Uganda - 30, Theater Factory, going home

Today I am 30 and you are here when I wake up. I’m 30 now, I tell you. Such a remarkable thing to be grown (inside another body). To come from. And …

Jen, to answer your question – how to continue? – I would maybe place another question – continue what? – This has been my daily question of the last – 15 years? Like I said, not surviving. Not finishing. Not those things that are about breaking the future off from the here and... Still…

It’s a day off day. We have rollex again for breakfast. I spend the day putting the first ink on paper for my Fulbright proposal. I am coming back.

I tell Okello that it is my golden birthday and he returns with 5 members of Ndere troupe and 3 musical instruments. And they sing happy birthday in harmony and then Cogonza dumps a glass of water on my head.

Cold water. I get it! Ok. I’m here! Hey!

I do my laundry by hand. I drown the grass in soapy water. I drape clothes over the line where the sun has just left.

Can I love this?

Asiimwe’s friend Julius picks me up and throws me in the air. OK. I

I am sitting in your kitchen. November already. Lucie, who took Jubilith and I to her house for lunch, has just found my email and writes to say hello. I listen to the garbage truck outside and realize I forgot to take out the trash.

I make myself an education from your bookshelf - writers who are exploring the line between poetry and essay (reflecting on/ forming experience) and who are writing about memory as a present occurrence – Scalapino, Toufic and Hejinian. I am interested in Toufic’s proposal – that the opposite of forgetting is not memory. The past is already. The opposite of “to forget” is “to promise”.

As in, I promise to love

As in, I promise the size of an egg an arm

As in, I promise long horn cow we

As in, I promise insect face we laughed

As in, I promise screamed bird hymn

As in, I promise pink suit stare wooden bench

As in, I promise bicycle

As in, I promise dog hole snake cement blue plastic late afternoon

As in, I promise tide high river one eye

As in, I promise we

We rush by dinner and go to the National Theater for Theater Factory. Theater Factory resembles a Ugandan Saturday Night Live - clever and full of energy and tapped into something remarkable as evidenced by our struggle for chairs. Their show is on TV now too. It’s a big phenomenon and truly local. I think Ugandan artists are committed to creating economically sustainable work as part of their image of a successful national culture. I think Theater Factory is making big strides in this endeavor.

The bathroom in the National Theater is out of toilet paper.

We go backstage after the show to congratulate the artists. And then it turns out they’ve bought Dana and I cake! Dana turns 30 tomorrow. Kenneth organized the cake. Did I mention that he’s the funniest man in Uganda? He performs stand up as part of Theater Factory’s show and also works as a radio personality named Pablo. He’s also just a great guy. He’s got cow eyes. Cows are a symbol for beauty in Uganda.

Promising is something I do now. A now that is for the past and the future. How to continue? Maybe this is the question. Maybe this is a question that implies a promise to continue without a certainty of what continuing looks like. A perpetual interrogation of continuity: what continues in me?

I’m lying in bed. I can hear through the walls Erik talks to Zak. I’m grateful to him for telling the truth and for failing to tell the truth. I’m grateful to him for creating this exchange. For asking me if I have remembered my passport.

It’s the middle of the night. The moon orange over Kampala. Albert drives Dana, Lauryn, Katori and myself past the darkness of Lake Victoria to Entebbe. To the airport where the signs say goodbye in 17 different languages.

Today is made possible by Ruth Lambert in memory of SAWM.

Uganda - source of the Nile

We start the day with more omelets and pineapple and bananas. Today Rabbi Gershom and Lorne are driving north to Acegerekinei village to help with famine relief. Here is an article Lorne wrote about this trip.

It’s a quick drive to Kampala - we stop halfway at Jinja, the accredited source of the Nile. It’s a weird scene – kind of like the grand canyon in terms of ways and means to buy things. There’s a group of traditional dancers and musicians in vivacious blue and yellow and smiles. Turns out they’re filming a Primus commercial. The group takes a boat ride out into the source. I stay behind and watch mobs of school children recite together the text of a large plaque describing Jon Hanning Speke’s discovery of the source of the Nile. He’s a British explorer who sailed up here in the middle of the 19^th century. It sounds very serious – recited in unison by over 100 small voices. And then recited again. And again. When I read about his journey, it sounds like a mess – he went deaf and then blind and then he got better and by the time he got to Lake Victoria he had lost all his equipment so he couldn’t really say what he had found. It was later said to be the source of the Nile.

I am standing on the shore. I am thinking about sources – return, as in where one is going. Ultimately known – and meanwhile…

A bust of Gandhi. His ashes – some of them – were thrown in the Nile. His eyes cast down, or closed. He’s all ears.

Our group is the boat that is singing.

Meanwhile, famine. Meanwhile, 2,420 pounds of food is loaded off a truck in a remote village where people are hungry. Meanwhile, an old man holding a bag of corn meal tells Rabbi Gershom, "Thank you for saving us." Meanwhile, Rabbi Gershom tells 65 families sitting under a tree that Jews value human life above all else. Meanwhile, famine. Meanwhile, an email waits in my account from a friend. She says it seems I am asking a question she asks herself daily - "the world seems like such an impossible place for real living. how to continue?" I like this question because, it seems, we are asking it together.

Today was made possible by California Institute of the Arts.

Uganda - Abayudaya, Sipi Falls

There's another American staying with the Abayudaya. Lorne Mallin. He’s an amiable guy spending his retirement touring around the world. He's teaching here and writing for and about the community. We wake up a little after dawn to help a local farmer and his wife plant 100 eggplant seedlings. He leads us down the slope of the hill in narrow paths through banana trees, coffee, Irish potato plants, beans, cassava – these are from the World Bank and yield three times as much the local cassava plants. Maybe seven cassava a year. It requires such patience, agricultural time. To care for this plant for one year and then to harvest 7 cassava. Is that a week’s worth of food? Some kind of patience.

We arrive at a small rectangular plot of dirt. The farmer shows me how to dig holes – the depth, the spacing, he marks them and I dig. Soccer ball sized craters. – about 6 to a row. It’s tiring work. We need to dig 50 in all as each hole holds two seedlings. His wife carries manure in a plastic container from their cow. We put them in the holes and mix them with light dirt. The seedlings are wrapped fragile in banana leaves. We unwrap them – wet book pages – and place them in holes, tucking them in with fertile ground. The farmer hacks up a banana tree and we place the stiff, light bark over the holes to keep the seedlings safe from sun. My back is sore. The novelty of helping worn off. This is hard work.

Omelets for breakfast. Fresh pineapple. Local coffee. Luxury.

We meet with Rabbi Gershom. This guy has a big mind and a big smile. He’s the first rabbi to be “officially” ordained by the international community. He went to rabbinical school in Los Angeles, actually. He just came back last year. I wish I could remember more of our conversation – yes, as a rabbi, he allows people to incorporate traditional ceremonies into Jewish ceremonies. The holocaust is part of his identity as a Jew in that he believes one can live in a way where god is in the room and this is an image of the urgency of this work. And then Katori asks about whether he would accept homosexuals – this is a really hot topic in Uganda, a country where homosexuality is illegal and gays can face discrmination, imprisonment and possibly ill torture, according to Human Rights Watch. And now a new bill is being introduced that would prosecute those who “promote homosexuality”, not simply practice it – and he answers in this surprising way: he says he doesn’t want to go against the political or social will – that’s not his battle – but he doesn’t think homosexuality is a sin as long as someone is being true to his/her own nature. If he were to sleep with a man, he says, it would be a sin because it wouldn’t be true to himself. I’m inspired by the way he takes in every person and every question and considers it and responds openly – without fear.

