I was never interested in co-writing.  Making songs was always a private exercise for me, an archive of my spiritual progress (... or decline for that matter), something born in silence as a way to excavate/study/chew on my internal storms and, in so doing, set them free. Sitting down with "other minds" and trying to build, brick by random brick, something called 'music' always felt forced - false. How wrong I can be...

Life is always teaching me - the fiercer your grip, the more suffering you create. Think Bruce Lee... ;)

I feel as though everything important I have ever learned has in some way involved letting go. Life knows what it's doing, Slean, trust! Flow with it. Resistance to life is not only futile, it's a complete waste of time and energy...

So we are gathered around the kitchen table, me and my three new best friends Steve, Damhnait and Tim, shouting out verses - some great, some awful, switching chords and tweaking melodies.  It is refreshing and thrilling for all of us to abandon our firm ideas about who we think are 'musically' and just be conduits. The present moment twinkles around us.  The cameras are rolling but do not intrude.  I have such affection for everyone here now.  I am genuinely delighted to see them in the morning.  Wedging this heart open another blessed inch...

R&B queen Miss JoJo arrives to put some of her silky vocals on our dance-hall track.  She told us that the Rwandan music scene is exploding.  She's been making videos and recordings with her friends using new, easy-to-use technology... For our song she whips up a whole lyric and numerous killer melodies within an hour.  Amazing.

Rwanda's best live reggae band also stopped by - Patrick, the bass-player, patiently waded through our busy tune with numerous chords.  The chart I made up for him was a full page.  When I sat in on their tune (yeehoo, playing the organ part in a real Rastafari band!) he wrote four chords at the top of the page.  Oh.  I hung my conservatory-head in shame. 

Our next field trip is to visit a successful farming cooperative situated on the sloping, spectacularly beautiful terrain of the lush eastern districts. Nope. Still not over it.




Lovely Claire will be our guide again, and the male members of our company aren't complaining.  After a ledge-hugging, heart-stopping ride through banana fields and hillside forests, we arrived at the village hub where 20 or so community members were working away shelling peanuts. 

Without a beat, Damhnait jumped in to help, and the people were delighted by this gesture.  Dahmnait is uniquely gifted this way - perhaps it's the Newfie laid-back openness - but in every single situation, she would effortlessly break the cultural ice between our group and the Rwandans we were visiting.  Despite an almost impenetrable language barrier, she was always able to make people laugh.  Without words, you can't do that with jokes or witticisms - she did it with her body language, her smile and her willingness to share their personal space without fear or hesitation.  She put people at ease.  I learned a lot from just being around her.  Here the women are chuckling at the slowness of her peanut-shelling technique - when she accidentally dropped a few shelled peanuts, well, that produced a much louder eruption.

It was not unusual to see teenage boys holding hands and hugging in public.  Friendship in Rwanda is a different, deeper thing than in Canada.

They are not conservative about affection, loyalty or physical bonding.  Our breakfast chef Betty routinely held my hands and told me she loved me! It made me ask myself what we're so afraid of in the west.

Germs? Betrayal? Honestly - how sad!

The children in this village were positively magical. 

Their eyes - the depthless love, the universes of potential in their eyes! - will forever haunt me.  They stood in a close circle around me, giggling and marveling at my weird skin and hair and features.  I wanted so desperately to talk to them.  A teenage boy, in heavily accented English blurted out "Good morning? Nice to meet you!" Gales of laughter.  I decided to use the language-barrier trick I learned in Cuba while filming the video for Sweet Ones with an all-Spanish crew -  I pointed to my nose.  For a few minutes, they stared at me like "What is UP with this crazy muzungu?"

I was persistent, until one child finally screamed out the word for nose in Kinyarwandan. Then I mimicked, as best I could.  Hilarious!  And that set us off on a bilingual tour of the human body.  (Of course they wanted to try the English words too.) The whole thing was fantastically side-splitting to them.  Such easy JOY! So pure and so immediately available! They smiled and clapped so generously! I was humbled beyond recognition - like I'd burst into a vapour and was now hovering in my form, light as a feather.  Just look at this little girl. 

Later, the whole group decided they would sing their national anthem for us.  They harmonised and sang out, richly, without reservation.  We returned the favour, although our song seemed a little stiffer and, mmm, a tad too formal? 

