africa « Chine bLog

A nice proverb for a Sunday morning

Posted on October 11th, 2009

I found this Swahili proverb in a somewhat interesting piece on Zanzibar in the Washington Post’s Sunday travel section.

Ukiona vyaelea vimeundwa

[If you see vessels afloat, remember they have [...]

Another finding in East Africa – pirogues of Madagascar and Mozambique

Posted on November 21st, 2008

After our trip to Mozambique in the last post, we at Chine bLog set sail into the Indian Ocean’s rising sun and made Madagascar. Sounds epic, eh? Amazing what you can do on Flickr… anyway, we were moved to explore a little bit because we discovered outrigger canoes, or pirogues, in both places. [...]

Gorgeous lanteen rigged boats from Mozambique

Posted on November 20th, 2008

To Mozambique we go – ain’t these beauties? Thanks to Africa Geographic Travel for the image from its Mozambique [...]

Dugout canoe from the Congo River basin

Posted on December 13th, 2007

One of my favorite web sites is that for the African Wildlife Foundation (full disclosure: it was designed and build by my company, Forum One Communications). It is packed full of gorgeous images, but I kept running into one that stuck with me, for obvious reasons.

This, my friends, is a lovely dugout canoe from [...]

The traditional Malagasy fishing boat, part deux – the rig

Posted on December 5th, 2007

Thanks to Ruth from the blog VazahaGasy for picking up my last post on her partner’s building of a traditional Malagasy fishing boat. She updated her pictures to include a few of the boat under sail.

As I suspected would be the case, the boat carries a loose-footed lanteen rig. Really, I would [...]

An excellent intro to Malagasy boatbuilding

Posted on November 29th, 2007

Today I came upon an interesting post and some great pictures courtesy of the blog VazahaGasy and author Ruth Frost. The post outlines the author’s experience watching the building of a traditional Malagasy fishing boat. It is a quick read, clearly an interested, observant, non-boatbuilder’s take on the process. No matter – [...]

Boats of Lake Malawi (Lake Nyasa), Africa

Posted on October 3rd, 2007

We bloggers tend to pay a great deal of attention to our web stats – page views, visitors, visits, etc. It is a tangible validation that somebody is paying attention. Or, in my case, 50-75 somebodies a month, pretty consistently (you know who you are). One area I am always eager to see [...]

Stunning traditional boat images by San Francisco’s Lisa Kristine

Posted on May 15th, 2007

I recently had to go to a conference in Sonoma, CA. It was a rough assignment, what with all that wine tasting, but I managed to pull through. Along the way I stumbled on the gallery of Lisa Kristine, a San Francisco-based photographer. Ms. Kristine specializes in images of indigenous peoples and the [...]

Canoes bring democracy in the Congo

Posted on July 31st, 2006

I love these stories, like this one from Reuters or this one from the UN about dugout canoes bring ballots to parts of the Congo. Who says traditional boats don’t still have important geopolitical roles [...]

Recent read: At the Mercy of the River

Posted on December 31st, 2005

I recently completed At the Mercy of the River: An Exploration of the Last African Wilderness, an account of the first decent (by kayak) of the Lugenda River in Mozambique. It was written by Outside contributor Peter Stark, who was invited on the five-person trip to document it.

As books from this genre go, [...]

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