Tag Archives: Africa

Australia Day, Bush Fire Edition

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Australia Day has come around again, but it doesn’t seem fitting to post pictures of me standing near wallabies in New South Wales or recalling how they call Rice Krispies Rice Bubbles in Oz or my Christmas Day walk around in Canberra in a T-shirt.

Seems like one damn thing after another for the Lucky Country this year. Some choice recent headlines:

“Australia’s Wild Weather: First Fires, Now Baseball-Size Hail” — New York Times, Jan. 20

“Australia Rains Bring Relief From Fires — and a Surge in Deadly Spiders” — Smithsonian, Jan. 24

“Coronavirus: first Australian case confirmed in Victoria as five people tested in NSW” — The Guardian, Jan. 24

“Record 81 days of bad air quality in Sydney” — Sydney Morning Herald, Jan. 24.

Curious, I took a look at the web site of NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, which (as it says) “distributes Near Real-Time (NRT) active fire data within 3 hours of satellite observation from both the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).”

Took a screenshot of the Fire Map of Australia on the site as it appeared on Friday. Fires in the previous 24 hours, it says.

I can see why the air is bad in Sydney and why parts of Canberra — which is a small city practically plopped down in the bush — have been evacuated.

Still, I’m not sure the map helps me grasp the magnitude of the bush fires. Maybe that’s not really possible. I wondered about that even more when I looked at Africa at the same time.
Looks like central Africa is burning to a crisp. But do the many points of fire denote blazes regardless of size? That way a lot of small fires — which could be entirely normal for central Africa right now — wouldn’t be a catastrophe on the order of a smaller number of much larger fires in Australia.

Another NASA page hints at an answer. First, it says, “The colors are based on a count of the number (not size) of fires observed within a 1,000-square-kilometer area.” Also: “Across Africa, a band of widespread agricultural burning sweeps north to south over the continent as the dry season progresses each year.”

I’ve changed my mind. I think I will post a picture of wallabies. In hopes that better times are ahead for Australia.

Pebbly Beach NSW Dec 1991

December 1991: We’re feeding wallabies at Pebbly Beach on the NSW coast, which was damaged by fire recently, according to local reports. The other fellow is Peter, a friend I stayed with for a while in Canberra. Lost touch with him long ago; hope he’s well.

Burundian 100 Franc Note

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I should have known that Burundi uses francs, but I didn’t until I acquired a 100 franc note from that African nation as part of a collection of cheap but colorful currency. Just more ignorance on my part. Interesting that a lot of Francophone African countries use the franc, but neither France nor Belgium does.
The gentleman on the obverse is Louis Rwagasore, or Crown Prince Louis Rwagasore, Burundi nationalist and son of Mwambutsa IV, king of Burundi from 1915 to 1966. Louis Rwagasore was briefly prime minister in 1961, ahead of independence the next year, but was assassinated in a hotel dining room. Suspects were rounded up and executed. Belgian authorities were suspected of having a hand in the murder, but that was never proved.

In the background of the note is Louis Rwagasore’s tomb.

On the reverse, house building. And a warning not to counterfeit the notes.

In theory, 100 Burundian francs is worth a bit more than five U.S. cents. No wonder there have never been any Burundian centimes.

The Clan-Na-Gael Guards Monument, Mount Carmel Cemetery

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An obscure monument to obscure men fighting for a now-obscure cause. That’s what I found at Mount Carmel Cemetery last week when I spied the Clan-Na-Gael Guards Monument. What a find.

The Clan-Na-Gael Guards Monument, Mount Carmel CemeteryObscure isn’t meant as a pejorative. People besotted with fame might think it’s one, but obscurity is the common fate of almost everyone and everything. Life’s still worth living. In future millennia, we’ll all be as distinctive as grains of sand on a beach. It won’t even take that long. That’s probably as it should be.

Yet we memorialize. In stone sometimes, no doubt since mankind learned to carve. I’m no expert on the psychology of memorials, but I’d guess they’re mostly for those who already remember: family, friends, colleagues, comrades-at-arms, or a public who read the newspaper stories, saw the newsreels, recalled the special bulletin interrupting a radio or TV show. Memorializing for posterity might be given lip service, but that’s all it is.

