Maggie, all and anything you forward to me from your African sojourn I will be more than happy to post for you. This is suc a great idea! I know just about nothing of Africa.

Thank you. I will do my best to expand your horizons .....

Languages Many inadequate attempts have been made to classify the great complexity of languages in Africa. There are at least 1,000 distinct African languages known. Linguist Joseph Greenberg prepared the most recent and accurate attempt at classifying African languages based on the principals of Indo-European languages. The four main language families according to this classification are: Niger-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic, and Khoisan. Niger-Kordofanian languages are found from Senegal to the Cape of Good Hope. The most original in this classification is the Benue-Congo which includes all the Bantu languages found dispersed over most of eastern, central, and southern Africa. Swahili, grammatically Bantu, is widely used as a lingua franca in eastern Africa. The Nilo-Saharan family comprises languages spoken along the savanna zone south of the Sahara from the middle Niger to the Nile, with outlying groups among the Para-Nilotic pastoralists of eastern Africa. The Afro-Asiatic family includes languages from both Africa and the Middle East: Semitic (e.g., Arabic), Ancient Egyptian (extinct), Berber, Cushitic, and Chadic (e.g., Hausa). It is found over much of northern Africa and eastward to the Horn of Africa. The Khoisan, or Click, family comprises the languages of the San and Khoikhoi, who are now limited to the arid parts of southwestern Africa, and perhaps of the outlying Hadza and Sandawe peoples of northern Tanzania. The Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) family is represented by the various dialects of Malagasy in Madagascar. There are also many widespread trade languages and lingua francas in addition to those mentioned above. Some were imported and used by administrators, missionaries, and traders during the colonial period. They include English, French, and other languages of the former colonial powers. http://africancultures.about.com/culture/africancultures/library/weekly/aa100699a.htm

The Region of Western Africa http://africancultures.about.com/culture/africancultures/library/weekly/aa073099.htm (07/30/99) Western Africa lies south of the Sahara and east and north of the Atlantic Ocean. It is divided into two geographical regions, the western portion of the Sudan and the coastal region known as the Guinea Coast. The nations of the western Sudan include Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), Cape Verde, Chad, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. The nations of the Guinea Coast are Benin, Cameroon, C�te d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo. The major ethnic groups are the Wolof of Senegal, the Serer to the south, and the Mande-speaking peoples to the east. The Songhai are located largely in the region south of Timbuktu along the Niger, the Mossi are in the Volta basin, and a variety of smaller groups survive within the great bend of the Niger and to the southwest. The Hausa are concentrated largely in northern Nigeria and the Fulani are concentrated in Senegal, Guinea, and northern Nigeria. The languages spoken are branches of one great Niger-Congo family, including the Mande, Voltaic, Kwa, Adamawa-Eastern, and West-Atlantic groups. The Kordofanian languages are spoken in the area of the Nuba Hills. Other major families that have been distinguished are the Nilo-Saharan group and the Afro-Asiatic. French is the language of communication among the elite of most nations of the western Sudan, and English is used in The Gambia, Ghana, and Nigeria. Belief in the supernatural either in traditional rituals or in the Islamic faith serve as reassurance and hope in time of trouble, and offer the possibility of a greater reward in the next world. People adjust their life according to the seasons and adjust their pace to natural conditions to be in harmony with the unseen powers behind them. Farm work is intense during the rainy season, but the work is considered an honorable occupation and is supported by strong ties to a complicated system of obligations--to kinsfolk, neighbors, and members of the same age group--maintained by constant visits, economic exchange, and mutual help at ceremonies. Villages consisting of fenced-off clusters of houses, known as compounds, are occupied by members of a lineage and their spouses. Many of these villages were built on sites that afforded some protection by rivers or fortified by earthen walls as a means of defense from hundreds of years of ravage by invaders and slave traders. These old fortifications, with the exception of the great walled cities of northern Nigeria, have given way to smaller more widely dispersed villages separated by cleared land for agriculture. But, as a result of periods of drought, many people have resettled in the larger urban centers.

Will they resettle the rural areas or do you think this is the end of a culture?

