walking to school

Primary Students:

* Confirm what time school will start on the first day.

* If your children are going to a new school, check with the school to see what information or identification will be required on registration day.

* Get your children used to the back-to-school routine before the first day of school by having them shift to their school bedtime and wake-up

routine a week before school begins.

* Have your children choose their outfits the night before the first day to help start the morning calmly and efficiently.

* Find out how your child’s teacher communicates with parents and take advantage of the opportunities available.

* Get involved in the school community. Contact your local board of education or the Parent Advisory Council at your child’s school for volunteer opportunities.

Intermediate/Middle Students:

* Review your children’s class schedules with them to ensure all of their classes are correct.

* Help your children figure out a plan for getting to class on time, especially if classes are at opposite ends of the building.

* If your children are going to a new school, encourage them to check out the school before their first day. Have them locate the gym, library,

cafeteria and their classrooms to get them acquainted with the facilities.

* Talk to your children about the upcoming school year; be positive and remind them of the friends they will meet, the new things they will learn

and the fun they will have.

* Continue to be involved in the school community as this is a great way to get to know your children’s teachers and other parents.

Secondary Students:

* If your teenagers are going to a new school, have them arrange a visit to learn where to find their classrooms, the gym, the library and the cafeteria so they will feel more comfortable on their first day.

* Encourage your teenagers to review their schedules and make an appointment with a school counsellor if there are any conflicts or mistakes.

* Have them practise the combination on their locks to ensure they know the combination and that the locks work properly.

* Work with your child, their teacher and principal to ensure courses, programs and graduation requirements are being met.

* Continue to be involved in the school community.

Public Affairs Bureau
Ministry of Education

Drive Smart Tips For Back To School

Make smart driving decisions to keep kids safe

As a new school year begins, ICBC and police throughout the province are asking drivers to make smart decisions: plan ahead, drive with extra caution and watch out for children. Every year in B.C., there’s an average of 16,655 crashes, 5350 injuries and 36 deaths involving children.

“The most important thing to remember is that these crashes are preventable, which means we can all play a role in making our roads safer,” said Nicolas Jimenez, ICBC’s director of road safety.

“Back to school is an exciting time for kids,” adds Jimenez. “As parents, we can help by reviewing our kids’ daily routes, the rules of the road and how they can make smart decisions.”

Jamie Chung, RCMP media relations officer agrees, “We really need drivers to do their part, slow down and watch out for kids. Police will be out in full force, monitoring the 30 km/h school zones throughout the province to make sure that kids get off to a safe start this school year.”

Drivers should also be aware that starting Sept. 20, new changes to the Motor Vehicle Act will trigger a seven day impoundment of their vehicle if they are caught speeding 40 km or more over the posted speed limit.

Teachers have also been contributing to road safety awareness – last year more than 1,600 teachers in B.C. ordered ICBC’s free school-based curriculum materials for students in kindergarten to grade 12. ICBC has invested in road safety education for the past 30 years, and this year all school materials have been updated.

“We’re excited about the new materials – teachers can order these free materials which provide age-appropriate, fun and interactive road safety lessons,” said Jimenez. “We focus on pedestrian and bike safety for children and incorporate more hard-hitting messages about the risks of impaired or distracted driving for teens.”

In addition, ICBC has designed a new youth contest, ”YOUR AD HERE”, enabling high school students and schools to get involved by designing a road safety ad to be featured on next year’s high school agendas.

Here are ICBC’s smart driving tips for drivers and parents:

Tips for parents and students

Consider posting these safety tips somewhere in your home and review them with your kids – even older children need to be reminded about road safety.

No. 1: Remove your headphones; put away your phone, MP3 player or other gadgets when crossing a street. Focus your full attention on the road so you can see, hear and respond safely.

No. 2: Use designated crossing points and follow pedestrian traffic signs and signals. Make eye contact with drivers, so you both know you see each other. The most common road safety error made by kids is not finding a safe place to cross. Teach your child to cross at intersections that have a pedestrian crossing light or a marked crosswalk whenever possible.

No. 3: Dress to be seen. Wear bright or light coloured clothing. In dark or bad weather, wear reflective material on clothes or accessories.

No. 4: Always walk on the inside edge of the sidewalk – away from the road. This way, you’re further away from the traffic. If there is no sidewalk, always walk facing traffic so you can see oncoming vehicles and drivers can see you.

No. 5: Be aware of parked vehicles in parking lots and on the road. Drivers may not see you between parked vehicles and you may not see them moving. Before crossing or walking through a parking lot, stop and look left-right-left around the parked vehicle and avoid taking unnecessary shortcuts through parking lots.

