Anna
instruments: bass, shakers, and vocals
Nationality: Canadian
Anna joined the band in the latter part of the Year of the Snake. She came and sang and then learned the bass!
Anna added stability and sensibility to the google of chicks. Now, she's studying Law in Montreal:
Friday, June 4, 2004 1:21 PM
The hours of a standard work week at the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda are redistributed so that on Fridays we finish at 2.
I've just completed my first week and am very happy to have finally started
my internship. It has been a busy week, mainly occupied by trying to carve
myself a place within the dense bureaucracy - the main building material
of this organization. I've been eating and breathing red tape for the past
four days and am quite pleased to be nearly finished with the set up process.
I have an office in a section which is commonly referred to as the "chicken
coop." One room is subdivided into 6 small offices, which are shared
by up to three interns. I am lucky: although I am in a room of 3, I did
manage to get most of the basics finished this week. I have a security badge,
and my office is relatively set up (complete with a desk, a chair and a
computer). I have keys to my office and I am allowed to use the library.
Although these may sound like basic new arrival tasks, there is enough difficulty
involved in each of these processes to make them feel like small victories.
We do not yet have any stationary supplies and so I am using a pen that
I brought with me from Canada. Maybe Monday... we scavenged a few things
from the office of an intern that left today (extension cord, waste paper
basket, etc).
As many of you know I applied to work in the Office of the Prosecutor -
however, one of the many surprises of this week was that I was actually
accepted into the Chambers division. This is the section that provides support
to the ICTR judges. Any of you who have played "Assasin" with
me will laugh, but I find myself forced to develop a poker face as I'll
be spending some time in court - but in the neutral area in front of the
judges, where I can't visibly root for either the Prosecution or the Defence.
[interesting side note: the Defence side does not take interns]. I must
also be very careful to use words like "accused" and "alleged"
when speaking about the individuals whose actions and motivations are on
trial.
As for the specifics of what I am doing, I am working in Trial Chamber 1,
which is where the "Military 1" case is being tried. The accused
are Bagosora (Rwandan Minister of Defence during the genocide, former army
Chief of Staff); Kabiligi (Brigadier General in the government army); Nsengiyumva
(military commander in Gisenyi, a site of early and widespread attacks);
and Ntabakuze (an army Major). The trial has been going on since 2002 and
a decision is not expected before late next year, or even 2006. It is one
of the major trials that this Tribunal was created to hear. One of my main
tasks is to prepare witness summaries - hence the sitting in Court. After
seeing and hearing the testimony, I go to the transcripts and try to pull
out the important events and relevant evidence in summary form. These documents
will be used later by the judges when they are deliberating on the outcome
of the charges.
I have been in Tanzania for almost a month now (my how time flies) and I
do have lots of travel tales to tell from the three weeks before I started
at the ICTR... but I am afraid that they are currently still coloured by
a serious case of culture shock - the first unpleasant dose I've ever had.
I'm ok now, and am growing to like Arusha, but I think that I will save
the story of my first few weeks for another time. I have regular email access
now and so I promise to start catching up on the individual emails that
I owe to so many of you. Thank you for your patience.
I hope that you are all well, and that summer is unfolding in a good way.
xx, Anna
..jan.2003
I am happy to be back in Montreal after a 2 week holiday in
Winnipeg... school is back on and I'm back to teaching (who would have thought,
ESL in Montreal? sure beats the waitressing gig I started with). School
is heavy but I am determined to maintain better balance this time round.
I'm going to go buy opera tickets tomorrow and start really living in Montreal
- last term I worked too much and wound up doing some insane cramming and
felt like I might as well have been going to school in Regina for all I
was taking advantage of this city. But live and learn, I hope.
took an overnight bus last night and am desperately in need of a flat bed. Hope all's well.
love Anna
10.30 am, 20th June: bus trip from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay
Even out here in the country houses are narrow and long rather
than wide.
Many buildings are made from slabs of concrete. We pass field after field
of rice, muddy brown rivers, water buffalo. Incessant honking. Palm trees
and lillies growing in ditches. Rice drying at the side of the road. So
many people, hard at work, wearing conical straw hats to protect against
the vicious sun. Chopping rice with an old rusted scythe. Bundling it and
stacking it in carts. A child sitting inside a doorway, leaning back into
his chair, one foot up on either side of the doorframe. Passing through
a small town, shady streets and inattentive cyclists, children playing.
Low brick or stone walls. These women carrying the yolked baskets laden
with goods have a peculiar gate. They turn their hips slightly and lead
with the side carrying the load. Many of the women bend forward slightly
at the hip, but keep their torsos straight, as if they are leaning into
their burden. I have never seen a man carrying a heavy load.
6.45 pm, 27th June: Minh's Quan Bia (a cafe), Hanoi
We're in that pale part of day. Past the golden light of sunset,
but before the fading out of colour. S & R have left - may even be winging
their way through the skies by now, further into this summer's adventures.
I am sitting at the upstairs outdoor patio where we have spent so many hours.
The lights have just come on around the edge of the balcony. Earlier today
we had a few drinks at the 69Bar, and now I am waiting or M to turn up for
dinner. This afternoon's gin and tonics are wearing off and I am starting
to
feel more sober. I hate this leaden feeling of sobering up. Of being not
just of this world but denser, heavier than everything around me. Like I
might sink through the table, through my chair, and down into the center
of the Earth.
10.30 am, June 3rd: My Son
It's 43 degrees. I am ready to give up, knowing there is no
way I can possibly take in enough fluid to replace the litres that I must
be sweating out. I can feel new sweat glands forming beneath my skin. I
am wandering through the ruins of a 4th - 13th century complex, trying to
absorb something about the Cham civilization that built these structures.
This area was heavily bombed in the Vietnam War, and the site of intense
combat. What's left of the buildings are overgrown with weeds and grasses.
There are
bullets in some of the crumbling red brick walls and in my dazed and heatstupid
state I find my imagination slipping back in time. I imagine soldiers hiding
in the buildings and behind every corner. Though I stop frequently in the
shade to drink from my water bottle, it's hard to focus, hard to concentrate.
I develop sudden empathy for the way my sister must have felt when I was
mercilessly dragging her around southern Spain last
August. I wander around some more, but find I can no longer remember which
groups of buildings I have already seen. I meditate on the idea of dying
from heat as I slowly make my way back to the entrance gate.
