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KenyaThe smallest african tribe

GabonIboga, Freud’s root

Editorial

Rwanda20 years after the genocide

AfricaFlying above the Sahara

EthiopiaBourgeoisie awakening

Western SaharaLost Saharawi

NigeriaThe black Hollywood

MoroccoThe artists of Morocco

AfricaFootballing Africa

MaliMilitias vs islamists

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19

41

57

72

87

103

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134

149

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EDITORIAL

“Semper aliquid novi”, wrote Plinius the Elder in the 1st Century AD. He was referring to Africa, and the sentence translates: it always has something new to offer.

This is still very true twenty Centuries later. And it probably has never been truer than in the past decade. The African Continent of the 21st Century is surprising us with changes that we would have thought unimaginable just a dozen years ago. Some economies, like Angola’s or Gabon’s, to mention but two, are growing at a pace faster than most European nations’.

Yet, most African countries have the extraordinary ability to keep their genuineness, to safeguard their traditions and maintain a strong national and cultural identity. Semper aliquid novi, but without rejecting the past.

When we inhabitants of the Western world travel to Africa, it is not uncommon to feel that that’s the land where our roots are buried. And not only our roots, but also the rest of the plant, that remote part of us which grew under the sun the way we hoped it could have until the day we had to start coping with the dogmas and the obligations imposed by our society, ex-

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the compromises, the unavoidable small hypocrisies of our daily existence. Many times, when we travel to Africa, we feel the same bittersweet regret for what we might have been and we are not (or we are no more) that we feel in front of the spontaneousness of children. We are now adults, which is not very different from saying: we are now whites.

It is with much pride that, thanks to the outstanding work of our photojournalists, we want to turn temporarily black and take you through some of the most surprising Africa in this special issue of P’Zero.

We will go to Rwanda, which celebrates this year the twentieth anniversary of the terrible 1994 genocide, and to Lake Turkana to witness the magical rebirthing of a dead language. Then to Ethiopia, a country in full, amazing awakening, to Western Sahara, to the incredible dunes of the Libyan desert, inside the Nigerian Hollywood, to Morocco, to Mali, to the forests of Gabon where a very peculiar initiation ritual takes place. And, while the world soccer games are about to begin in Brazil, we will see what soccer means to Africans.

Come with us on this stunning trip through the Black Continent.

RWANDA

TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE GENOCIDE

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In 1994 one million people were slain with machetes in one of the worst

mass murders in history. Today Rwanda, a country dotted with cemeteries

and mass graves, is struggling to leave behind the specters of war and

poverty. Its economy is growing fast. The country is betting on

technology, even though 90 percent of the population lives on

agriculture. But every year in early April, survivors of the massacre

visit the schools and talk about hell to those born after 1994, who

amount to half of the population. Ethnic belonging, which once upon a

time was clearly indicated on every ID card, has been written off by

decree and it is illegal to even mention it. In hundreds of occasions

ex-enemies hutus and tutsis find themselves side by side for a violence-

free future. Yet some human-rights organizations maintain that the

government is manipulating the genocide in order to suppress dissent.

TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE GENOCIDERWANDA

By Bruno Zanzottera

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A view of the hills and of the tea fields in the Northern region of Byumba

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A view of the hills and of the tea fields in the Northern region of Byumba

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Modern buildings in downtown Kigali

9A trendy bar in downtown Kigali

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A street of Byumba

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The analysis lab in the hospital of the Muyanza mission

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A gym class in the school of a village on the shores of Lake Muhazi

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A billboard in Kigali advertises a movie about

post-genocide Rwanda

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The Marian sanctuary of Kibeho was built on the site where, between 1981 and 1989, several apparitions of the

Virgin Mary have been reported

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A member of the Rwanda cycling team during training. Both Tutsi and Hutu athletes

are part of the team

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Radio Ishingiro, a social radio in Byumba

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Students of the Muyanza Catholic mission during a

computer science class

By Paulo Siqueira

Prostitution is a big word, to de-

scribe what goes on on the

straights of the great Amazon Ri-

ver of Brazil in a region privy to

years of conquest and exploita-

tion. The life of the river peop-

le or “Ribeirinhas”as they are

known has always been about little

THE SMALLEST AFRICAN TRIBE

WOMEN OF THE

KENYA

THE SMALLEST AFRICAN TRIBE

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“The area where lake Turkana is today used to be so dry it did not even have a

pond. It was just a plain with few bushes and a couple of palm trees”. The

narrating voice is that of Kaayo, the last speaker of the El Molo’s language.

Kaayo died in 1999 and with him the El Molo lost the only remaining connection

with their culture. The El Molo are a small ethnic group of fishermen who live

by lake Turkana. They are such a small community that they can all be included

in a single photo. After Kaayo’s death, Michael Basili, a leading member of the

community, said: “My people have no more reason to live. They prefer to let

go”. His statement shows that for the El Molo losing their culture is far more

dramatic a condition than the lack of food. Basili asked Alberto Salza, an

Italian anthropologist who has spent most of his life by the Turkana, to create

a project to bring the El Molo language back to life and to create a museum to

preserve the most significant elements of El Molo culture.

