Africa
gregladen | June 3, 2011On of my favorite books is A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul. It is a story set in at the junction of a native and expat community in an African rain forest country with a not very despotic leader (the "Big Man") at a time when a civil war was about to arrive on the scene. I like the book because of the writing, because of the story, because one of the character is supposedly based on someone I vaguely know (that's always fun) and because I was there .... living at the juncture of an expat and native community in a rain forested African country with a not-to-despotic leader named Mobutu…
gregladen | May 31, 2011We three had somehow wound our way down into the canyon without experiencing any really steep slopes, but having walked for several miles in the sandy dry riverbed, Trusted Companion, Young One, and I were now looking rather hopelessly at unsafe-to-climb cliffs on both sides, covered with imposing vegetation of the kind that sports a thorn every few inches. The sun was low enough that the canyon floor was in a dark shadow, and the air was beginning to chill down. We were far enough from the vehicle, lost enough, and sufficiently plan-free that it would be perfectly reasonable to worry that…
gregladen | May 26, 2011When wildebeest, such as those famous for crossing the Mara River in Tanzania during their annual migration, run into a crocodile or some other danger it is often the first time they've seen that particular thing. This is because most wildebeest don't live very long so many are on their very first migration. One wonders what would happen if you killed all of the wildebeest migrating in a particular year and set new ones out on the landscape to take their place. Would the migration continue?
Probably not, initially. Something like this did in fact happen on the Botswana-South Africa-…
tsmith | May 18, 2011Ebola has long been associated with wildlife. From the early days, bats were viewed as a potential reservoir (though it wasn't confirmed that they actually harbored the virus until 2005). Contact with wild animals--particularly primates which were butchered for food--was also long thought to be a risk factor, and now we know that primates can become ill with Ebola and pass the virus to humans.
What hadn't been examined until 2008 were pigs. I mean, it's not exactly the animal you associate with central Africa, where many of the Ebola cases have been concentrated. However, pigs are much more…
tsmith | May 16, 2011Via H5N1 and other sources, there's at least one new Ebola case in Uganda:
The rare and deadly Ebola virus has killed a 12-year-old Ugandan girl and health officials said on Saturday they expected more cases.
The girl from Luwero district, 75 km (45 miles) north of the capital Kampala, died on May 6, said Anthony Mbonye, the government's commissioner for community health, in the first outbreak of the virus in Uganda in four years.
"Laboratory investigations have confirmed Ebola to be the primary cause of the illness and death. So there is one case reported but we expect other…
gregladen | April 7, 2011... Continued ...
I started out walking a good six feet behind her, to avoid the sand she was kicking up and the occasional thorn-lined branch that might swing back in the wake of anyone walking through the African Bush. We were traversing open country in the Kalahari, in an area sealed off from people owing to the presence of unfriendly lions and other dangers. We were doing this in part because we both felt like we had been locked up for days and needed some freedom; We needed freedom from confinement, freedom from the people we were with, freedom from patronizing park employees, freedom…
gregladen | February 21, 2011The son of Libyan leader Gadhafi/kadafi claims that the "government" (which is not really true but its complicated) will fight to the last bullet against people engaged there in an uprising.
Even as Seif al-Islam Gadhafi spoke Sunday night, clashes were raging in and around Tripoli's central Green Square, lasting until dawn Monday, witnesses said. They reported snipers opening fire on crowds trying to seize the square, and Gadhafi supporters speeding through in vehicles, shooting and running over protesters. Early Monday, protesters took over the office of two of the multiple state-run…
gregladen | February 2, 2011Once you've killed the monkey, you need to carry it back to camp. Slit the tail, near the end, and poke the head through the slit, so the tail makes a handy strap.
Here's a detail:
gregladen | January 31, 2011An Efe (Pygmy) man making poison arrows for use in killing monkeys.
Ituri Forest, Zaire. Photograph Copyrighted 1986 Greg Laden
The arrows are thin darts of wood, often made of palm. Large marantacae leaves serve as a bowl and as a ladle. The poison includes a large number of ingredients, and the specific recipes vary a great deal (and are often guarded). This concoction included the juice pounded from a vine that contains strychnine. About seven arrows are fired at a monkey, up in the trees, per strike (on average) and it takes about two strikes to bring down a monkey. Several dozen…
gregladen | January 13, 2011Remember this?
That was from the time of the first big Tut tour. Well, Steve Martin's silly rendition was not part of the tour, but one of the many fine cultural sidebars.
This is not a cultural sidebar resulting from The Treasures of Tutankhamun:
That comes from the observation of people trying to not fall down while walking on the ferry. Someone thought they looked like the figures in Ancient Egyptian paintings.