From my observation, there seems to be a general trend of migration of young men to the larger towns and cities. Links to the villages remain strong. Many cities have what could be called 'shanty towns' attached. Some of these are very large, for example the one in Dakar, Senegal. Families live there, not just single young men. Subsustence farming, and cash cropping can be severly affected by periods of drought. Another problem in countries like The Gambia is the increasing salination of the land as the water table drops and sea water is carried further upstream. Salt resistant strains of rice have been developed so that this cash srop can continue to provided a much needed income. As to the resettlement of the rural areas. I am unsure. I think what is happening could be akin to the Industrial Revolution in Britain. However, family and land ties remain strong and often it is only part of an extended family that moves to the town, thus keeping the rural links. I don't believe 'culture' will necessarily be diminished, mostly because of the continued contact with the 'homeland'. Most African countries are multilingual and multicultural. In fact many villages are also. For example, the village I lived in had five language groups, each of whom kept their own cultural customs. Because cultural diversity is therefore perceived as normal, it is less common to see acculturation when people move outside of their own area. Of course, these are just my thoughts and observations, and are highly coloured by the areas I have visited and lived in. Other areas of Africa may be very different.

If you had to live anywhere in Africa, where would it be? Anywhere in the world?

Please don't say Hawaii - it is only Paradise for vacationers!

In Africa I would like to live in The Gambia again. I love the people, the beaches and the lifestyle, and I don't need to struggle to talk in French!!! Although I am happy to be going to live in Mali.... Worldwide, I guess I'm happy to live in England. There are lots of places I would like to visit..... Hawaii among them!!!

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ogunyemi/pidgin.html Some pidgin sayings and their translations by Gaga Ekeh See am as e siddon. No face! Everywhere tinted! Translation: Observe as the subject sits. One cannot but notice the frown occupying the face. Neither can one ignore those dark glasses. As im enta for man eye, I jus tux. Because why? Na so so baffs im throway comot. Translation: As the subject proceeded to occupy my peripheral vision, I had to bow in respect. Why, you ask? The subject was dressed impeccably. Abeg giam! (Usually during a fight). Translation: Allow his face to slap your fist so as to dissuade him from pursuing this frivolous conflict. Eba without! (Usually at a "bukateria") Respectable madam and owner of this eating establishment, I encourage you not to endow my plate with meat lest I am unable to service such debts as I may acquire should such a measure be put in practice. As such, I ask you to put more Eba, the amount of which should suffice to provide the illusion that I am affluent enough to afford the corresponding cost of meat. Yours faithfully. Ol boy! Of which now? Translation: It has been brought to our notice that you are now in a position to end the drought of stout lager that has so devastated this area. We would like to inquire what you intend to pursue as a course of action. Allow us to add that all deliberations should have our general interest at heart. Ehen? So make I comot nyash begin cry? Translation: The statements you just made do not constitute concrete evidence and as such do not justify or warrant any specific action by me for or against any of the parties involved in this circumstance. As man land, man eye brush vest. Man begin knack tori. Translation: As I "cascaded" down the stairs, my eyes happened upon a young member of the opposite sex dressed in a manner as would be illegal in 17 American states (including Alaska). I calmly walked up to the subject and proceeded to relay a series of lies guaranteed to stand me in good stead. by Elliot Ibie Why your body dey shake like leaf now, abeg thermocool! (Said to a visibly upset person) Translation: It is apparent to anyone within a fifty mile radius that you are about to experience an emotional implosion which will entail loss of control of all bodily functions. I implore you to seek out the nearest body of cold water and immerse yourself in it. Other translation: Please calm down. omolola@ogunyemi.net

Wow! Maggie that is great reading. Mucho thanks!

Hello again Carys. Feel free to comment or ask any questions.....I may not know the answers but I'm good at finding out things....

I trust you in that Maggie. I hope that you and Cheryl, I think it was she, can work out something concerning food and culture. Sounds like a promising topic.

