AFRICAN LANGUAGES IN GOOGLE SEARCH ENGINE

Dear Readers,
I found the attached a worthwhile proposition that should be vigorously pursued by all and sundry. African scholars or linguists, I believe this is the moment for you to make your contributions. It may be an opportunity for those African communities that have their scripts to see how they could be represented. Remember many African languages are literally dying with modernism. One way to rescue them is to communicate in them by African literati. I read the cited and became excited and want to highlight here for my readers who may be interested:


"Recently, two major organizations have become interested in this project: UNESCO and Google. UNESCO will be highlighting the 100 African Locales initiative as a part of the International Mother Tongue Day, which is February 20. Will your favorite African language be ready to be included in that day? If you would like your language to be recognized by UNESCO (part of the United Nations), please write to

"The other exciting news is that Google has been encouraging us to complete the data as soon as possible, and has volunteered their staff to help on the technical end. Why? Because they want to create search interfaces for more African languages, and they want to be able to recognize the language that a document is written in so that they can provide customized services for African users. This is just one indication of the possibilities that a completed locale will open up for your language.

"Now is the moment when we can prepare a lot of African languages to be part of the information technology age. It's up to us. Can you help?"

What do you think? There are no longer outsiders telling your children that vernaculars are abomination. They all understand that one language dying or dead is a lost to the global heritage. So, let us make our contribution.
Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.

Amazing details of the Google satellite map of Africa and the rest of the world.
Even Kumbo and Nso proper could be seen and cars discerned on the streets. Look at BBH, St. Theresia's Cathedrale and semi-prep school, the former Empire Stadium at Shisong (Mission Station), River of the Bui meandering. Gorgeous verdure and detailed land use. Some maps could be produced using this base. However, I am not sure of copyright? Are users allowed to use part of it for review or private purposes? I will be interested if any staff of Google or any other person with expertise in this field enlighten my readers.



Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.

MY FORTHCOMING BOOK ON RACE NEEDS REVIEWERS

I read with enthusiasm the following comments by a Miss T. Elizabeth at Rock my World. She is a student of Africana Studies. I will appreciate it is she could be the first person to write a comprehensive review of forthcoming book or race, Continental Africans and African Americans. Could anyone who knows her get her to get in touch with me:

Read too what Elizabeth wrote and some of it makes sense to me. I do not know what you think.
Dr. Viban Ngo.

Not what I'm here to write about but:

Does it hurt to just ASK? I don't appreciate someone who DOESN'T live here leaving notes about cleaning things up. Especially not snaky ones. A simple note from my roommate asking me to clean the bathroom (which really wasn't THAT bad. the floor needed some vacuuming and the sink needed to be wiped down, but that's pretty much it) would suffice. which i was GOING to do anyway today. And then, my lunch, my left over pizza from yesterday, was pretty much gone. THANKS GUYS. I know these are dumb little things, but sometimes I just can't deal with her personality. This is why I need to find somewhere else to live after my lease is up because I cannot live with her. (i'm not talking about the roommate, for the record) I admit I can be a little sloppy, but I need someone who isn't so anal about cleaning. JEEZ.

ANYWAY, on to the real post.

So, this semester I have pretty much dubbed the "White People Suck" semester. 3 out of my 5 classes (and debatable 4) are about how white people suck. First, Africana Studies which is basically how white Europeans shit all over Africans. Second, Latinos in the U.S. which is basically how white people shit on people of Latino origin (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc.). Third, Race and Ethnicity in American Literature, which is basically about how WASPs shit on everyone else. And still debatable, my Ancient Archaeology of North America class has a bit about how white people decimated and shit on Native Americans.

