BAOBAB

Published By DEIA, August 11, 2011


It's sure that there was a time in the awakening of man in which no one felt out of place in nature. Today, one of the biggest problems of the human being is feeling that he does not belong anywhere, neither to a family, nor to a place and not even to nature. And, curiously, I suppose that as in other rules of life, instead of searching to return to that link of union with what we are, we have tried to solve the problem by making the surroundings adapting to us, losing totally the north of the things.

How have I come to this conclusion? After reading an article of a tree that lives almost exclusively south of the Sahara desert and that has lived 3,000 years, reaching its truck to measure more than 30 meters of diameter.

It is the Adansonia Digitata or African Baobab. The odd thing of this tree is that it reaches those giant-sized thicknesses having grace at not having a high height. Living where this arboreal species lives it has specialized in the storage of enormous quantities of water inside, converting itself into something like an enormous barrel, capable of containing up to 120,000 liters of the liquid element. This tree is a true treasure because we achieve monkey's bread; a fruit with great quantity of vitamin C, of the bark; a fiber with which strings and baskets are manufactured, from his boiled leaves food, while from his wet pollen glue is obtained.

Because of its strange appearance, the baobab has been creditor of many African legends among them one is that everyone who drinks the water in which its seeds have gotten wet will be protected against the attack of the crocodiles or that the one, who extracts a flower from the tree, will die devoured by a lion. Besides their hollow trunks have served as jail, house and even like the one of Limpopo ( South Africa ) as a bar, being able to hold in its interior 40 people.

We try to subdue the surroundings to our needs, without realizing that the path is in finding what we are and in that way we’ll be able to enjoy all the baobab of our existence has to offers us.

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AFRIKA

Published on June 17, 2010 in the newspaper DEIA


The World Cup has just started off, the most important sport event in the world. This year held in South Africa, a country full of contrasts and working hard to make his way to the so-called first world. Interestingly, I received an email from a friend who told me that there is a photographic exhibition in Bilbao, called Desvelos, which is exposed outdoors throughout the wide venue walk of Abandoibarra, between the Guggenheim and the Euskalduna. It shows the snapshots of the Cameroon photographer Angèle Etoundi Essamba and was organized by The Africa House, an association that works to promote relations between Africa and the Spanish State. I've seen several of the photographs of the collection and was surprised by its strength, the contrast and elegance. It is a portrait of African women dressed with the controversial issue of the veil, a very stereotypical view in our society. Angèle has sought to go beyond, offering an elegant and sensual vision of it. And thinking about it, something similar happens to me with Africa. We all have a very specific image of the black continent. Safaris, tribes, hunger, disease, poverty, migration and great poverty, but Africa also has many other aspects that are worth knowing. The fauna and flora, the abundance of raw materials and minerals and the enormous variety of human cultural representations that makes this corner a living oasis, working much the same way about how our planet had to operate long ago. Many times we have that image with what they tell us about them but it is essential not to be satisfied with what they tell us. Let's find answers! Africa is the mirror that reflects our past, a disturbing present and hopefully a more promising future. A corner that still, in which they can say whatever they want; you can savor the full essence of life, even in small sips.

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USADIO ZAHARRAK

April 16, 2010

When did “civilized” man lose his contact with nature? When did the huge explosion of our bound that connected us to the circle of live occur? When did we move from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic or what is the same, when did man stop being a nomadic hunter and gatherer to become a pastor, rancher or farmer. A few weeks ago while I was channel hopping, I came upon an incredible documentary called The Lion Hunt with the Bow. It explained how hunters from the Gaos´s tribe, located in the region of Yatakala, Nigeria hunted lions with the help of a bow, arrows and the Nadyi, a powerful poison that attacks the nervous system. Throughout the documentary they narrated on how they produced, all by hand, everything needed for this task. The bows were made of Farev´s branches, a kind of African bush, the arrows from rush wood, while the village’s blacksmith forges the tips with an amazing master, drawing series of spirals so that the poison would adhere better to it. The poison is obtained by cooking the fruit of a tree called Nadyinya. The making of this poison itself is considered very “serious” for them, produced only every 4 years. To do so they head into the savannah, far away from the village, because the “poison” is an evil thing. The people of the tribe responsible for making this poison carries out a series of rituals so that the evil will not affect then or stay joined to them and they can return to be normal men. It’s striking that what for us would be pride to own and to use this, for the people of Gaos the Nadyi is something evil, terrible, something that embodies almost the forbidden. How many customs, atavistic rituals that bounded us to our mother Earth, showing respect has been forgotten. Today, this is a type of current or a new awareness that fosters a spiritual return to our roots, the truth is that we have it a bit complicated but we are obligated to take this into serious account.

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