James Rodríguez: revisiting genocide in Rabinal, Guatemala

I've been following the blog of Guatemala-based photojournalist Jaime (James) Rodríguez in recent months, and just spent some time with one recent entry about the rural village of Rabinal, where "one of the most atrocious cases of human extermination prompted by so-called economic development" occurred 25 years ago. This July, a group of human rights activists from Mexico, Canada, and the US visited Rabinal to better understand and aid that community's ongoing search for justice and reconciliation.

What I find so moving about Rodríguez' work is the sense of closeness with these places, and these people, that permeates each shot. These are not abstractions, they of individuals and families and homes. They are not past tense, and we're connected to them in ways we might not realize. Work like his makes these stories a little harder for the world to ignore. Snip:

Nicolas Chen, a survivor from Rio Negro, often visits the museum where a number of his murdered relatives’ photographs are on display. Here, Mr. Chen caresses the photograph of his daughter, Marta Julia Chen Osorio, where the caption reads: “She was murdered when her gestation period was about to be completed. The soldiers, acting as medics, induced a forced cesarean with machetes. The assailants, who wanted to see how a child grows inside a mother’s womb, accomplished their feat. How is it possible that someone can take the life of defenseless human beings so unjustly?!”

Link to "The Chixoy Hydro-electrical Dam and Genocide in Río Negro." See also these recent entries on his blog (some of which include video from related documentaries in progress): The People of Nueva Linda; Nueva Linda: Along the Side of the Road (video link here); We Are Not Squatters, We Are Natives of Guatemala.

Note: he publishes everything in both Spanish and English -- I'm linking to the English versions here, but pick your flavor as you wish.

Ambient audio: Antigua, Guatemala, at night.

(Images: Ivan Castro)

Click on the embedded audio below, and you'll hear a 10-minute chunk of ambient sound I taped one night in the old colonial city of La Antigua (literally, "The Old"), Guatemala: centuries-old church bells, popping firecrackers, rumbling mopeds, and a Kakchikel Maya family walking home on ancient cobblestone streets.

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[Browser-compatibility note -- The audio link in this post appears as embedded Flash, and is brought to you by our sponsor: HP's iPaq 510 Voice Messenger. If your web reader doesn't allow you to access Flash, here's a direct MP3 Link. ]

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I taped this outside my bedroom window there in November, 2006, while in the country working on a series of reports for NPR News. I'd been out in the field all day taping interviews. I was sun-fried, road-weary, hunched over a Marantz digital audio recorder and backing up what I'd taped that day to portable hard drives, ipods, and CDs for redundant safekeeping.

I heard a bunch of loud explosions -- pulled off my headphones for a sec -- an escalating cluster of pop pop pop, again and again, and the churchbells ringing nonstop. WTF? Firecrackers are familiar sounds there, lit for any and every birthday or saint's day, any excuse it seems. But the bells were just going and going and going this time. Some big Catholic holiday? An emergency? Are those guns mixed in with the firecracker sounds? Couldn't figure it out, and neither could the family in whose home I was staying.

Anyway, the editors and producers I learn from at NPR always tell me, tape first, ask questions later. So I stuck my mic out the window and hit "record."

Never did figure out exactly what was going on.

But when I listen to this recording now, it transports me back. I keep this file in my iTunes playlist and fall asleep to it sometimes. I remember the things that filled my senses, while falling asleep there: warm tortillas cooking over wood fires; copal resin burning in the church next door; cool breezes from nearby pine forests; diesel fumes from overburdened trucks; and the volcan de fuego puffing ash and intermittent red sparks off in the distance.

I hope you enjoy it. I love this old place like you might love a person. This sound reminds me of that.

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PHOTOGRAPHS of nighttime Antigua, Guatemala in this post ganked from the flickr stream of Ivan Castro, a prolific and (obviously) very talented photographer based in Guatemala.

Related: Link to an archive of my posts from the road in Guatemala.

March for civil war "desaparecidos" in Guatemala: photos

Snip from independent photojournalist James Rodriguez' first-person account of a demonstration that took place in Guatemala City on June 30:

The March for Remembrance, organized by H.I.J.O.S. (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetfulness and Silence) [ Ed.: in Spanish, "hijos" means "children" ] , brought a number of activists and families of victims from the civil war together with the goal of halting the parade which commemorated the 136th annual Military Day.

The demonstration congregated in Jocotenango Park, formerly Morazan Park, in Zone 2 of the Capital City. Those drawn on the sheets represent only a small fraction of the more than 200,000 victims killed during the 36 year internal conflict.

A member of H.I.J.O.S. waves a flag depicting the image of one of the many victims killed by Guatemalan security forces during the civil war. In many cases, the person represented on the flag is the flag-waver’s own father or mother.

(...) Meanwhile, the military parade continued just a block behind the anti-riot forces.

Today is not for celebrating
It’s for struggling and protesting
Because forgiving is not enough
Those who carried on genocide must pay (...)

