Ben Affleck and Mick Jagger have got together to work on a series of short films for a new campaign to raise awareness about the dire situation in Eastern Congo. The campaign is called 'Gimme Shelter' (after the Rolling Stones song), and is run by the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

In November, Affleck visited Africa to shoot footage in the strife-torn North Kivu province of Democratic Republic of Congo, where tens of thousands have fled their homes since fighting resumed in August. He also visited Uganda, where some 30,000 people have sought refuge and are receiving help from UNHCR. UNHCR hopes the Gimme Shelter campaign will help raise $23 million in 2009 to pay for clean water supplies and emergency humanitarian assistance kits in the region.

The main film, 'Gimme Shelter', was directed by Affleck and filmed by John Toll, both Academy Award winners, and set to Paolo Nutini's cover of the Rolling Stones song Gimme Shelter, which Jagger and the group donated to the campaign.

For the series of short films on youtube, go here.

For UNHCR's campaign site, go here.

For a news release summarising the story, go here.

The Migration Information Source has just posted the 'Most Up-to-Date Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants in the United States'. Amongst the wealth of data made available is this summary of the historical numbers and share of immigrants in the US since 1850:

'Data on the nativity of the US population was first collected in the 1850 decennial census. That year, there were 2.2 million foreign born in the United States, 9.7 percent of the total population.

Between 1860 and 1920, the foreign born as a percentage of the total population fluctuated between 13 and 15 percent, peaking at 14.8 percent in 1890 mainly due to European immigration. By 1930, the share had dropped to 11.6 percent (14.2 million individuals).

The share of foreign born in the US population continued to decline between the 1930s and 1970s, reaching a record low of 4.7 percent in 1970 (9.6 million individuals). However, since 1970, the percentage has risen rapidly, mainly due to large-scale immigration from Latin America and Asia.

In 1980, according to the US Census Bureau, the foreign born represented 6.2 percent (14.1 million individuals) of the total US population. By 1990, their share had risen to 7.9 percent (19.8 million individuals) and, by the 2000 census, they made up 11.1 percent (31.1 million individuals) of the total US population.

As of 2007, they comprised 12.6 percent (38.1 million) of the total US population.'

For more on the Migration Information Source, see previous posts.

There is a strong article in the Guardian about the disconnect between official British sympathy for the plight of Zimbabweans and hostility towards Zimbabwean asylum seekers, by Yeukai Taruvinga. Taruvinga is an asylum seeker and chair of Women Asylum Seekers Together in London. There is a list of links to articles on women and refuge on their website, here.

A new report by the British anti-immigration think tank, Migration Watch, claims that nearly all the jobs created in the UK since 2001 have gone to immigrants, not British born workers. 'Virtually all the extra 1.34 million jobs have now been filled by people from abroad, notably by the half a million workers who have come to the UK from Eastern Europe', they say. Philippe Legrain takes their figures and conclusions to task in the Guardian. The author of 'Immigrants. Your Country Needs Them', who has become a leading champion of immigration, cites evidence to contradict the Migration Watch figures, and concludes:

'The bigger point is this. As even MigrationWatch is forced to concede, there is not a fixed number of jobs in the economy. Immigrants don't just take jobs, they also create them, as they spend their wages and fill roles in complementary lines of work. If Britain threw out its Polish workers there wouldn't suddenly be more jobs for British people – just as throwing women out of work wouldn't provide more jobs for men.

'Whichever way you look at it, immigrants are not taking British people's jobs. On the contrary, they are helping to provide vital public services and keep small businesses going. Not for the first time, MigrationWatch's xenophobic prejudice is causing it to twist the truth.'

