The Moth

Here is a city culture article I wrote about The Moth, a wonderful organization supporting the art of storytelling, that was published recently in my school's newspaper, Communiqué. It was also posted here on Columbia's The Morningside Post. 

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“What is this, ‘Occupy Crosby Street?’” a man asks as he passes by a line of people that has wrapped around the block in the SoHo neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.

Some in the crowd could easily be mistaken for the occupiers camped out a few blocks away, with their thick-rimmed glasses and their hip T-shirts advertising obscure bands you’ve probably never heard of. But in this same group stands a woman in her mid-forties, dressed fashionably in black and looking like she might have just stepped out of a nearby boutique.

The passerby gives this woman in particular a peculiar look. She is talking under her breath and making hand gestures to no one in particular, holding handwritten notes in one hand and her iPhone in another as a five-minute timer ticks away on the phone’s screen.

“No, it’s The Moth,” a girl in line answers.  The man turns to the girl and furrows his brow in confusion. “A public storytelling event,” she explains.

“Huh.” The man gives a slight shrug and turns away into the night, casting one last glance at the woman who, engrossed in her own narrative, has not even noticed him. The forward movement of the line snaps her back to attention, though, as this throng of New Yorkers eagerly presses in to get a good seat for tonight’s featured entertainment: story time.

Every week or two, crowds like this show up at standing-room-only venues in New York City and other major U.S. cities for a chance to hear personal stories told by ordinary people. These StorySLAMs, as they are called, are put on by The Moth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling that began in 1997 as a gathering of friends swapping stories on a porch in Georgia.

Some people come just to watch and listen. Others, like the woman in black, come with stories in hand, ready to jump up on stage if her name is drawn and share a funny or touching tale with a room full of complete strangers.

Interview

Good news! An interview I did with Pamela Yates, producer of the powerful film Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, got picked up by a new blog by Columbia's Institute for the Study of Human Rights. Check out the interview HERE and the film trailer below.

Granito is up for Academy Award consideration this year - let's hope it gets nominated!

"We Know What We Need"

I just came across this post I wrote for another blog during a 2008 trip that took me to Nicaragua, among other places. I realized I never posted it on my own blog. It was so nice reading it and remembering the lessons I was learning, I thought I'd share it on here.

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[Thursday, July 31, 2008]

When the rooster right outside your home begins crowing at 4:30am, you quickly understand why people in the campo wake up so early.  Or at least that was my experience this morning.  The day starts early in Ramon Garcia, with breakfast to make, washing to be done and kids to get ready for school.  I had the great pleasure of spending my days in a small home with a young woman named Yolanda and her two daughters, Maria Jose and Gladys.  This morning, while the girls washed in the nearby river, Yolanda taught me to make corn tortillas from scratch.  Along with beans, corn is a staple item of this community -- and I’ll tell you that the tortillas and other fresh food in this community have been delicious. 

Gladys

After breakfast, our group met up with Don Julio, a community leader, to see some typical crops that community members grow.  The people of Ramon Garcia rely on the food they grow not only to feed their families, but they also sell their extra yield to generate some income.  So by going around to view their crops, we were seeing a major part of their lives.  We first visited a nearby parcel of land before going on a rather long hike to visit Don Julio’s land.  The walk probably took us at least 45 minutes each way as we picked our way across the river and along hillsides covered with rows and rows of beans, which is their primary crop. 

Hearing Don Julio’s story impressed upon me the power of ownership in an agrarian society.  Don Julio rents his land, and paying rent means giving half of each harvest to the land owner.  A good harvest yields about twelve 100-lb. bags of beans, so that leaves six bags for the family.  Two bags must be saved to plant next year’s crop, and three bags are used to feed their family.  So at best, that leaves one bag to sell – although they must often hire outside help for the harvest, which cuts into that available income that is needed for other food and household items, school fees, etc.

Walking to Don Julio's lands

I was also reminded today of a lesson we learned in Ethiopia concerning the volatility of a developing economy that relies on agricultural production, as Yolanda told me about a bad plague that destroyed their bean crop last year.  I cannot imagine the frustration of working so hard to plant and cultivate, all for nothing.  But what is worse, without that source of food and income, Yolanda had to leave her family to hire herself out as a domestic servant in Managua for six months.  Plagues, poor rain and natural disasters are impossible to predict, and in families like Yolanda’s or economies like Ethiopia’s with little resources or social safety nets, such things can be devastating. 

The amazing thing, though, is that these stories are told without a hint of complaint.  Although people do talk about ways life could be improved in the community, I have been so impressed by how strong and incredibly intelligent the people in Ramon Garcia are.  Later in the afternoon after our hike, we met with some of the women leaders in the community, and the thing that stuck out to me most in this conversation was their clear understanding of their current situation: “Our most difficult struggle is that we know what we need to solve our problems. We just lack the capacity to make it happen.”           

These words of Daisy, one of the women, linger in my brain as I reflect on other times along the way we have heard people -- from physicians and educators to community leaders and government officials -- say that they know what is required to fight their problems of poverty, but the resources just aren’t there.  This has caused our group to take a second look at the way we think about development work and consider shifting from imposing plans made outside the local context and doing everything ourselves to listening to, learning from and trying to resource these local leaders who already possess expert knowledge about their own problems with poverty.