It's all fairly culturally insensitive yet demonstrative of talent and highly entertaining for most people. I've not decided if making fun of Ancient Egyptians is OK or…
gregladen | December 21, 2010Everyone knows that there are two kinds of elephants in this world: Asian and African. The Asian is the only one that can be trained and the African ones live in harmony with their environment until hunters come by and shoot them. Scratch a little deeper, and the African bush elephant lives by destroying its environment and moving on to new areas, where it destroys that environment, cycling back to the original region over generational time; Both African and Asian elephants can be trained; and there are three, not two species of elephant in this world: Asian, African Bush, and African…
gregladen | December 16, 2010Formerly known as Day of the Vow, as South African holiday, and a time of reflection on dramatic historical and cultural changes.
In 1836 about 400 or so southern African farmers of European Ancestry, known as Voortrekkers, killed about 3,000 Zulu out of an army of 10,000 or so. It was a turning point in South African history. Prior to what became known as the Battle of Blood River, the Voortrekkers made a pact with god; Let us win this battle and we'll make this an annual holiday and build a church and stuff. It is possible that god needed a church and a day off, so he let them win. It's…
gregladen | December 10, 2010It is probably true that every culture has child safety devices. It is also probably true that all of these devices are very limited in their effectiveness.
As an anthropologist living with the Efe Pygmies of the Ituri Forest, I often found myself observing some thing ... an object, a construction of some type, or a behavior ... that utterly baffled me. I learned to avoid asking about things as questions occurred to me; The very asking of a question, especially if you are roughly the equivalent of an alien visitor (an extraordinarily wealthy giant scary white being with highly advanced…
gregladen | October 19, 2010I like Wikipedia, I really do. But there are also some serious, very serious problems with it. I just read the entries on the Battle of Rorke's Drift, a few related historical entries, and the entry on the movie Zulu, which is about the Battle of Rorke's drift.
My interest here is in looking at how things African are depicted in movies and other aspects of popular culture, especially historical events and "traditional" cultures. (I am not an expert on modern African studies.)
I will write about that at another time: Suffice it to say that at this point it is obvious that the overall…
gregladen | October 2, 2010Nazi Holocaust: 1939 - 1945
War crimes trials: Fall 1945
DR Congo genocide: 1996-1997
War crimes trials: Still thinking about it.
I guess that brackets the range of potential variation.
(Note: This does not refer to the other, related genocide of Tutsi, for which trials have taken place.)
gregladen | October 1, 2010The old man crouched slightly as he took small tiny steps forward towards the woman's ass. I didn't see what was in is raised right hand, it was hidden from my view by his body draped with a colorful sarong. He crept closer, still crouched and still silent. She didn't see him coming, but when he finally struck the woman hardly seemed to notice. His hand, it turn out, bore what looked like a hand broom of the type used to sweep the dirt floors of the mud huts and open barazas, but smaller, cleaner, and cut somewhat differently. He used it to strike a fly off her bottom and when the surprised…
gregladen | September 25, 2010The UN's human rights chief has said the "scale and viciousness" of mass rapes in DR Congo "defy belief", as a report into the attack was released.
Navi Pillay said that, even for the region, the incident stood out because of the "extraordinarily cold-blooded and systematic way" it was carried out.
Some 300 people were raped by armed militia in the attack in August.
Details here
gregladen | September 21, 2010In which I explore the interface between the Jungian Subconscious and my own primordial anguish.
The blocked end tube pipe is a touchstone to the shamanistic world of the people we call the Hopewell. Similar artifacts are found elsewhere in the world, but the Adena-Hopewell cultural complex (dating to approximately a thousand year plus long period centering on "Zero" AD/BC/b.c.e.) has more of them than your average archaeological culture. The blocked end tube is made of soapstone, and is a cylinder almost hollowed out but with a wall of stone left intact so nothing physical can actually…
gregladen | September 10, 2010We were standing behind my friend Andre's store in Isiro, Zaire, waiting for Andre to finish receiving some orders so we could sit down for some tea, or may be some beer, and do a little black market trading.
A big truck with a canvas top stretched over an iron frame was backing up to the loading dock. These loading docks had solid concrete bases set at the approximate height of a freight truck's bed, and with a large concrete and steel canopy over the top to provide shade and protection from the rain. All this concrete and steal is normal for the region: Most houses are made of either…
gregladen | July 29, 2010Up to 140 people are feared dead after a boat carrying passengers and goods capsized on a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials say.
The accident happened on the Kasai river - a tributary of the Congo River - in the western province of Bandundu.
Information Minister Lambert Mende told the BBC the boat had been overloaded and 80 people had been confirmed dead.
After decades of conflict, DR Congo has few roads or rail links and many people travel on often overloaded vessels.
I've not been on this boat, but I've been on one like it. It is true that you can't actually drive from,…