An extraordinary story of asylum, non-citizenship, deportation and reinvention in the New York Times. Tuy Sobil, 30, who goes by the street name K.K., was a refugee from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge “killing fields” who found a haven in the United States in 1980. He was an infant when he arrived. In fact, he was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and had never seen Cambodia before he was deported. But K.K.’s parents were simple farmers who failed to complete the citizenship process when they arrived. Like some children of poor immigrants, K.K. drifted to the streets, where he became a member of the Crips gang and a champion break dancer. It was only after he was convicted of armed robbery at 18 that he discovered that he was not a citizen. Deported to Cambodia, he arrived without possessions and without family contacts. He was a drug counselor at first and then founded his break dancing club, Tiny Toones Cambodia, where he now earns a living teaching about 150 youngsters and reaching out to hundreds more.

Compelling reportage from a migrants' detention centre in Libya by Fortress Europe's Gabrielle del Grande.

'At night, from the courtyard of the prison, you can hear the sound of the sea. They are the waves of the Mediterranean, a hundred meters from the fence of the detention centre. We are in Misratah, 210 km east of Tripoli, in Libya. And the prisoners they are all Eritrean asylum seekers arrested off Lampedusa or in the suburbs of Tripoli. Victims of the collateral effects of the Italo-Libyan agreement against immigration. They are more than 600 people, from 20 to 30 years old, including 58 women and several children and babies. The majority was arrested two years ago, but none of them has been tried by a court. They sleep in rooms with no windows, 4 meters per 5, up to 20 people in each one, on the ground. At least they are allowed to stay in the courtyard, under the watchful eyes of police. Their fault? Having tried to reach Europe in order to look for asylum.'

Del Grande compiles the Fortress Europe blog, which acts as something of a clearing house for hard information on deaths amongst migrants trying to get into Europe, and on conditions in detention centres in transit countries. There is a selection of activist/journalistic video and audio on the site here.

We wrote recently about Anthony Haughey's artistic intervention at Dublin City Council's offices, 'How to be a model citizen', which ran last week (see post on December 4). A previous work of Haughey's also addressed issues of citizenship, rights and migration. 'Postcards From Mosney: A Collaborative Political Art Intervention', involving asylum seekers in the Mosney Reception Centre, County Meath, happened in 2006, and we thought it'd be worth documenting here. Haughey sent Migration Matters the following account of this work (edited slightly for length).

'The problems facing asylum seekers in this Reception Centre are complex and beyond the scope of a well intentioned art project. However, by collaboratively and critically entering a dialogical process over a long period of time (four years) it was possible to learn, share knowledge, ideas and actions building strong allegiances and shared goals with the community in Mosney. The majority of the individuals who participated had a strong desire to actively negotiate and lobby for human rights in relation to unjust governmental policies in relation to the asylum process and migrant rights.

'Grant Kester has recognized the problems that artists have to deal with when working with marginalized groups such as asylum seekers and refugees. He is critical of ‘well intentioned’ artists [as in this article] who often inadvertently become an instrumentalising agent for the state. He argues for discursive strategies when working in collaborative contexts, he suggests that, ‘the antinomy between empathy and negation can be at least partially resolved by recourse to a discursive aesthetic which conceives of the artist primarily as a collaborator in dialogue rather than an expressive agent.’ He argues strongly for an ‘emancipatory political vision’ to ameliorate the philanthropic and often misguided tendency of socially concerned artists.

'In June 2006 I was invited by Belfast Exposed Gallery to produce an installation for the exhibition and public seminar series, Migrations. This offered an interesting opportunity to test the potential of a political (art) intervention with residents living in the Mosney Reception Centre to draw attention to the issues facing this marginalized and hidden community. The method we adopted was to revive and reinstate an historical and nostalgic connection between the site as a former holiday camp and its former visitors - the Irish public. In Northern Ireland, there is also a strong historical link between Mosney and working-class families. It was a regular holiday destination for thousands of families from N. Ireland and the Republic until the site was acquired by the Department of Justice in 2000 to house asylum seekers.

