Young Thai temple dancers perform at a Theravada Buddhist street shrine in Bangkok, accompanied by traditional wood xylophones, cymbals and a two-sided rack-mounted barrel drum. Devotees can hire dancers to perform and sing prayers, often as a form for making merit or giving thanks for previous prayers answered. Digitalized Noritsu Koki slide scan, shot with a compact point-and-shoot flash camera.
The devotional street performances are colourful and striking at night but seldom approach the more refined and formal dance form of Thai classical Khon, an elaborate masked dance drama that draws on a variety of the arts (drama, dance, pantomime, music) in performing the story of the Ramakien, the Thai epic adapted from the Indian Ramayana.
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Peul herders, Bambara and Dogan farmers, itinerant traders and a colourful multiethnic host of other buyers and sellers converge at this vibrant weekly market every Monday in front of Djenné's ancient grand mosque.
They come from the surrounding regions and fertile flood plains of the Niger inland river delta in the Mopti region of central Mali, part of the semi-arid Sahel zone that stretches across northern Africa just south of the Sahara.
The iconic calabash bowls on prominent display are used to carry goods, store grains or prepare fresh fermented cow’s milk traditionally popular among Mali's pastoral Peul communities.
Access to the mosque's interior and rooftop was forbidden to non-Muslims in 1996 after an intrusive display of disrespect by a Vogue magazine fashion shoot inside the grand mosque.
Digital film scan, Asahi Pentax Spotmatic (SMC Pentax Zoom 45~125mm f/4), mosque rooftop pov, circa 1976.
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Postrscript - The enchanting Arabian Nights imagery emanating out of this ancient marketplace at the time if this photo shoot (1976) is reminiscent of a seemingly bygone Sahelian era devoid of smartphones, credit cards, and packaged safari tours.
Nowadays, nascent tourism is on hold and easy access to markets, pastures, and farmlands is hampered as ethnic strife and inter-communal violence continue to erupt under a fragile Malian state.
In 2018, Human Rights Watch reported that the Mopti region of central Mali has become an epicentre of interethnic conflict, fuelled by a steady escalation of violence by armed Islamist groups largely allied with Al Qaeda’s advance from the north since 2015.
Recruitment to the militant Islamist movement from Peul pastoral herding communities has inflamed tensions within sedentary agrarian communities (Bambara, Dogon, Tellem, Bozo and others) who rely on access to agricultural lands for their livelihood.
Predominantly Muslim but opposing ethnic self-defence militias on both sides were formed for the protection of their own respective communities. This has contributed to a continuous cycle of violent attacks and reprisals touching villages and hamlets, pastures and farmlands, and some marketplaces.
While communal tensions are profoundly connected to a larger ethnopolitical conflict unfolding in northern Mali, chronic insecurities around the ancient town of Djenné and the broader central regions of Mali are exacerbated by longstanding indigenous concerns over the struggle for access to scarce natural resources - agricultural land for settled farmers versus water and grazing land for semi-nomadic Peul herdsmen.
Efforts at mediation in the area around Djenné and the grand mosque include a Humanitarian Agreement specifically among Bambara and Bozo farmers, Dogan "hunters" protecting farmers' interests, and Peul herders - all committed to guaranteeing the freedom of movement of people, goods and livestock in the "Circle of Djenné" situated in the Mopti region of central Mali.
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Swahili racing teams come together several times a year to compete in traditional hand-crafted, arabic-styled Mashua dhows in the Lamu Archipelago off Kenya's northern Swahili Coast. Intense village rivalries build over the years, often reaching pitch fever on race day.
These four magnificent racing dhows are in near-perfect formation, positioned towards the noonday equator sun on the first day of the New Year. They are in the lead as they prepare to tack around the buoy (top left) and change course, back again to the starting point at Shela, a small Swahili fishing settlement on the island of Lamu. The winners will return to their village with team bragging rights and a certain village swagger that may last several months until the next race.
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Tibetan Gaden Jangtse monks huddle over the creation of a sacred sand mandala, an intricate centuries-old meditation motif made from millions of brightly coloured sand grains. The Gaden Jangtse monks are now centred at Gaden Monastery (Jangtse College) in Mundgod, Karnataka, India.
The monastery moved from its original site in Gaden (near Lhasa, Tibet’s religious and administrative capital) to its present location in southern India following the 1959 Chinese occupation of Tibet. The settlement of Tibetan refugees living in exile around Gadan may be the largest of its kind in India today.
Underlying the creation and ultimate dismantling of the sacred sand mandala is the essential Buddhist doctrine of impermanence and the notion that all existence is in a constant state of flux. The Tsengdok Monastery Association describes it as follows:
“Mandalas are drawings in sand of the world in its divine form and represent a map by which the ordinary human mind is transformed into the enlightened mind. The creation of Sand Mandalas takes place over four to seven days, beginning with special prayers and chanting ceremonies. They work all day placing sand practically grain by grain as they create these incredibly rare forms of art and faith ... Upon completion of the Mandala the monks hold a dismantling ceremony whereby the Mandala is blessed a final time and the grains of sand are swept up into a pile – erasing the once beautiful work of art. Some of the sand is given to people present, as a small blessing for their home or gardens, and the remainder is taken to a nearby body of water where it is poured into the moving water which carries the prayers and blessings throughout the earth.”
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A root-entangled doorway inside the ancient Khmer temple of Ta Prohm suggests how the “Lost City” of Angkor might have appeared upon its "rediscovery" in northwestern Cambodia in the mid-19th Century. The ancient temple once served as a royal Mahayana Buddhist monastery and university at the height of the Khmer Empire in the late 12th Century.
Ta Prohm remains in an intentionally unrestored state of partial collapse with strangler-fig or silk-cotton tree roots enveloping parts of the temple structure. The trees eventually lend some support to the partly overgrown and gently declining "Jungle Temple.” Finely carved sandstone statues of apsaras or celestial maidens and devatas appear in the niches that still adorn the temple walls.
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