South Africa, Cuba and USA / 2009 / 24mins / Documentary / Spanish

Freddy Ilanga, a fifteen year old Congolese youth, becomes Che Guevara's personal Swahili teacher and translator during the seven intense months of Ches mission to train anti-Mobutu rebels in Congo. This film is about displacement, familial relations and the high costs of exile during the Cold War and the Cuban Revolution. It is a story about migration and displacement and the high human costs of exile and family separation.

Katrin Hansing

Dr. Katrin Hansing received her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and is the author of numerous publications including the book Rasta, Race, and Revolution: The Emergence and Development of the Rastafari Movement in Socialist Cuba (2006). She has worked as a consultant for think tanks and policy institutes, is often quoted in the international media and completed her first documentary film in 2009: Freddy Ilanga: Che’s Swahili Translator, about Cuban-African relations. Dr. Katrin Hansing’s experience also includes being Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Baruch College (CUNY). Prior to her tenure at Baruch she was the Associate Director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University in Miami. As an anthropologist she has spent years conducting research in the Caribbean (especially Cuba) and Southern Africa and its Diasporas. Her main areas of interest and expertise include: race/ethnicity, religion, migration, transnational relations, remittances, medical internationalism, youth, and civil society. Learn More