week 270

Mon: Dakar museums try to “decolonize” their shelves in their own manner, to much of the chagrin of former european colonizers.

Tue: From Brisbane to Longreach and Winton, crossing Queensland informs the travelers of the settlers unsustainable practices of farming sugar cane and tending to cattle.

Wed: Pottery findings along the river Oyapok at the the Brasil-Guiana border, make it clear the presence of hundreds of cultures in precolombian Amazonia.

Thu: Sri Lanka’s wildlife is at the mercy of the two annual moonson rains. Surprisingly, humans too.

week 269

Mon: Benin city is building a museum to house their infamously stolen bronze statues. Can the local people get together to achieve consensus on how to do it?

Tue: After 25 years, Fitzroy island has become a victim of its own success with environmental degradation and coral bleaching all over the place.

Wed: Iranian coastline, from Qeshm island Bandari people and “lenj” vessels to nomads at the gulf of Gorgan, makes for a enticing route.

Thu: Barely scratching a living out of “chars ” (ephemeral fluvial islands on the flow of the Brahmaputra river) pushes bangladeshis’ resilience to the limit.

Fri: Chilean Patagonia national park authority maintains the puma population alive while colonial settlers think only of them as cattle predators.

week 268

Mon: It is not that easy to be different in Risaralda, but a few brave confront society to face their own misguided fears.

Tue: A rush visit to a Melbourne museum to have look at a map of the location of countless aboriginal tribes makes for a pointless acknowledgement of their past presence.

Wed: Deserts like the Iranian Dasht-e Kavir, where wet-bulb thermometers almost reach 35C, prove the impossibility human habitability of the area in the very near future.

Thu: Cape’s Museum of Contemporary African Art promises a hope much needed in the rainbow country.

Fri: Driving a truck from Yakutsk to Tiksi following a frozen Lena river for three weks in late March redefines the concept of “beyond adventure”.

week 267

Tue: Western Australia, where the mindless mineral exploitation of the land by the colonizers meets the sensitivities of aboriginal people … to no avail.

Wed: In Iran, as elsewhere, the resilient mountainous communities try to escape the modern ties that urbanites build for themselves.

Thu: Ancient Tu people, encroached by Tibet and Tang China, left an archaeological mark and a very especial horse breed adapted to high altitude.

Fri: Preserving the natural biodiversity of the french overseas territories is a tall order to understand by the very far away citizens of “la metropole”.