Tips for drivers

When school is in session, a 30 km/h school zone speed limit is in effect from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every school day, unless otherwise posted. Also, remember that vehicles approaching from both directions must stop for school buses when their lights are flashing.

No. 1: Plan ahead and be alert. Driving routes with less traffic in the summer may now face congestion, so give yourself extra time to get to your destination. Take your time and don’t rush – especially through intersections. Look for children especially near or around crosswalks and intersections.

No. 2: Always yield to pedestrians – it’s the law.

No. 3: When dropping off children in a school zone, stop and allow them to exit on the side of the car closest to the sidewalk. Never allow a child to cross mid-block.

No. 4: If a vehicle is stopped in front of you or in the lane next to you, they may be yielding for a pedestrian, so be prepared to stop.

No. 5: Always watch for pedestrians when you’re backing up. Before you get into your vehicle, make it a habit to walk around your vehicle to ensure no small kids are behind it. And remember, children notice your driving behaviour, so set an example and drive smart.

For more road safety tips, visit icbc.com

Nelson Mandela -Personal Choices For Public Benefit of All People Photo by The Afro News

I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.

Nelson Mandela -The spirit of unity and service

Former South African president Nelson Mandela celebrated his 92nd birthday on 18th July 2010. His fans all over world devoted 67 minutes to mark the 67 years Mandela spent in politics.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in a village near Umtata in the Transkei on the 18 July 1918. His father was the principal councilor to the Acting Paramount Chief of Thembuland. After his father’s death, the young Rolihlahla became the Paramount Chief’s ward to be groomed to assume high office. However, influenced by the cases that came before the Chief’s court, he was determined to become a lawyer. Hearing the Elders stories of his ancestors and valour during the wars of resistance in defense of their fatherland, he dreamed also of making his own contribution to the freedom and struggle of his people.

After receiving a primary education at a local mission school, Nelson Mandela was sent to Healdtown, a Wesleyan secondary school of some repute where he matriculated. He then enrolled at the University College of Fort Hare for the Bachelor of Arts Degree where he was elected onto the Student’s Representative Council. He was suspended from college for joining in a protest boycott. He went to Johannesburg where he completed his BA by correspondence, took articles of clerkship and commenced study for his LLB. He entered politics in earnest while studying in Johannesburg by joining the African National Congress in 1942.

At the height of the Second World War a small group of young Africans, members of the African National Congress (ANC), banded together under the leadership of Anton Lembede. Among them were William Nkomo, Walter Sisulu, Oliver R. Tambo, Ashby P. Mda and Nelson Mandela. Starting out with 60 members, all of whom were residing around the Witwatersrand, these young people set themselves the formidable task of transforming the ANC into a mass movement, deriving its strength and motivation from the unlettered millions of working people in the towns and countryside, the peasants in the rural areas and the professionals.

Spurred on by the victory of the National Party which won the 1948 all-White elections on the platform of Apartheid, at the 1949 annual conference, the Programme of Action, inspired by the Youth League, which advocated the weapons of boycott, strike, civil disobedience and non-co-operation was accepted as official ANC policy.

When the ANC launched its Campaign for the Defiance of Unjust Laws in 1952, Mandela was elected National Volunteer-in-Chief. The Defiance Campaign was conceived as a mass civil disobedience campaign that would snowball from a core of selected volunteers to involved more and more ordinary people, culminating in mass defiance. Fulfilling his responsibility as Volunteer-in-Chief, Mandela traveled the country organizing resistance to discriminatory legislation. Charged and brought to trial for his role in the campaign, the court found that Mandela and his co-accused had consistently advised their followers to adopt a peaceful course of action and to avoid all violence.

For his part in the Defiance Campaign, Mandela was convicted of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act and given a suspended prison sentence. Shortly after the campaign ended, he was also prohibited from attending gatherings and confined to Johannesburg for six months.

During this period of restrictions, Mandela wrote the attorneys admission examination and was admitted to the profession. He opened a practice in Johannesburg, in partnership with Oliver Tambo. In recognition of his outstanding contribution during the Defiance Campaign Mandela had been elected to the presidency of both the Youth League and the Transvaal region of the ANC at the end of 1952, he thus became a deputy president of the ANC itself.

At the beginning of June 1961, after long and anxious assessment of the South African situation, I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable; it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force.

It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle, and to form Umkhonto we Sizwe…the Government had left us no other choice.”

In 1961 Umkhonto we Sizwe was formed, with Mandela as its commander-in-chief. In 1962 Mandela left the country unlawfully and traveled abroad for several months. In Ethiopia he addressed the Conference of the Pan African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa, and was warmly received by senior political leaders in several countries. During this trip Mandela, anticipating an intensification of the armed struggle, began to arrange guerrilla training for members of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Not long after his return to South Africa Mandela was arrested and charged with illegal exit from the country, and incitement to strike.