The front of the Clan-Na-Gael Monument says (in all caps, but that screams):

Erected by the
Clan-Na-Gael Guards
To the memory of their
Departed comrades

The Clan-Na-Gael was, of course, dedicated to Irish independence. Any enemy of the British was a friend of theirs, such as Imperial Germany 100 years ago, though this memorial goes back a little further. I shouldn’t have been surprised to read the side of the memorial, yet I was:

Dedicated to the memory of
Lieut. Michael O’Hara Co. A
Lieut. Thos. Naughton Co. B
Who died in South Africa
While serving in the
Irish Brigade
Of the Boer Army 1900

Irishmen in the Boer War? Yes, indeed. Not just any Irishmen — though I’ve read there were a fair number in South Africa at the time, working in the mines — but Irishmen from Chicago who headed out to Africa for a chance to stick it to the British.

Soon, I came across a digitized version of an anti-British polemic, Boer Fight for Freedom, written in 1902 by Michael Davitt (an associate of Charles Stuart Parnell, and interesting in his own right). In the book, there’s a passage about the Chicago Irish who fought for the Boers:

The CHICAGO IRISH-AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS

This small contingent of volunteers was spoken of in Pretoria as the “finest-looking” body of men that had yet reached the Transvaal capital from abroad. They numbered about forty, excluding the medicos and non-combatants, and were all young men of splendid physique and of the best soldierly qualities.

They were under the command of Captain O’Connor, of the Clan-na-Gael Guards, and joined Blake’s Irish Brigade. President Kruger extended a special reception to the company, and addressed them in complimentary terms before they started for the front.
Lord Roberts was on the point of advancing from Bloemfontein when the Chicago men arrived, and they were hurried forward to Brandfort along with other reenforcements for De la Rey, who was in command until the arrival of Botha.

O’Connor and his men acquitted themselves most creditably in all the rear-guard actions fought from Brandfort to Pretoria; Viljoen’s Band Brigade, Blake’s and O’Connor’s men, with Hassell’s scouts, doing their share of fighting in all the engagements during events and occurrences which were well calculated to damp the enthusiasm of the allies of the Boer cause.

It is, however, under trying circumstances, offering little or no compensation for services or sacrifice, save what comes from the consciousness of a duty well performed, that men are best tested in mind and metal, and the work done during that most disheartening time was worth many a more successful campaign fought under brighter hopes for the cause of liberty.

The Clan-Na-Gael Guards Monument, Mount Carmel CemeteryBut what of the memorial itself? I found digitized information about that, too, in The Reporter, a Chicago-based national trade publication “devoted to the granite and marble monumental trade,” the masthead says (man, Google wants to digitize everything).

The October 1914 edition of the magazine tells us that, “Sunday, September 27th, there was unveiled with due ceremony, in Mt. Carmel cemetery at Hillside (a suburb), a Barre granite monument to the memory of Lieutenants Michael O’Hara and Thomas Naughton, who lost their lives while serving with the Boers against the British in South Africa. They were the only ones killed out about 40 Clan-na-Gael guards who went to the war from Chicago.

“The monument is a shaft with conventional bases, die, plinth and shaft, and was furnished by the Moore Monument Co., the price being about $1,800.”

That was fairly serious money, about $43,800 in 2017 dollars. I don’t doubt that the surviving members of the Clan-na-Gael Guards’ foray to Africa got their money’s worth.

One Nakfa Note

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Among the autocratic nations of world, Eritrea has managed an astonishing achievement. According to Reporters With Borders, which ranks which countries abuse their journalists most and least, Eritrea comes in dead last — 180 out of 180, even worse than North Korea.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Human Rights Watch reports that “the United Nations High Commission for Refugees reported at the end of 2014 that 416,857 Eritreans have lodged asylum claims or are registered as refugees, over 9 percent of the country’s population. UNHCR released no comprehensive figures for 2015, but reported about 39,000 Eritreans had applied for asylum by October in 44 industrialized countries alone. In October, 10 members of Eritrea’s national soccer team sought asylum in Botswana.

