Burundi rebels’ unintentional allies

The peace is shaky again in Burundi, where the government is accusing the FNL rebels of plotting further attacks, and the FNL are saying–as they have been for years–that they just want to be a legitimate political party. So says Reuters.

This is good news for anyone who makes money off of instability, which is a bigger group of people and profit than most of us compassionate naifs often think. It’s also good news, perhaps, for a surprising actor: an anti-landmine organizatoin.

I found this on Reuters Alertnet a few weeks ago:

The team with me, from Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD), are hoping to complete an ambitious mission in September and declared Burundi the first conflict zone in the world completely free of all known landmines and unexploded ordnance.

To meet that goal, of course, requires that Burundi still be considered a conflict zone with the FSD finishes its operations, be that ahead of schedule or behind. I’m sure the good people of FSD had no such intention, and I’m clearly feeling a little snarky today, but the goal crafted for a sound byte is just a bit too ironic to pass up.

“It is finished in my heart,” or, how to forgive the man who cut off your arm

I don’t have any idea. But here’s what Temba Kekura told me (this is the last part of my Sierra Leone series; if you read yesterday’s post, you haven’t seen this yet):

Before the war, when his village and his family and his body were whole, Temba Kekura was a farmer. He had few things, simple things, the things he needed – land, crops, family, and two strong arms. Then he became part of a story that repeats, village after Sierra Leonean village.

The rebels came. They looted, burned houses, raped. They killed Mr. Kekura’s mother, and when he refused to join the force, one of them cut off his right arm.

So now, he calls himself a gardener. He tends peppers and okra with a hoe. Proper crops – cassava, sweet potatoes, and rice – he leaves to men with two arms, or to their war widows.

Most days, his arm, that arm, hurts. “Whenever I feel pain, I just think bad things,” he says about his life, about himself, but mostly about the man who left him this way. “My heart spoils.”

So he has never talked about what happened; but his body tells a story everyone knows on sight. That story starts with Fallah Sakila.

Really, I went to Sierra Leone; or, A look at reconciliation, village by village

Way back in March, the Christian Science Monitor sent me to Sierra Leone to report a series on ‘grassroots reconciliation,’ for lack of a better term, after the war there.

It’s finally seen the light of day, in a three-parter which began yesterday. Here’s the setup:

John Caulker might know the rough, red-rock roads of rural Sierra Leone better than he knows the hallways of his own office in Freetown, the seaside capital.

There, streets are crowded equally by people and piles of trash – a sign, in its own unintentional way, of abundance. Kids hawk candies, shammies, pirated DVDs, and cellphone chargers. They tease you, in the heat, with cold Cokes and baggies of drinking water tied tight at the top. An hour in traffic – a rather common way to pass an hour in Freetown – and you can do a day’s shopping from your car window.

Here, to the east, in the villages where Mr. Caulker has done human rights work for 10 years, neither goods nor income are disposable. Every kid’s belly seems to sag for lack of food. All that can be found for sale are staples – cassava, mangos, rice. Then there are the signs of the brutal, decade-long civil war: Abandoned houses, some clearly shelled, stand apathetically along the road. In one village, a rusting tank, its cannons sometimes used as makeshift laundry lines, sits at a crossroad, inscribed hopefully, “For Sale!”

The farther Caulker goes on his cross-country trips, the farther away Freetown seems – geographically, existentially. In countries recovering from war, capitals have the edge. They’re the places where political power is reestablished, aid projects are launched, and donor money flows. It’s in the capitals that the “postwar reconstruction” agenda, engineered in good part abroad, begins.

“It’s like they have this postconflict checklist: Truth commission, tick. Military assistance, tick. Trials, tick. Next. Go on to the next country,” Caulker says. “But the people have answers. They have their cultural values.”

Caulker wants to put those values on that checklist. For months, he has been traveling from village to village, reviving fambul tok – family talk in Krio (an English creole). It’s a tradition with a long history – before the war; before, even, the white man – and a range of meanings. Villagers sat around nightly bonfires, telling jokes and recounting the day’s events. Sometimes, fambul tok resolved disputes, adjudicating everything from petty theft to matrimonial discord. The practice made villagers more than neighbors; it united them as a fambul.

