The BBC recently published an article about Lalibela and its churches in Ethiopia, and I thought about reblogging the article I wrote about it many years ago. The article I wrote, “Lalibela, Ethiopian churches carved in the stone,” was one of the first posts on my blog. It talked about the bees being a central part of Lalibela’s churches; this article also helps to see the evolution of the blog, from the very beginning to now. It is sweet to realize that some of the stories on this blog caught our eyes before they caught those of the BBC: Ethiopia’s miraculous underground churches. Cheers!
When I was younger, there was a cartoon on television in which they always mentioned the churches of Lalibela, and somehow I used to think that it was not actually real,… you know like these made-up places in cartoons! Isn’t it interesting that the name Lalibela always made me think of honey bees (abeille in french)… Imagine my surprise when I found out that it is said that at birth a swarm of bees descended on the baby king’s head, and his Mother named him Lalibela, meaning “the bees have recognized him as king!”
Carved straight from red volcanic stone, and actually from a single stone, Lalibela is the place of pilgrimage of thousands of christians every year, and is one of Ethiopia’s holiest places. It was intended to be the New Jerusalem, in response to the capture of Jerusalem by Muslims. The architecture of Lalibela was revealed…
Yes… I think most of Egypt is truly a treasure for archaeology, and for humanity as a whole. I would love to have the chance to work on one of those excavations!
The excerpt below is from the BBC. For the full article, please go to the BBC article.
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Archaeologists have discovered three tombs that date back around 2,000 years in southern Egypt.
They were found in burial grounds in the Al-Kamin al-Sahrawi area in Minya [Governorate ]/ province, south of Cairo.
The tombs contained a collection of different sarcophagi, or stone coffins, as well as clay fragments.
Egypt’s antiquities ministry said the discovery “suggests that the area was a great cemetery for a long span of time“.
One of the tombs, which was reached through a shaft carved in rock, contained four sarcophagi that had been sculpted to depict a human face.
In another, excavators found six burial holes, including one for the burial of a small child. …
I already knew that the great Pablo Picasso had been inspired by African art (just a look at his sculpture on the Chicago plaza reminds you vividly of a Fang mask of Cameroon, Gabon, or Equatorial Guinea), but this is the first time I read it clearly in the BBC, an international magazine. It is about time that the world knew how much Africa has inspired the world, and this throughout the ages from ancient Egypt to modern-day Congo as in the case of Picasso, Matisse, and others. See… and then we are told that our ancestors were not savvy: have you ever looked at an African mask? The geometry, symmetry, symbolism, and emotions are amazing! Enjoy! This is just an excerpt of the article by Fisun Güner of the BBC. For the full article go to the BBC.
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A small seated figurine from the Vili people of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo was instrumental in the lives of two of the greatest artists of the 20th Century. The carved figure in wood, with its large upturned face, long torso, disproportionately short legs and tiny feet and hands, was purchased in a curio shop in Paris by Henri Matisse in 1906. The French artist, who liked to fill his studio with exotic trinkets and objets d’art, objects that would then appear in his paintings, paid a pittance for it.
‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ by Pablo Picasso (Source: Wikipedia)
Yet when he showed it to Pablo Picassoat the home of the art patron and avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein, its impact on the young Spaniard was profound, just as it was, though to an arguably lesser extent, on Matisse when the compact but powerful figure had fortuitously caught his eye.
For Picasso, his appetite whetted, visits to the African section of the ethnographic museum at the Palais du Trocadéro inevitably followed. And so precocious was the 24-year-old artist that it seemed that he had already absorbed all that European art had to offer. Hungry for something radically different, something almost entirely new to the Western gaze that might provide fresh and dynamic impetus to his feverish creative energies, Picasso became captivated by the dramatic masks, totems, fetishes and carved figures on display, just as he had with the Iberian stone sculptures of ancient Spain which he also sourced as material. Here, however, was something altogether different, altogether more dynamic and visceral.
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… artists were struck by a directness, a pared-down simplicity and a non-naturalism that they discovered in these objects. But no thought was given to what these artefacts might actually mean, nor to any understanding of the unique cultures from which they derived. The politics of colonialism was not even in its infancy.
Pablo Picasso (Source: WikiArt.org)
The Trocadéro museum, which had so impressed Picasso, had opened in 1878, with artefacts plundered from the French colonies. Today’s curators, including those of the Royal Academy’s Matisse exhibition in which African masks and figures from the artist’s collection appear, at least seek to acknowledge and redress this to a small extent. A similar effort was made earlier this year for Picasso Primitif at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, an exhibition exploring Picasso’s life-long relationship to African art. The sculptures, from West and Central Africa, were given as much space and importance as Picasso’s own work and one could appreciate at first hand the close correspondence between the works.
