While my family and friends in Europe are probably already enjoying a fancy New Year's Eve dinner with cava, I'm still in my pajamas sipping on my morning tea and reviewing my blog posts in 2009 (I hate this timezone).
So here are 10 of my favorite posts in 2009, so you can have something to read tomorrow while you recover from the partying. In no particular order:
I loved seeing K'naan play live for a small audience in my neighborhood, and to hear him talk about his beloved Somalia. It was spring in San Francisco, but it was greay and cold, was feeling a bit down and uninspired, but he really made my day. Here are some photos too.
I just love it when The Onion covers Africa. Always brilliant.
This post started out on Twitter and it ended up being a collection of initiatives trying to show the positive sides of Africa, which there's no shortage of. It was a very rewarding post to write.
I don't usually write very personal posts on this blog, so I loved talking about my friend Tim and remember the good old times in Kinshasa with him. This post made me really nostalgic.
For some reason March was a very prolific month for me. The post about Tim's photography was written on that month, as well as a review of a photo exhibit, an African Diaspora event a movie about Liberia, a book presentation and a Congolese music band.
It was my first big event in Abengourou, and I enjoyed sharing my impressions and photos about it as there isn't much content about Abengourou online.
I thoroughly enjoyed this documentary movie made up of archive material of a concert that took place in Kinshasa during the famous Rumble in the jungle boxing fight of 1974. Once again, I loved being transported back to Kinshasa's golden years.
I loved sharing these old black & white photos of Francophone West Africa, from the French National Archives.
I was so impressed to learn about this online project while attending a conference in South Africa, that of course I had to write about it. It blew my mind.
Thanks to my visit to South Africa to attend the Highway Africa conference, I finally got to learn a bit about this country and to educate myself further. I also realized things are still very complex down there, which is what this post was about.
Since Côte d'Ivoire is the world's largest producer of cocoa beans and I'm a big fan of chocolate, it was inevitable that I would end up checking out a cocoa plantation during my stay here. I had already received multiple invitations from friends and strangers, so one fine dusty Saturday I embarked on a rickety moped to visit one of them in a little village about 10km from Abengourou. Our host was the son of the owner, a jovial fellow named Max who is also a relative of the Indénié King (pictured above).
He took us on a two-hour tour inside the plantation whle we sucked on the sweet sap covering the cocoa beans of a freshly-cut pod. Afterwards we went fishing (without much success), and finished up the day with some fried bananas and a beer. Quite the perfect day.
At one point, while I was taking photos, Max asked me to make sure no children were pictured since there are big fines for plantation owners who employ children. I didn't see any doing any work, just village children playing around but apparently it's a huge problem in the cocoa industry. And not only are child labor practices common, but unfortunately also child trafficking - mostly from neighboring Mali.
Another thing I didn't know was that Côte d'Ivoire only exports its huge cocoa bean production, not processing any of it to make chocolate domestically. I was told that there's only one chocolate company in the country, Chocodi which used to be Swiss until last year when it was bought out by an Ivorian group, that actually makes chocolate locally. But it seems that they make it with cocoa butter processed in Europe that they have to import, even though it's made of Ivorian beans*. Such is the cocoa business.
Also, it turns out that at the beginning of this month cocoa prices reached a peak, the highest in the last 25 years due to disease affecting yields. Although I'm wondering how they calculate the prices since, according to articles like this one on Les Afriques, Côte d'Ivoire doesn't know how many tonnes it exports since the sacks leave the harbors with a "theoretical weight", but are not actually weighed.
* I know this sounds strange, and I haven't researched this myself - that's what a guy working for the International Cocoa Organization in Abengourou told me
Apparently, these are the covers of some French atlases for children:
The left one says:
Europe, the cradle of extraordinary civilizations.
The right one:
Africa, the kingdom of wild animals.
They remind me of a phrase coined by the blog Wronging Rights to describe Africa: Land of rape and lions. Obviously.
