the prologue is past

Things have been going well here. Clara started her workshop last week. Unwilling to turn people away, she accepted all 50 registrants and hoped that attrition would bring it down to something more manageable, like 25. Unwilling to miss out on such a cool opportunity, nearly all (47) of the participants continued through the week. Clara is a victim of her success.

On Wednesday she got the person who is by all accounts the nation's first filmmaker and who is, by his own account only, the nation's first musician to attend a screening of his recent documentary on the history of Burundi, and to stay after for Q&A. We had seen it a few weeks earlier -- did I mention it at the time? Clara talked her way into tickets to a sort of VIP screening. We realized it was "VIP" when, during the introductions by the host, "former president" was the third or fourth person to be recognized, after "Excellencies" and things like this. It was a really interesting film. We noticed, and never really understood, some odd times when the audience (almost entirely Burundian) would laugh. For example, footage of a Belgian "social anthropologist" (lab coat and all) using some caliper-like device to measure the width of people's noses, and using a diagram in order to classify the color of their irises, in order to "identify" them ethnically. Was this funny because it was absurd, because it was made people nervous, because it was true, or because there's nothing else to do with that information? We don't know. Anyway, it was really cool that Clara got this grandfather of the film industry out to meet the aspiring filmmakers, and he managed to both remind everyone of how exceptional his accomplishments are while also making them think that it was possible for them, too. Which, I think, is all you can expect of someone in his position.

My work project has also been shaping up in a really interesting way over the past couple of weeks. I had been poking around this state plantation situation, and I came across some cases of really egregious misappropriation of state land for the benefit of political allies. And specific, substantial negative consequences for several thousand people in the area who were waiting for allocations of state lands and who remain landless. The consequences are stark enough, and the decision point is clear enough, that I'm going to try and document it from the perspective of human rights violations. Also, the land in question had formerly been controlled by a rebel group who collected "taxes" on land use. The rebel group joined the government in 2008 but, after boycotting last year's election, has moved to Congo and is experiencing friction with the current government. When a government crony took all this land (and, of course, stopped paying the "taxes") members of the rebel group killed about ten of the day-laborers of the land. That led to a government crackdown over the past month against opposition figures. So I'm sort of interested in how corruption leads to documentable violation of economic rights, violations of civil and political rights (people getting killed), and, perhaps, contributes to a destabilization of the political detente. That's sort of speculation at this point, but it's an interesting one!

Our weeks have been full enough that we have felt that we've earned real weekends. Yesterday we spent almost all afternoon cooking. Against mom's advice to try and make our cuisine more local, yesterday we made a really nice indian dish. Clara made paneer (from scratch!), I made a naan-ish thing (better described as garlic foccacia, really) we made a really nice curry, and we had a couple friends over. It was really good. Really good. Then Clara decided we should have some dessert and so, while the guests and I were chatting, came back with an impromptu rice pudding. Which really made us feel ridiculous. But it was so yummy.

We went to another concert by this guy Stephen Sogo, who I think is pretty good. I'll try to upload some of his songs, but I'm not sure that'll work with out current internet situation. Actually, we went to one concert of his at the French Cultural Center, which is sort of the nicest venue in town, and that was really good. Then we heard that he was going to perform at the joint across the street from our house, so we were happy about that and we went to see it a couple weeks ago. It was really good. (Interestingly, at the French Cultural Center his set was all his own tunes. At the joint across the street he played a mix of his own tunes plus a bunch of familiar American crowd-pleasers.) But the we learned, a week later, that he is doing a regular weekly gig. So last night we heard our fourth concert by Stephen Sogo, and either we are starting to get tired of his tunes or he is getting tired of them himself.