Woman’s Group Meeting, Kinshasa.

It’s true, and I don’t know how I feel about it.

I was in a kind of compound before, where if I wanted to go out for a beer I would have to take a Congolese boy with me and we would walk on splintered pavement in the pitch black. Occasionally he’d throw his hand out because a car threatened to run me down. Then we’d get to a tiny shop with no lights on and ask for beer. Inside the cramped space was littered with imported rice and flour, and I would sometimes see the long tail of a rat disappear into cinder block. Two warm beers and a walk back full of broken English and French conversation. He would tell me, “American boys are gooood, because they have this,” rubbing his fingers together to denote fingers full of cash. I would try to explain that this was first of all not true and that Congolese boys had plenty to offer. He looked confused, “No, you would not marry a black man?” “Aren’t you racist?”, and then I’d laugh a lot at him and he’d sort put the pieces together that I was in Congo by choice and walking with a black boy in the night.

I don’t know, I just slept all day and now I’m awake until morning. In any case, I’m back, and missing my friends.

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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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Hello Hello, I´m currently writing from a very cold apartment in Berlin, but by the time you get this I will be on my way to Johannesburg, and then into Kinshasa, Congo.

This morning my sister sent me a link to a special on 60 minutes about women in Congo. I must admit I find Anderson Cooper to be a little self-important and difficult to listen to, but this truly is not the point. His report covers the issues I will be dealing with in the upcoming project in Congo– in fact he visits and speaks to women in parts of the country I will be traveling. It was strange, to say the least, to watch this news report this morning when I will be right there in a few days.

I will have occasional access to email over the next few weeks and will send updates when possible.

And I promise, I will be careful.

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Hello legions of readers. Just a quick tip of the tip to a photographer who deals with security, homeland identity and shiny boiler suits. Paul Shambroom is not a rookie, he’s one of those ‘gradual geniuses‘ that lets his great ideas gestate for a few years. He is quoted as saying he knew 9/11 would affect the focus of his work but he didn’t quite know how.

He is not alone. Everyone was confused by 9/11. Not always by the events, but on how to respond accordingly in their work. This was of particular concern to photographers – those first in line to answer accusations of opportunistic career-building off the back of an international spectacle. People expect to see death and destruction on TV, but in an art gallery?…

Shambroom was at a disadvantage – he was not a photojournalist. Joel Meyerowitz cemented his reputation with some clever networking that sealed nine months of exclusive access. Jim Nachtwey went down to the rubble to create his documents. Elliott Erwitt went to the blood bank.

The effect of the 11th of September on Shambroom took a couple of years to emerge. In 2003 he rolled out – Security Series – from which a book was born. Previously, Shambroom had been working on a nuclear series, whereby he had gained access to restricted areas and big guns. He was accustomed to making tangential comment on government power. That was closely followed by Meetings. Conceptually Meetings is more engaging; the witty tableaux arrangement of mom and pop, micro-level civic groupings appeals to the self-absorbed art historian. BUT, Meetings hardly arouses the viewers latent fear like an image of a person looking like an E.T. extra.

Seriously, Shambroom as an artist is fantastic. Spend time with his images. He puts up a mirror to the crazy world we live in – a world where knowledge of chemical agents amounts to political power. I much preferred the days when anthrax was a butt-rock cliche, but one must admit that now it’s not so much the pen, but the letter that is more powerful than the sword … and the biological warhead.

Maybe the day will come when artists like Shambroom won’t have government drones in ridiculous suits as subjects; the day when contingency troops and emergency response units have no threat to answer. One possible route to such an unlikely absence of paranoia would be the newest weapon of mass deviation. It is a chemical/hormone/who know’s what the frig it is agent that turns infantry into a bunch of homosexuals baying for cock. I’d like to think that if superpowers unleashed this novel tactic simultaneously, military squads the world over would turn to the intellectual reasoning of most gay communities – that war, aggression, fear and paranoia are all linked, a fact evident mostly to minority groups. Nations would turn attentions to putting right their own civil injustices before they went to shoot up other continents.

Instead of disarray amongst the troops, the weapon would unleash heightened enlightenment and instant reconciliation across battle lines drawn. Gay is the new Peace – a simple theory, but I just thought I’d throw it out there. Perhaps, Larry Craig should run for president? Then again he’s not gay, his wife’s gormless grin tells us that … right?

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