Here I sit outside the Force Commander's office (that's how everyone refers to Opande out here, though for my purposes it's ususally just faster to use Opande), waiting for a sign that things are going to begin. Aside from shooting back pains, sweat that removes my sunscreen and the fact that my pants don't stay up as well as they should (those low angle shots are a bitch), the most difficult part of my job here is accepting the fact that I can control exactly nothing.
As in nada. Not where we go, who we see, who will be speaking, acting, doing. I'm trying to get cutaways when Aisha is throwing dollars into the air--the good and the bad news is that there is no telling how the action will happen and from which direction it will come.
Last night's meeting was worth doing, and Conneh was very expansive in his enthusiasm for the disarmament process. Then he started to get into the infighting between he and his wife Aisha, and Opande tried to convince him that he had the woman under control. Which remains to be seen, really. She wants to oust a govt. man that her husband wants to keep in, and was going to make that part of the disarmament deal. All inside baseball stuff, none of which belongs to the film. But it does affect the drama. I was invited to take my leave of the boys when they wanted to get down to boy business. I was lucky to have been allowed to film anything, but as a journalist I wanted to be there for it all. I shut up and walked out.
This morning we were meant to go immediately to the disarmament site--oh, we're off out. More as I can.
Posted by Jessie Deeter at April 15, 2004 10:02 AM