house of horrors, as many of our hurricanes are birthed off Senegal’s coast when hot dry Sahara and Sahel winds meet southerly cold North Atlantic winds plus moisture from the warm Atlantic Ocean currents, The ITCZ clash zone known as The Doldrums , to form the building blocks of storms
.
Yet nothing takes one’s breath away more than standing on the craggy Senegalese coast in the evening and seeing the copper-gold sunset over the rambunctious Atlantic ocean. No wonder Senegal’s world famous poet and first post-colonial President, Leopold Senghor, called this land his “Childhood Kingdom” whose heartbeat is the Tam Tam (talking drum).Senghor’s eyes, though were mesmerized by the beauty of Senegalese women. His famously erotic poem, Black Woman, published in his 1948 Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache , became a historical landmark for placing the African woman on a pedestal as a worthy model of beauty, thus challenging the centuries-old denigration of black women as antithesis of ideal white femininity.
“Naked woman, black woman
Dressed in your color that is life, in your form that is beauty!
I grew up in your shadow. The softness of your hands
Shielded my eyes, and now at the height of Summer and Noon,
From the crest of a charred hilltop I discover you, Promised Land
And your beauty strikes my heart like an eagle’s lightning flash.
[…snip]
Naked woman, dark woman
Oil no breeze can ripple, oil soothing the thighs
Of athletes and the thighs of the princes of Mali
Gazelle with celestial limbs, pearls are stars
Upon the night of your skin. delight of the mind’s riddles,
The reflections of red gold from your shimmering skin
In the shade of your hair, my despair
Lightens in the close suns of your eyes.”
U.S. President Barack Obama meets with African drummers on Goree Island near Dakar, Senegal, June 27, 2013. Obama visited the island on Thursday where African slaves in past centuries were shipped west.
—REUTERS/Jason Reed
Here are some videos.
First Lady Michelle Obama speaks to students at Martin Luther King school, an all-girls middle school in Dakar, Senegal.
Barack Obama, the first US President of African ancestry visits Goree Island in Senegal — the point of departure for the slave trade. Deborah Lutterbeck report
Senegal’s President Macky Sall toasts First Lady Michelle Obama during an official dinner in Dakar
President Obama greets youngsters in lobby of hotel before departing Senegal
President Obama looks at rice crops during a food security expo on Frida in Dakar, Senegal. The President met with farmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs whose new methods and technologies are improving the lives of smallholder farmers throughout West Africa
THANKS FOR SUCH WONDERFUL PHOTOS, WE ARE SO VERY PROUD OF OUR FIRST FAMILY!
Thank you so very much for the pictures and videos. I am a senegalese expat and have been searching the web to find reports of Obama’s visits. This site is the best. I am so proud of my country. Keep up the good work.
This photo and video diary is FABULOUS! Thank you.
Why Is the Obama Administration Suddenly So Interested in African Farms?
—By Alex Park
| Fri Jun. 28, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
This week, Obama is making his first major visit to Africa since taking office. One topic that’s likely high on his agenda: US investment in African agriculture.
With the global population expected to top nine billion by 2050, the Obama administration is pushing hard to use foreign development funds to expand farming in the developing world, and especially in Africa. Since 2009, when Obama made a pledge at the G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy to devote massive resources to global “food security,” Congress has committed more than $3.5 billion to an agricultural development program called “Feed the Future.” Congress has since renewed the initiative’s funding.
“After decades in which agriculture and nutrition didn’t always get the attention they deserved,” Obama said in an address last year, “we put the fight against global hunger where it should be, which is at the forefront of global development.”
But the US government’s motivation for investing such a large sum in Feed the Future isn’t entirely altruistic. Here’s a look at some of the other reasons behind the sudden enthusiasm for agriculture in the developing world.
I’ve heard that hunger had something to do with the Arab Spring. Is that true?
Possibly. The impetus for Feed the Future goes back to the food price crisis of 2007-2008, when prices for basic commodities like corn rose dramatically all over the world. Among middle-class consumers in the United States and Europe, the spike in prices went largely unnoticed. But in developing nations such as Cote D’Ivoire and Haiti, where families typically spend a large portion of their incomes on food, it led to riots. Some observers theorized that the price spike hastened the start of the Arab Spring.
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/06/explainer-us-governments-push-bring-big-ag-africa
These pictures have been wonderful. Once again, it’s gratifying to see how appreciated our First Family is.
I think PBO might get to see Mr. Mandela. Winnie gave a statement to the press earlier .