As you might imagine my travels in Africa have reached an end and I have made it home safe and sound. The caption for this entry is intended utterly sarcastically--nearly four months in Africa and the worst thing that happened was someone tried--vainly!--to pickpocket me at the Lilongwe market. The second I make it to Rome my passport is stolen! As a result I missed all my flights and spent more on hotels and phone calls and transportation in two extra days in Rome and London than I did in several weeks in Africa. But I am writing to apologize for [View Full Entry]

---

---

[url='/Videos/4089.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/4089.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Congolese dancing[url='/Videos/4091.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/4091.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] And I have no rhythm... This past week was my last working week this summer which is totally nuts! On Tuesday I gave a 3-hour (!) workshop to the camp's teachers on children's rights. There were about thirty of them, some Malawian and some refugees. I studied children's rights last fall but we focused entirely on U.S. law so I had to spend some time last week [View Full Entry]

---

---

[url='/Videos/3973.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/3973.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Turn off from main road to camp road Or good afternoon in kinyarwanda. I have attached a video of the reaction I get when I try to speak that language with people in the camp. My friend swears they laugh because they are shocked to hear a mzungu speak it, but I am quite sure it's because I am saying it wrong! It’s been a while since I had internet because I pretty much spent all of the last week in the camp. I started my interviews so I went every day through Saturday to get [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well as if the hassle with the immigration lady wasn’t enough I am now getting trouble from the government! I went to seek their cooperation in communicating to refugees who haven’t filed their claims yet that I would be available to help them, and was told that a refugee’s story is a secret between the refugee and the government. I was pretty baffled and told the official that I would think it would be up to the individual person to decide whether or not to share her story with me and ask for my help. So then he brought down [View Full Entry]

---

---

Great news: Sourire’s rejection was reversed by the immigration official. I was with a couple of her classmates who are also going to study abroad with her when we all found out; it was especially exciting for them, since none of them was really able to feel good about their own approvals until they knew Sourire would be going, too. On Tuesday Elodie took me around the camp to meet some Rwandan families, since I have so far met mostly Congolese and Burundians. There is a new batch of refugees who just arrived in the camp from a transit shelter [View Full Entry]

---

---

[url='/Videos/3622.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/3622.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Mada scooping nsima Well to give you a quick update about the case of Sourire, the immigration official decided to reopen her case. She swore up and down that it had nothing to do with the pressure that had been brought to bear by us and others, claiming rather that she had been apprised of “new information.” But there was no new information—except the information in Sourire’s file which the official had neglected to read before interviewing her. But as my boss [View Full Entry]

---

---

[url='/Videos/3582.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/3582.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Food stalls at Dzaleka Well I confronted my first real challenge here in a (near-)attorney capacity. Today a group of fifteen students who have been approved for a program to study abroad in a Western country had their interviews with the country’s immigration official to determine whether they would gain refugee status there. No student approved by the program has ever been rejected by the country’s immigration before, but to our great surprise a student from Rwanda I&rsq [View Full Entry]

---

---

[url='/Videos/3450.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/3450.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Mwezi marking Greg's laptop Thursday I spent another day meeting with Mike all day, since it would probably be our last office day before his departure (Friday is a camp day). In the afternoon we had a birthday party for the outgoing country director, who is moving on to work with refugees on the U.S.-Mexican border. One of the Malawian teachers at the camp, Isaiah, brought music he had composed, and the Malawian women on staff demonstrated some traditional Malawian dancing. Us mzu [View Full Entry]

---

---

[url='/Videos/3445.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/3445.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Dzaleka kids[url='/Videos/3449.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/3449.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Walking through Dzaleka camp market On Wednesday I was picked up near my house to head out to Dzaleka refugee camp, which is a little over an hour from Lilongwe. The proximity to a major urban center is something that makes Dzaleka unlike most refugee camps, which are usually very isolated. It is also a very established camp, which many of the refugees (most of wh [View Full Entry]

---

---

By Tuesday I was starting to feel pretty isolated from real life here. I had only been driven around in SUVs, eaten at places most Malawians could never afford, and been in supermarkets with brands like Heinz and Ceres (= all imports). So I decided to venture out to the Old Town in the morning. Our housekeeper, Mary, walked me to the place where I would catch the minibus to work from then on, and told the money collector where I was going (since I really didn’t know myself!). The minibuses are something else—if I ever feel like the group [View Full Entry]

---

---