Lost and found: Euskara reemerging as the language of the Basques

BY KATHERINE BOYLE & SARA GOODMAN, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

"Mus!" With that, the speaker, a weathered cowboy wearing a black beret and cowboy boots, grins as he high-fives his partner and lays down his hand. He and three other men are sitting at a picnic table outside a tiny log cabin at the top of the Bighorn Mountains right outside of Buffalo, Wyo., playing a card game. At a glance, it seems like any other group of American cowboys gathered together for a game of poker. But it's not.

This game is being played entirely in a foreign language, one that isn't familiar to most Americans. They're speaking Euskara, a language with no known ties to any other language around the world.

The cowboys are Basque-Americans and they are part of a thriving community in the western United States. They come from the Basque Country: seven provinces in the Pyrenees of western Europe that make up the northwest corner of Spain and the southwest section of France. In Buffalo, most Basques are of French descent, and their relatives immigrated here in the early 1900s, seeking political freedom and economic advantage. At a time where many immigrant groups are wrestling with questions of nationality and identity, the Basque culture is flourishing.  (More)

Sierra Leone's amputees: A refugee in Chicago

BY MATT RUSLING, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

After a decade long war, many of Sierra Leone's war wounded still slog through life, depending on handouts for survival. These two companion stories contrast the life of one amputee who has made it to the U.S. with the lives of his counterparts - disabled people who are left struggling for survival in his native Sierra Leone.

[to companion story - Sierra Leone's amputees: Those left to beg]

Photos by Matt Rusling and Florent Blanc

On a basketball court in Rogers Park on the North side of Chicago, Victor Saidu, 32, looks up and takes a shot. Whoosh! Nothing but net. On any court in urban America, that would not elicit even a yawn - except that Saidu is shooting with two stubs where his hands used to be.

Saidu is a victim of the civil war in Sierra Leone, which was known for its particular brand of barbarity, perpetrated by the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel group that used amputation as a means to terrorize the public. The conflict, which ended in 2002, displaced two million people, or one third of the population.  (More)

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