Away from Africa

Razia Said Razia Said's CD,  Zebu Nation  was created to raise awareness and benefit the preservation of the rainforest in her native Madagascar, specifically the region to the northeast known as MaMaBay (area comprised of the Masaola and Makira forests, and the Antogil Bay). This region is protected through a WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) initiative, and several WCS team members were at the launch, including Lisa Gaylord, Country Director for WCS/Madagascar, who oversees WCS’s program activities in MaMaBay.  New Yorkers and visitors to New York may know the incredible  Madagascar!  exhibit at the Bronx Zoo , inaugurated in 2008, in the former Lion House. The exhibit features an incredible mix of Madagascar endemic flora and fauna such as the ring-tailed lemur, radiated tortoise, giant crocodile and a unique mammal, the fossa. Madagascar is one of the most ecologically diverse places on earth, and some animals can only be found there. Lemurs, for example, are prim

T he words "modern" and "African art" are rarely used together. African art as usually identified as traditional art: sculpted masks, statues, in the same style they were done for hundreds of years. One of the galleries attempting to change this is the  Contemporary   African   Art   Gallery  in  Manhattan ,  New York  City. Founder Bill Karg is an architect, and he lived and worked for over five years in  Africa , working on low-income self-built housing, as a consultant for various organizations, such as USAID, the United Nations, the World Bank, and various African governments. El Anatsui wall hanging While he was in  Africa , he started collecting the work of contemporary local artists, and in doing so, met them and learned about their work. He realized that many were well-known, well-collected, and often shown in  Europe  but were virtually unknown in the  United States .  Karg felt that this situation needed to change, and this was the main motivati

Cameroonian finger foods: - boiled peanuts - grilled peanuts - grilled corn on the cob Grilled plantain and "prunes" (seed to the right) - grilled or boiled “prunes” - these are fruits that are savory rather than sweet, and as far as I know do not exist anywhere else than in tropical Africa. They do not travel well. You can now find them, for a high price, in Parisian African markets, but not in the United States, as far as I know. Chicken, miondo and fried ripe plantain slices - fried plantain slices, and/or plantain chips - fried fish and/or spicy grilled fish - fried chicken feet - skewered beef, spiced with hot ground pepper (called “soya”) - Corn flour and banana fritters And of course: Maggi™ along with (very) hot sauce made from Scotch bonnet peppers. Corn flour-banana fritters Photos of these foods can also be seen at MyWeku.com .

Since the  October  2010 post about Vickie Frémont, jewelry designer and recycling artist of Cameroonian descent, much has happened. The blog post caught the attention of Columbia's Alliance Fran ç aise , which took interest in her recycling work, as a sustainability conference was being hosted in Bogota; she has been invited for a residency in Peru in the fall. In the meantime, she exhibited at several fairs, including the Bastille Festival in New York City in July. In the meantime, here are a few photos of her jewelry, modeled by Myriam Maxo , a designer herself, of Caribbean descent.

Genita Ingram greeting a guest My friend Genita Ingram, PR professional extraordinaire, invited me to a fundraiser for Project Enterprise on Tuesday, May 17, at Casa Frela, an art gallery in New York City, at 47 West 119th Street. It was a very nice event to raise funds for a nonprofit that provides entrepreneurs in under-served areas with loans ranging from $1,000 to $5,000. The art at Casa Frela was a mix of pieces by contemporary African-American artists and traditional art and artifacts from the African continent, and the gallery is housed in a beautiful historical Harlem brownstone. I recognized several items from the Bamiléké area of Cameroon, as well as many Nigerian and Ethipian pieces. Soothing music was provided by a young Gambian Cora player, Malang Jobarteh. The gallery owner is Lawrence Rodriguez, himself the product of two cultures, Mexican and Native American. Contemporary art Amber beads in a wooden bowl Malang Jobarteh Playin

Sheep, gentle and meek not only in reputation! (Link to Cameroon sheep photo here ) Barely a few months into my life in Cameroon, we went on a road trip to West Cameroon to see a business connection.  Nkongsamba is one of the Littoral Province's larger towns, a commercial hub, about two hours' drive on the way  to West Cameroon, from Douala, where we lived.There we stopped for lunch at a local small hotel. I ordered roast chicken which seemed safe and familiar. When the chicken was served, I tried to dig in--unsuccessfully. The chicken was as tough as leather. Little did I understand the reality of "poulet bicyclette" (bicycle chicken), i.e. chickens that were never fed anything, and had to fend for themselves, often pecking on dirt and running around all day, till they approach Lance Armstrong's musculature. I had to wait a couple of years till my American friend started a chicken farm to have tender chicken. That was that for lunch on that day! We con

Ayse,  Bibi, and daughters  Bibi Seck is an industrial and product designer of Senegalese and Martiniquais descent,  introduced from afar by Fatimata Ly, a Senegalese ceramics designer I wrote about last year. As a matter of fact, I had been hearing about him and his spouse, Ayse Birsel, for a while already: the New York African design community is not that large, and especially an African married to a fellow Middle Easterner (Turks are Middle Easterners as well as Europeans, with literally a foot in both worlds; and of course we had the Ottoman Empire for six centuries!). Moroso-M'Afrique collection Bibi’s stools, made in Senegal, of recycled plastic, are currently exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design’s Global Africa show. I interviewed him last week to find out what his path had been to this point. Bibi was raised between Europe and Senegal.He had planned on studying architecture at first, but then found his true vocation in Industrial Design at the Ec