The group takes the rest of the day to be tourists. We drive to Sipi Falls – water falling off cliffs. Such a simple thing and it takes the breath away. We hire a tour guide and he leads us through people’s backyards to the base of one of three waterfalls. One by one, we stand in the force of spray and sound bouncing off rocks. Wow. The people who live here have a tremendous gift.

What was the tour guide’s name? He had a way of seeing that I couldn’t wrap my head around. Open. He says that he was given this gift of being open with people – being able to talk to anyone – and so he became a tour guide. He takes the work seriously – organizing other people to give tours that have a certain kind of standard – chasing away children who are begging – otherwise, he says, they will not go to school. They will follow tourists around and ask for money and then where will they be? He has lost his parents from AIDS and supports his younger siblings and grandmother. He is used to thinking about taking care of a group of people. I find myself thinking – is he telling the truth? And if he is, is he telling me this story so I buy things? From his body language, I am inclined to think, he’s being friendly.

It reminds me of my friend from Uganda who is here – among many other things – teaching dance to young people living in the Salvation Army. This one young man calls him “Africa”. As in, “Hey Africa, why you using those big words!” Like – ok, look, he’s a impeccable storyteller but I forget all the details so I’m going to skip to the punchline - there’s a stereotype of Africa as being poor and my friend explains, it’s a different thing to be poor in a beautiful place where everyone is in it together. There’s dignity in it. (Yes, of course, poverty itself can be dehumanizing, but also what do I add to it in my thinking and action that dehumanizes people?)

And here – we are in the habit of circling up under the stars outside the guest house. In the dark on the top of a hill. Conversation becomes – how does sweetness remain a space for serious contemplation? Erik models this exploration – our tour guide steps off the path a moment and reemerges with a chameleon on his finger. We see “green” – he sees individual plants, a chameleon. A calling to the work of discernment. The chameleon is afraid, his arms making furious mindmills in his attempt to escape onto a neighboring leaf. The chameleon is afraid – not because he is experiencing pain or injury – but because he doesn’t know himself. He doesn’t know that he will not be destroyed by whatever threatens to overwhelm him because he doesn’t know who he is. By whatever strange means we come to know ourselves.

It reminds me of a dream I had several months ago – I am on the bus, in Uganda, and I am turning 30. And my father gives me a present. It’s covered in writing. A song. In another language. But three words are translated. I can’t remember the literal translations, but put together they could mean – To know yourself is to be without self. And/or. To stand in the presence of God is to be in God’s absence. I remember the act of reading being disorienting in my dream. I don't know what this has to do with genocide or theater, but for myself, it is a reminder that desire does not necessarily consummate in fulfillment. Home is not the clarity of answers, but the confusion of standing fully inside your own questions, or need or seeking or whatever you want to call it. Maybe when I say I need to understand the work of grieving, I am really saying I need to arrive outside of this work. Maybe when I say I need to understand why I am here, I am saying "get me out of here!" Maybe there's a kind of a kind of meaning that is just to stay present to a thing. Rwanda. Uganda. This new space. An agricultural patience. I don't know.

Today was made possible by the California Institute of the Arts.

Uganda- drive to Mbale, Abayudaya

David says he is well and can drive us to Mbale – it is 6, maybe 8 hours away. The roads are much better. Last year everything was dirt and pockmarked and under construction. Chinese companies. He sweats the whole way. The man is made of steel. I wonder how many people are depending on his paycheck.

We are driving to the Abayudaya. This is a community of self-appointed Jews in the east of Uganda. In the beginning of the 19^th century, the British converted a Ugandan warrior, Semei Kakungulu to Christianity. They used him to conquer neighboring tribes. Kakungulu operated under the assumption that he would be given proxy control over these areas. When that didn’t happen, he became disillusioned and he and his followers went into seclusion. Kakungulu spent a lot of time reading the bible and came to the conclusion that the first five books – the torah – were what spoke to his heart. He started to practice rituals described in the torah and he and his followers circumsized themselves. The people in the community around him were appalled and called them Abayudaya – which means Jews, a derogatory term. But he said, yes, that’s who we are. We are Abayudaya.

They didn’t know that Judaism was a major religion internationally. So, I believe there was mutual surprise when members of the Abayudaya ran into a Jew, Joseph – I believe they were on a journey that involved trading. This is around 1920. Anyway, Joseph agreed to come back to the Abayudayah community and teach Judaism – he brought a Torah, introduced the Jewish calendar, and taught them major religious ceremonies.

In 1928, Semei Kakungulu died of tetanus. Half his followers reverted to Christianity and half remained Abayudayah. They remained so despite advantages going to Christians – the schools were often missionary schools, the Christian church could supply jobs. In the 1980s, Idi Amin came to power and outlawed Jewish worship. Most people converted to Christianity, but the Abayudayah who remained – 300 or so – kept practicing. They were in the middle of something else – not just surviving; they were building a life.

Today the Abayudaya live in a few scattered communities near Mbale. They have made connections, are officially recognized by, and receive support from the international jewish community. They also have peaceful relations with their Christian and Muslim neighbors and have established an inter-faith coffee cooperative. They model an intentional way of living – a modest peace.

We stop in Lira which for some reason feels halfway between Gulu and Mbale – although when I look at a map it’s only 1/3 of the way. Maybe it’s the roads. Lira is a big town with a view of a voraciously green hill, a rock, cell phone towers. They have a big movie theater with bright pink walls. Lira is bright! We eat lunch at a little restaurant with white tile and a bollywood film on the TV.

OK, so, really, at this point of the trip, I can’t sit still anymore. I’m stumbling over my own obstacles to seeing. Turning 30 is hard for me - a sign post for "going on". Alone. Or at least, without mom. I am not sure quite what the work of grieving is. I don't like this image of "going on". Surviving. I don’t want to be a survivor. I don’t want to say I survived losing mom or I survived living with her illness. I don’t want the meaning in suffering to be proving that I am strong. I want something more than that.

We arrive at the Abayudayah guest house. It’s beautiful – clean, on top of a hill looking out on mountainous green – I go for a walk. I’m trying to walk out of my head. To the edge of the hill where the road slopes down to the sound of lively conversations – a town, a school getting out. Children in blue uniform walking up the hill. The land is flat until the horizon, until the haze of colorless sky. Farms. Smoke from domestic fires. Homes. The land goes on unfamiliar forever. What is it - the work of going home...

Today was made possible by the California Institute of the Arts.

Uganda - Gulu, Mao, Invisible Children

And, well, at least I’m not the only one asking this question. Erik drank too much Ethiopian coffee and was up all night with his mind spinning. Rwanda – and also Northern Uganda – are places where culture has broken, he says, and is knitting itself back together. I imagine skin over a wound. To study how culture knits itself back together here, we learn something about the work of culture. We learn something about violence and hope in our own culture. (The work of peace always starts from home perhaps?) The trip, a constant introduction. Introducing. To network. To plan. To come back for at least 10 years. To keep moving. Art is a movement. A way of being in the world (hospitality, playing house, conversation.) There are things the trip is geared toward – to see, to accompany, to relate to…

I have written in my notes this question – If art is a way of life what are its characteristics? It is followed by a list related to drawing choices and events down to a human level (rehumanizing the other, ourselves), to allowing space for the ineffable (the work of forgiveness, justice, silence), to (re)organizing images and energy (telling our truth). Also in my notes – a working definition of cultural institution – disseminates information, combines practical needs with aesthetic ideas/ideals, directs conscious adaptation of histories...

