New Blog!

Ok...so I've created a much more organised blog with categories and everything that can be reached by going to www.adamsloan.co.uk . It's still being worked on and everything due to my incredible lack of technical knowledge!

Cheers!
Adam

Another day another dollar...

I thought I would share with you something amusing that happened to me today at work, if for no other reason than something rarely does!

Anyway, I was standing at the back of my shop (it's a camping and outdoors store called Blacks for those of you who don't know!) and despite my meandering hopes a customer happened to come in, rather old, little bit on the overweight side. "Can I help you with anything at all?", I say, putting on my best fake smile and overenthusiasm. "Oh no thats ok, we're from the United States, touring the whole of the UK"...thanks, I wasn't actually offering you transportation or a place to stay, just help if you needed a new jacket/tent or anything! "You see that Cornish Pasty shop down the road, son?" This is the Cornish Pasty shop that I regularly get my lunch from on a Sunday afternoon, "I have a factory in Michigan that makes those things, 20,000 a week we put out, doing very well thank you." I didn't actually ask him how well his factory was doing, and unless he read my mind and realised I hadn't had any breakfast, I'm pretty sure I didn't mention Cornish Pasty's too him either!

"So, do you sell guns?" this I try and laugh off, until I realise he is actually serious. The thought that is going round in my head is the image off that Michael Moore movie where he goes out and talks to the "Michigan Militia." I inform him that no we don't sell guns, and he is unlikely to find anywhere around York city centre that does, "oh...too bad that, anyway nice talking too you" unfortunately I didn't share the sentiment.

Rape of the Congo - the war against women and children

Last week I made a trip down to London to interview the author, playwrite and columnist for the Independent, Johann Hari, about his time out in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Johann wrote a feature on the war for the Indy a few weeks ago and, with this being an issue I have cared about for some time, and with Johann being one of my favourite columnists, I thought it would be a great opportunity to go down to London and talk to him about his experiences.

I have to say this is probably the most difficult piece I have ever written. Hopefully it will become clear why when you read it.

So, here you are (excuse the lack of photos)...

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Rape of the Congo - the war against women and children

It is the most deadly war since Adolf Hitler’s army marched across Europe. Encompassing nine nations, dozens of militias and killing over four million people, yet weeks will go by and it gets barely even a mention. For many years now the whole Eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo has effectively been outside central government control. The Congo is a country the size of Western Europe, and since 1994, hundreds of thousands of children have been orphaned. Every day, women are kidnapped by militias, and rape has become a weapon of war.

Last month, Independent columnist Johann Hari went to travel out in the Congo, to investigate why the war continues to proliferate, and listen to the stories of the women and children who are most badly affected by the continuing violence; “I went to a rape clinic, it is the only rape clinic in Eastern Congo, called the Panzi hospital, where there were dozens of women who had been gang raped and shot in the vagina.” This is an increasingly common occurrence now in the Congo. Rather than fighting each other, the militias are trying to destroy the other side’s moral by fighting their women; “Sexual violence is absolutely endemic as a tool of war in the Congo.”

During his time in the Congo, Johann visited a hospital run by a man called Denis Mukwege, whom he described as “the Oskar Schindler” of the Congolese mass rapes. For years Dr. Mukwege was not allowed to treat the women, so he ran his hospital in secret; “he had a three year old girl brought in where, as he put it, ‘everything had been shot away’, and the father almost immediately committed suicide because he couldn’t cope with it. He had a very old woman brought in who had been gang raped in front of her sons in law.” The relationship between a mother and her son-in-law is a very holy one in the Congo; “she just said ‘don’t feed me, I want to die, I can never go back.” The women that make it to Dr. Mukwege’s hospital are, of course, the luck one’s. Most women are just left to die.

While the death toll in itself is horrifying enough. Only by looking at the individual tragedies can we begin to understand the horrors of this war; “The UN vehicle I was travelling in had a flat tyre and we had to stop. By the side of the road there was this woman called Mary Djembe, carrying this huge load.” In Congo, because no one really has cars and there are very few horses, women are basically used as packhorses. They are made to carry these absolutely huge loads for as little as 30 cents a day. “The load she was carrying weighed 200lb, I tried to carry it on my back and I couldn’t have walked to the other side of the road. I asked her how far she was going, and she said ’30 miles.”

