Dried fish on manioc leaf sauce

Dried fish on manioc leaf sauce, a recipe in Baynunk language of Senegal

Baynunk is an Atlantic language spoken in southern Senegal, northern Guinea-Bissau, and the neighboring  Republic of Gambia. It belongs to the Nyun-Buy group (according to Ethnologue) – along with Buy, language of the Cobiana ethnic group – of the Niger-Congo language family.

The origins of the Baynunk people are still rather uncertain. But the Baynunk themselves claim to be the most ancient peoples of Casamance: the ancestors are said to have come from the East, chased away by the Malinke and forced to end up settling in Casamance. The Malinke call them Abaynunko (“those who were chased away and seek shelter”). The term Abaynunko decomposes as follows: abay (“he who has been chased away”) and nunko (“he who seeks shelter”).

Ingredients:

• manioc leaves
• palm nuts
• tomatoes
• garlic
• 3 cabbages
• onion
• aubergine
• dried fish
• salt
• rice

How to cook it:

Recipe by Awa Sambou.

Watch the video to know about the recipe!

This is a recipe from Senegal, told by Awa Sambou in Baynunk language, spoken in the region of Casamance.

The fish is dried, the sauce is made from manioc, and the dish itself is served on thinly ground, local Niamone rice.

Awa Sambou is the one teasing our taste buds here. On beautiful footage by Muriel Lutz, she introduces the ingredients and utensils, and unveils her cooking secrets, in Baynunk language from Casamance.

© Text and image: www.sorosoro.org

Daratt

Title: Daratt (Dry Season)

Director: Mahamat Saleh Haroun

Writer: Mahamat Saleh Haroun

Year: 2006

Running time: 96 minutes

Country: Chad

Plot summary:

Set in the wake of the long Chadian civil war, 16-year-old Atim (Ali Bacha Barkai) is sent by his grandfather to the city to kill Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro), the man who murdered his father before Atim's birth. Atim, carrying his father's gun, finds Nassara running a bakery. Unexpectedly, the taciturn Nassara takes Atim under his wing as the son he never had and begins teaching him how to run the bakery. The emotionally conflicted Atim is drawn into the life of Nassara and his pregnant wife (Aziza Hisseine), before a finale that Variety described as "sharp, fast and unexpected."

The film was one of seven films from non-Western cultures commissioned by Peter Sellars' New Crowned Hope Festival to commemorate the 250th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Inspiration for the themes of revenge and reconciliation was taken from Mozart's La clemenza di Tito.

© Text: Wikipedia

The Seri of Sonora

Name: Seri (sometimes called Comcaac)

Living Area: Estado de Sonora, Mexico

Population: 716 (2006)

Language: Seri (518 speakers)

Comments:   

The Seris are an indigenous group of the Mexican state of Sonora. The majority reside on the Seri communal property (Spanish, ejido), in the towns of Punta Chueca (Seri Socaaix) and El Desemboque (Seri Haxöl Iihom) on the mainland coast of the Gulf of California. Tiburón Island (Tahejöc) and San Esteban Island (Cofteecöl and sometimes Hast) were part of their traditional territory, but some Seris also lived in various places on the mainland. They were historically seminomadic hunter-gatherers who maintained an intimate relationship with both the sea and the land. It is one of the ethnic groups of Mexico that has most strongly maintained its language and culture during the years after contact with Spanish and Mexican cultures.

The Seri people are not related culturally or linguistically to other groups that have lived in the area, such as the Opata, Yaqui, O'odham, or Cochimí. The Seri language is distinct from all others in the region and is considered a linguistic isolate.

The name Seri is an exonym of uncertain origin. (Claims that it is from Opata or from Yaqui were nineteenth-century speculations based on similarity to words in those languages and not with clear evidence.) Their name for themselves is Comcaac (phonemically /komkɑɑk/, phonetically [koŋ’kɑ:k]); singular: Cmiique (phonemically /kmiikɛ/), phonetically [‘kw̃ĩ:k:ɛ])

The Seri were formerly divided into six bands. They were:

Xiica hai iic coii ("those that are towards the wind"), who inhabited a large area to north of the other bands.

Xiica xnaai iicp coii ("those that are to the south"), who inhabited the coast from Bahía Kino to Guaymas.

Tahejöc comcaac ("Tiburón Island people"), who inhabited the coasts of Tiburón Island, and the coast of Mexico opposite it, north of the xiica xnaai iicp coii.

Heeno comcaac ("desert people"), who inhabited the central valley of Tiburón Island.

