tagged w/ Africa
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Featured here is Cecil Rhodes who helped the British Empire literally conquer a massive swath of Africa from the north all the way to the south, the portion over which Rhodes is spanning in the illustration. In memory of his megalomania, the British would name what is now modern day Zimbabwe after him, calling it “Rhodesia.”
Today, US Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, is spreading across Africa in the footsteps of Cecil Rhodes. As reported by allAfrica.com, Vice Admiral Moeller at an AFRICOM meeting held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008 would declare that protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market” was one of AFRICOM’s guiding principles. Of course by “global market,” the admiral means the Fortune 500 corporations of Wall Street and London.
In our politically sensitive modern age, pillaging Africa in the footsteps of shameless and quite racist imperialists is very difficult to do. Therefore, Joseph Kony, Al Qaeda, Qaddafi, starving children, pirates, and every other geopolitical ploy and contrivance imaginable, and some left yet unimagined have been used to justify AFRICOM’s expanding presence on a continent they have no business setting foot on.
Ironically, ploys like KONY 2012 have liberal youth clamoring for what is perhaps the next dark chapter in large scale racist imperial enslavement, plundering, and exploitation.
For excellent analysis on the KONY 2012 scam, please read Nile Bowie’s “Youth Movement Promotes US Military Presence in Central Africa,” and BlackStarNews.com’s “KONY 2012, Invisible Children’s Pro-AFRICOM and Museveni Propaganda.”
Land Destroyer Report
March 11, 2012
Not saying Kony is a great guy, but you need some sophistication and intellectual discernment (not popular with Current trolls, I know) in order to understand complex geopolitical issues.Featured here is Cecil Rhodes who helped the British Empire literally conquer a... more
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CNN...
First gorilla genome map offers clues to human evolution
By Matthew Knight, CNN
updated 12:17 PM EST, Thu March 8, 2012 | Filed under: Innovations
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Scientists have completed the DNA map of an African western lowland gorilla
Research hopes to shed light on human evolution and biology
Western lowland gorilla population estimated to be 100-200,000 individuals in the wild
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(CNN) -- The first complete gorilla genome has been mapped by scientists giving fresh insights into our own origins.
Gorilla are the last of the genus of living great apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans) to have their DNA decoded, offering new perspectives on their evolution and biology.
"The gorilla genome is important because it sheds light on the time when our ancestors diverged from our closest evolutionary cousins around six to 10 million years ago," says Aylwyn Scally, postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge and lead author of the report.
"It also lets us explore the similarities and differences between our genes and those of gorilla, the largest living primate," he added.
A team of researchers examined more than 11,000 genes in humans, chimpanzees and gorillas, looking for evolutionary clues.
Initial findings have revealed that 15% of the gorilla genome is closer to human DNA than to our nearest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee.
Researchers found that genes relating to sensory perception, hearing and brain development showed "accelerated evolution" in all three, but particularly in humans and gorillas.
Having the entire length of the gorilla genome now means scientists can start to compare all the four great apes at every position on the genome, Scally says.
It forms the baseline, he says, from which to move forwards and really explore why and when our genes and those of the great apes diverged.
"Did it happen quite quickly or was it something that gradually happened? At the moment we don't know," he said.
"It could have been some climatic change that separated humans in the east of Africa from chimpanzees in the forest -- that's an idea some have floated. If we can see some imprint of it in the genome that would very, very useful information."
Scientists used the DNA of a female western lowland gorilla (called Kamilah) who resides at San Diego Zoo.
In the wild, it is the most widespread species of gorilla, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), with a estimated population of 100-200,000 individuals.
The majority are found in Cameroon, Central African Republic, west Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola.
It's cousin, the eastern lowland gorilla is less prevalent (fewer than 20,000 individuals) and can only be found in the rainforests of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, says WWF.
The research is published in the science journal Nature.
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PHOTO (ABOVE):
The complete DNA of a female western lowland gorilla called Kamilah (left) has been mapped by scientists, completing the set of genomes for all great apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans).
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.CNN...