Since he considered the prosecution a trial of the aspirations of the African people, Mandela decided to conduct his own defense. He applied for the refusal of the magistrate, on the ground that in such a prosecution a judiciary controlled entirely by whites was an interested party and therefore could not be impartial, and on the ground that he owed no duty to obey the laws of a white parliament, in which he was not represented.

Mandela prefaced this challenge with the affirmation: I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

Mandela was convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment. While serving his sentence he was charged, in the Rivonia Trial, with sabotage. Mandela s statements in court during these trials are classics in the history of the resistance to apartheid, and they have been an inspiration to all who have opposed it. His statement from the dock in the Rivonia Trial ends with these words:

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment and started his prison years in the notorious Robben Island Prison, a maximum security prison on a small island 7Km off the coast near Cape Town. In April 1984 he was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town and in December 1988 he was moved the Victor Verster Prison near Paarl from where he was eventually released. While in prison, Mandela flatly rejected offers made by his jailers for remission of sentence in exchange for accepting the bantustan policy by recognising the independence of the Transkei and agreeing to settle there. Again in the ‘eighties Mandela rejected an offer of release on condition that he renounce violence. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Only free men can negotiate, he said.

Robben Island

Released on 11 February 1990, Mandela plunged wholeheartedly into his life’s work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa after being banned for decades, Nelson Mandela was elected President of the ANC while his lifelong friend and colleague, Oliver Tambo, became the organization’s National Chairperson.

Nelson Mandela has never wavered in his devotion to democracy, equality and learning. Despite terrible provocation, he has never answered racism with racism. His life has been an inspiration, in South Africa and throughout the world, to all who are oppressed and deprived, to all who are opposed to oppression and deprivation.

In a life that symbolizes the triumph of the human spirit over man s inhumanity to man, Nelson Mandela accepted the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of all South Africans who suffered and sacrificed so much to bring peace to our land.

Mandela accepted the Nobel Peace Prize as an accolade to all people who have worked for peace and stood against racism. It was as much an award to his person as it was to the ANC and all South Africa’s people. In particular, he regards it as a tribute to the people of Norway who stood against apartheid while many in the world were silent.

Information sourced from   http://www.anc.org.za/

Back To School Tips

Advice for all parents:

* Be interested in what your children are learning. Help relate what they are learning to the real world.

* Stay involved. Be sure that your children are meeting their requirements.

* Know your child’s school, the principal and especially your child’s teachers.

Primary Students:

* Let your children see you read, and set aside time each day for family reading.

* Read street signs.

* Ask your children to read to you while you prepare a meal.

* Get your children excited about reading by taking turns reading pages or acting out characters.

* Talk to your children about what they read. Ask them questions that require them to read between the lines and think about what they have just read.

This will help improve their reading comprehension.

* Introduce your children to a variety of literary styles and see which one they most enjoy.

* Help your children get a library card and take weekly trips with them to the library.

Intermediate/Middle Students:

* Set up a daily homework routine. Designate a homework area away from distractions like the television and Internet, and with adequate lighting and supplies.

* When it is time for your children to do their homework, reinforce strong study habits by also doing yours: balance your chequebook, pay

your bills or immerse yourself in a book.

* Let your children read comic books in their spare time because comics can encourage positive reading habits and can play a role in improving literacy.

* Help your children identify difficult and easy homework tasks and get them to tackle the most difficult subjects first.

* Make yourself available to answer questions and offer help, but do not do your children’s homework for them.

* Ask your children questions and have them explain what they have just read or studied.

* Encourage your children to write stories and poetry.

Secondary Students:

* Continue with an established homework routine. Make adjustments as needed, such as after-school or weekend time set aside for working on

big projects.

* Encourage your teenagers to take 20 minutes each night to read over their notes from that day, or rewrite them using colours to highlight

important information so they retain it longer.

* Have your children take regular breaks to help alleviate eye, neck and brain fatigue while studying. This will help them be more productive and retain more of what they read and study.

* Encourage your teenagers to explore magazines or appropriate websites on subjects that interest them to keep them reading. Most local libraries carry selections of magazines on a variety of topics, including sports, science, mechanics and politics.

* Keep an assignment calendar on the fridge for quick reference of due dates, exams and how they fit with other activities.

