Knowledge Cultures: Illustrations

Above: The traditional African tree model: our tribe consists of persons. These are forces (in white) transmitting power to other forces. The power is the past. It is the ancestors. To stimulate the transmission of power to us by the ancestors, we have a scala of gestures of respect to them: sacrifice, song and dance. These are small down currents (green in the picture), called bait, against the main (up)stream of power (red in the picture). Time runs up with power. It is how the tree became what it is. The power is the past. The past is the real: it is what you can see, feel and hear. The future is only hypothetical, determined beyond our control. We may have expectations about what the tree will look like in the future, but these are irrelevant. The future is wait-and-see.

Above: The African straight clap ...power generating... and the western skewed clap ...power consuming... 

Above: Money
...gets its power not from the written but from the spoken word...

Above: Rain-song
...power generating... 

Above: Bert hamminga plays with drums on his self designed "recoprano" (European recorder with reed powered soprano saxophone mouthpiece).

Above: Bert hamminga learning some dancing from experienced drum artisans in Bufulubi (Busoga, Uganda). Mzee (head of family) himself is doing the drumming (far right in the foreground). There is no teaching by slow motion rehearsal of steps while counting and other "brainy" things you find on western dancing schools. You just start and are "loaded" by the other dancers.

Bert hamminga (l) and Yoweri Museveni(r), editorial meeting