As the sun began to set on our last full day in Ramon Garcia, the community prepared to send our group off in style. They were going to throw us a fiesta, we were told.  What we were not told is that after a few performances of cultural dance, the gringos would be expected to get up and join in!  After a bit of general awkwardness, we all embraced the dance and had a great time until late in the night.

I am glad I got to write about this day in the campo, because I look back on it now as one of my favorites.  And even now, as I go about life back in the US, I cannot help but look at my grocery list and wonder about whose work went into growing that food – whether it was from a community like this one which is persevering against great odds to try to enjoy the work of their hands. 

"Quick Cash"

Here's a photo I took in Kono, near the diamond fields of Sierra Leone, that was featured
in a recent email publication by my grad program.

Costs & Benefits: Trying to Update a Blog in Salone

It is past time for a blog update!  I generally find myself with little time to give updates here, but when I do actually sit down to write one the internet connection doesn't allow me to post it!  

So this one has been hanging out for a while to get posted, but delayed as it is, it's a small attempt to get somewhat back on track by sticking something from work up here.  I have many more pictures and things to update on, but as the internet is so unreliable here and what with me leaving on Monday (wow! already?) to return to the States, I may have to wait and post those things there in the land of speedy internet connections.

But until then, I am posting below a press release I wrote for the release of two reports analyzing some flaws in mining agreements between the Government of Sierra Leone and foreign companies.  The basic idea is that the government has violated its own laws in granting too many financial concessions to the companies, which means they lose out on substantial tax revenues that could/should be put toward development projects here.

We launched the report in two provincial towns out in the central part of the country where these two companies are operating, then had a national launch here in Freetown.  This week I got to go to the State House (Sierra Leone's version of the White House) for the launch of a work plan on the Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative, and the Government Chief of Staff actually mentioned the reports and said they were committing to take up the recommendations made in them!  It remains to be seen if they will actually make good on that promise, but it was neat to hear them brought out in a pretty high-level forum and to get some form of commitment from the government.

The press release is below, and to spice things up I'm also including a couple photos from the launches at the bottom of the page:

Reports Uncover Flaws in Mining Agreements with London Mining and African Minerals Limited

Freetown, Sierra Leone, 12 July 2011 - The Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD) today released two cost-benefit analysis reports that reveal flaws in recent mining agreements made by the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) with the London Mining Company (London Mining) and African Minerals Limited (African Minerals). 

“These two contracts, if allowed to go on as ratified, will amount to holding Sierra Leone economically hostage and will reinforce the notion of the natural resource curse,” says Mr. Abu Brima, Executive Director of NMJD.  “This obviously spells doom and undermines everything that has been done in the country to secure peace and work for change.”

The reports indicate that according to information accessed regarding iron ore mining agreements made with these companies in the past year, Sierra Leone will be deprived of large amounts of tax revenue by implementing these agreements.  They also state that the GoSL is violating its own laws through the heavy fiscal concessions it has granted to both African Minerals and London Mining.  This sets a bad precedent for future mining agreements, they note, as it will now be difficult for the GoSL to fully implement laws such as the Mines and Minerals Act in the future.

“The government’s priority that the country needs as much foreign investment as it can secure is much appreciated, but at what cost?” states one report.

De Bodi Fine

Welcome to Sierra Leone!  How de bodi? De bodi fine?

As an update I thought I'd post some pictures on here.  These first few were taken at a beach outside Freetown where the River Number 2 feeds into the Atlantic. It's a beautiful place - it made me feel like I had been dropped in the middle of Jurassic Park.  It was also strange and nice to have such a picturesque paradise almost completely to ourselves.

I don't live in this paradise, but the view isn't too bad from where I stay, either.  Here's the view of Freetown and the Atlantic from the porch of my house:

So I'm working with the Mining & Extractives Program at a Sierra Leonean organization, and last week I went out with a group to visit mining sites in the areas outside Freetown to look for evidence of child miners there and document our findings.  It's illegal in Sierra Leone for children under the age of 18 to mine, but we found several there - most of them were there with their family members, who said the children were mining because they were poor and needed the money or the kids had been chased away from school for lack of school fees.

Here are some photos from the site visits:

A child miner with his grandmother at a granite mining site

 The boy in the center is 6 years old, working at this mine with his family members pictured here

Sand miners bringing sand in on boats

Poor fisherman with his boat at a sand mining site

Child miner breaking rocks

So things are going well so far.  I'm enjoying the rainy season for the most part because it cools things down, although it does turn everything into one big mud puddle.  It's also mango season, and I'm trying my best not to be too much of a glutton!  Internet is very slow here, which will make updates a bit difficult to get up, but I'll try to post when I am able!  

Sierra Leone

Boo!

Just a quick post to say that I'm heading out tomorrow morning to Sierra Leone in West Africa for the summer! 

I am doing an internship for a Sierra Leonean organization called the Network Movement for Justice and Development, or NMJD for short.  I'll be working with the program on mining and extractives and am going to try and pick up as much of this awesome language as possible:

I don't know yet what my internet access will be like yet, but I'll be living in Freetown, the capital, so it should be available, and I will try my best to write updates on here whenever possible!  Until then, I'll leave you with a lovely image which I hope is just a preview of what I expect to see upon my descent into the country:

Photo Credit: Dave Tacon