Self-Organization: Fractals in the Heart of Africa

I'll bet there are a couple of readers out there wondering if I really am an anthropologist given all the stuff about technology and professional development I've been posting lately.  I haven't forgotten, I've just been a bit side-tracked.

 

Royal palace, Logone-Birni, Cameroon (Musee de l'Homme, Paris)

This morning I received an interesting email that brought together a few subjects near and dear to me - Africa, indigenous knowledge, and fractals.  "Fractals?" you say.  Yes.  Fractals.  They are everywhere in nature, art, architecture, and even, as I will discuss, African society.

 

Queen Anne's Lace - Daucus carota - More images at WebEcoist

The email came from a listserve for folks interested in indigenous knowledge that is based at Penn State - ICIK.  It seems that in June 2007, Dr. Ron Eglash, an ethnomathematician gave a TED talk and someone in the forum found it, sent it to the co-director of ICIK, and she (Dr. Audrey Marezki) posted it round to the listserv.

Eglash's talk started out with some background about the history of fractal math in Europe and what exactly fractals are.  "Pathological curves" are one definition used by mathematicians, but really they are self-organizing systems/patterns.  Each part looks like the greater whole - a property of self-similarity, where recursion continues into infinity.  He then went on to talk about African architecture, art, and social organization.  His work, beginning with a Fulbright to explore why African villages and towns, used fractal math to organize, shows that while some of the use is unconscious, much of the use of fractal mathematics in Africa is deliberate.  And the village layout patterns are repeated in the clustering of houses and organization of rooms within homes.  Fractal algorithms even appear in the seasonal cycles of religious ceremonies, funeral ceremonies, and spirit/ancestral houses.

“When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.”  - Eglash, Designers 421

Eglash then moved on to discuss fractal math used in the game Mancala, wind screens made in West Africa for desert winds, and the origin of binary code in Bamana Sand Divination.  Yes, even the humble code that allows me to produce this blog finds its origins in Africa.  According to the talk, explorers carried the Bamana Sand Divination to Moorish Spain where it was picked up by alchemists and incorporated into their geomancy divination practices.  Later, Leibonitz derived binary code from geomancy.  If you watch the video I've posted below, you will see that Eglash makes the story far more interesting with inclusion of giving out gold to 7 lepers and sleeping with a kola nut.

Dr. Eglash ends with a discussion of how this knowledge is being applied in American classrooms - encouraging black students to connect to their mathematical roots - and how the robust, self-organizing algorithms found in indigenous knowledge could be applied to finding solutions to many of the African continents' problems.



More links:

Eglash, R.  2008.  Bamana sand divination: recursion in ethnomathematics.  American Anthropologist 99(1): 112-122.

Eglash, R. 1999.  African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design.  Rutgers University Press.

TED Profile on Ron Eglash with the link to the original video talk.

Ron Eglash's African Fractals homepage.

• Link to CDST page with teaching applets (cultural design and math).

 

From the Electronic Visualization Laboratory UIC

Searching for info on the postdoc experience

Now that I am heading into a postdoc I thought it might be wise to do some research on what I should expect.  Ha!  Like everything else I've done for grad school, it seems that I should have been working on this 2 years ago.  Never fear, the internet is here! 

There isn't a whole lot out there specifically relevant to social science postdocs - unless you are looking for one.  When I broadened my search, to postdocs and postdoc blogs (just trying to get a feel for others' experiences) I got a couple of hits from bloggers in biological and physical sciences.  Reading their stuff was rather depressing, and maybe I've been super-protected at UGA but the professors in the anthropology department here don't treat other people so poorly - colleagues, grad students, or the occasional postdoc.  I also did a search for women postdocs since I fit into that special category too.  Again, more depressing stuff.  I'm hoping that the nasty stuff I've read applies to the biological and physical sciences, and that social scientists have their shit together for the most part.  I get the sense that my new mentor and department do have their act together, but I may run make friends in other departments and it would be helpful to understand a bit where they might be coming from.  As my mom tells me, forewarned is forearmed.

A couple of the postdoc blogs from my search:

Dent Cartoons: NIH Post-doc Life


YoungFemaleScientist 

I also looked for books and came up with a couple of good reads.

