Tonight is the launch of POV, a strand of independent documentaries screened weekly through the summer on PBS. Check your local listings to find out the exact time, but usually it is 10 PM. There are trailers and reminders online to help you remember, or set your TiVO!

Rain in a Dry Land by Anne Makepeace
After more than a decade in a refugee camp in Kenya, to which they had fled to escape the civil wars tearing apart the Horn of Africa, two Somali Bantu families are stunned to learn in early 2004 that they will finally be allowed to immigrate to America. The resettlement plan began under Clinton in 1999, was interrupted by September 11th, and began again late in 2003. The families are, in a Somali Bantu expression, grateful recipients of bish-bish, which translates literally as “splash-splash,” indicating the first rains after a long drought (”rain in a dry land”) and, by extension, resettlement in America. In a world teeming with desperate refugees, where barren camps like the U.N.-supported Kakuma in Kenya become permanent rather than temporary fixtures on troubled borders, a ticket to the United States may be the ultimate bish-bish. Read the synopsis>>