Word: nigerian
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...latter-day art boom was fostered by Roman Catholic missionaries. Among them were Brother Marc-Stanislas Wallenda from Belgium, who founded Kinshasa's Academy of Fine Arts in 1943, and Father Kevin Carroll of Ireland, who in the same era came to work among Nigerian craftsmen. Most white missionary bishops back then, Carroll recalls, "thought we were wasting time." Political independence and the increase of black clergy accelerated the process that European Christians call adaptation or inculturation, meaning the incorporation of local culture into Christianity. Today Nigeria has Africa's largest corps of artists and artisans, and Zaire probably boasts...
Since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Roman Catholicism has shown the most readiness to embrace Africanization. One of the boldest steps came in 1967, when the newly built St. Paul's Church in Lagos opened its doors to reveal frankly pagan symbols and statues. A black Nigerian priest protested at the time, "You are taking us back from whence we came -- paganism." But prominent Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya notes that the Yorubas "worship God through the spirit Orisha, who will pray to God for them and obtain the blessings they desire -- not so very different from parishioners kneeling before...
Abayomi Barber, a Nigerian who makes the sign of the cross over each painting he creates, sees profound value in tribal cultures. "The birth of a child, coming of age, marriage, death and the spirits of our ancestors -- all these needed to be illustrated and represented as supernatural manifestations. This is the basis of our art. We are still interlinked with nature." More radically, Cameroon's Father Mveng wants to fling the church doors wide open to fetishes and magic charms. In Africa's interreligious melange, Muslims are creating images for Christian churches that are not allowed in mosques. Animists...
...horror of events in Biafra unfolded, Kouchner became convinced that Recamier was right. When Nigerian forces closed in on the hospital where Kouchner was working, the doctors asked to evacuate their patients. The Red Cross ordered them to stay on the grounds that they would be safer in a hospital under the Geneva Conventions. As the troops drew near, many patients bolted into the forest. "It was unbelievable," recalls Kouchner, who is now France's Secretary of State for Humanitarian Action. "Some of them were | carrying their own plasma bags. Others had been operated on, and their intestines were hanging...
...proven technology to dispose of it safely. In the past two years, some 3 million tons of hazardous waste have been transported from the U.S. and Western Europe on ships like the Pelicano to countries in Africa and Eastern Europe. Observed Saad M. Baba, third secretary in the Nigerian mission to the U.N.: "International dumping is the equivalent of declaring war on the people of a country." And if such wastes continue to proliferate, man will have all but declared war on the earth's environment -- and thus, in the end, on his own richest heritage...