Who kidnaps, tortures and assassinates?
The Genocidal Army.
Children of the motherland, Children of the Quetzal,
Which son of a bitch took my father?

A demonstrator, while still recovering from the effects of tear gas, adjusts a homemade gas mask in case of a second skirmish.

Link 1, Link 2 (English), Versión en Español aquí.

James Rodriguez has many, many photosets on Flickr, including 11+ from Guatemala (where he's based). You might just want to start at the top of the stream and scroll back, tons of absolutely incredible photography in here. (Gracias, Margarita).

Snip from an advisory about "HIJOS," dated 2000, from Amnesty International:

HIJOS is a new human rights group, made up of young people, many of them students, who were children when their parents were ''disappeared'', killed or massacred and have joined together recently, some of them returning from exile, to try and establish what happened to their parents and who was responsible for it. They also want to help educate the new generation in Guatemala about what happened during the years of repression. Amnesty International shares their view, that understanding what happened, who was responsible and who allowed it to happen are vital in efforts to make sure that no such future violations will be either repeated or tolerated.

HIJOS work to discover the fate of their family members who were victims of the civil conflict which raged in Guatemala over a period of more than 30 years. Before the conflict was formally ended with the signing of the final Peace Accords in 1996, it is estimated that some 200,000 people were extrajudicially executed or ''disappeared'' at the hands of the Guatemalan security services or the civil patrols and so-called ''death squads'' acting under their command. The number of cases where the perpetrators have been identified and brought to justice can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Previous BoingBoing posts about Guatemala: Link.

Nepali "Living Goddess" is rather into gadgets

andy carvin says,

This weekend, a living goddess paid a visit to the DC area. She's the Kumari of Bhaktapur, Nepal, one of a small group of girls worshipped as living deities in the Himalayan kingdom. Selected at a young age, Kumaris fulfil this spiritual role until they hit puberty, at which point they retired as goddesses and are replaced by another toddler.

The most famous Kumari, the Kumari of Kathmandu, is generally sequestered in a small palace, and she's not allowed to touch the ground when she leaves the building. In contrast, the Bhaktapur Kumari, Sajani Shakya, is allowed to live with her parents and attend school, despite the fact that the faithful are known to drop to her feet to pay their respects. This is the first time a Kumari has visited the US.

The Kumari was in town for the Silverdocs festival for the world premiere of a documentary about Kumaris. While she was here I managed to shot a short video and some pics on my phone. It turns out she's a gadget geek - as you'll see in the pics, when she wasn't holding court, she was snapping pics with her digital SLR and an HDV camcorder.

Link

How to write about Africa

This essay by Binyavanga Wainaina from an Africa-themed issue of GRANTA is not new. But I just stumbled on it in the course of researching a story about Africa and bloggers, and found much worth paying attention to:

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn't care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African's cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat. Make sure you show that you are able to eat such food without flinching, and describe how you learn to enjoy it—because you care.

Link. Binyavanga Wainaina lives in Nairobi, Kenya, and founded the literary magazine Kwani? (unfortunately, the magazine's website appears to be dead). Image: detail crop from the cover of Granta #92, in which this essay appeared, from January 2006. You can purchase a copy online.

Guatemala: very large earthquake

I just spoke to a friend in Guatemala who says there's just been a very large seismic event -- at or over 7.2, is what local news says. No official reports of injury or damage, and no report from Guatemala's institute of Seismology. I'm hearing it was centered near the southern coastal area of Escuintla, 70 miles away from the capital, Guatemala City -- and that the quake was very deep, but they're not expecting tsunamis.

I spent the better part of the last month working on a documentary series in Guatemala. The area where this quake hit was heavily waterlogged from intense rains over the last few weeks, there was flooding and some small mudslides... I wonder if there will be reports of further damage of that kind, it's possible that a quake this strong would dislodge wet soil.

I've spoken to a number of people on the phone since the quake hit, and it was felt in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala City, and as far north as some of the small indigenous towns in the upper part of the department of Sololá.

The quake just happened within the past hour.

Update: Reuters says 6.8: Link (in Spanish). Ah, here's a CNN report (thanks, Seth Rosner). The quake hit at 3:29PM ET, 1:29PM Guatemala Time. People felt it as far away as Mexico and the capital city in El Salvador, and the activity even registered on seismographs 1,800 miles away (!) on Midway Island.

Early reports indicated some homes were damaged and people may be missing, journalist Patzy Vazquez told CNN en Español. Torrential rains have made telephone communication difficult, hampering efforts of rescuers trying to reach the region. The USGS has received no confirmed reports of damage or casualties, and no immediate reports of aftershocks, the agency's Rafael Abreu told CNN. As a precaution, authorities were evacuating high-rise buildings and homes that might be vulnerable to damage if there were any aftershocks.