Scientists Find Ancient DNA in Living Africans Fossils in the Blood by Mark Schoofs http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0014/schoofs.shtml OBE, BOTSWANA�In the shade of a tree, 140 kilometers from the nearest paved road in an endless plain of scrub brush and sand, Nxuka Nxu is discussing the origin of human beings. An elder of the !Kung San hunter-gatherer tribe, with a face as wrinkled as a raisin, she says emphatically, "We are the first people." Many traditional cultures mythologize themselves as the progenitors of all humanity, but the !Kung San people, sometimes called the Bushmen of the Kalahari, have a better claim than most. Geneticists have found fragments of DNA in the Khoisan ethnic group, of which the !Kung are one tribe, that appear to date back to the very first human beings. Most other African ethnic groups lack these genetic traces, as do people from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Indeed, a few of these ancient genetic fragments have been found only in the Khoisan. These findings, which are still emerging, "help us understand our past," says Himla Soodyall, a South African geneticist who has conducted much of this work. In addition to bolstering the theory that modern humans arose in Africa and then migrated around the globe, these findings also weigh in on the newer debate of exactly where humans originated. They support the idea that the cradle of humanity is southern Africa, where the San live, and not eastern Africa, as was widely thought. On this continent, where people are trying to kindle an African renaissance, this new genetic research "can reinstill pride in the richness of African history," says Soodyall. Yet the research could also be twisted to bolster deep-seated prejudices against the San, probably the most abused and downtrodden ethnic group in southern Africa. One method used to determine the age of genetic fragments is to compare them to the genes of chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates. The ancient DNA segments in the Khoisan are more closely related to chimp DNA than are those of any other people. Given how the Khoisan have been dehumanized�scientists once postulated that they had fewer chromosomes�it is all too easy to imagine how this research could be misused. Here in the village, an elderly San man named Xuma Kgao ponders the idea that his people bear traces of the first humans. "God made us lucky in that way," he says. But, noting how his culture has been denigrated and destroyed, he adds, "It's not luck anymore. It's a drawback." So, given the tragic history of the San, not to mention all the other ethnic and racial bigotry this continent has endured, perhaps the most astonishing fact is that the research appears not to have inflamed prejudice. In fact, when Soodyall and her colleague Trefor Jenkins presented their preliminary findings to a 1997 conference devoted to Khoisan identity, they were met with praise, not protest. That's partly because the researchers vigorously resist bigoted interpretations of their findings. They note that the genetic traces that date back to the first humans are just that: traces, fragments picked out of the 3 billion letters that make up the human genetic code. In other parts of their DNA, the Khoisan have very recent mutations. "It's not as if they stopped evolving and were put away on a shelf," says Michael Hammer, a University of Arizona geneticist who has collaborated with Jenkins and Soodyall. "They preserve ancient lineages, but they are not an ancient group. They are as evolved as any other people." The new South Africa might be the best place for such research, because freedom from the crushing oppression of apartheid has fostered a candid and mostly positive discussion about ethnic differences and identity. In his inauguration speech last year, South African president Thabo Mbeki vowed to "rediscover and claim the African heritage," noting that, "From South Africa to Ethiopia lie strewn ancient fossils, which, in their stillness, speak still of the African origins of humanity." What geneticists have essentially discovered is that DNA is also strewn with "fossils," mutations that have been preserved through generations. In addition to shedding light on humanity's origins, "population genetics," as this branch of science is known, can also illuminate more recent episodes in history. For instance, Jenkins and Soodyall have studied the Lemba, a group of so-called Black Jews who claim to be a lost tribe of Israel, and found that many of them have genetic markers similar to those of Semitic people. Another team of geneticists has discovered that a few of the Lemba even have a marker common among the Jewish "Cohens," a hereditary lineage of priests. "There are so many stories written in the genes," says Soodyall. "My goal is to understand the history of each mutation." For Jenkins, the goal is to "counter racism scientifically" and candidly. "You can't claim there are no differences" among ethnic groups, he notes, "because people will say, 'We can see we're not the same.' " What genetics does show is that the similarities among all humans far outweigh their differences. Under apartheid, when every citizen was assigned an official racial identity, people used to ask Jenkins to help them gain a "race reclassification." He recalls, "I would say to the person, 'What race do you want to be classified as?' " Examining their blood, it was always easy to find genetic markers in blacks or "coloreds" that were also present in whites, allowing Jenkins to bolster their appeal to be racially reassigned. As Jenkins explains: "What people use to classify the races"�skin color, hair type, and nose shape�"represents only a very small proportion of the whole genome." But then, no one ever needed DNA analysis to oppress the San. That's why Xixai Gakekgosi, a politically active villager, doesn't fear racist ramifications from the new research. It can hardly make matters worse, he says. "People already see us as outsiders and look down on us." