On October 6, the World Monument Fund (WMF) published the 2010 world monument watch list plotting the dozens of villages, buildings, bridges and monuments at risk of destruction on an interactive Google map. The WMF in New York is one of many organizations, like Global Heritage Fund, World Heritage Center (part of UNESCO), financing projects to preserve world cultural heritage sites.

Becoming a heritage site

While a nomination for cultural heritage site or monument can be a useful step on the way to acquiring funds for preservation, an additional benefit can be a general rise in tourism to the sites in question. Moreover, the nomination often stimulates national or local pride.

Singaporean university lecturer Tan Wee Cheng created a Facebook group, asking for Singapore sites to be included on the World Heritage list:

As at the end of Dec 08, there are 878 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 145 countries but none in Singapore. Are there really no sites in Singapore worthy of such an honour? I have visited a few hundred WHS round the world and am convinced that certain sites in Singapore deserve to be listed, for they do posses what UNESCO calls sites with “outstanding universal value”.

Conflicts can also help influence decisions. After the violent clashes between ethnic Uighurs (Uyghurs) and Chinese Hans in Kashgar, the ancient Silk Road city, a petition had been submitted online to claim World Heritage Status for the city, threatened to be demolished.

Man is a threat

Humans themselves are almost always the source of the dangers, as this article written by Dr. Anjana Khatwa, education coordinator for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage, points out:

Threats to World Heritage Sites come in many forms: armed conflict and war, wanton destruction, natural disasters, pollution, poaching, unplanned construction and uncontrolled tourism.

This idea is shared by WMF President Bonnie Burnham in her address for the launch of the 2008 World Monuments Watch List of Most Endangered Sites:

On this list, man is indeed the real ennemy. But, just as we caused the damage in the first place, we have the power to repair it, by taking our responsibility as caretakers of the world’s cultural heritage seriously. So today we are sounding the alarm, using the World Monuments Watch List to demonstrate, through the vivid examples of beloved places around the world, the importance of working together to meet these challenges and join forces to protect our world’s shared architectural heritage.

Innovating answers

Since 2003, UNESCO has also been working to safeguard Intangible Cultural Heritage like languages, dances, and handcraft techniques. New technologies and the Internet could be a necessary breakthrough in preventing some cultural and intangible heritage from vanishing.

CyArk, a non-profit entity, is working on the “500 Challenge”. This project intends to make a digital model of cultural heritage sites by laser scanning, to create an open archive of the data.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) also has a project to preserve and protect oral and intangible heritage, Creative Heritage Project: IP Guidelines for Documenting, Recording and Digitizing Intangible Cultural Heritage:

New technologies provide communities with fresh opportunities to document and digitize expressions of their traditional cultures, meeting the strong desire of communities to preserve, promote and pass on their cultural heritage to succeeding generations.

This is a credo shared by Malian blogger Boukary Konate, in talking about African folk tales [in Bambara] on his personal blog, Fasokan:

Bi bi in na, an bɛɛ bɛ k’a kɔlɔsi sisan k’o ko ninnu bɛ ka ban dɔɔni dɔɔni. N kɛlen kɔ ka n yɛrɛ ɲininkan, ye jaabi min sɔrɔ, o de ye ka u sɛbɛen an ka kanw na, k’u bayɛlɛma kan wɛrɛw la, k’u bila ɛntɛrinɛti kan. O b’a to u tɛ tunun wa u na lakodɔn mɔgɔ wɛrɛw fɛ.

Fate, and hard work, brought him from rural Mali to Bamako, where he discovered and fell in love with the World Wide Web.

Joining the translators team at Global Voices in French has steered him onto a new path. He is now involved in multiple projects to promote his native language, Bambara, on the Web, and to bring more Internet access to rural Mali.

If you are on the iPhone and ‘information overload' side of the digital divide, you will appreciate that Boukary has a sobering, inspiring, and even magical story to tell in this interview.

Q: How did you discover Global Voices in French and decide to join as a translator?

It happened in December ‘08.

One day, around 8 PM, I was sitting alone in my room in Bamako when I was seized by the wish to learn more. The following words formed in my mind: “I want.” These are powerful words for me.

I got up, went to the cyber café, booked a computer and typed, “I want” in the Google search bar. I browsed the results and found Global Voices en français.

The next day, I enrolled as a volunteer translator.

Q: Your native village, Sanogola-Bamoussobougou, has no electricity, much less an Internet connection. Please tell us a bit about your life.

I am the son of Négué, a farmer, and Djènèba Kané, a housewife. I grew up on a farm, helping my parents. One evening, I was shepherding cows with other kids when we met a man on the road, a sergeant. His Suzuki motorcycle was broken. His name was Lassinè Traoré.

While we helped him, he asked if I went to school. I said “No”. He went to see my father and advised him to send me to school. For weeks, he came back, until my father gave his consent. Sergeant Traoré told me, “There I leave you. You now have the duty to do well at school to honor me, and later to take care of yourself and your parents.”

I walked six kilometers to the nearest school for years until I moved to Bamako to attend high school. I did bricklayer work and odd jobs on week-ends to make ends meet with my state grant. My mother wanted me to succeed in school, she did everything in her power.

I went on to teachers’ school. I would have liked to go to university, but I don't have the means for that. So I trained myself to use a computer and surf from cyber cafés in Bamako. The Web soothed my thirst for knowledge.