Gray, Paul and David Drew.  2008.  What they didn't teach you in graduate school: 199 helpful hints for success in your academic career.  Stylus: Sterling, VA.
This book was not only funny, but useful in terms of looking at the entire academic career arc (not just the postdoc).

COSEPUP.  2000.  Enhancing the postdoctoral experience for scientists and engineers: a guide for postdoctoral scholars, advisers, institutions, funding organizations and disciplinary societies. National Academy of Sciences.  National Academies Press.
This entire text is available free on the National Academies Press website (linked above).  You do have to create an account, but it is free and gives you access to other free book pdfs.

Other articles and links:

The National Postdoctoral Association

Best Places to Postdoc in 2006 (most up-to-date stats I found)

The 3 Worst Places to be a Postdoc

Penn State also has their own Postdoctoral Office and Postdoc Society.

Given all the resources out there on the web (despite the under-representation by social scientists, or maybe I'm not looking where I should), it is interesting that most of the information is about finding a postdoc, rather than the day-to-day experience of a postdoc.  Perhaps this is a byproduct of the amount of work postdocs are expected to do - I hope it is the work and not something else.

If anyone finds this and wants to leave a message about their experience - particularly if you did a social science postdoc, I'd love to hear about it.

Dr. With Revisions

One of my friends teasingly called me Dr. With Revisions the other day when I explained the behind closed door department. He was taking notes since it is his first year of grad school and giving me a "rough" time since I'm almost done and won't be around for teasing much in the future.

Despite the public and behind closed door defense, I still have quite a bit of work left on my dissertation. My committee requested that I rewrite my conclusions to better highlight the value of my research. And I have to basically rewrite my 3rd chapter on cultural adaptations to the savanna-forest environment in the southern Mozambique region.

My major adviser sent me his full comments last night and I am meeting with another committee member in about an hour. The chapter isn't completely unsalvageable but it will be ugly. I suspect further data analysis too. I have less than a month as my final version of the whole shebang is due to the UGA Graduate School on 7 December.

I have a ton of writing and editing to accomplish this week. Rewriting chapter 3 and getting a mock-up final copy to the grad school for the initial format check. It has to look pretty much done for the format check or you DO NOT GRADUATE. Seriously, at this point my graduation could be hampered by people with rulers checking my margins. You would think it would be easy with a word processing program, but then there are 2 set of required page numbering systems (i-iii in the front matter, 1-200 in the back), smashing together multiple pdfs, etc. One last bullshit hoop.

As I was writing my dissertation, I used to fantasize that the dissertation fairy would wave her magic wand and the entire draft would appear on my flash drive. I wish there was a writing fairy - I guess that's me. My wand sucks - keyboards just aren't as flashy as a ncanhu wand with a lightning bird feather inside.

Great Ideas: Fridays in an African Classroom

I read other blogs to get ideas. One of my favorite Science Fiction blogs, Topless Robot, likes to post really bad fanfic on Fridays (be wary, this stuff will make you really worry about the future of humanity). Now, I'm not going to do that here. However, the idea of regularly posting on the same theme one day a week I thought was a great idea. Since I am an anthropologist who works in Africa I thought perhaps maybe posts about Africa, Africans, and African culture - materials that could be used in the classroom - might be a good theme for Friday blog posts. And as a secondary factor, it helps me save material in one spot that I might use in the future to teach about Africa, Africans, and African culture (which is not some monolithic country BTW, there are some people that think this sadly).

Today I start with one of my favorite videos - Binta y la Gran Idea (Binta and the Great Idea). I used it spring term 2009 in my Introductory Anthropology class as it speaks to rural life in contemporary Senegal. Themes of gender roles, education, modernization, sustainability, love, kin, and what it means to be human are explored through the eyes of a little girl named Binta. The great idea, referred to in the title, comes from her father.

The 31 minute long movie is dubbed, as the actors speak French and Diola. Spanish director Javier Fesser shot this movie in cooperation with UNICEF and the Senegalese in 2004. The film is boxed with 12 other short films and 100% of the profits from the sales go to UNICEF in perpetuity. I have linked to the video and trailer below - both with English and Spanish subtitles. More information about the film and the numerous awards it has won are on the Short Film Central database.

Two stories interweave in Binta's narrative. The first story is that of her cousin Soda. Soda desperately wants to attend school, but her father believes girls don't need an education. Binta and her classmates produce a play for the entire community that shows the benefits of education for both boys and girls. I don't want to give away what happens, but this story does end happily.