Caulker thinks these old ways may be Sierra Leone’s best method for dealing with its newest problem: reconciling rural communities after a war felt most brutally in these villages he says fell through the gaps of the postwar checklist. Here, former soldiers live again alongside the women they raped or whose husbands they killed, or the men whose hands they cut off. They didn’t apologize; didn’t acknowledge the past. They just, Caulker says, moved back in.

The series continues today, and concludes tomorrow (with video!). Hope you’ll check it out.

Apologies–mine, and otherwise

Oh, so many apologies.

* First, to my few but devoted commenters–commentors? how is it spelled? this new internet age!–whose wonderful thoughts I’ve let languish in the “awaiting approval” pipeline. Sorry about that; it’s been a bit crazy here, and I didn’t want to click in and out until I could really engage.

So, here I am, ready for you. Which is by no means to assume that you are still there.

* Second, an apology on apologies: My post on Canada’s truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) elicited the ire of one reader (whom I don’t know), who vigorously and quite rightly nudged me to correct my assumption that there’s no reparations involved in the Canadian TRC. I had assumed–wrongly and stupidly–that if there were a reparations scheme, the BBC would’ve reported it. I’d been doing so much of my own reporting on truth and reconciliation measures, and so much work at grad school before that, and reparations have never not come up in those conversations, so I figured it would be part and parcel of any story on a TRC. (Though a bit of sympathy to the BBC: I had 4,000 words over three days to deal with Sierra Leone, and I still had trouble getting a graph about reparations in.)

My Astute Reader is not right about the amount–it’s $2 billion, according to the International Center for Transitional Justice, and not $4.9 billion as s/he asserts–but is right about the fact that it’s part of the package. In fact, the ICTJ says reparations and the TRC were negotiated at the same time, which is pretty remarkable: So often, governments fear TRCs because of reparations. ‘Open an official truth-telling process,’ the logic goes, ‘and people will eventually ask you for money for the suffering you’ve given them space to talk about.’ It’s been a problem smart people in transitional justice have been working on for a long time. So this Canadian commission is good news on that front. (Quick note, just to temper this a bit: A 2003 article in the journal Comparative Education says that more than 9,000 lawsuits had been filed against the Canadian government in a bid to get reparations–and that was just in 2003. So the reparations fight was not a short, quick battle.)

What makes me sad about all this is that the woman I met in Montreal in October 2007, who had been through the residential school system, didn’t know anything about it. ICTJ says the agreement was negotiated in 2006 and the payments started in 2007; but when I met her at the Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide, she still felt neglected and anonymous. She hadn’t seen any money yet, or heard of any.

Certainly all the press this is getting, in Canada and beyond, will change that. Also, I’m citing an example of a single individual, which certainly no statistician, and not even a good journalist, would ever get away with. But I think there’s still a lot to be learned–and not just in Canada–about how to make these institutional processes reach far and wide, to make the majority of those they’re supposed to help feel included.

Which, to be unforgivably self-referential, some of these question are part of what my series on Sierra Leone is about.

But at the heart of that post on Canada is a question that has been gnawing me for a long time. It’s not just about TRCs; it’s about the whole notion of story-telling. We say–we, journalists; we, TRC commissioners; we, peacebuilders; insert-other-we-here–that sharing stories, or “truth telling,” or “giving testimony,” or any other favored locution, brings benefits: many people say it helps the teller, by bringing closure or giving voice or some such thing (though in interviews I did for the Sierra Leone stories, many people also acknowledged ‘truth telling’ has the potential to re-traumatize). Many people say it’s good for society, a learn-from-the-past-so-you-don’t-repeat-it thing. Many people say it helps us craft history.

All these things are true, to varying degrees–and, surely, like everything, are sometimes not true. It’s the second one that concerns me, which is why I harped on that quote in the BBC piece: I’m worried that we are–that I, too, am–too quick to offer platitudes about the social utility of listening to victims. I’m not entirely sure that, if something awful happened to me, I’d want someone to say, “Tell us, for the good of America.” I think I would probably be tempted to say, “Get lost.” And I’m surprised more people don’t say that to me.

