This article is about fermenting for preservation, not alcohol. Preservation matters: "The climate makes the preservation of fresh farm products such as milk, fruits, and vegetables very challenging, resulting in reports of over 70% loss of some products yearly"
That 70% sounds a bit high.
The Liberia Airport Authority (LAA) has informed the Senate Transport Committee that a group of birds, feeding from nearby dumpsites, has been causing significant disruptions to the airport’s power supply.Initially, the LAA had attributed the disruption to an electrical issue stemming from the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) power grid.
However, in a subsequent update, LAA officials revealed that the birds have been perching on the airport’s transformers, leading to frequent electricity problems. This unusual interference has resulted in intermittent power outages, significantly impacting operations at the airport.
Image taken from Knews Online.
"six months imprisonment with an option to pay $250 fine"
I wonder what would have happened if she'd lit a cigar with a 1000 niara note.
From a Nigerian source: "It was at a time there was a severe scarcity of Naira notes following the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s withdrawal of old 200, 500 and 1000 Naira notes from circulation and replacement of the affected currency notes with newly designed versions which were hard to come by at the time." I'm guessing that flaunting wealth that way when the economy was in a mess from lack of currency was what led them to charge her with currency defacement. Not because she'd done anything substantively wrong, just that she'd angered a lot of people...
The article explains a book by John Collins. "The agbadza ... is a recreational dance of the Ewe people and emerged in the 1920s out of much faster traditional war dance."
The author explains the parts of the agbadza as contributions within a 12-beat measure, in which no single instrument plays every beat. Even with the explanation I have trouble following the music. Perhaps someone can tell whether this Ghanaian performance matches the description.
Bethel Revival Choir does an Agbadza gospel medley, on non-traditional instruments.
Or an older recording... I can at least tell that some of the rhythms aren't quite as simple as the article describes.
UPDATE: Wikipedia has me in way over my head very quickly. I'm a fan of examples...
The one who died "was facing another charge of throwing a grenade at police officers while in prison."
Interesting what you can get ahold of in an Ethiopian prison.
It's a noble project. But can it be sustained? Why were so many trees taken down in the first place?
I followed a hunch--this popped up as one of the first sites: "To date, Casamance has lost over 10 000 hectares of its forests to illegal logging, representing an estimated 1 million trees. ... This includes rosewood, which is particularly high in demand in China."
An extensive network of actors has been cashing in on large-scale illegal logging and timber trafficking in the region. These include armed groups, Senegalese and Gambian businessmen, foreign actors (particularly from India and China) and also the local population
Diémé's project: "Up to 12 kinds are being planted, from palms and tamarinds to kapoks and lemon trees" seems to focus on fruit or nut-bearing trees, whose wood is probably less in demand in China, and useful enough locally for there to be some resistance to cutting them down.
Killick doesn't actually find anything that was better. The closest statement is:
In fact, as Schmidt notes, students of African metallurgy have documented an amazing variety of processes, many with no known counterparts on other continents - "a spectrum of variation of such diversity as to suggest that the term "bloomery" no longer does justice" to the range of evidence (p. 220). ... Schmidt goes on to argue that continuous innovation was the normal state in African iron smelting, with each iron worker improvising off a preexisting repertoire of techniques - much, I suppose, like a jazz musician improvising off a standard melody. I'm not sure that I agree with this latter point; iron working can succeed only within a very narrow window of temperature and gas composition, which tends to impose rather strict limits upon individual departures from a successful process.
I think Fischer misread the article. Killick takes the time to point out the flaws in claims that iron smelting was invented in Africa.
One of the books Killick reviewed was "Les Routes du Fer en Afrique," initially proposed by UNESCO with a plan for a number of activities which in the event turned out to result mostly in scholarly journal articles. Surprise, surprise. One of the activities startled me: "consider whether indigenous African techniques of iron production could be revived in remote rural areas as a cost-effective alternative to importing iron from outside the continent."
The answer is obviously no--small scale works aren't going to be efficient (see Mao's Great Leap Forward) and scrap metal is readily available to even remote iron workers.
His adventures and Knivet's are included with editor's comments. Names are not necessarily the same as modern names--for example Sierra Leone is probably not the modern country.
Granted, captives aren't always perfectly accurate witnesses (Knivet claims to have been places he probably wasn't), but I grant witnesses on the scene a bit more credibility than commenters centuries later.
Battell's group are not paladins:
We found a village of negroes, which are sent from San Tome, for the Portugals of San Tome do use, when their slaves be sick or weak, to send them thither to get their strength again. For the islands are very fruitful, and though there be no fresh water, yet they maintain themselves with the wine of the palm-trees. Having refreshed ourselves with the fruit of this island, we burned the village.
Granted, this might have been revenge against the San Tome folk, but then it would seem to miss the mark a bit.
