Always a beautiful site to be enthralled into the magical mystical dance of the Kalahari San Bushmen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTL_TdONVBs
@Tekweni Tekweni Media
ANNOUNCING I. MURPHY LEWIS' ACROSS THE DIVIDE TO THE DIVINE: AN AFRICAN INITIATION WORLDWIDE RELEASE
Greetings to you!
IML Publications' book Accross the Divide to the Divine is offering 10% to Global Voice Foundation to any book sold, to benefit the Maasai Warriors and the Kalahari San Buchmen.
ACROSS THE DIVIDE TO THE DIVINE: AN AFRICAN INITIATION is of an American woman's initiatory journey before, through and after the Maasai Warriors, a story of reclamation. Inspired by the stories of the Kalahari, in search of more, Lewis takes flight from her fashion career to Botswana. Only to discover through an intuitive, she had been a San Bush-woman in 1787, who was kidnapped by the Maasai and dragged across the continent to heal their elderly. This pronouncement will lead her to Kenya in and out of NYC on her holidays where she will be immersed in the culture through a naming ceremony, a water ritual and the final fire walk, which will open her heart, awaken her to her gifts, catapult her out of the corporate world, transform the way she sees the seen and the unseen the worlds.
“Across the Divide to the Divide is an unceasing journey from America to Africa, back and forth, but also an unceasing journey into the self. Both are compelling for their passion. One learns much about the Maasai and the San Bushmen, as well as the many ways, here and there, to travel deep into one’s own psyche. This book is for a traveler and the relentless, intense searcher of the self, who is committed to divining the divine.”
— Gay Walley, the erotic fire of the unattainable, Venus as She Ages Collection, The Waw
“Deeply rich and beautifully cinematic, this book is an escape into a secreted and disappearing world. A page-turning glory that holds the power to bring you beyond the demands of the overarching culture into the divine calling that is waiting in your wildest dreams. Incredible.”
— Suzanne Kingsbury, The Summer Fletcher Greel Loved Me, The Gospel According to Gracey.
I.MURPHY LEWIS, is the author of Why Ostriches Don't Fly and Other Tales from the African Bush. After her initiation with the Maasai Warriors, Lewis left her executive position with Badgley Mischka to complete a PhD in Mythology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She lives and writes in Paris.
Lewis' ACROSS THE DIVIDE TO THE DIVINE is sold through:
Dear Ones,
Our dear brothers and sisters in Uganda are struggling for their lives, to be themselves, to be gay, transgender, lesbians. Avaaz.org has set up a campaign to protect them! Thank you! Murphy
To read more:
We are proud to announce Ike Brady as an Ally Advisor!
Ike is a retired human resource executive who worked for over 30 years for several Fortune 100 companies including AT&T, Kraft General Foods, Altria, and Payless ShoeSource. During his tenure with these various organizations, he served in leadership positions focused on employee relations, labor relations, staffing, finance, merger/acquisitions, and human relations. Ike’s corporate experience provided international responsibilities in the United States, Mexico, Asia, Canada, and South America. His success was based on emphasizing to individuals, and to companies, the intrinsic value of being mutually engaged in personal goals and Company expectations versus merely complying with policies, laws, and financial targets. This led to satisfied employees and corporate social responsibility. At each stop in cities during his career, Ike was involved in charitable organizations such as NAACP, Urban League, and the YMCA. He continues his community service working with the University of Kansas in retirement.
Ike was born and raised in the Midwest US where he was a classmate and friend of I. Murphy Lewis. He has a bachelor's degree from Southwestern University in Kansas and a master's degree from Rockhurst University in Missouri as well as a certification in Labor Relations from Michigan State University.
Dear BaAka’s supporters,
Global Voice team is very proud to introduce you the new BaAka journalist for Radio France's Radio Ndjoku in Central African Republic:
Caroline Linzou is the new presenter for Radio Ndjoku in Bayanga, replacing Samedi, Louis’ son. She will be on-air programs and in particular the BaAka Musical Show designed by our beloved Louis Sarno and Max Bale, head of RFI Planète Radio, founder of the Radio France’s Radio Ndjoku.
