Swahili lesson:
Unataka kuchuliwa? = Do you want a massage?
Tulia, samba! = Easy, lion!

Sarah Exports the Peace Sign

I’m still in Kinshasa. I missed the earthquake in the East by a matter of days. Somehow, I forgot to factor natural disasters into the list of possible dangers. Here, in the capitol, my bad education continues. Over the past week I’ve met with high school girls, college students, parliamentary officials, women’s groups, a local private television station, and a priest. My list of fragmentary knowledge grows. Here are a few examples:

There is a culture of NGOs in Congo which have been described as the New Colonialism. The only people with jobs in this country are those
working for NGOs.

Every other vehicle in this smog choked city belongs to the UN. They have a sweet set-up and they do nothing. They do nothing. They know where rebel groups are located. They know everything about the Interhamwe’s whereabouts and doings. But instead they just act as a fat parasite, leeching like every other outsider who has their hand in Congo’s honey pot.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are offering Congo a huge chunk of change so they can get at the resources. Congo’s belly is swollen with oil, as it turns out. So if you know Congo only for its diamond mines, well this puppy has resources beyond belief and EVERYONE wants some.

On the equally frustrating social scene I’ve learned that many of the rape victims in the East are ostracized because people in the village believe that they are cursed, or even that they somehow asked for it. Across the country there is a huge problem with sexual violence and general oppression of women. The high school girls I talked to told me that their teachers are always trying to get them to sleep with them and often their grades depend on it. And the real frustrating part is that when violence and oppression is the norm and there is also a huge problem with impunity many women don’t even think about their rights, or that there really is such a thing as women’s rights. I’m really glad I’m not a radical feminist because I’d likely get all, “I’m GOING TO CRUSH SOME SKULLS!!”. And I am wildly angry, but I have met a lot of women who are trying to re-educate people about some pretty basic human rights issues. So, there is at least faction attempting to influence basic awareness.

If I come back to Congo again I have been asked to appear on a local private television show, they are going to have a special program. Yeah, hilarious and possibly a disaster, but in any case we’ll get that shit up on youtube.

Barring any last minute disasters, I will fly out of Kinshasa on Sunday and be back in SF the 16th. It’s so strange here and I’m really going to miss it. The traffic is the worst. I’ve never had so many near misses in my life, and he roads themselves are really just a series of kiddie pool sized pot-holes. There are vendors of everything, in fact they stand on the side of the street and hold out puppies to passing cars, Puppies. They sell crocodiles in the market and I also saw a monkey just tied to some log. We have been lucky to have electricity and running water almost every day. Often power lines get cut and stolen to be sold. I ate a pile of caterpillars, they tasted good. Oh, crocodile tastes like fishy chicken.

Okay, I think that covers the basics for now. Oh, here is a Konono #1 video so you can see what Kinshasa looks like:

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I have avoided writing about my trip because I don’t really understand it. I experienced my first real culture shock when I landed, maybe not because Congo is so different than I expected, rather because it’s just as it promised it would be. It met me with green haunty hills and gashes of jungle and the twisting spine of the Congo River, and then we landed and it was havoc.

Kinshasa has a post apocalyptic quality that I have now gotten used to, but at first, after flying for days I was out of my body out of my mind.

Congo is, well I’m having a hard night so I hesitate, but I mostly want to say, terrifying and fucked, but I will re-frame by saying that it is blood stained for generations, and the whole country suffers from post traumatic stress– they are survivors. Everything seems corrupt and in perpetual quagmire. A kingdom of ghost and guns. Everyone is stunning.

For now I will just give you some disconnected highlights that make even less sense to me than they will to you:

I learned that my travel companion was hit by lightning when he was a child and smoke came out of his mouth.

I watched TV with Kabila’s (the assassinated president) vice-president. Er . . . The former president had four vice presidents, and I hung out with one of them. His slipper fell off at one point and I put it back on his foot. In his office I saw a photograph of him with Che and another with Mao, and then we ate some chicken.

We were in Goma during the big Congo Peace Conference, and when our plane landed one of our interpreters turned to me and said, “You know, there are rebel groups no less than 40 kilometers from here”. The conference was deadlocked for a few days and in the end I fear that paper signing is the last thing that will do this country any good.

I crossed Lake Kivu, which rests upon a layer of natural gas, one crack in the basin and the whole lake would explode and the surrounding region would be suffocated by the gas. Seriously, they have exploding lakes here.

Eastern Congo, really. We had a police man from the presidential guard when we went outside of the city into the villages in the Walungu region. I just found out today that there had been another rebel raid on a village in Walungu while we were there. We don’t know where exactly, they could have been on the other side or it could have been a few miles away. Yes, pretty much scary, but I knew this going in.