In search of trade, he found himself captive (although a useful one) to the Gagas, when his Portugese captors abandoned him. ("Adventures" is a better description than "Travels".)
The women are very fruitful, but they enjoy none of their children: for as soon as the woman is delivered of her child, it is presently buried quick [alive], so that there is not one child brought up in all this generation. But when they take any town they keep the boys and girls of thirteen or fourteen years of age as their own children. But the men and women they kill and eat. These little boys they train up in the wars, and hang a collar about their necks for a disgrace, which is never taken off till he proveth himself a man, and bring his enemy’s head to the General: and then it is taken off and he is a freeman, and is called Gonso or soldier. This maketh them all desperate, and forward to be free, and counted men: and so they do increase. In all this camp there were but twelve natural Gagas that were their captains, and fourteen or fifteen women. For it is more than fifty years since they came from Serra de Lion, which was their native country. But their camp is sixteen thousand strong, and sometimes more.
Later visitors suggest this may have only been the children born inside the war camp--but maybe customs changed.
He succeeds in escaping, but the Portugese wind up with him again.
Here they made me serve like a drudge, for both day and night I carried some stone and lime to make a fort.It lyeth right under the Line, and standeth in a bottom in the middle of four hills, and about are many fogges [bogs] but not one river. It is the unfirmest country under the sun. Here the Portugals die like chickens. You shall see men in the morning very lusty, and within two hours dead. Others, that if they but wet their legs(*), presently they swell bigger than their middles; others break in the sides with a draught of water. O, if you did know the intolerable heat of the country, you would think yourself better a thousand times dead, than to live there a week. There you shall see poor soldiers lie in troops, gaping like camelians [camels?] for a puff of wind.
Here lived I three months, not as the Portugals did, taking of physick, and every week letting of blood and keeping close in their houses when they had any rain, observing hours, and times to go abroad morning and evening, and never to eat but at such and such times. I was glad when I had got anything at morning, noon, or night; I thank God I did work all day from morning till night; had it been rain or never so great heat, I had always my health as well as I have in England.
Perhaps the Portugals' approach to medicine left somewhat to be desired.
"Of all these friars the Italian Capuchins alone appear to have done good work; ... Many of the other friars seem to have been men whom their superiors in Europe were glad to part with; and the same may be said with reference to the secular clergy."
UPDATE (*): elephantiasis? but that's mosquito-borne. But there are snail-borne diseases, not all classified.
Speaking of blackouts: "Members of the regional parliament attending the ECOWAS Fifth Legislative Parliamentary Seminar and 2022 Extraordinary Session of the ECOWAS Parliament were forced to call off the session on Thursday due to the sudden breakdown of the generator supplying the Ministerial Complex electricity." They had requested that Liberia host the session as part of their year-long celebrations.
The issue of power supply at the Ministerial Complex has been one of an embarrassment, some employees there said. Most of the ministries at the Complex do not work on some days due to lack of electricity.“What is happening here is that some almost all of the ministries here have their own small generators that can supply at least two offices and the rest of the offices remain off. People come to work and they cannot work because there is no electricity, so, we come, sign in, sit and do nothing until it’s time for us to go back home,” an employee with one of the ministries there said.
This is the dry season, and the Mount Coffee Hydro station doesn't get as much water through it.
Some scholars have been very eager to move iron smelting into the first millenium BC in sub-Sarahan Africa, but once you get away from Meroe (Nubia, in ages-old contact w/ Egypt), the evidence is pretty frail and disputed, the wikipedia article on Bantu expansion to the contrary. The chronology is muddled, but it looks as though both iron and bronze started being made a bit before 1000AD. (Coincidentally, that's about the time the Andeans started making bronze too. It seems bronze was rare and beautiful enough that they used it for ornamets rather than tools/weapons. Maybe given more time--but they didn't have time.)
The failure of iron smelting technology to spread seems to demand a little explanation. There would be two main secrets: what was the rock used, and what was the procedure. After knowing those, you could figure out the details with trial and error. And, once these were known, the technology did spread. Low grade iron ore is fairly widespread, and charcoal is not hard to come by either.
In fact, I'd think making bronze would have been the trickier thing to teach. Tin is rare. Spies in Nubia wouldn't know exactly where the ore came from (not local). There's some in what's now Nigeria, and once they figured that out they started in making bronzes--now famous. Copper -- that people already had.
At any rate, I wonder if there was an effort to keep the materials and process secret from the rest of the Africans. It would help with the Nubian balance of trade ...
The rest of Africa did learn. The way smelting was treated is suggestive: "The operations of sub-Saharan smelters were associated almost ubiquitously with extensive ritual. ... The smelter's role was identified as special, with the smelter accorded a particular status, either elevated or in some cases as a member of an outsider caste. ... The reproductive symbolism of the smelting process was often made explicit by the anthropomorphic design of furnaces found ranging from Nigeria to southern Africa." (The emergence of the bloom of iron was like a birth.)