'I was aware of this collective memory and carefully selected an original John Hinde postcard depicting Mosney’s boating lake during its tenure as a holiday camp [see some other examples of John Hinde postcarts here]. The postcard acted as an aide memoir to trigger a point of recognition and connection with the viewer. It was also chosen for its metaphorical reading. By subverting the context of this postcard, it became an allegory for migration. During my research into postcard conventions, I observed that on the reverse of pictorial postcards at the top edge there is usually a short text which anchors the image into a geographical, historical, and cultural context. By subverting this convention, I was able to generate a revised history of the site for the reader.

'Together with my co-participants, we distributed the postcards to the residents in Mosney and invited the participants to write a personal message to the Irish Minister of Justice (responsible for decisions in relation to asylum applications). The response was impressive. The postcards were written, stamped, and mailed to the gallery in Belfast. An empty gallery wall in early July soon filled up with personal messages including criticisms, appeals and angry complaints. To reach the gallery, the postcards crossed an international boundary from south to north. This point was not lost on the residents of Mosney, further emphasising the stasis of asylum seekers, unable to travel outside of the Republic of Ireland.

'Because of the overwhelming response from Mosney’s asylum seekers and considerable interest from gallery visitors, the duration of the exhibition was extended. This was to encourage visitors to attend a series of public seminars organised to address issues raised by the Migrations exhibition. At the end of the exhibition, all the postcards were gathered together and sent to the Minister of Justice in Dublin for a response. Unfortunately, despite repeated efforts, a response never came. This may have been due to unfortunate timing as it coincided with a general election in Ireland. It seems that the voting public also did not agree with the Minister of Justice’s draconian policies as he was unceremoniously dumped from office!

'This political art intervention and act of resistance within a state controlled ‘detention centre’ is an example of how an artist can mediate within a collaborative frame. The dialogical exchange begins within the camp between the artist, co-participants, and the residents. By clearly articulating the historicity of the site and by subverting the John Hinde postcard we were able to generate a dialogical aesthetic. Although the interaction between the viewer and the residents of Mosney was virtual by necessity, it did nonetheless constitute a critical dialogical exchange between the site – gallery audience – and the Irish Department of Justice and Immigration. This final step of the process established a direct political voice from the residents to the Irish government. The anonymity of the residents was protected and a safe space was created to voice personal frustrations relating to human rights and asylum claims.'

Mosney has been the site of another substantial artistic intervention: a documentary film, originally entitled 'Mosney', but changed to 'Seaview' after protests from the owners. See the trailer here, and an article on the film here. There's an article on the John Hinde Butlins photographs here.

Jazz writer for the Sunday Tribune, Cormac Larkin, wrote last week about foreign-born musicians being 'an important conduit for new ideas and fresh energy for Irish musicians' over the years.

'The ranks of the migrant musicians have swelled in recent years, but whereas most migrant brickies came here seeking employment and prosperity, and may now be thinking of returning home, it was generally less tangible benefits that attracted the musicians', he suggested. 'Perhaps the Irish acceptance of artists as an integral part of our society, and the respect offered to creative musicians has been a factor.'

This coming Sunday, in well-know jazz venue, JJs on Aungier St in Dublin, Dublin resident Italian multi-instrumentalist Franceso Turrisi's Pensierini e Canzoni explores the song forms of his native country with Danish bassist Claus Karsgaard and Portuguese drummer Joao Lobo, Larkin wrote.

Others singled out by him included: Argentinean guitarist Ariel Hernandez, who collaborates with accordionist Dermot Dunne (listen to a track from their latest album, 'Lunfardia', on myspace, here).

Australian trumpeter Paul Williamson (listen here).

English alto saxophonist Nick Roth, who plays with the Fuzzy Logic Ensemble (on youtube here).

'Pianist Phil Ware (on youtube here), with a successful album by his trio, In Our Own Time, flying the flag for Irish jazz as far afield as Japan and India, is now such an integral part of the Irish scene that it is easy to forget he only arrived from England in the late '90s.

