Linguist Tucker Childs and his research assistant, Hannah Sarvasy, have been studying Kim, a dying language in Sierra Leone. More at the New York Times:
Jogue, yipe, simoi are three short words for foods in Kim, a language in Sierra Leone that Tucker Childs has been trying, for the past three years, to write down, record and understand.
Kim is a dying language, and Dr. Childs a field linguist. From his base here in Tei, a small fishing village on the Waanje River, he canoes up the narrow waterways that cut across the river’s floodplain, and hikes a few miles inland, to where the last Kim communities remain. Based on recordings taken there, he has devised an alphabet and compiled a dictionary and is finishing a book on the grammar.
Africa has about 2,000 of the world’s 6,000 languages. Many are still unwritten, some have yet to be named and many will probably disappear. For centuries, social and economic incentives have been working against Kim and in favor of Mende, a language used widely in the region, until finally, Dr. Childs speculates, the Kim language has been pushed to the verge of extinction.
It is hard not to love India, the beauty of its people and the magic of the country stands today in stark contrast to the agony of Pakistan. Though I had already been in India for ten days, I did not come to experience India until I arrived in Varanasi, the ancient holy city of Benares on the Ganges. One arrives in India in the middle of the night and when I arrived in New Delhi on a hot August night, I overnighted at the airport before catching a flight to Leh, the capital of Ladakh up in the Himalayas. I would spend ten days traveling in there and in Kashmir before flying back to Varanasi. Ladakh and Kashmir are part of India but they are not the real India. The former is Buddhist and the latter Muslim and not suggest that India is simply Hindu because one of the achievements of India has been the construct of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious secular state. It’s more that Ladakh and Kashmir had a certain quiet. India is a joyous bundle of colorful chaos. It is the constant motion that excites the senses.
Coming in from the airport in Varanasi one drives past villages and fields and after the vastness and solitude of the Himalayas, it is the bustle that captures one’s attention. Entering the old city was an experience I will never forget. As my cab entered the city, we came upon a round point and suddenly our ride was at a crawl for from every direction came cars, bajaj (I lived in Indonesia so I prefer the Bahasa term but in India, they are rickshaws or tuk tuks in Thailand), bicycles and just simply a mass of humanity.
The above ad from the Times of India speaks well to the magic of India.
Eid al-Adha is a time of plenty and festivity for Muslims around the world. Eid al-Adha (Arabic: عيد الأضحى ) or the Festival of Sacrifice is a religious festival celebrated by Muslims and Druze worldwide and it follows the end of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The festival revolves the legend of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac.
But this year in Mauritania, the crushing economic downturn and the country’s political instability have left thousands of people with very little to celebrate and half of the population living in poverty.
Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall reports from Nouakchott.
Colombia’s Museo de Oro, the Gold Musuem, in Bogotá is set to re-open in two weeks after undergoing major renovations. The Museo de Oro houses tens of thousands of artifacts created by the various indigenous cultures in Colombia that were expert goldsmiths. Their work, of course, gave rise to the legend of El Dorado, the Gilded One.
La Balsa Muisca
La Balsa Muisca, above, is the representation of the El Dorado legend. Every year during a full moon, the cacique of the Muisca tribe would be covered in gold dust and taken out to the middle of the Laguna de Guatavita with gold offerings made to the Muisca gods. Once in the middle of the lake, he would submerge into the cold waters to wash off the gold dust.
The Museo de Oro will re-open on November 2, 2008. For more information in English, please visit their website at Museo de Oro.
Namibia’s Etosha National Park is one of the world’s great national parks. Meaning “great white basin,” Etosha National Park is dominated by a large mineral basin that is part of the larger Kalahari basin and desert. The park is one of the world’s oldest national parks having been declared a park in 1907 when Namibia was still German South West Africa. While colonialism was a brutal experience for Africa, the Germans were probably the best of Africa’s colonial masters. While most colonies in Africa were a money losing enterprise for European countries (not for corporations but for European treasuries), the Germans had profitable colonies. German efficiency and German bureaucracy and all that. Germany would lose its African possessions in the wake of World War I and the area would pass to South African control.