Xnaamotat ("those that came from the south"), who inhabited a small strip between the xiica hai iic coii and the Tahejöc comcaac.

Xiica Hast ano coii ("those that are in San Esteban Island"), who inhabited San Esteban Island and the southern coast of Tiburón Island.

Three of the bands were further subdivided. Relations between bands were not always friendly, and internal fights sometimes occurred.

After the Seri population was greatly reduced by conflicts with the Mexican government and the O'odham, and epidemics of smallpox and measles, the remaining Seris grouped together and the band divisions were lost.

The autoethnonym of the Seri people, Comcaac, was first recorded by United States Boundary Commissioner John Russell Bartlett, who was in the area for a short visit in early 1852. The word was included in the list of approximately 180 words that Bartlett archived in the Bureau of American Ethnology (now part of the National Anthropological Archive, housed at the Smithsonian). He recorded the word as "komkak", which reflected the pronunciation of the word at that time (although he missed the vowel length and did not indicate stress). Other word lists, obtained by other people during the last half of the nineteenth century, confirm that pronunciation. The phonetic rule by which the consonant /m/ is pronounced as a velar nasal in this context (after an unstressed vowel and preceding a velar consonant) obviously did not come about until sometime in the early twentieth century. The singular form, Cmiique, was first recorded by French explorer and philologist Alphonse Pinart in 1879. He recorded the word as "kmike", which also obviously reflected the pronunciation of the word at that time (although he also missed the vowel length). The phonetic rule by which the consonant /m/ is pronounced as a nasalized velar approximant in this context (after a velar stop) did not come about until sometime in the mid twentieth century.

Known by their:

a) New year’s celebrations

It is also a custom to celebrate the New Year Comcáac each new moon of July. The empirical calendar is confirmed by means of certain changes in the vegetation, the weather and by the appearance of certain constellations. The celebration also includes dances of Pascola, games for men and women.

b) Celebration of the Basket

the celebration of the great basket takes place when a Comcáac woman concludes the weave of a basket or “corita” of great size. The celebration is organized by her godmother and the games and dances of Pascola are executed by the people of the community. The celebration culminates with the weaver throwing gifts.

To know more about them:

http://www.sil.org/mexico/seri/A003i-People-sei.htm

http://www.lutisuc.org.mx/

© Text: Wikipedia, Image: Lilycaziim

TEFAF Art And Antiques Fair

Name: TEFAF Art and Antiques Fair

Date and opening times: 18-27 March 2011, 11-19h

Place: MECC (Maastricht Exhibition & Congress Centre), Forum 100, Maastricht (The Netherlands)

Contact: info@tefaf.com

Webpage: www.tefaf.com

Comments:

TEFAF to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2012

The 2011 edition of TEFAF Maastricht closed on Sunday 27th March. The Fair is often referred to as a museum in which everything is for sale. The breadth and quality of objects are admired throughout the world. In 2011 TEFAF attracted visitors from over 181 museums from 20 countries. Principal sponsor AXA Art brought more than 2,000 collectors to TEFAF this year. At Maastricht-Aachen airport 154 private aircrafts landed during the course of the Fair. Next year TEFAF celebrates its 25th anniversary from 16-25 March 2012. The Mayor of Maastricht, Onno Hoes, said, “The City of Maastricht and TEFAF are inseparable and are of great mutual benefit.  I very much look forward to celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Fair next year and the City looks forward to working with the Fair over the next quarter century”

© Text and image: www.tefaf.com

The Royal Ballet of Cambodia

Renowned for its graceful hand gestures and stunning costumes, the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, also known as Khmer Classical Dance, has been closely associated with the Khmer court for over one thousand years. Performances would traditionally accompany royal ceremonies and observances such as coronations, marriages, funerals or Khmer holidays. This art form, which narrowly escaped annihilation in the 1970s, is cherished by many Cambodians.

Infused with a sacred and symbolic role, the dance embodies the traditional values of refinement, respect and spirituality. Its repertory perpetuates the legends associated with the origins of the Khmer people. Consequently, Cambodians have long esteemed this tradition as the emblem of Khmer culture. Four distinct character types exist in the classical repertory: Neang the woman, Neayrong the man, Yeak the giant, and Sva the monkey. Each possesses distinctive colours, costumes, makeup and masks.The gestures and poses, mastered by the dancers only after years of intensive training, evoke the gamut of human emotions, from fear and rage to love and joy. An orchestra accompanies the dance, and a female chorus provides a running commentary on the plot, highlighting the emotions mimed by the dancers, who were considered the kings’ messengers to the gods and to the ancestors.