First gorilla genome map offers clues to human evolution
By Matthew... more
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It all started in 1987. He lead an exsisting rebel group and changed its name to Lord's Resistane Army (LRA). The LRA is a group that does cruel atttacks. But when Joeseph Kony ran out if soilers, he abducted children to be his soilders or "wives" to his officers. He even raped, beat, and killed some. The LRA is no longer active in Uganda, but spread to other parts of Africa. In its 26-year history, the LRA has abducted more than 30,000 children and displaced at least 2.1 million people. Kony has been called the World's Worst War Criminal.
Share with your friends on FB, Twitter, or wherever to stop Kony and the LRA. Use your voices!!!
KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.It all started in 1987. He lead an exsisting rebel group and changed its name to... more
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Malaria, Tuberculosis, Illiteracy, Malnutrition.. and that's just the diseases...there's also domestic and civil violence, FGM, illiteracy, etcMalaria, Tuberculosis, Illiteracy, Malnutrition.. and that's just the... more
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A griot (gree-oh) is the keeper of the West African oral tradition and the tribe's genealogy through poetic songs. Bob Holman is invited to Gambia by his long-time friend and teacher, Papa Susso, to learn more about this musical art and see how the kora, the 21-string harp-lute is made. Bob travels up the Niger River with Papa's son, Karamo, also a griot, in search of the spirit of the African-American Beat poet, Ted Joans, who lived a buoyant life in Timbuktu in the 70s and was Bob's mentor. Along the way, Bob discovers the roots of hip-hop, rap, the blues -- all the great American musical traditions that originated in Africa. The episode concludes with a kora-guitar jam session between Karamo and Ali Farka Toure's son, Vieux.A griot (gree-oh) is the keeper of the West African oral tradition and the... more
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On the Road continues in Timbuktu where Bob Holman gets more insight into the dusty off-station in the middle of nowhere. Bob goes to the Timbuktu Library, with volumes from the 16th Century when the city was the center of African learning. We ourselves learn how to ride a camel and how Timbuktu got its name before we venture into the Sahara and spend an afternoon listening to the hypnotic music of the Tuaregs, the nomadic "blue people," named because their indigo-dyed clothing rubs off on their skin.
Then we head south to visit the Dogons, renowned for the interplay of their culture of masks with daily life and rituals. Bob tries to get a mask ceremony to happen: he buys millet beer for the town, and we see how it is brewed. He then has his fortune read via iconic marks in the sand that are left overnight for the pale fox to wander through and change their meanings, one of many Dogon traditions first written about by Marcel Griaule. When the village erupts into a mask ceremony, the Dogon dancing, music and masks evoke a complete cosmology of extraordinary beauty, utterly fascinating and unique.On the Road continues in Timbuktu where Bob Holman gets more insight into the dusty... more
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Sure enough, Amasaygou (Dolo, of course), is at the Castor for breakfast at 7am. We lay out the day’s plans, the week’s plans: visits with the elders, the diviners, the traditional healer, the griot, the blacksmith, and a celebration that includes masks, if all goes well. The village of Tireli, 19k’s and an hour+ away makes the best Dogon millet beer (“kunyan”) and has the best mask collection – we’ll go there and talk about throwing a party that we can film.
Maybe it’s because the diviners are such a part of life here, maybe it’s because everyone has the same last name, maybe it’s because Griaule left such a mixed heritage of scholarship and hoax (or, maybe, mistranslation). Whatever it is, the Oral Tradition is thriving in Dogon country like nowhere else I’ve seen. The tourists are here for one thing only: the Dogon way of life. Which is to say, the way spirituality is imbued in all objects. The odd jester’s hats with swinging puffballs. The landscape that makes the arcane, fantastic cosmology seem logical. And it’s not that tourists are here in such great numbers – the toilet is still a hole as often as not, and sanitary conditions are, let’s say, haphazard. Meeting Moussa in Tireli (everybody here is a Saye) is filled with these engaging contradictions – he runs the only hotel in town, which the Women’s Association started with a grant from Nobel winner Muhammad Yunus, he of the microgrant theories. Entrust Moussa to hold the money, and he’ll put together our Festival. Hmmm.
