Keep a diary for just one day – Mass Observation on 12th May

I’d like to pass on this message for the UK Mass Observation project. It sounds fascinating and fun!

Would you keep a one-day diary for Mass Observation on Wednesday 12th May 2010?

In 1937, Mass Observation called for people from all parts of the UK to record everything they did and thought from when they woke up in the morning to when they went to sleep at night on 12th May. The resulting diaries provide a wonderful glimpse into the everyday lives of all sorts of people in the late 1930s. They are stored, with many other diaries and papers, at the Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex.

As it happened 12th May 1937 was the day of George VI's Coronation and many people wrote about being involved in this national event. May 12th 2010 is likely to be quite an ordinary day but we would still like to have your diaries.

Write as much as you can about what you do, who you meet, what you talk about, what you eat and drink, what you buy or sell, what you are working on, the places you visit, the people you meet, the things you read, see and hear around you and of course what you yourself think.

Anyone from any part of the UK whatever your age or background is welcome to send us a diary but it must be in electronic form!

How to take part:

- Diaries should be no more than 750 words

- Diaries MUST be in electronic form - emails or email attachments

- You should include a brief self portrait: your age, where you live, who you live with - if anyone, your present job or occupation if you are working and any other information that you think is important to record. We need this as background to your diary

- If 12th May was a typical day for you please say so. If not, please say why it wasn't. Any reflections on the day and on how you felt while keeping the diary always welcome

- So that we can add your diary to the rest of the Archive for the future, please include the statement below at the end of your diary (not within the 750 word limit). If you don't attach this statement, we won't be able to keep your diary or make it part of the Archive.

"I donate my 12th May diary to the Mass Observation Archive. I consent to it being made publicly available as part of the Archive and to it being reproduced in full or in part on the MOA website, on other websites and in publications as approved by the Mass Observation Archive Trustees".

To submit you diary email to: moa@sussex.ac.uk

We can't thank you personally for your diary but keep an eye on www.massobs.org.uk for news of the project.

The Book of UnCommon Prayers

A friend of mine, who works as a writer in residence in prison, has edited a moving and beautiful booklet - “The Book of UnCommon Prayer”, a collection of personal prayers and reflections by inmates at HMP Grendon (Cat B secure) and Spring Hill (Cat D open prison).

“They say that when men go into prison, they find either the gym or God,” says Jane Bidder. “When I first arrived as writer in residence of HMP Spring Hill, I was slightly bemused (and confused) to find that this was indeed true. Every morning, from 8am onwards, I would hear loud sounds of activity from inside the gym. Meanwhile, only a few feet away, was the chaplaincy…”

She asked her students to write an individual, personal prayer, and if they didn’t have a religion, it could be a private reflection.

To her surprise, lots of men wanted to contribute. Their voices are extremely varied – some are simple, others formal and a bit predictable, and others fresh and moving. Staff at both prisons contributed too. The book counts about 70 prayers and their authors describe themselves as Muslims, Catholics and Christians, as well as one Jew, Hindu, Church of England, Church of Scotland, Rastafarian, Buddhist, Lutheran, Quaker, Seventh Day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witness – some practicing, others lapsing and others without religion - a fascinating array of religions and beliefs all in one place!

Here are extracts from a few prayers:

“Because of my past life as a thief.

I feel kinda numb; I’d like time to fly.

I want peace of mind; I want to know why.

I pray that my tariff will come to an end

And I can go home to family and friends.”

Paul, brought up as a Catholic

“When trouble wells within and my soul

screams for release,

I walk alongside the still waters of his peace.”

Noel, a Seventh Day Adventist

The book (ISBN 978-1-905373-29-1) is published by BAR NONE Books, the publishing arm of the Writers in Prison Network, a charity founded in 1992 to bring writers in residence at various prisons across the country. They believe that “prison does not have to be simply a place to deposit criminals. It can also be a foundation for prisoners' future lives and the writers show how exploration of the written and spoken word can provide a gateway to change.”

Saving the Rospuda Valley

Małgorzata Górska / Credit: John Antonelli

Last week, I’ve interviewed Malgorzata Górska, a Polish environmentalist who managed to save one of Europe’s last remaining great wildernesses from a giant motorway project.