By Bruno Zanzottera

THE SMALLEST AFRICAN TRIBEKENYA

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The small lake surrounded by lava flows at the southern point of Lake Turkana

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call him Charley. He looks more like a fairy tale Grandpa than Moby Dick’s Ishmael, but he is a hero for the El Molo of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. El Molo fishermen are

known to be “the smallest tribe in Africa”. In the Sunday Times of October 19th, 1958, appeared a photograph that portrayed them: everyone in a single shot. Then came the nomadic shepherds in search of pasture, and the El Molo were marginalized and despised: “fisheater” became an insult. To survive, they changed their language and customs, but they remained fishermen. Here you are living in hardship and you do not throw anything, not even the past. When I counted them, in 1974, the El Molo were a total of 92, dressed in lake-grass fibers and fed exclusively on fish. They married within their ethnic group, calculating the genetic distances between relatives. The children began to dwindle, due to a lack of potential brides. One day they decided that it could not end like this, and began to give their girls to the shepherds and to marry women from outside. Today the El Molo are more than 500. They raise goats and sheep, but they consider themselves fishermen, stubbornly. Charley, like everybody else, is fishing. He has a round face, alert eyes and a white beard, so unusual in Africa. He walks on crooked legs, clinging on a stick as if to save his life. He exhibits a cowboy hat and a German bayonet, “a gift from a friend”, he says. Charley wears two earrings of a not too manly fashion, simple drops made from the bone of a cow. No one makes fun of him, because the earrings tell everyone that he killed two hippos in his life. With his hands and a harpoon. “My torsaala” says Charley with a naughty smile. “To get to the heart of the beast” he adds. He begins to mimic blows and the final thrust. Everybody starts screaming: “Too! Too! Too!”. And they look happy.

Yet, for environmental reasons, the days of the hippopotamus hunt are over for the El Molo. Charley will soon be a ghost, with the remembrance of razor-sharp mustache all around the gaping jaws of a mythical white hippopotamus. Or maybe not, because Charley became a consultant and an avatar. He will provide the scenario and the movements for an ultra-modern video game: “Hunting the yee”, the hippopotamus, the most evil animal in Africa. For the El Molo it is the most coveted prey. The game intends to

JUST

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return atavistic emotions, virtually. Get ready to play with it. On the second day after the new moon, you climb behind Charley on a raft of palm trunks; while paddling, your legs feel cool in the water and you feel the presence of 30,000 crocodiles. Chewing tobacco, you set the harpoon nearby, among the supplies of dried fish. You look at the shore, where a group of comrades are marching in single file. For days you move in search of hippos. Then the sighting: a dark hump on the surface of the lake. Adrenaline. You take the harpoon and you dive without noise. You approach the prey in a row, with only your head above water. You form a semicircle around the hippo. You can choose to be the mete (the word means “head” and indicates the leader) or the kooro, the tail. If you are young and inexperienced, you should stand in the middle. Once the encirclement is completed, the leader yells “Too! Too”. The man at the back replies, “Too! Too!”. Then you begin to shout: “Too! Too!”. And, out of fear, you invoke the name of the ancestors. And the hippo gets scared. At that point, all together you try to spear the hippopotamus. The hippo charges to save space and time and escape the encirclement. Now it’s your turn, and you know it since you were a little boy who was training to throw the harpoon through a hoop fiber thrown into the air by a playmate. Grandfather's voice echoes in your head: “The first man to hit the prey with a harpoon that remains embedded in the skin has the right to kill the hippo: so says the customary law”. Everyone is required to inflict the maximum damage to the hippopotamus, also by severing the tendons. The coup de grace, however, must be dealt by a single person under the front leg, right to the heart. The operation is very dangerous as there is a risk of being stepped on, or be hit by the fangs. You scream an invocation and plant the harpoon deep, from bottom to top. Here, you are the hero of the El Molo for a year. Back at the village, you will sing the seur, the song apologizing to the hippopotamus. The women adorn you, the hero, with ochre and other colors, red, white, and brown; the colors are spread around the eyes, on the chest (in horizontal stripes), the back, the legs. You will keep the decorations for six days, and then you will receive the rarag, a necklace made by elderly women with ostrich egg beads. Your mother will set it around your neck: after the ceremonial period you’ll have to return it. One day, the necklace will be placed in the hands of the bride,

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who will take over the ceremonial duties of your mother. You will stay with a simple earring of cow bone, the kalate, in everlasting remembrance of the enterprise. One last thing: take the hippo’s tail and the stone used to grind the colors, go to the shore of the lake and throw everything in the water. Only in this way the cycle is completed. Game over.