I like him, and we are encouraged that we’ll shoot here, but want to allow Sangha a chance to respond, so it’s an hour plus back to Sangha: 20 minutes on a sand piste including a 75 degree plunge into an empty river bed, 20 minutes dirt road past Amani, the sacred crocodile village, Irili, which is also a World Heritage site (truly extraordinary, Hobbit + Star Wars + Truli plus you name it – Mitterrand helicoptered here!), then a steep ascent up a rocky torture road that is intermittently paved, a road that curves alpine-like past villages, Telem caves, and wild west vistas. An NGO paved the road, but didn’t have enough money to pave it all — paved means a cement slab is sunk into the earth. So they paved the most dangerous parts, so the story goes. If that’s true I don’t know what these nondangerous, unpaved parts used to be – the 4x4 sometimes slows to a roll as pointy rocks and potholes take their toll. Avberage speed is around 3kph. Finally we clear an incline and there’s Lower Sangha spread before us – hundreds of mostly women workers with jugs or rice sheaves on their hand, slowly walking from here to there through the green rice and onion fields of Paradise. In the distance the cliffs, the reed rock escarpment, the Telem caves. An indescribable landscape.
Turns out Sekou is also the man in charge of the Sangha equivalent of the Tireli plan. He asks me, Well, did Tireli work for you? Sure did. Then why not do that? Because I wanted to get a price from the Sangha. From you.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/Sure enough, Amasaygou (Dolo, of course), is at the Castor for breakfast at 7am. We... more
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Bea and I walk into town at sunset but there is no town. She spots a pregnant baobab tree, which becomes a running joke, the first joke I’ve told that gets a laugh from the Dogons. And not just a laugh – this is a heartshaking thunder clap of a retort, as if I knew something! That’s what this guide named Amasaygou says, the first Dogon I’ve had a real conversation with. He helps us with our Dogon greetings’ riffs, we discuss the compatibility of religions, Animist, Muslim, Christian, all coexisting here. Another joke: a Muslim can have Animist beliefs, but Animists cannot be Animists and have Muslim beliefs. More laughs.
This is taking place at the Campement, built on the grounds where Marcel Griaule’s house was. Griaule had lived with, and studied, the Dogons for twelve years when the Wise Men’s Council told him it was time for him to have a chat with the blind guy, a former hunter named Ogotemmeli. The result was a book, Conversations with Ogotemmeli, that outlined the Dogon cosmology and its interaction with daily life. Incredibly rich and evocative, these stories were the basis of everything – from which side of the room you slept, what the direction the ox plowed, and how each village was laid out as twins, to a divination method where sticks, stones and sand are used to create a sore on the earth, which night animals walk across and disturb. The paw prints and disturbances are read as your future, and resulted in another book, The Pale Fox.
That night I will visit the Kirili’s friend, Sekou Amadou Dolo (everyone in a Dogon village has the same last name: in Sangha that would be Dolo). His first words are, can Animists can’t have Animist beliefs, correct? The idle chitchat I’d had with Amasaygou just an hour or so before had already become part of Sangha lore, was returning to me in another conversation. Sekou “knows” me. Not only that, but he is asking me if I think Amasaygou would make a good guide. Why not? Things make sense in a way that is clear and understandable – the medium is the message, the content is the messenger.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/Bea and I walk into town at sunset but there is no town. She spots a pregnant baobab... more
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We’re in the beginning of an Arizona/Grand Canyon Western film set, so stop after just fifteen minutes down the piste to shoot some B roll. Bea discovers the key to the room at Gourma, so Abdul returns to Douentza while we shoot, crack jokes, get burrs in our pants, are visited by wandering Peuls, and…. finally our faithful driver returns and we’re on our way. Taking it easier. And of course today happens to be Tabaski here (it’s a locally defined thing), so still no food.