It’s the time in the trip when the mind starts spinning.

This image will stay with me: the way skin regenerates over an injury. Bodies heal themselves. And one’s job becomes patience. Not making things worse.

What are we doing here? What are you calling here?

The bus driver, David, has malaria and typhoid. He says he’s gonna sleep it off and he’ll be fine to drive us to Mbale tomorrow. We spend the day in Gulu.

We meet Chairman Mao. He’s the chairman for this district.

We crowd into Norbert Mao’s office. We’re a big group. Introductions. He says he is glad to meet us. He says many people come now when the fighting is over. Where were we when people were really suffering? Ah, but still he is glad we have come.

We have a long conversation what he sees as the challenges facing Uganda and the region. When asked what he saw as the priority in developing Africa, he answered – build more roads. Roads lead to easier access to Africa’s natural resources. It leads to commerce between nations, and among more regions in nations. People in remote regions can gain access to hospitals, larger markets. Uganda is wealthy in terms of its natural resources. Why is the country so poor? Mao suggests Uganda mortgage their natural resources – uranium, copper- to China in exchange for roads. He will be running for president next year against Museveni. Yoweri Museveni has been in office now for over 20 years. Many people like him since he brought some degree of stability to Uganda after the turbulent dictatorships of Milton Obote and Idi Amin.

We talk about the situation in Northern Uganda now. The LRA has moved to Congo and to Sudan. Mao suspects that Kartoum – the capital of Sudan – is interested in funding the LRA to “mess up” southern Sudan – the Darfur region. I’ve heard suggested that the Sudanese government was funding the LRA and the Ugandan government was funding the Sudanese Liberation Front, a rebel army in Southern Sudan fighting the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militia. Mao points out that although things look more peaceful now in Northern Uganda, what is to stop the LRA from coming back? And what is the work being done to address grievances that lead to violence?

In Northern Uganda, the population is decimated by war. According to Mao, eighty percent of the population is under 30 and half the population is under 15. Will all these young people find jobs? Do they feel they have a stake in peace?

There is some tension about the upcoming elections as Northern Uganda is somewhat sore with the current government for not intervening as they were driven from their homes and their children were abducted. There is some feeling of not being counted.

I am thinking again of my friend’s questions – “What happens when over 40 nations (the ones popularly known as "tribes") are forced to merge into one "nation" under a system of governance that is unfamiliar? Can one really call that a nation? What happens to the smaller nations that find themselves under the mighty foot of the bigger nations? What does the word "nation" mean to you, Emily?”

Mao discovers we are artists. His faces animates. His wife is a filmmaker. He wants Gulu to become a cultural center in Uganda. A nation is only as good as its culture, he says. Drama, radio – we can change the way we think of the future.

It was a gem of a meeting. Not just because of the wealth of information, but also Mao’s charisma. He’s a remarkably personable, honest and sharp politician. It will be interesting to see where he goes.

We wander through Gulu. Get lost. Christian takes us to visit his friend’s house. He makes paintings and small figures out of banana leaves. We stop at a coffee shop. We go back to the hotel. I sit in the lobby and watch TV – Jon Stewart is making fun of Republicans for insisting that Barak Obama should reveal his birth certificate to prove that he’s not African. Hail in Europe. Flooding in Belarus. We have pizza for dinner. With chicken and beef on it.

And we meet with the Ugandan head of Invisible Children. She’s a fascinating woman. Laker Jolly Grace Okut. Some young filmmakers came to Northern Uganda in 2003. They created a documentary about the conflict – Invisible Children. And then they teamed up with Okut – who has years of experience running development organizations – and began a non-profit. The young men organize young people in the US to raise money and she pragmatically uses that money to build and repair public schools, to finance education, small businesses, and aid in resettling people from the IDP camps. She seems smart at collaborating with existing infrastructure as she is concerned about the money going into projects that follow through. If you were interested in investing money in Northern Uganda, it seems like a good organization to go through.

She was also friends with Joseph Kony and participated in the negotiations to disarm the LRA. She spoke to us a little about what she feels isn't working. She says the use of force has been disheartening because when the army gets close, Kony lets the children go. The army guns them down only to realize they are shooting up 10 year olds with AK-47s down to their knees. Negotiations aren’t working, she says, because why would he put himself in prison? She says someone will need to pay him off. Promise immunity. Give him a million dollars. Then he’ll come out of the bush. It’s such a difficult justice.

I find comfort for this helplessness that sometimes takes hold - to meet people who are doing so much for the recovery of Northern Uganda. There's some kind of space between everything and nothing. I hope it will be OK. I hope the people we have met find some peace. I hope we all find peace.

Today was made possible by the California Institute of the Arts.

Uganda - Hope North, Gulu

The termites live in holes in the ground. The rain drives them out. People eat them. They are a delicacy.

I have swept the dead termites out of the hut and the children have come and put them in tin cups to cook.

The head boy (the boy who is elected leadership among the students) gives us a tour through the school. I wish I remembered his name. He’s soft spoken and tall with a natural ease about him. Hope North’s long term goal is to be an international peace institute as well as a school for war affected children. The guest hut has a ground plan of the proposed site hanging on the wall.

Tour includes a bakery, fields for growing corn, beans, potatoes, other plants. The corn is so dry. There hasn’t been enough rain. The old watering hole. The new well – the well last year was infested with – I think it was typhus? Cholera? But they raised money and dug a new one and it looks like it’s working out. We toured the dormitories – named after Forest Whitaker – he donated considerably to Hope North after his time in Uganda filming Last King of Scotland, where he met Okello and Rwangyezi – who both worked on the film. The dormitories are big cement buildings with tight rows of bunk beds. They are across from the classrooms. The class rooms are cement buildings with worn chalkboards and a few wooden desks. This is a place with big dreams. It’s a difficult thing, I think, to make dreams into practice. The students and the teachers work hard. We ask where is the head girl? And the tour pauses while someone goes to find her.

Ndere troupe stops by on their way to perform at Lima and they eat heaping plates of eggs and posho and chicken and japati for breakfast. Hope North raises chickens and goats – but I think this chicken was bought from a nearby town for us to eat. Lauryn is in the classroom singing hymns with the choir. The children dig termites retreating back into the ground with a spoon.

It turns out the students have a big schedule so we all crowd into a small classroom and give our gratitude and acknowledgement of this encounter and head to Gulu. Christian, the man who has been working at Hope North as a Peace Corps representative, is gracious enough to join us.

Gulu town – someone made a joke that this is like NGO Vegas. Northern Uganda had a rough time for a long time with Alice Lakwena and then the LRA. It is a popular place to send aid. The aid is mostly concentrated in towns, especially Gulu. There is some frustration because there is no single entity coordinating the aid efforts so there can be redundancy, inefficiency and a lot of money going into easy to access areas with very little money reaching more remote communities. Gulu town has a lot of internet cafes. And the placards for international aid organizations do have a carnival density and slickness. International aid can promote authentically human goals and values and still be a business.

Day off. We have dinner at a local Ethiopian restaurant. We’re a little grumpy. Tired from long traveling, our expectations of “doing something” at Hope North unmet. A day of “doing nothing” in Gulu. We’ve come all this way and people are in the middle of their chaotic lives in their own schedules and their own thoughts and dreams and work. And we are left facing the question – what are you doing here? Why did you come?