In the past, every young El Molo became a man by participating in the hippopotamus hunt. Michael Basili, a prominent member of the community, told me that: “One man alone can kill a crocodile, but the hippo takes at least twenty hunters and a lot of courage. If we could, for once, organize a hippo hunt again, it would be an opportunity to revitalize our culture”. In a video game, maybe, to train without the shedding of blood for the rebirth of the collective hero and of an entire culture. Not a return to the past, but a modern rebirthing. Basili is one of the creators of the El Molo Renaissance program (www.elmolorenaissance.com), involving the Piedmont Centre for African Studies, the University of Turin, and several NGOs with the voluntary collaboration of experts from various disciplines, from anthropology to pedagogy. In 1999, after the death of Kaayo, the last man able to speak the native language, Basili was convinced that his people were just waiting for extinction.”The spoken language” he says “gives pride and dignity to the people. It gives them a willingness to live. We do not have one anymore, and that’s been for too long.” According to the elders, around 1930 (with an unprecedented move) the El Molo decided not to teach the language to their children anymore, and adopted the Samburu, a Nilotic language. By collective deliberation, the shepherds’ culture became dominant: along with the language, they lost the youth initiations (replaced by circumcision) and the institutions of marriage (exogamy instead of endogamy), with deep mixing in the genes and in the practices of child rearing. It was a cultural catastrophe provoked by a network of causes. The domino effect of the external environment, behavior, speech and structural consequences that leads to the death of a language is similar to the process of extinction of a species, with the interaction between the environment, society, history, individuals and groups. It is a phenomenon of complexity, where the past is not a linear mechanism but a phase of a dynamic system

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that generates emergent behaviors and unpredictability for the future. The El Molo do not aim for an impractical and unpresentable recovery of the past (the good times of the white hippo) that would transform the community into a sort of human zoo. You do not enter into modernity by removing the colored wool legwarmers (inherited from the Samburu warriors) or the motor boats (donated by humanitarian organizations) or the lifting weights made of tin cans filled with concrete (influence of the movies), or the ubiquitous cellphones. The latter are now essential to communicate: in the semi-desert their lack is critical. “Sasa maskini Kabisa!”, "Now I am really poor”, says Vivian Lenapir, a young El Molo, when her cellphone breaks. Linguistic science shows that the language cited by Basili is classified within the western Omo-Tana languages, a subgroup of Afro-Asiatic family. The closest relatives of the El Molo language are the Dhaasanac and Arbore, widespread in southern Ethiopia. The three languages, almost classifiable as dialects of a single strain, share over 50 percent of the lexicon. Basili and other El Molo therefore went to Ethiopia to retrieve the language of their community and recognize their origins.

The El Molo Renaissance program was developed in 2012 from requests of the community through the organization of the Gurapau base, which in the ancient language simply means the “People of the lake”. The Cushitic word “El Molo” is derogatory, and can be translated as “poor fisherman”. Probably, the first step of rehabilitation has been the use of the term Gurapau instead of El Molo, a linguistic claim started a few years ago by the educated leaders of the community and now being spread among the people.

By contacting most of the El Molo, we got an informed consent for the cultural rehabilitation. The power of the shepherds is fading with modernity. In the light of economic changes, such as commercial fishing, motor boats, and global marketing of the fish, the tradition is staggering; given that the ecosystem changes, people here are fishing less and less. But “even though technically dead, the El Molo language is still present in the community, especially to indicate everyday things” says linguist Marco Tosco, who led the operative research among the population. “From the name

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of the fish and their body parts to that of the birds, from the instruments to the techniques for fishing, whatever concerns the lake is the backdrop for a vocabulary taken from ancient El Molo. On the other hand, the shepherds do not have similar terms, and this gives a minimum of power to the El Molo, the power that comes from the use of unintelligible words. One here, one there, among the elderly we have recovered nearly a thousand words: material which is morphologically frozen and invariable.” The story of El Molo can be reconstructed through linguistic loans and the testimonies of the elders. Apparently, the “original” El Molo (no one is really native: we all come from somewhere else) were a population of fishermen moving along the shores of Lake Turkana, a marginal area where they welcomed environmental and war refugees coming from Ethiopia. Among them was a clan of Arbore, the Marle, who arrived at the lake through the Dhaasanac in the terrible period of rinderpest, around 1880. Some of them are still remembered by their names. The El Molo welcomed them in one of their clan, the Oriarpula. It was the Marle who imported the Cushitic language on the shores of Lake Turkana: hence the original El Molo began to speak the Arbore. We cannot know the original language spoken by the fishermen and hunter-gatherers who took refuge on the islands of the Elmolo Bay. The switch from one language to another, by camouflage and concealment, seems characteristic of these people. Probably they did not have a real language, as they were a jumble of refugees and displaced persons with the only need of a vocabulary of survival and mutual protection. From here comes the legend of the island of Lorian as a safe haven for today’s El Molo. The El Molo have always described themselves as a “peaceful population which does not kill people, does not kidnap children or steal the animals”. This self-representation distinguishes them from the shepherds they live amongst: in this way, they protect themselves from the complex intersections of feuds and reprisals that characterize the aggressive behavior of the shepherds in the area. The marginalization is therefore a secondary form of survival. Says Andrew Lengosira, a young El Molo with the management unit of the program: “We speak a bastardized, ridiculous Samburu. At school, everybody remarked that to me. And I wanted a language of my own”. Visibility and ridicule, in such a weak group as that of the El Molo, have always formed