The second story follows Binta's father, a fisherman. The movie opens with him talking to a friend about European fishing and efficiency. Binta's father is alarmed at the loss of community and their unsustainable resource use practices. He develops an idea that takes him from the local district government all the way to the governor's office. Again, I don't want to give away the ending, however, it is a surprising twist on the normal cultural exchange between industrialized and non-industrialized cultures. Let's just say that Binta's father proposes a wonderful way to school children from industrialized countries so that they can grow up to be good people. :) My intro anthropology students loved it.

Here is a link to the wiki on Binta y la Gran Idea if you want to know the ending.

English Subtitles:


Spanish Subtitles:
Part 1

Part 2

Part 3


Trailer (Spanish subtitles only):

A Scholarly Rite of Passage

It has been a long time since I've posted regularly to my blog (barring today's earlier post). I have been writing, analyzing, scrutinizing, and banging my head against the keyboard in general. But now it is done.

Writing, the last stage of the doctoral journey, is probably the loneliest part. At least while I was doing field research I was surrounded by people and outdoors. Writing up my results put me indoors day after day after day, tied to a computer screen. Ugh! Actually double ugh, since writing about Mozambique made me long to be there AND I have an awful time sitting still for extended periods.

The short of it, is that on Monday at 12:30ish, my committee congratulated me on becoming a doctor in the philosophy of anthropology. But there is a bit of back story, there is always a story.

I gave the public part of my defense on Thursday, 29 October. At 9am that morning I received an email from a committee member letting me know he was really ill and asking to see if we could set up a speaker phone. UGA has rules, of course, about attendance of committee members at doctoral defenses. They've been a little relaxed this Fall term because of swine flu. We did get the speaker phone set up but there was an hour or so of panic.

My friends from the department showed up - a lot of them - as well as a number of professors that aren't even on my committee. I was soooo nervous to present. Not hyperventilating nervous, but I swallowed a jar of butterflies and crawly beetles nervous. It is way easier to present someone else's work (teaching class) or to a group of strangers or teens.

The presentation went off without a hitch. I calmed down as the presentation wore on. People asked interesting questions at the end. I got to talk about rain ceremonies, fire, historic ethnography, etc. One of the professors, a good friend, suggested that elephants be enlisted to put out wildfires since the folks in Madjadjane and Gala lack a fire department. He got to laughing and it was really difficult for me to keep a straight face as I answered other questions.

My committee and the listening public

Then it was over. The committee members in physical attendance seemed happy. But I still had the dreaded "closed door" defense. This was postponed until Monday, 2 November. UGA had a furlough day on Friday, so yes, I had to wait an entire weekend to know the final outcome. To be fair, the folks in my department and my major adviser are not the type of people who would let me defend without a good chance that I would pass. But there is always that off chance.

On Monday, my entire committee promptly began the final interrogation at 11am. I was asked to leave briefly at the beginning so that they could discuss procedures with the newest faculty member (this was his first defense as a faculty member). Then I was brought in for the grilling. It wasn't bad. Basically we discussed my dissertation - the theoretical bits and some other loose nuts and bolts that needed tightening. Everyone was really helpful. However, I was so anxious that my mind went completely blank. I recognized they were speaking English and I understood each word individually, but I could not comprehend what they were asking. It was like when I meet someone I know and I don't remember their name. My mind is dark and foggy. Same in this instance but worse. I must have said something acceptable.

At the end, they asked me to leave for about 15 minutes. When I entered, they congratulated me and then we discussed in detail the revisions I need to make before the final submission of my dissertation to the graduate school.

I'm still stunned and kind of out of it. I'm not really sure what to do next. I mean I am applying for jobs and postdocs, but in the great grand scheme of things... now what?

More adventures.

Making the Rounds

So this song is making the rounds amongst anthropologists and their blogs. I've tried to avoid it, mainly because it just seemed so silly in concept. But really, it's pretty cool at explaining what I and other anthropologists do.

I give you The Anthropology Song by Dai Cooper. Bravo!

What anthropologists do...

An anthropologist, an archaeologist, and a paleontologist walk into a cave.

