He had dreams beyond his border

I discovered K'naan only  a few days ago, possibly because I was one of the very few people who did not catch the World Cup fever. Now that I finally have heard him, his songs are making a lot of my past favourites seem worthless now. There is so much passion in his voice and words, its almost poetry in a tune! I have never thought I would say this about a rapper of our time - but he melts my heart. He sings of freedom, or trying to fight for freedom, dreaming, or about lost dreams. He sings about love, without lust. (Okay, he is not perfect, I do hate some of his songs because they just sound like he's screaming, but we can ignore those for arguments sake.) I was introduced him with Fatima, a song about a little boy who loves his neighbour's daughter, who is killed by the military. I like this version the best, because you can see his passion in his half-closed eyes. Somewhere in the middle, I saw the corner of his eyes glistening. 


Picture the morning, taste and devour,
we rise early, pace up the hour
Streets is rustling, hustling they heart out
you can't have the sweet with no sour

Spices, herbs, sweets and the flour
she came out precisely the hour
Clouds disappear, the sun shows the power
no chance of a probably shower

I feel in love with my neighbor's daughter
I wanted to protect and support her
Nevermind, I'm just 12 and a quarter
I had dreams beyond our border


...


If beauty was in the eyes of the beholder,
How come everyone hushed when she walked by?
How comes girls would look just to scold her?
How come angels wanted to hold her?
Fatima, Fatima, I'm in America,
I make rhymes and I make them delicate,
You would have liked the parks in Connecticut,
You would have said I'm working to hard again.

Damn you shooter, damn you the building,
Whose walls hid the blood she was spillin'?
Damn you country, so good at killin',
damn you feelin' for persevering.


Most people know him from Waving Flag, a love song to Africa. It immediately pumps up your heart and makes you want to go out and experience the world! I can relate to it too, because a lot of it, most of it, relates to Bangladesh. It relates to the general people in the streets, the people who suffer the most out of the trouble the people at the top cause to fight for the name and money. The country that fought so hard to be free was ranked to be the most corrupted nation in the whole wide world for three whole years this decade! Its ranked 39th now, so I guess those people with filthy hearts are relaxing a little. This is one of the reasons why I do not want to go back, because their politics is a little less messed up than only 38 other countries. I am at a position where I can do nothing about it to fix it, so my brain tells me its better to stay as far away as possible from it. But, recently, I came across this charity group called CommunityAction. They were formed two years ago on the 16th of December, on the day Bangladesh became an independent nation. They have already done incredibly well for a few people with young blood. One of the things they have done is that they built libraries - eight of them - for people who usually would not have access to books. They have trained people about fire safety hazards, something that the (insert-whatever-negative-adjective-you're-thinking-about-in-your-head-here) government failed to think of before pouring millions of Takas in changing the name of the airport!