c qoi o jus' ? ki sa sa ki sa yé ?

HELPING SAMOA PEOPLE AFTER THE OCTOBER TSUNAMI

With 90% of the island’s housing destroyed and heavy loss of life, the consequences of the September 30 earthquake and tsunami will be long-lasting for the people of Samoa.

By clicking on any image in the slideshow (link below), you’ll be able to order large format prints from a small selection of high-quality photographs taken in Samoa by Travel Photographer Karim Sahaï.

In doing so, you will be helping Samoans, and contributing to the rebuilding of their beautiful island nation.

100% of prints sale proceeds will be transfered to the New-Zealand Red Cross, spearheading the relief effort.

CLICK HERE :

IMAGES FOR SAMOA

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CEREALES DU MATIN, MALADIE PLUS TARD

You Should be Worried if Your Kids' Cereal is Widely Known                                                             

    Breakfast cereals marketed the most aggressively to kids have the worst nutritional quality, according to a new analysis of 161 brands.

    Children's cereals were classified as those that had a character on the box, toys or games inside, or the company's Web site listed the brand as a children's cereal.

    Kids’ cereals had more sugar, sodium, carbohydrate and calories per gram than non-children's cereals, and less protein and fiber.

    Sugar accounted for more than one-third of the weight of children's cereals, on average, compared to less than one-quarter of the adult cereals.

    Source :

• Reuters April 23, 2008

STORE WARS !

Not long ago in a supermarket not so far away...

• Organic Rebellion
• Buying Organic

NATARAJA ON APASMARA

NATARAJA SEIGNEUR DE LA DANSE VAINQUEUR DES OBSTACLES

FRIGHTFUL SHIPWRECK OF COOLIES

FRIGHTFUL SHIPWRECK OF COOLIES —  260 LIVES LOST.
————————————————————————————
From the Friend of India, August 31, 1865.

If any other argument were wanted to prove the necessity of the Indian government giving earnest attention to the coolie emigration trade, it is to be found in the tale of horrors with which Calcutta has been occupied during the past week.

On Sunday, 19th August, the American built ship, Eagle Speed, Captain Brinsden, left Port Canning with 497 coolies for Demerara. Of these 300 were men, 93 women, 65 boys and girls under 10, and 39 infants—in all equal to 425 adult coolies. All the formalities attending the departure and the arrangements of an emigrant ship were duly observed. The crew was sufficiently strong as to numbers, being of the same strength as when they left England.

There were twenty-six sailors and officers, exclusive of cabin boys, cooks, and assistants. Captain Hoskins, the portmaster, appointed Mr. Vardy, one of the three Mutlah pilots, to pilot the vessel, and he himself, with the port doctor and three other Europeans, went down the river in her. He was aware that some of the crew were sick, but did “not know whether the number was over the average;” he knew that “three or four” were drunk, including the second officer and the boatswain, and they continued drunk the next day.

The Lady Elgin, Capt. Heath, which had been sent round from Calcutta, towed the ship down to Halliday's Island where she anchored for the night. On Monday morning she went on down the Eastern Channel. The barometer was low and the wind from the west ; and soon the sea rose so high, as the wind veered to the south that the ship feared the steamer would not be able to tow her.

At 4 in the afternoon, in sight of the Mutlah reef buoy, with the water low, the tide setting in and a fresh breeze blowing, the rope connecting the steamer and the vessel parted.

The sands were a mile off, and during the two hours spent in passing another rope, she drifted towards the sands, without setting sail, which was impossible ; or letting go the anchor which, Captain Brinsden confesses, it would have been better to have done. She struck at half-past 6 in 4¼ fathoms, and then the anchor was dropped, while the sea rolled in “very high.” After half-an-hour she went off to the southward, but with 19 inches of water in the hold. At 9 o'clock the machinery of the steamer became deranged, and the ship anchored at the western channel at 10.

The coolies had been at the pumps from the first, but the water increased, and at 3 on the morning of Tuesday, the 22nd, with darkness around and a heavy sea, the Eagle Speed signalled to the steamer that she was sinking. At 4 the steamer's boat reached the ship, and the steamer herself approached. But no attempt was made to pass ropes, though this could have been done by daylight, and she might have been at Halliday's Island by ten o'clock.

On this point Captain Hoskins evidence is clear—“Under the circumstances, it would have taken two hours to pass hawsers, they would have readily passed by daylight. Suggesting that the wind was favourable and the sails were set, the steamer could have towed the vessel to safe anchorage in four hours. She would have been at 10 a.m. at Halliday's Island.”

Now we come to the tale of mismanagement, inhumanity and horrible sacrifice of life. Three of the Eagle Speed's boats were launched, manned by the crew, and commanded by Captain Hoskins, by the pilot at Captain Brinsden's request, and by the second officer, the first being ill. Including the coolies, who threw themselves into the water on hencoops, the boats saved 169, and all the Europeans.

Captain Hoskins' boat made five trips, but the others were soon smashed ; one of them had at half-past 12 brought off the captain, whom his own crew refused to help.