And as we move into Dogon country something happens. As if the cliffs are living. The Telems were here first. In the eleventh century. You can sense their world – veldt, savannahs, jungle with lions, buffalo, elephants. The wild dangers led the Telems to live in impossible-to-reach cliff houses, like Chaco Canyon or Mesa Verde. You can see these astonishing dwellings in a documentary of a Dogon cliff funeral made by Jean Rouch Cimetieres dans La Falaise . I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU STOP whatever you are doing and spend 18 minutes with the Dogons. It’s in Dogon and French and awesome.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/We’re in the beginning of an Arizona/Grand Canyon Western film set, so stop... more
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A new United Nations report shows that almost 2,000 communities across Africa abandoned female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) last year, prompting calls for a renewed global push to end this harmful practice once and for all.A new United Nations report shows that almost 2,000 communities across Africa... more
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The six-hour 4x4 trek from Timbuktu to Douentza on the Muslim Feast Day of Tabaski (i.e., no stores open in the two towns we passed) did me in. We stopped an hour or so north of our destination to shoot the sunset behind the first Dogon cliff landscape, and I felt a might queasy – or was it just the poetry of the moment? (This is the sunset conclusion riff that concludes the 2nd show, “From Timbuktu to the Dogons.”) The piste was ass-crackingly rugged, hellishly bouncy with intimations of carsick. Was it because I was memorizing Dogon salutations, which can go on for seemingly ever? Researching Douentza hotels? Reading David Markson’s The Last Novel? Maybe the heat? The luncheon salad in Timbuktu? Whatever. While checking out our quarters at Gourma Campement I became a walking projectile-vomiteer. Three times sending indecipherable stomach remnants into orbit. Diarrhea. I am sick in Africa.
So I lay down, Bea helped me, brought cold Coke and a bucket, and in this night of fitful sleep I drift unthinkingly through consciousness. No fever, so probably not malaria. I look at myself for the first time on the trip: I have aged. My face is red. My lips are badly cracked, bleeding. My hair is crazy. A tired, sad sack. Now sick.
Heave a couple times overnight as well. Really wished I wasn’t the guy who had to decide in the morning, but I am and do. The working principle for this trip seems to be Stick to Schedule. Keep On. So having skipped dinner and now breakfast, feeling “better,” not hungry, we’re on our way.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/The six-hour 4x4 trek from Timbuktu to Douentza on the Muslim Feast Day of Tabaski... more
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The Collected Poetry, Leopold Sedar Senghor. I’m a big fan of Melvin Dixon’s poetry, but his translations seem stilted, and intro, dated. But what a great object to have on hand in Dakar! With Eshelman’s Cesaire translations, we’ve got a good intro to Negritude in English.
Slumberland, Paul Beatty. DJ Darky has created a perfect beat (Think Pootie Tang crossed with a DJ Spooky satire) and is in Berlin to track down an unknown US African American jazz genius whose work he’s discovered as the sound track to porn films. It gets wilder and funnier. A couple of plot gimmicks – spies and fortune tellers – are Beatty’s nod to prose, but his whiplash wit kept me spinning throughout this joke de force.
Tropic Moon, Georges Simenon. The first of Simenon’s nouvelles dur (hard novels, i.e. not Maigret), this is a young man’s descent into lust/love/madness as metaphor in colonial Benin, 1932. Norman Rush, a totally brilliant, required reading, novelist has written a super intro for this new edition.
God’s Bits of Wood, Sembene Ousmane. Ousmane, the great Senegalese film director (required viewing), was a writer long before, and this kaleidoscopic novel of the 1948 Dakar-Bamako train strike against the French overseers is simply great history, great writing. Finished this novel today while working on the Ted Joans section of the Timbuktu shoot, came across the phrase “fine warm sand” and was struck down – it’s a phrase from the totally inspiring letter that Ted’s widow, Laura Corsiglia, sent me right before I left for the Griot Trail! Words I had selected for tomorrow’s blog. (BTW, God’s bits of wood are the native population of West Africa.) Incredibly powerful novel, which Breyten Breytenbach recommended.
The Koran, Allah. The copy given to me, Mohammed Bob, at the Senegal-Gambia border, is hardcover, gilt-embossed, and called The Noble Qur’an. Unlike the first time I read it, when I thought it harsh and finger-pointing, the book seems quite lyrical this time through. I can see how Rumi got so revved up by it. To understand Islam, read the Koran.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/The Collected Poetry, Leopold Sedar Senghor. I’m a big fan of Melvin... more
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I interview Lamont about Ted Joans. We are sitting on sofas in the middle of the desert. Bea is taking a long shot. The young man in a ski parka is bringing us our tea. Lamont is answering my question,
OK, if Ted was a surrealist—
What is surrealism?
Sana is saying good-bye. He won the sword vs stick dance and taught us an Ali Farka Toure song. He used Lamont’s cane like a ringmaster at the well. He is, like Laura described him in her letter, a tree planter. He knows the scientific names for all the species. (How surrealist is that?) Lamont wants to know if you can just get the material and build a house in the desert – who owns the desert? First, says Sana, you must build a well. Then you plant the trees.