'Similarly, Irish audiences, accustomed to high quality Cuban music from Conor Guilfoyle, may have missed the fact that the drummer's groups have become more international in flavour – with native Cuban musicians, singer Evelio Galan and percussionist Frailan Moran (lots of music and video here).

'Guitarist Sami Moukaddem, of Lebanese origin, is easily Ireland's longest standing migrant musician.'

Larkin concludes: 'Far from taking gigs from Irish musicians, our migrant musical community has enriched and stimulated the local scene, and long may they continue to find open minds and open ears here.'

There's a further article by Larkin on the multicultural nature of Irish jazz here.

I had the good fortune this week to spend some time talking with Chuk Iwuji, who takes on the archetypal Irish role of the Playboy, in 'Playboy of the Western World', at the Abbey this week. (First preview is tomorrow, and opening night next Tuesday. The play is a modern-day rewrite, by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle, in which the Playboy is from Nigeria. See posts below for more background. I'll link next week to the full interview, to be published in the Sunday Tribune.)

Iwuji is Nigerian. He spent his first ten years in Lagos, then moved to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, when his parents took work with the UN. He was sent to boarding school in England, then went to Yale University in the US. Having trained as an actor, he was working as a jobbing Shakespearian actor when his brother phoned him from London, and said, 'It might be a good time to come back, because this black guy is playing Henry VI - the first black English king'. That was a landmark moment in British drama. The 'black guy' was David Oyelowo, and the production was the RSC’s 'Henry VI' trilogy in 2000, directed by Michael Boyd, which sowed the seed for the staging of the full Histories Cycle, six years later - in which Iwuji starred, himself taking the role of Henry VI.

In 'Playboy', Iwuji plays a Nigerian who arrives in Ireland having fled home, believing that he has killed his father; he is represented in the play as an asylum seeker.

I asked Iwuji about his background and sense of identity.

'When asked, ‘where are you from?’, I always say, ‘Nigeria’. I’m proud of that heritage, but my pride in it comes more from my Mum and Dad, who are my heroes, as opposed to from feeling Nigerian.

'I’m quite a rolling stone – I genuinely feel like I could live anywhere. I don’t miss it, just like I don’t really miss any other country I’ve lived in. I wish I felt more connected to Nigeria than I do. But it’s the closest thing to home of any of the other countries – home, where your roots come from. The village represents where home should be. Everywhere else feels like, ‘this is just where I’m living’. But I always feel slightly like I’m visiting (when in Nigeria). There’s nowhere I’ve been where I feel, 'this is where I want to be for the rest of my life'.

'Nigeria represents tradition, ideas, my extended family. So somewhere along my journey in life, it has to be (a goal) to really connect with that.'

I asked what it was like to play a Nigerian on stage.

'It's like any role – I see it as (just) another character. It could be Greek', he said.

'It makes me smile when I recognise Nigerian-isms in it, like certain phrases like ‘this fine woman’. So I probably have more access to it.

'Do I believe that should be a criteria for casting? No! I’ve played a British king, for Christ’s sake. It’s a bonus that I am Nigerian, so I can connect to that. But you have to come at it like a character, and if things bling out, like 'this fine woman' or 'no more boi boi', that’s a bonus.'

The language questions cuts both ways. He feels like 'a fish out of water, in a weird way', he says, because of the Hiberno-English accent of the play.

'There are phrases in there which are just words to me, but actually they’re phrases – like 'great girl', as in, 'she’s a great girl'.

As noted last week, there's a feature article by your correspondent on the original production of this Playboy here, and the Abbey Theatre's site is here. Bisi Adigun's African-Irish theatre company, Arambe, is here, and some of Roddy Doyle's work for Metro Eireann, Ireland's multicultural newspaper, for whom he writes short stories, is here.

'We know how difficult it is for women here to report rape - and that's in a culture where the police have been trained to be sympathetic, responsive, tender and understanding.

'How is it possible for a woman who has arrived in this country in a very brutalised state to produce medical evidence of that rape - at Heathrow? She doesn't speak the language, she's in a state of trauma, she doesn't know where her husband is, she may have left children behind.'

