Great folks found in Dakar: Missla Libsekal @another_africa
On 5/10/2014 I wrote this entry in my journal in my hotel room in Dakar:
Yesterday at a restaurant in a compound near The Baraka Hotel, I met Missla Libsekal sitting alone (for the moment) at a table with a pack of Marlboro cigarettes. My research tells me later that she is the founder of anotherafrica.net, with its huge editorial team.
Our meeting was at Restaurant Le Bideew, which struck me as a central meeting location for DAK’ART attendees, artists, journalists, officials and French people. When Missla and I looked at each other, her warmth immediately made me concerned that yet another brilliant Ethiopian woman is about to disappoint herself once she discovers—in a few seconds—I’m not Ethiopian. I guess I would soften any blow by pronouncing her name as ‘Miss L.A.’ like the bumpkin I am. (She wrote down her email address in my Moleskine—it was prefixed with her first name.)
Missla is no bumpkin, her work on anotherafrica.net, can easily be considered the 2010-premieire replacement for my thang, kintespace.com—this elderly whittle from 1996. Missla—and her huge, international, editorial team—achieved in news and interview what I can still only dream of… The dream is having a finger on the pulse of world-class arts and state-of-the art design with an informed, international flair—while remaining firmly planted in contemporary Africa. Missla has that finger. I appreciate her lifting it for me for a fleeting moment in Senegal.