Public Space

Place-based pedagogies, University of Mandalay (4)

In order to link the classroom with the real world for the course of Urban Anthropology, our department decided to interact with the community elders to find out about the Taunghtaman Village Tract. 

Our group met the village head and community elders of Taunghtaman Village in the village administrator’s office. The elders shared that nowadays most school children who grow up in Taungthaman do not know much about their home village and don't cherish it; and because of this, they are forgetting their cultural heritage.

Comparing street markets: Myanmar and Leiden

The Saturday Market opens every Saturday along the canals (Nieuwe Rijn, Vismarkt en Botermarkt) and a smaller one on Wednesdays. There are many makeshift stalls on Saturdays but fewer on Wednesdays. The stalls sell - flowers, bags, toys, foods/ drinks , accessories (bicycle, tailor, fashion etc), speciality food like Middle East cuisine/ ingredients, Dutch herring, chesses etc. The stalls are always busy.

Family and women: Leiden and Mali

The family is a social institution. It is beautiful to see a mother and her children together because it reflects the natural love and the affectability that exists between her and her offsprings. In Leiden, the parental concept is very visible in the streets because it is found that the parents and their children are at the edge of a bicycle (the parents and their children: case where all drive together; the case where the mother also pilot alone). Education is one of the priorities of the population of this city of the Netherlands.

Fish Selling in Leiden and Elmina Market

On my visit to the Leiden Market, I witnessed a scene where the fish sellers were singing in unison with each other. There was a man and woman selling and singing, while scraping herrings. But in my home country, Ghana, the fishermen sing when pulling the nets of fishes out of the water whilst the women await and take the fish away to sell at market like the Elmina fish market. The women are the one that sell and the atmosphere is mostly of chaos.

Saturday Market

The setting of the Saturday Market is a completely different image from the other local shops during the weekdays. It opens twice a week - a small one on Wednesdays, and the main one on Saturdays from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. It is full of products from local and as well as non-Ducth origin (e.g Mabroek). The uniqueness of the market makes people visit it and makes the experience worthwhile. People come not only to shop but also to relax, to enjoy their Saturdays with family and friends.

Streets of Leiden

The 1890 photograph of ‘laundry day’ shows people washing, bleaching and drying their clothes on the side of the canals of Leiden. According to our sources, the people in Leiden used the water that was centrally heated by the factories, once a week, to wash their clothes once a week. They needed the entire streets for the laundry process and used it as a community.

Memories of absence

The Netherlands was placed under German occupation during the second World War after the  country was invaded by the Nazi Germany on the 10th of May, 1940, which continued till the German Surrender in 1945. Nearly seventy percent of the country's Jewish population was killed in Nazi concentration camps during these years. 

First Church Visited in Leiden: Marekerk

First church visited in Leiden: Marekerk. Architecture may be reminiscent of a Catholic church, but our guide told us that it is a Protestant church. The building is majestic, a round dome overlooking it, and it is still used by the Protestant community of Leiden. The past and current relations between Catholics and Protestants in Leiden are relatively complicated, and certainly competitive, as everywhere else. We did not expect it. Nor did we expect so many churches and stories in this city.

Bakhri (2)

Bakhri II
 
The community Bakhri (Granary) at Thuribari, Kokrajhar, is one of the few such Bakhris seen nowadays in Assam. Community Bakhri is representative of a communal living and sharing. Located in an open village space just opposite the Brahma temple, these three small raised mud houses look ordinary but the significance and relevance of them in Thuribari community life is clearly visible from the well-maintained condition of it. 

The Naga Day

When the day came to be, Kohima was resplendent in sunshine. It was January 10, 2018, the first Naga Day. At the Kohima Local Ground, Khuochiezie, music played from the early morning hours.In the surrounding market area, people hummed the tunes as they set up shop. Some planned to go to the ground, some planned to watch from their terraces—everyone had heard this one thing, Nagas from everywhere were coming together.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Public Space