In Myanmar, the most popular sport is football. But baseball, which is American’s national pastime, has carved a small niche for itself thanks to a man from Japan. Dave Grunebaum has the story.
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Day: June 17, 2018
For 25 years, Patrick Matondo has earned a living buying and selling monkeys, bats and other animals popularly known as bush meat along the Congo River. Standing on the riverbank in Mbandaka, a city affected by the deadly new outbreak of the Ebola virus, the father of five said that for the first time he’s worried he won’t be able to support his family.
“Since Ebola was declared, business has decreased by almost half. It’s really, really bad,” the 47-year-old said, hanging his head.
Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak declared in May has 38 confirmed cases, including 14 deaths. The discovery of a handful of Ebola cases among Mbandaka’s more than 1 million residents also has hurt the economy, especially among traders of meat from wild animals.
The virus, which spreads through bodily fluids of those infected, has been known to jump from animals such as monkeys and bats to humans. In the West Africa outbreak four years ago that killed more than 11,000 people, it was widely suspected that the epidemic began when a 2-year-old boy in Guinea was infected by a bat.
Usually the wild animals are highly sought-after as popular sources of protein along with beef and pork, and cargo ships carrying the smoked meat arrive daily in the city, the trade hub for Congo’s northwestern Equateur province. Meanwhile, bush meat markets still see locals bartering for the animals, both dead and alive. Prospective buyers pause at tables piled with monkey meat, picking up blackened chunks one by one for a closer look.
“Meat is very important for people here. It’s one of the biggest industries in Mbandaka,” said Matondo, a leader in the city’s bush meat association.
Dr. Pierre Rollin, an Ebola expert with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said if the meat is cooked, smoked or dried it kills the virus. The people at greatest risk are hunters and butchers who process the meat, he said.
The World Health Organization has advised against trade and travel restrictions because of the current outbreak, which is mostly in remote areas.
Boats with bush meat continue to depart for the capital, Kinshasa, 600 kilometers (323 miles) downstream and for villages tucked deep in the rainforest up and down the river. Disease experts warned, however, that precautions are still necessary as monkeys and bats are sold live throughout the region.
Traders said demand has dwindled because of Ebola, with sales for many dropping from about 100 animals a day to about 20.
“Kinshasa and Brazzaville told us to stop sending monkeys and bats,” said another trader in Mbandaka, Willy Taban, who said his business has been cut in half in recent weeks. He was referring to buyers in the capital of the nearby Republic of Congo, which is across the river from Kinshasa.
Congo’s health minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga Kalenga, said there are no plans to ban sales of bush meat in the province since bush meat is not the primary way the Ebola virus spreads. Instead, the government is focusing on good hygiene practices such as hand-washing, he said.
Health officials are also tracking down anyone who had close contact with anyone infected by the virus, offering an experimental vaccine and promoting safe burials and other practices. Such health efforts can be challenging in communities where many people consider Ebola to be witchcraft. Others are skeptical that the disease exists, even though this is the Central African country’s ninth outbreak.
One Mbandaka trader, Gamo Louambo, said he’s still shipping 100 wild animals to Kinshasa daily and said he won’t stop eating them as they’re his main source of food. “I don’t see Ebola. It isn’t here,” he said.
In West Africa, where there had never been an outbreak before 2014, getting people to accept that Ebola was a real disease was key, said WHO’s Jonathan Polonsky.
For those in Kinshasa, “Ebola is very far away,” said Defede Mbale, immigration chief at the capital’s port of Maluku.
Pointing to a poster of safe Ebola practices on his desk, he said the government has provided extra resources to patrol the river and take people’s temperatures as they arrive by boats, checking for fevers.
He doesn’t doubt the deadly virus exists, but Mbale said there’s only so much that he’s willing to change.
“We have our customs and they won’t change because of Ebola,” he said. “We’ll eat all foods.”
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A Puerto Rican from the Bronx, Orlando Pagan fell in love with Ukrainian folklore when he was a teenager. He used to dance in the Syzokryli Ukrainian Dance Ensemble, and now he leads it. Pagan believes Ukrainian dances are truly special and hopes to make them as popular as the Argentine tango or the Austrian waltz. Carolyn Presutti narrates this report by Tatiana Vorozhko.
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Many Muslims around the world are not happy with Hollywood’s stereotypes of Muslims and Islam. But instead of protesting, nonprofit group Muslim Public Affairs Council created a Hollywood bureau to engage with filmmakers. It also honors those making a difference with the so-called “Muslim Oscars.” VOA’s Vina Mubtadi reports from Los Angeles.
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A Swiss born artist who got his first big break in 1955 in the United States, is back in the city of his first museum exhibit, New York. Sculptor, painter, draftsman Alberto Giacometti created most of his masterpieces in a tiny studio in Montparnasse in Paris, but his work has been closely connected with New York. The maestro’s work returns to the U.S. this summer, as the Guggenheim Museum welcomes art lovers to an exhibition dedicated to Giacometti. Anna Rice narrates this report by Elena Wolf.
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It’s happened to many of us. You fumble for your camera to record a precious moment but you’re a little too late. A delayed touch of the button, an opportunity missed forever. But now entrepreneurs in the Netherlands are hoping to change that dynamic with a new camera that can capture events even before you hit the record button. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Several hundred yoga practitioners unrolled their mats on the lawn of the United States Capitol on Saturday to celebrate the International Day of Yoga, which takes place June 21. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves free.”
That proclamation, June 19, 1865, was the spark for a day that has come to be known in the United States as Juneteenth, the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of U.S. slavery.
The proclamation in Texas actually came 2½ years after slavery ended with President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. That document, which made emancipation effective in slaveholding states January 1, 1863, was signed in the middle of the Civil War. But it was not until federal troops arrived thousands of kilometers west in Texas, two months after the official end of the war in 1965, that many Texas slaves were informed that they were free.
The reason for the delay in notification of the slaves is unclear. It could have been slow communications at a time when telephones and email did not exist; it could have been that such a proclamation could not have been enforced until federal troops arrived in Texas after the war.
Life for freed slaves
The proclamation did not immediately make life easy for freed slaves. They had to find their own work for wages and grapple with prejudice that causes racial divides in the United States today. But emancipation was a legal victory that came as welcome news to the 250,000 African-Americans who had been illegally enslaved in Texas for 30 months after the signing of the document that was meant to free them.
Today, Juneteenth supporters are still working for recognition of the holiday, which is celebrated with picnics, parades, prayer and public celebrations of African-American culture.
The holiday was once celebrated mostly in the western United States. Texas-dwellers took the holiday with them as they followed job opportunities west. But the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s brought a new surge in interest in the holiday in the East, and now 45 out of 50 states have designated the mid-June celebration as an official state holiday or day of observance. Texas was the first state to make Juneteenth a state holiday.
Community celebrations
This Saturday and Sunday, many Juneteenth celebrations are taking place before the official June 19 anniversary of the proclamation. In Salisbury, Maryland, close to the eastern U.S. coast, residents held an outdoor festival featuring dancing and local crafts at a cultural center.
Community organizer Amber Green told a reporter that Juneteenth “is basically Black Independence Day.”
Juneteenth celebrations tend to be generated by the community, highlighting ties among family and friends.
“Today is our festival,” Green said. “We have local artists, local vendors, local music, and we are just bringing the community together through good food, good music and good fun.”
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