

Having been taken to the Awoko website, I decided to have a wander around and was captivated by the quirky collection of stories about everyday happenings in Sierra Leone. Much of my interest in obscure newspapers is the fact that there is no finer window into any society than its newspapers. Moving around the site is a little difficult as all the indexes seem to have stalled back in 2007. The only thing that seems to work for more recent articles is the "search" function and therefore you need to think of a word and input it and see what comes up (I, for some reason tried "kitchen" and the results were fascinating).
It is so easy to sit back in my comfortable retirement home and scoff at the somewhat curious use of the English language to describe the strange goings-on of the local people. As I was scoffing I did a Google search for Awoko and discovered it is more than a little oddball African newspaper. It attempts to provide an independent viewpoint in a country where press freedom is far from secured. According to Reporters Without Frontiers, Sierra Leone was ranked as having the 121st least-free press in the world. And according to an article in Afrol News, "Sierra Leonean police units .... raided the offices of the independent daily 'Awoko' newspaper, assaulting three journalists and confiscating a camera. The 'Awoko' journalists had tried to cover a police operation against illegal street vendors".
So I salute Awoko. It well deserves to be my Newspaper of the Week.
The Russian word "pravda" means "the truth" : and makes a suitably Orwellian title for what was the official organ of the Soviet Communist Party between 1912 and 1991. In August 1991, President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree shutting down the Communist Party and seizing all of its property. For a short period a number of ex-Pravda journalists continued to run the paper until the name and familiar Order of Lenin medals trademark were sold to a family of Greek entrepreneurs. There followed a series of splits and splinters which the original Russian Communist Party members would have been proud of, until the present time when Pravda exists in two quite separate manifestations.
First there is Pravda the traditional newspaper which continues as a voice of the Communist left in Russia. It looks not too dissimilar to what it looked like in the Soviet era (see the illustration above) and if you are desperate to read it, you can obtain a full digital copy via PressDisplay.com (but beware, at just four pages, it is an expensive buy) although you will need a decent knowledge of Russian as a translation is not available.
In stark contrast to the seriously heavy Pravda newspaper there is Pravda online (Pravda.ru) which is a very different kettle of fish. With a content and style which makes an English tabloid look staid and restrained, Pravda.ru is the face of modern, brash, cheap and cheerful Russia. Today's headlines included such gems as "Man who decapitated and ate his fellow traveler in packed passenger bus due in court" and "Nude blond visits petrol station creating public disturbance (PHOTOS)" (their upper case emphasis, not mine). Lenin would have blushed, but you might want to pay it a visit.
There it was, a pefectly good 1936 house, and now (left) the back-addition kitchen is gone, the upstairs has no partition walls (centre) and it's all the work of builder Alan (right.)
When my time comes, I wouldn't mind a memorial like this. There's an appropriate look of regret at the passing of the person whose...