The words are those of leading British actress Juliet Stevenson, from an interview in the Daily Telegraph earlier this year. Stevenson is supporting the New Statesman campaign to end the system of detaining children for immigration reasons (see yesterday's post). In the course of reviewing the campaign, I came across her project from early 2008, 'Motherland'. This was a verbatim theatre production, where Stevenson and others performed the testimonies of people detained for immigration reasons. It played at London's Young Vic theatre for just a couple of performances, and was later staged in the Houses of Parliament. There's a collection of articles on 'Motherland' here, which is the news archive of the organisation Women for Refugee Women. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page for 'Motherland'; the page is a useful general archive of articles on women and asylum in the UK.) Also, Anthony Barnett, the founder of Open Democracy, has written about it in the Guardian and on OpenDemocracy's 'Our Kingdom' site.

There's been a strong, recent trend of documenting and exploring the asylum-seeking experience in verbatim theatre in the UK. One exponent is Sonja Linden, who has written about her work here. Though a few British verbatim productions have toured to Ireland, I'm not aware of any significant verbatim-based production here, whether dealing with asylum or another subject. Might there be an opening? Or perhaps the tribunals and their reenactments have exhausted our appetite for 'verbatim' drama.

The New Statesman, a mainstream left-wing magazine in Britain, is running a campaign,'No Place for Children', calling on the British government to end the practice of detaining children for immigration reasons.

There is a series of articles on their website, including this account of a visit to Yarl's Wood detention centre by Gillian Slovo (the South African writer). She writes:

'The right to seek asylum was born out of a world shamed by the genocide of the Holocaust. And yet asylum has now become a political football, with the government so determined to prove its muscle that it is prepared to lock up children. Yarl's Wood's inmates have committed no crime: although detention is supposed to be their last stop before removal, many appeal and are then let out pending further adjudication.'

There are also a number of videos, including this video of actress Juliet Stevenson reading the story of Tessa, who was sent to Yarl's Wood with her 1-year-old twins. (Juliet Stevenson recently performed 'Motherland', a play telling the stories of detained women and children in verbatim, in the Houses of Parliament. We'll return to this later in the week.)

Also on the New Statesman campaign site are a series of first-person testimonies from detained children. Here's the start of Bethlehem's story:

'Yesterday was one of the worst days if my life. I woke up in the morning like I usually do to go to school... Suddenly we heard this banging on our door... My mum got up and went to see who it was. I was still in the bedroom at that time and frightened. I was shaking like never before. Once my mum had opened the door about 6-8 officers came in and they handed my mum a letter... That letter was in fact a warrant to say that they had come to search our house. They told us that we had to pack our stuff and go with them because the Home Office had organised to get us both on a plane to go back to Ethiopia on the 1st of October.'

According to the New Statesman, every year, around 2,000 children pass through the UK’s immigration detention centres. They are there because their parents have applied for asylum in the UK. Detention is physically and emotionally damaging for children, as the detainees' testimonies so painfully demonstrate. In many cases, children have lived for most of their lives in Britain, and consider this country their home. Many subsequently receive refugee status, but children who have been detained remain deeply traumatised by their experiences.

The magazine cites a response to their campaign from Britain's Border and Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne, as follows:

'We are absolutely clear that UK Border Agency’s treatment of children must be as sensitive as possible. That's why we've transformed our children’s policy, and even legislated to impose a duty on UKBA to keep children safe from harm. We would only ever detain children so they can stay together with their parents, which is where they are safest - we never want to split up families. And we are actively testing alternatives to detention which we'll roll out when we know they work and offer the best possible protection.'

(There's an article by Liam Byrne on the issue here.)

The magazine is running a petition, which has so far attracted over 3,000 signatories. The latest article in the campaign is here, which includes at the bottom a short list of suggested actions readers can take.