Although I'm sure they abound in many other countries, it seems to me that in Côte d'Ivoire traditional healers are etiher extremely popular or very good at promoting themselves. Not only they advertise their services in the towns, but also on the side of the roads indicating their presence in the adjacent villages. Maybe it's just that Ivorians are better-versed at marketing, but I had never seen so many signs of traditional healers than here and so informative.
For example, take this one below seen in Abengourou. It says that the healer in question (guérisseur in French) is a Master in spiritual and natural sciences (although it doesn't say who gave him that title), and that he's a specialist in "mystical and spiritual ailments". He also fights against witchcraft, spells and curses. Even the price is listed on the sign: only 225 FCFA per consultation, which is just half a US dollar.
Since I haven't visited any of these healers I can't speak for their effectiveness, but I'm convinced that they serve a purpose for certain problems. Almost certainly I wouldn't trust them for things like malaria, HIV/Aids or other sexually transmitted diseases, it seems they have a placebo effect on mental health issues:
Usually we think of traditional healing as easy to “respectfully dismiss,” as clearly it’s not evidence based… right? Well, actually, there is some evidence supporting traditional healing. Joop de Jong, one of the founders of the global Transcultural Psychiatry Organization, presented some evidence just over a year ago that in a randomized clinical trial of counseling versus traditional healing in Burundi, the traditional healers had a much greater healing effect.
Next time I feel some mystical pains or somebody casts a spell on me, I'll have to visit my local healer to test his powers. I wonder if they have a cure for jetlag, though...
Now that I have a faster internet connection and a bit of time on my hands as it's too cold for me to enjoy doing anything outside the house, I find myself browsing through photographer's websites that I had been bookmarking for months. Here are a few of South Africa that I particularly enjoyed, mostly because they show very different sides of the country.
This is how he defines himself in his website:
When I was child I asked my grandmother, whilst walking back from 'goga metse', "what was on the moon? She replied, "an old woman with a bucket of water on her head walking back home with a child." I still believe that to this day. Her name is Sinah Ntholi Nkoane and I am that child.I am lebogang nkoane. I am merely exploring photography.
Btw, you can also follow him on Twitter at @LTDN (which is how I found his photography in the first place).
I don't really know much about this photographer, only that I think he's based in Johannesburg and that he has amazing abstract compositions that remind me of cubist painters like Mondrian.
This Johannesburg-based photographer became famous for her series of portraits of black lesbians which she started in 2007, challenging the public's perceptions of female and male identity. She then continued with a series of intimate scenes of the domestic life of black lesbian couples in South Africa, such as the triptych below.
Another Johannesburg-based photographer, but again with a completely different style. In this case, the series that gave him popularity was Invisible Women, of women cleaning the inner city of Johannesburg which he photographed over an eight-month period at night between 11pm and 3.30am.
More recently he showed a series titled Men Only, focusing on the George Goch hostel on the East Rand of Johannesburg built in 1961 to house migrant mineworkers. Only men are allowed in such hostels, and in the collective imaginary they are places of violence, sexual abuse and illegal trafficking. They are also places where the legacy of apartheid is still clearly evident, despite the gains of the past 15 years of democracy. Mlangeni says:
It is these imaginings that led me to photograph life in these buildings, going beyond the stereotypes and trying to capture the normality that exists in an abnormal, unnatural situation.' Men's hostels are not easily approachable places, both practically and visually, and, Mlangeni says, 'my curiosity and maleness weren't enough to gain me access to this private world'. It took him two years to develop the trust and familiarity needed to show the residents' lives with honesty and clarity.
Veleko became popular thanks to her Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, a series of bold, funky street fashion portraits providing a contemporary face to South Africa.
This is what this Cape Town-based photographer says about himself:
Extremely verastile and adaptable photographer with an easy way with people.My goal is to change the way people see their differences and what makes them unique.
To travel the world and show new and exciting perspectives on the planet we live on.