Boukary (left) and his father with a picture of him in hunting gear. Photo: Toujours Pas Sages, on Flickr

Q: How well is Mali connected to the internet nowadays?

Mali has done a lot to promote new technologies in government administration, but there’s a lot left to do to connect people, especially in rural areas.

The interest in new technologies is huge, but people cannot access them. The cost of personal computers, training and Internet connections are too high. A new laptop costs that equivalent of six months of a teacher's wages.

In Bamako, an hour in a cyber café costs around 500 CFA francs (USD $1) or even 1000 CFA francs in smaller towns. Compare this to the price of a 50kg bag of rice, which is 17.500 CFA francs (around US $38) it's well beyond the means of most people.

Q: You've not only started blogging since you joined Global Voices, but you blog in Bambara!

It so happened that Maneno.org, a blogging platform for Africa co-founded by Global Voices' author and translator Elia Varela Serra needed African translators. I speak and write in Bambara, a major language in Mali.

Bambara has special type fonts [see this post] and no keyboard. We overcame this problem with a virtual keyboard. I localized the platform in Bambara and opened my blog, Fasokan. I blog in Bambara and French about Mali, the problems of farmers, and my thoughts.

It is now my great wish to promote African languages on the Web, so that African people can relate and share across the continent. In rural Mali, many people speak and learn to write only Bambara in elementary school. I want them to be able to access the web  in Bambara too.

Boukary trains villagers in Mali to use the Internet. Photo: Toujours Pas Sages on Flickr

Q: That dream came true this summer?

My dream was to bring the Internet to my village, to introduce my family and the farmers to the Web. Through Global Voices in French, I met Albertine Meunier, who conducts internet workshops with senior citizens in France. We launched the Toujours Pas Sages (Still not wise) project on Maneno, in French and Bambara. Thanks to Fondation Orange Mali, we got a mobile Internet connection for remote places.

With donated laptops and camera phones, Albertine, her friend Caroline and I trained children and grown-ups for two weeks in Ségou and my village to use Google to find information, and use the Web to upload digital photos and videos. The villagers were so surprised that they could read and write in Bambara on the Web! It was a great success.

My father is a hunter and was very curious about hunters in America and how they hunt. On Google, he finally discovered what they looked like. And we also learned that it is possible to charge a mobile phone with a dynamo hooked to a bicycle.

Now, we are going to try and train my pupils in Bamako.

Dr. Nabulo Mabaso, Deputy Medical Director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's Ithembalabantu “People's Hope” Clinic in Durban expresses his satisfaction that support for marginalized communities (sex workers, men who have sex with men, and indigeneous people) was emphasized by conference organizers. However, he explains that this focus should extend to other marginalized communities and even currently isolated nations:

“There is still limited access to treatment. For example, my neighboring country, Zimbabwe, it might be politically unstable, but there are people on the ground who are suffering and because of sanctions that are being imposed funders are not going to Zimbabwe. At the end of the day, it's the lives of individuals and I hope the theme of universal access is really put into practice”.

George Kanuma lives in Bujumbura and is an activist for the France-based association Africa Gay and is a member of ANSS (National Association for HIV-Positive and AIDS patients in Burundi). He is content with the renewed emphasis on MSM (Men having Sex with Men) and sex workers at the conference (fr):

However, in some French-speaking African countries, discrimination is still very strong, he explains (fr):

“Il y a certain pays comme le Cameroun ou le Sénégal qui criminalise encore l’homosexualité [..] Il y a des cas aussi comme au Ruanda, la présidente de l’association gay et lesbienne au Ruanda ne peut toujours pas quitté son pays, parce que la police de l’immigration a pris son passeport.”

A few countries, like Cameroon or Senegal, still criminalize homosexuality. [..] There are also cases like the one in Rwanda, where the president of the LGBT association cannot exit her country because the immigration police is still holding her passport.

The Fimizore project in Madagascar was one of the recipient of the 2008 UNAIDS Red Ribbon Award. Balou, a trans-gendered sexual worker and her colleague Jeannie, are members of the project and they both weighed in on their hope and concerns for the conference. Like Kanuma, they both emphasized the need to end marginalization of sexual workers if we want to effectively fight HIV/AIDS (mg):

“Ny fanilikilhina indrindra no manankana ny MSM sy ny TDS hikarakara ny fahasalamany […] Io moa dia eo ihany ny fomba-drazana antsika malagasy, raha ohatra hoe msm dia tsy tafiditra am-pasan-drazana. Raha amin’ny autorites dia mahafa-po fa raha amin’ny societe civile, mbola mila fivoarana.”

Marginalization is what prevents MSM (men having sex with men) and TDS ( sexual workers) from taking care of their health [..] There are also the walls of traditional Malagasy culture. For instance, if you are a MSM, you will not be allowed to enter the familial cemetery (when you pass away). The official authorities have made great strides but the civil society has still a long way to go (in ending marginalization).

Finally, marginalized communities in the fight against HIV/AIDS are not only products of cultural intolerance or political agendas. They are also the result of economic hardships or plain geographical locations. In this video, on The Hub, Dr. Phillip Njemanze, in Imo State, Nigeria, explains the struggle for HIV positive people in rural areas to monitor their immune system:

“In rural areas in Imo State, CD4 testing is non-existent. This means for 3.5 million people you have only two centers that can measure CD4 count in the whole state [..] The most important thing would be, to be able to move around with the test and go where the patients are.”