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the basis of neutrality. Today, with the economic and ecological crisis (a dam on the Omo river threathens the level of the lake, while the presence of oil will upset local cultures, two typical points of no return of complex systems), the El Molo must appear more neutral: hence the need to abandon the Samburu (however bastardized) and to be recognized as the original inhabitants of the Turkana. In order to emphasize their culture, they once again find refuge on a small island. Lorian, or Gayo in ancient El Molo (both words mean simply “island”), is little more than a rock between the villages of Komote and Layeni, north of the town of Loiyangalani. It is a sacred island where the clans can keep their gante, altars containing ritual objects: earth dolls, sticks, horns, bowls, a stone that appears in a dream and then disappears from the altar, and so on. Only four clans, of the seven of El Molo, own the gante. Operators at the altars serve as social services for the whole community. The clans have specific functions: the origalgito protect fishermen from crocodiles (nyaud); the oriKara bless the hippopotamus hunt (yee); the oriSole pray for the sick (magira); the origaya invoke an abundance of fish (peyte); the oriSayo protect the community from enemies by using fire (eek, which also stands for “rifle”); the oriarpula (or Marle) invoke the rain (iyene); the origaltite pray for fertility and children (hele). Each El Molo belongs to one of these clans; by birth, of course, but also through marriage or adoption. So, after consulting a good part of the community, the Renaissance project intends to launch an international campaign to encourage everyone to be adopted by the smallest tribe of Africa, and save it from extinction. Everyone can choose a clan because of his interests: I, for example, belong to the oriSayo, with a single family. There will be a friendly competition between clans to attract more followers. The island is a place of refuge since ancient times. “In that stone fence we would milk hippos” says Charley; he is serious, but he refers to the myth according to which, in ancient times, the hippos were the cows of the El Molo. “We have a vision for the future” explain Vivian Lenapir and Andrew Lengosira. “The sacred island of Gayo will be the heart of rehabilitation. A place where beauty and culture are not a luxury and count more than food and money. The island will host the multi-purpose center for the preservation of the El Molo culture.” It will be a unique

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structure, with a ceremonial arena, an educational center, an outdoor museum, a model village and a number of shelters.

The construction technique, developed by Paolo Cattaneo, involves the use of gabions, wire mesh folded in the shape of a box. The empty gabions will be transported on the island and positioned by architects, artists, volunteers, local staff and all those who want to work with the community. Once the gabions are in place, the locals will fill them with stones of the island. This will allow a harmonious fusion of the buildings with the materials and colors of the environment. If in the future the buildings should prove unsatisfactory, it will be sufficient to open the wire mesh and the stones will return to their original position, reducing the environmental impact to a minimum. The island, as seen from the village of Layeni (in Samburu means “boy who is not circumcised”), is like a white whale made of lava, which ran ashore among the jade-green waters. It’s probably because every time we come to Layeni we are exhausted by the march and the heat, but the sacred island ensures visions. So, looking at the tail of the whale, where the El Molo see the fortress of Alamuké and the harshness of Korometé, I sensed a precise point where the whitish rocks, the green water of the lake and the blue sky meet. The three kingdoms merge: the water evaporates into the air because of the wind, while sometimes the air condenses into rain and the rocks are constantly being eroded by water. Liquid, solid, gaseous: Lorian or Gayo, the island, simply. That point is a volatile boundary, semi-transparent and permeable, if you know how to look at it. It is a jelly border. People on the shores of Lake Turkana cross boundaries like this all the time: who can say about himself to be fully El Molo or Turkana, Samburu or Italian? Everyone has an ancestor or relative who comes from a different ethnic dimension. Everyone has to cross, sooner or later, a jelly border, where we are transformed in such a way that it is no longer possible to distinguish one from the other. Julius Loyok, a valuable informant, told me: “You know why God has created so few El Molo? Because otherwise the trouble would have been too much, even for Him”.