I come from Spain, the land of delicious cured meats, so growing up it never crossed my mind to question the very act of eating meat - especially because jamón is a symbol of identity and a source of national pride. Vegetarians are not something you encounter on a daily basis, and the ones who visit often end up having a taste of jamón or meat tapas. The only time I thought about it was when my mom cooked our pet chicken one day after he almost pecked my brother’s eye out, but that was a naughty chicken.
a colleague's rabbit that has undoubtedly already been eaten...
Here in Abengourou everybody seems to have some kind of animal in their backyard or terrace that sooner or later gets eaten, most typically chickens but also goats or rabbits. I even saw a one day in somebody’s yard, looking scared to death. In the market they sell them either live, or freshly killed in one piece. If the animal is big, say a beef, you have to point at the parts you’d like and they carve them out for you. The heads are often on display at the counter, since absolutely everything is eaten.
It’s also common to see people transporting live animals on bicycles or in taxis, and to keep them into very small spaces such as a cardboard box or a plastic bag. On the road to Abidjan I’ve often seen live sheep or goats tied up to the top of taxis, such as the ones pictured below, who seem to survive the ride in spite of the heat (it takes about 3 hours to get there).
In the two and a half months I’ve been here I haven’t cooked any meat at home because of all that. One weekend a guest visiting from out of town, so I bought 4 live chickens and my guards killed them, plucked their feathers out and cleaned them up for me. I emphasized that they should do it away from my sight, which they found highly amusing. Then my friend grilled them on the barbecue I borrowed from the neighbor while I made salad and French fries.
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The other day, while in Agnibilekrou, I went to visit an industrial chicken farm which supplies the whole country with eggs and chickens.
A colleague of mine is planning to start his own one day as his retirement activity, so he wanted to see how everything worked and asked me to take pictures of the whole production process. Fortunately we didn’t visit the slaughterhouse, where 5,000 chickens are killed every hour. However, we did see a room full of big sacks (pictured below) that seemed to be cheeping. When I asked what was inside, the guy showing us around opened one of the sacks which were stuffed with newborn chicks that were being discarded for not being good enough for raising. “Don’t worry, they’ll be dead by the evening”, he said. It was 10am.
Coming from a place where meat is only a final product and you never really have to deal with the process of how that meat gets to your plate, this is quite a change. In the US I buy free range chickens and eggs, organic meat and even tofu. But it all comes nicely cut and packaged with several layers of plastic so I don’t have to see where it comes from. I'm rarely reminded of the death that had to happen for me to enjoy that food. In Côte d’Ivoire, though, I’m reminded it every day, all the time, of where meat comes from. And it makes me feel like a murderer.
Some cool shots from Abidjan's golden years under Houphouët-Boigny's rule. Those were the years when it was the most desirable tourist destination in West Africa, with casinos and fancy shopping areas, when it earned the cheesy nickname of "the Paris of Africa" and ads like these were produced to attract international tourists to its glamourous hotels like the Ivoire Hotel.
Today is International Migrant's Day, and although one way or another we are all migrants, some people have a harder time than others migrating. Such as children. Or people forced to migrate because of the less than ideal conditions back home. This film is a reminder of how hard it is.
[H/T Oso]
Abengourou, the town where I'm living, is the capital of a region called Moyen Comoé. This region has 3 provinces, Abengourou, Bettié and Agnibilekrou. A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to go for a quick visit to latter, which is the second biggerst town in the region. Although it's only 50 km from Abengorou, the second half of the road is full of potholes and so the ride took a bit over an hour. I didn't see much of the town, as I was there only for a work meeting, but this little mosque with a man hanging out by the shade on a random street really stood up. For me it's really representative of the small town life here in Cote d'Ivoire.
And since a few days ago it was the International Day against HIV/Aids, here's a very popular song in Côte d'Ivoire advocating for more tolerance for Aids victims. The title is "Ne l'abandonne pas", don't abandon him/her.rn
