Posts tagged Smithsonian Folklife Festival
Life is calling. How far will you go?
Tinikling Dancers from Philippines on the Peace Corps World Stage at Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2011
San Dancers from Botswana on the Peace Corps World Stage at Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2011
The San are a people native to the Kalihari Desert of southern Africa whose territory covers parts of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola. Alternately referred to as “Bushmen”, Kung, Sho, Barwa, or Khwe, the San were traditionally nomadic foragers who lived in small bands. In recent decades, the roughly 100,000 remaining San people have transitioned from hunter-gatherers to settled farmers.
The traditional dances of the San have been performed by the San/Basarwa/Bushmen people in southern Africa for tens of thousands of years, and are used in social, religious, and healing contexts.
According to various traditions throughout the world, “wish trees” posses spiritual power to which offerings are made. At the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Peace Corps offered attendees the opportunity to attach messages to a wish tree to honor the memory of Peace Corps friends lost or to offer good will to Peace Corps Volunteers and partners around the world.
A Moroccan artisan demonstrates her craft in the Peace Corps Village at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2011
Here’s a little video I took on my phone yesterday of the Garifuna Collective (featuring Umalali) from Belize performing on the World Stage. Later we’ll have better footage from our video team, I promise!
Peace Corps Volunteer Shelia Slemp is joined by Ukrainian friends for a cooking demonstration at the Folklife Festival. They are cooking red borscht — beet based soup enjoyed with smetana (sour cream).
Later in the week, Slemp is singing, acting, and dancing with the Opika Performance Group, a group of nine young students from Ukraine. The group also educates the community, through performance art, about quality of life issues impacting Western Ukraine.
San Dancers from Ghanzi, Botswana, represent Peace Corps at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival
This is the first World Map Project map, the beginning of a standard Peace Corps activity. Maps are still being created today around the world. Dominican Republic - 1988
Come to the Smithsonian Folklike Festival to see Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Barbara Jo White demonstrate the World Map Project she created!
The Festival starts this Thursday and we hope to see you there! For those of you who can’t make it to DC, we’ll be blogging about all the great activities here on Tumblr.
How to Turn 8,000 Plastic Bottles Into a Building
Peace Corps Volunteer Laura Kutner demonstrates how she turned trash into the building blocks for one community’s revival