Alberto Salza

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El Molo fishermen from Layeni at the end of a fishing trip

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Two hunters walk on the lakeshore in search of crocodiles to catch

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Two hunters walk on the lakeshore in search of

crocodiles to catch

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An El Molo girl dressed up for her wedding

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Young morani (warriors) of the Turkana ethnic group in the village of Loyangalani

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An El Molo man writes some notes about the fishing net’s size in anthropologist Alberto Salza’s notebook

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Leokulo, an elderly El Molo christened with the Catholic name Egidio. The earring made from cow bone proves that the hunter has killed at least one hippopotamus in his life

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The El Molo village of Komote

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A young El Molo bride is being prepared with red ochre for her wedding ceremony

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The lava flows at the southernmost

part of Lake Turkana

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An El Molo man on his wedding day together

with his best man

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The necklace of a young El Molo 'morani' (warrior)

GABON

IBOGA, FREUD’S ROOT

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A young pregnant woman is being prepared to take for the first time what is

considered a drug in most parts of the world, under the supervision of a

shaman. It is called iboga, an endemic root in Gabon forests, used to make a

strong hallucinogenic infusion, which takes a person through a deep

psychological experience: a couple of hours of self consciousness that many

people agree in defining as the equivalent of “ten years of psychoanalysis in

one night”. For the Gabonese people this is an initiation rite, a ceremony –

influenced by a strong Catholic syncretism – marking admission to maturity.

However, this root is a potential business for traditional medicine and the

pharmaceutical industry, since several experiments have shown that it is very

effective in the treatment of drug addiction, alcoholism and several mental

disorders. This is confirmed by the fact that its active principle, recently

become available in the European market, is worth up to 250 euros per gram.

GABON

By Sergio Ramazzotti

IBOGA, FREUD’S ROOT

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A moment in a purification ceremony of a young woman being initiated to

iboga. The woman being initiated takes the iboga infusion, which

has an extremely bitter taste

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The woman being initiated (on the right), going through a hallucinogenic phase and affected by nausea, is being helped by an assistant. The lady on the left, a priestess leading the ceremony, is in a trance

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A moment in a purification ceremony of a person being initiated to iboga. The person being initiated has just drunk the iboga infusion

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The purification ceremony of a woman being initiated to iboga (in the

middle) in the forest on the edge of Libreville. The initiated to iboga

drinks the infusion seven days after purification. The bottles are

offered to the spirits in the forest

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A shaman in his house in the suburbs of Libreville shows a container with iboga roots soaking in water

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A shaman, assisted by his wife, is cutting the bark of a purifying tree which will be used in the preparation ceremonies for the initiated

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At the end of the purification ceremony, the initiated is taken to a

river in the forest and washed with water and talcum. In a rite heavily

influenced by Catholic simbolysm, the analogy with Baptism is all too clear

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The purification ceremony is a complex rite which involves leaving the person to be initiated (left) alone in the woods for several hours in order for her to get in contact with the spirits of the forest and confess her sins

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The shaman, wearing Catholic symbols, is blowing a whistle to get

the purification ceremony started

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A shaman-healer who knows the secrets of iboga in his house in the suburbs of Libreville

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A shaman who knows the secrets of iboga getting ready before going to the forest for the initiation

ceremony of a girl (in the middle)

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A moment in a purification ceremony of a woman being initiated to iboga

inside the temple in a shaman’s house. The woman being initiated is

kneeling and has had her body painted

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A shaman-healer in his house in the suburbs of Libreville. Inside the wooden

construction at the back is a temple used for the initiation ceremonies

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The woman being initiated is carefully prepared with body painting

by Francesco Alesi

When St. Patrick set his feet on

Irish land to preach Christianity,

it is unlikely there were any

Irish Travellers in sight. Almost

sixteen Centuries later, the Irish

Travellers is one of the strongest

Catholic communities in the world.

Irish Travellers were a nomadic fa-

THE GREAT BOURGEOISIE AWAKENING

GOD ETHIOPIA

THE GREAT BOURGEOISIE AWAKENING

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“We've been sleeping over the past thirty years, now we are awake” says

an Ethiopian businessman sitting in a room at the Nani Building, a

skyscraper in downtown Addis Ababa sponsored by the Saudi billionaire

Mohammed Al Amoudi. This building is also the symbol of a massive urban

expansion that turned Addis Ababa into one of the most caothic, yet

vibrant, African cities. The city bourgeoisie loves luxury, golf and

body building. And it is made of entrepreneurs, businessmen, U.N. or

African Union diplomats, whose headquarters are in a brand new building

opened in 2012, and sponsored by China with over 200 million U.S.

Dollars. Ethiopia's awakening also resulted in a new, widespread feeling

of pride, blatantly shown by its middle class, for the history of a

nation which has (almost) never suffered slavery.

