Jessica Hatcher over at Vice News has an amazing piece about a Peace One Day-sponsored concert in Goma, hosted by none-other than R&B/hip-hop star Akon and...... Jude Law?
Well worth a read. My favourite passage:
Akon, in black PVC trousers, diamond studs, and a black hooded cardigan, burst onto the stage. The people of Goma responded. Police strained to hear on their walkie-talkies. "Ladies say yeah!", he shouted, communicating in neither Kiswahili nor French. The crowd, who couldn't understand, echoed distorted versions of his chants. "I wanna make love now now now now," he sang, to an almost all-male crowd.The music was intoxicating, the stage-craft ambitious. At one point, Akon stepped into a giant clear plastic ball and surfed the crowd — though the audience of five or six thousand wasn't quite dense enough so he fell three times, and at one point a team of robo-cop style United Nations police went to the rescue. The speakers pumped out gunshot sounds for a few seconds, but that was quickly cut off. Foreign aid workers cringed at the song, Smack That, which glorifies domestic violence. Much of the audience looked bemused, but those at the front kept up the arm-waving and screaming. "It's amazing!" said one British aid worker as he drifted past aglow.