Paul Gauguin, perhaps the quintessential European artist to ‘go native’, …, had long felt a disgust at Western civilisation, its perceived inauthenticity and spiritual emptiness.
I admire this African anthropologist’s determination. Thanks to his perseverance, he was able to make a discovery which changes our understanding of humanity, or rather of what humans’ ancestors may have looked like. Isaiah Nengo of DeAnza College in the US, made a discovery in Kenya, in the Turkana Basin, of a 13-million-year-old ape skull. When he embarked on his research, no one wanted to follow him, and everybody told him what a waste of time this would be. But determined, he set out by himself, hired 5 local Kenyan fossil finders, and went off to the area he thought would bring results. A month went by without results, and at the end, as the team was leaving the area, they stumbled upon the skull. He had made a discovery, as it turned out, the team found what is thought to be the most complete skull of an extinct ape species in the fossil record. His findings have just been published in the Aug. 10 issue of the journal Nature. You can also read more in this article published in the Washington Post. Talk about perseverance!
I had to share with you this video of Akon at the YouthConnekt in Kigali, Rwanda, this past July. I am not a fan of Akon, but what he says about rebranding Africa is so true. It is just the reason I started this blog, to talk about Africa, the part that we should know: our history, our lives, our realities! The fact that Africa is being represented by wars, when there is only war in maybe 4 countries out of 54, makes me mad. I remember talking to Americans, and they thought I lived on trees in the jungle; when I told them that we had real cities, and that their city in America looked worst than where I came from, they couldn’t believe me. Rebranding Africa is so important… we have to tell OUR own story, and stop letting others tell it! This is also similar to Chimamanda Adichie’s talk: The Danger of a Single Story.
I never thought of flying a rhino until the BBC published an article on the subject the other day. Imagine flying a 1.5 tonne animal in an airplane: what does it entail? what are the challenges? why do it in the first place? Here are a few excerpts from the article; for the full version, check out the article ‘How do you get a rhino to fly‘. At the end of the article, I felt sad that humanity has come to this in order to preserve an endangered species from humans! Is the answer to relocate all endangered species all over the world to avoid extinction? Any ideas?
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Several rhinoceroses (Source: ndtv.com)
… 12 white rhinos have just left their native South Africa for a new life in a nearby country, as part ofan anti-poaching project.
The beasts spent 15 hours in a truck, plane, and helicopter to get from a game park in KwaZulu Natal, on South Africa’s east coast, to their new location.
Step 1: Blindfold and ear plugs
“The animals are caught and put into a steel crate that’s specially designed to contain them, and designed to fit in the aircraft.”
… “You have to immobilize them – make them go to sleep completely, and then blindfold them. And then you put earplugs in their ears.
Original location of the rhinos
And then, you slowly give them a little bit of [sedative] reversal, enough so they can stand up. They’re uncoordinated at that stage – so then you put a rope round their heads and you pull them slowly into the crate.
“They have to walk on their own feet because they’re very heavy. You can’t move a tonne of sleeping meat!”
The rhinos need to be awake throughout the flight so they can move their legs and regulate their own breathing. “The problem with a flight that long and an animal this big, is that if it lies for too long, that restricts circulation to the leg. And they get pins and needles – and then occasionally the animal could lose the use of that leg.”…
Step 2: Roll it into the plane
Then comes the heavy lifting.With the rhinos safely in their transport crates, a crane lifts them onto the back of a truck bound for the airport.
Rhinos being sedated (Source: Getty images)
Next,the crane deposits them on a loading vehicle, which will move them on to a plane.
“In this case we had rollers on the floor,” … “We just laid them onto the rollers, and then rolled them into the aircraft. …
The process involves a significant team of human helpers. “The loading – you’ve normally got between10 or 12 people per rhino. Andwe normally do two at a time, so 25 people.”
Sadly,the move requires an armed security contingent due to the threat from poachers. Trading in rhino horn has been banned globally for four decades, but the substance – traditionally used in Chinese medicine – has a higher black market value than gold or cocaine.
… there are four rhinos airborne at any one time, “in a big military transport plane”.
