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Africa

Summer 2017

Old remedy

Veterinarians use an old remedy to eliminate the deadliest infectious disease known to humanity. Rabies.

It was the season for guavas. Their sweet musky fragrance drifted through the morning air and into the open window of seven-year-old Sharon Korir, beckoning her outside to play.

The year was 2003, the day after Christmas. As was customary, Sharon had traveled with her parents to their home village in rural Kenya for the holiday. When it came time to return to Nairobi, the doting grandparents asked Sharon to spend an extra day.

The rains had passed and that day arrived with welcome blue skies. Sharon and her friends … » More …

Barry Hewlett and Aka man
Spring 2015

We’re one big counterculture

Back in the early 1970s, Barry Hewlett was part of the whole counterculture thing. He designed his own major at California State University, Chico—sociology, anthropology, and psychology—and set off after graduation for Europe. By the time he got to Greece, he was bored.

“I thought, ‘This is so familiar to me,’” recalls Hewlett, now a Washington State University anthropology professor.

Other people his age and temperament were heading to India. Not wanting to follow the crowd, “I went the other way, directly south,” he says, “and there were no other European folks with me.”

He ended up in central Africa, encountering hunter-gatherers for the first … » More …

New and Noteworthy
Spring 2014

New & noteworthy

 

Operation Cody: An Undercover Investigation of Illegal Wildlife Trafficking in Washington State

Todd A. Vandivert ’79

2013

Undercover game wardens Todd Vandivert and Jennifer Maurstad posed as husband and wife businesspeople in 2010 to bring down commercial poachers and black market dealers in wildlife parts. This first person account by former Washington State Fish and Wildlife Detective Vandivert tells of their success as they risked their lives to reduce wildlife destruction in the Pacific Northwest.

 

Isaiah Shembe’s Prophetic Uhlanga

Joel E. Tishken

Peter Lang Publishing, 2013

During South Africa’s colonial era, Zulu Zionist prophet Isaiah Shembe and his Nazareth Baptist Church congregants saw … » More …

Summer 2013

Waiting for the Rain

In the impenetrable Dogon highlands of Mali, the storm of war is coming.

An excerpt from We Never Knew Exactly Where: Dispatches from the Lost Country of Mali

Washington State University English Professor Peter Chilson happened to be in Mali in March 2012 when a military coup ended the country’s two decades as a model democracy. Within days, the Malian army in the troublesome northern part of the country collapsed. As a result, Tuareg and Islamist fighters claimed 60 percent of the country, creating a safe haven for al Qaeda and other Islamist forces and threatening West African stability and European security.

» More …

Spring 2012

Lessons from the Forest—The anthropology of childhood

Fresh out of college in 1971, with a little money saved up, Barry Hewlett bought a one-way ticket to Europe. He trekked around Europe for a while, but eventually started to get bored. He noticed many of his fellow youthful travelers were heading for India. So he headed south, for Africa.

He found a cargo boat that was going to Alexandria, Egypt, and booked passage. And kept going, up the Nile to Khartoum in Sudan. Along the way, he says, other travelers told him, you’ve got to see the pygmy people. So he made his way to Uganda to visit pygmies.

He didn’t stay long, … » More …

Winter 2006

Vicki Owens: Into Africa

Twenty-one years ago Vicki Owens stepped off an airplane into the hot air of Kampala, Uganda, thinking she had come for a brief stay, just long enough to help Christian missionary pastors start a primary school.

“I thought I’d do my little thing for humanity and then go home,” she says. It was her first time traveling overseas, and she really had no idea of what she would face in this country in the center of Africa.

Owens, who admits she was naïve to the culture, dangers, and challenges of living in a place like Uganda, had arrived two months after one military coup and … » More …