Friday, February 19, 2016

Landfill Harmonic

It is hard to imagine a less-likely place for an orchestra to come from than the slums of Paraguay. Cateura is a community on the very edge of South America’s largest landfill . When an Environmental Technician is assigned to the landfill to assist in sorting and recycling the waste, he starts a small orchestra for the children using instruments made from recycled products found in the mounds of garbage that arrive daily. The  Recycled Orchestra of Cateura has toured all around the world and played with such superstars as Megadeth and Metallica. I liked that even after they became well-known, they were still playing on their recycled instruments.

My Internship in Canada

Souverain is a young Haitian man who has come to Canada to be interviewed for the position of assistant to a independent Quebec MP, Guibord. When Guibord realizes he came all that way just for the interview he hires him on the spot. Guibord’s riding winds its way through First Nations territory, with rising tensions between resource development, supply routes and native land rights. When Guibord becomes the deciding vote on whether or not Canada goes to war in the Middle East, Souverain suggests he should poll his constituents before deciding. His constituents are more interested in setting up road blocks than they are about any possible war. His family is divided with his wife for the vote and his daughter against it. All these manoeuvrings are being sent home to Haiti via Souverain’s new iPad with his entire town weighing in on the decision.