I did feel a whole-body tingle though - and it wasn't exactly patriotism per se, it was more an intense surge of gratitude.  The word 'Canada'  caused a flood of strong, conflicting emotions.  I was confronting the bald, random fact of geography - 'this anthem I am singing is the reason that I can drink clean water (hell, I bathe in it whenever the mood strikes me), that I can make a living dreaming up art, that I can always easily access nutritious food and I can walk around (even fly around) my country without fear of violence'...  How brutally causeless, this fact of my birthplace.  Canada - free and safe and plentiful.  Why should I receive this bounty and not her? What did these children do to deserve what they are facing? It wasn't guilt I was feeling - guilt never served anyone or any cause. It was the injustice of it.  It's not right, and we all know that deeply. I want, in some way, to be one of the people in the world who are trying to remedy injustice.  I've got to figure out a way to do this.

That beautiful little girl ran after our departing vehicle...

The light vapour-feeling I experienced in their presence turned into a crushing heaviness as we were driving home.  All along the road, people were carrying (or tying to their bikes) big yellow containers of water from the closest well.  Most of their day is spent fetching water. Every day.  Fetching water, carrying wood, growing food. If all of the real wealth of human potential in the world - and by that I mean ideas, innovation, invention, cooperative action - was developed and harnessed, I can't help but think that this world would rapidly transform itself for the better.  When humans are completely and solely occupied with the business of survival, how will we face the challenges of a growing population on a limited planet?  What if that man carrying a mattress on his head down the highway - what if he could be a pioneer in developing-world health care? that woman digging potatoes - what if she could have taught all the village girls how to sew, midwife, read, start businesses? Most will never know because they have to work tirelessly to feed themselves and their children.  Though I agree with Tolstoy that to live off the land is indeed a noble way of life (the only one in his view), it seems to me,  in this place where so many are suffering, that this kind of existence is such a waste of human endeavour.  How many genii lay dormant here? I know there are repetitive, robot-replaceable jobs in North America - someone has to put the car parts together, pick up the garbage, clean the windows etc.  Hey, I was a bartender at Swiss Chalet.  Are these a waste of human endeavour? Debatable, but the difference is, we have so many opportunities and ways to become educated, to train and acquire skills of all kinds - so North Americans, for the most part, are freely making choices in this regard.  In Rwanda, those choices are drastically limited or just plain non-existent.  And I think the world pays dearly for this wasted potential...  The door to betterment - the chance to develop the mind - should be freely accessible to all that seek it...

As I'm video-skyping with my fella that evening, I ask him - how is it that I can see and hear you, from thousands of miles away, over the internet, for free, in real time - and there are people who don't have clean water ?!

Perplexing and troubling. Perhaps a naive way of framing the question, but valid nonetheless.  Video-skyping is pure Star-Trek to me.  It is the living future.  I experience a "Jetsons"-style oddness, every time.  My friend (an epidemiologist I met in France) just happened to be working in Congo this month, and he's coming for a visit.  It will be good to talk about all of these thoughts with a seasoned veteran aid-worker.  

Ugh... I've been sleeping so heavily I don't know what day it is... feeling fragile...

I wake to the sound of glorious voices and hypnotic rhythms... this is the Rwandan soundtrack - life, the celebration of life, rejoicing!

Just watch this seven-year old Batwa child cut a rug.  Man.  He will have his pick of the ladies one day.  Behind him his mom, in the colourful wrap skirt, beams with pride.

She's playing a traditional umuduri... the "Oh my God" at the end of this video is, er, me. I couldn't help myself.

Notice the interchange between 4+2 and 3+3 beat groups... all underneath the umuduri's consistent eighth note... Music nerds, indulge.

I still can't get over the energy these musicians created in the room, in fact, the entire house.  It was pure, selfless joy.  You can see it in their faces, hear it in their voices. The singers were smiling and laughing through the whole thing. I had no idea what words they were singing and it didn't matter.  I forgot myself and my sore belly. 

The man in the baseball cap was the first and possibly the only elderly Rwandan I saw on the trip - and we've seen rivers of people along the highways and in the towns - there are just under 10 million people living in Rwanda.  Its population density is one of the highest in the world.  After meeting this man, it occurred to me that everyone we've laid eyes on has been under 30.  There are a number of reasons, but the most glaringly obvious is that people just don't live very long here.  What effects must this have on the culture?

I could eat that kid he's so cute.

Next up was dance hall reggae growler Rafiki.  This guy was born to perform - every chance that presented itself he was playing to the cameras. (Exhibit A, this photo) Dave and Steve cooked up a suitable loop and off he went.




For the second song we worked on figuring out the implied chords in his vocal line and started to track some guitars... The result was wild and I can't wait to see what our other collaborators will do with it.  

I'm still falling asleep a lot ... sadly, I missed rapper K8 write and perform an elaborate lyric in Kinyarwandan...  but the recording is fantastic.

It is a comfort (of sorts!) to hear that most of the crew are grappling with intestinal revolt as well, and not just the fair-skinned, vegetarian, hypochondriac Mademoiselle la Baronne...