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In nearby Quaa village, some women spot a mophane worm in a tree, and a boy clambers up into the branches to knock it down. Like the sweet, yellow-orange motsontsojane berries, this worm is one of the many delicacies relished by the !Kung hunter-gatherers. Avoiding the sharp, black spines that jut out from its blue and yellow body, a woman tosses the worm, fat and long as a breakfast sausage, onto hot coals. While it cooks, an elder named Tcgoma Xontae plays a handmade lyre called a quru and sings in a high, beautiful voice. But if the scene appears idyllic, the life of the San is not. "My parents could control the forest and go out to hunt," says Xontae. "But now someone else controls our life." Indeed, for all practical purposes, the Botswana government has barred the San from hunting. Most have been removed from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. The few licenses that are granted limit the hunting season and the number of animals the San can kill. It's merely the latest chapter in an ancient history of oppression. The Bantu-speaking Africans, farmers who expanded throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa from the area near the present-day border between Nigeria and Cameroon, pushed the Khoisan off their land, sometimes enslaved them, and deemed them inferior. White Christian settlers slaughtered thousands of these indigenous people and had serious debates about whether the Gospels applied to them. (The Khoikhoi, called Hottentots by the Dutch settlers, herd cattle, while the San, to whom they are closely related, live by hunting and gathering.) In the 1970s, the army of the old apartheid South Africa used the San as scouts in its war against Namibia and Angola. Pawns in a war that wasn't theirs, those scouts and their families�about 4000 people altogether�now live in a tent city in South Africa, hundreds of miles from their homeland. And in Botswana, which has some of the world's richest diamond deposits, mining interests inevitably prevail in land disputes. The San are quite possibly the most studied indigenous people on earth, yet myths about them abound. The San are reputed to be wholly innocent and peaceable�"the Harmless People," as the title of one influential book put it�but, as the anthropologist Richard Lee documented, murder does happen, and the San sometimes execute the perpetrators. But nothing has been as damaging as the myth that the San are backward and primitive, which is profoundly entrenched in southern Africa. One widespread misconception is that they do not wash. A recent report on the educational problems facing the San�they have astronomical dropout rates�reported that one boarding school headmaster wouldn't give San children mattresses or even blankets, on the rationale that their unwashed bodies would dirty the bedding. It is possible that their isolation�first geographic, then cultural�is what preserved the ancestral genetic patterns. Forced to abandon their traditional way of life but barred by prejudice from joining modern life, the San now subsist in a kind of limbo. In this region of Botswana, they live mainly on government food handouts. While they used to store what they gathered for future use, now they try to sell it�and the cash often buys alcohol and tobacco. "We don't have a life, says Xuma Kgao. "There is nothing we can do for ourselves. Our hands and feet have been cut off." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joining the discussion on the origin of humanity, a young mother named Nxae Nxu rules out the possibility that people evolved from animals. "The first two people were San, and we were always like this," she says. So why do the races look so different? "That's a tough one," she says, laughing. "After God created these first two people, they had children, and generation after generation they started to change a bit." And that, pretty much, is what the geneticists also think. They examined DNA from the Y chromosome, which is passed only from father to son, and from the mitochondria, tiny cellular proto-organisms that are passed down the maternal line. Using various mathematical models to estimate how frequently mutations are made, the researchers estimated the age of the different genetic variants, called polymorphisms. At least two teams, working independently and looking at different parts of the Y chromosome, found that the oldest variants are most common in the Khoisan. Jenkins and Soodyall also analyzed the mitochondrial DNA. Virtually all of the !Kung have the most ancient mitochondrial fragments, which date to about 120,000 years ago, roughly the time humans are thought to have evolved into their modern form. The genetic findings accord with at least one line of fossil evidence, and various likely mathematical models yield similar results. Yet just as fossil evidence has often been reassessed, this genetic analysis could be off the mark. As one !Kung man said about the research, "I don't know my relationship to the first people, because I wasn't alive then." One of the myths about the San is that their genes are what enable them to survive in the harsh Kalahari climate, where the nights are frigid, the days scorching, and water is scarce. But while they may have evolved some advantageous traits, the notion that they owe their survival mainly to unique physical characteristics is false, says Phillip Tobias, a South African anthropologist who has studied the Khoisan. He notes that the San traditionally filled ostrich shells with water and buried them for use in dry times, that they drank the juices out of the stomach of freshly hunted animals, and that they smeared their skin with animal fat to keep from dehydrating. Such "cultural tricks," he says, were more important than any genetic mutations in helping them to survive. Now the San face the harsh climate of a culture stacked against them. Again their survival depends not on their genes, but on the ability to adapt culturally. But this time, their way of life depends not only on the San themselves, but on whether southern Africa's majority populations can overcome one of humanity's oldest and possibly inherent characteristics: prejudice. Research intern: Elinore Longobardi

