In our house paperwhite season arrives just in time for Thanksgiving, which is when this picture was taken. I have been trying all this while to upload it to the blog--thank you, Emily! You can see the effects of the Hipstamatic, the app everyone in the family maligns but that Pogue of the NYT named one of the coolest 10 of the year. So there!
This was a first for us--an indoor pig roast; no flames, no charcoal, but much excitement about our winter-roasted suckling pig. Quite the production. We bought him at a market in York, near Sarah, and took him to a butcher in Portland to be boned. Well worth the effort. We decided that formal dinners on linen cloths required a boned pig, while an outdoor picnic table was proper setting for one not boned, not easy to carve, not unmessy. It was a very good feed. (Those are kumquats staring out at you.)We are really looking forward to our bus ride. We had been led to believe that it would be 36 hours long, and having braced for that we feel lucky that it will only be 28. Moreover, there will be Zanzibar on the other end.
We've been up to odds and ends lately. We went out to visit the farm of a businessman that I've been working with some. The government has been giving him a hard time about their land, so we went to go look at it. It's sort of interesting how land should be totally comprehensible in the abstract -- it's just lines on a map, after all -- and yet going and looking at it always reveals new things. This guy's land is in an interesting spot. It's just 20 km from the city. But it was apparently abandoned for a while during the civil war, and not everyone has been willing to move back yet. This guy's mother moved back, and he has been improving it pretty quickly. Cows, bees, ducks, rabbits, pigs, goats, a palm plantation, other veggies. It was a really nice, pastoral spot. His brothers are farmers -- not just gentlemen farmers like him -- and yet they aren't willing to move back because they aren't sure it's safe. The guy, it turns out, pays monthly 'taxes' to the rebels that are on the other side of the hill to keep them from bothering him and his mother. He's a businessman in the capital and so he is a bit above the fray, but I wonder whether people feel more pinched by the rebels hanging out in the hills, or by the government that sends police once in a while to chase people off their land. But then again, some people aren't pinched at all. This guy, and his mother, seem to be taking it in stride. She invited Clara to go up for lessons in "real Kirundi."
Clara's grandmother Grace asked for some information about the Tutsis and the Hutus. I wish I could refer her to someone else. It is a really interesting question. But it's sort of messy, and I have to admit that hearing "Hutu" and "Tutsi" in the same sentence is sort of like hearing about the Bengals and the Colts, or whatever. I mean, I realize there is some drama there, but then the meaning of the drama depends on what division each is in, and whether it's season or post-season, and how they did against the whatevers last week, and all these other things that are really hard to care about. Do you know what I mean? It turns out that ethnicity was never the source of conflict, and it isn't the sources of conflict now. The conflict has always been about control over state-managed resources. For a long time the group in power was a sub-group of Tutsis. They used Tutsi nationalism when it was convenient, and opponents used Hutu nationalism when it was convenient, but really it was a narrower ruling class that was competing to keep hold of resources. The civil war of 1993-2003 resulted in the Hutu majority taking power. But in the process of that happening, the Hutu political groups fragmented and started competing with each other. Now, the Tutsis -- they remain a wealthy and therefore powerful group -- are minorities in government, but they are just sort of laying low as they watch a pretty intense struggle between the historically Hutu political groups. The ruling party (a historically Hutu party) is repressing opposition Hutu parties pretty severely -- outlawing parties, killing opposition members, arresting opposition journalists -- while the historically Tutsi party is playing by all the (de facto) rules, not complaining too much, and getting to keep a few senior government posts as their reward.
The social dynamic is harder for us to read because the social cues are less obvious -- including ethnicity itself, which I can't see. Interestingly, it does seem that I end up meeting with lots of Tutsis. Much more than Hutus, I think. I'm not really sure about this until I go to someone's house and see a photo of the last Tutsi president on the wall, or something like this. I guess I am meeting more Tutsis because they remain, on average, a more educated and wealthier class, and they continue to hold lots of important social positions, such as teachers and civil servants and things like this. So they are more accessible to an outsider. It's an interesting example, I guess, of how sticky social relations are. (For Clara's part, most of her film-making colleagues are Congolese.)
Sorry, Grace -- but you asked for it so there you go!
On a much lighter note I'll pass on a, um, documentary film about Clara's documentary film work. I got envious seeing all these filmmakers in our house every day creating things, so I decided to try my hand at it, with my iPhone. Their work, scheduled to premiere Jan 15, will be much, much better. Anyway, this is what has been going on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IPdqcjToPY
Merry Christmas everybody!
B
Happy Thanksgiving! We just finished our Thanksgiving Observed dinner. We decided not to have it on Thursday. Our neighbor, who is a great and eager cook, had to work on Thursday. And Clara has been insanely busy, on which more later, so she couldn't do it then either. In the time that that bought, our neighbor conspired with his neighbor to get a turkey. This was a major coup. Americans at the embassy had to order their turkeys a couple months ago to have them procured from South Africa. When our neighbor got one locally, he was told that they are considered 'game', and so while not protected they are hard to get a hold of. We later learned that this isn't true; there's a whole turkey market elsewhere in town, but still.