Now, while I'm a bleeding heart for the underdogs and see all the racism and shitty conditions people have to live with, I'm also frustrated about "reverse" racism (which I think is a dumb term, I see why it's used because racism usually refers to the majority against the minority, but racism is racism no matter who is being discriminated against). I don't think that I should be held accountable for slavery or exploitation of these people, and yet I still get some of that. I see it all the time. The Mexicans and Filipinos that I worked with at Chick-fil-A didn't include me in their conversations. The Filipinos especially rarely took it upon themselves to talk to anyone who wasn't Filipino. It took them a long time to warm up to you, and even then mostly ignored you. I see it in my Africana Studies class, which has a large number of African-Americans (I don't even know what to call them. What is the PC term? Is it still African-Americans? Or can you use black without being misconstrued as a racist? Obviously negro and colored is out of the question, but is black still acceptable?) who don't talk to me, or if I ask them a question look down at me as if they can't waste their time answering a question for me. Or my professor who always gives the non-black kids the harder questions to answer. Why am I being held accountable for my ancestors actions hundreds and thousands of years ago?

We had a large argument in my Africana Studies class the other day about how my professor thinks that Africans and African-Americans need reparation for what happened to them. Not necessarily in terms of money, but in acknowledgment. Students offered up possible suggestions but nothing was good enough for him. He wanted a museum devoted to slavery (like how we had a Holocaust museum), but when someone told him there was one, he said it wasn't popular or big enough. When we talked about how you're taught in school from an early age about how bad slavery was, and how badly people were treated, but he said that wasn't good enough because we need to acknowledge that these people were large contributors to the development of our country. I mean, I kind of thought that was inherent in the history. I mean, how do you apologize for something like that? And that goes across the board, not just in the sense of African slaves in America, but even for the Jews in Europe (Note too that often the Gypsies and other people that were decimated in the Holocaust are often looked over too), and the native Africans in their own countries. And what about the Mexicans who are third and fourth generation Americans but still get treated like they're all illegal immigrants? America owes them about as much as they owe the Africans and African-Americans when it comes to development of our country. Or the Chinese railroad workers? I mean, you can go on and on and on about how no one (particularly whites, I suppose) fully appreciates or acknowledges what people of other ethnicities have done for us. How do you make up for that? Nothing is going to be good enough. I mean, obviously we've matured as a nation and have let go of some of that racism. I mean, hello, Barack Obama!

Although, on the other hand, I am always inspired to see the rebellion against the heavy fist of oppression. Every country in Africa had rebellions against the colonial governments and take overs. There were African slave rebellions in America, Jamaica and just about everywhere else. The Chicanas and Nuyericans and Cubans and Boricans all protested and fought for their rights, and today Puerto Ricans are still doing so. Has America forgotten that at one point we were there too? Remember the Revolutionary War? I also feel like people with different ethnic backgrounds forget that white people have to fight for freedom and rights too. Look at the Civil Rights movement in the 60s, it wasn't just African-Americans. It was women, and La Raza Unida, and the Young Lords. Gays are fighting for their rights now. Women are still fighting for their own rights to their own bodies, people are still fighting for unions, etc. etc. etc. Oppression is still here. And people are still fighting. It's not just a racial thing, it's a human thing.

and don't even get me started on corporations with factories overseas.

This hits me kind of hard too because I'm an anthropology major. I study people. I want to learn about different cultures and different people. But, it's hard for people to shake off their prejudices. And I am going to be affected by that. I am being effected by that. I understand that because I am a white female I have more opportunities than a lot of people. And I'm not saying that it's right, but that's the way it is. There can be the people who rise above the sad odds, and the people that use them as a scapegoat for being bitter all the time, but there can also be the people that really do get fucked over by the system. And I hate that. But I feel like all the negative things about race (which is kind of a defunct term. Many people will tell you there is one race, the human race. The more PC term is ethnicity, just fyi.) are centered around whites. But white people get fucked over too. And it severely bothers me that people forget that. Maybe it doesn't add up to the same amount of bad treatment, but it's still bad treatment. and surely we're not playing the my sorrow is worse than your sorrow game, are we?