Or, at least, I am feeling grumpy. I leave the restaurant and walk alone back to the hotel. On the street, three young girls in high teenage fashion stop me. Who are you? What are you doing in Gulu? Will you be my friend? Give me your email. It's dark in the street. She will write me and say her name is Lilian.

Gulu is happening without my deciding why I am in it. But still, why do I come? It's essential - this work of being human together, but it's not enough.

Today was made possible by California Institute of the Arts.

Uganda - Hope North workshop

Ah, it’s our big workshop with the students of Hope North today. We are interested in encouraging the students to form a drama club. Goal may sound modest or naive – but it points to a larger question which comes up in this kind of work – what can you really offer with a two day workshop?

I’m going to do a little time traveling here and talk about something I will learn in a month when I am driving across my own country. I’m listening to NPR and they have an interview with a woman who trained a parrot named Alex to speak English. But the thing that really struck me is – what does it look like to teach someone(thing) to communicate? Yes, it involved technique. For example, parrots don’t have lips so you have to be really patient for it to learn how to make some kinds of sounds – “p” “b” – those kinds of things and I seem to remember him having trouble with words that ended in an “s” sound- he would say words like six as sick. That kind of thing. But then also, she told the story of taking Alex home with her once for a vacation and he got freaked out by the owls out of the window and said over and over “Wanna go back!” And she had to drive back to the lab in the middle of the night and bring him back. Because teaching communication is not just teaching sounds and ways of organizing thoughts. It involves teaching trust.

And what does it mean to teach a theater workshop in a community whose individuals have had their trust violated in a profound way? The LRA seems systematic at this – because if the children have their sense of being in the world broken, they need to stay with the rebels. Where else would they go? I feel awkward recording testimony – but I recently watched War Dance – and I’ll talk about this because it was not given to me, but to a camera. To anyone. I have some questions about who is taking the picture in this documentary – their hand is visible, but unacknowledged – but I still recommend it – the children it follows are impossible to dismiss. It’s about the LRA’s impact on the lives of three young children from Padogo in Northern Uganda and their triumph at the national music, dance and drama competition in Kampala – a symbol of resistance and rebirth. A boy named Dominic tells a story to the camera of his time as a child soldier. He says, he was nine years old. He was kidnapped with his brother. The group of kidnapped boys and soldiers came across two farmers. He and two other boys were given machetes and told to kill the farmers and cut them into pieces. If they didn’t do it, they would be killed. If anyone cried or looked away, they would be killed. So they did it. And in telling the story, he says he has told no one – except this camera – that he has killed. And that the community welcomes him back as a victim, not a perpetrator, but he knows in his heart that god is not happy with him. And that these people – that he has killed – were killed for no reason. The LRA has asked children to kill other children. To cut off their lips, or eyes. To kill their parents.

And what can you really offer with a two day theater workshop?

And then I see a lot of reporting on Rwanda and Uganda that ends here. Like OK. This atrocity is the real story and the work of recovery is never enough. But I think there can be some space between doing nothing and making everything better.

So, in this two day workshop, our goal is to encourage the students of Hope North to form a drama club. Because, we imagine, it could be fun. As a space to tell their own stories and to feel heard. As a space to compose memory and to imagine the future. To play. To practice playing.

Our workshop looks like this:

We are a giant group – maybe 150 students? We all get into a circle in the field. We’re a very big circle. I have to squint to see the shy faces on the other end of the circle. We do a warm up together. A movement/sound meditation. There are little kids standing on the periphery and watching us, curious.

We break into groups and do a story circle – do you know this? It’s really simple. Everyone tells a story. Nobody comments on stories. Everyone listens. Most of the stories I hear in my group have to do with times people got injured or scared and ran away from something – they saw a snake, they were playing sports – young kids with old faces and quiet voices and we’re standing under the shade of a tree in a field where students play soccer very well and telling stories of overcoming obstacles in our lives.

Next step, we get into a big group and share images that we remember from our stories – an elephant, soldiers, a birthday cake. Then we tell the students to go and make masks inspired by images from the story. Come back in 15 minutes. At this time, the structure falls apart a little bit. In an hour and half, we are back, gathered under a tree. We look at about 15 masks. There’s two gorillas. An insect. My favorite was the student who was a wall. What did he say? He could hide from soldiers? Or it made him a very good soldier? He performed being a wall for us. That was the next thing – we had some of the masks improvise a scene together. They did capoeira. Capoeira artists came in – last year? Two years ago? – and led a week long workshop. And the practice stuck. And the practice evolved. Maybe that will happen with this work too.

So, anyway, this is meant to be the first half of the workshop. We are meant to practice an exchange. It’s meant to look like – we lead a theater workshop, then we teach each other dances –Hope North teaches a dance, our Ugandan partners teach a dance, Americans teach a dance

In the break between the workshop, I draw with the young children of the village. Why? I don’t know. I want to make friends. The kids draw with serious joy. The oldest, Rose's daughter Concy, meticulously copies drawings from my book. A list of things to do in a day. They don’t know our names so they call us “This one.”

It’s a hot day and the dancing doesn’t happen. I bind all the children’s drawings together and make a book. Zoe draws a cover. She’s good at it. The day disappears. It’s evening. It is night. Dinner by candlelight in a field under the stars. Fire. A van is pulled up and the headlights are turned on and a handful of students perform capoiera by the light of the fire and a car battery and stars and stars. Man, they are good. Dana and Katori and Lauryn have choreographed a hip hop dance. There’s dancing together. Acholi dances. Concy leads me into the dance. I don’t know how to dance and the student behind me is very kind and keeps pushing me into the right position every time the dance changes. We are beating the earth with our feet. It is night. I am asleep. The termites come to the light and die in dark sheets over the floor of our hut.

Today is made possible by the generosity of California Institute of the Arts.

*Photo taken by Cristina Frias.

Uganda - Hope North

Today my friend gave me a birthday present. A t-shirt that says Rwanda. Woven on the heart: a woman holding a baby. He knocks on my door. “This didn’t fit me,” he says. “Happy Birthday!” I am elated. I turn 30 next week. Golden birthday. Who remembers anyone’s birthday? And standing in the doorway of our bedroom with its big wooden beds and regal white mosquito netting and sheets that say Ndere Center in bright colored cartoon font, I suddenly feel lonely. There is a French word Erik taught me two years ago – it means something like to lose your sense of being at home in the world. I forget the word now.


I was born at 12:18 am on July 30^th in Seattle, Washington. My mom didn't go to the hospital right away after her water broke. When she finally got there, the hospital staff had to carry her from the car on a stretcher – upside down – so I didn’t pop out at the front door. Her whole labor only lasted three hours. And there we were. I read that in the beginning, babies literally can’t recognize any space between their bodies and their mother’s bodies. Strange how even now, she can be familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.


We depart for Hope North. Usually, we take these small buses with fold out aisle seats to Hope North. But today, we walked out to the Ndere Center parking lot and meet the VIP bus. It’s made in Japan. It has modular seats in the back so you can have a meeting or more bus seats. It seats – maybe 30 people? We are Zak, Orena, Katori, Amanda, Zoe, Dana, Lauryn, Cristina, Erik, myself, Arthur, Harriet, and Kenneth’s sister. 14 and two bus drivers. One for driving and one for keeping the driver company. The bus has air conditioning. I feel like a rockstar. I put on sunglasses.