The archaeologist pulls a roll of string out of her left pocket and a handful of little stakes out of her right. She begins marking off identically-sized square sections across the floor of the cave. The paleontologist rushes to a corner of the cave yet unmarked by the archaeologist, and starts unpacking his jackhammer, saying "You fool! You won't find anything of any value that close to the surface."

The anthropologist is staring at the mouth of the cave. Eventually, the archaeologist stops laying string and asks the anthropologist "Well, are you just going to stand there all day, or are you going to do anything?"

"Oh, I'm already working," replied the anthropologist. "I'm trying to figure out what is motivating our hosts to fill up the cave entrance with rocks."



My friend Sabine sent me this joke in response to a discussion about the difference between anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology. Thanks!

First Day of Class

I taught my own section of Introduction to Anthropology this afternoon. Sixty students were registered, but only 42 showed up. I'm hoping that the class stays fairly small.

I forgot how nerve-wracking getting up in front of a group of folks can be - and we only discussed the syllabus and class expectations. I felt like I was talking a million miles per hour, but my TA Elaina said my pace was just fine. I feel like pulling all my hair out but that's just the adrenaline talking. I finished the class slightly out of breath. I guess it could be worse. When I first started teaching, I used to vomit in the bathroom just before class.

This weekend will be fairly busy preparing the three lectures I will give next week and prepping the activities I want students to complete over the course of the term. I really want to help my students learn cool new things. I'm pretty excited. I hope that 10 years from now, if I have a job I still be as excited about teaching.



I am simultaneously running an anthropology discussion forum with my online community. Most of the folks in my community have been out of university for a while and are at the point when they enjoy learning for the sake of learning. I post the same materials I am using in my University of Georgia class to the forum - readings, web links, etc. - as well as the lecture power points and audio. The non-student students have the opportunity to learn and participate in a weekly discussion with no pressure. I get feed-back on my teaching, the materials students access, and what topics people are really interested in. Elaina thinks it is a cool idea for extra feedback, but that I am completely nuts to do it.

I am more nervous about the community forum than my IRL students. Community members are very outspoken and opinionated. There is so much potential for problems when one is discussing issues like race, human evolution, religion, politics, immigration, etc. My online community is member moderated so the possibility for butthurt is exponential.

Scams in Science

My adviser forwarded me an interesting email the other day. It seems someone was interested in my dissertation research. All NSF grants are posted online with their abstracts as part of the US Freedom of Information Act. Since grantees receive taxpayer funding, we are required by law to post information about our research. No biggie. (my award) At any rate, someone at a European publishing company found my grant application and contacted my adviser. They contacted him because he is listed as the lead principal investigator – that’s how it works for doctoral dissertation improvement grants.

Here are some of the sections from that email (real names have been removed and all that):

We are producing a special report at the end of February with a focus Social, behavioural and economic science from a small number of National Science Foundation funded projects; promoting these projects to a European audience, we would like you to work with us to create a professional dissemination article.

Ultimately we are aiming to work with a small number of NSF projects to enable:

• Commercialisation/exploitation exposure to a highly targeted audience in Europe
• Wide spread dissemination of the results of the NSF project to European peers
• Establishment of research partnerships and knowledge exchange
• Contact building for participation in FP7 (European Commission’s €50 Billion Euro R&D funding program launched last year)

Our goal of widespread exposure and dissemination for selected NSF projects, academic institutions, nationally funded projects and commercial research units is achieved via a high profile communications drive, targeting approximately 39,000 key decision makers across both the private & public sectors throughout Europe. Each of the projects and institutions involved will be working closely with us to produce high quality professional dissemination material.

Once we allocate your position within the report I will assign to you a dedicated Editorial Manager and Editorial team from ZZZ Publishers. But a general guideline of material to be developed would be based around the following;

• Case Study
• Project Profile
• White Paper
• Interview with leading Project member
• Pre-Defined article which you may have produced previously

All material developed will be agreed upon and approved by you, before publication. We would also request it is approved by your project officer. ZZZ Publishers are an independent company; this means the content of the report is completely unbiased and independent.

