Ok, I've been spending some time reading my $400.00 worth of text books starting with my Anthropology class...mostly because many books for the class are novels...and i had read one book "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe leisurely over the summer and really liked it.
I then read "The Translator" by Daoude Hari. This book is written by a refugee survivor of the genocide in Darfur by the Sudan government. There were at least 5 points in the book where i was bought to tears. I had been pretty ignorant to alot of issues regarding this conflict. To be honest I'm still not sure that i really know what the situation is over. I think I'm in denial that people would go as far as genocide over natural resources...i mean i know they're precious but that adults would think mass murder would really solve anything! What will be done when the land is diseased with the dead bodies strewn about.? It seems kinda wasteful to me. It takes quite a bit of resources to kill and torture and hold people also!
I'm now working on reading "Nisa: the life and words of a !Kung woman" written in the mid 70's by an anthropologist who spent 20 months living with the African tribe. This book is interesting because from what i'd read thus far this tribe seems pretty matriarchal in many ways, divorce in initiated by the wives, wives hunt, as well as gather from the surrounding area and have say over who they marry after a certain age. I'm not sure why but this intrigues me.
I really look forward to this class..i've always liked anthropology but never had the opportunity to take a class...maybe this class comes at a good time when i'm pretty up in the air about teaching????
On a whole other direction I've been helping Bird and Hippy do veg. surveys at E.E Wilson and Finley. I ate so many blackberries at E.E Wilson that i nearly pooped myself on wed. LOL. There was so much fruit there, apples, pears, blackberries, cherries...not sure how it all got there but im glad it is. It's funny , i was telling Hippy and Bird that i never really liked berries until i moved out here. Now i love them..huckleberries, blackberries, thimbleberries! At Finley there were so much Elk sign and weird nest or debris in the trees. We found this cool grove of trees, hawthorn i think randomly in the middle of his huge field. I could of stayed there all day!
It was so nice. I'm kinda sad that surveys are over liked the motivation to hike and explore.
