A Most Majestic Fly Whisk

  Sotho mokorotlo. They're postcolonial, but semiurge of Archons March On fame pointed out that big hats are a must and these are pretty baller. "Their journeys are like strings of different kinds of beads. The opaque blue-black glass beads come from the lands of the sunrise. The pale grey disks made from the giant land snail come from home. The shiny white disks ground from ostrich eggshell belong to the sunset deserts. Whether you wore them around the waist, for a lover, or around your neck or ankles for all to see, or you put them on a person for burial, all these pretty beads point to the far corners of the world and the layers of life it held." - David Schoenbrun's Vashambadzi: The Coast Walkers Toby Green's excellent public history A Fistful of Shells beat me to the Dollars trilogy reference, but I think this one is pretty good too. The arrow is poisoned , naturally.  I'm on record saying that I'd warn people if I ever used African history as a T...

The next generation of Vezo sailors involved in serious play. Andavadoaka, Western Madagascar "In brief, if Western historicity (at least in the twentieth century) can be summed up by the much invoked figure of Benjamin’s allegorical angel of history, that is hardly the Sakalava vision. Instead of turning back toward the mounting ruins of the past onto which the angel mournfully gazes, Sakalava face the future, bearing the past on their backs, carrying it with them." - Michael Lambek, The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar I've been setting up a SWN game for some of my high schoolers (all of whom have 0 experience with TTRPGs with the exception of one girl who watches a lot of actual plays but hasn't joined a table herself) and I'm noticing stuff that I wouldn't have expected: Procedural Generation Trying to push myself out of my comfort zone and use more proc-gen tools for my games (SWN is a good system for it.) Initially intend...

  Vessels of the spirits: pots and people in North Cameroon  Been a long time since I did one of these, huh? Maybe I should make 'em more regular - do y'all like documentaries? There are a decent number of ones focused on African topics on YT*, but they tend to suck, so I think it might be worthwhile to keep collecting the good vids with a bit of added context.  This is part of a three-film series on the material culture of the Mandara Mountains, the other two of which are mostly focused around ironworking. I'm saving those for a bigger forgepost tho, so just hang on a bit longer! This is posted by the actual account of the rockstar archaeologist and ethnographer Nicholas David, who has run the groundbreaking Mandara Archaeological Project since 1984 alongside fellow Mandara scholar Judith Sterner. I'll use the description of the people in question he provides in Patterns of Slaving- to situate us, the upcoming map is from the same source: I refer to the inhabitants ...