Ministry of Education

Africa Old Leadership, New Leadership

Development/ Africa  ; By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong :Leadership has become a buzz word for practitioners, bureaucrats and theorists of African development. The term variously means a process of getting work done through people. Leadership may not be science but it is committed responsibility. Africans in civil service, in business schools, in NGOs, in the mass media, in think tanks, in academic, in State Houses, in opposition political parties use leadership as a sort of reality refiner – a way of contrasting past and present, an implement for cataloging out history at a moment of African changes, the flowering of The African Century.

African leadership, being heavily over burdened and scatterbrained, is part of the Old Leadership. For the past 50 years, Africa has been sorting itself up into categories of Old Leadership and New Leadership. We see this in one of Africa’s foremost leaders, Kwame Nkrumah. Prof. A.K.P. Kludze, former Justice of Ghana’s Supreme Court, observes that although President Kwame Nkrumah was a freedom fighter and committed Pan-Africanist, he later succumbed to the Big Man syndrome, turned Ghana into a one-party state and became the life chairman of his ruling Conventions People’s Party and general secretary of the party’s Central Committee. It was considered treason to challenge him. Nobody could stand as a candidate unless his candidature was approved by the General Secretary of the party (read-himself).

The 1960s to the 1990s have become a transforming boundary between one age and another, between a format of things that has crumbled and another that is taking shape. A millennium has come, a celestial divide. Kwame Nkrumah’s era of autocracy of the 20th century is dead; the 21st is a kernel, revealed in continental giant Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan. New Leadership-Old Leadership makes a match of lists: what’s in, what’s out in the African experiences. More imperative, it is a way of considering what works (New Leadership) and what doesn’t work anymore (Old Leadership).

The horrible Central African Republic’s Jean-Bedel Bokassa was the Old Leadership. The New Leadership is what we are seeking for – Liberia’s Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson. One-party system and military juntas are Old Leadership. African communism as seen in Ethiopia’s Menghistu Haile Mariam is Old Leadership. Big one-party systems, military juntas and Jerry Rawlings’ emotionally charged aggressiveness style are dead. Democracy brewed from within African experiences is becoming more and more alive as a development fertilizer. Botswana is one example; Mauritius is another.

With over 45 years in Ghana’s and Africa’s turbulent politics, ex-president John Kofi Kufour is more than qualified to examine Africa’s leadership from very close range. His analysis: “Leadership is key to unravelling the problems of Africa. With the right leadership, good policies would be enacted that will create the right condition for economic growth, respect of the rule of law and the conducive atmosphere for business to thrive,” observed Kufour. Kufour said this in South Africa during the launch of “Why Africa is Poor and What Africans can do about it,” written by Greg Mills, Executive Director of the Brenthurst Foundation of the Oppenheimer and Son Group.

Kufour diagnosed the awful Old Leadership this way: “Africa’s problem was that people assumed leadership positions without being adequately prepared for it and they lacked the vision and drive to pursue policies to the benefit of their people … Studies of individual historic leaders exemplified in the likes of Biblical Moses, among others, would show conclusively that each one of them had come through relevant experiences to be imbued with epochal visions of great and abiding development of their nations … The time when people just jumped into leadership positions should be by-gone. Budding leaders must bide their time and go through the apprenticeship exposures and institutions to better prepare them to assume the rightful role expected of them.”

Old Leaderships: Mobutu Sese Seku, military juntas, one-party and communist systems, Sekou Toure, Mamadou Tandja, the Big Man syndrome, tough talk, imperially threatening attitude (Yaya Jemmeh), arrogance (Idi Amin), centralized bureaucracy and Big government, the leader as a massive juju-marabou dabbler (Samuel Doe), the leader mired in extreme superstitious believes (Marcias Francoise Nguema), the leader under the control of warped spiritualists (Sani Abacha and Bokassa), refurbished ancient paternalism (Siaka Stevens), dictatorship, “God has destined me to be leader” (Jerry Rawlings), heavy cultural inhibitions (all Africa), charisma, tribalistic blood-feud payback, primordial corporate loyalties, Guinea Bissau, and Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (the military politician as the face of the unrepentant African traditional autocracy).

New African Leadership: Humility. God fearing. Deep decentralization so much so that decision-making is pushed down as much as possible to the people affected. Truthfulness. High sense of African history and traditions. Traditional consensus building mixed with modern leadership practices. John Kufour. Evans Atta Mills, Nana Akufo Addo, Ian Khama. Balances. Democratic tenets, human rights, freedoms, social justice, the rule of law. Goodluck Jonathan, Ernest Koroma, Jakaya Kikwete. The African Union, the Economic Community of West African States. Television news network, participatory communication, information, facebook, fax machines, tweeter, myspace and other new media. David Mark (the Nigerian soldier greatly democratized). The new Liberia. Pluralism. The new Sierra Leone. Kwasi Pratt Jr. Botswana.