Bea is shooting a mirror in the middle of the desert. We borrowed it from Sana, where Bea shot his Tabaski goat climbing the stairs. We send a postcard to Laura, signed by all of us, and Sana too. Lunch at the Poulet d’Or includes an interview with the chef Dedeo Maigre, whose luncheon, tukassou, boiled dough in sauce (think big African dumpling in cinnamon sauce) was totally M’yum-m’yum (Karamo’s compound nickname)! Dedeo believes in Timbuktu as a hometown village, nothing mysterious about it. After lunch, he pulls out a century-old tambour and plays a marvelous, wild, desert beat. Then his son takes over (www.timbuktumusicproject.com) and suddenly there’s a monster in the room. A scary mask, made out of a calabash of course, is dancing. It’s the nonmysterious but totally artistic, Dedeo behind the mask. Bea borrows the mask and shoots him through it.
We’re saying good-bye to Sana. He’s telling us that you can know someone for three days and it’s like you’ve always known them. And then, whoever they are, they always disappear. He has been offered three times to visit Europe and United States, but he only knows the desert and Timbuktu. They disappear, but they are still family. Ted Joans brought our family together. Now I’m an old cynic who plays with ideas as if they were words, working in all order, there’s always a punch line, LOL. But Sana Sibily opened up the mysteries of Timbuktu in a way that I understand. And believe. If it’s in the footage I’ll be happy. I want you to know this place. The end of the earth. The beginning of friendship. A mystery, a miracle, a story. Timbuktu.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/I interview Lamont about Ted Joans. We are sitting on sofas in the middle of the... more
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Sana is going to let us scout his house. Good to have Abdul back — we drive. Bea and Karamo hop out to follow Sana, I am slower and when I get out they’re gone. I ask Lamont where they went. He points across the street. I saunter into the compound, and when I see a woman with two children staring at me in surprise and fear I call out for Sana. Suddenly, a tough-looking guy steps out of the main house with a pistol. I say Je cherche Sana, je vous empris, and with a flick of his gun I get myself out of there. Next thing, he’s out on the street, sans pistol, and Abdul is trying to calm him. Sana comes out, tensions ease. I tell Lamont he almost got me shot. Sana says not to worry, “he is military man.” Seems like that’s good cause for worry to me.
This morning (December 8) is Tobaski, a major Muslim holiday. Lamont sees the military man cruise by the hotel in a truck marked Commissar Police. Bea calls her Mom in Sao Paulo to tell her about the nightmare she had last night, of a military takeover in Brazil. She helped an old woman over a bridge, basically carrying her. Everyone was calling the military “Crocodiles!” Her mother says not to worry – there will never be another military coup in Brazil. Because of the internet.
I am reading Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark, which posits an alternate universe where 9/11 didn’t happen and where the US is not in Iraq. Instead, there’s another civil war in the States. As always, ever-expanding writing enmeshed in great story. Please don’t kill the characters, kill the author! Etc. My headlight goes out, change batteries in light without light, man in the dark.
Over Tobaski breakfast, the same old instant Nescafe, powdered milk, round loaf of bread with butter and red fruit jam, I know something is different.
The grit is gone. How can there be a loaf of bread in Timbuktu sans sand? Must be time to head out. We’ll try for Dogon country tonight, but will probably end up at the crossroads in Douentza. Road conditions are impossible to learn in advance.
But then until last night we thought Tobaski would be two days from now, which is the date Papa Susso had told us, and we were looking forward to a Dogon el Eid (Arabic), Fete el Khabir (French). That turned our schedule around. Let me sleep in this morning. Anything could be going on in America. Last dreams in Timbuktu.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/Sana is going to let us scout his house. Good to have Abdul back — we drive.... more
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Timbuktu Bucks
It’s expensive here – dinner costs around $10, double the price of Dakar and Bamako. The jewelry hustlers are all over you all the time. And you understand it – a tourist arriving here is like Mali making a pact to export to Montenegro. It’s hard to get here: the pharmacist yesterday apologized for his lack of lip balm, and promised it would be on the next plane into town. Right. The only way to export your work is to get a tourist to carry it home. And the exchange rate is lower, too.