(map image ganked from cnn.com)

Development porn: white, 1st-world photogs take most 3rd-world pics

A cluster of blog posts have popped up recently around the ethics of "development pornography," and the fact that most images we see of the developing world were shot by photographers (and presumably, video cameramen) who are not from the countries, classes, or ethnic groups they're photographing.

"Recognizing everybody’s communication rights in the information society is not mere slogan or campaign; it’s an integral part of social justice," say members of fair trade photography group Kijiji Vision, whose "mission is to reveal, support, develop and promote indigenous photographers from the majority world" while "making it easier for image buyers and the general public worldwide to access their work."

Here's a snip from one post on the "Technology, Health, and Development" blog:

In the past month there has been a slate of news from Reuters, MSF and others, surrounding imagery and how western media portrays the world. Imaging Famine is about media representations and was mentioned this week by a Reuters blog. This is nothing new, but the debate is good, and as the Reuters piece points out, they have covered the issues surrounding ‘development pornography‘ previously.

Another Reuters writer also picked up on this entire theme: Viewing the poor through Western eyes, I recommend the short read below and checking out the Kijiji/Majority World websites-

“Part of the reason for this kind of post-colonial choreography by INGOs is because they are still required to be the visual mediators of the poor world to the rich world. In Western society, our INGOs are inter-cultural gatekeepers. And you would often have for example, the young white INGO nurse talking passionately on television beside starving children...” Full story.

(...) Two other bits of related content from this week. First, Buffett (son of Warren) donated $730,000 to the journalism school at Nebraska to help student photojournalists record the wants of the world. And finally Together TV (yet another video outlet) has launched more video “in their own words”.

Cat Laine from the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) has a thoughtful post on the topic here, which ends with the following:

Another interesting thing that this brings up is the relationship of the photo’s subject to the photographer. In the post, they mention the following fact: “Upwards of 90% of the images of the majority world that are seen in the western media are produced by white photographers from the USA or Europe.”

When I was in Cap-Haitien, Haiti last summer, I took various pictures of people who were involved in the charcoal training workshop, as well as folks who were on site. I took a few shots of these 2 sisters. [At Left] is the pic they posed for me, a Haitian-American female.

[At right] is how the posed for Dan, an engineer who was also on the trip [a white American male] a few minutes later.

Via Africa Unchained.

Central America: snapshots from the road

I'm grabbing a bunch of little detail snapshots while I'm wandering around through Central America. Here's the growing flickr set of little stuff that adds up to my memory of texture here. Most of what's uploaded now is from urban areas, though I've been elsewhere, too. Includes: internet laundry, tortillas and more tortillas, a bus named Daniela, telephone utility covers in the street, an interesting "no pets" sign, local citizen journalism, baby cocos, coca cola chickens, trompe l'oeil en el mercado, political paint jobs, lots of patterns to recognize, ethanol rides, pan dulce, economic indicators, footwear for honkys, and salas de video juegos.

Central America: notes from the road -- Palenque, old books, DNA

( posted from Guatemala / Xeni ) -- "It is by no means improbable that these fantastic forms, and others equally whimsical, were the delineations of some of their deities, to whom they paid an idolatrous worship, consistent with their false belief and barbarous customs."

Here's a post on the excellent Bibliodyssey blog that points to a collection of texts at Mesoweb about the Mayan ruins at Palenque.

Referenced publications include a scholarly work about evidence of physical deformities that may have been genetically transmitted as a result of heavy intermarriage within the god-king class in preColumbian Mayan society.

Physical Deformities in the Ruling Lineage of Palenque, and the Dynastic Implications," By Merle Greene Robertson and Marjorie S. Rosenblum Scanidizzo and John R. Scandizzo.

Central America: Notes from the road

Image: snapshot of a religious poster in Antigua, Guatemala -- blood-soaked Christ. (Link 1, Link 2 / Xeni).

I'm in Central America for a few weeks -- in Guatemala right now following up on stories I reported earlier this year for NPR, and exploring others.

Where I am right now, the coffee and wifi flow freely, wisps of smoke puff out of the volcan de fuego nearby, and all is well.

A quick skim through TV and the daily papers today (Prensa Libre, Siglo 21, and the like) shows several top stories as common themes. I'll recap them quickly here.

Much of what's in the news in Guatemala right now involves the upcoming presidential elections in September. TV and radio are saturated with campaign ads. Concerns over transparency and potential electoral fraud are high (not that we'd have any such worries in the US).

Crime is the dominant theme in the Guatemalan election campaigns, and it's a big problem here. A number of particularly violent attacks have taken place on public transportation in the nation's capital, Guatemala City, in recent weeks. People are asking if some of the attacks may have been orchestrated with political motives, because a climate of destabilization could help certain political parties running on a law and order platform. Billboards everywhere for one party promise "a strong hand" against crime. Some folks I've spoken with fear that this could presage an abandonment of human rights protections hard-won in peace accords after Guatemala's 36-year civil war. Link.