In the African context, Old Leadership is a mixed bag. New Leadership isn’t necessarily the best. There are sham democracies and leaderships – The Gambia and Yaya Jammeh. The New Leadership is an on-going project that needs a lot of socio-political engineering constructed from within Africa’s traditional values, but better than Old Leadership. New Leadership is about output instead of input. The assessment of the New Leadership is what works. It Africanizes Botswana’s leadership skills, the capability to mix the traditional with the modern so as to refine any inhibitions within the traditional.

Old Leadership and New Leadership are often intermingled. Jerry Rawlings and Jacob Zuma as awkward, stalled in stupidity, complete dumbness, are Old Leadership. Foolhardiness is New Leadership, as seen in Central African Republic’s Francois Bozize and the entire leadership of Guinea Bissau, can be different style – small-minded, dishonorable, blank, and uninformed of Africa’s painful past of agony and sadness. New media, the medium of the New Leadership, has an overwhelming addiction to the mediocre that it constantly wrestles with. The New Leadership is a distraction that sometimes reveals simple-mindedness.

In Emilio Mwai Kibaki’s mind, Old Leadership and New Leadership circle each other suspiciously, as Kenya struggles for better leadership and governance. Kibaki is often New Leadership in regional issues but Old Leadership in domestic affairs. Under his watch, Kenya’s 2008 general elections descended into fatal violence and saw over 1,300 people killed and over 300,000 homeless. The International Criminal Court coming into Kenya and planning to put six top Kenyans on trial saw Kibaki dashing back toward patriarchal conclusions.

Rawlings and Atta Mills? Object lessons on how Old Leadership and New Leadership clash with each other. Dictatorial Rawlings wants members of the opposition National Patriotic Party arbitrarily arrested for suspicion of being corrupt. With enormous pressure from Rawlings, Mills reveals how fragile the New Leadership could be, how it could be menaced by Old Leadership. Rawlings sticking to Old Leadership despite the fact that its time is gone has become a dilemma for Mills. The trouble is there is no New Leadership for Rawlings to migrate to. Maybe never.

Either in the analysis of Kufour’s African leadership impasse or Botswana’s and Mauritius’s ability to mix modern leadership practices with their traditional ones that has paid off remarkably, the Ghanaian Joseph William Addai argues in Reforming Leadership in Africa that transformations in African leadership, as a way of improving the quality of governance, should start from African traditional values and then mixed with global governance practices. This means African leaders should have a high sense of African traditional leadership values in relation to global governance ideals.

In this sense, Africa’s leadership struggles are rationalized from within Africa’s soul. It is a new intellectual construct to make things work. A way of thinking about change. For long, Africans have taken their leadership for granted seeing the likes of Bokassa, Doe, and Amin mount power and destroy their countries. The New Leadership is above all struggling toward a working model for the progress mechanisms of The African Century.

Short of this, there will be huge imbalances in the quality of leadership and governance, and this will impact negatively on Africa’s progress. Kenya’s and Nigeria’s struggles for better governance practices, as progress act, seen in their attempts to reform their constitutions, illustrates Africa’s tussles to grapple with its leadership challenges.

Fifty years after freedom from colonial rule, Africa is largely still Old Leadership. But as the flowering of The African Century reveals, Africa’s brilliance would be how it renew itself, how it improvise itself, technically how it quickly grow New Leadership as a replacer of Old Leadership, as part of its transformative endowment. This means New Leadership should be the overarching idea, the signature of The African Century.

Regaining control over your health - eat vegetables

By Diane Dutchin The Afro News Vancouver

We live in a world where it is easier to blame others for either our screw ups, lack of achievements, discipline, success and if we’re unhappy with where we are we won’t need to look far to find someone to blame. The color of our skin, our upbringing, our parents, our boss, our partner, our government, struggles with our lack of weight gain or loss, and the list goes on.

Being a part of the ever growing fitness industry I hear of and see the continual battle of the “bulge” which becomes a war within ourselves and can feel at times like we’re like a gerbil locked in a cage spinning our wheels without reaching the goal we have set before us.

We’re live in a world of over excessiveness both in fat and overwhelmed with too much information on what is required and what it takes to get healthier, aka lose that excess body fat.

Let’s get real here, no one is to blame for the excess fat we may carry around and no one can get us healthier but us. If I find myself unhappy and unhealthy as a result of my weight, then I am responsible for making changes in my life to get the results I desire. No there are no quick fixes, only temporary bandages that give you a superficial sense of accomplishment, but I know it’s not the solution we’re seeking right?