She has won the Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest prize for grassroots environmental activism, for her campaign to save Poland’s Rospuda Valley. I’ve interviewed her in London on her way to San Francisco to receive the prize.

With its pristine primeval forest, ancient intact peat bogs and wetlands, the Rospuda Valley in North Eastern Poland serve as flora and fauna reservoirs for the rest of Europe. It is home to lynx, wolves, otters, elk, eagles and 20 other endangered bird species. Scientists say the area gives a pretty good idea of what Europe must have looked centuries ago

Yet, as Poland began to grow economically, developers in 1996 began plans to route one of Europe’s most ambitious highway projects, the Via Baltica Expressway, directly through the Rospuda Valley, linking Helsinki to Warsaw.

Górska, a conservationist with the Polish Society for the Protection of Birds (OTOP), launched a campaign with a coalition of activists, scientists and NGOs to fight the road project, propose alternative routes and raise public awareness.

When their efforts to persuade their government failed, Górska and her coalition harnessed European Union legislation to help save the Rospuda Valley.

This led to the first ever successful intervention by the EU to obtain an order from the European Court to stop a member state from breaching environmental regulations and damaging a protected site. This court ruling now has the potential to strengthen the legal framework for EU environmental regulations across Europe.

I’ve written an article for the Economist's paper/webiste European Voice about Górska, which was published yesterday. Read it here.

DRC - hasty UN peacekeepers' withdrawal puts women in danger

From the statistics in my last posting – about 160 women raped every week in the Kivu provinces and more than 8000 cases of rapes reported in 2009 – you wouldn’t think that Congo has laws against sexual violence. On the books the laws are there though, but the country’s capacity to implement them is near zero.

Since 2003, no more than 50 soldiers have been convicted of sexual violence, although 20 were convicted in the first quarter of 2009 alone, according to Human Rights Watch, so there is slow progress.

However, this progress might be short lived if the U.N. peacekeepers are withdrawing from the country at the demand of the government, as the humanitarian news network, Reuters’ AlertNet, reports. This obviously would make the struggle against endemic rape "a lot more difficult", the United Nations has said. Margot Wallstrom, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, is at the moment visiting Congo, as the world body tries to persuade the government not to demand a hasty withdrawal of the U.N. force.

Ruined - Finding Mother Courage in DRC

Photo Hugo Glendinning

I went to see the European premiere of Ruined by American playwright Lynn Nottage at the Almeida in London on Friday. The play, presented in partnership with Amnesty International, is gut wrenching but gripping – and a powerful way to bring the huge problem of the DRC civil war and its impact on women to wider audiences. To research Ruined, Nottage travelled to East Africa three times to hear the stories of Congolese women brutalised by the war. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for the play.

“In Ruined,” says Nottage, “Mama Nadi gives three young women refuge and an unsavoury means of survival. As such, the women do a fragile dance between hope and disillusionment in an attempt to navigate life on the edge of an unforgiving conflict. My play is not about victims, but survivors. Ruined in the story of Congo.”

According to the International Rescue Committee, nearly 5.4 million people have died in that country since the conflict began and every month, 45,000 Congolese people die from hunger, preventable diseases and violence related to war. It is the deadliest war since World War II, yet it is still largely ignored by the media and the international community.

In “Finding Ruined,” her account on how the play came about, Nottage said she travelled to East Africa because she wanted “to paint a three dimensional portrait of women caught in the middle of armed conflict.” And she wanted to understand who these women were beyond their status of victims. She writes:

“I was surprised by the number of women who readily wanted to share their stories. One by one, through tears and in voices just above a whisper, they recounted raw, revealing stories of sexual abuse and torture at the hands of both rebels soldiers and government militias. By the end of the interviews I realised that a war was being fought over the bodies of women. Rape was being used as a weapon to punish and destroy communities…”

In the Kivu provinces, where the play takes place, about 160 women are raped every week, mainly by armed men, according to the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (9 February 2010). That is an astounding number. Ruined gives a face and a voice to the real women beyond the grotesque statistics. Like Sophie, many of the women are subjected to horrific injuries and mutilations and will have severe long-term internal vaginal and anal injuries. These women are “ruined” and will often be rejected and ostracised by their husband, family and community.

