WRITINGS & NEWS
We can’t get away from it. Even in the most remote villages, even in the furthest reaches of the country, the bus jolts and rocks past another reminder – usually, another mass grave, encircled by a spiked iron fence, a wobbling arch above the entrance. On each arch, the same bold letters: “Never Again.”
Around seemingly every corner, we pass another, a mirage of ribbons and close-cropped grass in the midst of scraggly banana plantations. Never again. Never again. Never again.
This is not a lone antelope.
The reason that it’s not a lone antelope – in addition to the reality of it being an entirely separate animal - is because a lone antelope is not a real thing. It is, in fact, not a thing that is at all. The number of lone antelopes that exist is a null set, a void, a nothingness. And that is a bitterly disappointing fact. Because I was very excited to see one.
It’s late when we get back. The normally crowded streets wrapping about the hotel are now nearly empty. Crosswalk signals blink furiously at no one at all. Most of the team blearily awakens, blinking, as the vehicle lurches over the sidewalk and up the incline into the hotel’s parking lot.
I’m stationed in my usual spot in the jump seat up front, a position I’ll occupy for most of the trip until another team member’s carsickness graduates from “aggravation” to “vomit-spewing,” at which point I gladly surrender the spot. For now, though, I can use the seat to take a million blurry, poorly-framed shots as we bounce along the dirt roads of the Rwandan countryside, in hopes of getting lucky once in a while. It is not a high-percentage strategy, and it leads to hours of glumly poking through photos, trying to talk myself into the idea that my accidentally canted-angle landscapes are “artsy.”
Our headlights illuminate the hotel’s stern-faced guard as he waves us through the gate, the movement revealing the butt of a rifle glinting below his shoulder. I involuntarily shudder, as if I’ve never seen an armed guard before. But it's this country, and the tremors of its recent, violent history. It makes me uneasy. A well-armed guard protecting this tiny hotel is just one more sign of the divide between the haves and the have-nots here. Down the road is a grocery store that has a door flanked by angry stone lions, with two metal detectors at the entrance and three armed guards always on duty. Rwanda might be in a state of peace, but the people who have money are deeply cautious in a way that makes one wonder how firm their footing really is.
I thought sleeping under a mosquito net would feel different than this.
There’s something… survivalist about a mosquito net. A thin bit of webbing that keeps you from disease and death. In countries like Rwanda, they can be made from anything, from chicken wire to wedding veils, but the one I’m under is a standard-issue bit of gauzy white fabric. It drapes around me on the bed like a poorly assembled canopy, and I feel less like David Livingston and more like I’m sleeping in the bed of a nine-year old girl.
John has taken to calling it my “princess bed.” He cavalierly leaves his net knotted on the ceiling above him and smirks at me from his bunk as we get ready for bed.
I tell John, not for the first time, that I hope he gets malaria.
A few random thoughts from today I wanted to add to the Oscar post from below:
1. Most of the articles I've seen (or podcasts/interviews I've heard) about Seth MacFarlane's performance at the Oscars have led with professions of open-mindedness - something along the lines of "I'm not too familiar with MacFarlane's work, so I was fully willing to be impressed." Then they transition into shock and horror at what came next.
I think that if you open any piece defending your open-mindedness with a "it wasn't me - I was willing to give him a fair shake, you know," there's a very good chance that you didn't start from a very open-minded position at all. Alex Pappademas gave offhanded reference today that Seth MacFarlane "hates women," as if this was an inarguable fact, based on hundreds of firsthand accounts, and not based on a dislike for the no-holds-barred style of his television show.
When you expect someone to come out and be racist and misogynist - and he gives winking reference to the fact that this was what you expected of him - it's awfully easily to have reality play into your preconceptions.
2. MacFarlane tweeted today "The Oscars is basically the Kobayashi Maru test" - a reference to the Star Trek challenge involving a no-win situation, where the only thing being rated is how you hold up under pressure, or redefine the situation. It's an apt metaphor, but I think a better one is War Games - "the only way to win, is not to play."
3. There's a real tone to these MacFarlane commentaries that have been bothering me, and I finally put my finger on today.
It's the fact that "Family Guy" is watched by "the wrong sort of people." You know, bros. Unintellectual types. Poor people. Not our tribe. And that makes MacFarlane an outsider - and the wrong sort of outsider. Not an outsider like Letterman or Jon Stewart, who showed up to skewer the puffed-up celebrities. The sort of outsider who'll track mud through the ballroom. That type.
It's classist.
4. I've defended MacFarlane's performance on the Oscars, which might have given the impression that I thought the Oscars were well produced. They were not.
The producers this year, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, decided to do a tribute to movie musicals. Which is... fine, I guess. There was one musical that came out this year, Les Misérables, so there's some connection. The big discussion leading up to the awards was actually "truth and history," but that's kind of a bummer, so... musicals! You've even got a host who loves musicals, so it works out.
But we didn't do a tribute to movie musicals. There was nary a mention of The Music Man, Greast, A Star is Born, Singin' In The Rain, Meet Me In St. Louis, Cabaret, West Side Story, or The Wizard of Oz. The closest they came was MacFarlane doing a gag about The Sound Of Music, where he announced the Von Trapp family but they failed to appear. We did a tribute to movie musicals from the last 10 years - Les Mis, Dreamgirls, Hairspray, and Chicago. In fact, we did Chicago a number of times - Catherine Zeta-Jones sang a song, the cast reappeared to announce a winner, MacFarlane talked about it being the ten-year anniversary of its Best Picture win... why this emphasis on Chicago? Because the producers of Chicago were Craig Zadan and Neil Meron.
So, so classy, guys.
5. And finally, I'd just like to remind everyone again that last year, Bill Crystal did blackface during the Oscars. Unironic blackface. Completely out of context blackface As in, he just had a blackface Sammy Davis, Jr. bit he wanted to shoehorn in, and he did.
I just thought we've all forgotten about that too quickly.
Never forget.