The trip to Hope North takes about 6 hours. I’m reading The Transformation – sprawled out on the VIP bus. This is a book of poetry where the poet is wondering how to write for or about a “we” when she is a colonizer living in a colonized land (Hawaii). Or in a relationship that happens to have three people and not two. Or in New York trying to parse out personal mourning from nationalism after September 11^th. The structure reminds me of Badou when he talks about the major shift in consciousness (Western? Global? French?) that happened in the middle of the 20^th century was: communal subjectivity could no longer be assumed. ‘We’ got broke. And now the thing we share together is not so much an image of ‘together’, but a searching for ‘together’. Our searching becomes a space and we meet in it.

There are corn fields. They look dry.

We stop at an attractive restaurant with a large outdoor patio. It’s exciting because we get to order lunches. Posho and beans was voted group favorite. Tables are swirly and erratic like polished tree trunks.

And Hope North. We arrive to ululations and drumming – welcome visitors! Down the dry dirt road, we meet a young dancing community to welcome us to their home. Rose, an older woman who lives at Hope North and is like a mom and a dance teacher and a woman with a heartbreaking smile, she dances with them.

Out of the bus, the familiar round houses with tin roofs. The familiar line of chairs under a tree that might be a stereotype of Africa. It almost feels like home.

Hope North was founded to provide a safe space for children effected by the war in Northern Uganda. From 1987 until recently, a man named Joseph Kony led an army of rebels in Northern Uganda. This army drove a lot of families from their home. Many have returned as the north becomes more stable, but still many in Northern Uganda live in IDP (Internally Displaced Peoples) Camps. The LRA also abducted many children and forced them to become soldiers, or sex slaves. The stories either register for me with the gleeful impossibility of horror films or as too sad to say much about. The army has now moved to Congo. The Ugandan government has been in negotiations with Kony to disband, but nothing has come of this yet.

So, here Hope North teaches children that have been orphaned, that have been forced to become soldiers, that have had difficult lives. It seeks to give them more than a high school. It seeks to give them a sense of community. It is modeled after a village. Families live here. The students eat, sleep, dance, learn and live here. A couple hundred students here at one time. The school gives them a story of their life that is larger than the moments of trauma they have lived and the carry with them. It gives them a sense of being at home in the world. Or at least, that is its goal.

They have a well put together web site. I recommend it: http://www.hopenorth.org/

I go for a walk. In the dirt roads through the dry corn. I walk and walk until I’ve walked away all the daylight. I can see the stars. I can see the milk of the milky way. I can see the dry corn smell in the dark.

Hope North has set a table for visitors in the middle of a field under the stars. I can see the dim oasis of candle light and on the horizon, lightning. We eat chicken and beans and rice and posho and coke and wine and okra cooked in a little round house by the bus. We eat well. After wards, we gather by the fire with the students and faculty. The students dance and teach us traditional dances. There is a peace corps member from America named Christian and he gives a speech as well – in Acholi! All the students laugh. Sam welcomes us and someone throws a log on the fire. I am feeling so tired. So tired. I go to bed under the misquito nets that I hung with Rose – she let me work with her even though it made the work take longer. She is very kind.

In the night, it rains. An army drums relentless on the thin tin roof. Wake up! Wake up! The rain has come! It has not rained for a long time here. I hope it will help the corn.

Today was made possible by California Institute of the Arts.

*this photo was taken by Zak Landrum

Uganda: Kampala, the National Theater

Dear Friends,

I want to back track a moment:

In Kenneth’s car driving from Ndere. Did I mention that Kenneth is the funniest man in Uganda? It’s official. He was voted funniest man this past year.

I ask Erik what we are doing here in Uganda. He looks to the left and up. Isn’t that the body language for remembering? Centers. He counts off on his fingers.

An arts center.

A refugee center.

A religious center.

He has a way of occurring instantaneously with pattern that I really admire.

So, what are we doing in Uganda? We spend three days in Kampala staying at Ndere, an arts center. Kampala as center of art and culture in Uganda. Ndere, Makerere, National Theater, Theater Factory at the National Theater. Then, we will travel to the north to a school for war-affected children. Hope North. It is run by a fantastic performer at Ndere, Sam Okello. Okello has a big heart and he’s created a warm place for young people who have had some rough experiences. My sense is that Northern Uganda, with its troubles with the LRA and its neglect from the center of culture in Uganda, makes visible some of the divides that exist throughout Uganda.

A Ugandan friend recently writes me – What happens when over 40 nations (the ones popularly known as "tribes") are forced to merge into one "nation" under a system of governance that is unfamiliar? She's referring to the arbitrary lines drawn by European powers over which area would form the British Colony of Uganda in the late 19th century. She's referring to the question of who was liberated when the British left? She's referring to democracy and I remember our visit to Makerere a few years ago and the question written on the blackboard: does democracy make sense for Africa?

We visit a religious center. A community of self-declared Jews in Western Uganda who are working with Muslims and Christians in their area to create a model for peaceful coexistence and development.

Three centers.

Today, we have rolex at Ndere Center. We see people talking about rolex on TV (a skit about how they are the fad pauper food and the lengths rich people will go to order from street Rolex stands on the sly.) As jolly tourists, we are determined to try them. It’s japati with eggs rolled up in it. Japati is like a tortilla, but thicker. Maybe a cross between tortilla and nan. We learn that Ndere Center makes some delicious rolex.

Taxi to the National Theater. A conversation with local artists and a play reading. I think I ate too much rolex, because I kept falling asleep during the conversation with local artists. I missed a lot of it. Quite frankly, I am frustrated too. Everyone wants to talk about how it is nearly impossible to make a living as an artist. I have very little patience. Why is this sense of sacrifice and struggle so embedded in my own image of artist? Hey, we are not Western donors, I want to say. I’m an art student graduating into a recession. I have no illusions that I will make my living off directing. How is it different in this context to ask someone to build a career out of something that can’t support them (or their extended family) financially? Maybe it's not. And why do I think I’m asking anything, falling asleep in a folding chair? What is my responsibility now that I’m in the room? Maybe it's just to wake up.

A woman whose name I wish I remember shares a script with us. She has written a play about people who are selling on the street. A man is hoping to get a promotion/ a new job. There is a building with mysterious upstairs entrance. An ascended class place. I remember the expectation that a character will get promoted, will be accepted into this high place, but in the end, nothing changes. People below stay below. The author is a quiet woman with a kind face and glasses. She used to write radio dramas with my friend Deborah.

We have this strange thing now. Free time. Amanda goes off to buy an African dress. Others in search of an internet café. I have not exchanged any Ugandan money, so I stay at the National. I watch a movie about Australia with Arthur on his laptop – what’s it called – the one with Nicole Kidman and High Jackman about the disappeared indigenous children? I wander the traditional, tourist craft booths behind the National Theater. Kampala is a big city and we are right at the heart of it – lots of traffic. Big hotels and office buildings. The area is not really as green as this, but here’s a sense of what I’m talking about:

Kampala always feels alive, so alive. People are more outgoing here then in Rwanda. Kampala is loud and fast and little dirtier than Kigali. More like New York, then, say, Portland. It’s got that gritty edge.

We return to Ndere. Ndere is a little paradise with big trees and wireless internet and hot showers. Ndere Troupe is rehearsing a show for their 25^th anniversary. I sit in on rehearsals. They dance and dance and dance. I think the wooden floorboards will break from so much life. But they do not.

Tomorrow, we go northToday was made possible by the California Institute of the Arts.

Uganda - Ndere, Makerere

In the morning, we eat breakfast.