It's not fair, on any level, for many many people. But what can you do? I don't know how to end this, because, quite honestly, where does it end? Just part of what I go through in my head almost every week day. Anyway, just rambling. Now, I'm going to try to take a nap

On the Etymology of the name Yaff

Dear Charles,
The name Yaff is also known in the West African Kingdom of Nso', Grassfields, the former British Southern Cameroons (Cameroon Republic). Yaff or Yav is a name of a mount to the west of Kumbo, the capital of this Kingdom or once compact empire. Also from this Kingdom are name like JAFF which stands for skin, and JAVE which stands for to divide. Slaves from this region were found in Nova Scotia, and others were intercepted by the British frigates going after slave ships in the 1840-60s in the Gulf of Guinea or the Northern Atlantic (African Ocean) and resettled in the Province of Freedom that later became known as Sierra Leone. There was a famous one freeman, slave called Bunngo later known as Robert Shilling. He was interviewed by Rev. Koelle of the Church Missionary Society, London. More could be read in "Polygotta Africana" by Koelle or in my forthcoming book. There should be a copy at the British Library, London or the Congress House.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.
for further inquiry visit my Blog.

The error is that Westerners look at African religious artifacts as works of Art

3 Réponses vers “AFRICA ART , anthropologie, ethnologie, tribal art,”

Dr Viban Viban Ngo a dit :

The error is that Westerners look at African religious artifacts and call them works of art. They were not art works at all as Westerners perceive them until tourist curios surfaced in the 1960s. They were not supposed to be displayed. They were sacred replicas of real people, family heads, elders, or souls of dead people. In some tribes they were supposed to be fed, oiled and given liquid refreshment as if they were thirsty and famished persons. If you did this before going to the market you had luck and sold all your articles of trade with a super profit. The ancestors supposed to be lodged in the fetishes you oiled were the ones that gave you luck. If you were sick, you prayed to the ancestral spirits that were lodged in one of these fetishes. If they represented your dead elders, they had to be kept in a sacred shrine and not displayed or handled by anyone who was not initiated. It was the work of the consecrated priests or priestesses.

Now the problem is someone who had seen western art and tries to look as these fetishes or even displaying masks that were not meant to be appreciated as Western art works have different interpretations. He, as many other is inclined to call them "primitive" because they were not as polished as Chinese, Japanese or European 3d or 2d works of art. I read this in Ladislas Segy’s work African Sculpture Speak and many more. I think traditional African set up has no artistic elements as Western or Chinese sort of art. They are just unique and should not even be called art works but praying artifacts as one would talk of a Bible and Rosary in the Catholic Church.

In the same vein, that is from the African perspective, Christ represented on the cross is not a true form of art. May be to the Westerner, but to the Africans, it is not. The African may attribute that with the soul of Christ that may not even be displayed to remind man of the brutality of man in the past. To an untouched African, a Christ's crucifix contains the soul of Christ and may not be touched or even seen by a person who is not initiated; in this case a consecrated priest or priestess.

African art works that are remotely like those of European started in earnest in the 1950s when missionaries and some colonial teachers started teaching Africans to draw two-dimensionally and to carve as was the case in Zimbabwe with soap stones, the Congo with wood works, and West Africa in the 1950s. The 1950s will be when African started having what Europeans will call real art and those would not have excited Picasso who popularized them and made a fortune from imitating them. In this case Picasso was no original but a copyist who exaggerated what he had copied from Africans.

You will be surprised to know that some of the African religious fetishes or masks are only seen when taken out of Africa as they are taboo objects for reasons aforementioned. For example, some may not be touched by women or children or the non-initiated back in Africa.

Do Not Touch the Hornet’s Nest. Do not touch President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe

Objective commentary on Zimbabwe, Southern Cameroons, colonialism and survival of the fittest doctrine of Charles Darwin… by

Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.