By Alessandro Gandolfi

THE GREAT BOURGEOISIE AWAKENINGETHIOPIA

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Ethiopian patrons at the Hilton Hotel bar in Addis Ababa

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Ethiopian tourists visiting the Gondar castle in Addis Ababa

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A room of the Engineering department at the

Addis Ababa university

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Dancing during a wedding reception in Addis Ababa

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Young golf players at the Addis Ababa Golf Club

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An hairdresser shop at the Laphto Center in Addis Ababa

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An outdoor cafeteria at the Laphto Center in Addis Ababa

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Young Ethiopians at the Addis Ababa Hilton Hotel bar

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Tennis courts in Addis Ababa

67Bowling at the Laphto Center

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Singers from a local band get ready to perform

at the Sheraton Hotel

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A Taekwondo lesson at the Juventus Club

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A kid visiting the National Archaeological Museum along with his fellow pupils

WESTERN SAHARA

LOST SAHARAWI

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The area of Western Sahara which is not under Moroccan occupation

recently celebrated the 38th anniversary of the foundation of the

Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). But it was an unhappy

celebration, as Morocco has been obstructing for a long time a referendum

for the declaration of independence by the former Spanish colony, where

the Moroccan army has been established since 1976. The United Nations

mission, in charge of organizing the referendum, seems to make a weak

impact on the situation. As a consequence of the neverending waiting, it

is getting more and more difficult for the ruling Polisario Front to

control the discontent. And an increasing number of young people, tired

of living in refugee camps in Algeria, are planning to resume hostilities

towards Moroccan troops.

LOST SAHARAWIWESTERN SAHARA

By Bruno Zanzottera

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Western Sahara. A Saharawi soldier near a wall in the Second military region, set free by the Polisario Front, not far from the village of Tifariti

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Western Sahara, Tifariti. A parade for the 35th anniversary of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, celebrated in 2011

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Algeria, Layoune refugee camp. Nouena is one of the women

in charge of distributing food

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A sand storm in one of the liberated regions of Western Sahara

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A Saharawi soldier has just found a landmine near a wall in the Second military region, set free by the Polisario Front, not far from the village of Tifariti

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Western Sahara, Tifariti. A batch of 1,600 landmines are set off for a demonstrative performance during the 35th anniversary celebrations of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, held in 2011

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Saharawi women attend the celebrations for the 35th

anniversary of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

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Western Sahara. A military academy where young Saharawi over 19 periodically train and learn how to handle weapons

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A disabled Saharawi war veteran hospitalised in the School for

War Victims in the refugee camps in Algerian territory

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Young Sahrawi soldiers on a Moroccan tank, damaged by Saharawi troops during the war in one of the liberated regions of Western Sahara. On the tank, a writing by Artifariti, a Spanish artistic team, author of several works of art in Western Sahara

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Members of a Saharawi family reunite for a few days in Algeria:

some of them live in Algerian refugee camps and some other in the

occupied region of Western Sahara

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A women's army unit parades during the 35th anniversary

celebrations of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, held in 2011

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Dawn over a post in the Second military region, part of

the liberated Western Sahara

FLYING ABOVE THE SAHARAAFRICA

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An aerial ride over the most beautiful regions of the Sahara. A meridian

overflown from south to north along routes of sand and wind. Geographic

splendours, from Mali to Egypt, across five thousand kilometres of dust,

sand, rivers, acrobatic agriculture, archaeology, ghost towns, volcanoes

and spectacular rock formations. From Bamako to Timbuctu along the Niger

and its internal delta. Next, southern Algeria with the wonders of the

Assekrem and the Tadrart: dunes, lava, striking wadis and ever-changing

orography. The Libyan Acacus and the circular Messak cultivations

precede the grandeur of the Erg Murzuq, one of the most incredible dune

clusters on Earth. We then meet the Waw en Namus volcano and the

nothingness of the Libyan-Egyptian border. Finally, the Mediterranean,

the beaches of Marsa Matrouh and Alexandria.

FLYING ABOVE THE SAHARAAFRICA

By Davide Scagliola

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Mali, Djennè island

89

Libya, the Waw en Namus volcano

90

Libya, small volcanoes and lava flows on the Murzuq plain

91

Mali, the centre of Timbuctu

92

Mali, the inland Niger delta

93

Mali, the centre of Djennè and its mud mosque

94

Libya, the coast near Tobruk

95

Libya, small volcanoes and lava flows on the Murzuq plain

96

Libya, the Acacus and its lava flows

97

Algeria, the Tadrart lava pinnacles

98

The northern Erg Murzuq dunes in Libya

99The northern Erg Murzuq dunes

100The northern Erg Murzuq dunes

101

Egypt, the coast between El Alamein and Marsa Matrouh

NIGERIA

THE BLACK HOLLYWOOD

103

In Nigeria, the movie industry is worthy of the highest respect, not least

for the fact that it occupies the fourth place in the economy of the

world’s eighth largest oil exporter. Some figures: about two thousand

films produced each year, two hundred million DVDs sold in Africa, Europe

and America, twenty thousand actors, a turnover, estimated by defect, of

half a billion euros. And a name: Nollywood. After Hollywood and

Bollywood, it is the third largest film colossus in the world, specialised

in impossible love stories, the gangster genre, and a touch of neorealism.