Big Day Shooting
Bea and I settle in for a Production Meeting and lay out a morning in town and afternoon with the Tuaregs. Sana introduces me to his brother, Sandi, who turns out to be his cousin, who turns out to be… etc. When Sana sees me looking at Bradt’s, he casually drops the news that it’s Sandi on a camel on the cover. Indeed.
Losing a Negotiation with the Tuaregs
No problem.
We go to the Tourist Office and shoot my passport getting the official Timbuktu stamp. Only took me thirty-five years. Shoot the outside of the 15th Century Mosque that looks as much like Arizona as Timbuktu. Have a great conversation with Sana at the sacred Tim (well) of Madame Buktu, who lived alone but her well became the way station that became the stopover that grew into today’s Timbuktu. Karamo buys a homemade, tin-can mbira, and we have an impromptu jam ‘round the well. I fall in. It’s dry.
A Kilo of Salt
Buy a kilo of salt, one chunk, dug straight from the earth, two bucks. [NB - this purchase is destined to appear on the poster for LinkTV’s broadcasting of “On the Road.”] Stage the meeting of Sana and Bob at the Hotel Bouctou, another of the seemingly infinite number of places where Ted Joans lived. The owner, another friend of Ted’s, tells us he always stayed in Room 2. But we’d already shot in front of Room 1 – Ted’s number one room, according to Sana. Lunch, like all meals in Timbuktu, takes forever unless you’ve ordered in advance. Omelet clocks in at an hour and fifteen minutes. Last night we ordered chicken. We heard a squawk about half an hour later.
In the afternoon it’s Tuareg time – I ride a camel into town, Karamo and Lamont ride into desert. Bea and I scout the village – located in the midst of scrub and sand, a particularly unhappy piece of desert. Bea immediately asks for a dune, which Sandi conjures up and which totally makes the shoot. Camels, hypnotic music, the sword dance. Karamo sits in on kora. It’s decided professor Bob should ride his camel sans handler, which turns into a rich comedy of camel stubbornness and poet exhilaexasperation. The sun slides down. The women are wearing incredibly ornate silver headresses which mingle gorgeously with their deep indigo clothing. Bea requests a woman to dance. She moves away from her drum, settles on the earth, and subtly moves her hands. Waves of sand. An hourglass without the glass.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/Timbuktu Bucks
It’s expensive here – dinner costs around $10, double... more
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Why we come to Timbuktu is a mystery. It’s the furthest away from everywhere if you’re speaking English. But there’s plenty of French, Bambara, Songhay, Peul (Fula), and Tamashek spoken here as well, more than English bien sur. But it’s only in English that we say, “It’s as far away as Timbuktu.
Mystery Tour Guide
Coincidence or fate? One reason we’re here is because US Black Beat poet Ted Joans, who died eight years ago, had a house here in the 60’s-70’s (rent $25/year, so the story goes). Laura Consiglia, his widow, had written us a letter if inspiration and info. One clue was the name Sana Sibily, a man who had put them up on his roof when they were last here, in the 80s. Coincidentally, the Bradt Guide to Mali (I like this British series, and so far as I know it’s the only guidebook to Mali – the Rough Guide to West Africa has an excellent chapter) mentions one Sana Sibily as a good contact for desert culture (Tuareg (the “blue people” – from indigo-dyed clothes, nomads of the Sahara) and great roots-rock Tinariwen).
So when I ask at the desk of La Colombe Hotel they say Of course, Sana Sibily, he likes to hang out at the dibiterie (barbecue) next door. He’s not there, but the dibiterie owner calls him, and ten minutes later I am approached by a big sweet face covered with a shocking blue atell (desert turban). His first words, “un ami de Ted Joans,” come complete with tears – his good friend is my good friend, so we are immediate best friends. Say hello to the King of the Short Cut, the Tree Planter of the Desert, Sana Sibily, friend of Ted.
Where Ted Joans Lived
On the other hand, Sana doesn’t have a house in town, let alone a roof. He takes us to Ted’s house, but unlike Laura’s letter, there’s no good wooden door with brass details, the hallmark of old Timbuktu architecture – #22 111 St. (also known as Omore, Omo’s Street, in Djengeri-Ber), has a corrugated tin door. And the layout’s wrong. And the “good people” who were living here when Laura and Ted were here have morphed into a single, poor blind woman who appears to be 80. The photos of Ted that Sana raves over, promises to bring to us, which will be so great for the film, seem to have been put in a suitcase that disappeared in the sand. The mysteries expand and contract with language difference – Sana’s English is focused and right off the tourist trek. On the griot trail, there’s a marvelous disconnect. Who’s whose what?