I was able to interview a few women, rape victims, in Walugu, and interestingly I actually met and interviewed the same woman that was in that Anderson Cooper thing I sent you. I don’t really know what to tell you about this. It was disturbing, of course, but really my brain is only allowing a little of this information to register at a time.

The next day we were invited to a gun exchange in which a local organization was trying to get villagers to trade in their weapons for useful items like tin roofing or bicycles. It failed; no one would show because this would be a public admittance of being a thief and rapist. I didn’t think it was a realistic plan, but I was there to bear witness anyway. The army was there and then the UN showed up. In this region the UN is made up of a bunch of terrifying Pakistani men that ride around in jeeps. They were like, what are you white people doing here in this village in Eastern Congo?

A fine question.

And then I left the jungle and now find myself back in sweltering Kinshasa. I am trying to follow what is and has been going on in this country since the war. I now understand that Rwanda is trying to carve out a piece of Congo, and that the Interhamwe were once found eating UN food. I don’t know!

shitfuckmutherfuckingjesuschristbaby

ok.

Anyway, I’m safe still but pretty well frustrated and misanthropic. Well, no, not completely, but if you want more details I’ll try my best to pull together the fragmented mess that i know and have gathered from my time so far. I will be here for two more weeks, more interviews and filming and then I will pull myself from the motherlands dark loins and return to our white bitch of a country.

I am missing everyone something awful and I feel so so far away. But, all this said, I wouldn’t trade a moment in Africa for anything.

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In between heaping handfuls of artificial-butter flavored popcorn film critics will argue the merits of cinema until their faces turn blue and their arteries clog with smegma. Despite the insulting utterances of these arrogant fiends who’ve no business orating anywhere other than from the depths of the dumpsters where they belong there comes from the horde rare observations which blind by virtue of their sheer brilliance. The particulars escape me, possibly severed from my retrievable memory by my own mind, but I once witnessed one such studio crony escape the tired opinions of his rank and question: do films from bygone eras appeal to modern audiences because of their inherent achievements or because of a collective nostalgia?

When I was growing up my summers were often spent falling asleep on the couch watching TV20 before the rape and pillage perpetrated by the WB. Original Star Trek episodes aired at midnight and, if you could stand the excitement, The Untouchables (starring Robert Stack as Elliot Ness, narrated by Walter Winchell) followed. More than anything (certainly not syndicated episodes of Perry Mason which my sister loved to watch) I think that this constant exposure to hard-nosed G-men tommy-gunning rum-runners for God and country eventually relinquished my dependence on color when watching movies. The show, which originally aired from 1959-1963, was shot on film, expertly lit and well crafted. The dialogue and acting was, admittedly, less refined but that’s hardly important when you’re eleven and get really excited when people are riding running boards through the streets of Chicago shooting up speakeasies.

As I’ve never really gotten over the cheap entertainment of pulp I still find a fair share of detective stories and back-lot productions to kill my life an hour at a time. The deeper you dig the worse you find but my tolerance for crap of this kind is far greater than that which is churned out these days. Bad acting, insulting plots, dialogue a deaf-mute could’ve written and cheap sets are just part and parcel of the experience. You forgive the movies because they come from another time and another place and your irritations are washed away by stylish old cars and trench-coats, smokey diners, cheezy swing-bands, wise-cracking cabbies and roustabouts working the pier. And the dames? Ah, the dames!

It could have just been an honest geek-fixation but I started to get pretentious and watching movies with subtitles. At first I just assumed this interest came as a result of my obvious superiority in matters of taste and intelligence but after hearing some snobby poppycock on the television about nostalgia as a spice I started scrutinizing these nickel and rupee three reel deals a little more, trying to look through the exotic for the inexcusable faults which anchor our major productions to the bottom of the bowel. There’s been some success: recently a Russian movie which made the rounds and earned rounds of applause on the indie/arthouse circuit earned nothing but my displeasure because of obvious pandering, shallowness and exploitation. I don’t want a Russian movie made for an American audience, I want Russian movies about fucking Russia for Russian audiences. I want quality, taste, intelligence, emotional resonance! Maybe if I read the back of the boxes before I borrowed these things I could spare myself some wasted evenings but that’s a no-no unless it’s a documentary…

The Turkish film “Journey to the Sun” isn’t great by any measure. The acting comes courtesy of, reportedly, amateurs culled from the streets and there’s little doubt in my mind that this is true. Overall the story is serviceable but elements can cause involuntary cringing (particularly the cheap, pre-fab romantic sub-plot) and not the empathetic embarrassment you get from “Rushmore” but the revulsion of seeing old 1940′s melodramas still seeping into film. Loose ends are tied together a little too cleanly with convenient twists cropping up at just the right time, reaching across the table for the salt and maybe that gravy’s gonna slop and stain the linens. There’s little room for directorial detatchment but even allowing political content there’s ways to make a movie without having your thumb in the frame. It’s not a great movie at all but I would sit and watch it again this very evening.