Sounds pretty good, right? The email goes on with some testimonials, lists distribution across Europe (numbers), and describes a work plan to get out the slick, color publications that will wind up collecting dust on some politician’s coffee table or be used to fill in space in an overfull landfill. Here’s the fine print at the very end of the email:

The cost for each of the projects involved in this report is fixed at only $ 3,800 USD

Someone forgot to tell this publishing company, that anthropologists and definitely PhD candidates in anthropology, have zero funding to publish their own work and that unless it is some sort of report for the government or funding agency peer-review is expected (well, unless it is National Geographic or something, but I think they must have some sort of review system). This is why we publish in academic journals (large readership) and write book proposals that go through an approval process based in part on previous work validity. I mean, my research could be absolute shit (I believe it isn’t) and this chap is offering to publish it without peer review. Huh? If I wanted that, I’d set up a website or a blog and…

Finally, the last thing that sort of niggles at the back of my brain is why? Why was my project picked? I took a thorough look at the publisher and their in-house magazine. They publish a lot of engineering and profit-producing scientific research. The magazine target audience is not only politicians but corporations. Hmmm…. wild plant harvest, conservation, Africa… I know that the business of companies is to make money and that the communities where I work are extremely poor, but I would really hate to see poor folk be made poorer. And I don’t think I’m paranoid as there have been cases where companies went in, bought up rights to wild plant materials, and then the community could no longer access the plants they have depended on for centuries. It is called biopiracy, and I have no desire to be involved with it.

For my own research I needed to know what species are useful in order to determine if community habitats are more biodiverse than similar reserve habitats because people are manipulating the landscape in order to have useful plants nearby. I was interested in whether a species was useful for construction, food, firewood, medicine, etc., but not how to prepare them for consumption. My recording of any extra information people volunteered was solely for the community. That was the research agreement that I made with the chief and induna (council of tribal elders). If the community wants to take the information I have recorded for them and do something more with it, that is their business. But seriously, none of the species people told me about were new to the literature. Botanists in southern Africa, particularly SANBI, have done a very good job of collecting data on plants used in magic, medicine, food, fuel, construction, alcohol, etc.

Am I being cynical? Is there some sort of results publishing that I don't know about? I hope that the intent was more innocent. I emailed the guy back to let him know I had no money, and he backed off quickly. Then I emailed my adviser. He replied that it looked like a 419 scam to him, but he left the decision up to me what to do with the guy. I guess I’m still the padawan.

If you're interested in the name of the company and magazine, I'm more than happy to send it along if you drop me a line.

The Monster

I'm back stateside. Today is day 10. My friends and acquaintances keep asking about culture shock - or The Monster, as my friend Jessica calls it. I can't say that I've really felt The Monster's presence. I've had a couple of glimpses - homes don't have fences with razor wire on top, cops don't carry AK-47s, I can eat tofu - but nothing that has made me feel odd or uncomfortable.

I miss Mozambique and my friends back in Madjadjane, Gala, Maputo, and Limpopo NP. I miss my friends in South Africa too. I miss the warm temperatures, the friendliness of people, the smells, the noise, the non-plastic feel of life... I have trouble sleeping through the night. Maybe The Monster's name is Saudade. Por que tenho saudade para Moçambique.

In the coming months, I'll be working on my dissertation and finishing up graduate school. I still have plenty of photos and stories from Mozambique that I will post from time to time, however, for practical purposes this blog will become more of an anthropologist's adventures in her own culture and environment wherever that may be. I hope that you will continue reading.

Confronting a Prejudice

I have finally finished all my interview work (for now). I return to Madjadjane on Wednesday to give a presentation on my research - purpose, preliminary results, and photos of the community.

Catharanthus roseus
This last week of interviews was really difficult. I am burnt out on interviews, much of the interview was devoted to saying good-bye (for now), and I was physically exhausted. Many people that I didn't interview, but passed on the road or passed by their homes, stopped me for a chat and said that they will really miss me. I will really miss them too.

Madjadjane, and Gala, are the type of communities that just don't seem to exist in the United States anymore. People make jokes about "it takes a village to raise a child" but this really happens. So does Ubunto, and knowing all your neighbors, and sharing what you have even if it isn't much, and pooling resources to get a bigger project accomplished.

One of my good friends, Sr. Mateus (who loves to talk) told me this week that he was glad I came and stayed, and hopes that I can return soon. But besides that, he told me that my questions about how people and culture and landscape are tied together opened many people's minds. He felt pride in where he came from and his community. That made me feel good - like I had accomplished something tangible and useful.

