The Story

Razia Said grew up in her grandmother's home in Madagascar, dancing and singing on the table as her relatives clapped. When she was 11, her mother came and took her away to live in West Africa with a French stepfather. Razia eventually went even further, to New York City, where she was singing R&B and jazz. It wasn't until Razia had a baby that she began writing and singing in Malagasy, the language she grew up with. Also in this show: Remembering Granny D

As Ghana marks its fiftieth year as an independent country, more and more African Americans continue to travel there, and in some instances, settle there.Saidiya Hartman was born with a different first name, Valarie.  She changed it in part to spite her parents, and also because she wanted to be and feel more African.  Yet when she traveled to Ghana years later, she found that she was an outsider to people she'd previously hoped would be like long-lost members of her family. Also in this episode: Marcus Mann has a parallel, but different story than Saidiya's.  He found his true home in Ghana. 

This past week, BP earned a dubious new distinction. Although it’s not the first oil company to have a blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s now officially the worst. In June 1979, the Ixtoc 1 offshore oil well exploded and oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico for 10 months. Within weeks oil was coating the beaches of south Texas. Leo Trevino was a college student back then in Corpus Christi, when one of his professors asked him to grab his diving gear and travel down to Mexico to check on a research site not far from the Ixtoc. Along the way, Leo and another grad student surveyed the Mexican coastline, looking for oil and documenting recovery efforts. Leo talks with Dick Gordon about what he saw on his Ixtoc roadtrip, and how well the Gulf of Mexico has recovered in the three decades since. Also in this show, surprising dad.

Our series on the health of water continues today. Living with threats, Francisco Pineda led a citizens’ movement that stopped a gold mine from destroying El Salvador’s dwindling water resources and the livelihoods of rural communities.