“If there is hardship over in Zimbabwe it is deliberately caused by the very Caucasians who had ever controlled the lands, industries, lucrative mines and still do so as before.”



Early this week, I deplored us using French in this forum and I drew the havoc those who spoke that language as their native tongue did to a once peaceful country like Rwanda and many more. I also highlighted what role they played during the dirty Biafra-Nigerian internecine civil war. The energy they took to push that war forward because they had been promised the Gulf of Guinean oil and that in the River State of Nigeria the Ogoni peoples are fighting for that blinded their reasoning. Again, they are closing their eyes to our interminable pleas to tell their Cameroon Republic friends alone to leave us and their craving for oil is still blinding them. Now, we have to record these as our children will not be myopic as we or our parents were who went on signing bogus agreements at Fumban without an agenda and not knowing the people we were getting chummed up with, Cameroon Republic. Let me not go too far as all these are reiterated in sundry forms. The UNO, UK, France, USA, and the African Union are monitoring it unfolding minute by minutes.

History shows that Africans have never abused their economic and political powers. God earlier gave Africans power and they did not abuse it. Remember the Maurs (Moors), Africans. They could have marched right to Britain after defeating the Spaniards but they were not grabbing like the Europeans Caucasians after the doctrine of Charles Darwin of the survival of the fittest. The fittest, Europeans went every where and grabbed people and their lands and did not care a damn what became of them. Is it not appalling that the Catholic Church is forgiving Charles Darwin by supporting that man actually evolved from some sort of ape? We Africans who have suffered and are still for his so-called scientific research are disappointed.

Today the British glamorize this man by printing his head on their currencies. This Darwin planned to kill himself before his ORIGIN OF SPECIES was published as he doubted the truth of what he had written and did not want to face the negative reaction from Christian believers. The colonialists took his doctrine literally and it was not long before they regarded any non-white creature as inferior and closer to animals. With that belief instilled by Charles Darwin with the tacit support of Europeans governments, it was easier to enter Cameroon and other countries or regions with sophisticated Maxim guns and wipe our people defending their lands from invaders.

Do you still remember what the Germans did to the Heroros in the present Namibia, then called German South West Africa? They drove thousands to the deserts and they died of thirst and hunger just to take over their land? They caught their king, Hendrik Wibooi and hung him as a rebel. Do you rebel when you defend the land that had been yours since time immemorial? By implication, are you Southern Cameroons citizens who want your independence as you were since 1954 rebelling? That will lead me to comment on Comrade Robert Mugabe, the incumbent president of Zimbabwe that should rightly be called Monomatapa Republic.

The crime of President Robert Mugabe is that he had refused to allow a Caucasians-backed stooge to take over the reins of power so as to legitimize the lands that the British colonial government seized from the Shona and Ndebeles and gave to a handful of Britons who were brought from Britain to settle in the then Charterland, later known as Southern Rhodesia. The man who carved this out as his private property, Sir Cecil Rhodes used his company and resources. The settlers in Rhodesia subjected the locals they derogatorily called natives to slaves, took away their fertile lands, seized their livestock, killed some and forced them to live in near desolate tracts they gave the name reserves. These so-called reserves were rugged landscapes where motorized farming was impossible and were full of outcrops of sand stones and some had no running water. The natives there depended on wells for their water supplies. The sites of these reserves had been studied by the white agronomists and found to be less predictive, no minerals and poor soils for agriculture and that was why they dumped the Africans who were less or not humans.