Don’t forget that if you are in Central African Republic, you can listen at Radio Ndjoku on frequency 95.5!
Global Voice Foundation’s Ally Organization Insight Share https://insightshare.org/ has been a part of working with the Maasai Warriors and Pitt Rivers Museum to bring into right relationship the artifacts collected and held in their keeping with the Maasai families.
Decolonising Cultural Spaces is a full-length documentary, follow link here: Maasai at Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford which is a part of the Living Cultures project coordinated by InsightShare, Oltoilo la Maa (Voice of the Maasai) and Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford in partnership with MAA Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. The documentary follows a delegation of seven Maasai representatives from Tanzania and Kenya spending two weeks in the UK working alongside British museums to decolonise cultural spaces by making them aware of their colonial history and how this can be addressed responsibly. June 27, 2023 the employees of Pitt Rivers and their families will join the Maasai in Narok, Kenya for a ceremony. Below is a picture of Nick Lunch, cofounder of Insight Share and the Maasai—some of them are from the region I’ve visited—who came to England to “listen” spiritually to the artifacts. It’s been an incredibly healing journey for them and those at Pitt Rivers.
—Murphy
Letter from Global Voice Ally Advisor Jean-Marie Teno:
Dear Supporters,
I am finishing the construction of a building in Bandjoun (West Cameroon) which will allow us to host more edition of the Patrimoines-Heritage workshop, where young filmmakers will be able to reside while the training takes place. It will be a house for learning other forms of local crafts, and will also accommodate a library for African cinema, documentary films, as well as my films and the films from the Patrimoines-Heritage workshop. This place will be called La'a LOM, “the village forge.”
I need you, dear supporters, for the last efforts before the building is operational, for the green energy autonomy of the place, the waste disposal, the drinking water supply, the basic equipment to lodge the trainees, the trainers and to arrange spaces of work, development of projects and screenings. I would like to raise the sum of 20,000 euros through this link to: Crowdfunding.
Jean-Marie Teno smiling below:
Jean-Marie continues his narrative about his history:
In the 1970s, Ousmane Sembène said that cinema is a weapon to conquer our dignity, to rebuild our identities destroyed during colonization. For this, I felt concerned and I wanted to make films, African films.
In my 35-year career, I have made a dozen documentary films and fiction films: Bikutsi Water blues, Africa, I will fleece you..., Clandestine, Chief!, A Trip to the Country, The Colonial Misunderstanding, Chosen and many more.
In 2015, while taking part as an expert at a documentary workshop in Cameroon, I was surprised by the subjects that the trainees proposed, sympathetic subjects, yes, but what was happening around them was ignored. That is when I had the idea to initiate the Patrimoines-Heritage project, to share knowledge and to encourage the trainees to take on local issues. Already, there have been 3 editions of Patrimoines-Heritage, the one of 2017, 2018, 2021 and the one for 2023 is in preparation. From these editions, 17 short documentary films from 12 to 26 minutes were produced and 11 of them directed by women. These workshops took place in Bandjoun Station (West Cameroon) in 2017, Espace Gacha in Bangoulap (West Cameroon) in 2018 and Villa Santa Barbara in Yaounde (Central Cameroon) in 2021.
Thank you, Jean-Marie Teno
French link to Crowdfund
Please support our dear friend and ally, Jean-Marie Teno!
Since the days of Louis Sarno’s recordings (1987 to 2017) the BaAka music has changed, Robert Sambo informs. No longer do the elders who made the original instruments exist. So now, the community uses plastic for drums. Enjoy the 3 minute Epop video: BaAka pygmy music from plastic as Robert tells this story.
