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Galamsey

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I’m off to Ghana for a few weeks working on a gold mining project.  Before I leave I sit in my cafe in London and read reports.

 

One is about the Galamsey, the men who pay off guards, descend down into shafts for days, chip away at bits of rock, and then turn around hauling bags of ore on their backs.  They are often injured, sometimes die, are always trapped in a web of bribes, debt, desperation, hope that one day they’ll hit a good gold vein.  My job is to help figure out how to improve the situation..

 

I drink sweet Turkish coffee and eat tabouleh bitter with lemon.  I still don’t understand much about the world.

 

Liberia Return

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Just back from three weeks in Liberia.  Amazing to work in a country, that six years after a devastating civil war, is putting itself back together.  I was advising the government on how to make sure Liberians benefit from over $20 billion of concession agreements with foreigners in mining, oil, and agriculture.  Piece by piece.

I was taken by the people, by the language, by the possibility.  I learned a new kind of english and glimpsed another way of seeing the world: perhaps God is real, not so sure in this land.  It was shocking to be in a country where not the French, not the English, but people from the US were the colonizers: I couldn’t hide as easily.  I was taken with the place, the warmth people showed me, the opportunity to make a difference.   I’m hopefully going back again soon.

Of Rites and Rituals

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My play Whose Blood is now three weeks into its run, and yet it has taken me this long to fully understand its meaning.  Only now that the play is in the hands of the director, actors, and technicians, do I fully see its power.

All theatre is an event (the event of people coming together to witness a story) but what makes Whose Blood so unusual is that it is being performed in an actual 19th Century Operating Theatre.  The drama is therefore a recreation of what might have occurred there.   The play tells the story of a couple in 1832 who face a difficult choice about a surgery, but what makes the play so unusual is that they are standing in the actual space where they would have made that decision.

I have come to fully realize that the play is not so much a play, as it is an event.  It is the event of witnessing a story which blurs the line between past and present, history and reality.  The actors bring to life a story that has remained hidden until now.  The play is actually a rite or a ritual.  It calls to life the stories of those whose blood lies in the floorboard on which we sit.  I am proud to be a witness.

Whose Blood Review (and response): Time Out

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Time Out says ★★    Readers say ★★★★

Time Out (Andrzej Lukowski):  “Full of interesting titbits about medicine of the day (including the body-snatching exploits of the ‘resurrectionists’) and the experiences of African immigrants in Victorian London, Burger would appear to know his stuff.  But convincing dialogue and character eldue him. . . . Much of what happens in ‘Whose Blood’ is reported not enacted.”

Reader Review:  “Something that struck me about this play is that it is unique to anything else on the London stage at the moment.  Efua tells us what happens in a way not dissimilar to how tales and fables are told in a lot of African culture. She’s a storyteller and plays her heart out, inviting the audience to be part of the story. Perhaps Andrzej is not familiar with African theatre.”