“The commission of inquiry concluded that grave human rights violations ‘incite an ever-increasing number of Eritreans to leave their country.’ Based on over 500 interviews, the UN commission found that the Eritrean government engages in ‘systemic, widespread and gross human rights violations,’ and that the abuses occur in the ‘context of a total lack of rule of law’ with the result that it ‘is not the law that rules Eritreans, but fear.’ ”

But at least the faces are happy on its money, the nakfa. Interestingly, the currency is named after the city of Nakfa, which was an important nexus of resistance during the Eritrean War of Independence.
One NakfaWere anyone interested in exchanging a 1 nakfa note, in theory it’s worth about 6.5 U.S. cents, but only because it’s pegged to the dollar. And in fact, the note I have isn’t even money in Eritrea any more, having been replaced by newer notes.
1 Nakfa Note reverseI also wonder why the despots of Eritrea kept that name for the country. I understand it’s derived from the ancient Greek name for the Red Sea, and it’s something the Italians dreamed up as part of their jerry-built imperial ventures during the Scramble for Africa. Why not something harking back even further (as woeful Zimbabwe did)? Such as Axum.

Four Cards From Afar

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Might as well end the week with more about postcards. The following, from Ed, have been pinned to the wall of my office since I received them in the late 2000s. The text is his message on each card.

Bora Bora“Have circumnavigated the island in a tevaka, outrigger canoe. It is way prettier than I expected. Fed sting rays yesterday, watched a turtle swim toward the open ocean. Story itself is being difficult, but trip is great fun.”

Yap“I suppose it’s the cliche postcard from Yap, but then, for an extremely beautiful island, the postcards kind of suck. So far, I love it here. Topless women greet you at the airport, flowers are blooming everywhere, and outside the town, it is very, very quiet. Unlike the Tahiti story, which is like pulling teeth, this one is going to be extremely easy. And I haven’t even seen the manta rays or giant fruit bats yet. Marvelous.”

Uganda“Technically, haven’t been here yet, but going tomorrow. Today, saw ~50 elephants and dozen giraffe, countless zebras, antelopes and buffalo, 4 lions, 2 leopards. It really is like being inside a national geo special.”

Timbuktu“I’ve been here & you haven’t. Ha.”

To that last one, I think I answered by sending him a postcard of the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids and saying exactly the same thing. He admitted it was true.

The Krannert Art Museum

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Time to praise university art museums: generally unpretentious, inexpensive and not so large that you can’t have a good look-see in a short time. One of the places Lilly and I visited at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was the Krannert Art Museum, which has ten galleries and art ranging from ancient Egypt and Pre-Columbian to much more recent items.

One so recent that it was created using an iPhone: “A Lexicon of Dusk.”
The Krannert Art MuseumOver the last six years, a Houston artist named Ruth Robbins took her iPhone out and took pictures at dusk. From these, she made a series of 26 different postcards, copies of which were on a long shelf at the gallery. That’s the artwork.

“Printed as postcards for the viewer to take away — a distributed work of art in line with conceptual art practices — the images show richly colored ambiguous skies and whatever else she happened to have seen at the time: lights low on the horizon, an electricity pole, a snow-covered landscape, an equestrian statue,” the sign near the cards says. “Longitude and latitude coordinates are documented on each image…” That, and an exact date and time when the image was made.

The best part? Postcards are free to take, adds the sign. I took one of each. I’ve already mailed a few.

In the room adjoining the postcard exhibit was an amusing series called “The First and Last of the Modernists,” by Lorraine O’Grady, pairing images of Baudelaire with Michael Jackson.

The Krannert Art MuseumI’ve had a soft spot for Baudelaire since an entertaining acquaintance of mine recited “Be Drunk” — I think it was this translation — at a party at our house late in my college years, ca. 1982. As for the King of Pop, I can’t claim to be a fan, but I respect his reach. I heard his songs walking down the streets of the 10 European countries I visited in the summer of ’83, even East Germany, but maybe not the Vatican City, and even then I might have heard something from a transistor radio someone was carrying at the Piazza San Pietro.

Another room sported some African art. Not just pre-Scramble works from lost states and misty kingdoms, but more modern items. These are two of a particularly striking series, “Seven Lines From Djwartou” by Yelimane Fall.