Global Voice Foundation funds two BaAka employees for Radio Ndjoku to broadcast the BaAka music and to share their culture and their daily issues. As we wait for the final attachment of the fiber optics, we hope within the next 6 months that this station will go worldwide.
Max Bale, who created Epop, is also the founder of the Radio France’s Radio Ndjoku, which broadcasts the BaAka Music and forest ceremonies recorded by Louis Sarno while he lived amongst them. This Radio Ndjoku was the wish of Louis’. In it’s beginnings, Louis participated in broadcasting the music of the BaAka with such joy (see photo of Louis below with Bayanga broadcasting). Louis Sarno was the author of Songs from the Forest: My Life Among the Ba-Benjelle Pygmies. Listen to his recordings here Pitt Rivers Sound on Global Voice or on Spotify
Max and Louis are photographed together below (2014). They spent many hours dreaming of this moment for the BaAka’s music to be broadcasted.
Max Bale travels worldwide “listening,” “engaging” others to speak their feelings (not facts) about the environmental changes they see and experience in their everyday lives. Recently over tea, Max confiding, even so, it’s as though we as humans are going headlong into the wall with our lack of changing the way we live.
Bale is an Expert in audiovisual development, Director and producer of audiovisual documentaries, heading the RFI Planète Radio Department and International Affairs Department France Media World (FMM) and is head of the Radio France / RFI Planète Radio Cooperation Fund. Max Bale’s LinkedIn
Be a part of EPOP, change the world by giving voice to your feelings—submit a film by April 20, 2023: submissions
On March 14th, our ally advisor Michael Lechuga’s bookVisions of Invasion: Alien Affects, Cinema, and Citizenship in Settler Colonies (Univ P of Mississippi, 2023). For three years Michael worked with Global Voice Foundation, filming the Bushmen in Botswana Short video on youtube and the Pyramid of the Sun and the Moon in Mexico. Influenced from working with us, he became an activist—trying to shift the way people perceive those who are “other-ed” by the societal forms. His book is on sale now: Bookshop.org
An exploration of the ways migrants are coded as alien in popular film and public discourse
Description
Visions of Invasion: Alien Affects, Cinema, and Citizenship in Settler Colonies explores how the US government mobilizes media and surveillance technologies to operate a highly networked, multidimensional system for controlling migrants. Author Michael Lechuga focuses on three arenas where a citizenship control assemblage manufactures alienhood: Hollywood extraterrestrial invasion film, federal antimigration and border security legislation, and various immigration enforcement protocols implemented along the Mexico–United States border.
Building on rhetorical studies, settler colonial studies, and media studies, Visions of Invasion offers a glimpse at how the processes of alien-making contribute to an ongoing settler colonial project in the US. Lechuga demonstrates that popular films—The War of the Worlds, Predator, Men in Black, and more—participate in the production of migrants as subjective terrorists, felons, and other noncitizen personae vilified in public discourse.
Beyond just tracing how alien invasion narratives circulate in popular media, Lechuga describes how the logics motivating early US colonists materialize in both the US’s citizenship control policy and in some of the country’s most popular texts. Beneath each of the film franchises and antimigrant political expressions described in Visions of Invasion lies an anxious colonial logic in which the settler way of life is seemingly threated by false narratives of imminent invasion from abroad. The volume offers a deep dive into how the rhetorical figure of the alien has been manufactured as a political subjectivity, one that plays out the anxieties, guilts, and fears of colonialism in today’s science fiction landscape. From the Univ of P Mississippi site
Dr. Michael Lechuga researches and teaches Latina/o/x Studies Communication Studies, Rhetoric, Migration and Settler Colonialism Studies, and Affect Studies. He graduated with an M.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2007 and with a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Denver in 2016. His research explores the ways migrants and migrant communities are subjected in the US by austere migration control structures and white nationalist ideologies. His current research focuses on the role that technology plays in border security assemblages and the ways alienhood is mapped onto migrant bodies through contemporary mechanisms of white-settler governance. In addition, Dr. Lechuga is interested in Latina/o/x Futurism, Surveillance Studies, and Film Studies. He is currently writing his second book, Alien Affects, which illuminates the complex relationships between Hollywood alien invasion film industries and the industries tasked with securing the México/U.S. border.
