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<DIV>Rudy,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Thank you very much for your suggestions. It really sounds great. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Unfortunately the situation in Congo doesn't allow us to do that anywhere in the forsiable future (in my opinion). You see in the areas where we work they have no libraries, no universities, no museums, no roads, no electricity and no means to go in there except charted planes. There might be a couple of cameras available in a few hundred km area, but then there is no way of developping those films except when they occasionaly travel to Uganda. I don't think any scientific researcher would dare to travel there. SAD BUT TRUE! </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>That's why I don't know what to do with these names for plants and animals.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Let's just hope one day would be possible to do research. But I think the idea of contacting the Belgium society sounds great. Maybe they have already done some research.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Cami.</DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR><B><I>Rudolph C Troike <rtroike@u.arizona.edu></I></B> wrote:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid"><TT><BR>Re Cami's question, my first suggestion would be to contact a university<BR>in the area to find out if there are any botanists or zoologists around<BR>who could help. Secondly, to check at the library of one or more<BR>universities in the region, to see if there are books on the flora and<BR>fauna available. Librarians, in my experience, will often go far out of<BR>their way to respond to requests for help, even when they do not know<BR>anything about the subject matter.<BR><BR>As suggested earlier, another useful approach, if practicable, is to visit<BR>a natural science museum in the region and see what resources they have.<BR><BR>Finally, since in the colonial period there were often expeditions from<BR>museums in the home country to collect and classify specimens, and often<BR>publish results in research reports, probably a very productive approach<BR>would be to contact a
major natural science museum in Belgium, and perhaps<BR>one in France, to see if there are research reports on these topics. Some<BR>of these may actually date to the 19th century. Also, there are<BR>undoubtedly curators in such museums who would be interested in<BR>establishing contact with someone in the field who could actually furnish<BR>specimens with native names, and ethnographic information on their use.<BR><BR>Since the existence of a number of different terms for 'manioc' imply<BR>native knowledge on different means of collection and preparation, it<BR>would not only be valuable to annotate a dictionary with this kind of<BR>detailed ethnographic information, but it might be possible to link this<BR>information with prior anthropological research on food and agricultural<BR>practices in the region. There is certainly a growing scientific interest<BR>in ecological issues, to which this information could contribute. As I<BR>have noted here before, once languages become
extinct, dictionaries often<BR>become a major source of ecological and cultural information, so the long<BR>term scientific and historical importance of inclusiveness in providing<BR>detailed glosses should not be overlooked.<BR><BR> Rudy<BR><BR><BR></TT></BLOCKQUOTE><p>
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