#pissedoff

Today I’m pissed off about oppression – of all sorts.

From a conversation about colonialism and art. Who decides what is art and what is not? If a woman in a rural village in Timbuktu creates art it’s considered ‘craft’. When a famous artist makes art in the style of that same woman – it’s recognised as a masterpiece.

My own struggle trying to access film funds from funders often under the guise of ‘diversity’ in the global north to platform the voices of women who have been oppressed/silenced by the same patriarchal colonial system from which the funders arise. Oxymoron?

Here in Siwa I hear and read in 1975 (I think) the Egyptian government did a survey of the Amazigh people who live here to find out whether they identified more closely with Egyptian or Libyan culture (another case of colonials creating a border – it is a line drawn with a ruler from north to south – with no regard for people’s lived reality). Oddly enough the Amazigh/Siwi folk overwhelmingly said Libya (I wanna say unanimously but I don’t have the evidence… so that would be a lie IF it wasn’t true…). The result… The Egyptians established a police station in Siwa manned (I haven’t seen a woman yet but hey that doesn’t mean there isn’t 1 or 2 even…) by Egyptians with no local people … again… maybe I haven’t seen that local recruit.

Update, caretaker just came and now… I have consistently … warm water. It’s a step. Poor bloke he’s really doing his best under challenging conditions. He’d actually found a water-heater-fixit-guy but said guy kept saying he was coming and wouldn’t turn up so caretaker said, “Don’t bother”. I explained the same happens in my country (but good tradesmen in demand so I would NOT have said doh boda… I would have begged – I doh have no problem beggin’ nuh! Amazigh are proud people).

Libyan music is popular here and I’m trying to find my fave one on youtube – to no avail. If anyone knows it… it has what sounds like the words ja nim repeated all the way through. Now, remember I don’t speak Arabic so my world is small. I wonder how the songs of resistance and revolution in Libya affected the Amazigh here in Siwa. For that matter, did Egypt’s 2011’s uprising have any traction here in Siwa? I was told by one person that if you get out of line, you disappear - my words not his. I guess it happens in the rest of Egypt so why would Siwa be any different?