During the journey, Mary recounted her story to Johann; “She was forced out when the Intrahamwe, one of the militias, started picking off women from her village. A very good friend of hers was taken. She came back a year later, she had been kept by the militia and repeatedly gang raped. When she came back her family wouldn’t look at her, and the woman just went completely mad and started tearing out her hair, before running back out into the forest. Mary and her husband moved to one of the towns which are slightly safer.”

So why have things ended up like this? Why does this war that ‘officially’ ended in 2003 continue to destroy so many lives? The answer is probably sitting right in front of you, in your computer, in your iPod and in your mobile phone. All of these electronic devices contain a metal called coltan, 80% of known supplies of which lie under the Congo.

The official story of how the war started centres around the tiny mountain state of Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide, the Hutu Power people who perpetrated it fled across the border into the Congo. What it is said then happened is the Rwandan forces went across the border to capture them. Other countries then invaded as a countervailing force and you had Africa’s first world war.

The UN panel of experts set up to look into the causes of the war discovered a more sinister story though. What was found was that Rwanda did not invade to go after the perpetrators of the genocide, but to seize the mineral resources of Congo and sell them on to us in the West. Due to the increasing popularity of mobile phones and playstations, the price of coltan boomed during the 1990’s. This made it much more attractive for Rwanda and the other international armies and militias to go in there and take it; “As Oona King puts it, kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living room.”

Johann went with Oona King, University of York graduate and former Labour party MP, to visit an orphanage just outside the Congolese capital of Kinshasa; “we were told this was one of the best orphanages in the Congo. When we arrived, the first room we went into, the children were just covered in shit, and flies and vomit. One child was lying on the floor just shaking. They said this was where the Aids babies go.

“There was one boy just rocking back and forward, and we asked ‘what is wrong with this kid?’ They said ‘he’s been like that since he arrived here.’ We asked what his name was and they said ‘he doesn’t have a name.”

It is not only Congo’s physical landscape that is in ruins, it is it’s psychological one too; “There has always been an idea of witchcraft in the Congo but it has always generally applied to older people, it is very new and is a product of the war to accuse children of being witches.

“In the orphanage we saw a child who they called ‘Fidel’, they didn’t know his name because he hadn’t spoken, who had his penis cut off by his parents because they thought he was a witch. I went to one of the evangelical churches promoting this idea of witchcraft in a place called Bukavu. I met a 14-year-old girl who was accused of being a witch. She said that her grandmother had came to her in her sleep, and forced her to eat an evil doughnut, and this evil doughnut had meant she had killed her baby sister. This girl had been made to believe she had really done these things, and that she had turned into a dog and a cat and gone out and killed people in the night.” Johann pauses for a while; “If Britain had 4 million people murdered, and the rest of us displaced from our homes, living in terror and gang raped, we would start to believe some pretty crazy things too.”

The UN has a force of 17,000 international peacekeepers in the Congo. If you consider the immense size of the country however, this really doesn’t work out as many. When you consider as well, that every country that has ever had UN peacekeepers deployed in it could fit inside Congo, and there would still be room for France; “This is by far the biggest peace keeping mission that the UN has ever tried. They do some good, but they simply don’t have the resources. They are not even able to bind the wound, never mind treat it.”

Buck 65 Interview

Last night I luckily had the opportunity to interview Buck65 after a gig he played in York. Here is the result! I have never written a music feature so would more than welcome any comments anyone has.
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Buck 65

Presenting an eclectic mix of hip-hop, blues and folk music, Buck 65 has moved on echelons since the start of his career. First introduced to hip-hop during his University life in the 1980’s, he started his own work with a series of mix-tapes, back in the early 90’s. Super articulate and somewhat elusive, when reading about him you tend to be left we the impression that there is more to his story than just what you are being let on to. He is a self-confessed ‘hermit’ however, preferring to write, produce and record alone, only fairly recently coming out of his shell.

Richard ‘Buck 65’ Teffry is spending a lot of time on the road at the moment promoting his new album, ‘Secret House Against the World’. In fact, since signing a major record deal in 2002, he has had very little time to take a break and relax, but just keeps the music coming and keeps the touring going; “I do enjoy the life on the road. When I do get a bit of a break for a while, and the time starts to get close when I have to leave again, there is a part of me that says ‘ahh, I don’t want to go!’ but then as soon as I get started I just love it so much…when I do finally go back home, I try to relax and I just miss being out there touring.”

