Enric Sifa opened the evening. Enric was six when genocide broke out in Rwanda. His mother, who loved to sing and dance, was killed in the violence, along with his father. He ended up on the streets for years, singing to himself the songs his mother used to sing, until finally he was able to go back to school. Now he lives in Portland, Oregon, and sings for audiences, following his calling and trying to spread love to the world. He has a very strong voice.
This is one of the songs he sang, though ours was a guitar version. The title, Vahanze, means something along the lines of "come out and enter in." He taught us how to sing the refrain, as he does to his audience in the video. (Hear the whole song at myspace.com/enricsifa.)
Next Amy Something talked about 5 Weeks For Freedom, and showed episode one of Raw From The Road, a very rough documentary series chronicling the bikers' five-week journey. The rest of the episodes can be found at youtube.com/user/IJM2009. Following the screening, three of the riders went up onstage to share a little about the experience.
After we had clapped for all the bikers, we watched IJM's new 30-minute documentary on modern-day slavery; that is, human trafficking, the sex trade, and forced labor. It's called At the End of Slavery. You can learn more at IJM.com.
After that, the tone of the evening lightened considerably with a spectacular performance by Green River Ordinance. The band is made up of five guys from Texas who started playing in high school and are still together ten years later.
They started the website thehopeGROs.com, where you can download their songs for $0.99 each and 100% of the profits go to charity. You can choose which of the five charities listed (IJM is one of them) your money benefits.
They sang Getting Older (below), On Your Own, Goodbye L.A. (a song inspired by their van's run-in with a three-foot yellow pole in said city), Learning, Piece It Together, Everything You Are, and Come On. They're the kind of band that's well enough on the CD, but really amazingly powerful live. Funny, too. And it helped that the audience was into it.
After a few more words from Amy, and a few minutes spent signing advocacy letters the bikers passed out, GRO came back onstage with Enric Sifa and they did a pretty entertaining duet/improv kind of thing, where we got to see Enric's retro-hip-rocker side. That pretty much made the night.
Afterward, Jess, Laura and I enthused about the show while huddled on the street corner in the rain, until we developed common sense and ran for the parking lot. We met back at Jess's apartment and all got into her car to drive to Spot Coffee, where Jess and I got vanilla cappuccinos and Laura got a green tea. Jess and I impressed the guy making our drinks by reading the message written on the counter - 你爱我们的咖啡！- You love our coffee! - and then we grabbed a table and discussed TV shows, until a random (very polite and uncreepy) guy named Phil came up and told Jess she looked like his Russian ex-girlfriend, which made everyone crack up.
We left fifteen minutes before closing time, headed back to Jess's to say goodbye and transfer cars, then Laura and I hit the road. We chatted the whole way back, which was great because we both stayed awake, but bad because we missed the first exit which added 20 minutes to our trip. But no harm done.
We arrived safely home around 2 a.m., well satisfied with the night.
