Exchange

Street Food in Dakar & Suburbs (4): The Construction

On every street corner, too, various street food outlets compete for customers with other types of businesses. These places are either "canteens" or garages of houses transformed into catering spaces with a large table and wooden benches around for customers, or metal or wooden kiosks glued to a wall or by the roadside.

The materials used are numerous: stainless steel or plastic or glass containers, spoons, dishes, a gas bottle or coal furnace, plastic basins for laundry, a few 20-litre oil cans recycled into water reserves and a stack of newspaper used as packaging.

Readjusting the focus: Who was the other participant involved in the cakewalk dance?

Attached here is an archival photograph from the Missouri Historical Society of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, specifically of indigenous Filipinos from the Cordillera region of northern Luzon known as the Igorots. Titled by American photographer Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) as “Mrs. Wilkins teaching an Igorrote boy the cakewalk at the 1904 World’s Fair,” the photographs presents two people in the image, the eponymous young Igorot boy dancing with Vienna opera singer Mrs. George S. Wilkins, as she teaches him the cakewalk, a popular dance of the time period.

Renga between Past and Present Selves

Clad in polka dots,

Eyes glitter despite wet toes,

Exchanging this love.

 

After days of rain, the sunlight

shimmers – dappled shadows dance.

 

Living tradition,

Colors bleed transformation,

An elsewhere awaits.

 

What do our bodies know that

text cannot articulate?

 

Shuttling asleep,

Lines collapse past and future.

Who holds the power?

 

Resisting capture, its wings

flutter, fighting off the pin.

Champurrado to Champorado: Understanding cross-border connections through my childhood

Pictured in the first photograph is pictured the champorado, a Filipino dessert dish made of sticky rice and tablea (tablets of ground roasted cocoa beans) and topped with milk and sugar. The champorado is often served for breakfast or merienda (afternoon tea), and is served alongside dried fish as a salty balance to the dessert’s sweetness.

Ajrak: A textile without borders?

The two textiles shown side by side, are Ajraks-- the blue silk one is from Karachi, Pakistan and the blue-red is a wool-silk scarf produced in Bhuj, India. While deeply visually similar, the textiles are produced in two countries, that though border each other, are divided by political conflict that does not allow trade or travel between the two countries-- even to conduct research. The blue silk scarf is mine and the blue-red scarf belongs to Meera Curam. 

Red Tomatoes, Green Houses

At an altitude of 3000 meters, Khamje is a tiny village with a handful of houses in the Solukhumbu region of north-eastern Nepal. The mountains in Nepal are not considered hospitable to a variety of food, and most of the country’s food production is centered in the hilly region and the Terai (Southern Nepal). Dawa Phuti Sherpa (woman pictured here) is seasoned in mountain farming and animal husbandry, and has spent most of her life in Khamje. The red tomatoes, and the large pumpkin shown here are grown in her recently-built greenhouse.

Tabaski Twenty Twenty (2)

The first activity on the feast day tabaski is group prayer in the public squares. Otherwise it will led in the mosques by the Imams who will be the first to slaughter their animals. After the immolation of the Imams from each zone, the rest of the community starts to slaughter their animal. Following the mechanical skinning of the animals, the meat is distributed at three levels: firstly, the share of the disadvantaged first, then the next of kin and the third part is for the family. This meat is consumed in different dishes, at least within the families.

Tabaski Twenty Twenty (1)

The feast of Aîd El Kébir or tabaski is a Muslim feast. It involves prayers and the slaughter of animals (preferably sheep). This year, it coincided with the Covid 19 pandemic and its consequences. This explained the soaring prices of sheep in the market. The animals were exposed in the parks and on the streets to customers. The prices varied between sixty thousand (60,000 F cfa) to four hundred thousand (400,000 F cfa and up). Because of the high price of sheep, within twenty-four hours (24 hours) of the event, some Muslims could not have the sheep of their choice.

Farmers and Loan Money “Amadaw Kyay” Under BSPP

Daw May Myo Khine, 49 years old, who once lived in Sittwe, capital of Rakhine, and whose grandfather and father owned many rice farms explained that under the Burmese Socialist Programme Party, some farmers grew two different kinds of rice. They grew low quality rice, which they would sell to the government at the prescribed price and good quality variety, which they would eat themselves. The government gave farmers loans called “Amadaw Kyay”  for growing rice. In return, the farmers had to sell the harvested rice to the government.

The Prayers of the Talibés (2)

yalna laa baay laate, dugal la ci poosam yobu la aldiana !

yalna nga àjji màkka 

yalna nga giseek seriñ tuuba yoomalxiyaam 

yalna la borom bi bindal tuyaaba

yalna nga amm ay seex 

yalna nga tabbi ci teenu xaalis ñu lay gene ngay bañ 

 

May God make Baye Lahat put you in his pocket and enter with you into Heaven.

May God give you the grace to perform Hajj in Makkah

May God make you meet Serigne Touba in the afterlife

May God record this good deed for you...

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