Wednesday September 13, 5:26 PM Inside look at African music scene and daily life By Gary Hill NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new book and CD, both titled "In Griot Time," by American writer and musician Banning Eyre offer a unique inside look at daily life on the music scene in the West African country of Mali. It was Mali's melodic, hypnotic music, increasingly popular overseas and believed at home to have secret powers when sung by "griots," that drew Eyre to study with master guitarist Djelimady Tounkara, but even readers with no special interest in the music may find the book fascinating. "In Griot Time" is not exactly travel writing but its deft, novelistic descriptions of smells and tastes, sunny outdoor guitar lessons and murky late-night dive-bar visits, the central market teeming by day and eerily deserted at night, all evoke the rich colours and textures of African life. "There's a story here that's got some more universality to it for anyone who's curious about another culture, anyone who's curious enough to breach the lines and go in," Eyre, 43, who lived for seven months in Tounkara's family compound in the capital city of Bamako, said in an interview. The book is filled with sharply observed small professional intrigues, individual struggles and family squabbles -- some recognisable as simply another culture's version of everyday life anywhere, some frighteningly incomprehensible to Eyre, who communicated easily in French but learned only basic Bambara. On his first day, while riding in from the airport, Eyre realised he had already been forced to choose sides in a local rivalry. "Though I was riding with the (French expatriate) producer, I had cast my lot with the musicians," he wrote. CD OF HITS AND INTIMATE MOMENTS The CD, a generous 75 minutes and 19 cuts, has choice hit songs from Mali's greatest stars -- including Salif Keita, Ali Farka Toure, Tounkara's Super Rail Band, Oumou Sangare, Habib Koite, Toumani Diabate -- and some more intimate musical moments recorded by Eyre during his lessons with Tounkara. "The thing that I consistently felt every time I heard him just sitting out on the porch -- and some of the things on the CD have this feeling, just that string music totally pared down -- was so exciting to me and so beautiful," Eyre said. In earlier travels to many of the musical capitals of Africa, he had found his journalistic inquiries would segue into musical exchanges when he got out his guitar. "I was able for whatever reason to pick things up pretty fast and that would always create this energy and excitement and a certain electricity and I was totally intoxicated with that," he said. "And every time that I would finish an interview with a guitarist I would think, why am I leaving? We're just getting started." Eyre, who believes Mali has "the richest music of any country in Africa," comes through as always patient, flexible and tactful under sometimes difficult conditions, but no matter how well he learned to play the guitar styles, he always knew he had only scratched the surface of the tradition. "It's one thing to appreciate the music, but to be able to really, fully enter into that context is considerably more demanding, on a whole lot of levels," he said. Or, as they say in Mali: "No matter how long a piece of wood floats in the river, it will never become a crocodile." CAN'T LIVE WITH THEM, CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT THEM Most difficult for outsiders to understand -- and Eyre does not claim to, fully -- is the role of the griot (pronounced gree-yo), whose praise songs are an essential part of West African life. Listeners being "sung" are expected to shower the griots with money. Westerners, while loving the music, may feel uneasy with the money hustle that goes with it. "Me too," agreed Eyre. "You can never transcend your culture." One snippet on the CD includes an exchange in French in which the teachers are explaining that a certain technique will make the music flow. An American friend of Eyre jokes that then the money will also flow and the Africans laugh and say, "Ah, he has understood well." Non-griot Malians may resent having to pay the griots but they could not conceive of holding major events without them. "People don't exactly hire them, they invite them, and then the griots work the audience," said Eyre, adding that even other griots may "feel manipulated when they're being sung." Not all musicians are griots, a role passed down by birth. International superstar Salif Keita, an albino outcast from a noble family, helped change that. Ali Farka Toure, whose home is near Timbuktu and whose music reminds Westerners of the blues, is quoted as saying he is Songhoi, not Manding, and that "griotism is an art of exploitation and flattery." But for many West Africans, the griots are a necessary part of society. "There's a sense that the griots are not telling everything, they have secret knowledge and they're using their knowledge in particular ways," said Eyre. And there is something about the griot's "nyama," or power, that cannot be resisted. "That thing they get that we really can't get is that emotional connection," Eyre said. "Those phrases and that sound and the character of the performance are calculated to have an emotional effect, and it really does work. And sometimes it's overwhelming. You can tell by the way a person surrenders the money. Sometimes they just hand it over and sometimes they are incredibly moved," he said. "They're digging in their pockets instinctively, just wanting to give. 'Please make the nyama stop,' giving money with the trembling hand saying 'Please stop,'" Eyre said, chuckling. "And I've seen that."

