Mali // Current TV

Tuaregs had completed a military push aimed at creating the state of Azawad and declared victory

BAMAKO – DESERT rebels have launched a revolutionary war in the Sahara. The... more

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On the Road: Episode 2 - From Timbuktu to the Dogons

On the Road continues in Timbuktu where Bob Holman gets more insight into the dusty... more

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On the Road: Episode 1 - The Griots of West Africa

A griot (gree-oh) is the keeper of the West African oral tradition and the... more

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Senosa: the Gold Earrings

After the shoot we head 12 kilometers North to Senosa, the village of the huge golden... more

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Monday Market Day

The Campement Hotel has air-conditioned rooms with great showers, flush toilets:... more

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Days since writing for the blog. The doing overtakes the talking about the doing and the writing, which is the kind of talking about the doing I’m doing now, and sometimes you are the audience itself, dear Reader. Still the miles flow under and we head, full of anticipation and eyeful quaffing eyeful, kora note after note, towards Timbuktu.

Mud villages are generally Fulani now (with some Bela); the straw encampments, built around tree branches held together by twine, are the Bozo fishermen, whose pinasse boats are decorated with flag- like rectangles and the date of building near the stern, and who ply these waters with nets. The big adventure this morning was when we came across a three-boat net laid out all the way across the river, with the boss walking net on the near shore. We tried to maneuver under the net line, but eventually the two outer boats pull their nets together, allowing us to swing around outside them. A twenty minute example of sharing the river, accompanied by all kinds of shouts and recriminations between the two groups.

We embark from Mopti like real filmmakers, which is to say we did it and then we did it again from a different angle. Amodou 2, our river guide, had never heard of such a thing, but everybody enjoyed the silly tubabs (white people – I guess I mean me, Bea being Brazilian, Lamont African-American, Karamo African, Ram Indian) who had to leave twice. We were going to do it three times, but Bea figured that my entering the boat and taking off needn’t be repeated by the Karamo-and-me duet, that my sailing alone mid-Niger would suffice for both films. That felt good, loading everybody in after the second shot: Karamo with kora and Bob, poeticizing, hop on board.

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/Days since writing for the blog. The doing overtakes the talking about the doing and... more

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Child Slavery and Chocolate | Videos | Facts | Chocolate Industry Responses

CNN... . THE CNN FREEDOM PROJECT ENDING MODERN-DAY SLAVERY . January 19th,... more

EthicalVegan
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In a remote town in Mali, climate change takes on a sinister reality

Ten years ago, I ended up on the mud flats of the Nile delta with a water engineer. He explained how everything we could see around us would be under water if sea levels rose as they are predicted to do – the nearby city of Alexandria is one of the most vulnerable to climate change in the world. It was just before a major conference on climate change, and the aim had been to find stories – and images – of global warming that got beyond the cliche of a melting ice cap. But as a journalist it was hard to bring this future to life; this sleepy bit of coastline hardly evoked the sense of urgency required to mobilise the international attention needed.

This is the central paradox of climate change politics, argued the sociologist, Anthony Giddens, that electorates can't grasp the significance of climate change because it is too abstract, and not dramatic enough (they need catastrophe footage), and won't – until it's too late. By the time we are experiencing massive floods, freak weather, sea-level rises and higher temperatures, we will be well past the point of doing anything about it. He christened it Giddens paradox.

Ten years on, the impact of climate change is frighteningly more concrete. In the remote town of Anakila in Mali, west Africa, I find what we were looking for in the Nile delta 10 years ago. Campaigners know the power of images to drive the message home, and that's why the aid agency Tearfund took me on a 1,000km journey from the capital, Bamako.

Three hours after we left the paved road, we arrived at low mud houses clustered under large mango trees. This is part of the Sahel, and the nine months of the dry season have always left a narrow ecological perch for the community and its subsistence agriculture. They are poor, yet the town is vibrant; the Dogon people are much admired in Mali for their resourcefulness and hard work. Circling the town are the small vegetable gardens on which they depend.

For years now, the elders explain, they have been worried by climate change. Disrupted rain patterns, shifts in winds have no parallel in collective memory; they notice how it is prompting changes in the behaviour of animals and birds. But all of these anxieties are dwarfed by the sand dune now looming above their town – the result of those drier, fierce winds and erratic, intense rainfall.