Belinda sends news via Whatsapp from the Kalahari:
So many new born babies ....human and doggies.....it's almost as if a direct message is from Spirit. Life. No one seem to be bothered that moms have no milk.....young girls the new moms....litters all female pups....moms no milk. Minimum food in all families.....even the affluent.
I am good in position to observe and listen and feel. At times I feel deep tags of pain, other times easier stabs. I feed and share as they come even just fresh water. No judgement. No more worries or fear....Some booze and drugs, others go to church to serve God. Some are just.....Despite heat more intense than known before, and especially in the north where we are....well, the Kalahari north the tribes are resilient......building life with joy under minimum shade.....no water for days, no privilege of transport like I have. Giving Thanks. I help of course but sparingly and discretion no 1.
Life is. I am.
Leopards on the prowl...music soft in village.....senseless chatter. grandpa and grand ma org just silent saying ahhh now and again.
When the sun turns to embrace the coming evening fall....sunset ...u breath out.....in deep. A hot cuppa ...heat less but still....lie down....wait to see the shadows longer....rise. We all drink water at night if in bush, wise cool water lots. Fire talks start .....this pattern since 8th January 2023.
We sleep as the nightlife starts ....a new way for most....the stars, milky way our Telli Vision. Some nights chaos as parties end in loudness beyond control. I am ready to return to the open land...where few roam....
Witdam where we were. flourishing with medicine plants etc....Spirit of the land in charge.
I vote for huge huge downpours in thus area so the animals can be free of abusive owners .....The animals are usually last on list for water or living consciousness about the heat wave we in.Last on list to be fed....I observe....offer crumbs to strays ...water thirsty horses I pass ....they think I am a white Witch. Jan let's me....lately I just call for the best to happen. Blessings!—via Whatsapp February 22, 2023 from the Kalahari Desert, by Belinda Kruiper Org
On March 3rd, in Brooklyn, in the heart of the “cool” Williamsburg district, Tanya Weddemire launches her first opening for her new nonprofit Tanya Weddemire Gallery with the artist Verna Fogg. About Verna Fogg
Global Voice Foundation is proud to celebrate the 7th anniversary of Radio Ndjoku, this wonderful community station in Bayaka in Central African Republic!!!
https://www.facebook.com/RadioNdjoku
Radio Ndjoku’s goal is to promote their local culture and their music. Besides that, one of the most important functions of the station is to spread news of dire situations, like they did during COVID 19’s pandemic.
If you want to help us and Radio Ndjoku, you can donate following this link, in the donation form you can precise Designate to “BaAka/Radio Ndjoku”.
https://www.globalvoicefoundation.com/contact
As you are all aware, for over 30 years, Louis Sarno recorded and preserved the BaAka music. Global Voice has been supporting his work since 2002. Since his death, Global Voice joined forces with Radio France and Radio Ndjoku to broadcast the BaAka’s music, which was recorded by Sarno. Thanks to your generosity, we have finally succeeded in this mission, as we have been able to deliver to Radio Ndjoku over 1,000 hours of BaAka music through Pitts River Museum in Oxford, England as well as through Epop and Radio France's Max Bale Epop info.
Since then, we are still committed with Radio Ndjoku to employing two persons, a young BaAka woman, who tells traditional stories and teaches listeners about medicinal herbs. The second person was Louis’ son Samedi, who recently retired to raise his family in the jungle. Therefore, Radio Ndjoku is now looking for a BaAka to replace him!