And then we meet with Stephen Rwangyezi of Ndere Center who tells us something of the history of the place. He tells us that in 1912 Uganda, the British colonizers created anti-witchcraft laws which banned drumming and other elements of traditional performance and ritual in Uganda. He tells us the missionaries taught young children if they played the piano or dance ballet, they would go to heaven. The drum, of course, being a sure way to hell. He talks about how shame with one's culture become internalized. Invisible after some time. And so that now he, and other artists, are doing the work of recontextualizing traditional forms as something admirable and relevant to contemporary culture. Ndere creates performances with traditional dances and instruments from all over Uganda and also runs a theater for development network which links over 2,000 amateur companies performing educational theater for their communities. Rwangyezi says he wants people to understand Uganda is not just Idi Amin. It houses thriving, beautiful performance.

After Rwangyezi, we eat lunch.

And then we travel to Makerere. This is a major University in Kampala that houses a Music, Dance and Drama Department. This is where Deborah was voted best overall student. She has explained in the past that the Music, Dance and Drama field (MDD) is perhaps not the most supported field. She tells us in fact the MDD is said to stand for Musilu Dala Dala (Deborah, am I getting that right?) - a fool through and through. Here at Makerere, we tour the departments' three small buildings. It's summer and they are empty, but still they look somewhat in disrepair next to the newer and larger buildings of the rest of the university. We meet friendly professors who lead us through the buildings and explain which classes happen in which rooms. We pass students rehearsing under a large tree. The landscape feels green and dense. It's so green it gets in your bones, the feeling of something coming to life. And the cobwebs over the chairs in the room for dance. And the broken glass on the windows. I know some great artists that have come
from this institution. It must be difficult to concentrate here. And people do.

(Also, just some trivia, apparently, Barack Obama's father graduated from Makerere.)

And then there's dinner. Dinner with performance. Every Wednesday and Sunday, the troupe performs for the residents of Kampala and their visitors (like us, tourists) - a repertoire of dances, singing and storytelling. And they are very good at what they do. When the Ugandan borders were drawn at the end of the 19th century, they enclosed 4 major language roots and at least 31 different languages. Different dances. Different rituals. Different musical instruments. Ndere combines instruments from different origins in its orchestra. They perform dances from different areas together in one night. As part of the performance, the MC performer, Okello Sam, shares stories about the origins of each dance and what it meant inside of that community. The grand finale is a dance where performers balance clay pots on top of their head while continuing to sing and dance. OK, but I'm not talking like one clay pot here. I'm talking 6-8 clay pots piled on top of each other until the line of pots is taller than the dancers. And they balance this line while performing complicated hip movements and weight shifts. Virtuosic.

And then the questions. In taking these dances out of context, what is being preserved? And, yet, if Ndere did not perform shows bi-weekly for tourists would it survive? Ndere takes economically disadvantaged kids, trains them in traditional dance and song and pays for their education. 25 full time residents, 12 years or older. What does preserving a culture look like?

Today is made possible with a generous grant from California Institute of the Arts.

Crossing the boarder to Uganda

We wake up very early. In the dark. We wait for the bus to the other bus as the moon waits, a little sliver in the sky, over the empty offices. The moon has more patience than I do. Let’s go already. Simba, the bus driver who's put up with us the past couple weeks, pulls into the dirt driveway and we all climb clumsily in. Good-bye Darius. Good-bye Center Christus.

The horizon begins to green as we board the bus to Kampala. Everyone got your tickets? Head count. Everyone here? Half the group spreads out in back and we’re off. We’re off. We’re – asleep…sleeping…head against glass pane – and then mist – over rice fields – white thick air over the marshes - between hills – maybe the people harvesting in half light, maybe imagined. Green in a blur – open your eyes. Time to get out. Border crossing. Passports, forms, lines. The bathroom. It costs 100 Rwandan francs, but the men collecting money try and pretend it’s 200. No, it’s 100, I say. They give me my change. They give the muzungus a hard time.

I learned the name muzungu used to mean – wanderer, someone without a home. It was derogatory. When the “white folk” came, they came from far away so they were called muzungu. Now the name means – someone rich. So a black African can be called muzungu if they make a lot of money. We are called muzungu all the time. Kids running down the street. “Hey, muzungu. How are you?” They are practicing their English as Rwanda has recently converted to an English speaking country.

Oh! I forgot to share this! This is a secret moment. Last week, the morning before we went to Kabuye, I went for a walk down the road outside of our hotel in Butare. I had so many thoughts in my head which made it so heavy I was staring at my feet walking down the road and I hear the little pitter of feet running down the road. I look up, two boys in school uniforms – very little – like maybe 7 – running down the road and they ran and they stopped right in front of me and one little boy puts his arms out and he gives me a hug. The other boy gives me a hug. Hello, I say shyly. They smile shyly. They run away. Thanks strangers on your way to school, I needed that hug.

On the other side of the border, Uganda. You can tell by the sign: welcome to Uganda! Uganda is markedly dirtier than Rwanda. You cross the border and the roads are not as kept, there is garbage marking the space between road and field. There is an army of young men ready to sell you phone cards and exchange money. On this side, we wait in line again, get our visas cleared, our passports stamped and then – back on the bus. Time for more sleeping.

Flat land and long fields – big sky – it’s day now somehow – yellow stalks of corn – sleeping – I dream I am in a field full of bodies of people I do now know. A town I do not know. Someone is taking their clothes. And it seems the saddest thing that their clothes will not be worn by someone who knew them. This new owner will wear the clothes only as clothes and where they came from will be forgotten, the particular way this sleeve rested on the wrist or housed this manner of searching for words, will pass into the realm of no consequence. They will just be clothes. I wake up.

On the bus, there is bus drama. The bus driver has skipped a pee stop and people have to pee. The back of the bus is bouncing like mad on the unpaved roads and this is making the need to pee unbearable. There is some talk about a bus coup but nothing ever comes of it. The rest of the bus is in total silence. Why? Do they need to pee? Do they think the bus driver is driving recklessly? It must be fine, it seems. Meanwhile, the Americans at the back of the bus are crying, “Oh, god. I need to pee!” Well, in hindsight, we could have just asked the bus driver to pull over. Or given him five bucks or something. I wonder why we didn’t?

Finally, a pee stop. The same one every year with giant vultures. Ugly things. And mean looking. These are the kind of vultures that would steal candy from babies and not think twice about it. Man, I have never loved peeing in a hole so much.

Back on the bus. The back of the bus. I trade out, ready to brave the bumps. I figure I can sleep through anything. And then I realize, I’ve lost my necklace. This is a real bummer because it’s something that reminds me of my mom and I have lost it. And I am very sad. And I sit in the seat at the back of the bus – except for when we hit bumps and then I sit in the air above the seat in the back of the bus – and I wonder if, in fact, I own anything. What do I have? Not people. Not things. Not days. Not plans. Not thoughts. Not dreams. Not memories, most of them anyway. What? What to hold on to? Or maybe the question is – what to let go of? Did I mention the bus ride is 10 hours? What to let go of? Necklace. Clenched jaw. Consciousness. I dream sadness. Like dreaming a little not that is a part of me. Don’t you recognize yourself? You are sleep and a little not and the silent, hot bus to Kampala and the cheek resting on the red seat and a schoolgirl on her way home for vacation and the big sky and the corn and the garbage and the dry dirt roads that need work and plans for tomorrow to tour Makerere University and the middle of the bright day and the night to come. You are here. The bus hits a bump and I literally fly bodily off the seat and then back down, back into sleep. I can sleep through anything.

