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Just yesterday,  I learned about a special service of the BBC, known as BBC Great Lakes. It was established in 1994  by BBC journalists seeking to help reunite families in the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda. It continues to broadcast in the Kinyarwanda and Kirundi languages. Its online presence includes the newsy  BBC Gahuza page,  as well as social media channels. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was from PRI's The World that I learned about this news service, in a piece entitled Memories of growing up in Bujumbura , in which producer Robert Misigaro reflects on the importance of a youth center in his home city, the capital of Burundi and shares music from that city. Lagniappe The Great Lakes region of Africa is not merely a BBC construction; the term is sometimes used narrowly to refer to the are bordering Lakes Victoria and Lake Tanganyika. Map source: ACCORD More broadly, it refers to the 12 member countries of the International Conference on the Great Lakes R...

Sometimes a large city can give a person a feeling of profound anonymity. I felt it the first time I flew over São Paulo -- among the millions there, I envisioned myself as nameless. But what if the city itself had no name? That is exactly what the new urban place at 30°01'48"N 31°46'48"E is: a nameless city. I will be interesting to compare this July 2018 screenshot with the imagery of Egypt's new capital as it continues to be built out. Even now it is a bit difficult to see what is emerging in the Saharan sands some 30 miles to the east of Cairo (and not to be confused with New Cairo City, about halfway between the two). Journalist Jane Arraf told the story of Egypt's new capital , as officials decide that relief from congestion and pollution in centuries-old Cairo cannot be provided otherwise. Wikipedia simply calls the emerging city Proposed new capital of Egypt in its description of the details of its establishment. Unlike the original Cairo -- whose or...

The April 2018 issue of  National Geographic focuses on race, and  begins with a critical look at the magazine's own sordid history on the topic. As new Editor-in-Chief Sarah Goldberg writes in her introduction, "It’s possible to say that a magazine can open people’s eyes at the same time it closes them." From the NatGeo 2018 caption: Photographer Frank Schreider  shows men from Timor island his camera in a 1962 issue. The magazine often ran photos of “uncivilized” native people seemingly fascinated by “civilized” Westerners’ technology. Editor Goldberg was also part of a broader discussion about representations of the past in a March 2018 episode of On the Media . On the same day I first read the National Geographic editorial (I got a bit behind on the magazine), I heard Shades of Privilege , an intriguing and important story about colorism as a particularly insidious form of racism in several national contexts. Together, I believe these items are good starting point...

My favorite librarian used this short excerpt from novelist Chimamanda Adichie's very popular TED Talk as part of a presentation she was giving on religious literacy. In it, she describes the narrow lens of pity through which many -- including middle-class Africans -- view the continent and its people. We both recommend  Adichie's full talk : the medium is truly the message in this case, in that she has much more to teach us than the avoidance of stereotypes about Africa. Millions of viewers seem to agree. We also recommend her novel Americanah , especially the audio version. But her story about stereotypes of Africa is timely, as the  Washington Post  has recently published an essay on the topic by Salih Booker and Ari Rickman of the Center for International Policy. In  The future is African — and the United States is not prepared , they describe demographic and economic trends that will surprise many readers. Africa is often described as though it were a singl...

Africa is not a country! When, as I often do, I have students gathered in front of the Africa side of our EarthView globe , I ask them to repeat the phrase, "Africa is not a country!" For a brief time during the month when I was born, however, it was a possibility under serious discussion. I learned this from BBC Witness , a nine-minute radio program that followers of this blog will recognize as one that has become a favorite of mine. It was through the author John McPhee that I developed an appreciation for biography as a great way to learn geography and history, and Witness  gives me such lessons in a small doses. The whole series is available online, but I often plan my morning coffee routine around its local airing on 90.9 WBUR. I have to get the hand grinding done before 4:50 so that I can hear the whole program. The most recent episode to capture my attention was a rebroadcast that I actually heard in my car, as I drove to early-morning rowing. (My dog, my wife, coffee,...