So what does this have to do with prejudice? During the interviews this past week I spent a significant amount of time asking about plant identification and use. Over the past 9 months I took photos of plants people mentioned during interviews and plants that caught my eye or were common in the community. A couple of the plants were very pretty flowers (photos in this blog). During the interview, people mentioned how beautiful these flowers were. They might not know the names, but they all said that people planted these flowers in their yards to make their homes beautiful.

I was surprised that people would plant flowers to make their homes beautiful. These flowers have no other utility for most people (specialists did mention that one species could be used as a medicine). I had assumed that residents didn't have the time or the space to plant anything around their home that had no utility as a food or a medicine. Or that they would even care about making their homes beautiful. They do talk about different trees being beautiful, but most trees around homes were already growing when the homes were built. Also, these trees usually provide fruits, medicines, or construction materials.

When I realized the depth of the assumption I had made, I felt horrible. Why wouldn't poor people/African farmers care about making their homes beautiful? Why wouldn't they see beauty in their surroundings? Why should brancos corner the market on landscaping?

I think that my prejudice stems from the fact that the landscaping in cities like Maputo, Pretoria, and other African cities I've visited is modeled on a Western ideal. The people I see landscaping are low level workers, usually black. I never thought that they might take an interest in the work other than that it was a job that paid the bills. I also think that some of my horror in the discovery comes from my own research and reactions to Westerners who describe agriculture in southern Mozambique as messy, wasteful, and inefficient. I always answer that multi-cropping milho (maize), squash, bean, and peanut helps keep soil fertility and conserves biodiversity. And all those "weeds" are medicines or wild foods.

The African landscape is different in many respects from an American or European landscape. I find the African landscape very beautiful, but at the African household scale I still carried some baggage. I'm glad that my mind was opened, and I was forced to rethink my point of view.


I would identify the plants in this blog, unfortunately I have already mailed home all my plant identification guides. I'll post the species if anyone is interested when I return to the States.

Reputation

I learned this Friday that I have a reputation. My empregada, Dona Fatima, told me that her daughter was visiting Ponto do Ouro in the last month and mentioned that her mom in Maputo worked for a woman anthropologist that worked in Matutuine District. Immediately, people asked "Doctora Jenny?" These were people from both sides of the Mozambican-South African (KwaZulu-Natal) border.

It weirds me out a bit that people I've never met or spoken to, living many kilometers away from Madjadjane and Gala know who I am. I suppose I stand out a bit. There aren't too many white people living out in rural Mozambique, walking everywhere, asking about culture and tradition and history and plants, making terrible attempts at learning Mazingiri Ronga, measuring trees and counting plants, asking men and women and children about their opinions about agricultura to xilate... And everyone is related, so there is a lot of news exchange between villages in the Maputaland region... Imagining the situations where I might come up in conversation is a fun exercise in and of itself.

At the same time, I know that while people probably tell stories about the silly and crazy things I've done out of ignorance, I haven't done terrible things to warrant warnings about me. So I am happy that people know who I am. It makes my work easier. People are more open about their activities. For example, in the past month a number of local hunters have spoken with me about their hunting, what they've caught, and where. This is not something that I would have been able to do a year ago.

I still am curious what my reputation is though. I'll probably never find out. Salema, my assistant, tells me that people like me. That will have to be enough.

More photos from this October

River Road along the Futi River, Madjadjane, Mozambique.
Tihaca (Momordica balsamina) is an edible wild vegetable.
Xihaha (Opuntia ficus) is used in medicine for asthma treatments.
Waiting on the roadside to sell charcoal.
Me on the River Road.
Marracuja (Passiflora edulis) - passionfruit
Making mfuma - a paste of macuacua pulp that can be stored for future consumption.
Fire is used to clean fallow land in preparation for machambas (fields) where maize, cassava, and peanut will be grown.
A black catfish (~30 lbs.) harvested from the Futi River.
Little boys make carrinhos out of scrap wire, tin cans, and anything else they can find - including someone's old kewpie doll.
Building a new research lab/museum/office at the IUCN ecotourism lodge.
Selma and her cousin.
Constructing a new kitchen.
Dusk - a thunderstorm with heavy rain is blowing in.
Dawn.
Xavito making esteiras in his family's fabrica

Research Preparations & Presentations

From L to R: me, Vania Pedro, Linda Manjate, Angelo Francisco, Márcia Langa, Leocadia Naene, and Sergio Julane