Buck has spent most of his life in the small Nova Scotia town of Mount Euniacke. Much of his current work is emblazoned with references to his life in his home town; “Sometimes when you are really up close to something you kind of have to back away to really see it. I have heard an expression, the mouse and the elephant, the mouse is so small that it doesn’t even know it is standing in front of the elephant until it backs up. I was standing in front of an elephant.”

Buck continues to talk about his home town with both a sense of nostalgia and a thankful relief that he has somehow managed to escape; “I’m kind of one of the first people to have really come out of that town. I think I am actually one of the first to have ever left! Most small town people just tend to stay there!” Reflecting for a minute though, he then says; “When I was there, the town was just normality. When I moved away though and had other things to compare it to, I ended up getting really home sick. So what has ended up, is this small town where I came from became more of an influence after I left then when I actually lived there. It is very deep inside of me and it just has almost everything to do with who I am.”

More recently, the municipal government of Mount Euniacke has started to recognise his achievements as a musician; “They have set up, like, a scholarship in my name! For a local community college, a trade school, where kids will go to learn practical skills, and I just thought ‘that’s great!’ I don’t know what all this means but they are giving me the keys to the town and putting my name on the sign! Of all the great and rewarding experiences that have happened to me in my life, I have to say, that is probably the one that makes me the most proud.”

Much of Buck’s early career was based around the underground hip-hop scene. His first collection to be released to critical acclaim was the Man Over Board album, on the Anticon label. Before that he had released many collaborative hip-hop tapes, however he doesn’t look back too fondly now on much of his early work. In a 2004 interview with Kerrang! Magazine he said he had “grown to hate” hip-hop music and that “people behind hip hop music don’t know anything about music theory.” Buck was then slammed by former Anticon label mates and later retracted his comments.

The last two albums especially however have shown exactly how much he has moved on from his early work; “I think of myself as more of a music fan than a musician in my own right. I am obsessed with it. I buy music every single day. I have the biggest record collection I have ever seen, and due to the fact that I am really hungry when I listen, I learn from the new music I am hearing and am continually inspired.”

Progression in his music also reflects on how he has grown up since he first started recording; “When I wrote my first songs I was a teenager and now I have grey hair on my face! My music is all personal though, and that being the case it is a reflection of who I am, and how I am a changing person, for better or for worse.”

Where Buck really comes into his own however, is of course his live shows. He doesn’t just play his songs, he is a real entertainer; “I always try and keep it new and different. With people who have seen me before, I want to give them a reason to keep on coming again, and I don’t want anyone to walk away thinking ‘well, I could have just stayed at home and listened to the record,’ so I like to mix things up, put on a show and try to interact.”

What is really obvious is just how much Buck 65 just loves making music; “I’m trying to be super-prolific at the moment. Trying to write a new song every day, and I’m going to try and put a lot of new material out, use my website and my myspace page, just constantly throw new stuff out there. Not stuff I am going to sell, just like, here’s more music, more music! I just want to go on, learn more and more instruments, try and learn more and more theory. I have a close friend living near me who went to music school and I am always asking about ten questions a day! Recently, I have also re-kindled a relationship with my school music teacher from when I was a kid!”

While he is on stage, Buck 65 comes across as quite the extravert. However when he is not performing, he really just prefers to work alone, listen to music and, it appears, return to being elusive; “I hopefully want to go back one day to just being a complete hermit. I am really anti-social, and it tends to be the way I am most comfortable.” His more recent music has seen him collaborating with some big-name producers; “When I did the last record, with Tortoise and other people, I was terrified! I suppose it was good for me, to put myself in an uncomfortable position and work from it. Almost as an experiment, like 'lets see what happens if I work from an area of complete discomfort'”
“Doing collaborative things here and there is fun, but I work best alone I think.”

Visas!

There is something strangely satisfying about receiving back your passport with a freshly stuck visa on one of the inside pages. Of the places I have been, Russia and Moldova, two of the countries I will be going to this summer, are the only one’s I have ever actually had to apply for a visa in advance for! I think the whole process encompasses a mixture of anxiety (will they accept me?), and anticipation. Having a visa sticker or stamp in your passport is about as “official” as you can get, so you know that wherever you will be going is that one step closer.

Thankfully my passport now contains both my Russian and Moldovan visa’s, meaning all there is for me to do now is show up on the border and get stamped in :-)