More on African music - specifically Gambian music Here is a site you should visit ...lots of audio examples http://home3.inet.tele.dk/mcamara/cu.html Also Dr Roderic Knight has researched the music of the Mandinka of the Gambia and gives examples on his website. http://www.oberlin.edu/~rknight/ (I lived and worked in The Gambia for five years ...and lived in a Mandinka village)

More from Mali for you ... Traditional Handicrafts http://www.discovertimbuktu.com/am/culture.html Many Tuareg designs are geometric and clean-cut, reflecting the austerity of desert life. Because of the Tuareg's relative isolation, these designs have not altered much over time. The motifs are repeated in jewelry, leather work and embroidery. Tuareg jewelry is worked exclusively in silver, the metal of the Prophet Mohammed, as gold is considered impure. It is said that there is a Tuareg tribe with extrasensory powers. The only way they can lose these powers is by simply looking upon gold. Tuareg crosses, nowadays worn only by women, were once only worn by men, passed down from father to son with the words: "I give you the four corners of the world because one cannot know where one will die." Most famous are the crosses of the Agadez (Niger), which incorporate elements of celestial constellations. In fact, these amulets sometimes serve triple duty as protection, ornamentation and as a compass for orientation in the desert. According to Muslim belief, the four points of the cross disperse evil to the four corners of the earth. Some might see similarities between the Tuareg cross and the ancient Egyptian ankh, but there is no known connection. In times of drought, these crosses are used as currency to buy cattle, cloth or food. Crosses incorporating the phallus and circle are said to be powerful fertility talismans. Tuareg women also wear necklaces made of shell and leather or silver in the form of a geometric hand, which protects the wearer and ensures fertility; they are passed down from mother to daughter. Silver finger rings are usually gifts of affection between men and women. More contemporary designs mix semiprecious stones (usually malachite) and/or ebony with silver.

Does the modern day nation of Mali take its name from the medieval Mali? I think medieval Ghana was known as the Gold Empire. Unless that was Mali? Help! When I was teen/early twenties a got into African pop music. People like King Sunny Ade and Youssou N'Dour. Youssou was from Senegal, I believe. I'm not sure what country King Sunny was from. I don't know how traditional musical forms influenced the work of African pop musicians. Still they might have. Thanks for the information an the Tuareg design tradition, Maggie.