A microwave and other stories

Prepared for my Storytelling assignment with Tony Woodcock, President of NEC:

A few days after arriving in Boston, I happened to find myself at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. As I walked into the atrium of the main house, I found a courtyard setting that I did not imagine from having seen the outside. An early 1900s façade hid a Roman-inspired courtyard with Gothic windows, topiary and an original mosaic of Medusa. A sense of calm and peace came over me in the face of such a beautiful setting. This helped to ease the emotions I was experiencing after some recent traumatic events.

A few days before, I had been travelling from Tanzania for over forty hours when I finally arrived at 18 Dalrymple St at 9.30 in the evening. I had been assured by my soon-to-be flatmates that the key to the flat would be in an envelope with my name on it in the mailbox. Examining all three mailboxes yielded no mail of any sort, let alone a key. In the true British spirit of ‘Keep calm and carry on’, I went through several options. These included furiously and repeatedly pressing the doorbells to the three apartments in the building. No success. Then I tried trundling my luggage up and down the street to find 7 Dalrymple St where I knew the landlord lived. Myself and several other inhabitants of Dalrymple St were unable to find the location of this phantom house. So I walked back to the T station hoping to phone a taxi who might be able to take me to a hotel or hostel that would let guests check in past ten o’clock. I only had a Tanzanian phone and so had to remember how to use a pay phone, and ordered a taxi that said it would arrive in fifteen minutes. I also phoned the number I had for my soon-to-be flatmate who didn’t answer her phone. I sat outside the T station for about an hour and no taxi showed up. I started to contemplate the relative comforts of sleeping on the front porch or in the bushes by the trash bins.

In the meantime, the lovely lady at the T help desk had come over to see if I was alright. She started off by asking me where I was from. She had heard me order the taxi and thought that I had excellent English. Thanks I said, I’m from the UK. She replied by saying, Do they speak English there? Luckily before I could launch into a detailed linguistic history of the English language, which she obviously needed, a man came over to report something. He told us that he had observed a man coming off the train, dumping a microwave on the wall outside the station, and then going back into the station. Of course, this is suspicious behaviour so the lovely lady at the T had to call the Boston Transport Police.

An awesome policewoman turned up shortly after and examined the microwave which she deemed to be an innocent piece of kitchen equipment after all. She and the lovely lady at the T were discussing this, when the lovely lady at the T told the awesome policewoman about my predicament. The awesome policewoman happened to know a place that was fairly cheap, so she phoned them up and booked a room for me. Check-in closed at midnight and it was already 11.30. So of course the only way I could get there in time was by police escort.

So my first day in Boston was finished by a high speed journey with sirens blaring through downtown Boston to get to the hotel in time. You can imagine what people were thinking when I arrived at this hotel at midnight in a police car – the faces of the other guests in the reception were pretty priceless. They weren’t impressed with my story of having been stranded and then saved by a lovely lady at the T and an awesome policewoman.

I am sure that Isabella Stewart Gardner would have approved of rescuing abandoned stray artists from the streets of Boston, and might have even given me refuge in her Museum, so that I could recover from my ordeal by relaxing by a Roman fountain. This story also shows that many are unaware that dumping microwaves saves lives.

In the disguise of Art

A few of us went to see the screening of the documentary movie 'Truth in Translation' on Saturday evening (http://www.truthintranslation.org/). This is a very intense and powerful story of a theatre production travelling to parts of the world that has experienced continuous conflict and violence between people groups such as Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Rwanda. The play itself was created in a workshop environment in South Africa, the theme was the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and the actors represented the variety of ethnic backgrounds of the country. Through the story of the translators working daily with stories of victims and perpetrators, the different audiences was asked to step outside of their own situations and to look again at the source of the conflict they were experiencing, and how reconciliation could be achieved.

The responses were very different, ranging from heart-breaking declarations of forgiveness and commitment to reconciliation, to doubt to flat-out refusal to feel regret at past actions. We were incredibly lucky to have a discussion with the director and two of the actors after the screening. A couple of things they said stuck out for me. Firstly the director talked about how the stage production was able to visit areas of these countries and talk to people about conflict resolution in a way that would not have been possible if they did not have the play as a starting point. People came in droves in some places, eager for artistic experience, and found themselves unwillingly becoming involved in conversations about subject material they wouldn't talk about in another context. They came to talk to the celebrities of the production and ended up studying the face of the person next to them in an actor's exercise that also created empathy between the workshop participants. 

Secondly, one of the actors explained how the members of the cast managed to cope with all the personal conflicts created by the hazards of touring, the constant engagement with intense subject matter, and also the different backgrounds of the actors. Constant talking through of the issues and breaking up the tour into small chunks over a long period of time were some of the solutions. However, he believed that at the end of the day it all came down to the stage production itself, where all members literally had to do their part and interact and listen to the others. This is similar to Abreu when he says that the orchestra is an enterprise where all of the participants must agree with each other. In addition to this, the director emphasised in the documentary and in the discussion, that the production would not have been successful without the presence of music. The songs were another point when all the cast had to be in harmonic agreement with each other. Conflict resolution in the disguise of Art.

 

 

Hello friends! Karibuni and welcome to my blog which will mostly be about my experiences as an El Sistema Fellow over the next nine months and beyond. I want to start with two movies as a way of summing up and celebrating my recent experiences. They will also explain a little more of the background to my studies of El Sistema and the possibilities it has for my work in Arusha, Tanzania. The first movie I created for the El Sistema Fellowship application process that documents a lot of my musical work and experiences at Braeburn School and in the wider Arusha community.

The other is a snapshot of the experiences I've had during the last four years in Tanzania outside of school work. I've tried to get it down to a reasonable duration and I hope you enjoy seeing the countless blessings I have received during my time there!