There’s a little window in my living room, a window into the world. It’s the streets of Istanbul and not the streets they have in tourist pamphlets or posters in travel agencies. It’s peeking in on people struggling to survive, struggling for identity and struggling to be. Through it you see the news, you see history, you see things that make you feel richer for having witnessed and you feel ashamed for not throwing open the sash and screaming. Not to reveal too much but this is a movie about two people who’ve moved from their impoverished provincial towns to the big city, one from the east and one from the west. One knows the score and one’s about to learn the hard-way that life isn’t just unfair but it calculatingly fucked. One’s a Kurd and one’s a Turk but the difference suddenly becomes negligible.

The film’s writer/director, Yesim Ustaoglu become a filmmaker while working as an architect. With some short-films for which she won some awards under her belt she eventually dedicated herself to a feature film, 1994′s The Trace. Turkey became more volatile as Kurdish separatists and government troops became increasingly engaged in what would amount to war and Ustaoglu, being from eastern-Anatolia, decided to focus her lens closer to home. In interviews after the film’s screening in various festivals Ustaoglu talks about how she became increasingly depressed and despondent about the second-class status of Kurds and wanted to understand more about how things had come to be the way they are today. From her research and reading came the script and eventually the movie. Her reasoning is my favorite thing about this movie, but also a reminder that I don’t know shit about shit… (more…)

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There’s a side porch on the third floor of my apartment in between my hovel and that in the rear of the building. On the ground underneath the bench decorated with Parisian landmarks lay three peeps– the disgusting yellow (traditionally) marshmallow chicks that plague Easter baskets– alongside a can of spray varnish. This is not the project of anyone I live with but, out of respect, I carefully hunker down a safe distance from them to smoke a cigarette out of the wind.

A cereal box had been employed to prevent the newly varnished peeps from damaging the floorboards, some variety of Safeway O Organics product that have been increasing in popularity over the past couple of years. Poor people– they hear that organic foods are the thing to do, so right and so correct, but they don’t know anything about what that means or what it entails. Lucky for them Safeway discovered this niche and has provided “over 150 exclusive organic items” for purchase. Now you can get your box of organic cereal and you’ve done your part– no need to worry about any of the messy agricultural or transportation or distribution or economic implications involved. Look, the express aisle’s open and there’s no line.

Mildly offensive– as offensive as it is amusing– but nothing to start setting fire to shit over… or is it? On the back panel of the box there’s a colorful depiction of South America. The earnest copywriter who landed this contract entices: “Take Organic Living on the Road”. There’s an invitation for me, the viewer, to take advantage of “naturally beautiful eco-friendly vacation destinations…” next time I’m traveling abroad. The recommendations? The Dominican Republic, The Galapagos Islands, Chile and Brazil.

Nothing to special about the D.R.– just one more place with Club Med sanctuaries for Mr. and Mrs. White 1st World to play in the tropics for pennies on the dollar. Chile doesn’t seem too wild although there’s a suggestion that Easter Island is the most remote inhabited island (which is actually Tristan da Cunha) that calls into question the overall validity of my cereal box encyclopedia. Then the real head-scratching begins when you look at Brazil:

Travel through stretches of unexplored rainforest, islands with pristine tropical beaches and endless rivers.

As tempting as it may be to send tourists into the uncharted wilds of the Amazon some latent ethical gland prevents me from willfully pursuing a life as a death-dealing travel agent. It’s not only a bad idea for the personal safety and well-being of idiots booking vacation but it also seems a little less than eco-friendly to have a bunch a shorts and Tevas clad goofballs tramping around the flora and fauna, or that which is left after the clear-cutters came through.

The absolute worst crime against humanity perpetrated by the Safeway Cereal Conglomerate is, by far, best exemplified by their interest in the Galapagos Islands:

…the Galapagos Islands have rich natural history and unique plant and animal life that make it a mecca for ecology enthusiasts.

You’re then invited to scuba dive into the unique plant and animal and swim with sea lions and penguins. For years scientists have been concerned about the unique Galapagos environment being affected by flotsam and jetsam drifting in from us civilized folks the world over. Now the sea turtles and weird blind critters found only here have to contend with idiot eco-tourists alongside castaway nets, Coca-Cola cans and leaky outboard motors.