The steamer's boat was also smashed after one trip. Her two large boats were never launched. Captain Hoskins said, “Had the steamer anchored ahead, and a raft been made, many more lives might have been saved,” but there was no material to make a raft of, and Captain Brinsden in vain “asked the steamer to anchor on the bow or astern, and pass lines, in order to keep up a quicker and safer communication.”

Before the captain left, the boatswain had deserted the compounder and some topasses had broken into the brandy-closet, the interpreter was not to be found, and the pilot, who knew the language, did not return to the ship. “From the first to last the crew acted badly. There was some difficulty in getting them to man the boats latterly. They were shamed into it by the passengers.”

(continued, see below).

COOLIES : HOW BRITAIN REINVENTED SLAVERY

COOLIES :
HOW BRITAIN REINVENTED SLAVERY

The slave trade was officially abolished throughout the British Empire in 1807.

This documentary reveals one of Britain's darkest secrets : a form of slavery that continued well into the 20th century - the story of Indian indentured labour.

Coolies : How Britain Reinvented Slavery - VIDEO

Indentured workers from North India. 

L'ANTILLAIS ET LA JALOUSIE

La jalousie pour héritage?

    ■ Le caractère typique antillais se distingue à tout niveau, économique, intellectuel, social ou affectif par son sens de la moquerie, et  une forte jalousie.

  Ce sentiment peut prendre des formes subtiles et surprenantes.            

    Votre partenaire accompagnera votre démarche jusqu'au bout. Ou presque. Presque, car l'épée de Damoclès est là: d'emblée, une partie de son énergie se perdra dans une angoisse vis-à-vis de son positionnement, la révolte potentielle.

    Dès qu'il se croit surpassé, à tort ou à raison, qu'il croit sentir à côté de lui une compétence qui peut le contrarier, le partenaire d'hier peut devenir l'ennemi sournois du jour.

   Il commencera peut-être à diminuer son soutien en vous privant d'information, en communiquant avec vous de manière moins franche, ou cynique, ou moqueuse, ou dénigrantre, ou en n'accusant plus réception de vos communications verbales, écrites ou autres. Ou alors il ne tiendra plus compte de vos suggestions, il les bravera en se durcissant, quitte à aller jusqu'à promouvoir l'erreur par la force.

    La force est son recours favori face à l'intelligence. Sans doute parce qu'il ne croit pas en posséder, tant on le lui a fait croire.

    Lui reste la force brute, vocale, physique ou mentale ou alors son équivalent privilégié : l'inertie.

GUYANA - WHO TO BLAME?

From my understanding the bad blood between Indians and Africans in Guyana came way after 1838, most likely in the mid 1900'ss. However, anytime new ethnic groups are introduce anywhere, this could cause resentments, but normally it will not cause the type of racism and destruction as seen today between the Africans and Indians in Guyana. The question is who should be blamed for all the racism and problems that took place in Guyana? Should it be the Indians and Africans alone? 

LE TOUT MONDE... L'ETAU MOU...

Dessin de François Gabourg, Martinique. ©2006, avec aimable permission de l'artiste.

CARNIVAL, INFECTIONS AND DISEASE

By M. Faisal Rahman, Trinidad & Tobago.

Infections and Disease.

In seeking to diagnose the illness of patients, doctors pay particular regard to diet and lifestyle.

Careless excess in food and drink is a common recipe for disease and results in obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, kidney failure, strokes and similar illnesses.

Entire nations suffer from pandemics that are the result of cultural tastes.

But we must also consider that just as the nation may suffer from excessive imbibing in its physical nourishment, so too must its body politic suffer from paucity of spiritual diet.

We bewail the state of the nation that now produces mayhem as the norm, yet we have not considered that the primal cause of this may well be the moral decay that we have embraced in public nudity and open wantonness, staged, telecast and published with religious fervor.

It is oxymoronic that we would seek to curb Aids through the very medium of its greatest facilitator. Promiscuity and licentiousness are the bedfellows of our nationally beloved festival.

Far from being Art, Carnival is its caricature.

The rhythm of our lifestyle now infects our souls and we can boast that we now export this poison to western soils where our diasporized citizens reside.

But like the glutton who digs his grave with his own teeth, we are incapable of admitting the evils of our ways. The pleasures are too great and addictive and they give a fleeting purpose to meaningless lives.

Majority religions here are mired in a quandary. How can we condemn the separate innocent parts that constitute the metamorphosed whole?

For surely wine is sacred, art is very life and music the food of love? Yet mixed together in this now unholy land, their fruits are promiscuity, Aids and rampant bastardy. To those who know their scripture, up to the seventh generation, pews shall be defiled in perverted continuum.

The disease continues to spread like cancer through the sinews of the society’s being and every depredation confronts us as a people.

Perhaps it is time for thinking people to seek out a “new” faith that prohibits alcohol, demands continence and disdains art and music. The athlete whose goal is fame and fortune gives up drink and excessive food and pleasure in his quest for Olympic Gold.

The goal beyond the inevitable grave is Paradise. Its path is an austere one and not necessarily ascetic. Its hurdles are hedonism and lust.

Shall we continue to respond to the beckoning of the other place where those who have lost Paradise shall abide?

MFRahman.
mfr1@tstt.net.tt

Tourist market in Ooty, Nilgiris, South India, Jan. 2006. ©J.S.2006.