Togo: The Houses That Grow Out of the Earth

In the north-east of Togo, houses do not simply sit on the land.

They seem to grow out of it.

The Batammariba people have built distinctive mud tower-houses called takienta, using earth and other local materials. Some rise to two storeys, with rooms, storage areas and spaces arranged according to both practical needs and traditional beliefs.

These houses are part of Koutammakou, a remarkable cultural landscape extending across the border between Togo and Benin.

UNESCO first inscribed the Togolese part of Koutammakou as a World Heritage site in 2004. In 2023, the property was significantly extended to include the Beninese part, recognising the landscape as a transboundary cultural whole.

What makes Koutammakou particularly fascinating is that the houses cannot really be separated from the landscape around them.

There are fields, sacred places, springs, forests, ceremonial spaces and traditional routes. The architecture reflects the social and spiritual life of the people who live there.

The Batammariba name is often translated as “those who shape the earth.”

It is an unusually appropriate name.

They have shaped the earth into homes, villages and a way of life that has continued for generations.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Koutammakou is that it is not simply a collection of old buildings.

It is still a living place.

#Togo #Koutammakou #AfricanHeritage #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

What We Learn to Keep Quiet

There are things we become better at keeping quiet about as the years pass.

Not because they don’t matter.

Perhaps because they matter too much.

When we are younger, we often want to say everything. We want to correct the misunderstanding, answer the accusation, explain the decision and make sure our side of the story is known.

Age changes that.

We begin to realise that every argument does not need an answer.

Some people will understand us without being convinced. Some never will, no matter how carefully we explain ourselves.

So we learn to leave a few things unsaid.

We learn that a private disappointment can remain private. That not every kindness needs an audience. That sometimes walking away is more peaceful than having the last word.

It is not always easy.

There are still moments when we want to say, “But you should know what really happened.”

Then we stop.

Perhaps that is one of the quieter forms of growing older.

Not winning every argument.

Not correcting every opinion.

Simply knowing what is worth carrying—and what is better left where it happened.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

The Bumblebees That Didn’t Mind Plastic

Bees are supposed to collect flowers.

Apparently, nobody told the bumblebees.

Researchers have recently reported an intriguing behaviour: some bumblebees have been observed incorporating pieces of plastic into their nest structures.

It sounds like a very modern problem.

But the interesting part is that the bees did not simply encounter the material by accident. Researchers found that bumblebees can use unfamiliar materials when building or modifying their nests, showing a surprising ability to adapt to what is available around them. Nature highlighted this behaviour in September 2026.

Of course, nobody should take this as evidence that plastic is good for bees.

It is quite the opposite.

What it shows is how inventive animals can be when their surroundings change.

A bee does not have a blueprint.

It does not have a toolbox.

It simply finds something that seems useful and tries it.

There is something rather charming about that.

We think of intelligence as something complicated—books, computers, laboratories and equations.

Sometimes it is simply a tiny creature looking at an unfamiliar object and deciding:

“Perhaps this will do.”

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

Cameroon: The Mountains That Hold Old Stories

In the far north of Cameroon, the Mandara Mountains rise from a landscape that can appear harsh at first sight.

But among these mountains are villages where stone architecture, farming, belief and community life have been connected for centuries.

In 2025, UNESCO inscribed the Diy-Gid-Biy Cultural Landscape of the Mandara Mountains on the World Heritage List. The property includes sixteen archaeological sites spread across seven villages. Its dry-stone structures are believed to date from between the 12th and 17th centuries.

The remarkable thing is that these are not simply abandoned ruins.

The landscape also contains agricultural terraces, houses, tombs, places of worship and areas connected with traditional crafts and everyday life. UNESCO describes the site as reflecting a long-standing relationship between the Mafa people and their environment.

Looking at photographs of the stone structures, it is easy to think first about architecture.

But perhaps the more interesting story is about adaptation.

People built with what the mountains provided. They farmed difficult terrain. They shaped settlements around the landscape instead of trying to erase it.

The stones have survived for centuries.

But they are not the whole story.

Behind them are generations of people who learned how to make a life in a demanding landscape.

That is what makes the Mandara Mountains worth remembering.

#Cameroon #MandaraMountains #AfricanHeritage #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

The Life We Almost Miss

There are periods in life when we are so busy waiting for the next thing that we hardly notice the thing that is happening now.

We wait for the weekend.

Then for a holiday.

Then for retirement.

Then for the next journey, the next book, the next plan.

There is always something ahead.

I sometimes wonder how many ordinary moments we pass without really being present in them.

A cup of tea with someone we love. A familiar voice in the house. An unexpected phone call from an old friend. Sitting quietly near a window while rain falls outside.

Nothing remarkable.

Yet these are often the moments that return to us years later.

Perhaps life does not announce its important moments when they arrive.

There is no small bell saying, “Remember this. You will miss it someday.”

We understand only afterwards.

That is why perhaps we should occasionally stop looking so far ahead.

Not because plans are unimportant.

But because while we are busy preparing for the life we hope to have, there is a life already sitting quietly in front of us.

And it deserves to be noticed.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

The Frog That Freezes Solid

If you saw one of these frogs in the middle of an Alaskan winter, you might think it was dead.