The Royal Ballet practically ceased to exist under the repressive rule of the Khmer Rouge, who eliminated almost all master dancers and musicians. Immediately after Pol Pot’s defeat in 1979, dance troupes re-emerged and performances of the ancient repertory resumed. The ballet has regained much of its former splendour but still faces numerous difficulties, such as a lack of funding and suitable performance spaces, competition from modern media and the risk of becoming a mere tourist attraction.

Inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2003)

© Text and images: UNESCO

Threads of Africa

Exhibition: Threads from Africa
Dates: 3 February – 31 March 2011

Opening times: Mon – Sat 9h30-17h00

Place: Gold of Africa Barbier Mueller Museum, 96 Strand Street, Cape Town (South Africa)

Entrance fee: R30

Webpage:  www.threadsofafrica.com 

About the exhibition:

We invite you to view our first collection of bowls and bangles woven by talented weavers from the Thukela (Tugela) Valley in fine 18-carat gold, silver, copper, brass and shakudo wire.

A man in Australia had a dream. He dreamt of a golden bowl. A little bowl, hand-woven. He owned a copper wire bowl woven in the Thukela Valley, KwaZulu-Natal, and his engineering background and interest in metals set him thinking about strands of gold. Who were the weavers? Where did they obtain their wire?

There are difficulties in weaving with 18-carat gold wire, and the first little bowl was an experiment. It began in 2002, when Julia Meintjes was assembling an art collection for a Sydney-based company, RFC Corporate Finance, which offers investment and corporate advice in the resources, energy and industrial sectors. The company has clients in the South African mining industry, and when the MD, Rob Adamson, saw a woven copper bowl by an artist from Mdukatshani in the Thukela (Tugela) Valley, he asked whether a similar bowl could be made in gold wire. The commission was given to Mzonzima Dladla, and because of technical, creative and logistical challenges, it was more than two years before that first little gold bowl was completed.

Other bowls would follow, some in 18-carat gold, some combining gold with various coppers, silver, brass and shakudo. In 2008 the University of Stellenbosch commissioned a special edition of six bowls, which were presented to a select group of their donors - and the project was formally named Threads of Africa.

Nobody knows when the first gold wire was hammered into strips on the South African veld. A thousand years ago? In 1933 the first evidence of handmade gold wire was unearthed in graves at Mapungubwe, a rocky hilltop near the Limpopo River.

Now a world Heritage Site, Mapungubwe would yield spectacular finds of gold artefacts, including gold beans, gold foil, and the famous gold rhino. Gold wire anklets and bangles, however, were the most important from a technological point of view. The wire appears to have been hammered out by hand and then smoothed off with sand or stone, before being wound into a helix.

Who were the goldsmiths, and where did they find the gold? The answers have been elusive. Mapungubwe was briefly occupied between 1220 AD and 1290 AD, a period that was part of the Late Iron Age, when African metalsmiths were already skilled at the art of extracting metal from rock. They had little interest in gold, however. It was too soft for utility, and it had no song. It was copper and iron they were after. They needed iron for weapons and hoes, and copper was used for decoration. Copper was the “red gold” of Africa, the prestige metal, offered to the gods, and buried in the graves of Africa.

Early metallurgists worked with fire and, a thousand years before Mapungubwe was settled, forgotten men had been testing their minds on how to set fire to draw molten iron from rock. You can pick up the slag of their furnaces today. It lies on the surface of our modern landscapes, the scattered debris of ancient fires that mark the radical changes of the Early Iron Age. It was an age of innovation and settlement. By 300 AD a new way of life had spread from the Limpopo south into Natal, and the well-wooded valleys of the Thukela River. Almost every village had a smelting site, and there were shallow pits where village potters used fire to bake earthenware pots incised with pretty decorations.

There are still potters at work in Thukela valley today, digging into ant heaps to scrape shallow pits which are used as simple kilns for firing. The pots are made to order, or sold along the road on pension days – a local trade based on the need to use clay pots for beer in any ritual involving the amadlozi, or family spirits. Some of these potters supply the clay bowls which are used as moulds by the weavers of the Threads of Africa project.

Although wirework has been described as a ‘quintessentially Central and South African craft’ practiced by different tribal people over hundreds of years, there is no evidence of gold wire baskets or bowls in Africa’s archeological record.

© Text and image: www.threadsofafrica.com