amjamin

A roti is made on a clay skillet on a Chuhla, the traditional Indian clay oven. This phenomenon is slowly diminishing in the fast paced world, but some households are keeping this tradition alive Every evening, Savita Yadav religiously bathes, gets ready, goes into the corner of her home with a high zinc roof, the cemented courtyard lined with the pots of holy basil plants, pours ghee (clarified butter) on to the stack of fuel in a mud stove, strikes a match, waits for the fuel to burn, and puts an earthen ‘tawa’ (Indian flat skillet) on top.  The chulha (pronounced choo as in shoe, la as in large), a traditional Indian cooking stove, has been an integral part of Indian households for centuries, a rapidly diminishing phenomenon taken over by the gas stove and the more ‘funky’ microwave. “I started cooking on the chulha when I was seven years old,” said Yadav as she meticulously divided the kneaded dough, neatly packed in a brass vessel, and blew air from a hollow metal tub...

In north east India is a district, which is off the tourist grid, seeped in oft time warped traditions – Madhubani (translated as Forest of Honey – Madhu: honey, Ban: forest) – is the home, and lends its name, to the country’s foremost traditional painting genres, which dates back centuries. Rustic, traditional, and precise, each work tells a story – of the painter’s thoughts, dreams, aspirations, and critically giving life to Hinduism’s holy scriptures and deities. A mix of folklore, realism, celebrations, joy, and spiritualism, Madhubani is a personal statement of the artist, carrying on a tradition that has been handed down from generations. Ram Charita Paswan, is one of scores of painters who started dabbling with colours when he was six years old.  “I used to watch my grandmother paint,” the bespectacled, lean fourth-generation painter said. “I used to take cotton wool, tie it on a stick and try to dab paint on a paper, but I always ended up making a mess of th...

Rasheda Tennant works on a customised ring of silver and brass   "My pieces have to tell a story," says Rasheda Tennant, a young Jamaican jeweller, who said she combines her clients' personal choices, their stories with an eclectic mix of media, colours, and design. The jewellery that she creates is a statement - literally and figuratively. Tennant said creating is in her DNA. Her grandfather and father were woodcarvers and she, from as far as she can remember, spent her childhood and teenage years in their workshop, tinkering with the tools, carving, and hammering wood. "I was always helping my father; I used to accompany him whenever he went to the sites. I helped him in his workshop," Tennant said. She told The Sunday Gleaner that the training was hands-on and on the job. "That's how I have these muscles," Tennant said, as she flexed her chiselled biceps, shaped by hammers, nails, saws - not your typical doll-totting girl. The play th...

Archivo CPI photo:  Humacao's landfill   By Omar Alfonso On a summer day in 2015, the elevator doors at the headquarters of the Puerto Rico Electric and Power Authority (PREPA) in Santurce opened. Off the elevator walked out Manuel Mata, President of AES Puerto Rico, a company that since 2002 has sold 454 Megawatts of electricity to the public corporation derived from its coal fuel plant in Guayama. The annual invoice for the deal exceeds $300 million. Without attracting attention and protected from public scrutiny, Mata walked up to the executive offices and signed a legal document. It dealt with an amendment in the contract made between the multinational company and PREPA: a clause that prohibited the company from disposing its waste derived from the burning of the coal on any part of the island. A few days later, on July 17, 2015, the agreement was completed. Once signed by Carlos Castro Montalvo, the former Interim Director of PREPA, the rules of the game ch...

The creator and his creations - Wazari Johnson “I am like a child on Christmas morning when I open my kiln,” said Wazari Johnson, his shirt dotted with spots, and hands caked in clay, ready to shape the docile, earthy mass of mud into statement pieces. It's love, he said, that makes the wheel spin around, fire in the kiln burning and ideas to create the poetry and prose in glazed ceramic. “For me, everything about ceramics is just simply awesome,” Johnson said. “I love everything about the process, from getting the idea of what form I want to create, to preparing the clay, to taking it on the wheel. I love seeing the piece slowly dry and finally proving what it's made of in the fire, I love glazing and glaze firing.” These ideas, like any artists’ creation, form on a blank slate. In this case, from specks of mud, which Johnson said is therapeutic to work with and is also adaptable to changes. “I find that clay is a very versatile and "forgiving" material,...

View of AES from barrio Jobos in Guayama, Puerto Rico By Omar Alfonso | Center for Investigative Journalism They went looking for Víctor Rodríguez Aguirre to his home in the Santa Ana sector of barrio Jobos Guayama. He was a critical player. The young father was resident in one of the most densely populated zones near the AES carbon plant and knew what it was like to live in poverty. He became a local sports leader who strived to help his community move forward. He focused particularly on young students with no job prospects on the horizon. His desire for progress and his influence in the neighborhood were key to convince others to believe in the promise that AES would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the construction of a power generating plant that would bring wages and prosperity to the region. "They took us to Hartford, Connecticut, to see the AES facilities," Rodríguez Aguirre recalled sitting in a chair in the balcony of his home....

By Omar Alfonso Eight years have passed but Amparo Andújar Maldonado does not forget. She lost her first child while she was approaching the fifth month of her pregnancy. Nor does she erases from her mind giving birth to a disfigured fetus, with cranial malformation, something incomprehensible for a healthy 27 year old woman, counting with quality prenatal care. But Amparo was not alone. From 2005 to 2008, the rate of miscarriages and premature births rose suddenly in the Encantado neighborhood of Arroyo Barril, a working-class rural and coastal town, north of the Dominican Republic. An area rich in natural treasures such as the Bay of Samaná, global sanctuary for humpback whales. Amaparo’s friend, Rosa María Andújar, also fell into statistics. She gave birth to a child with exposed intestines and six fingers and toes. The newborn died not far from birth, in June 2008. Months later, another neighbor, Maribel Mercedes, gave birth to Siamese twins that also die...