Which must mean that one of those justifications, or some other one I haven’t included, really do carry some weight. It’s just that sometimes, it’s impossible for me to understand.

A note on Zimbabwean notes

Saw this on the BBC headlined, “No paper for Zimbabwean money.”

It’s wrong, I know, but that’s kind of funny: The Germans supply the country with paper to print bank notes on, but because of the election, they’ve said, “No more.” So now, Zimbabwe can’t print any more money.

Which may be the best thing to happen to the value of Zimbabwe’s currency in quite awhile?

Ever on the edge

I’m keeping a list of things I need to blog, and I’ll get there, I promise. In the interim, a newsflash from the other side of the continent, where ethnic violence in a small town in Ghana is worrying the country. Ghana’s not really a place you think about as prone to ethnic violence…then again, whose early warning system predicted the Kenyan clashes this year? I can’t think of one. (But if you can, tell me.)

Via the BBC:

There are fears that a long-standing chieftaincy dispute between two ethnic groups, the Kusasi and the Mamprusi, is spiralling out of control despite a heavy military presence and a dusk-to-dawn curfew which has been in place since the beginning of the year.

To up the ante a bit on this, Ghana’s got national elections at the end of this year. Ethnic violence…politics…hasn’t really been a good combination anywhere in the world, even when the former is ’small scale.’

The universalities and idiosyncracies of civil service

The mail in Kigali works. I can finally vouch for it personally.

It takes a while–one month, door to door, for a package from my mom. Which doesn’t sound so bad, except she thought she was paying for it to arrive in four days. Well, she did pay for that. What she forgot was the Africa factor, in which time expands, sometimes exponentially, and no one thinks it’s strange.

What else no one here thinks is strange is that you have to pay to pick up your package. The price seems to be in proportion, somehow, to the size of the package—a big one cost me 500-something francs, or a little more than a buck, and the small one 120 or so. When I asked why, they said it a security fee–to keep the package in a secured room. Which I thought was part of what I paid for when I rented the PO Box for a year, but no mind.

What does turn out to be true, everywhere, is that postmen are afflicted by curtness. It’s just impossible for them to be nice. I’m going to pretend it makes Kigali…familiar…

The upside of all this–sort of–is that I am chomping on some instant Cream of Wheat, cinnamon sugar style, and I am reminded what food tastes like when it consists most of chemicals and additives. Nasty, is the answer.

But I grew on on this crap, and so it’s nasty in a sweet, nostalgic way.

I can’t wait for the instant grits. Take me home…

A step, or a leap, or maybe nothing at all, for African women

About a week ago, the Christian Science Monitor ran an article I wrote from Sierra Leone on a new law protecting women in war zones. The law–less a law than an international precedent which may, or may not, become influential–categorizes the crime of forced marriage as a crime against humanity, for the first time ever.

Forced marriage is pretty pervasive here. It happened en masse during the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone; it still goes on in Uganda and Congo. It’s surely happening in other places that are less on our radars. All crimes are viscous, but this one is somehow especially cruel: it changes forever the status women have in their communities, making it impossible for them to try to ‘go back to normal’—the way the soldiers who kidnap them as wives get to do—after war.

I haven’t blogged it yet because there’s so many other things to say, in addition to what made it in the piece, but I still haven’t wrapped my head around it yet. So expect to see more on this.

Here’s the story:

“In Africa, justice for ‘bush wives’”

Observations in three acts

I.

I have met only one person in Africa–though I’ve only been to four countries–who is, as a rule, early. But I’ve found the one place where gaggles of people will arrive far ahead of time: the bus station on the Kigali-Kampala route. For good reason: that bus, somehow, leaves early. Early. In Africa.

II.

I have found the place where that same gaggle, or any other really, moves like New Yorkers: Immigration posts. Pushing, shoving, cutting in line, thrusting hands over shoulders and between elbows just to get your passport through the window before the guy who is, legitimately, in front of you. Only to stand around and wait, for an hour and a half, for the bus to be inspected.

III.