The next day we are traveling east again to visit staff from FACEAids.  We've been invited to a school for kids who have been orphaned by AIDS or are living with the disease themselves. Twenty-something Claire, an angelic, sweet-voiced Seattle native greeted us at the site wearing a vibrant print dress and a magazine smile.  How on earth did this girl end up here? we all wondered... The students we were about to meet, she said, were very excited to perform for "real musicians".  They had all prepared songs for us dealing with AIDS issues, and when we walked into the one-room classroom, they burst into applause.  Gracious, to put it mildly.  They each held a sheet of paper with a creation on it, waiting to be sung. One by one, they all stood up in front of the microphones, facing their classmates, and performed their music.  Some rapped, some screamed, some had choreographed dance moves, and some were accompanied by beat tracks on an 80's keyboard.  It was incredible to see the resourcefulness and creativity.  SO little to work with - and yet they all created something informative, passionate, beautiful and unique. The lesson I took was this - when you have nothing, you still have your voice.  And that makes all the difference. The voice, the story in that voice, is where all the power to change the world lies. 

Alright, I'm not the new spokeswoman for Unicef, but it really affected me.



This guy was a firecracker - you should have seen him sing and dance! He was a one-man show. Thrilling to behold.

And Miss Claire, I had to ask her the elephant-in-the-room question at lunch.  How did you end up here?



She wasn't gushy about it, and I didn't manage to pry out any awe-inspiring tales of blinding epiphanies or divine instructions.  She just told me that she had a French degree, and the opportunity to work in Tanzania came up and she decided to go for it.  And like a lot of people in humanitarian work, the experience felt purposeful, meaningful, and just, well, right.  So she continued, and now she's living in a rural community in Rwanda, far from friends and family, trying to change the lives of total strangers for the better. It's hard not to be totally, humbly, floored. She did just buy a puppy, so she's not made of steel.  However, the cuteness factor in her little dwelling is now well beyond recommended levels. 

Man down, man down! Steve has fallen ill. Who will make me laugh until I cry now? Alas! We soldier on without him. Boo.

I am a tad concerned about the enthusiasm and confidence with which I ate last night's dinner...

We pile into a van and head to the eastern districts to learn about the remarkable progress that CARE Canada and local communities have been making.  Their latest project - helping people organize themselves into savings and loan groups - is making an incredible difference in Rwanda and other rural populations in the developing world.  The model is loosely that of a credit union - entirely self-governed, members contribute to the overall available capital and share borrowing rights.  There are penalties for late payments, strict repayment guidelines, and diligently observed (downright ceremonial) procedures that ensure transparency and the honesty of all involved. With the community's help, CARE first identifies and targets "the poorest of the poor".  Once they have attracted enough people who have saved the requisite amount for admittance, they then train the group to essentially run their own bank.  Using a small start-up loan, participants launch micro-business ventures that have been discussed and approved by the group. Immediately encouraged by their progress, enthusiasm quickly catches on, more and more capital is raised.  The group becomes 'big news' in the village and this usually produces new members, which in turn increases its stability and lending power. 

The first group we met was just beginning to take off in such a manner.  The leader told us that their very first objective was to get a mattress for every member.  'We all recognized', he said, 'the importance of a good night's sleep'. Wo. The shock to my heart was almost audible. A mattress.  Once they had achieved that goal, they set their sights a little bit higher each time, and now they are working towards cell phones and hydro, but again - for everyone. This is what kills me about the way these people have adopted the model.  There is absolutely no sense of competition whatsoever.  Success is measured by whether the objective has benefited ALL.  I had an opportunity to speak at length with one of the women doing exceptionally well in the program.  (The woman in the printed dress in the background below) 





She took us to her 'pub' - a property other than her home out of which she sells beverages and small meals. With unmistakable pride she showed us the yard where she prepares meat and the well-swept room where she welcomes customers.  When I asked about what her life was like before, her expression darkened. She explained that before joining the group, she never knew when she was going to be able to eat. She was literally always hungry. Her eyes were full of pain when she spoke of those times.  But it wasn't the suffering of hunger she was remembering with sorrow, it was the blow to her dignity. 

