Professor Hair’s aim here has been to explore the European written record for the history of Africa south of the Sahara. This effectively began with the arrival of the Portuguese on the Guinea coast and many of these articles focus on Sierra Leone; others extend the enquiry to southern Africa. One particular theme is the use of early vocabularies of African languages as a source for the history of local populations. At the same time, these studies help illuminate the European reaction to the peoples and the places they encountered.
Protestants entering Africa in the nineteenth century sought to learn from earlier Jesuit presence in Ethiopia and southern Africa. The nineteenth century was itself a century of missionary scramble for Africa during which the Jesuits encountered their Protestant counterparts as both sought to evangelize the African native. Encounters between Jesuits and Protestants in Africa, edited by Robert Alexander Maryks and Festo Mkenda, S.J., presents critical reflections on the nature of those encounters in southern Africa and in Ethiopia, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Fernando Po. Though largely marked by mutual suspicion and outright competition, the encounters also reveal personal appreciations and support across denominational boundaries and thus manifest salient lessons for ecumenical encounters even in our own time. This volume is the result of the second Boston College International Symposium on Jesuit Studies held at the Jesuit Historical Institute in Africa (Nairobi, Kenya) in 2016. Thanks to generous support of the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College, it is available in Open Access.
Encounters with Witchcraft is a personal story of a young man's fascination with African witchcraft discovered first in a trek across East Africa and the Congo. The story unfolds over four decades during the author's long residence in and many trips to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. As a field researcher he learns from villagers what it is like to live with witches, and how witches are seen through African eyes. His teachers are healers, cult leaders, witch-hunters and self-proclaimed "witches" as well as policemen, politicians and judges. A key figure is Mohammadi Lupanda, a frail village woman whose only child has died years before. In her dreams, however, she believes the little girl is not dead, but only lost in the fields. Mohammadi is discovered wandering at night, wailing and calling out for the child. Her neighbors are terror-stricken and she is quickly brought to a village trial and banished as a witch. The author is able to watch and listen to the proceedings and later investigate the deeper story. He discovers mysteries about Mohammadi that are only solved when he returns to the village three decades later. Today, witch-hunting and witchcraft-related crimes are found in more than seventy developing countries. Epidemics of violence against alleged witches, mainly women, but including elders of both genders, and even children is on the increase in some parts of the world. Witchcraft beliefs may lie behind vigilante murders, political assassinations, revenge killings and commercial murders for human body parts. Through African voices the author addresses key questions. Do witchcraft powers exist? Why does witchcraft persist? What are its historic roots? Why is witchcraft-based violence so often found within families? Does witchcraft serve as a hidden legal and political system, a mafia-like under-government? The author holds up a mirror for us to think about religious beliefs in our own experience that rely heavily on myth and superstition.
THE ESSENTIAL WORK IN TRAVEL MEDICINE -- NOW COMPLETELY UPDATED FOR 2018 As unprecedented numbers of travelers cross international borders each day, the need for up-to-date, practical information about the health challenges posed by travel has never been greater. For both international travelers and the health professionals who care for them, the CDC Yellow Book 2018: Health Information for International Travel is the definitive guide to staying safe and healthy anywhere in the world. The fully revised and updated 2018 edition codifies the U.S. government's most current health guidelines and information for international travelers, including pretravel vaccine recommendations, destination-specific health advice, and easy-to-reference maps, tables, and charts. The 2018 Yellow Book also addresses the needs of specific types of travelers, with dedicated sections on: · Precautions for pregnant travelers, immunocompromised travelers, and travelers with disabilities · Special considerations for newly arrived adoptees, immigrants, and refugees · Practical tips for last-minute or resource-limited travelers · Advice for air crews, humanitarian workers, missionaries, and others who provide care and support overseas Authored by a team of the world's most esteemed travel medicine experts, the Yellow Book is an essential resource for travelers -- and the clinicians overseeing their care -- at home and abroad.