And I have found the country of remarkable slogans. I don’t know what’s in the air, or the water, or the curriculum in Uganda, but their advertising begs for a roll of the eyes. “Peacock: The Painter’s Paint!” or “Nice Clear Pens: CLEARLY the right choice!” (I suppose it’s better than “the write choice”?) But my favorite is: “BANDAG: Only Bandag is Bandag.”

That’s right. You heard it here first.

‘I conquered the Nile,’ or, a story that makes me sound far cooler than I am

I rafted the whitewater of the Nile River a few days ago. Please be duly impressed.

I’ve been wanting to go whitewater rafting pretty much my whole life; I grew up in West Virginia, which is actually known for its whitewater, even among the badass raft guides here, who tell stories that go like this: “Both the Nile and the Zambezi [in Zimbabawe] have a lot of class 5 rapids, but in the Zambezi you’re in a gorge, so if the boat flips, you get thrown against a rock wall.” Or: “If water catches the boat in the wrong places, it gets pulled it through two rocks, which squeeze it, and the rafters end up with broken jaws or legs or whatever.”

I broke nothing, and I was not flipped against any rocks. But I did mock the Nile at one point, and I was suitably punished. We’d just rafted our way through Bujagali Falls, the intensity of which I only appreciate because I put myself in a little rubber boat and bounced my way through it. The rush was incredible, and everything after that just looked small. So on the next “rapid,” which was really more of a gurgle, I said something cocky, and pretty much on cue, the Nile kicked me right out of the boat. It’s okay, I deserved that, and the wee bit of panic I felt being stuck under the boat briefly came in handy at the end.

Here’s a rafting tip: If you’re going to fall out of boats, the best place to do that, perhaps, is in the whitewater itself. If you’re properly suited, in a life jacket and a helmet, the river works with you, even when it’s knocking you around a little bit. When you get sucked under a big, roaring wave, you’ll eventually get spit out somewhere, and a safety kayaker will come over and rescue you.

In fact, that is the hard part. You can’t just grip the man for dear life and let him drag you ashore. There’s a process: You hold on to the front of the kayak—there’s a handle on the nose—and you wrap your legs up and around it, so you’re facing your rescuer, boat on your belly, and you’re both trying not to think about how ugly your feet are. This sounds a lot easier than it actually is, and I think this is why they don’t really like to let children raft. Getting rescued by a safety kayaker takes a certain degree of sexual skill.

Or you can just rescue yourself, which, having always been rather an independent woman, is what I did. At the end of the journey, there’s an optional rapid called “the bad place.” The others have cutesy names like “the Silverback” (for the gorillas here) or “50/50” (your chances of flipping, of course). Even “the dead Dutchman,” a rapid not for tourists, feels like rather a charming epithet by the time you get there. But “the bad place” is simply literal: If you hit anything wrong in the rapid, it will kick you to the bad place, and your boat will flip, and you will be drug under water awhile.

Which is precisely what happened. We tried to go in on the easy side and stay to the right, where nothing really has to happen, but we hit a wave wrong, and we were kicked to the bad place. (Our guide told us afterward that We flipped, but I managed to hold on to the rope of the boat, and when I realized it wouldn’t be that hard not to let go, the rest of the ride was tremendous: three or four huge waves that suck you in, and then let you roll through them (assuming you’re geared up, of course). I was sad when we pass through the water and our guide righted the boat and made us go rescue the others. It was so nice in there.

It’s a great trip, but like everything here, not one that doesn’t trouble your conscience. The ride back to the campsite, where you feast on a yummy barbecue, takes you through tiny village after tiny village of impoverished people. You’re eating potato chips and drinking some crappy high-fructose juice cocktail, and naked kids with bobbing bellies chase your truck and ask you for things. You’ve just dropped on a day’s worth of “adventure” more money than any of these kids’ parents probably earns in a year.

But if you don’t beat yourself up too badly about that, the serenity of the Ugandan countryside after the adrenaline rush of rafting is amazing. You travel at that magical hour, when the light is the best, and everything has a hint of mystery in it.

Post script for adventurers: If you have any desire to be able to say, “I rafted the Nile,” do it now. They’re building a dam there, and when it’s done, there won’t be any more whitewater.