Its body can freeze.

Its eyes can turn white.

Its heart stops beating.

It stops breathing.

And yet, it is alive.

The wood frog spends the winter buried beneath leaves on the forest floor. As temperatures fall, ice forms around its cells and organs. At the same time, its liver produces large amounts of glucose, which acts as a natural cryoprotectant and helps protect the cells from the damage that ordinary freezing would cause.

Some Alaskan wood frogs have been recorded surviving for months in this frozen state. Research has documented frogs remaining frozen for roughly six months while maintaining full survival.

Then spring arrives.

The frog thaws.

First the heart begins beating again. Then the brain becomes active. Eventually the legs move.

And the little frog gets on with its life.

There is something almost unbelievable about that.

For most creatures, winter means finding a way to stay warm.

For the wood frog, the solution is rather different.

It simply freezes—and waits for spring.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

Solomon Islands: Where the Forest Meets the Lagoon

There are places where the boundary between land and sea seems almost impossible to draw.

The Marovo Lagoon in the Solomon Islands is one of them.

The lagoon is surrounded by volcanic islands, rainforest, mangroves, coral reefs and seagrass beds. Hundreds of smaller islands and reefs are scattered through the water, creating a landscape in which forest and ocean seem to belong to the same world.

The wider Marovo–Tetepare Complex covers more than 1,600 square kilometres of terrestrial and marine ecosystems. It is on the Solomon Islands’ UNESCO Tentative List for possible future World Heritage nomination.

But its importance is not only natural.

Thousands of people live around the lagoon in more than fifty villages, and communities have developed detailed traditional knowledge of the forests, reefs and waters on which their lives depend. The sea provides food; the forest provides materials and plants; both are closely connected with cultural and spiritual life.

Perhaps that is what makes this part of the Solomon Islands so interesting.

It is not a landscape kept apart from human life.

People live within it, depend upon it and carry generations of knowledge about it.

Here, the lagoon is not merely something beautiful to look at.

It is part of the community.

#SolomonIslands #MarovoLagoon #Pacific #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

The Days We Do Not Notice

Some of the best days of our lives do not look special when we are living them.

There is no celebration. Nobody takes a photograph. Nothing happens that we think we will remember years later.

It is simply a normal day.

Someone we love is sitting across the table. The house is making its usual sounds. There is a cup of tea beside us. Perhaps it rains for an hour and then stops.

We go through the day without knowing that one day we may wish we could have it back.

I think we realise this only with time.

When we are young, we tend to wait for the important days. The first day of a new job. A wedding. A journey. A promotion. A celebration.

But life is mostly made of the days between those occasions.

And perhaps those ordinary days deserve a little more attention.

Because one day, when we look back, we may discover that what we called an ordinary Tuesday was actually a very good time in our lives.

We simply did not know it then.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

The Shrimp That Packs a Punch

There is a small creature in the sea that carries something resembling a tiny hammer.

It is the mantis shrimp.

And it hits with astonishing speed.

Some species have specialised front limbs that can accelerate so rapidly that the strike creates a tiny shockwave in the surrounding water. The blow is strong enough to break the shells of prey.

The remarkable part is that the animal does not need to be large.

It is only a few inches long.

Perhaps that is why the mantis shrimp is such an amusing reminder that appearance can be misleading.

A creature that looks as though it belongs in a child’s aquarium can deliver one of nature’s most extraordinary punches.

And there is another curiosity.

Mantis shrimps have remarkably complex eyes and can detect forms of light that humans cannot see.

So this little underwater boxer is not only powerful.

It is also looking at a world that looks very different from ours.

The ocean is full of creatures we could easily underestimate.

The mantis shrimp is simply one of the more convincing ones.

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

Suriname: The Wooden City Beside the River

There is a city in South America where some of the most important old buildings are made of wood.

It is Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname.

Walk through its historic centre and the architecture tells a complicated story. Dutch influences meet local materials and craftsmanship, while African, Asian and Indigenous influences have also become part of the city’s cultural character.

UNESCO inscribed the Historic Inner City of Paramaribo as a World Heritage site in 2002, describing it as an exceptional example of the gradual fusion of European architecture with Indigenous South American materials and crafts.

But Suriname is much more than its capital.

Deep in the interior lies the Central Suriname Nature Reserve, an immense protected area of roughly 1.59 million hectares—about eleven percent of the country’s territory. Much of it remains covered by primary tropical forest. The reserve contains an extraordinary variety of wildlife, including jaguars, giant river otters, giant armadillos and hundreds of bird species.

Sometimes the most interesting places are the ones we have not yet learned to talk about enough.

Perhaps that is what makes Suriname so intriguing.

One part of the country carries the memory of centuries of human movement and cultural mixing.

Another remains overwhelmingly forest.

Between the two lies a country that is still not well known to much of the outside world.

#Suriname #Paramaribo #SouthAmerica #RajatChandraSarmah

Rajat Chandra Sarmah, Guwahati, Assam, India, Instagram @rajatchandrasarmah5, YouTube: conversewithasmile, email rajatchandrasarmah@gmail.com

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