Ten years ago, Reboot the Roots creative director Serge left the squats of Hackney and returned to Malaysia to facilitate and organise in solidarity with a community of recovering drug users, refugees, and people living with HIV. They blogged about their experience, and we wish to share highlights from their writings to highlight the origins of RtR as an arts-for-social-change organisation.

“It is not for us to tell you what to do, but for you to tell us what you want to do.”

– Soon, Coordinator with Reboot The Roots

I could write for the entire night, jacked up on amphetamine till the sunrises over the jungle to the dawn chorus of monkey howls, and still I wouldn’t have enough time to report everything that his happened in a single day. Even as I write this, Soon is talking to me, Augustine and Azahar are playing music and writing poetry behind me, Leeboi is showing Nurul how to make a silk-screen, and Lokman is rehearsing his lines for the upcoming performance.

I awoke from a fitful night of hallucinatory waking dreams, soothed by the thunderous tropical rainfall outside, to a still morning of tea and errand running. The afternoon we spent painting new banners to cover the old Fallen Leaves mural on the backwall, before meeting with Rufus to discuss the upcoming Malaysian Care project.

Rufus joined back in 2008 when I took over running the company as Assistant Director. He travelled to Sabah with us twice, and was a member on and off through 2009-2010. I’m sure he won’t mind you telling me that he was in and out of prison, on and off drugs, all through that time. He left the house in 2010 under a cloud and joined the Malaysian Care home where he is now undergoing peer training. He has been pimping us to MC and the forum theatre tehcnique ever since then, and has literally doubled in size thanks to his pescetarian diet and a lot of working out. He is HUGE, possibly the most muscular man I know now, but when I worked with him before he was thin as a rake.

Due to the Short + Sweet rehearsals, two out of three of the MC training sessions I will have to run solo, which I don’t mind so much, but it stands as a testament to how busy we already are. It’s going to be a jam-packed couple of months, and my head is already bursting with the possibilities. MC want a three-day crash course in Theatre of the Oppressed, which means taking them through image theatre, forum and jokering in about 24 hours of contact time. Already I know that the FORUM festival from last year has more than prepared me for this. I’ll hopefully get more time to elaborate in the future blogs.

More interesting to report is the session that took place after we visited Rumah Ozanam – a shelter home nearby for women and children living with HIV. After a dinner and a rendition of Rasa Sayang, we returned to base camp for a house meeting.

Again, I haven’t enough time to relate on all the points covered, but let me bullet some to give you a flavour:

• “I want us to be real people. Have real relationships with people. Everyday we might fight but at least we will be real.” – Augustine
• “In RtR we have no bosses, only coordinators.” – Soon
• “I’m a person in life who has never achieved anything. It is the sense of attainment that is achievement for me enough. That I actually achieve something … I have been in many programmes, but this one is the only one that tries to rehabilitate people through art.” – Augustine
• An extended discussion took place about how to achieve financial autonomy, using the upcoming Bangun project and events around that to sell items (t-shirts, food, painted bottles, poetry books etc) as well as looking into our artistic investment. The discussion explored the balance between individual and community benefit, and the energies invested there in. This grew out of concern over the coming cessation of funding for the group from the Commonwealth Foundation for work done in Nursalam Krashpad. All the group agreed that 25RM (5 quid) a week was more than adequate for their pocket money needs. However, it was felt that through the collective efforts of the group, we could start to move quickly towards financial autonomy.
• The question of direction was raised – where are we going collectively? Personally? The idea was raised that self-sufficiency and ongoing recovery were key concepts, but also that the group had to self-direct. Individuals had to enact their own wishes, collaborate with others to successfully realise our desires and fulfil our needs as those of others.
• Forgiveness – everybody needs to practice forgiveness and live together as a community. If you don’t believe in what we are doing, then what are you doing here?

Original post can be found here.