And meanwhile everywhere we go we get a back route tour of town that’s breathtaking, full of dailiness, mud brick buildings, open sewers, kids playing soccer. Sana books us for what turns out to be a terrific interview with the Director of Ancient Manuscripts, who, when prodded, takes us back to la tradition orale and a wonderful story of three stars colliding – one for salt, one for limestone, and the one in the middle, sand. Fine, warm sand.
Bob Holman is the host of a new travel series focused on endangered languages called ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOLMAN on LINK TV. He traveled to West Africa, Middle East and Asia and these are his blog stories from his travels. More information at http://www.rattapallax.com/blog/on_the_road/Why we come to Timbuktu is a mystery. It’s the furthest away from everywhere if... more
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Bill Gates is one very confused billionaire philanthropist.
He understands global warming is a big problem — indeed, his 2012 Foundation Letter even frets about the grave threat it poses to food security. But he just doesn’t want to do very much now to stop it from happening (see Pro-geoengineering Bill Gates disses efficiency, “cute” solar, deployment — still doesn’t know how he got rich).
He love technofixes like geoengineering and, as we’ll see, genetically modified food. Rather than investing in cost-effective emissions reduction strategies today or in renewable energy technologies that are rapidly moving down the cost curve, he explains that the reason invests so much in nuclear R&D is “The good news about nuclear is that there has hardly been any innovation.” Seriously!
His Letter includes the ominous chart at the top, and he warns of the dire consequences of climate change:
Meanwhile, the threat of climate change is becoming clearer. Preliminary studies show that the rise in global temperature alone could reduce the productivity of the main crops by over 25 percent. Climate change will also increase the number of droughts and floods that can wipe out an entire season of crops. More and more people are raising familiar alarms about whether the world will be able to support itself in the future, as the population heads toward a projected 9.3 billion by 2050.
Strong stuff.
And yet, as the AP reported this week, the wealthiest of all Americans gets very prickly if you don’t wholeheartedly endorse his techno-fix adaptation-centric approach to dealing with this oncoming disaster:
Bill Gates has a terse response to criticism that the high-tech solutions he advocates for world hunger are too expensive or bad for the environment: Countries can embrace modern seed technology and genetic modification or their citizens will starve….
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent about $2 billion in the past five years to fight poverty and hunger in Africa and Asia, and much of that money has gone toward improving agricultural productivity.Gates doesn’t apologize for his endorsement of modern agriculture or sidestep criticism of genetic modification. He told The Associated Press that he finds it ironic that most people who oppose genetic engineering in plant breeding live in rich nations that he believes are responsible for global climate change that will lead to more starvation and malnutrition for the poor.
Resistance to new technology is “again hurting the people who had nothing to do with climate change happening,” Gates said.
The real irony is that most people who diss efficiency and renewables and aggressive greenhouse gas mitigation, like Gates, live in rich nations that are responsible for global climate change that will lead to more starvation and malnutrition for the poor.
Where is the story that says, “countries to embrace existing technology to reduce emissions or their citizens will starve” or resistance to aggressive low carbon technology deployment is “again hurting the people who had nothing to do with climate change happening”?
This is not a blog on genetic modification, so I’ll just quote the AP story:
Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, said everyone wants to see things get better for hungry people, but genetically modified plants are more likely to make their developers rich than feed the poor. The seed is too expensive and has a high failure rate, he said. Better ways to increase yields would be increasing the fertility of soil by adding organic matter or combining plants growing in the same field to combat pests, he said.
The biggest problem with those alternatives, Freese said, is the same one that Gates cited in high-tech research: A lack of money for development.
snip
But the fact is, as Oxfam and others have made clear, global warming is poised to make food vastly more expensive, which will be devastating to the world’s poor know matter how much money Gates dumps into GM crops — see Oxfam Predicts Climate Change will Help Double Food Prices by 2030: “We Are Turning Abundance into Scarcity”:
More at the linkBill Gates is one very confused billionaire philanthropist.
He understands global... more
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