The Playboy is back. Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle rewrote the classic Irish play, 'The Playboy of the Western World', by JM Synge, to give it a contemporary edge and tackle immigration as a subject matter. It played to great success at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin last year, and now it's back, for a Christmas run. Of particular interest is one of the recasting decisions: Nigerian actor Chuk Iwuji comes in to play the lead, the eponymous playboy. Iwuji is an extraordinary actor, and has a fascinating life story, which traces an inspirational plot from his birth in Nigeria to the summit of English-language theatre, playing Henry VI at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Also in the cast is George Seremba, a Ugandan who has made his life in Ireland. His story of being left for dead by Milton Obote's thugs is equally extraordinary. There's a feature article by your correspondent on the original production of this Playboy here, and the Abbey Theatre's site is here. Bisi Adigun's African-Irish theatre company, Arambe, is here, and some of Roddy Doyle's work for Metro Eireann, Ireland's multicultural newspaper, for whom he writes short stories, is here.

What were the top ten migration issues for 2008? For a US-based view, here's the Migration Information Source's annual list. (Send your suggestions for an Irish-oriented list by reply...) Number one is 'Buyer's remorse on immigration policy' - the idea that destination countries are suddenly more cautious about welcoming permanent migrants, because of the economic downturn, 'with some expressing the policy equivalent of buyer's remorse: paying too high a price for something no longer desired'. Closely following that in second place is the corollary, 'The recession-proof race for highly-skilled migrants'. 'Gloomy economic forecasts do not seem to have slowed the hunt for highly skilled migrants or foreign students — the best near-term solution to fill shortages and enhance competitiveness.' The rest of the list is below.

Also worth noting is the use of photos by the Source (for more on the Source, see last week's post), for the insight it gives into the evolution of photojournalism and publishing in the Web 2.0 era. Editor Kirin Kalia writes, 'We discovered the power of Flickr over the summer when searching for a photo to run with our two-part series on the Tibetan diaspora. I was thrilled when Ana Stefanovic, a professional photographer based in London, gave permission to use her vibrant image of Tibetan schoolchildren in India. Check out more of Ana's stunning work here.

'The strongest images for this issue came from Flickr: the Congolese woman in a shelter in South Africa, the migrants in Dubai waiting to send money home, and the elderly gentleman walking alone, framed by shimmering yellow leaves.'

The list in full:

1. "Buyer's Remorse" on Immigration Policy
2. The Recession-Proof Race for Highly Skilled Migrants
3. Remittance Patterns in Flux
4. Immigration Ultimately Not an Issue in the 2008 Election
5. Xenophobia Rising
6. Return Migration: Changing Directions?
7. Demography and Migration Flows: Do Shrinking Populations Mean More Migrants?
8. Building Border Fences
9. Warming up to Circular Migration?
10. Struggles of Iraqi Refugees Continue
 

For four days later this month, the public space at the entrance to Dublin City Council's HQ on Wood Quay will become the venue for an investigation of the notion and practice of citizenship in Ireland today, through an 'artist intervention' by Anthony Haughey. The intervention/exhibition is called 'How to be a Model Citizen' and is at the Atrium, Civic Offices, Dublin City Council, Wood Quay, Dublin 8, daily, December 9 to 12, from 11am to 4.30pm.

Anthony Haughey writes with the following overview of the work:

'How to be a Model Citizen is the culmination of a three-year partnership between the artist, Anthony Haughey and the Global Migration Research Network - a group of diverse individuals who came to live in Ireland (north and south) during the recent economic boom. Migrant groups arriving in Ireland have been circumscribed by an established set of competing terminologies such as migrant workers, asylum seekers, refugees, or non-nationals. Saskia Sassen has alternatively more positively described these people as ‘informal citizens’, immersed within the host country with their networks of family, friends and associates [this notion is elaborated on in an article here].