Poor people– they just don’t know what to do. We’re supposed to eat healthy and, lo and behold, you can now get salad at McDonald’s! How tasty and nutritious and once or twice a week on your lunch break at your McJob you can feel like you’re doing something positive. Unfortunately current laws do not allow me to smash these people in the face with handy bricks while shouting “Stop eating at McDonald’s you stupid fuck!”. (more…)

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In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernise, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things. Since they don’t have experience of the west, they even believe that western shit is pie.–Emir Kusturica

Despite my predilection for hiding in my room events overran me recently, out into the Richmond and in front of what used to be the jock-lite Last Day Saloon and has now become the yuppie-lite Rockit Room. True there was a birthday to celebrate and true two people had invited me but I was a little shocked at how readily I had consented to being taken away from my room. Maybe the mood was just there, perhaps the moon was in a special phase– I dunno. It may have been because two Serbian/Rom style bands were playing.

Years ago I dwelled in a dank little hovel called Leather Tongue which was so similar to the dank little hovels I hid away in on purpose that I kept going. It didn’t pay well and it didn’t help any minor mental issues I might have had but it did introduce me to plenty of movies I would never have chosen to hunt down and rent on my own. After renting it out to hip Mission scum a thousand times I checked out “Black Cat White Cat” by Emir Kusturica which drilled into my mind and deposited some of the most flamboyant images ever captured on film as well as some of the most scintillating music ever, er, captured on film. If Fellini had been into carnies more than circus freaks and was thrilled by saturated colors (and been Serbian) it would have been his movie. I travelled back in time a couple of years and caught his earlier festival success, “Underground“.

Last year at a different job I was hawking shit on eBay when I pulled the soundtrack to “Underground” from a bin of CDs. My hands were shaking and I played it on the office stereo. Then I played it again and again until I was quite certain that everyone was going to kill me so I had my boss price it out. Not in the store’s computer– Argentinian release so it’s $1.99… Awesome! To this day I think this is the only CD that I have danced to with another person. Waiting for my ride to The Rockit Room I played a couple choice cuts and bobbed around while finishing my roommate’s beer.

The first band of the evening took their identity-crisis cues from Hector Babenco’s depression-era drama “Ironweed“, glorifying the hobo/drifter lifestyle by not bathing and playing guitar, a washboard and a bass made from a washtub, broom handle and a single tightly wound length of twine. The kids, friends of the birthday girl, ate this up and had skipped their showers special for the event. I tried not to be bothered by this and watched them play but wondering what to expect from the next two groups in the bill.

Zoyres was a quartet: full kit, tuba, clarinet/sax and trombone. Fascinating shit, ultimately danceable and exactly what I was hoping for. It’s weird how the tuba took over where the bass would be and the trombone player kicked ass playing with a brash style reminiscent (tho probably because I can only name two others: my dad and Labamba from the Conan O’Brien show) of Don Drummond. The Brass Menazeri was even more bombastic with nine members, three tuba type instruments, accordian, clarinet, saxaphones and trumpets along with two drummers (a hand bass and a couple rack snares) and vocals. Both are local and I would recommend you check out either if your local is the Bay Area.

So the evening went quite well even tho the drinks were horribly over-priced, most of the attendees living as caricatures running around like sugar-addled, snot-nosed brats and my getting home past my bedtime. I should just stop here…

But it makes you think, don’t it? So far as I could tell everyone in these bands were American born and bred but both bands played distinctly Eastern European (with some Klezmer mixed in) gypsy music with no obvious Americanization taking place. It’s as authentic as The Dropkick Murphys but somehow entirely less offensive. Hell, the opening band, The Inkwell Rhythm Makers, co-opted not only their music but their dress and shtick from impression of a time long gone. Does America, appropriate outside culture so readily and so completely that there’s no bothering with integrating it with our own? Or do we just not really have any cultural identity not relating to commerce so we borrow heavily from places that have more than a couple centuries under their belts?

Ysabella Dolfin wrote in her blog:

Watching local access Asian TV
In Japanese. A cooking show. I have no idea what any of the ingredients are… but I recognize ground beef and some type of musrhoom. I am getting the feeling they are cooking “American” food. But they are serving it over rice with sliced fresh spinach. The theme song is some kind of Japanese rap music.

Now that’s a proper culutral mish-mash– anything the Japanese have done since 1945 has basically been one form of cocktail or another. Pop music, art, fashion, day to day living, advertising, food… it seems that every aspect of Japan has been touched by America and has incorporated, in the most fucked up way possible, the source material by taking what they think they understand and dumping tradition on top. Hell, the Japanese advertising industry has essentially become the hallmark of the Japanese approach to international relations. Why are we so fascinating to them? Cowboys? The independence of owning your own car? Where the hell is our culture out in the world that’s not a McDonald’s?

PS- my efforts to make these pictures integrate into this post have failed but I’m sick of the second one disappearing so I’m gonne give up. Deal with it.

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