The dune stands several hundred feet high, spilling into the river and stemming its flow, slowly burying trees whose trunks are now deep in soft white sand. Plenty of fields have been swallowed by the sand already. The villagers' defences against further encroachment are hedges of euphorbia – they surround the rows of sorghum that stand pitifully in ground which is more sand than soil.

The dune glows golden in the sun, a dramatic and unfamiliar eruption in the landscape. This area was once forest, but gradual deforestation has thinned the tree cover and exposed the sandy soils. The dune is moving inexorably towards the outskirts of Anakila. It's a sinister sign of the vulnerability of the Sahel, the grasslands that border the Sahara in a swath across Africa, and where millions have farmed and herded cattle for centuries. The ecological niche in which they have built their lives has always been full of uncertainties – and often hardship – but now the niche on which they have built cultures of great sophistication and resilience is shrinking beneath them as desert threatens.

This is another paradox of climate-change politics: it is in remote places like this that climate change will hit first and hardest. It is cultures built on deep understanding of their environment – whether the Sami of the Arctic or the Dogon of the Sahara – whose way of life is the first to be threatened. Anakila's residents are the canaries down the mine, their experience a foretaste of an Earth hostile to human inhabitation. But their experience of threat, potential devastation and loss of livelihood is discounted and ignored. No dunes are threatening Manchester.

But Anakila's plight will come back to haunt us in two ways. The entire debate around Africa and aid will shift in coming years from one dominated by charity and post-imperial responsibility to one framed primarily around environmental justice. The continent is one of the most vulnerable, with many of its delicate ecosystems threatened, as Camilla Toulmin's charts in her book, Climate Change in Africa. It is also the least well equipped to respond – and the least responsible for the coming calamities.

Media attention on the climate change talks in Cancún at the end of this month will focus on the negotiations over emission cuts, but equally important is the financing of climate adaptation – at Copenhagen $100bn a year by 2020 was pledged. Detailed proposals are due to be published this week on new forms of climate financing to start bringing this into effect. But the danger is that funding for climate adaptation will be poached from aid budgets. Already the development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, has made it clear that the pledge for foreign aid of 0.7% of GDP inherited from Labour will be used to finance climate adaptation. Ensuring this money reaches communities as marginalised and as poor as Anakila is a huge challenge.
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As we left Anakila, we were given gifts – fresh milk and two hens. When might this generosity become a demand for environmental justice? When might such visits prompt anger and recriminations instead of smiles and greetings? Mali is a country of crushing poverty, and the predicted outcomes of climate change could spell catastrophe for much of the country. Back in Bamako, a government spokesperson wanted compensation put on the agenda in Cancún. It's only a matter of time before the demand for compensation becomes the rallying cry for a new generation of activists – not just in Africa, but across the globe.Ten years ago, I ended up on the mud flats of the Nile delta with a water engineer. He... more

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"Original" Buena Vista Social Club Album Finally Out... 14 Years Later | Photos

'Original' Buena Vista Social Club album finally out... 14 years later By... more

EthicalVegan
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Koman Coulibaly Changed Fate Of USA Vs Slovenia FIFA World Cup 2010 Match?

The referee made a phantom call this morning which ate a third goal and the game itself.

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White Gold: Tracing Cotton and Fashion in Africa

This is the story of how African fashion entrepreneurs could bring new life to the... more

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Bamako, Mali: Bright Young People & The Trash Brick

In Bamako we meet and document the work of the Mali Health Project (MHOP), a... more

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2 years ago
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Les Yeux dans les yeux

3 short films by emerging filmmakers from Mali. Financed by EU and produced by... more

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2 years ago
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Al Qaeda linked to rogue air network: US official

In early 2008, an official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent a report... more

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Latin America’s drug cartels giving Al Qaeda a lift?

There is growing concerns that Al Qaeda in Africa and Latin American drug cartels are... more

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Science and the Scriptures

While scores of theological scholars have been studying the literal meaning of... more

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Mushrooms the Biblical "Manna"?

Exodus 16:14-24 indicates that MANNA was definitely a MUSHROOM. It was a small round... more

jkw077
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3 years ago
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Mali villagers fight back against Sahara

Over three decades, Mali's Lake Faguibine has become a shrivelled, dusty plain... more

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2 years ago
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