Africans there were used as reserves for labor supply in whites-owned industries and domestic purposes. Even in reserves, the so-called natives were not allowed to own landed properties. They were restricted from planting tree crops that is, citrus, avocadoes, apples, vines, and even exploitable trees. It was one way to ascertain that the Africans depended on them as the slaves in Southern USA were made to depend on their white owners. They were not allowed to study beyond Standard Six level which you the senior cadres in The Southern Cameroons took for granted. If one was lucky to go beyond that as Joshua Nkomo, one had to go abroad to a country like South Africa where one was still subjected to extreme racism. If not, one had to escape to sympathetic countries like Tanzania, Ghana and you will remember that we had some who studies at Sasse. We also had some Darfurian who studied at St. Augustine’s College, Kumbo, and others at PSS Bali. Do they also help us now that we are in dire need? Stories have come to our ears of South African security men running after our boys seeking asylum in South Africa as economic migrants. Did Southern Cameroons elders call South Africans and Zimbabweans economic migrants when they were running away from persecution?

Nkomo was persecuted while studying in South Africa simply because he was allowed by a white widow to drive her in her late husband’s car. A black was not allowed to sit next to a white lady not to talk of sharing the same means of transport. The Jim Crow rule in the southern USA applied. Interested executives who could afford it should read the autobiography of Joshua Nkomo entitled NKOMO. It is a must for all our executives as we are likely to face what he and his cohorts went through under colonialism as you in The Southern Cameroons are being subjected to by Cameroon Republic.

When Africans are screaming that Mugabe be eliminated and that all the hardship is because of his bad governance, they tend to forgot what the British Government did when late Ian Smith declared the UDI and economic sanctions were imposed on that country. Africans were dying like flies. What measures did the British Government take? We Africans tend to forget so fast.

Mugabe is there because of his gorillas that fought and defeated Ian Smith’s government and unless they deem it so, no one can replace Mugabe. Mugabe is a guarantee to the security of Africans. They could have galloping inflation, did anyone write of this when the UDI was declared by Ian Smith? Africans are not new in undergoing these sorts of hardship. It was appalling under the UDI. Would we in The Southern Cameroons claim that we are better off under the autocratic ruler Paul Biya than under Dr. E.M L. Endeley or under Augustine N. Jua? Be honest!

President Robert Mugabe was one of the leading defendants of Africans when the rest had folded their hands as they are folding their hands and watching Southern Cameroons being trampled on by Cameroon Republic. When tomorrow will come, will some person stand up to destroy our leaders who have been having sleepless nights looking for strategies to liberate us with little of no shed of bloods as inscribed in our motto? President Yar Adua of Nigeria could be instrumental in broking the peace of The Southern Cameroons and Cameroon Republic but Nigerians never bother. They are only concerned with taping electricity from Cameroon Republic for their industries. All these can happen if there is peace next door. Of what good are Nigerians to us as our western neighbors? Tomorrow electricity that they badly need will be coming from the River Congo Basin via The Southern Cameroons. They would need the sanction of Southern Cameroons and they better pave their ways right now and not tomorrow. They should remember that we are there indefinitely and we better sing their praises instead of regretting their presence.

When the British Government was asked to invade Southern Rhodesia to impose majority rule when successive meetings in Europe could not change the hardened mind of Ian Smith to share power with Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, what did the British Government of Prime Minister H. Wilson do? When Smith’s regime went about poisoning water wells in those African reserves and African-Rhodesians were dying from drinking it like flies where were these Westerners and Africans who are now sympathizing with the whites of Zimbabwe? When Ian Smith notorious scouts bombed refugees’ camps in Zambia and surrounding Southern Rhodesia and hundreds died and were buried in mass graves where were these Westerners and Africans who are now crying that Mugabe is killing his people with cholera? When it was suggested in the past that water be tapped from Lake Caribba to supply towns and villages, where were these very whites and Africans who now sympathize with the whites? The whites were the ones with their South African cohorts who argued that it would reduce the supply of water that run the hydro electric generators in the Carriba gorge that was in turn used in South African apartheid industries. Why do they levy the blames on Mugabe?

When Mugabe and his senior partner Joshua Nkomo were trying to reason with Ian Smiths, they were rounded up and imprisoned. How long was Nkomo in high security prison? Since Mugabe came in after the Lancaster Gate Agreement in 1979, how many whites, Rhodesian Caucasians did he imprisoned. How many did he kill? None. He forgave that son of Scotland and a British agent, Ian Smith and he lived in Zimbabwe as free as a bird till he died naturally. Was he ever tried for war crimes against African Zimbabweans? No.

