This week's installment of Fight Song is with angeliquekidjo, who discusses her foundation and life in lockdown, gleaning survival lessons from her storied career.
— has found new ways to make the year meaningful. Joined by her husband, French musician Jean Hébrail, she has been growing her own food in her garden, working on new music , and helping the communities which need it most.
She shifted the focus of her, which supports education for Beninese girls and women, to raising $25,000 to provide those girls and their communities with protective masks, hand-washing stations and radio broadcast messages about COVID-19. The crisis is personal to Kidjo, who says she has lost her father-in-law to the virus, and is mourning the March 24 death of legendary Cameroonian singer Manu Dibango, who had been slated to perform at the Carnegie Hall show, also due to coronavirus. “It’s been challenging,” says Kidjo, “but music is keeping me afloat.” The African music icon discusses her foundation and life in lockdown, gleaning survival lessons from her storied career.It’s a sabbatical year. I started gardening, which I’ve never had time to do. Looking at food growing out of the ground, you understand how lucky we are to have the Earth that we have. I have a lot of aromatic herbs; I have coriander, mint, basil, cumin, leeks, beets, celery, tomatoes, red pepper, potatoes, strawberries, blackberries and zucchini. I’m becoming vegetarian, because I can find everything I want to eat in my garden. When did the realities of the pandemic begin to hit home for you? Was it when your Carnegie Hall concert was cancelled? It was then. I was still hoping that we were going to be able to contain [the virus]. I started my 2020 tour in St. Louis, and it was packed. I was still feeling like it was a no-brainer walking into the public, high-fiving people. We’re talking about the end of February, beginning of March. We started rehearsing for the Carnegie Hall show on March 9. You pay the hotel room, you pay all the expenses, and then suddenly, boom. My husband’s dad was in a nursing home [in France]. We found two last-minute tickets, left at 10 p.m., and got here on March 13 in the morning.Even before COVID-19, I ask myself every day, “What do I need daily to survive?” When you’re raised in a family of 10, and your father is the only one making a paycheck, I’ve seen my mom do it. She used to tell me, “Nothing goes to waste.” You have to be creative and inventive, and then you don’t waste anything. That’s what I’ve been doing. Your Batonga Foundation uses a data-driven approach to provide education and mentorship to nearly 4,000 impoverished girls and women in Benin. Three years ago, you incorporated soap-making lessons into the program, to help those girls save money and start a local business. At what point did you start thinking about shifting the foundation’s focus toward preventing COVID-19? From the get-go, because once there is a crisis like this, women are at the forefront of it. The girls that I reach out to, they come from the poorest of the poorest communities, and no one pays attention to them. But they are going to be the agents of change. Three years ago, we asked them what they needed, and the first thing they said was that they wanted to manufacture soap. They are thinking at-large about themselves and their community. With COVID-19, they are the ones we train with the message through the phone. They are the ones on the local radio, saying, “Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face.” They are working with the head of the village. They came up with the idea of putting out fountains for people to clean their hands. Those girls are transforming villages where the government doesn’t have the time or means to go. When we started Batonga [in 2006], that was my goal: “I will ask you what you need and help you be self-sufficient.”We haven’t raised as much as we want yet, but people have really responded. People have started realizing that COVID-19 doesn’t know boundaries. This is teaching us that we need to think deeply about our role. If you have money, that’s where you have to invest it. If we want to live longer and leave an Earth to the next generation, we have to sacrifice things.
Please follow us on Google to support us United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
South Africa and Covid-19: A transformative opportunityPresident Ramaphosa can rediscover the ANC's soul by shedding the delusion of neoliberalism Opinion | Abdi Ismail Samatar
Read more »
Selma Blair's Mom Molly Cooke, a 'Brilliant Judge,' Dies at 82: 'She Was Formidable''She often gave the shirt off her back, a trait I have adopted,' the actress wrote of her late mother on Instagram
Read more »
Angélique Kidjo Brings Fresh Funk to Cover of Midnight Oil's 'Beds Are Burning'Angelique Kidjo shared a funky new cover of Midnight Oil's 'Beds Are Burning' for the PlayAtHome series on 'The Late Show.'
Read more »
Inside Phillip Schofield's bank holiday as he isolates in his £2 million padPhillip is still presenting This Morning with partner in crime Holly Willoughby, but the weekend gave him a chance to kick back with his family at their impressive Oxfordshire pad
Read more »
This Handheld Vacuum Is the Secret to My Clean KitchenI retired my dustpan in favor of a Dustbuster and am not looking back.
Read more »
Lakers' Jeanie Buss Says She Has Dreams of Friend Kobe Bryant That Make Her 'Feel Like He’s OK’“I would give anything to go back and have Jan. 26 never take place,” Buss told sports announcer Joe Buck and actor Oliver Hudson on their podcast
Read more »