My research group finally got to present publicly today. Even if the public that turned out consisted of 4 professors and a geography student. I was very disappointed. We originally planned to present our research proposals last week, and I had sent out emails early last week in anticipation. About an hour after I got out the last email, I got a call from Cornélio requesting that we move the presentation to this week because people at the Dept. of Natural Area Conservation (Ministry of Tourism) wanted to attend. He wanted to give the students an extra week to polish up their presentations since they would be presenting to more than just the department. Okay. That sounded good. DNAC is a potentially good connection for students who are looking for work or internships after they graduate. So, I emailed everyone again. Unfortunately, two of the people that would have definitely attended were in the field today.

Students got their titles to me by Monday. I forwarded the flyer to Cornelio for posting in the biology department. I came in Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to help polish the presentations as best I could, but some of the language stuff still flys over my head. Late Wednesday, I received 2 flyers for posting in Geography and Anthropology. Angelo and I walked them over to the other departments and posted them, but I didn't have a good feeling about it.

Anticipating that people would be a few minutes late, we used our extra time to upload everyone's slide shows and correct last minute typos. I learned that attention to detail surpasses national boundaries. Mozambican biology, anthropology, and geography students are just as picky as their US counterparts when it comes to making presentations look good. They might even be more detail oriented. Angelo spent 10 minutes making sure all his fonts matched and were large enough for easy viewing. Linda and Vania (picture) looked over their presentations to anticipate potential questions - which they then proceeded to ask one another.

Angelina Martins, a botany professora that I am working with, showed up about 20 minutes before we were to start. Cornélio had asked her to introduce our group, and make sure we had a projector set up. Already done (that was me being anal retentive). A colleague of Sergio's from geography showed up a few minutes before 2PM to see what we were planning and to support Sergio who was pretty nervous about presenting. (He did a fantastic job BTW.) Then Esmeralda Marianas, an anthropology professora, arrived a little late but she had just gotten out of a meeting and rushed over. Esmeralda is going to be teaching ecological anthropology next term and co-supervises Vania and Linda with me. Cornélio Ntumi and Eunice Ribeiro, both biology professors, arrived an hour into the presentations, but they had warned me that they might be late because they had to attend a thesis defense for another student.

That was our audience. I can't tell you how disappointed I was - pissed off might be a better term. The students worked very hard to improve their presentations - practicing, rewording slides, reformatting to make them clearer, etc. We presented to ourselves and our audience of one. I am not counting the professors because we've been working with the students all this time already. Well perhaps Esmeralda counts since she didn't know too much about the biology projects in advance. But no DNAC, no other professors or students from biology, no professors from agronomy (they were invited). Remember, I didn't have a good feeling about posting the flyer so late in geography or anthropology. One can always hope, but the pragmatic part of me did prepare to be disappointed from that direction.

I can post their work here and reach a huge audience. Over the next couple of days I will be posting a description of the projects (and linking to presentations if I can figure out how to do this). I will post a picture of each member of our Maputaland Landscape and Culture Research Group (the link goes to a separate but related project), with the title of their research, a brief description of the project, and contact information (they requested the last part). If you are interested please comment.

Do you have children?

"Do you have children?"

Inevitably, this question comes up in every extended conversation I have with native Africans of all nationalities, genders, ages, and cultures. To say that children are very important to Africans is an understatement. Children represent so many things - future, fertility, wealth, adulthood...

So how do I respond? I am sorely tempted to lie. People, especially older women, always give me these pitying looks like I might as well be dead because I have certainly proven my uselessness as a woman. There is also a slightly scornful cast to their pity, because without children I am not a grown woman. But I don't lie. "No, no children yet." I always add that yet part, because if I don't they will ask why. This is just as bad as the pitying scorn. The why is so very complicated. And who knows? The women in my family often have children late. I have some time.

Today, I explained a little bit of my complicated personal reasons to the anthropology student who asked. "If you are a woman and want to be a scientist in the United States and to advance, it is pretty difficult to do so and have children." Linda started nodding. "Yes, it is the same here. Women are seen as just factories for making children."