Krannert Art MuseumKrannert Art MuseumI appreciated these visually, not as someone who can read Arabic. The artist-calligrapher hails from Senegal, and is a devotee of one Sheikh Amadou Bamba, founder of the Sufi brotherhood Mourides in that country, and who wrote the poem “Djawartou” in the early 20th century, among many other things.

As the BBC notes, “Senegal’s most powerful men are not politicians, but the leaders of the country’s Islamic Sufi brotherhoods, to which a very large proportion of Senegalese belong, and whose influence pervades every aspect of Senegalese life.”

Seems that the Mourides are a very big deal in their corner of the world and, from what I can tell from a brief look, eschew the poisons of Wahhabism, and stress hard work among their members (work hard, make money, support the sect). And there are enclaves of them elsewhere. According to Religion News, “Their dictum, ‘pray as if you will die tomorrow and work as if you will live for ever,’ has brought the Mourides economic success wherever they have settled. In New York, the Mourides established their own community, Little Senegal, and July 28 has officially been designated Sheikh Amadou Bamba day.”

Remarkable the things that go into making an image on the wall. I never knew any of that. I don’t expect to make a detailed study of Senegal, but it’s good to be reminded that there are whole other worlds here on Earth yet beyond one’s experience.

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton

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I’m about halfway through Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton (1990) by Edward Rice, subtitled in its Amazon entry, “The Secret Agent Who Made the Pilgrimage to Mecca, Discovered the Kama Sutra, and Brought the Arabian Nights to the West” (but that phrase isn’t on the cover of the book). At the halfway point, Burton’s already been an agent for Gen. Napier in Sind and other places, daringly visited Mecca, and done a lot more, and now — around the time he met Speke — he’s preparing to venture into Africa for a date with a spear through his cheeks.

Wiki (to borrow only one sentence) describes Burton as a “British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer, and diplomat.” Rice’s biography, I’m happy to say, does him justice.

“Burton was unique in any gathering except when he was deliberately working in disguise as an agent among peoples of the lands being absorbed by his country,” Rice writes. “An impressive six feet tall, broad chested and wiry, ‘gypsy-eyed,’ darkly handsome, he was fiercely imposing, his face scarred by a savage spear wound received in a battle with Somali marauders. He spoke twenty-nine languages and many dialects and when necessary, he could pass as a native of several eastern lands — as an Afghan when he made his famous pilgrimage to Mecca, as a Gypsy laborer among the work gangs on the canals of the Indus River, as a nondescript peddler of trinkets and as a dervish, a wandering holy man, when exploring the wilder parts of Sind, Baluchistan, and the Punjab for his general. He was the first European to enter Harar, a sacred city in East Africa, though some thirty whites had earlier been driven off or killed. He was also the first European to lead an expedition into Central Africa to search for the sources of the Nile…

“His opinions on various subjects — English ‘misrule’ of the new colonies, the low quality and stodginess of university education, the need for the sexual emancipation of the English woman, the failure on the part of the Government to see that the conquered peoples of the empire were perpetually on the edge of revolt — were not likely to make him popular at home. Nor did his condemnation of infanticide and the slave trade endear him to Orientals and Africans. His scholarly interests often infuriated the Victorians, for he wrote openly about sexual matters they thought better left unmentioned — aphrodisiacs, circumcision, infibulation, eunuchism, and homosexuality…

“Burton’s adult life was passed in a ceaseless quest for the kind of secret knowledge he labeled broadly ‘Gnosis’… This search led him to investigate the Kabbalah, alchemy, Roman Catholicism, a Hindu snake caste of the most archaic type, and the erotic Way called Tantra, after which he looked into Sikhism and passed through several forms of Islam before settling on Sufism, a mystical discipline that defies simple labels. He remained a more or less faithful practitioner of Sufi teachings for the rest of his life…

Wow. Previously I only knew about his career in the broadest terms, colored by reading Mountains of the Moon by William Harrison in Japan in the early ’90s (published as Burton and Speke in 1982), an exceptionally fine work of historical fiction, and seeing the movie Mountains of the Moon, which is a good adaptation.

Never mind the fellow who hawks Mexican beer. Even though he’s been dead for over 125 years, I’d say Richard Burton would still be a strong contender for status as The Most Interesting Man in the World.