Desperation does something to the soul, and it was hard to see it still written there, in her face.  While we were talking her husband stood quietly by her side.  When I asked him if success had changed their relationship he nodded vigorously and they both laughed.  The pressure on men in these impoverished areas to provide for their wives and children is overwhelming. CARE told me that domestic violence is extremely widespread, but they are finding that when women are given the tools to contribute - or in this case, surpass their husband's earnings - the pressure on men is greatly relieved and sometimes the relationships heal, or at least the abuse stops. They've also found that when capital is generated by women, that capital tends to stay in the community.  Strong women equals strong children, families, and villages (an excellent article in the recent Scientific American by Lawrence M. Krauss makes this point hard to refute). I get the sense though, that not all of the men here are 100% comfortable with their wives succeeding or getting a lot of attention for that success.  While I was asking a different woman (from the same group) about the substantial wealth she had accumulated through raising and selling goats - perhaps in an overly congratulatory tone - she kept glancing over at her husband and replacing the word "I" with "we".  He seemed uncomfortable and she seemed, frankly, a little afraid.  I wondered for a moment, who or what could disempowerment and ignorance ever truly serve? In whose long-term interest is blindness, weakness, dependence, really?  

This fascinating article sums up the argument for CARE's work.  Read the whole thing if you've got 10 minutes, it's amazing. A taste: "There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution."

Now that's a thesis if I've ever heard one.  Alright, where was I...

Our hotel looked out onto the postcard-perfect Nyabarongo River


 
We returned from the field just after dusk. Imagine, in this view, a great navy blue swath of night spread regally overhead, speckled with sparkling points of light. The moon was incandescent, shining fiercely in the tranquil river and casting sharp, silvery shadows over the path to my room.  I stood and gazed at it for a while.  This is the same moon I have stared at in wonder for all of my thirty-two years. 

Countless creatures are breathing under it right now, simultaneously, with me.  How many billions upon billions of eyes have looked up at that sky in a similar moment of spellbound awe...  Earth, existence, life - how feeble and pale, our words!

It's raining in my bathroom, but the hotel keepers aren't too bothered. I am moved to a different room where soon I'm drifting in and out of consciousness to the dreamy murmurs of tree frogs. I feel like I'm experiencing my own existence with sort of detached, infatuated fascination. Is this what Kundera was getting at with his 'unbearable lightness of being'?  When we feel our aliveness so acutely but it is depersonalized, not grounded in the idea of "I", and the resulting sensation is, well, a kind of weird ecstasy? Sleep Sarah.  The anti-malarials are making you wiggy.

The next morning we are off to meet veteran graduates of the CARE program.  Sustained success is the calling card of these sorts of initiatives, and CARE is eager for us to see it first hand. We are deep into the eastern districts now. Long treacherous jeep rides up precarious mountain ridges, red dust clouds trailing... Sprawling vistas on all sides - thousands of rolling hills echo into the distance, their green skins fading into an indistinct blue mist of space.  The sky is crowded with towers of cottony clouds.  Everything in sight is vibrantly alive.


 
The group has already assembled and are taking attendance. They move through their procedures like a well-oiled machine.  All of them have little passbooks for keeping a detailed transaction record. They welcome (and are somewhat amused by) our questions - I've had a day to think about our experience with the first group, so I have about a million things to ask. Here you can see the committee seated at the table - they have been chosen for these specific roles because they are the most educated of all the members. 

Interestingly, these privileged positions come with heavier penalties for late payments or missed meetings.  The committee bears the most responsibility and is granted the most trust.  Just watching the treasurer counting the money was enough to communicate how seriously they view their roles. The box in the centre has three locks on three sides - and three different members hold the keys. 


 
When telling us the story of their group's beginnings, they mentioned that the CARE worker, Richard, had gone door to door trying to drum up interest in the program, and apparently it took him more than a few tries.  I was perplexed by this and asked them why.

They smiled as the translation met their ears and one woman quickly stood up (everyone stood before they spoke).

She told us that people were skeptical, doubtful, and just plain busy with surviving - but "then we started to open our minds" and she said these last three words emphatically.  I was taken by her use of this "opening" metaphor, and the strong gestures she employed to emphasize it... as though the darkness of a closed mind must be plunged through with sheer will and determination.  I also got the sense that she was describing the moment she began to consider her own mind in a new way - as a place where something could be called forth - a hope, a dream, an idea - and actually be brought to fruition.  She had a joy about her that emanated from that vital source - faith in the future.
We walked up the road to visit another household, but I was feeling queasy... tried to rest in the van... and woke up to the disorienting spectacle of Dave Bottrill teaching a  a whole group of children "Do Wa Ditty, Ditty Dum Ditty Do"...

Ah, my digestive fortitude had come to an end.  Add a dash of heat stroke and you've got yourself a hospital visit! (White girls near the equator, sheesh.) Hey - we can check up on Steve! The next two hours were a fog of deep breathing and reckless driving... 

Toronto to Brussels to Kigali

I'm going to AFRICA! Fabled blind spot in the western imagination!