"El femicidio." The ongoing, growing problem of murder and violent sexual crimes against women. Nearly 600 killed in Guatemala in the past year, according to one source. Thousands of cases in the past few years, too few resources dedicated to investigating and punishing the crimes, and almost no criminal convictions.

Amnesty International released a statement about the widespread violence against women in Guatemala recently, and this was covered in local papers this week. More here.

Editorials in Guatemalan papers and conversations with people who work on this issue generally come down to this idea: the femicide epidemic is the direct, logical result of decades of impunity for human rights violations committed during the civil war. "The highest officials in our country got away with torture, disappearances, and murder for nearly four decades, and still walk among us as free men" one human rights worker told me, "of course impunity leads to more violence."

I haven't seen the Canadian documentary film "Killer's Paradise" yet, but it sounds like a truly worthy project. The director, Giselle Portenier, has been following the story closely for years. Here's the film's official website, and here's the trailer.

Efraín Ríos Montt, the former head of a military regime responsible for some of the worst atrocities during Guatemala's civil war, is running for office again. Several Guatemalan papers ran op-eds this week from people who are basically asking (summarizing with some editorial liberty here): "WTF? How can this mass murderer be running for office again? Are we insane, that our country could even consider this -- when he should be in jail for war crimes?" Link to related item.

Police in El Salvador this week found the corpses of two young men identified as gay, and four (or more?) women identified as sex workers, in a house near the capital. The young people who died were tortured, sexually assaulted, then killed in particularly violent ways, according to news reports here. Some of the bodies were smashed, then half-buried under large rocks. Much discussion about the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, and of sex workers. I can't find the story online, but read it in a cafe this morning. It ran with a photo of the father of one victim, crying as he recognized the body of his child.

Reports of violence, break-ins, theft, death threats, and killings of human rights workers are on the rise in Guatemala: Link. Some of the most recent victims include people who work to protect the Mayan biosphere (an ecological protection zone), others who are working for the rights of indigenous farmers/peasants, and a group that provides legal support to people seeking justice on behalf of relatives killed in massacres during Guatemala's internal armed conflict.

Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan fried chicken franchise with an international cult following, is taking over the world. They're launching sites in China and Indonesia now, and this report says they've opened 600 sites in the past 7 years: Link. Overhead bins on the flights from Guatemala City to LAX are always packed with family-sized cartons of the stuff. To me, the stuff tastes like D-list KFC, but -- (shrugs).

Image above: from a series of Guatemalan street life photographs by Atlanta-based photojournalist Allen Sullivan.

Sandra Guamux, 21, sits with her 5 month old son, Alfredo, at an abandoned gas station in Zona 4 of Guatemala City. About 20 otherwise homeless people live inside the station and most are addicted to huffing paint thinner to numb the cold and their hunger pains. Guamux said another baby was stolen from her five days after it was born last year, and she is convinced the baby went into an illegal adoption system. She said that the police told her they would not investigate the situation since she had no photographs of the child.

Adoptions: Guatemala is one of the top "sender" countries for foreign adoptions -- 4,000 Guatemalan babies were adopted by Americans last year. Guatemala signed on to an international adoption treaty this week, committing to bring adoptions under government regulation and make sure babies are not bought or stolen:

Guatemalan law currently allows notaries to act as baby brokers who recruit birth mothers, handle paperwork and complete foreign adoptions in less than half the time it takes in other countries.

But U.S. officials have urged Guatemala to tighten up the procedure amid concern brokers were paying or threatening mothers to give up their babies.

Link. In some of the Mayan communities I've visited here -- extremely poor places where this is a big problem -- the phenomenon is known as "el robo de los ninos," the "theft of the children."

The virgin birth of a child to Cheney's gay daughter is totally weird news here. It's all over the tabloids. Guatemala is way Catholic, the Iraq war is extremely unpopular here, nobody likes Cheney, so this news is perceived as bizarre on many levels. Screenshot below.

Cloth cult: "Why Congolese men rather starve to death than look cheap."

Photo: Héctor Mediavilla Sabaté, from this Colors feature.

Serial entrepreneur and blogger Emeka Okafor, who also happens to be organizing TED GLOBAL in Tanzania next week, points us to this blog entry about Congolese "sapeurs" by Sefu Massamba Shongo Erik aka "Papa Shongo," a Congolese blogger who lives in New York City:

Hopefully you’re already familiar with the Congolese outlandish fashion sense courtesy of Koffi Olomide (expensive designer clothes, no concern whatsoever about matching colors) and Papa Wemba to name a couple.

If you thought that fashion sense (nonsense sometimes) was limited to famous Congolese artists only, you were wrong my friend. We Congolese have been so obsessed with designer clothes and looking good that over time some of us have prioritized it to the detriment of basic needs sometimes.

If you ever thought you spent more than you could afford to support a lifestyle, wait till you meet this guy I read about in a LA Times article who reported earning about $150/month but somehow was able to afford D&G, Gucci and other obscure designer accessories. That same gentleman also owned a fur coat, in an equatorial climate mind you!

