Food Fight: A creative take on history

I love watching videos and really like history, so this was a pleasant surprise. Some people are very creative and seem to have a lot of time on their hands, but it is quite cleverly done.

Food Fight An abridged history of American-centric warfare, from WWII to present day, told through the foods of the countries.

The Vietnam War

E Mulungo

After a long process of setting up meetings and having them canceled, making arrangements for going to the field, buying equipment and supplies, etc. I finally started my interviews and mapping.


Sergio Julane (geography) and Angelo Francisco (ecology/botany) (L to R in photo), 2 undergrads at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, came out to Madladlane with me for a week of meeting with traditional leaders, community mapping, and interviews. Madladlane, is a small farming community, located along the banks of the Rio Futi, adjacent to the Reserva Especial de Maputo. We stayed at REM and walked across a footbridge everyday to meet and talk with community residents.

Community residents were surprised to see a branca (white woman) walking from home to home, field to field, and certainly from the reserve to the community. E mulungo is what the very smallest children shouted when they saw me, adults were far more circumspect. A mulungo is a foreigner, particularly a white person. I usually shouted it back, in a silly voice, causing all sorts of giggling from both children and adults. After all, I am now the official village idiot.

These little girls were giggling just a moment before the picture was taken. Their mom got 2 of the 3 sisters to change into their best dresses for the picture.

These are just a few of the images from my past week in the field.

Sunrise

Elephant feet or patas. They come from 2 older elephants that were harassing the community and had to be killed. The guards at the reserve had tried herding the animals back behind the fence several times, but the elephants kept escaping to eat crops and attack residents.

One of 2 main roads in Madladlane. The other is a hard dirt road that will probably be paved in the next few years.

Local primary school

A pretty barboleta (butterfly) that decided to hitchhike a ride on my arm. The IUCN is working with the local community to get ecotourists to visit to check out the high diversity of birds, butterflies, and plants.

Terminalia sericea, also known as Conono locally, is used for construction and charcoal production. It is a typical wooded savanna tree species.

Abandoned store in Salamanga, a nearby town.

Mamana Amelia was one of several women farmers I interviewed this past week. She got a kick out of me pronouncing local names for plants and learning a little isiZulu from her during our interview - probably because the new words involved clicking and hlth sounds. I also probably made some funny faces trying to twist my tongue around the new words.

Sr. Olesene, me, Sr. Daniel Mathe, Sergio Julane. Sr. Olesene is a reserve guard and farmer, and acted as our translator this past week. Sr. Mathe is a traditional leader in Madladlane and provided a great summary of the history of the community.

Long Shadows

I've been reading The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence by Martin Meredith over the past couple of weeks. It's been taking a while, not because it is dense or long (which it is), but because it is for the most part depressing.

Independence is supposed to be a good thing - democracy, peoples' right to govern themselves, citizens shaping their national future, etc. However, Martin's work chronicles 50 years of African leaders exploiting, murdering, enslaving, authorizing genocide, and in general destroying African peoples and landscapes. Some of the most disgusting and depressing parts of the book chronicle how my own country supported some of the worst leaders like Charles Taylor in Liberia or Mobutu in the Congo. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, the US government also supported Pol Pot in Cambodia. Then there are all the fuck ups the US participated in politically, economically, or militarily (or are those really all the same thing?) in various countries throughout the African continent in the name of globalization and the Cold War against communism.

Anyway, each chapter chronicles one big man (and his cronies) after another bleeding the life out of the people and the land. Recent news stories about Zimbabwe demostrate that the phenomena continues. Mugabe is being sternly warned by other presidents of southern African nations, as well as his own party, to step down and not run for re-election next year. Will he? Even if he does, Zimbabwe will be suffering from the shadow of his rule for a long time.

My biggest critique is the dearth of information about Mozambique. It seems to be Africa's forgotten country - both in the popular and scientific literature. There are a few pages (out of 752 total) that discuss the war for independence from Portugal and a couple more on the RENAMO-FRELIMO conflict but not much else. Is it because Mozambique is a Lusophone country (Angola has a chapter, but it also has oil reserves and diamonds)? Is it because Mozambique is overshadowed by its neighbors, South Africa and Zimbabwe (Swaziland, Lesotho, Madagascar, and Botswana don't get much mention either)? Or something else that I am just not seeing?

An interesting quote

This morning I dropped into the PAO library (US Public Affairs Office) to catch up on the print news and found an interesting quote. At least interesting to me as a historical ecologist studying interactions between landscapes and cultures.

"Comparative history provides a way of dissecting the roles of chance and necessity, of assessing how and to what extent the time invariant and space invariant laws intersect with the unique attributes of individuals and their surroundings (250)."
- G.Vermeij, Nature: An Economic History (2004)

I wasn't actually reading the book, I was reading a review written by an economist in the Journal of Economic Literature. Somehow I was able to overcome my inherent phobia of financial matters and browse the economic journals to which the library subscribes. (I am able to do my own taxes and follow my investments, it just isn't something I get a kick out of like other people I know and love.)

The actual review was interesting as well - comparing the fields of biology (mostly evolutionary biology) and economics. However, I was disappointed that the author didn't mention economic anthropology. Another book for my ever-growing reading list.

Makyr, Joel. 2006. Economics and biologists: a review of Geerat J. Vermeij's Nature: An Economic History. Journal of Economic Literature 44: 1005-13.