The most important piece of information you need to know is this

• First it is up to you and no one else

• You must be mentally ready to make changes to ensure your success so get mentally ready.

• keep a journal worth of 1 week of eating and exercising this will show you what changes you must make to get the results you desire

• set a start and end date with realistic and challenging goals

• clean up your eating and drinking – more fresh fruit and vegetables, lean protein, complex and fibrous carbohydrates, and drink more water

• consume smaller meals 4-6 per day and do not skip breakfast

• Find an activity you enjoy and move intensely for at least 5 days a week for 30min minimum.

• surround yourself with people who will be a positive support – at least one person you’ll be accountable to

In a nutshell you now have enough ammunition to be successful at regaining control and improving your health.

Don’t put off regaining control over your health; make the decision to start now you’ll be healthier for it.

Diane Dutchin

CFT Fitness Trainer

Rosted Cornish Game Hen by Chef Honore Gbedze

By Chef Honoré Gbedze

Preparation Time: 25 minutes Cooking Time: 25 minutes Serves: 2

INGREDIENTS

1 whole Cornish Game Hen

8 big Chanterelle’s (mushrooms)

8 small golden potatoes

8 oz (1 cup) of green beans

2 tea spoons chopped garlic

1 tea spoon lemon zest

1 tea spoon coarse Salt

Fresh chopped thyme, fresh chopped parsley

1 tea spoon fresh pepper corns

3 tea spoons olive oil

1 tea spoon of butter

1 big shallot

¾ cup of red wine

1 table spoon brandy

2 tea spoons fresh cream

METHOD

Marinate the Cornish Game Hen with fresh thyme, 1 tea spoon garlic, olive oil, ½ cup red wine for about 25 minutes in fridge.

Clean the chanterelle mushrooms well. Boil the potatoes

Pan sear the Cornish Game Hen season with lemon zest salt (mix zest and salt) and flambé with the brandy and transfer to roasting pan and finish by cooking in 350˚F oven for about 25 minutes. Let the cooked hen rest for 5 minutes after cooking. Cut in half.

Quickly blanche the green beans (place in boiled water)

Cut the cooked potatoes in half and sauté, add the beans and the chopped garlic and season with salt and pepper to taste, add parsley.

Sauté the chanterelle mushrooms and chopped shallot in butter. Deglaze the pan with remaining ¼ cup red wine, add the pepper corns let the sauce reduce and finish with fresh cream.

Dress your plate and serve.

Bon Appétit.

Hand washing

Comment/Ghana/Africa

By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong : The Afro News International :It is human, and wise, that hand washing and general sanitation campaigns are heightened Ghana-wide. It borders on morality, too. Across Ghana, the sanitation situation isn’t good. That makes it instructive that in Ghana’s Upper East Region 14 junior high and primary schools in the Kassena-Nankana West District were brought together in hand washing campaign. It sound naive but simple hand washing could save a lot of lives.

It is surprising that such simple public hygienic practices – washing hands before and after eating, washing hands after using the toilet, washing hands after holding dirty objects and other such sanitation practices have become a national problem, veering into serious health issue. In 2010, it should have been the other way round.

Such public civility should normally start from homes and schools, and then into the larger society. Schools, as part of their civic studies, are expected to teach appropriate hygienic and sanitation practices. And this should be reflected in the public domain. The measure of any society’s depth of health is seen in its public sanitary practices. You don’t have to be a public health expert to know this. It is simple, if people urinate or spite or defecate in public, then they have poor sanitary and hygienic upbringing.

You see this shameful health picture on landing in Kumasi, Accra, Cape Coast, or Takoradi. The visitor quickly realizes that hygienic and sanitation practices are poor to the extent of interpreting that the people aren’t healthy. In markets, beaches, traditional “chop bars” (restaurants), banks, internet cafes, road-side food sellers, among others, people move through ramble through with unwashed hands under the sweltering sun. The people might have either come from toilets or might have blown their noses and with wipe their hands with it or touched dirty objects without washing their hands. Either they ignorant of the implications of their unhealthy actions or they do not consider the health implications of their actions.

Recently, at Adabraka, suburb of Accra, where I was staying, across my apartment, I used to see a khebab seller, a young man, blow his nose repeatedly beside the stove he is using to roast the meat. And without washing his hands, immediately touched the meat being roasted. In the scorching sun, sometimes, too, I used to see him wipe his face from his sweat with his bare hands, and without washing his hands, touched the meat being roasted. Almost everyday, I saw him do this. Despite all these unhygienic practices, the young man was selling the khebab to people, some of whom, I am very sure, might have seen his unhygienic practices. He was passing diseases to the public.