Etosha National Park covers an area of 22 270 square km. Though it is a dry harsh place, it is home to 114 mammal species, 340 bird species, 110 reptile species, 16 amphibian species and, surprisingly, one species of fish. The Etosha Pan covers about a quarter of the park. The pan was originally a lake fed by the Kunene River. However, the course of the river changed thousands of years ago and the lake dried up leaving a large dusty depression of salt and dusty clay which fills only if the rains are heavy and even then only holds water for a short time. This temporary water in the Etosha Pan attracts thousands of wading birds including impressive flocks of flamingos. The perennial springs along the edges of the Etosha Pan draw large concentrations of wildlife and birds.
While the animals in the park are protected and the park is one Africa’s best managed natural reserves, last month Namibia lifted its ban on the sale of ivory. More on the temporary lifting of the ban of the sale of ivory from All Africa.
The world’s glaciers are in retreat and perhaps no where else on Earth has the effects of global climate change been more visible than in Montana’s Glacier National Park and in Alberta’s Waterton National Park. When the area was first surveyed by naturalists in the 1880s, the two parks contained over 150 different glaciers. Today there are under 35 left and by 2030 there will be none. The pristine wilderness is a globally significant biological hotspot, protecting elk, moose, deer, mountain goats, bull trout and a host of other wildlife and plant species. It is also one of the most intact and diverse ecosystems in this type of climate in the world. It isn’t just natual beauty in peril, it’s also the aquifier in the Mountain West that depends on replenishments from the snow pack. That aquifier then grows crops and provides drinking water.
But just this week comes word of a new threat to the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, which spans the border between Montana and Alberta. Multiple proposals for mountain-top removal coal mines and coalbed methane extraction in this area are threatening the Canadian side of the border. These include Cline Mining’s Lodgepole Mine, which the U.S. State Department has opposed due to “significant adverse impacts.”
If you care add your voice in protecting the Glacier-Waterton International Peace Park, you can sign this petition to the Right Honorable Michael H. Wilson, Canadian Ambassador to the United States.
The Queen is putting up her heels. The notoriously lovable drag queen Heklina will end her twelve year run at Trannyshack, a gay club party held at San Francisco’s The Stud bar. Actually, I have never been. I am not a bar type, I was more a clubbing gay boy and while The Stud does offer dancing, the space is tight on the dance floor. The main impediment, however, to my attendance is that Trannyshack starts at midnight on Tuesday night. Hard to fit that into a Wall Street career.
My roommates have gone and over the years, word would filter through the ghetto that is the Castro about who made appearances at Trannyshack. Stars like Grace Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Debbie Harry and RuPaul among others all trekked there. Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters got her start there. Not just an event and a show, Trannyshack ran AIDS fundraisers and provided a political education to many gay boys on the lives of transexuals. Every year, the main event was the Trannyshack Beauty Pagent that became a required stop for city politicos. I remember former Mayor Willie Brown pictured there with drag queens kissing him from every side.
The closing event will be held Saturday, August 23rd at the Regency Center (not at The Stud), 1300 Sutter at Van Ness. Doors open at 9PM, show starts at 10 PM sharp. Heklina appreciates punctuality.
Actually, the Białowieża Forest is split between Poland and Belrus. The Białowieża Forest is what is left of Europe’s forest primaeval that once stretch from the Urals to the Atlantic. It’s the dark forest of Hansel and Gretel, the source of our myths and legends. Patches of this great European forest existed throughout Europe as late as the 18th century but now apart from the preserve on the Polish-Belorussian border, all of it is gone. Cut in the name of progress and firewood.
