About 18 years ago, while on holiday in the Auvergne region, my wife and I picked up a paraglider that had ended up rather unhappily in a meadow full of indignant cows. We were happy to do something. The paraglider looked grateful, although he was a little worried about the car in which we were going to take him back to the mountain peak he had come from. A classic Citroën, which would be nice if we had had the money to keep it in top condition. He told of the previous time he had been brought back in a Mercedes Convertible.
Our rescued one turned out to have a fascinating life. He worked for 'an NGO' in Macedonia, then on the edge of one of Europe's cruellest war zones. He didn't tell us much about his work. He did say that you could paraglide much better in Macedonia than here in France and that outdoor sports were much more adventurous there. It broke the boredom. He had many international friends, and he was going to see where his next job with 'the NGO' would take him. As long as you could play good sports there. And help people of course, though he said little about that. Maybe something in Africa.
Post-Traumatic
The encounter has stayed with me. Just as it will not have stayed with our paraglider. After all, we were just a few of the countless civilians who formed the backdrop of his adventure. He had described his work in war zones as a paid holiday paradise, and I suspected that this form of cognitive dissonance was a manifestation of severe post-traumatic stress disorder.
At the time, I did not understand that apart from UNHCR, Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières, there are hundreds of other 'Non-Governmental Organisations', from tiny to large, from private to vague and often with only a very limited purpose.
In 'Compassion, the History of the Machine Gun', Thursday 2 August the opening performance of Theatre Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch, actress Els Dottermans explains well the world of suffering, violence, civil war and relief work. She does so in a performance that is a duet of two personal stories. Her own, from drama school student to teacher with a mission in Africa, and eventually the person she is today, and that of Olga Mouak, born in Congo and orphaned in the massacre in Goma, entirely coincidentally exactly at the time Els Dottermans was trying to do her good works there.
Shadow Society
It is about the invulnerability of the white Westerner in the face of the insoluble tangle of revenge, hatred and reprisal that central Africa had fallen into in the 1990s. A tangle that, despite countless civil wars, revolutions and power grabs, has yet to be truly unravelled, judging by her account. And this in a world where hundreds of obscure NGOs in the camps do little more than do their own thing, with their own money. A shadow society in an in-between world of criminal behaviour, genuine commitment and powerlessness. In which the white man always remains unscathed.
The show is an initiative of Milo Rau, the new boss of NTGent. Because it is theatre, and an adaptation of a play he made in Berlin two years ago, we don't know whether Dottermans and Mouak are telling their own story, or something experienced earlier, by others, or Rau himself. We are not supposed to doubt the authenticity of any of it. Although, of course, it remains theatre.
Champagne
Uncomfortable theatre it is, and the many messages Milo Rau gives us largely amount to the same thing. We, and by that Rau means Western, white Europeans, have made a total mess of things, and any further intervention will only make things worse. No wonder Rau offers no solution, because there is no solution in this hell.
Is obviously not a pleasant story to open your festival with, but all present reacted as they should. Deeply impressed, silent, helpless and where is the champagne.
As beautiful and pure as it is, it almost feels like the obligatory Mass full of Mea Culpas and Hail Marys with which the carnival has been kicking off since time immemorial. A homily for a room full of guilt-ridden parishioners, which might bring in an extra penny in the collection box. After which we will forget all about it. Just be careful which paraglider you sponsor with it, though. Goodness comes in many colours.
Still, learned something.
Good to know
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