French Guiana has perhaps more diversity then any other country in the world in this regard. The interior population has learned little or nothing of the sciences, while on the coast the European Space Agency leads one of the most sophisticated operations in the world. The future seems to hold more of this great divide. More...
MarriageMost marriage ceremonies take place within the church, as is the custom in most of South America.Domestic Unit. families have followed a Western trend of becoming smaller. The average birthrate is 3.31 children per woman. Regardless of size, families maintain their closeness through activities and religion.
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Division of Labor by Gendert. The gendered Division of Laborresulted from efforts of Christian missionaries and French colonial officials to introduce a Western cultural system. In this system, men were defined as the breadwinners and heads of families and the ideal roles for women were as helpmates and nurturers. Before the introduction of development programs in the 1960s, men were responsible for taro gardens, tree crop plantations, and fishing, and women devoted themselves to motherhood and household maintenance. women also assisted their husbands in agricultural production and fishing. Men tended to dominate the income-earning opportunities in the processing of copra and vanilla. Rural and urban development schemes after the 1960s expanded men’s opportunities in commercial agriculture and introduced wage-earning jobs. Although women in some of the archipelago`es were drawn into wage labor, these opportunities were dominated by men.
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Reciprocity, generosity, and hospitality are central values. When guests are invited for a meal, the hosts are not necessarily expected to eat. Tahitians greet each other by shaking hands and/or exchanging kisses on the cheek. Unless there is a large number of people in the room, it is considered impolite not to shake hands with all of them. It also is considered impolite to keep one’s shoes on when entering another person’s home. More...
Division of labor by Gendert. The expectations of labor are different for women and men. women raise their many children, farm, prepare food, and do the household chores. In the villages, the men build a house for the family as well as a cuisine for each wife taken. The men handle cash crops if there are any, and may have jobs fishing or building, or in offices in the cities. The women also work in the cities as secretaries—there are exceptional women who have risen to positions of power in spite of the underlying male dominance in the workplace. The children help with the chores, do laundry and dishes, run errands, and clean house.
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The Omar Bongo university in Libreville and the university of Science and Technology in the south are the main facilities in Gabon. Doctoral students and other private individuals and organizations conduct sociological and anthropological studies throughout Gabon, and chemical companies search for new treasures in the rain forest. Resources are dim, however, and when evidence is collected, scholars often travel to other countries to seek superior facilities. More...
Gambia suffers from the usual list of tropical diseases, many of them water borne. Malaria is endemic; blindness afflicts a large percentage of the population. Modern health care is found in urban centers and sporadically in villages. More...
Support for the ArtsThere is some Government support but the gambia is a poor country and can spare little for the arts. Literature. Increasingly, there are collections of folk tales, poetry accompanied by the Kora, a lutelike instrument, and novels. No gambian novelist has reached the stature of other Africans, such as Chinua Achebe or Wole Soyinka, but there are promising young gambian authors.
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The most widely observed holiday still is the New Year. Among national holidays, Independence Day is the most respected, and people like to attend even newly invented festivities such as Tbilisoba in October, a holiday invented by the Communist authorities. More...
MarriageMarriage is based on the free will of the partners and rarely is prearranged, although that sometimes happens in rural areas, especially in the Muslim population. Mutual attraction is the most common reason for marriage, although for older couples, economic benefits or comfort may be more important. In Muslim areas, unofficial polygamy exists in rare cases. There is a significant incidence of early marriage, but there is a general tendency for later MarriageMarried persons who maintain a joint household have equal rights to their possessions.
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