Sometime around 1500 AD, an African farmer planted a maize seed imported from the New World. That act set in motion the remarkable saga of one of the world’s most influential crops—one that would transform the future of Africa and of the Atlantic world. Africa’s experience with maize is distinctive but also instructive from a global perspective: experts predict that by 2020 maize will become the world’s most cultivated crop. James C. McCann moves easily from the village level to the continental scale, from the medieval to the modern, as he explains the science of maize production and explores how the crop has imprinted itself on Africa’s agrarian and urban landscapes. Today, maize accounts for more than half the calories people consume in many African countries. During the twentieth century, a tidal wave of maize engulfed the continent, and supplanted Africa’s own historical grain crops—sorghum, millet, and rice. In the metamorphosis of maize from an exotic visitor into a quintessentially African crop, in its transformation from vegetable to grain, and from curiosity to staple, lies a revealing story of cultural adaptation. As it unfolds, we see how this sixteenth-century stranger has become indispensable to Africa’s fields, storehouses, and diets, and has embedded itself in Africa’s political, economic, and social relations. The recent spread of maize has been alarmingly fast, with implications largely overlooked by the media and policymakers. McCann’s compelling history offers insight into the profound influence of a single crop on African culture, health, technological innovation, and the future of the world’s food supply.
This title studies the relationship between China and Africa by reviewing this history and current state of interactions, offering a valuable addition to the often heated and contentious debate surrounding China's engagement in Africa from a Chinese angle. Comprised of four parts, the book covers a kaleidoscopic range of topics on Sino-Africa relations based on materials from different languages. The first part looks into early historical contact between China and Africa and historiography of African Studies in China in recent decades. Part Two contains a broad probe into the origin, dynamics, challenges and cultural heritage of China's policies towards Africa. The third part explores the issue of development cooperation from both the theoretical and practical point of view, with a focus on the case of Chinese medical teams in Africa and China's technology transfer to the continent. The final part illustrates bilateral migration, discussing the history and life of Chinese immigrants in Africa and the African diaspora in China. The insights in this book as well as real life case studies will make this work an indispensable reference for academics, students, policy makers and general readers who are interested in international issues and area studies, especially China-Africa relations, China's rise and African development.
William C. Olsen, Walter E. A. van Beek, and the contributors to this volume seek to understand how Africans have confronted evil around them. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. These studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity.
This edited volume examines entanglements and disentanglements between Africa and East Germany during and after the Cold War from a global history perspective. Extending the view beyond political elites, it asks for the negotiated and plural character of socialism in these encounters and sheds light on migration, media, development, and solidarity through personal and institutional agency. With its distinctive focus on moorings and unmoorings, the volume shows how the encounters, albeit often brief, significantly influenced both African and East German histories.
This book offers unique insights into modern African architecture, influenced by modern European architecture, and at the same time a natural successor to existing site-specific and traditional architecture. It brings together the worlds of traditional site-specific architecture with the Modernist Project in Africa, which to date have only been considered in isolation. The book covers the four architectural disciplines: urban planning, building technology, building physics, and conservation. It includes an introduction with a historical outline and an analysis and comparison of a number of projects in various countries in Africa. On the basis of examples drawn from practice, the author documents and describes the hybrid architectural forms that have emerged from the confrontation and fusion with (pre)modern Western architecture and urban planning, and in so doing he also narrates the history of African architecture.
Powerful and embracive, The Transformation of Black Music explores the full spectrum of black musics over the past thousand years as Africans and their descendants have traveled around the globe making celebrated music both in their homelands and throughout the Diaspora. Authors Samuel A. Floyd, Melanie Zeck, and Guthrie Ramsey brilliantly discuss how the music has blossomed, permeated present traditions, and created new practices. As a companion to the ground-breaking The Power of Black Music, this text brilliantly situates emerging, morphing, and influential black musics in a broader framework of cultural, political, and social histories. Grappling with subjects frequently omitted from traditional musical texts, The Transformation of Black Music is guided by more than just the ideals of inclusivity and representation. This work covers overlooked topics that include classical musicians of African descent, and builds upon the contributions of esteemed predecessors in the field of black music study. Providing a sweeping list of figures rarely included in conventional music history and theory textbooks, the text elucidates the findings of ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, Americanists, Africanists, and anthropologists, and weaves these accounts into a powerful and informative narrative. Taking its readers on a journey - one that has never been attempted in a single volume alone - this book reflects the musical phenomena generated by forced African migration and collective memory, and considers the kinds of powerful stories that these musics were meant to tell. Filling in critical musical and historical gaps previously ignored, authors Floyd, Zeck, and Ramsey infuse an engaging musical dialogue with a deeper understanding of the interrelationships between black musical genres and mainstream music. The Transformation of Black Music will solidify not only the inestimable value of black musics, but also the importance and relevance of black music research to all musical endeavors.
