charliedoggett.net
All of us literally walked out of Africa at one time ancestrally and the paths taken greatly affect who each of us are. Because I participated in the National Geographic DNA Genographic Project I got a report on both my Maternal and Paternal paths out of Africa which are greatly different . . .
Continue reading “WALKING PATHS of My Ancestors”
These photos were made in 1999-2002 in the Banjul and Serekunda areas of The Gambia, plus two in Albreda at the Slavery Museum near Juffre, the home of Kunta Kente of Roots book & movie. I believe these are the work of 4 different Gambia artists and most likely all were commissioned to do these public paintings.
READ MORE for a slide show of 8 different Street Art paintings . . .
Continue reading “STREET ART: The Gambia, West Africa”
Surely I’m describing Costa Rica and I could be . . . though this time it is the title of a documentary biography I found on my new streaming service, Curiosity Stream, that replaced Netflix for me, permanently this time with a whole year of streaming costing less than one month of Netflix (a stripped down version for Costa Rica).
The full title of this bio is Many Beautiful Things, The Life and Vision of Lilias Trotter. (Link to Wikipedia description) In brief, she was one of the world’s best unknown painters in water colors (late 1800’s to 1928) who was befriended by John Ruskin, the leading art critic of the Victorian era who promised to make her the “greatest living artist” in England. She repeatedly turned him down while continuing to paint beautiful nature scenes and landscapes simply to praise God.
Continue reading “Many Beautiful Things”
A few readers know or remember that I once live in The Gambia, West Africa for three years with many experiences recorded on this same website found by following my AFRICA Travel Page links or going directly to pages for The Gambia and Senegal. I made both of the above photos in Dakar, Senegal.
I got one of my first shocks the first month there when I told the guards that it looked like a rain storm was coming from the north, even though it was “The Dry Season.” They laughed at me and explained that the first month of dry season was called Harmattan and was when the sand and dust from the Sahara Desert blew south and west and that we would soon be covered in dust and sand, thus close your windows. I closed them and it did not help much with everything in the little apartment covered in dust or sand. Incidentally, some years that same Harmattan blows part of the Sahara Desert all the way across the Atlantic to Costa Rica. Really! 🙂
In Costa Rica it is not called “Harmattan,” but we have a similar experience any time from late December to mid-March when the wind blows almost constantly and everything is dusty. It is not as heavy as West Africa, but it is for a longer period of time with just dust, not desert sand (usually)! It is worse if one of the volcanoes is erupting and we get the gray to black volcano soot like I’ve had a few times from Volcán Turrialba. 🙂
Thus when another WordPress Blogger posted this Poem by Danusha Lameris, I saved it to share right now during our “mini-harmattan” or windy weather or dusty season, none of which are titles Costa Rica brags about for our “Dry Season” (most popular tourist time). And incidentally, this years winds seem to be stronger and at night much cooler than the previous 6 Dry Seasons for me here. Now North Americans wouldn’t consider the low 60’s Fahrenheit cold, but that’s a “two-blanket night” here! 🙂
Continue reading “Almost Harmattan in Costa Rica”
My last three years of working full time were in The Gambia, with visits to other West African countries like Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire. Plus I made three two-week long trips to Kenya & Tanzania that included two safaris in The Masai Mara, meaning I have a lot of Africa photos! 🙂
Thus I self-curated 139 photos for a beautiful little 7X7 inch photo book titled Magical AFRICA in 102 pages with the hardcover edition including premium lustre photo paper. This is my first book of Africa photos in my Blurb Bookstore and is a general “Portfolio” book.
Click the above linked title or cover image and as always, you can thumb through the book electronically by clicking on REVIEW and pages to turn them.
Another COVID19 benefit of being limited from much travel during the pandemic! 🙂
“One cannot resist the lure of Africa.”
– Rudyard Kipling
¡Pura Vida!
Some time ago I canceled my cable TV subscription and used the money for stronger internet service through which I occasionally watch a documentary or older movie from the Costa Rica version of Netflix (fewer titles than in the U.S.). Tonight (Wednesday) during my dinner of a pulled pork sandwich and cole slaw from Atenas Poco Loco (“To Go” or “Para llevar” here), I watched the BBC/Netflix movie The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, based of course on the book by the same title available from Amazon.com Books. I was so touched by the movie that I felt compelled to recommend it or the book written by the boy himself as a now adult engineer.
Having lived in The Gambia West Africa for three years, I of course related to almost everything in this excellent true story of a 14 year old boy in Malawi who had to drop out of school and help the family farm because they could not afford the school fees. In the midst of a common African drought the boy sneaked into his old school library and learned about windmills and thanks to his old science teacher’s device to generate electricity with the moving bike wheel he adapted it to a homemade windmill that generated enough electricity for a small pump to pump water from the well and irrigate the drought-stricken farm. I saw the life-changing effects of windmills in The Gambia too.
A moving family story with authentic African culture, scenery, and hardships. When I returned from The Gambia I often said that every American should live for 3 years in Africa to see what the real world is like. Well, this movie or book will give you a taste! I highly recommend it.
“Extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere.”
¡Pura Vida!
Maybe – or maybe not – just art that my second dentist (Ureña) likes or maybe a relative made. He has these in his lobby and 3 appear to be the same indigenous woman from behind but in different clothing and accessories. Whatever the story behind them, my first impression was good and I snapped photos with my phone. The other appears to be an early migrant from the Caribbean Islands to the Caribbean (Atlantic) Coast of Costa Rica, where most of the Afro-Costa Ricans live and have roots in Jamaica or other Caribbean Islands, originally brought here by Spaniards to work their banana and other farms. We have the largest Jamaican population outside of Jamaica. 🙂 Anyway, I think it is good art and I enjoy art!
“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”
~Francis Bacon
¡Pura Vida!
And a local sense of humor at Tico Times Digital Newspaper:
Since all the people are staying at home, the native animals are reclaiming our Costa Rica parks, even Jurassic Park! 🙂 Or is that the lake in downtown San Jose’s Sabana Park?
Native animals return to Costa Rica as coronavirus forces humans indoors
The Tico Times – Mar 21, 2020
🙂
As National Geographic closes out their human history project or “Genographic Project,” they have just made all information available one last time to participants, of which I am one, having sent them my cheek swab in 2013. They are no longer accepting participants and totally close the project at the end of 2019 with data going to another research company, FamilyTreeDNA.com. Here is link to the latest summary image of my DNA family history findings (won’t let me copy image}:
And I am posting the more detailed information (12 pages) on my Family History web pages if you are interested. Their latest (22 Nov 2019) report of my DNA ancient roots are on a sub-page of the above family history page called Genographic Project Family Report page. And at the conclusion I posted the original 2013 Summary Image which is almost the same with fewer participants. And I’m posting that DNA Summary Image in my Family History Gallery also. FYI.
And for relatives doing research you may also find helpful photos in my Family History Photo Gallery, though much more recent than these ancient DNA trails from Africa! 🙂 Though a few images from 1800s.
Family history is not my main activity or hobby now, so additions to these family pages may seem very slow or seldom, but I have great plans for them! 🙂
And actually there are some pretty interesting things on my family history pages now like the 1800’s Hardgrave Family Cemetery I discovered in Nashville, TN while living there and the stories and photos of my Uncle Earl Doggett’s World War II sacrifice. More to come! Little by little! (Or poco a poco we say in Costa Rica!) There’s even a page just for Stories from my life – eventually family history! 🙂
“Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Postscript to Regular Readers: For the last two days I did not have internet connection and I will share that story soon + my very busy week with two medical appointments, a lost phone and more! Too busy a week!
Featured Photo above is of a Mandinka Potter in the Makasutu Forest of The Gambia, West Africa using an old foot-treadle potter’s wheel. Scripture is my addition to a favorite photo from my 3 years in The Gambia, a print of which hangs in my bedroom here.
Though I dropped my paid subscription to Christianity Today, I continue to get the free CT Newsletter and just read this article that speaks to my desire for a new church and new identity: The Heart of the Evangelical Crisis. I hope the link works for you to read it. Like other writers on the subject, he does not have all the answers, but describes the problem in an interesting way that rings true with much of my life experiences.
While serving as a missionary in The Gambia, West Africa, I soon quit calling myself a “Christian,” a “Baptist” or an “Evangelical” as I related to Muslim friends calling myself “A Follower of Jesus.” The difference in our relationships was amazing with a new label and I found other reasons for the title when I returned to the states for the first 12 years of my retirement and even now while living as an expat American Retiree in the Roman Catholic Costa Rica. I’m a follower of Jesus! 🙂
The primary focus of this blog is retirement in Costa Rica, my love of nature and especially the birds here in Costa Rica, but occasionally I feel the need to speak my deep feelings about what I consider a crisis in America today, for which I partly blame Southern Baptists (the largest of the Evangelicals) for whom I worked my total adult working life. I now have no pride in those years, even though the denomination was different when I started. I apologize to the readers whom I offend when I speak like this, but it is a sincere concern of mine that I feel compelled to express at times. We who follow Jesus cannot allow the “Republican Trump America” of today to define Christianity! Far from it!
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
Matthew 16:24-26
An old English saying “in the nick of time” or Just in Time could be applied to the saving of a wetland near my old home of The Gambia West Africa on the Dakar Senegal Peninsula: Diplomats visit a key biodiversity site (article on BirdLife.org which I encourage nature-lovers to subscribe to).
If you have ever been to the sprawling metropolis of Dakar you have seen the danger of another city getting too big and another wetland destroyed like New Orleans did in the states. The great Niaye of Pikine, commonly known as the Technopole, is an exceptional urban wetland located in the heart of Dakar. And a big chunk of this one has been saved and hopefully the biodiversity that goes with it. Though getting less news coverage, scientists say that the loss of biodiversity around the world is as big a danger to the future of life on earth as is climate change. Yet modern man continues to destroy the natural worlds of places like this in Africa, in Amazon, etc. I’m thankful to live in a small country trying to do its part in saving the world’s biodiversity!
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