The Beauty of the Irrational

"The Beauty of the Irrational" follows Ryan Sandes, a South African Ultra-Runner, as he returns to the Fish River Canyon to run the 5 day, 84km, Fish River Canyon Hiking Trail in the fastest time possible. He completed the run, self-supported, in amazing time of 6h57min! Thanks for sharing, H.

The Beauty of the Irrational from The African Attachment on Vimeo.

Bébé(s)

I just watched this wonderful, funny, touching documentary film that follows the first year of 4 babies located around the world in Namibia, Mongolia, Tokyo and San Francisco. It was so interesting to see both, how similar and different the life of a baby is in different cultures in different parts of the world. The most stark difference was with the baby in Namibia. The little one was crawling around in the dirt, drinking water from a stream, putting fingers inside a stray dog's mouth and chewing a random bone in the dust. The film has no narration and yet, it is immensely interesting.

Watch French filmmaker Thomas Balmes speak about the film in this BBC clip.

Lost in Translation

Here's an interesting NPR article our Prof. shared with us. It draws a comparison between people in London and the semi-nomadic Himba people of the Kaokoland region in Northern Namibia to bring out the similarities and differences in culture, particularly sounds associated with emotions.

SADC

The South African Development Community (official website here), is headquartered in Gaborone, Botswana and consists of 15 African member nations in Southern Africa.

Previously, the SADCC (Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference, SADCC), SADC works towards improvements in several broad economic and social sectors, namely, Energy, Tourism, Environment and Land Management, Water, Mining, Employment and Labour, Culture, Information and Sport and Transport and Communications. Other sectors are Finance and Investment, Human Resource Development, Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources, Legal Affairs and Health.

From Wiki: SADC's 15 member states are:

• Angola
• Botswana
• Lesotho
• Malawi
• Mozambique
• Swaziland
• Tanzania
• Zambia
• Zimbabwe
• Namibia - since 31 March 1990 (since independence)
• South Africa - since 30 August 1994
• Mauritius - since 28 August 1995
• Democratic Republic of the Congo - since 8 September 1997
• Seychelles had also previously been a member of SADC from 8 September 1997 until 1 July 2004 than joined again in 2008.

Suspended

• Madagascar