Our neighbor's name is Rob. He's a little bit more than a neighbor: we're in a duplex, and he shares it with us, and there's a passage between our two backyards. He's from South Africa and also just moved here. He is a brilliant cook. He's had us over twice and both times pulls this trick where he makes this amazing multi-dish meal, and then just as the praise is dying down he comes out with some other stunner. Today makes three times that we've been to his house, and he did it again.
My contribution was the stuffing, and it was so good that as we did the round of what everyone is thankful for, one person said they were thankful for the stuffing. Nice! The stuffing was in that nice bird, a good gravy, veggies, etc. Then, just as we were all getting tired of telling Rob how great the food was, he goes out to the kitchen and comes back with grilled chocolate-stuffed bananas. Do you want me to tell you what that was like, or do you just want to imagine it for yourselves? There were 12 of us, including a range from strangers to acquaintances to colleagues to good friends to our more-than-neighbors. One or two of each. It was really nice.
Now we're back and Clara is outside meeting with a group from her film-making class. She had been working insanely hard. She finished the two weeks of class time a week ago, and then last weekend started working with the six groups filming six short documentaries. Along with a couple other experienced people, she is mentoring all six groups through the planning, scouting, shooting, editing, etc. It's amazing. And they're working on such cool stuff. One about getting a hair weave; one about a famous firebrand journalist; one about the national women's handicap volleyball team's trip to their sport's world cup; one about a husband-and-wife team that educates people about gender violence; one about a street child; and ... another one. Some, apparently, are going better than others, due mostly to the level of enthusiasm of the film crews. But it seems like a few of them are going to be really good. Clara's really excited about them, anyway. In the meantime, our house is crawling with aspiring filmmakers.
An interesting side-note: a few students proposed to make a film about "community work", the mandatory local clean-up work that everyone (ehem) is supposed to do from 8-10:30 AM every Saturday. But they didn't, because the idea was too controversial. One team pitched an idea for a pro-community-work piece; another pitched an idea for an anti-community-work piece, and during the discussion people got really animated about it. Too animated. It turns out that street cleaning is a proxy for whether people do and should live in a dictatorship. Which also means that it might have been an amazing film to make. But it wasn't to happen.
My work is chugging ahead, although I am about at the point where I have to give up on finding a local partner. Why my project idea is too uninteresting/undesirable/untouchable/foreign/whatever for the human rights community here is a really interesting question that I guess I'll have to chew on while I go ahead with the work. We'll see.
Last weekend we went to Gihanga, a community I've been working in, as the guest of the regional head of the Bashingantahe association at the annual Bashingantahe festival. Bashingantahe are the traditional community leaders and problem-solvers. The civil war and the current political climate, in addition to modernity, I guess, has dented their standing. But they are still the village-level authorities of reference. In this community they resolve disputes of value up to and including a goat; cow problems, however, go to the courts. I've been working with a couple of guys who, as it turns out, are Bashingantahe. So they invited us to their day. They got together on a stage (only a few passer-by in front of the stage, but whatever), the head of their group wearing a certain kind of robe, many of them carrying sticks that are important rhetorical and symbolic instruments of their office. There were some speeches. A couple old guys got up and gave these animated, energetic discourses that, it turns out, are recitations of allegories passed down as an oral tradition. After self-congratulation all around, we went to the town bar for drinks. The whole thing was so utterly Masonic. Clara and I had a really nice time chatting with our two hosts. At one point, one of them asked Clara whether we have Bahsingantahe in the the United States. Clara said that yes, and that in fact my father Wayne is a Bashingantahe! They were amazed!
We also tried some homebrew banana beer, which was a mistake. We were pretty eager to try it, it seemed to be part of the day. Most other people were drinking it. As soon as we were finished our bits, we gestured to pass it on to our hosts, and they were like "No way! We don't touch that shit!" "You'll get terrible diarrhea!" they added, helpfully. As a point of fact, what we got was terrible constipation. The beer, plus super-delicious (because super-fatty) goat kebabs, paralyzed our innards. But, well, we got over it.
B
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.
Karen and I attended the Witte Game Dinner tonight. It's a big fund raiser for the Witte Museum (where I am a board member until the end of this month). I'm not much of a foodie, but this event is something Karen and I have been doing for many, many years. The biggest Witte fund raiser of the year (and this being the 29th year) features exotic game served up in obscene quantities. Not politically correct but fun nonetheless.