"Have a look out the window..." producer Ian Fingland surprises me - I'm half-reading and half-sleeping in a jet-lag daze. 

To my left, under a brilliant blue sky, the vast north-African desert stretches in all directions, an awe-inspiring ocean of sand.

A little shock wave goes through me - much like when I first saw Paris or a gorilla at the zoo... The mind-pictures I have of these things seem so standard and known - Africa, the Eiffel Tower, primates, yes yes, of course. I know some facts about them, they are part of my understanding of the world.  But mind-pictures and experience-in-real-time couldn't be more different.  It's that kid-like sensation of realizing that no, it's not just something you've read about or seen pictures of, it exists!  And this thing you're newly experiencing, for a blessed interval, retains some of that magical aura of having previously only existed in your imagination - as strange as if you'd stumbled across living Muppets in the wild. 

So much of our consciousness is "by invitation only" - when the mind decides to think about a given thing, it does.  Gorillas, let's say. There, we're both envisioning them.  This is an amazing ability to possess, but it also gets us into quite the net of illusions and false presumptions.  The mind doesn't get to make such choices when we are next to the gorilla, being with it. Realizing the concurrence of our being and its being startles us into the Now. This is what I love about travel. 

It's the last leg of our journey to Kigali, Rwanda's capital.  Many blurry hours ago the eight of us met at Pearson airport, hauling a band and film crew's worth of excess baggage and drawing more than a few dirty looks at check-in.  In tow: Derek, the cheerful, inexhaustible director, Randy, the good-natured camera man, Scott, the Buster Keaton-esque audio expert, David Bottrill, the producer and engineer extraordinaire, Dahmnait Doyle, the singer/songwriter and all-round amazing gal, Timothy Edwards, the extremely likeable front man of Crash Parallel and Steve Bays, the hilarious creative wellspring of Hot Hot Heat.  Quelle groupe! After a sappy in-flight movie (couldn't they just leave The Time Traveler's Wife a great book? Hollywood!) a delicious curry (thank you Jet Airways, please send recipe to Air Canada) and a 12 dollar cappuccino in Brussels (?!)  I'm truly feeling the excitement.  Looking at the map I feel the great mystery of this continent nearing, preparing to unfold a little for me, its lucky visitor. 

Touching down in Kigali, we emerge from the airplane into a supple, warm twilight. Stars are twinkling. I walk across the tarmac, almost wading through the silky, different air. I can feel the altitude...

We arrived at the beautiful house around 8pm to a dinner of traditional Rwandan dishes followed by local fruits and African tea.  This was when I first met Ayub, our Rwandan guide and go-to translator, the executive director's crucial partner.  He sat next to me at the dinner table and I was immediately struck by the warmth and wisdom in his eyes.  Later in the week he left a message for me with one of the assistants - his instructions were "tell her the old man wants to make sure she goes outside tonight to look at the moon and stars." Ah. Ayub is going to teach me something powerful, I am certain of it.

I could hardly believe the countryside, and in the full brightness of the next day, it was breathtaking. During the night I heard cries of unfamiliar birds, beasts and insects, and opening my eyes in the morning from under a mosquito net was like waking from a tropical dream…

Join Sarah and support Toronto's Climate Action Candlelight Vigils, taking place on December 12 and 13. Sarah will be attending one or both of these vigils and details for both are below.

Time: Saturday, December 12 at 8 pm
Venue: Queen's Park
Place: University Ave and Wellesley Ave, Toronto, ON

Time: Sunday, December 13 at 4:30 pm
Venue: In front of Da Vinci school
Place: Russell St and Spadina Cres, Toronto, ON
Host: Maryem Tollar

If you're planning on ordering an item from our Store and want it to arrive by December 25, make sure to place according to our delivery cut off dates listed below. We cannot absolutely guarantee a delivery date druing the holiday season though, so if you already know that you'll be ordering something through our Store, make sure to do it as soon as is possible.

A second holiday show has been added for December 18, with Royal Wood, Buck 65 and Divine Brown. Tickets are available for both shows right now here.

Fresh off her tour with the Art of Time Ensemble, Sarah has written a new journal entry about her time on the road, as well as a new Vitamin (very important as we enter this cold and flu season!). 

We’re excited to announce that Sarah has been invited to participate in a documentary for Song For Africa, a non-profit organization that aims to inspire change and raise awareness about humanitarian issues in Africa. This project will take Sarah to Africa from mid-November to early December. 

Unfortunately, this means that the small US tour that was being planned for November has been pushed to next year.  Check back for tour updates or sign up for our mailing list to have this information sent to you directly.

To learn more about Song For Africa , visit SongForAfrica.com.