Last night I went to see a documentary with one of my professors called Justice For Sale. First we went out to dinner with my roommates and I had gnocchi. Everyone who worked there spoke Italian and the languages in my brain got all turned around when I could actually understand what they were saying. (In other words, as soon as I came to a Germanic country, I stopped being able to say the letter "u" with English pronunciation.) At the restaurant we also got serenaded by an elderly Italian man. I think he may have been the owner. He basically got a microphone and turned up his background music and just went to town. I have a theory that his big dream was to become a singer, but after several unsuccessful attempts, decided to open his own restaurant so that he could belt out tunes whenever he wants to. Our professor knew the lines to one and sang along a bit.

After dinner we walked over to the movie, which was held outside in a little square and projected onto a screen. There were beanbag chairs and cubes and sleeping bags for people to sit on. Two of the other participants in our program were there. One is a judge from Albania. I can't remember what the other ones does but he's not a student. We have several European students and several international professionals in our program, in addition to WCL students. 

The documentary was about the justice system in the Democratic Republic of Congo as it relates to rape cases. One of the filmmakers was there but she was only speaking in Dutch. The documentary followed the case of this man named Masamba who was imprisoned for 10 years after being convicted of raping an army commander's wife. Three years later a lawyer takes on the case pro bono and finds a lot of inconsistencies in it, such as the inconsistencies of the dates when the alleged rape occurred and the hospital visit. She goes around and talks to everyone about it. The main take away from the film is that non-governmental organizations/non-profits operate in these countries and need funding. Sexual violence is a big problem in several African countries, as is the spread of HIV, so these NGOs say that they've prosecuted and convicted X number of rape cases and are able to continue getting funding. In this case, the NGO sponsored the public court proceedings and paid the lawyer who represented the rape victim. The NGO asked another lawyer to represent the accused without payment. There's an inherent inequality in the proceedings. Additionally, the NGO gets more funding if they are successful in prosecuting these cases, as opposed to if they say, 'well we put on a fair trial for this rape crime, but ultimately decided the accused was innocent.' It basically sets up a system in which if you're accused of rape, you're likely to be found guilty despite any guilt that exists in your case. Masamba's case is currently being reviewed by the high court. Meanwhile, his wife, mother of his five children, has remarried. The point is you need due process of law and it seems like everything cuts both ways. People always say to carefully research charities and non-profits you donate to, but I don't see how the average person can research so carefully to find out about these problems. In another way it was interesting because I picked up certain words in Congolese French, since everyone was speaking in French with English subtitles. Anyway, here's the documentary's website in case anyone is interested: http://ifproductions.nl/justiceforsale.nl/

Moving on to a less heavy topic: The sun is out for like 19-20 hours a day here. Last night the movie started at 10 pm. It was still light outside. The sun did not set until around 11 pm and even then it wasn't dark dark. You could still see lighter parts of the sky at the horizon. I woke up at 5 one morning when I was still dealing with jet lag and it was light outside. It's really weird and is totally messing with my circadian rhythm. At 11 it only felt like it was around 8 or 9. As a result, I've fallen asleep, woken up at 9 pm and thought I was late for class because the sun was streaming in and I didn't realize it was 9 pm. One of my friends said that the moon is really pretty and big here but the combination of the cloudy skies and lack of darkness hours means I haven't yet seen it myself.

In other news, I'm almost done with a book I'm reading FOR FUN. :)