Although this may seem ridiculous to most of us, showing off (which this really is) has become a religion for a lot of “Congolais” who feel that perhaps they must live up to the hype, the expectation that all Congolese must have a high fashion sense. The phenomenon can also be observed here in the US where I’ve met someone (Charlotte, NC) who was working 3 jobs (no kidding) just so he could impress his friends and family with his Mercedes-Benz.

Read the entire post on Sefu Massamba Shongo Erik's I'm an African in New York blog.

Emeka also points us to some fascinating related items about the "cult of cloth" in Congolese culture, including a Colors Magazine feature (with amazing photos), the "Chic Theory" article in the Australian Humanities Review, and a BBC video documentary.

Image, top: "A three-and-a-half-year-old sapeur — wearing an eye patch in imitation of his uncle, the famouse K.V.V Mouzieto, a grand Sapeur who lives in paris — struts down a dusty street."

Image, inset: "‘I’M A SAPE’: Papy Mosengo, 30, lives with his parents and earns $120 a month — and spends several times that each month on clothes. (Edmund Sanders / LAT)"

Reader comment: Brett Burton says,

Just saw your Boing Boing post about the LA Times' Congolese cloth cult. It reminded me of something I recently read in Vice Magazine, so I did some googling.

On the Vice web site, they mention the recent LA Times piece and point out that they covered the Congolese scene in an article four years ago: Link.

The thing I read was in last month's issue, where Vice profiled the Swenkas of South Africa. Couldn't find a link to that article, but here's one for a Swenka documentary: Link.

Ben Frazier says:

Regarding your post on the Congolese men who would rather starve than look bad — as usual, the Onion beats everyone to the punch by commenting on the phenomenon (albeit using a Westerner as the subject) in this article, which is now over seven years old: Link.

Correction: I goofed when I first posted this, and attributed the body of that "sapeur" post to Emeka Okafor -- my apologies! The prolific Mr. Okafor has so many projects going on -- TED Global, plus he authors at least two excellent blogs, and he is an African entrepreneur living in New York (from Nigeria, specifically). But he is not the author behind I'm An African In New York. Here's an interesting profile piece about his work, from The African Executive: Link.

Clarification: Many BoingBoing readers wrote in to ask if the Emeka Okafor in question is this Emeka Okafor, listed by Wikipedia as an pro NBA player. No.

Wikipedia, disambiguate thyself!

PBS "Now": Can US entrepreneurial know-how save lives in Africa?

PBS "NOW" new media producer Joel Schwartzberg says,

On Friday, May 25 at 8:30 pm (check local listings), NOW travels to Kenya to investigate an enterprising idea: franchising not burger and donut shops, but health services and drugs in rural Africa. American businessmen are teaming with African entrepreneurs to spread for-profit clinics around the country in the hopes of providing quality, affordable medical care to even Kenya’s poorest people. But can they overcome obstacles like extreme poverty, corruption, cheaper fraudulent services, and long distances to establish a sustained solution to a chronic problem?

“If we had as many franchise outlets delivering health care in developing countries as Subway has sandwich shops, we've estimated that we could serve about 120 million people a year,” Businessman Scott Hillstrom, who conceived the idea, told NOW’s David Brancaccio.

This is part of a new beat on NOW and NOW Online called “Enterprising Ideas” that focuses on innovative solutions to social problems around the world. For the next two years, NOW will devote time to examining how people are applying business skills toward a new kind of bottom line: making the world a better place.

Link to video preview (on YouTube, which is a first for these guys), and Link to website launching Friday which will include "more innovator stories, tools and tips for starting new programs and a contest to find a social entrepreneur for special NOW coverage."

Smorgasbord of vintage African TV ads

I recently spent about a month in several West African countries (I'm typing this now from Central America). During my short stay on the continent, I became obsessed with local TV commercials. I believe you can learn a lot about any culture through its ads. I taped a bunch of stuff in hotel rooms, and will blog clips sometime soon -- but for now, I wanted to point to some super cool vintage African TV ads I found online, from the '60s and '70s.

You can find some great classic 1960s TV commercials from Africa on sites like YouTube and Africahit.com, but all of that stuff appears to originate from one source: the amazing Africa archives at Adeater.com. About a dozen MPEG files there, and products include everything from perfume to cool old cars to booze to cigarettes (add it up, you got a recipe for the good life). You can't link directly to the index of Africa commercials, or to any individual videos therein -- the site navigation kind of stinks. But if you search for "Africa" you'll find the stuff.

Here are a few favorites that originated in Adeater's archive: a retro hair product commercial (Petrole Hahn, screengrab above), Omo washing powder (I wonder if the boxer was a famous fighter at the time?), Ploum Ploum men's cologne, An Ivory Coast bank ad from 1967.