“When I was writing the play I wanted the audiences to get to know the characters well and empathise with them, so that when they leave the theatre they feel compelled to act rather than feel angry at humanity,” wrote Nottage in the March/April issue of Amnesty Magazine. She says that for her the biggest challenge was "finding hope, humour and optimism where there should be none".

If you would like to read more about the DRC or want to take further action, please visit the Ruined mini-site. Ruined is at the Almeida until 5 June 2010.

The World Most Dangerous Place for Women – Sexual terrorism in the DRC

I’ve watched “The World’s Most Dangerous Place for Women” a couple of days ago and cannot shake it from my mind. It left me deeply moved and unsettled. In this powerful BBC3 documentary, we follow 23-year-old Judith Wanga, who grew up in London as she returns to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she was born. Two decades after she was sent to Britain by her parents, she's returning to Congo to meet them for the first time.

She wants to understand the childhood she missed and the country she was forced to leave. After reuniting with her parents in the capital, Kinshasa, Jude heads east to Kivu, an area of the country that's been devastated by war.

It is the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman, where rape has become a weapon of war – rape with the intent of totally destroying women and through them their families and communities. Jude meets survivors - women and children - as well as perpetrators, and finds out what is partially driving this brutality - the precious minerals that make our mobile phones and laptops work.

We follow Jude as she is trying to make sense of the often blurred line between perpetrators and victims and the awesome beauty of the landscape and the horrors it holds. In a war that has already claimed over 4 million people, women of all ages continue to be the victims of sexual terrorism. “Mass rape. It was like a virus,” writes documentary director Fiona Lloyd-Davies in a blog post on her film.

“In Shabunda, a town deep in the forest, I found that nearly 70% of the women had been raped. Since then I'd gone back to DRC on and off over half a dozen times to write articles and make short films. But I'd never been able to secure a commission to make a whole film about what was happening to these women. It was as though they had been forgotten by the world. The women had totally captured my heart. I felt I couldn't let them down.

The sexual violence has now become generational. Women are being raped for the third or fourth time, and their children who they conceived through rape, are themselves being raped too.”

In most cases, women who have been raped are rejected by their husbands, families and communities because they bring shame and because of fear of HIV and other diseases. There is also the huge question of what is going to happen to all the children born as a result of rape…

In this terrible place, Jude also meet some amazing women, like 24-year-old Delphine, a final year law student who is going out to villages to record survivors' testimonies; Merveille a teenage former child soldier; Masika a survivor who has set up her own support network for other women, and Christine Schuler Descriver, a human right activist and director of V-Day Bukavu. V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. It acts as a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations.

Corneille - Rwandan singer exorcises the past through music

A friend sent me this beautiful song by Corneille or Cornelius Nyungura, a singer born in Germany to Rwandan parents, and now a Canadian citizen, who sings in French and English. His work is greatly influenced by American funk and soul music, but he also blends in jazz and African rhythms. He is well known in France, Canada and Africa, but now that he has released his first English-language album, The Birth Of Cornelius ( 2007), he is starting to be noticed in America as well.

In "Reposez en paix", a moving song from a previous album, he tells his mother, killed in the Rwanda genocide, that she can “rest in peace, ” as he is now getting on with his life and doing well. The song is in French.

Corneille was born in Freiburg, Germany where his parents were studying, though he spent most of his childhood in Rwanda. He discovered his passion for music in 1993 and joined an R&B group, who won the Découverte 1993 competition. This also introduced him to songwriting and musical composition.

However, his life changed after the genocide in 1994. His father, Émile Nyungura, was a leader of the political party (PSD); as a result, his parents (a Hutu and a Tutsi) and some of his relatives were killed in the massacre. Corneille fled through the DRC to Germany, where some of his parents' friends took him in. He spent the decade following the genocide in denial unable to face his past, but later used music to channel the feelings and emotions he had been repressing all along. Corneille is working with the Canadian Red Cross to raise awareness of children who are victims of war. He dreams of returning to Rwanda to do a reconciliation concert.