In Kampala, our friends Kenneth Kimuli and Norm from Theater of Yugen – who was with the trip in Rwanda but flew to Kampala a couple days early – met us at the bus station. While we are waiting for taxis, I check the bus one more time. The mechanic found my necklace. Sweet. We are on our way to Ndere Center. Luxury, fan palms and wireless. Life is beautiful.

Today is made possible by the grace of the California Institute of the Arts.

Rwanda: Jean D'Arc, Evas

A day off. The women outside their rooms scrub and soak their clothes in bright colored plastic bins. It is exotic. And the air smells great. It’s Sunday and the commemoration of the end of the genocide 15 years ago. We can hear the singing. Mass is crowded with mourning and celebration. The singing is beautiful. We hang our clothes to dry.

In the afternoon, a trip to the market. Another market. It’s Sunday so most of the stalls are closed. There are chickens. Cloth. A whole section of second hand shoes shined and resold. Where do they come from? Jean D’Arc says come with me. She buys me a necklace. She’s quiet and she takes quietly care of everyone.

We’re planning someone’s birthday tonight so a bunch of us go to town with Evas to get the cake. Evas runs the show here. She’s a mid-20s hilarious and grounded woman who manages the day to day of our time in Rwanda. When we are not here, she works for an organization called Stories for Hope – this organization has young people sit down with an older person they respect (parent, grandparent, aunt, etc.) and have them tell them an “impact story” – some story that gives inspiration, guidance, lessons on how to live. The stories are recorded. It’s a way of taking an old tradition of storytelling as a means of transmitting culture and adapting it to contemporary culture – creating a databank of positive stories of life in Rwanda.

Evas takes us to her house. It’s a room an apartment in a larger home where her relatives live. The apartment has a balcony that looks over Kigali as the sun sets into the diesel fumes. Buildings are brief outline in orange light. The broken bottles embedded in the cement walls glisten. The city spreads itself out secret and immense. Inside we eat tangerines and little bananas under pictures of Evas at college graduation. She has been accepted to CalArt’s aesthetics and politics program and is waiting on the funding to see if she will be able to go.

Then we have a somewhat bizarre photo-op with Rwandan generals. It was bizarre and that’s all I’m going to say.

And then as the clock strikes midnight, a very late surprise birthday for a member of our team. Every one is tired in that sentimental way. When you love the moment you have created together as it weighs down on you and insists on slipping from your fingers. You love the room for creating and losing together. You love the birthday candle sparkler for marking the silliness of passing time. You love Evas tugging on your shirt to make sure that all the presents are opened and cake eaten. Speeches scribbled on dinner napkins. Speeches made. Silence. Chocolate. You love sleep for insisting itself when life could just go on and on in utter delight.

There are many official reflections – the evolution of a program over 5 years to include a library, a festival, students from three US schools – Rwanda as a school of peace, as in permission for being – the commitment to return …the commitment to peace...

I am glad I do not have to talk. All I can think is I love these people. I love this place.

Today is made possible by the gracious and generous support of Kathy Babiarz.

Rwanda: Centre by Centre, Gisozi

In the morning, the group went to visit the Gisozi Memorial Center here in Kigali. (See photo.)

This memorial has a room where family members have hung photos of someone or someones that they have lost in the genocide. Photos clipped to string all along the sides of the walls. The room an octagon. Museum lighting. This room has a great impact on me – its as if people are inviting us into their personal remembering. This interests me as a form of memorializing… a room full of strangers’ faces in faded photos…two years ago Richard points to one - a group of people sitting on anonymous front steps. “These are my brothers and sisters.” Richard works at Gisozi. He films testimony. I don’t know what to feel or say about these people in the picture, but I trust that he has lost something great. There is an implied hand pointing to each of these photos. Hundreds. And what is my job here?

Final day of Centre by Centre. In the afternoon, we had play readings. Katori Hall, a NY playwright traveling with us, reads a monologue from a piece she wants to write about the Rwandan genocide. Myself, Darius, Zak – a stage hand and playwright in SF- some students from CalArts and playwrights, performers and producers from Rwanda sit in a circle of chairs on the wooden stage in Ishyo. Katori is very nervous about this reading. A monologue of a woman whose husband turned over his sister-in-law and her children to the interahamwe and how she loves him. It is beautifully written with guilt floating over everyone like a low clouds that could rain at any moment. The conversation centers mostly about whether as a Westerner we should be writing about genocide. Most of the Rwandans concur that yes, it is difficult from Rwanda to write about genocide because there is no distance, and there should be plays written about genocide and anyone could imagine aspects of the situation. I think there is more to say when we get to know each other better.

Final performances. Christina Frias, a CalArts student does a lively and personal piece about Mexican/American identity. I perform an excerpt of Angel of History by Carolyn Forche with Darius Mannino, Dana Gourrier and Noam – whose last name I don’t know… It’s a meditation on atrocity and empathy in the 20th century.

The Belarus Free Theater came too and showed a demo of their work. In a small room, people with extraordinary energy taking simple playful images – a woman with a red balloon, some men hammering boards of wood in rhythm to a folksong – and perverting them – the balloon becomes a pregnancy that is popped, the men perform a folkdance of “hammering” their hands. While statistics of life in Belarus are projected on the wall– sometimes mundane or marvelous and mostly a testament to the toll of 15 years of political dictatorship.

The Belarus Free Theater has been performing underground since 2005 in Minsk. risking and receiving imprisonment to provide a voice of dissent in an oppressive regime.

Also, Theater Factory came and presented. They are a theatrical cross between Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show. They lampoon weekly news stories or popular culture events. They have a huge following in Uganda and now also a weekly TV show.

And that’s the modest and promising beginning of the Centre by Centre festival.

And there are the lights of Kigali in the inverted night sky. We have a late dinner. A paved street with a sidewalk. Commercial buildings with pillars. A night guard. The city silent. A man sleeps in a cardboard box by the side of the restaurant. Young people go by in tucked in button down shirts. The cement swept clean. Tomorrow is our last day in Kigali.

Today is made possible by the gracious and generous support of Casey Kurti. Casey, my love and gratitude…

*Image by Christina Frias

Rwanda: Centre by Centre, Hip Hop, Lucie

OK. I’m going to break the 4th wall for a moment and admit that I am sitting in a coffee shop in New York by Washington Square compiling my notes from July 17th into something that could be comprehensible to you. Being back in NY, I’ve received some feedback (thanks Chris!) that perhaps the basic plan of the trip or the festival is not clear. So, I’m going to backtrack while I drink my paper cup of coffee and watch women pushing their baby strollers to the park.

Erik Ehn – the former dean of CalArts – started a program 5 years ago where he takes CalArts students, faculty as well as artists and cultural workers (mostly) from America to Rwanda and Uganda. We study the history and culture of these two nations, network with local artists, policy makers, activists, and this year also Erik co-produced a performance festival in Kigali with two Rwandan artists Carole Karemera and Hope Azeda. Our partners in creating the Rwandan portion of the trip are the International Genocide Studies Center, a survivor advocacy group. The exchange program is followed by a gallery presentation at CalArts and an international conference on arts and social justice at CalArts and now also Brown as Erik will be heading the playwriting program there.