And here's a wild 1976 spot for Gauloises cigarettes (screengrab below), presumably for French-speaking West African audiences. Dig the sweet cha-cha-cha score. Includes kung fu fight scene with vigorous chair-tossing and bottle-breakage over heads. "Gauloises, the cigarette of a strong man."

Design Made in Africa: traveling exhibition

"Design Made in Africa" is described as the world's first major traveling exhibit of contemporary African design. The show opened in New York a few weeks ago at 4 World Financial Center, and includes the work of 30 designers from 14 African countries. Works on display range from useful to ornamental: chairs, wall hangings, graphic design, jewelry, lighting, and more. If you happen to be reading this blog post from Morocco, you can check out a companion exhibit at the Batha Museum in Fes.

Either way, hurry: both the New York and the Morocco exhibitions close this weekend, on May 27.

There's a website with more amazing images from Design Made in Africa, but I'm afraid the site was Made In Hell. First Flash, then a popup window, then a video that won't play unless you have DivX installed. Argh. (via Urban Congo, thanks Emeka Okafor!)

China forces 250,000 Tibetans to resettle to "socialist villages"

Snip from an account by Tim Johnson, at McClatchy:

In a massive campaign that recalls the socialist engineering of an earlier era, the Chinese government has relocated some 250,000 Tibetans - nearly one-tenth of the population - from scattered rural hamlets to new "socialist villages," ordering them to build new housing largely at their own expense and without their consent.

The government calls the year-old project the "comfortable housing program," and its stated aim is to present a more modern face for this ancient region, which China has controlled since 1950.

It claims that the new housing on main roads, sometimes only a mile from previous homes, will enable small farmers and herders to have access to schools and jobs, as well as better health care and hygiene.

But the broader aim seems to be remaking Tibet - a region with its own culture, language and religious traditions - in order to have firmer political control over its population. It comes as China prepares for an influx of millions of tourists in the run-up to next year's Summer Olympic Games.

Link. Image: monk at Sera monastery, near Lhasa. Bernardo De Niz/MCT. (thanks, Mike Outmesguine, Laird, and many others)

Previously on BoingBoing:

Google, China, and genocide: web censorship and Tibet

"Hacking the Himalayas": Xeni's 5-part radio series on Tibet for NPR.

Guatemala: "tattooed terrorist," "Antichrist" denied entry

It's hard to imagine a country more traditional, and more religious, than Guatemala. For that reason, news that the country is denying entry to a cult leader who tattooes "666" on his arm, calls himself The Antichrist, and whose (alleged) 2 million followers describe him as a living deity -- it's pretty much the last thing you'd expect there.

Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda (Wikipedia link) is the head of the Florida-based Growing in Grace church. He runs a 24-hour Spanish-language television network, and hosts a radio program broadcast on 287 stations. This week, he tried to fly on his private jet to Guatemala, where he apparently has a big following, to celebrate his 61st birthday.

But Guatemalan officials flagged him as a terrorist, and say he's a security risk because he provokes conflict with Roman Catholics and evangelicals.

Photo at left (Alexandre Meneghini, AP): A follower of Miranda holds a baby with "SSS" painted on her head. The letters stand for Miranda's motto, "salvo, siempre salvo," or "saved, always saved."

Snip from an AP story:

He often takes aim at the Catholic Church — the most powerful faith in Latin America — calling all priests child molesters and saying chastity vows go against the Bible's teachings. Members of his church have torn up images of saints and other religious symbols in El Salvador, and marched in Guatemala and Honduras.

He preaches that sin and the devil do not exist. In January, he revealed tattoos of the numbers 666 on his forearms and declared that he and his followers were Antichrists because their beliefs supersede those of Jesus Christ. The Bible describes the Antichrist as someone who will fill the world with wickedness but be conquered by a second coming of Christ.

Despite the Guatemalan government's security block, his supporters say...

"It has been predestined, and angels will make it happen," said Axel Poessy, Miranda's media director. "He is, after all, God himself."

Link to that AP story. Well, that didn't work out. Miranda was indeed denied entry to Guatemala. Miranda spun the story of the nixed visit as his choice:

He had vowed to defy the ban but canceled Saturday and will instead address the gathering in a video teleconference, said the sect's head pastor in Guatemala, Jorge Batres. "We're a church respectful of the law and we will have to wait until the judge gives us an injunction," Batres said.

Batres said De Jesus Miranda's Guatemalan followers will "firmly fight within the law so that he can come and let the world know that Jesus the Man is in Guatemala."

Link.

The church's website appears to be a very important part of their "Antichrist ministry."

The most interesting part of the site, to me, is this photo gallery documenting "Day of the Tattoo," where followers of de Miranda all got tattoos of "666" and "SSS" ("salvo, siempre salvo") on their bodies to proclaim their faith.