Listen to BaAka music:
https://soundcloud.com/noel-lobley/momboli-playing-mbyo-flute-in
While living in Santa Barbara, before his academic career, Michael worked with Global Voice Foundation for 3 years as an editor and filmmaker, working in our small office in Murphy’s private home. He traveled with Murphy to South Africa and Botswana to film a gathering on behalf of the Kalahari San Bushmen in 2007 and to Mexica to film the Pyramid of the Sun and the Moon in 2008. Michael claims from the experience of working with us, he became an anti-colonial activist!
Michael Lechuga is an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico where he researches and teaches rhetoric, media, theories of settler colonialism, and Xicana/o/x studies. He examines the communication technologies that participate in the colonial organizing of settler subjects and occupied lands, rendering indigenous people, black people, and the environment, incomunicable–a term Erick Torrico uses to describe colonial modes of communication. Lechuga's new book, Visions of Invasion, explores this phenomenon as it pertains to today's anti-migrant, techno-border regime.
Lechuga is also the founder of the MUVE Lab at UNM, a VR lab founded on the principle of vincularidad, a term indigenous thinkers like Nina Pacari and Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez use to refer to a social connections mediated through shared care for the natural world.
See his new book published in 2023, Vision of Invasions.
See his publications on his Academia’s page: https://unm.academia.edu/MichaelLechuga
In the fall of 2016, I met, Jean-Marie on a train heading North from Grand Central Station NYC. Jean-Marie was on his way to teach and I was on my way to work with the Gateless writing coach Suzanne Kingsbury. Jean-Marie and I immediately hit it off--given that I love everything Africa and he's from Cameroon and given that I love living in Paris, which he at the time, did—we've kept our friendship going. Since our first meeting Jean-Marie has been chosen by the Academy of Oscars and has also launched a school in Cameroon for young filmmakers. December 2022, Jean-Marie joined our ally advisory board.
—I. Murphy Lewis
Here's more details on this amazing soul:
Jean-Marie Teno has been producing and directing films for over thirty-five years for international television broadcast and theatrical release. His films are noted for their original approach to issues of race, cultural identity, African history and contemporary politics. Teno’s films have been honored at festivals worldwide: Berlin, Toronto, Yamagata, Cinéma du Réel, Visions du Réel, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Liepzig, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, to name a few. Many of his films have been broadcast in Europe and featured in festivals across the United States. Teno served on the jury of Idfa, Sundance Film Festival, Yamagata, Hot Docs and many more.
Teno has been a guest of the Flaherty Seminar, an artist in residence at the Pacific Film Archive of the University of California, Berkeley, at Calarts, Los Angeles, a Copeland Fellow in Amherst College, and has lectured at numerous universities. In 2015, he was a visiting Artist at Wellesley College MA. In 2017 he was invited to join the Oscar Academy. In 2017 Teno started a yearly training documentary program in Cameroon ‘Patrimoine-Heritage’, on the topic of Heritage. 11 short films were produced. More infos on the site patrimoines-heritage.tv. His films include: Alex’s Wedding (2002) The Colonial Misunderstanding (2005), Sacred Places (2009) Leaf in the Wind (2013) Chosen (2018).
For more information on Teno’s films, please visit Jean-Marie Teno / On Demand pages and raphiavod.tv.
Greetings Everyone!
Global Voice Foundation has added a group of Allies to advise us as we go forward. Today, we’d love to introduce: Jim Jarmusch, film director, writer, musician, producer, and artist. A prominent figure in independent cinema, his notable films include Stranger than Paradise (1984), Down By Law (1986), Dead Man (1999), Broken Flowers (2005), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) Paterson (2016). His book Some Collages was published by Anthology 2021.
Through his instagram account, Jim will be helping us a launch a few videos about our work with Radio France’s Radio Ndjoku in the Central African Republic. Radio Ndjoku broadcasts thirty years of recordings that Jim’s best friend, Louis Sarno Jim Jarmusch remembers Louis made while living amongst the BaAka. The original recordings are held in keeping with Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Max Bale of Radio France re-digitilized a group of recordings from the late 1980’s in a box in Amsterdam found by one of Louis’ old roommates!
