thanksgiving

everyone is writing "i am thankful for..." blogs today but i think i am going to skip doing that. i am kind of tired and unmotivated to think of things i am thankful for besides people and i don't want to forget anything/one. last night was a strange experience. i joined this club called cinéclub (you can guess what it is about) and every week we watch documentaries and comment about them afterwards. there is always a lively little discussion afterwards and it inspires some really nice brain activity (which i feel lacks in my daily life). well yesterday we watched a documentary about soldiers in mauritania who were put in prison for planning to overthrow the government. they were treated horribly in prison and it was unjust etc. the movie was called "Le Cercle des Noyés" (the circle of drowned ones) and was made in 2006 and was in black and white. part of the conflict was about ethnicities, one black and one of arab descent (aka white). this was supposed to represented by the use of black and white. there was no music in the whole movie and the only sound was the narrator speaking some language that i don't think was arabic in monotone about his experience in the fort where they kept these people and the only images were of sand blowing in the desert and the fort in all different kinds of light. when the movie was over the whole room went crazy. there were some "white" mauritanians there that were arguing with black mauritanians and a girl who's uncle had fallen victim to this almost completely unpublicized genocide who was freaking out and sobbing. people kept getting up and giving testimonies...it was so intense and so upsetting i felt like everything was spinning out of control. the scariest part is that the people that tortured these black elites that were in prison haven't been punished, this story isn't over yet and people don't really know about this happening. sometimes i wonder how this is still happening here. i can't believe in race anymore. skin color really REALLY doesn't change anything. everyone eats, poops (or in my case, hopes to poop), breathes, needs water, etc. the fact that there are STILL black slaves in mauritania, only about 5 miles north of saint-louis, is incredible to me. i can't see how anyone can treat anyone else like they're a different value. and maybe i feel this so strongly because i am a minority for once but i think it is strange that skin color matters. so what if people that look alike have different traditions? they're still people and they still need to do the same basic things as everyone else. so i guess today i am thankful for all good people and for this experience and understanding that i am gaining through being here. i hate sounding sappy but being the only toubab from the western world in a room of intellectual africans screaming and crying about reality really makes you spin off to another world. thanks for reading. JAMM REKK.