The Rwandan portion of the trip looks like this: 4 days traveling around the countryside visiting genocide sites, museums, memorials; 3 days in Kigali (the capital of Rwanda) attending academic lectures on genocide, recovery, reconciliation and visiting organizations in the capital; 3 days devoted to a festival or workshops, readings and performances. IGSC in interested in cultivating an interdisciplinary summer study program of the Rwandan genocide. Students from universities at Missouri and – Ohio? maybe? - attending two weeks of academic lectures that overlapped with us. These students also came to the performances at Centre by Centre.

It’s a wide and brief conversation. Repeated annually. And builds a little each year. This year, we have a performance festival.

Today is day two.

Two NY HipHop artists – from Brooklyn and the Bronx – are touring Rwanda – with workshops and performances – sponsored by the US State Dept. So they came today and led a workshop on breaking (as in breakdance) and poetry – as in being an mc. Big turn out – a lot of interest in hiphop here in Rwanda. They started by talking about the difference between commercial rap and hiphop and community hiphop – as in art as a process of communal self-identifying and expressing – art not as cultural object, but cultural practice. Concerns of the Rwandan participants included: being taken seriously as artists, how to explain to their parents that art is a meaningful use of their time and study, what can art do to promote peace, how can one make a living as a hiphop artist?

I missed the workshop portion of the afternoon because yesterday, a woman named Lucie attended Jubilith’s Noh workshop. She liked Jubilith very much and invited her to her house. And me too because I happened to be standing next to her. So today, Lucie arrived at 1pm to take us to her house. After some chaos of finding Jubilith – eating lunch – and excusing ourselves from the planned activities, we walked with Lucie to the bus stop. Well, actually a man drove by and offered us all a ride to the bus stop which we gratefully accepted because it was a hot day and a hot walk. The roads are red dust and we take them with us on our feet.

Lucie tells us about her life. She lives in Kigali with her 4 children. She is from Congo. Rwandese. From Congo.

We take the bus. A 4 row van packed full of quiet people. When someone wants to stop, they rap on the window with their finger tips and the bus driver stops for them. Lucie’s stop. She guides us through a market with big open bags of rice and flour and dried beans. The smell of fish. Chickens. Folded fabrics of deep, vibrant colored patterns. Low tin ceilinged stalls. We walk down a dirt roads past many residences. Someone is making charcoal in their front yard and people from the neighborhood come to buy it. For cooking.

Lucie’s house. This is where the girls sleep. This is where the boys sleep. This is the toilet. This is the toilet. This is the toilet. There are three. This is our bedroom. This is the room for the visitors. Tile floors and cement walls . It is not finished, she says. It is not finished, she says again. The closets do not have doors. It takes 8 years to build a house .It takes a lot of money. Home feels like home. Dark like a cave and cool. Curtains on the walls catching the orange late afternoon sun.

She baked us a meal. Peas and cassava leaves and the corn flour staple and plantains and beef and rice and soda and fruit. Tangerines. She washed our hands in a pot and let us eat everything with our hands. This is a long standing dream of mine – to get my hands dirty eating a meal. We talked with her and her two sons about politics – do you think that the government will continue to be good when Kagame is no longer president? Yes, as long as the same people are governors, I think the next leader will continue to take Rwanda down the same path. What is lost when a child experiences or is witness to extreme violence? Are they still a child? Yes, and no. You do not trust in the same way. He says he wants to travel to Iran or the United Arab Emirate because he doesn’t like Islamic Extremists and so he wants to know more about these countries so he doesn’t rely on his prejudice. So he can understand them better. I don’t want to say that I do not like Islam. They cut off a boy’s hand for stealing candy in the market place in Iran. Why? He asked us what we thought of the Iraq War. I am reminded how easy it is to forget that my own country is at war. I think it is sad, I say. What can you say?

Tomorrow he goes to camp with 700 other people who have just graduated from secondary school and he learns how to shoot a gun – how to be a soldier and also how to be a good citizen – not to engage in divisive ideology. Rwanda has even worked to lessen community and gender divides. Alex was telling us how now he has to do tasks around the house that as he was growing up where exclusively girl’s tasks – like wash the floor. It is hard, he says, when my mom asks me to wash the floor. I don’t want to do it because I am used to it being a thing that only girls do, but I know that we have to change and become a more equal society, so I do it. He’s also the second young man I’ve spoken with who is studying cinema with Eric Kabera.

Lucie showed us how to make – posho: corn flour and water – over the open fire kitchen behind the house. It’s just such a different thing to be talking cultural exchange in someone’s dining room over the meal they have spent all day cooking for you then in a conference room. I am reminded that culture is the daily lives and aspirations of people, not abstract, not an object.

Alex rides the taxi with us back to Ishyo. Performances. Jubilith performs Noh. Some virtuosic Rwandan dancers perform. Rockafella and Rah Goddess perform a hip hop show. The theater dissolves into dancing. The theater is breathless with life.

Today is made possible by the gracious and generous support of Phyllis Stinson. Thanks kindly! Good luck in Senegal.

Rwanda: Centre by Centre, Ishyo

Student: What are we to do about the state of the world?
Teacher: What are you calling the world?
Zen Koan

Every morning at Center Christus. Birds.. Lauryn insists this one kind of bird is laughing at us .Birds and then the mass. I did not go this year, but from last year I remember music – everyone in the room is singing – and the priest will be speaking and as he exhales his last word, someone in the room will have started singing softly. And then more and then harmony and then the song will be in the room around you everywhere around you. And then fade out again and the preacher will be speaking. Bread and wine and music.And the birds. This is morning.

Today is the first day of our festival. Centre by Centre. The idea is an annual international performance festival on arts and social justice. The idea is an annual international performance festival in the local context of Rwanda (and hopefully later Uganda). So, spending time learning about the history and the culture, allowing ourselves to be transformed, and then to perform the work in a deeper conversation with the place and so each other. At least, that’s the language that’s going around. Sounds good to me.

Today is the first day of Centre by Centre and we meet in Ishyo. Ishyo is a performance space and cultural center run by Carole Karemera. She’s a Rwandan artist who trained and performed for some time in Belgium and has returned to do cultural work in Kigali. She opened Ishyo in 2008. She has a dance-theater company, her facility hosts workshops, and she also brings a bus/library to the schools for kamikaze theater, where performers act out different children’s books in English and French to promote tri-lingual literacy. (Besides from Kinyarwandan, the whole country has also been French speaking but recently switched to English speaking partly due to access with the global market and partly due to tension over the French involvement in the genocide.)

Ishyo is on top of a hill. It has a wooden stage in a deep, auditorium that seats maybe 300 people? I’m a bad judge of these things. It has also three rehearsal/workshop rooms with bright white walls and cement floors painted silver. A basketball court where a dance floor is sometimes rolled out. A bar and restaurant with an outdoor patio that can also be used as a performance space. It’s a great facility.

Today is the first day of Centre by Centre and it begins with workshops taught by members of Theater of Yugen. Norm Mundoz teaches Phillipine dance and Jubilith Moore teaches some basic singing and dance and dramaturgy of Noh theater. After both workshops, we see dancers practicing and then adapting movements that have learned. Exchange is in process.

Today is the first day of Centre by Centre and in the evening we have performances, including: music, poetry, a short Noh performance by Jubilith, two pieces from Carole’s group Ishyo - on real estate and African representation by non-Africans, and a performance in Kinyarwandan of The Monument by Isoko. The event is lively and diverse. My favorite moment is when two American string musicians, Nancy Usher and her daughter Alessandra, performed with a Rwandan woman musician playing an instrument usually performed by men. She sang as she played, a deep voice that felt totally free.

Today is made possible by the generous and gracious support of Cal Watson. Thank you, Cal!