Our friend and ally, David Coulson of Trust for African Rock Art* received the MBE from King Charles in October 2022! https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/rockartnetwork/david_coulson_mbe.php In 2021, London, David received the Royal Geographical Society lifetime achievement award 30,000 of David’s photographs of African Rock Art are housed in the British Museum. https://africanrockart.britishmuseum.org/ You can travel with him into Africa to these sacred sites! https://africanrockart.org/
*TARA is an international, Nairobi-based organization committed to recording the rich rock art heritage of the African continent, to making this information widely accessible and, to the extent possible, safeguarding those sites most threatened by humans and nature. To achieve its mission, TARA works closely with communities where rock art is found as well as with national and international heritage bodies including the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
“Africa’s rock art is the common heritage of all Africans, but it is more than that. It is the
common heritage of humanity.”
President Nelson Mandela
Photography by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher of African Ceremonies of Murphy Lewis and Robert Seaton at the World Heritage Site in Tsodilo Hills Botswana.
On a recent telephone conversation with our Wisdomkeeper Lmakiya, he informed me that the worst drought in 40 years in the Horn of Africa still continues. The Samburu peoples in Nairobi have gathered food, water and provisions taking these in trucks to their people in Northern Kenya. Lmakiya, author and guide, has stated that they needed to feed the zebras to keep them alive.
Greetings!
We are excited to share with you the launch of a project close to our hearts – The Africa Online Museum – see the illustrated attachment below.
During the confinement of Covid, Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher took the time to look at their fifty year archive of work and think about how they could make it more accessible to students and lovers of African culture worldwide, both now and into the future.
The result of this was the creation of the Africa Online Museum – www.africaonlinemuseum.org - which they made in partnership with the University of Wurzberg, Germany and Afro Project e.V.
The Africa Online Museum is carefully curated collection of the best of their images and videos accompanied with essays, captions and music from the length and breadth of Africa. They have begun with 33 different cultural groups and will be adding more as the museum grows.
The University of Wurzberg has shared the Museum with African universities across the continent. We hope it will find a home in schools and universities worldwide and would love you to share it with anyone you felt would value this resource.
The Museum is now online, and we invite you to explore it and take a journey around Africa.
Greetings Everyone!
Hope this finds you and yours in excellent health!
We wanted to give you the latest UPDATES on Global Voice Foundation's new relationship with Legacy Global Foundation and the BaAka, Louis Sarno’s friends and family in Central African Republic:
Since 2018, due to your support, we have been supporting Radio France's Radio Ndjoku in the Central African Republic on behalf of Louis Sarno. Presently, through our funding, Louis’ son Samedi is employed as a technician, as well, a young BaAka woman, who tells traditional stories and teaches listeners about medicinal herbs.
As you are all aware, for over 30 years, Louis recorded and preserved the BaAka music. While Louis was alive the station only possessed seven songs. One of Louis’ dreams was to return their music to them and to have it broadcasted throughout the Central African Republic. Because of your generosity, we have finally succeeded in this mission, as we have been able to deliver to Radio Ndjoku over 1,000 hours of BaAka music through Pitts River Museum in Oxford, England as well as through Epop and Radio France's Max Bale Epop info . For future sales to benefit the BaAka, Max is presently working on a CD of some of the BaAka music Louis recorded in the early days of his adventure in the CAR. We recently came upon these recordings, which are of their Forest ceremonies, through an old roommate of Louis' in Amsterdam, who discovered a box amongst her treasures. Max will be returning these recordings to the BaAka for broadcast on Radio Ndjoku!