Related posts on BoingBoing:

Xeni's NPR series "Guatemala: Unearthing the Future"

Xeni's notes from the road in Guatemala

Mayan priests to "purge" Iximche after Bush's visit

Guatemala: Photos from indigenous protest of Bush visit

More BB posts about Guatemala

(via Warren Ellis)

Ghana: eat shitto

[Image: thanks, Matthew] Shitto is an allegedly delicious Ghanaian sauce with a name that makes Americans laugh. When you hear someone in Ghana say it, though, the sound of the word actually does not make you think of poop.

I haven't eaten Shitto yet, but everyone in Ghana seems to love it. I'm told the best way to describe it is "sort of like a dark, red pepper salsa but with fermented fish and other stuff."

If the fermented fish part freaks you out, consider the fact that one of the flavors Americans enjoy in Thai cooking is imparted by a liquid extract of fermented fish.

There's an interesting cultural story around Shitto, too. I'm told that has been the "homesick food" of choice for Ghanaians living overseas. That's because it is preserved well and ships well, unlike most of the more delicate flavors and preparations in traditional Ghanaian cuisine.

It's hard to imagine microwaveable banku, for instance. And I have eaten that, and loved it. It's fermented mushy corn, like a sourdough tamale. Like many things, it tastes better the further away you drive from central Accra, into the rural villages in the hills. Mmmmmm. Smoky, wood fire taste, and that sweet-salty-sour corn mash, wrapped and steamed in leaves.

Ethan Zuckerman, who lived and worked in Ghana for several years, asked me to pick him up a few cans of Shitto while I'm over here -- and then discovered that a store near his northeastern US town carries it.

Ethan also turned me on to a recent episode of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain's food show which was all about the flavors of Ghana: Link 1, Link 2.

Here's a rudimentary Wikipedia article on Ghanaian food.

Update/Correction:

Reader Lamisi says,

Just to add to your culture lesson. Shito is the Ga word for pepper. Shito is a gravy made from dried pepper,smoked dried fish,dried shrimp power,variety of species,ginger,onion,garlic,tomatoes and seasoning.

The fish is not fermented as you put it but smoked,dried and powdered. It is indeed a delicacy that most Ghanaians eat.

Shitto can be eaten with rice,yams,gari,Kenkey,spaghetti, bread etc.I brought a big jar of home-made shito to the states.

East Africa: Photoblogging aid work in Kenya

Joseph Linaschke, a friend of mine who's a photographer and software technologist (with a very large company I've been asked not to mention here) is headed to Kenya soon with camera and laptop. He's going there to document the work of IHF, an aid group that serves indigenous children living in extreme poverty. Here's an introductory post about the project.

Image: a young person from the Kenyan Pokot tribe. Courtesy IHF.

Sourcing "Africa's a continent. Not a crisis."

Regarding the unattributed title of yesterday's post, "Africa's a continent. Not a crisis" -- Ethan Zuckerman wrote it. He explains,

"That's me, I'm afraid, from Link. The paragraph it comes from, more or less..."

"Africa's not an issue. It's not a cause or a problem. It's a continent - a complicated, confusing, beautiful continent, with wealth and poverty, peace and strife, success and tragedy. When Africa becomes a cause, we tend to see only one side of the continent - a helpless, dependent, starving side that "needs our help"."

"The post was written during debate over the Bob Geldof Live8 nonsense - the event caused a huge debate in the African and Afrophile blogging community and this was my response to the tendency for the event to blur all the problems and hopes of the continent into a single word."

West Africa: vintage hotel radios with email indicators

I have encountered these handsome, clunky old analog radios in hotel rooms throughout Benin.

Each of those numbered buttons is supposed to give you a different radio station (usually only one or two kinda work, if you're lucky). The slider thing (often missing) is volume. I do not know what that input jack is for, presumably headphones.

But the best part of this is the little envelope icon, with an associated red light.

I like to imagine that this is an email indicator.

My red email status light hasn't lit up yet, but perhaps that's just because nobody in Africa wants to send email to my hotel room radio.

The devices were present in very cheap hotels in smaller towns ($10-40/night, and they often double as brothels), but I also saw them in the most expensive hotel in the country ($200-400 a night, and for all I know, there may be sex work happening there too -- but more discreetly).

I have been listening to local radio stations a lot throughout the trip, on these devices, but also in cars. Some of the people I've met here have shared insight on the role of local, indigenous-language radio in popular culture. I'm told that the talk show hosts who speak Fon, Twi, Ga, Yoruba, Hausa -- whatever the predominant local language is -- are often more influential and have more dedicated fan bases than hosts who deliver in English or French.

Someone I met from the World Bank shared information with me about the importance of radio is as a communications medium in a number of African countries -- specifically, a case study in Mali -- and the internet ties into this in an interesting way you might not expect. More on that soon.

I don't speak any West African languages well enough to grok an entire radio broadcast, but I can understand some tiny bits and pieces. Mostly, I've just been trying to absorb as much as I can of the cultures here, and listening to lots of different radio helps. Even if some of it ends up just being sound, not intelligible words, to my still-uneducated ears.