In the Białowieża Forest, you will find 500 year old oaks with lichens dangling from them. Great Mamamuszi is the thickest oak in the forest. The trunk circumference at the height of 4 feet (130 cm) from its base is 690 cm or 22 feet. The tree’s name stems from Molière’s The Bourgeois Gentleman, in which the main protagonist, a Mr Jourdain, was appointed the Mamamouchi by a Turkish ambassador. The tree has a column-like trunk and reaches a height is 34 m (111 feet). The tree’s circumference can widen by 10 cm (not quite 4 inches) a year. Of all the oaks in Białowieża with a circumference greater than 600 cm (19 feet), it is in the best condition.
It is the last holdout of the wisent, the European bison, which is smaller than its American cousin. There are badgers, woodpeckers, deer, owls and perhaps even a magical creature or two. Ironically, the Białowieża Forest exists because it was set aside as a hunting preserve. The forest was declared a hunting reserve in 1541 for the protection of wisent. It passed from Polish kings to Russian Tsars who hunted in the preserve. In Soviet times, members of Politboro had their dachas in the Białowieża Forest. The park is a UNESCO World Hertitage Site. But now Poland and Belarus want to “manage” the forest. Why does that worry me?
You’ll find more of the world’s natural parks in the enviroment and travel sections. One park a week is highlighted.
Here are some of my photographs from a trip to Burma in January 2004.
The Sweetness of a Child at Inle Lake
The Inle Lake region is towards the Burmese border with Laos and China heading towards the Golden Triangle. At a paya (Buddhist temple), this young lad smiled up right into my camera. You can see my reflection in his bright shining eyes.
The Plains of Bagan
Bagan is the reason I travel. Located on a dusty plain just off the Irrawaddy in central Burma, thousands of stupas were erected between the years 900 to 1100. I first became aware of Bagan one day when I was about eight in my Uncle Juan’s library perusing his National Geograhic magazines. I remember opening an inset fold and pulling it out I saw something so magical that I knew I just had to go see it for myself. Bagan is likely the least known of the world’s wonders but perhaps the most magical.
The School at the Inwa Monastery
One of best shots ever. At a monastery school at Inwa, we came upon this class of young monks chanting their recitations. The light streamed in through a hole in the roof hitting their faces. Pure luck. The monks didn’t know quite what to make of me.
Confidence
This is young lad was brimming with confidence. He came up to me and asked me to take his photo. I took several. The paste on his cheeks is called tanaka. It’s made from the bark of a tree and ground into a paste. Only women and children really wear it. It’s meant as a sunscreen but the Burmese either slap it on or take great care to form an attractive cosmetic shape.
Kayan Woman
The long necked women of the Kayan begin wear these brass rings at an early age. It stretches their neck and weakens their neck muscles so that in time they can not support their heads without snapping their necks. They take them off to rest or sleep.
Today marks Bolivia’s independence day. While Bolivia is, in effect, an artificial state carved out of the old Vice Royalty of Peru in 1825, the country has managed to survive and endure a tragic history. Since independence Bolivia has lost over half of its national territory to Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. The country holds the record for golpe de estados (coups) and more military governments than one can count but the country has been relatively stable (by Bolivian standards) since 1993. Still today it remains a highly polarized land with a deep cleavage between rich and poor and some the world’s lowest socio-economic standards.
Evo Morales, a former coca farmer and peasant union leader, has been President of Bolivia since January 2006. Morales forms part of the hard left in the Latin America and his government is closely tied to Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. However, his government remains embattled with five of Bolivia’s nine provinces in more or less open rebellion. These provinces are energy-rich and have resented Morales’ attempts to nationalize the natural gas resources and devote the income to alleviating poverty in the highland regions of Bolivia. They recently held autonomy referendums which passed by a wide margin and have set the stage for a recall of Morales from office.
One of my favourite journeys is the drive from La Paz down to the Yungas of northern Bolivia down the infamous carretera de la muerte, the highway of death, on which hundreds of people lose their lives each year. It is an amazing if perilous descent from the Andes into the Amazon basin.
One of the quirks of Bolivia is that though Bolivia lost its coast in 1879 in the War of the Pacific to Chile, Bolivia still has a navy with admirals. No sea-faring ships but admirals.