Everything from paella to venison enchiladas. I rarely eat meat these days, but this evening always provides an excuse to try things not on my regular menu. Top of my list was the quail cooked in some kind of basalmic vinegar sauce. It was also served two other ways, but I stuck with this version for two servings. The lamb chops were a close second. Karen always goes straight for the gorditas with hand-made-on-the-spot tortillas and a sizable selection of fresh add-ons; guacamole, sour cream, tomatoes, onions, oregano, cilantro, etc...
The venison enchiladas were actually pretty good, but the bacon-wrapped, jalepeno-stuffed chicken bits were better. It was impossible to get excited about venison "sliders." The wild pig and buffalo were okay, but not great. Mashed potatoes with cheddar was a new offering that tasted pretty good. The fish dishes were suspiciously pungent, so I passed on them this year. I chose the dark beers (Shiner and Negra Modelo) over the crappy white wine.
So from Texas I offer up the worst of all possible worlds.
Chris K
This morning I made corn meal pancakes, which I accomplished by dumping an amount of corn meal into a bowl, and dumping an amount of dried milk on top of that, and then a smaller dump of baking powder, and then a much smaller dump of sugar, and then really just a dusting of salt on top of that. Then some water and finally an egg -- which, being pre-packaged, was the only item that was properly measured out. This method doesn't always work.
On a side note, though, we've been doing some really productive experimentation with grains. We made polenta last night, and paella the night before. They are so easy to do! It was great. Put some combinations of sausage and veggies on top and on the side. And then we had nutella brownies thanks to Clara. Oh god it was so good. Clara said it may have been a bit undercooked but I said Bah!: fondant.
On sunday we took a little overnight trip to Gitega, the smaller city in the center of the country. It was in the hills and therefore cool, which was nice. It is a small city with some really pretty tree-lined boulevards. It also seems to have been the retirement home of a modernist Belgian architect. Or maybe not. But the town had a surprising number (7?) of really interesting buildings with random cantilevered planes and things like this, made during the colonial period and now used to house the regional police, or political party offices, or nothing. French was much less spoken, Swahili much more so, so Clara was much more speaking, me not as much. We do seem to attract anglophone mildly-crazy people, however, which may prove to be an interesting network, or might not. (I'm reading 2666 right now, which has really cultivated my taste for equivocation, for uncertainty, which Bolano uses a lot in his descriptions. Or maybe he's just asserting many certainties.) The first was a guy at the Burundi-Ivory Coast football match on Saturday. He was wearing a dress and the kind of bandana that Aunt Jemima wore, and he was a bit crazy. But he also described MLK as an anti-colonial leader and was the only person in the whole crowd who was willing to go up to the policemen blocking everyone's view and ask them to get out of the way (they didn't). So if he was crazy, he was also wise and ballsy. The second was a guy in Gitega who was very friendly -- in fact, he introduced himself as "Mister Nice" -- and would have escorted us around the neighborhood but he had to go prepare for his Koran lesson. We're divided on whether he was crazy, actually.
B
Meanwhile I've been flying through a really neat little memoir called "My Stroke of Insight". A rising-star neuroscientist experienced an early-life stroke that incapacitated her left hemisphere, depriving her of various functions located there such as language, linear thought, the capacity for proprioception (knowing where your body ends) and other rational thinking skills. Amazingly, she recovered fully. The book explains what it was like to lose those functions and why she never really wants to go back to the way that she was before. It turns out that the left hemisphere creates our ego-centered consciousness, and that when the right hemisphere is permitted to have its way we are able to access an innate capacity for holistic and compassionate consciousness. Her description of the way that she lives her life now -- in order to preserve the capacities she gained/revealed during her stroke -- echoes almost exactly many of the prescriptions provided by Tara Brach and Thich Naht Han (the only Buddhist writers I've read, I'm sure there are other better examples) for mindful living. However she comes at it from a purely scientific, physiological angle. It's really fascinating.
Otherwise, Clara and I have both settled into work. She finished her outline for a month-long workshop on documentary filmmaking. I'm reading up on all the secondary literature about land conflict and the judiciary in Burundi. Of which, it turns out, there is plenty! In the evenings we have done some cool stuff. We saw a really good concert on Friday of this singer Stephen Sogo. Great fusion of traditional tunes and afrobeat. Earlier in the evening we were pulled away from our work by a ton of drumming noise coming from across the street. We checked in out and down at the far end of the soccer fields a drum and dance troupe was practicing. It was completely awesome. They were doing some crazy moves that Matt (Clara's brother) should not be made aware of, lest he get inspired -- there's a real risk of broken furniture, limbs, pride.
B
And that is a good thing! He seems cheerier these days. I guess we all are because the days are so beautiful here right now. A couple weeks ago my friend, Lani, brought over a xylophone for Kenny to fool around with. But he did not touch it until this week when he spent a little time hitting the wooden bars making lovely sounds. That and getting back into painting have been clues that he is a bit happier--more like his 'old' self.