The symbolism and secrecy could have developed independently in each place, but I suspect they were there from the start--from the first men (women were not allowed) who learned smelting. Did they pick that up from the Nubians?
I've had a hobby of trying to figure out how people with limited resources would discover things. For example, unless you have enough metal to experiment with, and possibly waste, you're not likely to try to mix metals to see what you get. Take bronze, discovered/created over 6000 years ago. Copper is moderately common, tin is rare. If you only have a little bit of tin, you'll be very careful with it.
Discovering what happens when you mix it with copper is only likely to happen by accident--if you try stirring melted tin with a copper rod, for instance. Even small amounts of bronze would be a very interesting discovery and prompt further investigation. After some trial and error, you'd discover that you didn't need much tin in your copper. Some people suggest the discovery came when copper and tin ore rocks mixed in the same charcoal fire, but a copper pot plus charcoal in a bed of tin ore rubble plus somebody being careless with the fire seems more likely.
If you are a tin producer, you might try adulterating the product, and wind up with something odd. Very odd, and maybe worth researching. And as a tin producer, you might have enough tin to research with. (On the other hand, I'd expect that you would then import copper and export bronze, but in real life the bronze producers imported tin.)
If you're rich enough to do alloy research, to try to find something as good as that famous type of copper that's so extra hard, you'll come up with some interesting things eventually. It'll take a while to find a good mixture, but even if you die of arsenic poisoning somebody else can take up the work where you left off.
I'd like to think it was the third possibility--I'm fond of basic research--but I think it might have been the second.
All of this educational material is easy to find and use--if you have good internet connectivity. The value-added with Ashcon is pre-downloading the material to a local server and simplifying the access. It developed thus:
"Whilst in my first semester in Ashesi, I developed a simple website with educational videos from Khan Academy and hosted it on my laptop. This was in response to the many requests I received from fellow students to copy the videos for them onto their flash drives. These were videos teaching topics related to the introductory courses we were taking that semester. Students who had seen me watching Khan Academy videos wanted to use them to revise for the upcoming mid-semester exam. Over that weekend, my classmates downloaded about a thousand videos, which motivated me to develop the site further. This gave birth to AshCon."
A little good news in the world...
Hank's claim that "NGOs exist to do one thing only - stay in existence" is a bit overstated--he doesn't discuss the religious ones--but someone who went to study abroad for a year who wanted to work with NGO's upon graduation returned with what seemed a much less idealistic attitude towards them and a different career plan. (Still donates to carefully selected NGOs)
"Chris David, a reporter working for Radio Paraclete, has been found dead in Gbarnga with gunshots wounds. David’s death has sparked protests from motorcyclists in Gbarnga, who are demanding the intervention of the Liberia National Police."
Ballah said as a mark of respect and protest for the death of Chris, all radio stations in the county have decided to suspend major programs for several days....
They further said should all of the mentioned actions fail to yield any fruitful results; they will shut down all of their radio stations because the police cannot guarantee the safety and protection of their employees.
...
Chris was said to have also been a motorcyclist who does his normal hustle when he’s off duty.
The latest update:
Prince Garlawolo, a notorious criminal in Gbarnga, Tuesday admitted to police investigators that he and the deceased Radio Paraclete journalist Chris David had gone to steal a goat on the night of October 29 on Tucker Farm before he (David) was shot in the stomach by the owner of the farm.
...
Garlawolo, who was arrested on November 2 following a manhunt, informed police that he and David had been successful in stealing goats at night and selling to a local restaurant owner in Gbarnga, Geeta Bryant.
Radio Paraclete is a Catholic radio station that began broadcasting on Pentacost 2020.
Sometimes it pays to wait for the rest of the story.
The recent riots frequently associated with the protests are larded with both kinds: thieves famished for $300 sneakers and arsonists burning what they can.
In Liberia, except for the Kru who keep dogs as pets, dogs (Basenji) are tools: "Kiki (dog) will fill the pot." Either the dog will help you catch something to eat, or you will eat the dog. And yet I heard a proverb that whoever would kill a dog would kill a man. Possibly this was a Kru proverb, but I wasn't in a Kru area. And they weren't talking about the owner killing his useless dog, but someone else. The dog is "just" property--but the dog-killer is more than merely a property-destroyer. And, don't forget, mere "property" can be the difference between the owner eating and starving.
Sure, people are more important the property, but they are linked. The destroyer may just be destroying property right now, but his hatred threatens people, not just things.
Or maybe it wasn't quite that way.