When he, Ian Smith was ruling his Southern Rhodesia, all Caucasians had to be armed to the teeth and one never traveled without one’s AK47 clogged and readied for action. Again, how many Caucasians Zimbabweans have died since Robert Mugabe took over in the hands of African Zimbabweans? None. How many go around carrying their guns openly? None. The irony is that those Rhodesians who ran away when Robert Mugabe took over to Canada, USA, Australia and the UK have been applying to come back. Why? They had the highest standard of living in the world. One man with acres and acres of free land, massive mansions, strings of servants, and gold underneath their homes. Where else could they live like that today in this world? No where.


If there is hardship over in Zimbabwe it is deliberately caused by the very Caucasians who had ever controlled the lands, industries, lucrative mines and still do so as before. They are the ones who have deliberately blocked financial aids to Zimbabwe. Why because they are comfortable and only Africans are suffering. They stashed money abroad in the hope of strangling Robert Mugabe’s Government to submission so as to bring in a quisling like Morgan Tsvangirai who would not take away the land from them and give to their rightful owners, African Zimbabweans.


How many Caucasians Zimbabweans stood up against Ian Smith when he seized power from the British colonial government by coup d’etat? We all knew that he was gambling with the lives of British and other European settlers including Jews. They shied away because they really wanted to prove to the world that the Caucasian British were still as tough and 150,000 Caucasian settlers could rule 6,000,000 African Rhodesians. We over heard some British saying that it was true that one white was equal to eight Africans?

When Africans are bending low because of their fear of God, the whites conclude that it is because they are weak. Are you Africans, including you of Southern Cameroons really weak? Is the fact that you cannot raise your arm to strike a Cameroon Republic citizen when he is molesting you, stealing your resources a sign of weakness?


The stubborn stance of the whites even when Africans were literally dying under them was still the survival of the fittest doctrine of Charles Darwin that was being implemented. Perhaps a break to this will come if the socialist Chinese stand firm but they are proving to be more exploitative than even the extreme right wing capitalists that I have ever seen. They do not bother dealing with the autocratic government of The Sudan to get their oil from the Southern Sudan, my Equatoria. This was the name it was known when Sir Gordon was still the British Governor of The Sudan before he was beheaded by the Mahdi Arab fundamentalists as they still do today in Darfur.

The massacre in Darfur does not deter the Chinese and some Europeans and North American firms from investing in the oil industry in the Sudan. Who put money before human lives and even God? You see that given opportunities, some Europeans and Arabs could still revert to slavery and slave trade. Some have not equated Africans to themselves. Africans are still viewed in some quarters as inferior noble savages. Progress of Africans is still interpreted as maverick achievements and that is very sad indeed when we know what the man from African has contributed to the technological and economic grown of the world. On account of the grabbing attitude of the Chinese, The African Union may have to monitor China and speak with one voice against blind investment and exploitation.

Many Africans are opening their doors to the Chinese settlers even you in The Southern Cameroons. They, Chinese must agree to be Africans and not to transfer all their gains back to China as once did the Indians in Uganda before Idi Amin Dada got infuriated and repatriated most of them.

If Africans remain fragmented and pretend that they had been made so by the Europeans and are to stay sacrosanct they may be in for surprises. Having advanced this point, I am not in for the union of Cameroon Republic and The Southern Cameroon State and that of Morocco and the Arab Saharwi Republic, former Western Sahara where the formers sit on the later countries as slaver dealer on his slaves. You will recall that one of the reasons advanced by the USA, and the UK for not sending their nationals to fight the Rwanda Government Forces (RGF) and Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) of President Paul Kagame of Rwanda was that it was in Africa and Africans had better defended their people. When it was the First and Second World Wars did they say that Africans better remain home not to defend France against the belligerent Germans? Are Africans still looked down on as very inferior apes by Caucasians in the 21st Century? Is Charles Darwin’s doctrine of the survival of the fittest still operational?

