• Places&Culture from

ANTIGUA, Guatemala--The thing is, he doesn't even like rap that much. As he sees it, it's filled with sin: violence, naked women, drugs and greed. Stuff that a priest is supposed to renounce. But if you're a padre, like Fray Richard Godoy, and you want to save souls, and those souls happen to be hooked on hip-hop, then, if you're smart, and young, and know your way around a beat, maybe you'll get over your repugnance and find yourself bustin' a rhyme. In your robes. Arms up. Raising the roof.
For Latin America's most popular -- and possibly only -- rapping priest, this makes for a complicated relationship with an art form about which he's got mixed feelings.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53011-2002Dec13.html

VOI, Kenya--There are chubby elephant footprints all over Jacqueline Mwaviswa's farm. But she doesn't think they're cute or even interesting. Love of the floppy-eared, six-ton elephant is something for tourists and wildlife conservationists, says this grandmother of 15. She's upset because an overnight elephant rampage around her village last week left her entire food supply for the next two months -- her cashew nuts, her cassava and banana trees, her mangos and maize -- trampled and devoured by the world's largest living land mammal. In Voi and the other poor rural villages that ring Tsavo National Park in southern Kenya, elephants...have not only destroyed $30,000 worth of food, but have also killed four people since April, causing schools in the area to close and local leaders to urge villagers to arm themselves against marauding wildlife.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34366-2002Nov10.html

• Previous P&C