There is also the night of the stars, the unmissable, self-congratulatory

moment of a money machine which produces ten percent of the country’s

gross domestic product.

By Sergio Ramazzotti

THE BLACK HOLLYWOODNIGERIA

104

Lagos. Movie posters in the Surulere neighborhood

105

Lagos, Surulere area. A young street vendor in front of an advertising board: the testimonial in the poster is a famous Nigerian actress

106

Lagos. A movie poster in the Surulere area

107

Lagos. Movie posters are everywhere in town

108

The preparation of the set in a Lagos hotel room during

the shooting of a movie

109

Director Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen is planning the shooting of one of his movies in his Lagos house

110

Director Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen (third from left) plans a movie with his staff in his Lagos house

111

Assistants of director Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen in the director’s house during the planning of a film

112

Lagos. The interior of a photolab specialising in composits and books for actors and models

113

Director Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen in his Lagos living

room with dog Bush

114

Lagos. Director Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen with some of

the movies he directed

115

An outdoor cafeteria inside Lagos National Stadium where films

and videos are regularly projected

116

Lagos. A local newspaper seller with a copy of “City People”

magazine with a cover feature on a Nigerian actress

117

Lagos. The interior of a printing house specialising

in movie posters

MOROCCO

THE ARTISTS OF MOROCCO

119

Politics and its relationship to religion, the role of women and the

scourge of illiteracy, the contradiction between economic development and

the growing fear of religious fundamentalism. Moroccan artists belonging

to two generations reflect about the future of the Arab society in a

photo essay that takes us through the streets and studios of Rabat and

Tangier via Casablanca and Marrakech. An itinerary which shows the

schizophrenia of a country that, while dealing with the demands of

modernity, is the theater of a harsh contrast between two cultures, and

at the same time between two generations of painters, sculptors and

visual artists. And while young creatives are seeking an identity through

political provocation, the elders claim the merit of having first broken

with the iconoclastic tradition of Islamic culture.

THE ARTISTS OF MOROCCOMOROCCO

By Matteo Lonardi

120

Casablanca, Meryem El Alj has been painting abstractions for twenty years. She is conscious that many artists are

doing political work after the arab spring but she prefers walking on her

paths and keep on painting

121

Kalamour Abdellatif, Casablanca. His art is a cry of defiance towards one of the basic principles of Islam, that which prevents the pictorial representation of the human figure, an act, says the Koran, which can only be performed by God

122

Marrakech, Mohammed Mourabiti says:” “My depictions of urban horizons give a glimpse into the dialectics of a changing world. The domes symbolize the ancient wisdom of the sages, the religious knowledge: a Muslim solid ancient civilization”

123

Casablanca, Fatiha Zemmouri's studio looks more like the workshop of a wood worker than an artist's atelier. Her artworks are made of metal and woodwork and something in her character seems to match with this intense labor

124

Amine Bendriouich, Casablanca. He is a celebrity in Casablanca. A revolutionary fashion designer,

he is part of the young generation of Moroccan artists.

Amine mixes the colors typical of Morocco with Western-influenced

shapes. He has created unique collections of garments and suits

125

Mehdi Qotbi, Casablanca. He is part of the older generation of Moroccan artists. His work follows the tradition of calligraphy.

Qotbi's close ties with the King have earned him the title of Morocco’s

ambassador for cultural matters abroad

126

Marrakech, Larbi Cherkaoui. Larbi Cherkaoui, Marrakech. Animal hides are scattered all over his atelier. “Each of those sheepskins” he says “is individual and different. We work to show the light to everyone, for everyone must see it."

127

Casablanca, Yacout Kabbaj. "Casablanca is owned by men. We are citizens but we don't have the same rights. Women here are continuously harassed in public and privately. This way of oppressing women is rooted in Morocco

128

Safaa Errouas, Tétouan. Safaa's pieces are all monochrome white. "I discovered white in my third year of art school. It’s only white that allows me to find purity and gives me a platform to express my sensibility"

129

Mohammed Mahdaoui, Playa Blanca. His speciality is performance art. Like many other young artists he is getting a lot of inspiration from the Western art landscape

130

Playa Blanca, Amine El Gotaibi. His idea of art is that of the new generation of

Moroccan conceptual artists. He rejects the notion of an elitist art and talks about an art made to educate, available to everyone

131

Rita Alaoui, Casablanca. "I pick up objects from the streets: dead

flowers, seeds, bird bones and stones. I take them home with me and speak

to them. I tell them my secrets"

132

Marrakech, Youssef El Kafhai. His art is an anomaly in the contemporary Moroccan landscape. His impressionist style could belong to any place if it wasn't for its uniquely Moroccan color pallet. "I isolate myself” he says. “I take inspiration mostly from classical and impressionist painting."

