Culture

A mystified Sudanese studies his first Halloween

The first things I had to learn were Jack o’ lantern, trick or treat, and you better get a costume! A week ago, I started seeing people on the bus, in grocery stores and other places, with pumpkins, real or plastic.  To me, the pumpkin is a vegetable that can be cooked with Sudanese peanut butter, or with meat, to become pumpkin stew. In some villages the dry pumpkin is cut in the shape of a cup that is used…

Teens turn tech skills learned from nonprofit into a first job

Kemish Rosales spent the summer of 2012, the one between his junior and senior year of high school, learning how to remove hard drives and disk drives safely, rebooting computers, installing software, cleaning mice and speakers, and attending a computer lab every Thursday. Angel Yañez also spent that summer fixing and refurbishing computers, setting them up in labs at schools and non-profit organizations. Both of them were 16 years old, and students at the Media Academy at Fremont High School….

Ebola reaction among African community in the East Bay

Nigerian Independence Day is Oct. 1, but for U.C. Berkeley Nigerians the party took place a few days later, at a hall near campus. It was a party crowded with people and colors from Nigeria and the rest of the African continent. You saw young Nigerian women in their bubas, the Nigerian blouses; their iros, wrap skirts; which in Yoruba usually worn with gele, the head wrap.  People sang the national anthem.  The smells of the broiled beefsteaks, platters of…

Oakland Zoo raises money to help trapped chimps

The Oakland Zoo held its fourteenth annual public gala on October 7 to raise awareness about chimpanzees accidentally caught in traps in Africa. The event, which took place in the Marian Zimmer Auditorium and was attended by more than 100 people, featured a silent auction to raise money for the Budongo Snare Removal Project, located in Uganda’s Budongo Forest. “The chimpanzees could lose their hands, limbs, or get infected,” said Amy Gotliffe, conservation director at the zoo. According to wildlife…