Everybody on the blog loved this video of Timbuktu about its great university, one of the world’s oldest universities. I loved these centuries’ old manuscripts on medicine, art, literature, astronomy, and other subjects. The idea that my ancestors knew all these things, and that even today people are still trying to decipher these, make me so proud. The great historian Ibn Battuta talked about Timbuktu’s great universities, scientists, and scribes, and the beauty and wealth of the place when he visited in the 1300s. Enjoy the video below.
Africa has a rich naming tradition, which varies across the continent.This article by theBBCgoes over some of the African naming traditions. I added a few more, and removed their ‘celebrity culture’ section, given that naming children after celebrities is not an African thing but a world thing, and dates as far back as the world. Don’t forget to check out the article I wrote on‘My Name’ by Magoleng wa Selepe. You can read the full article onBBC.
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Traditional African names often have unique stories behind them. From the day or time a baby is born to the circumstances surrounding the birth, several factors influence the names parents choose for their children. Whichever ethnic group you look at, these local names reveal a wealth of information about the bearer. Here are [eight] different ways African parents name their children:
Events surrounding birth
African Woman
Among several ethnic groups, picking out names can be influenced by positive or negative circumstances the family finds themselves in around the time a child is born. Often, such names are complete sentences.
Ayodele (joy has come home) is a unisex name for a baby whose birth brought happiness to their Yorubaparents in Nigeria. …
Adetokunbo (crown/wealth has come back home) is a unisex Yorubaname often given to a child born abroad.
Ajuji (born on a rubbish heap) is a Hausaname given to a baby after those born before it failed to survive. It is believed that giving the child a “terrible” name will deceive evil spirits into thinking the child is not loved and as a result, allow it to live.
Kgomotso and Pumza (comfort) are given to babies born shortly after a death or tragedy in Sesothoand Xhosafamilies in South Africa.
Kiptanui and Cheptanui are often given to babies whose mothers may have suffered extreme difficulties during childbirth among the Kalenjinethnic group in Kenya. …
Lindiwe (we have waited) is an isiZuluname often given to a baby girl after a long line of boys.
Emotional warnings
Flag of Zimbabwe
Some names, especially in Zimbabwe, [and Nigeria] reflect the mood or circumstance of the family at the time of birth. Some of them serve as warnings or rebukes.
Nhamo means misfortune
Maidei asks the question “What did you want?”
Manyara tells someone “You have been humbled“
Yananiso means bringing the family together
… But this is not unique to Zimbabwe. [It can be found across the continent, from Malawi, to Nigeria, to Ghana, etc.] …
Order of birth
In many African cultures, there is no need for someone to explain whether they are the eldest or youngest of their siblings. This is because their names can reveal that much. This is especially true of twins.
Twins
If you meet a Ugandan boy or man called Kakuru or Wasswa, he is likely to be an elder twin. The younger male twin is usually called Kato. These are names specially reserved for twins.
Similarly, the Kalenjins in Kenya refer to the first born as Yator (first to open the way) and the last born Towett meaning last.
The Yorubas call the first twin Taiwo (taste the world) and the second Kehinde (came after).
In Ghana, the unisex names Panyin and Kakra, which basically mean older and younger, are used for twins.
[InCameroon, in theBamilekeculture, the child who follows directly after twins is given names such asKenfack, Kengne or Kammagni. While the parents of twins are given the special names ofMagne (mother of twins) andTagne (father of twins), and the Magne used to have a special place in the society just like the twins. Moreover, babies born breach are also given a particular name,Tcheutchoua, to show how difficult the delivery had been.]
Day-born names
… Among some Ghanaian [and Ivorian] ethnic groups like the Akan, Ga, Ewe and Nzema, a name is automatically assigned based on the day the child is born. These day names correspond to the day of the week someone is born and so by default, everybody has one – though the name may not necessarily appear on official documents.
Monday – Kojo (male), Adwoa (female)
Tuesday – Kwabena (male), Abena (female)
Wednesday – Kwaku (male) [Kouakou in Cote d’Ivoire], Ekua (female)
Thursday – Yaw (male) [Yao in Cote d’Ivoire], Yaa (female)
Saturday – Kwame (male) [Kouame in Cote d’Ivoire], Ama (female)
Sunday – Akwesi (male), Akosua, (female)
These day names can vary slightly depending on the ethnic group.
Faith-based names
… Across the continent, several local names have religious links. Among the Igbo and Yoruba ethnic groups in Nigeria, a name that starts or ends with Chi (Igbo), Chukwu (Igbo) or Oluwa (Yoruba) has some kind of reference to God.