Ouidah, Benin: visit to the temple of the pythons

[ Images: a visit to the python temple in Ouidah, Benin. Sort of a tourist trap, but a beautiful one, and also a legitimate center of voudun worship, from what I'm told. But most daily religious practice of this faith takes place in far more private places, not really accessible to foreign visitors. 2007, Xeni Jardin, cc licensed. ]

Africa is a continent, not a crisis.

[ Image: Brothers Rodolfo and Roberto who live in Ouidah, Benin. 2007, Xeni Jardin, cc licensed. ]

"Africa is a continent, not a crisis."

I read those words on an African blog before I took off from the US, and I've been thinking about them everywhere I go here. Good words for any visiting American to remember. I lost the link and attribution, like an idiot, but I'll post it later when I find it.

Before I left, I was pretty ignorant about Africa. So I asked others who had closer ties for advice, and most importantly, their favorite RSS feeds.

I've found that regional blogs really are one of the best ways to learn about the world, and that is definitely the case here. Some of the blogs I've read voraciously over the last month -- and will continue to after I return -- are Africa Unchained, Emeka Okafor's Timbuktu Chronicles, Global Voices, and the terrific but not frequently updated Afrigadget. Ethan Zuckerman was generous with insight on Ghana, and other geek friends pointed me to some really interesting things in the region.

I'm typing this post from the city of Cotonou in the West African republic of Benin. Where I'm sitting right now, at a higher-end hotel in the country's largest city, things are pretty comfy. We've been in far more modest digs up to now, and sometimes traveling under rough circumstances, so this is a big change. I can see the sea, I have a cold bottle of water, and the WiFi works.

Inside this hotel, there's an interesting scene. The crowd is a mix of be-suited diplomats, NGO types, World Bank folk, lots of Belgian military troops in camo, important-looking Nigerian men in traditional dress (royalty? Oil traders? Businessmen? Could be any combination), and important-looking dudes from the Mideast (some of whom are hanging out with the important-looking Nigerians). Oh, and some wilted-looking tourists.

A hotel employee plays piano in the hotel lobby every afternoon. His songbook is eclectic. He just now finished the theme to the Brady Bunch, after some Chopin. Now he's doing "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." Yesterday I caught him playing "Jingle Bells." Everything here tends to be just slightly off.

At this hotel, you can buy hourly "wee-fee" access codes for 2,000 CFA per hour (about $4). Mostly, the connection works. But not so for life outside the hotel. Mobile phones and SMS use are everywhere. But internet access for blogging has been scarce.

Many of the places I've been along the route are not well wired -- and many others in more rural or inland areas, not wired at all. The questions of how communications technology is developing in West Africa, who's investing, who's developing, who profits, and how it impacts life -- those are are the reasons I'm here.

That scarcity of internet access is part of why I haven't been blogging for the past few weeks. But the other reason is this: back at home in the US, my life is whatever happens between blog posts. I'm always online. Even at night, with my Treo on my nightstand. Here I've been soaking up all that I can from the world and the people around me, every hour I'm here, with plans to process later.

The rhythm of blogging means that a lot my work back in the US happens in short, frequent bursts. Change that pace, and your understanding of the world changes. Here, it felt like the appropriate thing to do. Immerse, absorb, gather all the information I possibly can, take advantage of the luxury of being able to do just that. Then, process it all after a spell. Store and forward.

Benin is a small country, about half the size of Tennessee. Ghana and Togo -- the other places I've been so far -- are relatively small, too. But there is so much to experience here. I've spend three weeks on the ground so far, traveling extensively, meeting with a lot of people, visiting many different communities. I still feel overwhelmed by all there is to learn about this region, and how very little I still know or understand about Africa as a whole.

Most of what I'll post here for starters are small, close-up observations of the everyday fabric. Little details that add up to define the place. I'll share more about the bigger technology stories a bit later on.

This place is vast, diverse, and amazing, and it has already changed me.

Headed to West Africa

Image: one of the oldest photographs I could find of Benin. Obviously, it's not a representative snapshot of West Africa today, but any exploration of the future should start with a look at the past. Edmond Fortier, "An Indigenous Market in French West Africa." Circa 1900 photograph of a market scene in what was then the kingdom of Dahomey, situated in what is now the Republic of Benin.

I'm headed to West Africa for a few weeks on a reporting project. Ghana, Benin, and Togo. I'll be blogging notes from the road here as circumstances and connectivity permit. Image: Edmond Fortier, "An Indigenous Market in French West Africa." Circa 1900 photograph of a market scene in what was then the kingdom of Dahomey, situated in what is now the Republic of Benin.

Egypt: Supporters work to free blogger Kareem Amer

For today's edition of the NPR News program "Day to Day," I filed a report on Kareem Amer, the Egyptian blogger recently sentenced to four years in prison -- and the changing role of bloggers in Egypt. Voices you'll hear in this report:

Egypt's ambassador to the US, Nabil Fahmy

Cairo-based blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah

Lawrence W