Pitts River Museum Louis Sarno's recordings
On GVF website: listen to Louis' recording of the BaAka
In March 2020 Global Voice was informed of a terrible storm which destroyed Radio Ndjoku's antenna. Thomas Martensson, Louis’ missionary friend, was in the area and became very concerned that the radio was not functioning. Besides the sharing of their culture and their music, one of the most important functions of the station is to spread news of dire situations. Without Radio Ndjoku, there was no way to warn the BaAka about the Covid19 virus. Thomas had sadly written to us. “No one cares about the BaAka anymore.”
Oh, but GVF does and thankfully, so do you!
In a short amount of time, we were able to raise enough money to send two men into the BaAka village to warn them of the virus, giving them the correct information to protect themselves. (pictured below with a handheld megaphone) After this warning, many of them returned deep into the forest.
In the meantime, Thomas (a remarkable engineer) offered to do a band-aid repair on the antenna to get it functioning again (pictured below). Global Voice was again able to help, sending money in order for the repairs to be completed. The station is now working and the BaAka are in the range of Radio Ndjoku's transmissions. It will be some time till the antennae can be fully repaired, with a new pylon, which is quite costly. Though we understand this is a difficult time for so many, we will continue to support the station. Anything you can give will help. Please note, our new: Donation page
In December of 2021, we became a part of Legacy Global Foundation's 501c3, in a fiscal sponsorship. We are thrilled to be working with Legacy Global's Michael Glover and Melodie Gatz, who now serves as the Treasurer of our board. PLease note an update of our website with pictures of Louis with our board members Alexis, Sara and Murphy, as well as an individual picture of Melodie. Global Voice Foundation Board
Good news! On the 4th of March, Max Bale will be returning to the Central African Republic to encourage and support everyone at Radio Ndjoku and the BaAka, bringing an abundance of gifts provided by Global Voice: a new GPS system, tents, zoom and recording equipment, tripod, etc (see list below). We're quite thrilled as these gifts will enable the staff to keep in better touch with the villages.
Also, please note we are still supporting the Kalahari Bushmen. Here are some images of the artist Vetkat Kruiper for sale: https://www.fineart-africa.com/vetkat-regopstaan-kruiper
Everyone be safe. And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Warmest of regards,
Alexis Adler, VP
Sara Driver, Secretary
Murphy Lewis, Founder
To everyone who made it possible:
After months of preparation and a whirlwind welcome in Bayanga, at last Louis has made it home, and those (Wah Mohn, Thomas and Joakim Martennson) who brought him have each returned safely, though not without those inevitable stretch marks from soul expansion.
Louis was celebrated by a hybridized ceremony of BaAaka and local Bantu cultures, where everyone from the Mayor to the BaAaka Chiefs were present to honor him. He was interred into a stone structure that took several sleepless nights to build and which will stand for generations to come. It is perhaps one of the best burial sites in the country.
After living there for 30 years, there formed a complex co-dependent situation which was both rare and beautiful. Yet without him, it is unsustainable. In his wake, Yandoumbe is going through a tough transitional phase. But only through losing him can they push towards independence.
For the BaAaka the ashes functioned as Louis' body and were buried as so. They provided closure for their grieving which began in early April. Expectations were extremely high in Bayanga for our continued support. Despite only six full days we were able to move forward with the water pump (checked that it is functioning and scheduled its future maintenance) and assess access to medication. After visiting the hospital and meeting the traveling doctor, we are now working on inserting Yandoumbe into his assigned locations.
For all of you who made this journey possible, I want to thank you for making all this possible. We are eager for Yandoumbe to achieve total self-reliance, but the road is long. Though we want to avoid dependence, the contradiction is that to prevent this community and Louis' son Samedi from spiraling, our support is still needed. As a tribute to Louis, let us stay connected to his distant friends and family in the forest. Through wise action, we can help facilitate this new phase in their lives.
Below is the link to the video. It is not public, but you can access it through this link.
https://vimeo.com/227644478/09b85694c8
We recommend watching it in 1080p (click the HD button to select this).
Love to everyone,
Wah Mohn
and the Global Voice Team, Sara Driver, Alexis Adler, and I. Murphy Lewis