Their priority was Yugoslavia, being white that was being torn apart to enfeeble communism that had ever been on their way. Having said this, I am not going to go down in history that we should unite with peoples or countries that will turn round to be more imperialistic and exploitative than the former colonialists. I am referring to Cameroon Republic that is using the power of the barrels with the tacit support of another colonial country with the worst colonial records in Africa, France.

Freely Thinking on Housing and Bush or Brush Fires in the USA and Australia

Freely Thinking on Housing and Bush or Brush Fires in the USA and Australia

“Once a house is built, it has to protect its occupants and not them protecting the house.”

Could someone tell me why the entire wild brush or bush fires are ever concentrated in California and Australia? Africa that is clad with bush and jungles and has got climatic similarities with Australia and California do not cry like this every year. Have the inhabitants of these regions ever heard of clearing fire paths every spring? That is done in Europe and by most African villages and they do not “cry of fire again” every year with the lost of several lives, properties and livestock.

Have peoples in these regions ever thought of having sprinklers surrounding their properties so that in the event of fire out break being fanned by the wind they could be turned on? Have they ever considered building fire proofed houses? Is there any reason why Californians and Australians should use wood for construction when they could use concrete and tiles instead of shingles for their roofing? These are fire proofed materials. Is there any reason why people build in isolations in wooded or bush areas when they know that their homes are flammable? Is there any reason why California whose climate is not inclement should build like those person up in the north where there are extremes of temperatures? People are better off using local materials in their areas for construction as that is the way nature distributes resources and would protect those who make good use of them.

Do you ever hear the French and Swiss and British crying of massive fires as in America and California above all yearly? Do you hear these cases in Brazil? Why is it that it only affects those areas peopled by Anglo-Saxons who left Europe and have thrown away their tradition of building solid fire proofed houses? Why is it that it affects the affluent societies and not the poor? One person told me that constructing fire proofed houses in North America would be so expensive that no one would be able to afford them. Why is it that the haves build them? Most high rising penthouses are fire proofed and these are mostly afforded by the very rich.

The irony is that in countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa that are poorer, fire proofed houses are mandatory and they even have concrete tiles and concrete walls that are impenetrable by the most violent of bush fires. This goes with houses in the Middle East particularly in Israel where a mortar could set houses on fire at any given time. Do North Americans and Australians have to wage a war with some Moslem fundamentalists before they could change their designs and construction of houses that could withstand fire and other natural hazards?

In a country like Zimbabwe, steel roofing is cheaper than wood and no amount of fire could burn them down. Besides they use concrete tiles that could be copied by all around the world. Sand is so plentiful and Africans could set up industries to produce such material from the Sahara and Namib deserts sand for export. Dry walls could be replaced by concrete walls. These are feasible but one person has to start. We are tired of hearing death caused by bush or electric fires or lightning every year. Are you not tired? You should if you are human and care for others.

This may not be the case with others. I hear conservatives shaking their heads that my comments could put a dent in the pickets of Rona, Rena, Home Depots and other suppliers of flimsy housing materials in North American building industries. Could regions like Australia and North America not copy traditional houses in New Zealand, Austria, Italy, Southern Africa etc.? I do not mean shacks that sprawl the suburbia of Johannesburg and Cape Town. That should be a shame of the African successive African governments that took over from the racist Caucasian apartheid regimes.