AFRICA

FOOTBALLING AFRICA

134

Soccer in Africa is not just about sport and leisure. It also represents

a different perspective for your own future. Media are all focused on

African soccer stars, whose success and popularity are often bigger than

those of political leaders. Following these dreams of glory, millions of

youngsters run after battered footballs on improvised dust fields, while

from Cairo to Capetown, important matches may paralyze entire nations. A

strong passion that is inversely proportional to the money Africa can

afford to invest. That's why African football is forced to share the same

destiny of the Black Continent: raw materials export. Nowadays African

soccer is a gold mine that produces champions and sport fairy tales. But

also disappointments and ruthless failures.

FOOTBALLING AFRICAAFRICA

By Bruno Zanzottera and Marco Trovato

135

Angola. Table football in a working class district of the capital, Luanda. The former Portuguese colony hosted the last edition of the Africa Cup of Nations, won by Egypt

136

Western Sahara. An improvised football match in the Smara refugee camp. In 1975, the Saharawi population was forced to flee from Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony occupied by Morocco

137

Democratic Republic of the Congo. A discussion amongst players regarding the tactics to be used during an amateur football match near the capital, Kinshasa. In 1974, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then called Zaire, qualified for the World Cup in Germany

138

Guinea Bissau. A penalty kick during a children's football match in a village in the Bijagós islands. Football has even reached the Bijagós islands, an archipelago off Guinea-Bissau, suspended in the water and in time

139

Eritrea. A group of boys playing football in a road in Massawa. In Eritrea, football has the scent of freedom. In December, 2009, twelve players from the national football team, in Kenya for a tournament, absconded in order to flee from the repressive regime in Asmara

140

Western Sahara. A largely female public watches the final of the football tournament between the Saharawi refugee camps’ teams

141

Nigeria. Supporting one's team with a brass and percussion band in the stands of the Okrika stadium in the Rivers State region. In the tormented region of the Niger Delta, the local team, Itaka United, is made up of former militiamen

142

Angola. A football match along a dusty road in Luanda. Angola floats on a sea of

oil and diamonds, but 70 percent of its population lives under the poverty line.

Luanda, the capital, is a merciless showcase of these contradictions

143

Nigeria. Ateke Tom, leader of the Niger Delta Vigilante rebel group, addressing the players from his movement who are taking part in a “peace” match in Okrika stadium, located in Nigeria's rich and tormented oil district

144

Algeria. Teenagers playing football in the clearing overlooking the sea, in the Bab el Oued district of Algiers. As spring unfolds, the squares in Algiers teem with young men who organise improvised football matches

145

Cape Verde. Acrobatic manoeuvres on a beach in Boavista. The Cape Verde

archipelago, a former Portuguese colony, independent since 1975, boasts a social cohesion and political stability which is hard to find in continental Africa

146

Angola. The goal during a football match near the capital, Luanda

147

Western Sahara. A group of young Saharawis play football in the pitch located inside the Dakhla refugee camp in Algerian territory

MALI

MILITIAS VS ISLAMISTS

149

More than a year after France mounted Operation Serval to rid northern

Mali of  jihadists, they seem to have regained a foothold in several

areas. That is why, outside the provincial capital of Mopti, hundreds of

young men are gathered into basic training camps not far from the front

line. The day starts at 4 a.m. with physical exercises and hand-to-hand

combat techniques. The recruits get trained so that one day they will be

able to oust the radical Islamist groups from their homeland, where the

proclamation of Islamic law has forced tens of thousands of civilians to

flee the country. The would-be soldiers have almost no weapons, little

food and nowhere to sleep but on the ground. Yet, these young men, and

the occasional women, have something that is hard to find in the soldiers

of the regular Malian Army: an iron-strong will to free their ancestral

land from the Sha’aria and the jihadist occupation force.

MILITIAS VS ISLAMISTSMALI

By Marco Gualazzini

150

Members of the militia Ganda Koy, “Lords of the Land”

151

Members of the militia FLN, "Liberation des Regions du Nord",

during the basic training

152

Malian army soldiers at the last outpost before the territory

controlled by islamist militias

153

The Bani River in Mopti

154

Members of the militia Ganda Koy in their training camp,

resting after a training session

155

UN supplies are being loaded in the port of Mopti: they will be taken to starving people in the north

156

The Bani River island, in front of Mopti

157

Members of the militia FLN, "Liberation des

Regions du Nord", during basic training

158

Members of the Militia Ganda Koy during prayer. The movement was formed in 1994 and it is the oldest militia in Mali

159

Members of the militia FLN, "Liberation des Regions du Nord", learn the basics of fighting during a training session

160

Female fresh recruits of the Militia Ganda Koy on their first days at training camp

162

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P’Zero #03.2014 - the africa issue

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