There was more to his story than that one incident. A newspaper article gives some of his background, and says it was a \$500,000 loan with only \$90,000 cash and the rest bonds (and 7%). The revolt started when he "tried to extend his 2-year term of president by edict." This site doesn't mention the sums but says that he may have drowned thanks to the money belt he wore, or may have been dragged naked through the streets of Monrovia to be beated to death (the latter was designated the official version when Tubman named the True Whig Party building after Roye. Or maybe he was shot after escaping from prison. (He was there for several months.)
He was a free black man of Ibo descent living in Ohio, who learned how precarious life was for even free black men. He inherited his father's wealth, and went to Liberia in 1846, where he became a very prosperous merchant. When he was elected president he had a plan to build railroads to link the hinterland with the coast for trade, and to build new schools. But... That takes money, and the terms of the 100,000 pound loan were harsh. And the restrictions on trade weren't calculated to spur the economy (in fact, the restrictions sparked wars with tribes whose traditional trade was squelched: including slave trade, btw).
In October 1871 the dispute over this issue and the dissatisfaction with his handling of the financial affairs of the country resulted in riots, street fights between supporters of the two rival political parties, the Republican Party and the True Whig Party, and the shelling of the President's residence. Reportedly, President Roye himself started the actual fighting by flinging hand grenades to the crowds in the streets of Monrovia.In fact, the underlying cause of the fighting was the "colour-conflict", the struggle for political power between the mulattoes and the people of darker complexion.
Roye was pure Ibo, while the ruling elite were "mulatto." Many of the settlers were more dark-skinned--they were lower caste than the elite. Lower than they were the "Congos" who were those liberated from slave ships and dumped in the country. Lowest of all were the indigenous tribes. So Roye was rich and of the second tier caste. He'd just borrowed a huge amount with at best a very long term return (assuming the money was spent wisely and honestly) and a great deal of short-term pain. Declaring that an election had just been held to change the constitution to allow 4-year terms was the last straw.
My memory may have turned 100K pounds to 1M dollars, but I'm pretty sure most of the rest of this wasn't in the textbook I read.
This was in it, though: One of the things Liberia was dealing with was encroachments by the English and French. The Liberians still remember.
I have to admit I knew little of him beyond the bizarre Seychelles fiasco, but the Congo story of the Wild Geese is worth reading. The full story puts him and his men's crimes in better perspective. Read it.
He hated communism. I wonder whether he expressed his opinions much about the new South Africa. He was in France researching books on (e.g.) the Cathars for about 20 years up to 2009, so he wasn't around for a lot of the transition. He was about 90 when he came back home--and maybe not as fiery as he used to be.
I'm not sure the Ancient Order of Froth Blowers was exactly "well-disciplined," though.
The cover art was not promising--it is a map of Liberia divided into regions with tribe names scattered about--many in the wrong places. The internal map is better, though.
Upsides:
He ends the chapter with "It is the duty of every Liberian of the hinterland to fight for what their ancestors tried to achieve by sacrificing their blood for what the Kru termed "mu joboe bo." The world should be the limit. There should be no country on earth of which a Liberian is not a citizen." mu joboe bo means to go toward the sea, in context meaning to migrate for opportunity.
Downsides:
After giving a list of different cults (Leopard society, Water Leopard and Crocodile society, Bush Hog and Weaver Bird associations, etc), he wrote "It is not in the best interest of the reader to know the details or which tribes practice the various cults but suffice it to say that they exist in Liberia."
The meat of the book is about how the tribes and the "Americo's" got along, and how lies and oppression (including slavery) won out. Sort of. The Vai appealed to the British for protection, and so large chunks of what might have been Liberia wound up part of Sierra Leone. (This, though the author doesn't mention it, include some diamond mining areas--the Blood Diamonds might have been set in Liberia instead.). He describes several of the rebellions against the Americo's and includes a chapter of Albert Porte's description of the rice riots in April 1979 that eventually led to the coup against Tolbert.
Interestingly, Wulah sides with Tolbert about the rice price rise--in general. Tolbert had a rice farm business that would have benefitted greatly and thus a vested interest in a price rise, but there was really no other way to encourage self-sufficiency in rice, except by letting the price rise.
The tribes might have been integrated into the nation, but even if the Americo-Liberians had been interested in sharing power, the paradigm of government was wrong--you would need a model more like the Swiss than the US; very strongly federal. But given how often the tribes fought each other, it isn't obvious that even a very federal system would have worked.
Other little bits along the way: the hinterland tribes believed in reincarnation--but only about a dozen times or so.
On the issue of marriage, there is a misconception that Liberian tribes are polygamous. Accordingly, we are constantly told that at one time our ancestors had only one wife. In Liberia, as well as the United States and elsewhere, polygamy is the privilege of the well-to-do. Because of a taboo in Africa against sexual intercourse between the parents of a nursing child, polygamy is an institution that is absolutely necessary.
It may be something of a specialty interest, but it is worth reading if you have the interest.