Globally, health experts say over 80 percent of diseases start from the hands. And if the hands aren’t cleaned and sanitized properly, diseases are transmitted into the larger society. The heavy incident of cholera and malaria that attack and kill most Ghanaians reveal the level of civility in public health practices. If you urinate or defecate in public and die from cholera then one’s civility is bad.

Like the Foundation for Grassroots Initiatives in Africa (FGIA), a non-governmental organization, that mounted the Upper East hand washing campaign, in Canada for the past years public health promotion by Public Health Agency of Canada has been advising people to wash their hands thoroughly in order to limit the spread of diseases. Across Canada, in banks, internet cafes, restaurants, offices, groceries, malls, convenience stores, libraries, shops, university halls, etc hand sanitizers are everywhere for the public to use. And Canadians are using them as part of their civic health duties.

My sense here is that whether you are Canadian or Ghanaian, we all human beings and at certain level we have to conduct ourselves in the same ways, as the import of the hand washing campaigns reveal. There is hand washing campaigns in Canada, the same is underway in Ghana’s Upper East. But more seriously is the fact that since health-care services are more inadequate in Ghana, Ghanaians should be more serious about the hand washing issues as a way of lessening the burden on the health-care system. The Adabraka khebab seller will help the Ghana health-care system if he can simply wash his hands any time he wipes his face with his hands or blows his nose with his hands.

At the web site of Public Health Agency of Canada, as part of its public health promotion, tips are giving about how to clean one’s hands. The campaigns have saturated the Canadian public so much so that, in some cases, if one forgets to wash his or her hands after using a public toilet (they call it washroom in Canada), another person who might happen to be around will remind the person to wash his or her hands. That isn’t rudeness, that’s part of civility.

The Canadian hand washing campaign became more pronounced during the flu outbreak recently. “Preventing the flu is everyone’s responsibility!,” charged Public Health Agency of Canada in its promo, using mass communication tools such as radio, public transport, e-health, television, flyers, newsletters, public bill boards, presentations, participatory communication, community organizations, etc to drum home the benefits of hand washing to one’s self and to the Canadian society.

In a simple public health promotion, Public Health Agency of Canada advises Canadians to wash their hands “several times a day with soap and warm water, especially: before meals; before feeding children, including breastfeeding; before and after preparing food; after using the toilet; after changing diapers or helping a child use the toilet; after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing; after playing with shared toys; before and after visiting with people who are sick; and after handling animals or their waste.” It may sound basic but that’s why the power of the message lies.

This is despite the fact that public health in Canada is among the best in the world, if not the best. But while public health promotion anywhere may use the same mass communication tools like Canada, in Ghana, as the FGIA thoughtfully did in Upper East Region, should include traditional institutions, traditional rulers, traditional values, education institutions, drama and churches as part of its campaign. This is a reflection of the Ghanaian/African reality. FGIA’s inclusion of Ghana Health Services is laudable. But, like Canada, Ghana Health Services should take the lead, pro-actively, and work with non-governmental organizations. This is for fuller authority and sustainability of the hand washing campaigns.

In promoting hand washing as a way of preventing diseases, it is also reducing the health- care expenditure. Though hand washing exercises have the same positive health effects, in Ghana, unlike Canada, the implications are larger. There are cultural believe dimensions in Ghana. Hand washing and its added reduction of diseases will help push away the awful cultural believe that diseases are the work of evil spirits, the devil, demons, or witches and not poor hygienic and sanitation practices.

Simple hand washing will help rationalize Ghanaians in regard to evil spirits, the devil, demons, or witches and diseases. The diseases and ailments come from disturbing unhygienic and unsanitary practices. There is no evil spirits, the devil, demons, or witches involved. And Canadians have better health indicators than Ghanaians because of proper hygienic and sanitation practices and not because Ghanaians are under some sort of siege from evil spirits, the devil, demons, or witches.

And so when the evil spirits, the devil, demons, or witches are eliminated from the mindset of Ghanaians in relation to diseases and ailments, Ghanaians will come to the same conclusion as Canadians that “Hands spread an estimated 80 percent of common infectious diseases like the common cold and flu” and “…when you touch a doorknob that has the flu virus on it and then touch your mouth, you can get sick. But these disease-causing germs slide off easily with good hand washing technique.”

This is simply part of civilization. And the Foundation for Grassroots Initiatives in Africa has shown the lead. The Ghana Health Services in collaboration with the Ghanaian mass media (as part of its public service duties) should join the hand washing bandwagon, for higher utilitarian reasons. A simple jingle or bumper – “Please, wash your hands,” “Please, wash your hands,” “Please, wash your hands” – will swab away most diseases and ailments.