When people talk of houses in North America you will think of solid concrete or brick or stone houses, the sorts of houses you will fine in the suburb of Enugu, Abuja, Geneva, and Rome, Foncha Street at Bamenda or St. Augustine’s Junction, Kumbo. They look flashy but the majority of them are simply paper walls, clad with flammable plastic materials and timber roofs clad with flammable shingles. The life span of most of these is just only ten years before they start falling apart. That is good for the capitalist economy but are buyers so low and naive that they would not want to get the best out of the money? They do but the building industries are monopolistic and there are fewer options. On account of that, the housing market is not competitive and that is too bad for an apparently developed economy.

Do you know why most North Americans will not at this time buy their own cars or vehicles they had been used to since 1914? It is because they were not worthy of the money they paid for. They turn to European and Japanese cars and everyone is panicky and flying in executive jets to go and ask their governments to bail them out of the falling demand for their badly designed vehicles. That is still not the right way to do it. The right way is to ask the buyers what they want and improve upon the products instead of dumping on them as was the case in the past with the assumption that they would continue buying willy-nilly.

Let me not be carried away by my illustration with motor industries and that is a different topic for our next discussion. The joists, principles, doors, frames of houses are sometimes made of paper and wood with padding of insulation materials that are still flammable. Why could houses not be built to last forever so that next generations invest in other things other than houses? The few you see are for the very rich or those built by the first European settlers in North America. What will the present generation leave for the next? Would it be the same poor techniques and materials? How do they expect those houses to be speared from man-made or natural disasters as outbreaks of fire when they are not well constructed and fortified against these calamities? The inhabitants cry every year and no changes are made in the designs and material for construction of houses for the ordinary peoples. Has a year ever bypassed without houses being burnt down in California? Be honest with me and tell me the truth Mr. Mayor of Los Angeles?

Sincerely speaking, building companies are so selfish and go into the field with the assumption that we know better than the people who buy the houses we build. Is that not the same haughty attitude of the automobile industries in North America? Why will you diplomats and students after your services in North America not buy North American cars to take back to your countries in Africa, Europe or the Middle East? It is because they are badly designed. They will not like to hear me utter this constructive criticisms but I have motor mechanic experience and can challenge them. The Toyota was the American jeep the Japanese copied and modified. The Japanese had their training in German and used those skills or knowledge well in their design. Toyota vehicles entered the US market through the back door and are toppling the US and Canadian GMC, Chrysler, etc. These companies are not moronic. They know the answers but still have the feeling that they are far away and insulated from the other manufactures in the world and that the time is still. Are they right in this century?

When you hear of the USA bankrupt, most of it owed to loans banks give to purchase flimsy houses that if left standing un-attended to collapse after a couple of years or are consumed by fire? Through such houses are good for consumerism but when there is a U-turn in the economy for the worst, do we not think that better design are thought of and implemented? I lived in a house in England that had been standing there for five hundred years. You would never get a good number of houses that last so long in North America unless you have to patch them and rebuild year in year out. Once a house is build it has to protect you and not you protecting the house. Why? It is so because flimsy ones are good for demand but when we are getting poorer and no longer controlling two-third of the world economy, would it not signal that you change they way you do things? We better keep our houses in order or we die or bank these for our children. What is the opportunity cost here?
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When there are fire damages the insurance companies come in and pay hefty sums of money. Is that good business? The fact that there are out breaks of fire is good business for insurance companies. That is sad as ideally all houses should be fire proofed, and provided with solid bunkers that are equally fire and bullet or bomb proofed. As in Switzerland, they should have food supplies and water that that could keep occupants at least for one month in case of out breaks of fires, wars, or other unforeseen contingencies. Are Americans and Australians prepared for all these? They are far from the center of the world and have forgotten how to live with nature but artificial glamorous life that provides no protection to the environments and their homes. Could they take a new leaf after reading my write up? “Naught,” they will say that it is revolutionary and if they change they would be kowtowing to a man from a Third World Country and that does not augur well with their high status. Do not laugh but sympathize with them.

Dr. Viban Viban Ngo.


Post Script: Readers who want  to know more on this topic are recommended to read my article'Plants' Intelligence' below.