The situation is more complicated in Mozambique, but Linda and I didn't really need to get into the unstated understood. For instance, more than 70% of agriculture, especially subsistence agriculture, is done by Mozambicanas. So women are food factories too. Mozambique is also ranked first in the world for Female Economic Activity (82.8%). The US ranks 58th, with 58.8% in case you were wondering. Let's just say that Mozambicanas have a pretty difficult life.



I'm not sure how many Americans would publicly state or agree with the baby factory comment. However, the sentiment that a woman's role is to take care of children still permeates US culture. Obviously, not everyone believes this. I've met single dads, stay-at-home dads, and dads that share childcare equally with their spouses.

I've also experienced the pitying looks and "You'll regret not having children later" type comments in the United States. Again, mainly from other women. I don't know; maybe I will and maybe I won't. I do know for certain that I am tired of having people, sometimes complete strangers, constantly harp on my lack of children to me. Why am I so much more patient about answering this question when someone outside my own culture asks?

Do men even get asked these kind of questions?

The Zen of Waiting

Espera. Espera. Breathe in. Espera. Espera. Breathe out.

I do a lot of waiting in Mozambique. Time runs differently here. The viscosity of time varies more widely depending on the scale. On a minute by minute, day to day basis, it flows very slowly. I find myself waiting on appointments, waiting for businesses to reopen after the two hour lunchtime, waiting for emails to appear in my inbox, waiting for meetings to be held so that I can consider beginning my interviews, waiting to get out to the reserve... As I look back to January, the time has flown rapidly. It seems like I only just arrived, and I get nervous about completing the research tasks I have set for myself.

Waiting is tough for me. Chris says that I am high strung (anxious) and I won't disagree. Waiting forces me to recognize that I have no control and I just need to go with whatever happens. Letting go like this is a very difficult practice for me. Yet, amazingly things always turn out. Maybe a little later than I would like, but you can't always get what you want.

Espera. Espera. Breathe in. Espera. Espera. Breathe out.

The students I work with, particularly the anthropologists, find it funny that I am always on time or a little early. "That's so American." They tell me. "A Mozambicano will be at least 30 minutes late, if not 3 hours. That's why we carry cell phones; so we can call to see if the other person even remembered we were supposed to meet." We laugh.

But it is very American of me. Vania and Linda, both anthropology undergraduates, are good about meeting with me on time. The latest they have ever been is 20 minutes. Understandable for 2 serious, intelligent, and beautiful young woman busy with coursework, jobs, and being young and single. They are also hip to American culture and we talk lots about differences between our respective cultures. Maybe it's that they are anthropologists, but I appreciate their understanding.

Espera. Espera. Breathe in. Espera. Espera. Breathe out.

Plug for Ecological and Environmental Anthropology Journal

I am no longer officially working at the online journal Ecological and Environmental Anthropology, but I am going to put in a plug for them. Hey, you never know who's reading. They're accepting submissions for the next issue. Plus, you can check out past issues online for free (video too).

Call for submissions

Ecological and Environmental Anthropology (EEA) is an online,
peer-reviewed journal produced in the Department of Anthropology at
the University of Georgia. The editorial board of EEA is pleased to
announce a call for submissions from diverse disciplines including
anthropology, conservation biology, ecology, environmental studies,
geography, political science, and sociology, as well as from
professionals specializing in conservation, health, resource
management and other fields related to human ecology.

EEA 's mission is to engage in exploration of the complex and dynamic
relationships between humans and their social and physical
environments. We hope to provide fertile ground for integrative dialog
among the subfields of anthropology. We also hope and foster
interdisciplinary discussion among academic anthropologists, scholars
in other social and natural science disciplines, and non-academic
professionals in all fields engaged in the study of human-environment
relationships. Through the journal's online format, EEA takes full
advantage of technological innovations that aid in the dissemination
of research in ecological and environmental anthropology. In addition
to traditional manuscripts, we encourage submissions that take full
advantage of the electronic medium and push the boundaries of
conventional scholarly communication. Acceptable formats range from
audio/visual presentations to online symposia. Submissions will
present original research, critical reviews of published works, and
new eco-cultural models and paradigms.

Potential authors and other interested parties should visit to our web
site http://www.uga.edu/eea for submission guidelines and in order to
view previous issues of EEA. Submitted manuscripts that do not conform
to EEA's submission guidelines will be returned to the author(s).
Electronic submissions are preferred, and should be sent to
eea@uga.edu.