Africa-Dzonga 5c

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One of my small-change-of-the-world coins has words in the Khoisan language on it. That, I’ve discovered, is a modern umbrella term for the peoples once known as the Bushmen and the Hottentots, and their languages. The words on the coin are rendered ǃKE E: ǀXARRA ǁKE, but don’t ask me how that’s pronounced. The English translation is, “diverse people unite.”

That’s the motto found on the South African coat of arms, which happens to be on the observe of the 2003 South African 5-cent piece that I have. A lot of recent SA coinage features the coat of arms, which was adopted by the post-Apartheid government in 2000.

The coat of arms also includes ears of wheat, elephant tusks, a shield, two human figures, a spear and a knobkierie. Over all that is a secretary bird and a rising sun. Around the coat of arms is Africa-Dzonga, which is “South Africa” in Tsonga, one of the 11 official languages of the country.
SAfrica5cOBVApparently the languages take turns each year on the coinage, beginning in 2002. Tsonga’s turn happened to come the next year, at least on the 5-cent pieces (it seems to be different on other denominations).

The reverse of the coin is simpler: a blue crane and the value.
SAfrica5cREVMinting of the copper-plated steel 5-cent piece stopped in 2012, a victim of inflation, but the coins weren’t demonetized, so it’s still technically worth about three-tenths of US cent. The 1- and 2-cent pieces were discontinued ten years earlier.

Worth Only the Paper They’re Printed On

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Missed the green dye in the Chicago River on Monday, though of course plenty of pictures have been posted elsewhere. It’s a curious custom. Mostly the river looks like this in the colder months.

Downtown Chicago 2013

I’ve been transferring images from one place to another — from a very old computer to a somewhat old computer — and looked at some of the files for the first time in a while. I didn’t remember, for instance, that I’d scanned my Biafran one-pound note.

BiafraquidI bought it sometime in the late 1970s, and I know I didn’t pay very much for it. Biafra might have failed as a secessionist movement, but apparently they produced a lot of worthless banknotes during their try.

Then there’s this:

HypermarkWeimar Republic hyperinflation currency, to the tune of 10,000 marks, dated January 19, 1922. Scanned slightly askew, but never mind. I bought four or five of these notes, in crisp condition, for $1 in 2001.

One more. The theme tonight, it turns out, is nearly worthless banknotes — not only as collectibles, but pretty much from day one.

rubleThis is a 1,000 rubles. Or was. Dated 1993, plucked out of circulation by me in 1994. During the two weeks we were in the Russian Federation, the value of the ruble against the dollar varied a lot. I seem to remember it being about 2,000 rubles to the dollar — or was it 3,000? I think it was both, at one time or another. This was small change in any case.

The currency has been redenominated since then. Wiki, for what it’s worth, says “the ruble was redenominated on 1 January 1998, with one new ruble equaling 1000 old rubles. The redenomination was a purely psychological step that did not solve the fundamental economic problems faced by the Russian economy…  and the currency was devalued in August 1998 following the 1998 Russian financial crisis. The ruble lost 70% of its value against the U.S. dollar in the six months following this financial crisis.

“By calculating the product of all six redenominations, it is seen that a pre-1921 ruble is equal to 2×1016 current rubles.” About 20 quadrillion to one, that is. Good thing they’ve been redenominating. Even Zimbabwe doesn’t have a currency that small, I think.

 

Mali by Golly

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How often is Mali in the news? Here in North America, anyway, since I’d think the French pay more attention to French West Africa than we do.

Not too often. It’s the kind of place, under normal circumstances, gets mentioned in a half a column in a publication like the Economist occasionally because of a change of government, violent or not. Last time it was top of mind for me was when I got a postcard from Timbuktu.

I always thought country had an interesting shape. A compact area along the Niger and below 15 degrees N., plus an enormous lobe reaching out into the Sahara. You can see how a rebellion might get some traction up in the far-flung reaches of that lobe. By vicious Islamist bastards, from the sound of it. (Listen to that lovely first track posted with that article.)

I had to check: Mali’s total area is 478,841 sq. mi., making it the 24th largest country on Earth by that measure. You could put a Texas and a California in there with room to spare, so that’s a sizable chunk of land to quarrel over.