'Exploring often contentious issues relating to citizenship and contested spaces, the group has worked with the artist over the last three-years in Malta, North Africa, and Ireland (north and south). Together they have produced many dialogical art and media projects: installations, exhibitions, video works, television programmes and intercultural public discussions.

'Setting up a temporary space within the Atrium of the Civic Offices, the Global Migration Research Network will invite visitors to test their knowledge of citizenship by posing a series of questions in relation to democratic institutions and civic society in Ireland. The group will simultaneously research these questions online in relation to the process of becoming a citizen in Ireland and elsewhere. Key video works from earlier collaborations will also be shown. The group's findings on this occasion will be included in a book to be published in March 2009, designed in collaboration with Detail Design, Dublin.

'How to be a Model Citizen is supported by a Projects: New Work Award from The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, with additional support from the Centre for Research in Art Technologies and Design at the University of Ulster.'

Anthony Haughey is an artist and Lecturer in Photography in the School of Media, DIT (which is FOMACS's host institution). There's a detailed biog of the artist here, and some information on a previous project that may be of interest, an 'investigation into the slowly unfolding aftermath of conflict in Ireland, Bosnia and Kosovo', titled 'Disputed Territory', here.

As Haughey notes, Minister for Immigration Conor Lenihan recently announced plans for citizenship tests: see an report on this from the Guardian here.

The British Home Office has drawn up an official list of 'shortage occupations' - jobs open to foreign workers because not enough British people want them. For the Guardian, Jon Henley went and talked to some of the (British) people in these jobs, painting an intriguing picture of some of the more obscure - and not necessarily uncomfortable or underpaid - jobs on offer, and of some more conventional jobs, such as being a vet, which have simply failed to attract a new generation. The Home Office list is here.

We've written before about the work of American novellist and publisher Dave Eggers, and Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng, who collaborated on the novel 'What is the What', a fictionalised version of Deng's odyssey across Sudan as one of the 'Lost Boys'. Now, the two have collaborated again, on a volume of oral history, Out Of Exile: Narratives From The Abducted And Displaced People of Sudan. There are extracts here, the foreword to the book by Eggers and Deng here, and a 'web-exclusive' article on it here.

The genesis of the book is explained in the foreword:

'It started in 2003, when we traveled together to Valentino’s hometown of Marial Bai. It was the first time Valentino had been back home since he fled, as a young boy, almost seventeen years earlier. The town had survived many attacks by militias and the ­Government of Sudan both before Valentino fled, and in the years of war that ­remained. When we arrived in Marial Bai, there had been a year or so of ceasefire in place, and the town was beginning to recover.

'During our time in the region, we sat down with three women who had been abducted by murahaleen raiders during the war, and had been brought to the North, where they were made to be slaves, serving as household servants and concubines. Save the Children and other agencies had recently helped rescue these women—and thousands like them—and had begun returning all such abductees (women, men, children) to their homes in Marial Bai and throughout South Sudan.

'For the women we interviewed, the return was extremely difficult. The women spoke little or no Dinka—the language of Marial Bai and much of the South—because they had been abducted at a very young age and were made to speak Arabic. They knew little of the beliefs, lifestyle, or customs of the South. And most significantly, two of the three women we spoke to had left children in the North, with the men who had enslaved and impregnated them.(1) When they spoke of their struggles since coming back, they wept, and thus the interviews were fraught and relatively brief.

'After we spoke to these women, we were determined that their voices should be heard... So while we worked on telling Valentino’s story—in what became What Is the What—we also made plans for a book of oral histories of the lives of Sudanese women during the war.'

Some further material, previously highlighted in posts below:

Valentino Achak Deng was in Dublin in October to address a conference on fighting hunger organised by Concern, and spoke about the work of his foundation, in his hometown of Marial Bai in Southern Sudan, where he is currently building the first secondary school. (There's a slideshow and video of his recent visit here.)

Dave Eggers's online vehicle, McSweeney's, has an account of 'What is the What' here. Your correspondent's review, originally published in the Irish Times, is here.