Natural Environmental

Back in the 1990s, young people like myself were leaving B.C. in great numbers and heading to places like Alberta where the economic conditions and opportunities were much better. That’s a sad situation to be in. Alberta may not have any provincial sales tax, and it may not have any debt thanks to its diligent debt-busting during the 1990s, but it’s not home either.

Fortunately the tide has now changed and B.C. is once again a province of opportunity and a far more attractive place for those of us who want to stay here. All of the economic indicators for B.C. have been pointing in the right direction and in most areas we’re leading the country.

The one area where we’re falling behind, however, is in the critically important renewable energy and clean technology sector. Ontario recently stole the clean energy lead from B.C. and that represents jobs and opportunities that could have been ours here in B.C. If this province wants to keep its young people and keep the vigour and energy we bring to the mix then the province is going to have to redouble its efforts and regain the lead position in clean energy and technology that is rightfully ours. If we can do that then there is nothing that can stop us at all.

Christian Albanese

Coquitlam BC

This summer, thousands of people heading to and from the BC interior and Lower Mainland will pass the famous Hope slide on Highway 3.

Many will stop to view the massive environmental devastation this natural event caused 45 years ago when 46 million cubic meters of pulverized rock, mud, and debris came down the mountainside with a force so great it completely displaced the water and mud in the lake below and scraped away trees and vegetation on the opposite side of the valley.

In the natural history of BC, the Hope slide is probably just one such natural environmental disaster and it dwarfs any damage that past logging, mining and other resource extraction activities have done at the hands of man.

Fortunately for the BC environment, environmental awareness has increased greatly over the past several decades and the requirements for industrial activities such as logging, mining and road-building that could impinge on the environment have tightened considerably.

In many cases, the rules and regulations in place for new resource extraction activities like wind energy and run-of-river projects are actually leading to the reversal of human-caused damage from the past through the rehabilitation of abandoned logging roads and the restoration and enhancement of lost fish and wildlife habitats.

But as the Hope slide reminds us all, there is nothing that we humans can do to the environment that can match the devastating power of nature itself. When it comes to causing environmental damage we are complete amateurs compared to Mother Nature.

Sandra Robinson

Maple Ridge

Cancer Research

By BC Cancer Foundation : The Afro News Vancouver

Scientists at the BC Cancer Agency are launching parallel voyages of discovery that are changing the face of cancer in British Columbia and around the world.

The BC Cancer Agency is the provincial organization responsible for cancer control on our collective behalf. It is a broad and diverse community of health professionals and specialists based in five regional centres across the province. In a single year, Agency staff will guide more than 20,000 British Columbians through their cancer experience – from prevention and screening, diagnosis and treatment, patient support and counseling, to rehabilitation or end of life care.

Uniquely, Agency scientists work side by side with their clinical colleagues, sharing questions and answers, as well as a constant focus on the best possible outcome for the patient.

We are now seeing the results of this close collaboration, in what has been described as a “golden age” of discovery.

In the first of a series of major breakthroughs in this past year, a pioneering team of ovarian cancer researchers, led by the Agency’s Dr. David Huntsman, found the single genetic mutation or “spelling mistake” in the three billion “letters” that make up the genetic code of an ovarian tumour cell.

This was a true eureka moment for Huntsman’s team. They recognized that this one consistent mutation could be the bull’s eye target in developing new treatments for all patients with this particular cancer. Their game-changing discovery was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine and widely acknowledged in the global cancer community.

The next-generation computer technology provided by the BC Cancer Agency’s Genome Sciences Centre that decoded and sequenced the tumour cell’s three-billion-letter genome is another milestone achievement. A genomic task of this magnitude was unfathomable, in terms of both cost and complexity, even two years ago.

The power of genome sequencing continues to unravel the complexities of cancer in its 200-plus forms, as researchers and clinicians find more and more clues to its causes and cures.

Meanwhile, philanthropy is playing an increasingly significant role in funding this enterprising research. Last year, the BC Cancer Foundation, through its 30,000 donors across B.C., raised close to $33 million to invest in cancer research in B.C. – more than any other charity.

Many of the foundation’s donors are current or former cancer patients, grateful for the gold-standard care they received at their regional BC Cancer Agency Centre and keenly aware that research is our best hope. Their donor dollars act as the fuel to launch and sustain a promising investigation which, once established, can then be leveraged several times over through external grants and awards.

As partners in discovery, the BC Cancer Agency and BC Cancer Foundation are poised to change the cancer landscape, not only here at home in B.C., but across Canada and well beyond.

BC Cancer Foundation  www.bccancerfoundation.com