Olusegun means God conquers (Yoruba, Nigeria)
Hailemariam means the power of Mary (Ethiopia) …
Makafui means I will praise God (Ewe ethnic group in Togo, Ghana, Benin)
Day and night
Among some groups in eastern and southern Africa, certain names are selected depending on the time of the day or season a child is born.
Kibet means dayand Kiplagat means night(Kalenjin in Kenya)
Mumbua and Wambua means rainy season for boys and girls (Kamba in Kenya) …
Yunwa means hunger or time of famine (Hausa)
African tree at dusk
While the Luos are very specific:
Omondi (dawn)
Okinyi (morning)
Onyango (mid-morning)
Ochieng‘ (sunny midday)
Otieno (night)
Oduor (midnight)
Girls are given the same names but starting with an A instead of an O. [For instance,Atieno(night).]
Meet the ancestors
Respected elders of the family may be dead but they continue to live on through their grandchildren. Parents often name babies after senior members of the clan whether dead or alive. But it is considered disrespectful to casually shout or call out the name of a senior family member that has been given to a child, so instead it is common to hear a child affectionately called Ouma (grandma) or Oupa (grandpa) in southern Africa.
Similarly in Senegal, a child who is named after a grandfather tends to bear the grandfather’s nickname as well. So a baby boy often ends up being called Vieux (old man), [orPape, orPapa].
An antelope at dusk, with the African sun
Rude nicknames
Somalia has a unique system. Most people have three names – the ones they were given, as well as that of their father and grandfather [same in Sudan]. But many also have nicknames, which are so common that they can find their way onto official ID cards.
These nicknames often pick on the negative physical traits of the bearer, if he is male. Some common nicknames for men include Langare (limpy), Coryaan (handicapped), Lugay (one leg) or Genay (missing tooth).
Women, however, mostly get flattering nicknames like Lul (diamond), Macanay (sweet), Cod Weyne (rich voiced), Dahable (golden) and Indho Daraleey (gazelle eyes). …
It is about time we talked about Alexandria, the light of Egypt. So why the name Alexandria? If you thought about Alexander the Great, then you are absolutely right! Yes. The second largest city and major economic center of Egypt was named and founded by Alexander the Great.
3rd century BC bust of Alexander the Great (Wikipedia)
To me, Alexandria, has always had a special place in my heart because of its Great Library. Imagine thousands upon thousands of ancient papyri, scrolls, and books on mathematics, philosophy, medicine, architecture, etc. Just the thought of it makes my eyes shine with light. Isn’t it thrilling? And then to know that this library had been burnt down by the army of Julius Caesar in 48 BC (more like a repeat of history: Palmyra, The giant Buddhas of Afghanistan, Timbuktu, …) also makes my heart ache at the thought of all this knowledge gone down in flames. Today, we remember the Great Library of Alexandria thanks to what poets and writers of the past said about it, but there are no vestiges of it. I also remember Alexandria because of the brilliant female mathematician Hypatia who chaired a department of philosophy and astronomy, and the world-renowned mathematician Euclid.
Today, Alexandria is Egypt’s largest seaport, serving approximately 80% of Egypt’s imports and exports. It is an important industrial center because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez. Alexandria is also an important tourist destination. Enjoy the video below about Alexandria, the beautiful!
An ancient city has been unearthed in Egypt and dates back more than 5,000 years and contains houses, tools, pottery, and huge graves. The city lies by the River Nile, close to the temple of Seti I in Abydos. It is said to have been the city of tomb builders and architects. The rest below is from the BBC:
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It is believed the city was home to important officials and tomb builders and would have flourished during early-era ancient Egyptian times.
Archaeologists have made a range of finds in the newly-discovered city including buildings, shards of pottery and tools.
It is believed that this location was home to important officials and tomb builders who may have been engaged in the construction of royal graves in the nearby sacred city of Abydos – a place of many temples, and a capital in an early period of ancient Egyptian history.
The area is in the southern province of Sohag, in Upper Egypt, home also to the city of Luxor, one of the country’s most popular tourist sites.
“About a mile behind where this material is said to be we have the necropolis with royal tombs going from before history to the period where we start getting royal names, we start getting identifiable kings,” Prof Chris Eyre, an Egyptologist based at the University of Liverpool, told the BBC.
“So, this appears to be the town, the capital at the very beginning of Egyptian history.”
The discovery was made by an archaeological mission that belongs to the country’s Antiquities Ministry, and not a foreign group, officials quoted in Egypt Independent website said.
African Heritage 