The thing about "producing" a film here, I am learning, is that you really can't produce anything. Because the minute you start to plan something, it all goes tumbling down. Salvation is found in the little moments of serendipitous grace that are, of course, where and when you last expect them, which necessitates always having the camera ready to go.
On planning:
I planned to go a Nepali medal ceremony that would be given to honor the Nepali battalion for honorable service, and that happened basically as planned-although as I boarded the plane for Mayamba I was wishing that I wasn't on it because I learned that UN Day was going to be back in Freetown on Friday, and I had been planning to stay in Makeni through the weekend. I attended the Nepali ceremony because the seat had been reserved and it was a bit deal and I didn't want to make my contact feel bad. So off we went. I spent a day running around with camera (and tripod, for those who must know) in the screaming sun shooting this marvelous spectacle of Nepali troops going through their marching routines in the center of jungle lushness. In homage to their homeland the Nepalis have given all of the barrack houses (presumably for officers--I saw more tents) home names, like "Anapurna," and there was an interesting if not entirely talented paper-mache-like sculpture of the Himalayas on the ground in front of the main dining hall.
Bagpipes, local dancing, tae kwon do-the captivated troops sat through about four hours of military and civilian spectacles before we were finally freed for food somewhere in the afternoon. The troops all wanted to have their picture taken with me, which both helped and hindered my cause. I even caught one guy sneaking in a second photo. We were well if oddly fed, with dishes ranging from curried lamb to some Russian potato salad. All of the guests recieved large curved traditional Nepali knives as souvenirs-I'll send mine home with Rob because it could be a hazard in the edit room.
The captain-like figure (in the heat the ranks fly out of my head) had assigned me a ride to my next destination, Makeni, but I met a British police officer who offered me a lift with his police compadres.
Serendipity.
Colin, a British police officer with some 20 years of experience, kindly stopped the car when we ran across a soccer game in the middle of the road as the light was falling. He's a classic "tough guy," but was the only one of the policemen who squatted down to talk to a small malnourished girl (with the distended belly and large "outie" belly button I remember from Africa of long ago) while I was filming. You should see the roads here. While there are a couple of paved stretches between the capital and places like Makeni, not too far out, they are generally nothing more than potholed dirt, and, I understand, in many places they are just tracks through the jungle. Accidents are marked with clumps of grass spread at regular intervals about 100 yards before the site. We passed several markers but no accidents. I asked Colin what would happen if one were to break down on the side of the road at night and his reply was, "You don't want to break down." That said, the UN tends to trash these vehicles, meant to go on to other work in Liberia.
It took us about four hours to go 84 miles in a four wheel drive, whereas the local transport is minivan--and out in the provinces you hardly every see them at night, apparently. During the entire drive we saw only two other vehicles, one UN, another NGO. We passed a fair number of people walking. That's the main mode of transport when you get out of Freetown because the roads are tracks and there is no great supply of private offroad vehicles in this country outside of the foreign community.
During the course of the drive over these rutted roads to Makeni Colin grilled me on my project and by the end was nearly convinced that he might go on camera for me, whereas I was definitely convinced that I wanted him in the film. I was also intrigued by the notion of his interaction with his three colleagues-one Canadian, one former Nepali actor (!) and one Malaysian--all having done police work in their own countries, all in very differnent capacities, at very different levels, for very different types of police forces. So I had inadvertently picked up a character before I had even met the woman who I'd meant to interview in Makeni, an American named Amy Baker, in Civil Affairs.
Amy Baker is a different kettle of fish. I wanted to spend a day with Amy, as that's what I had ostensibly gone to Makeni to do, and I followed her through a series of meetings. Meetings that were several hours late, meetings where people hadn't filed reports since the last meeting, meeting upon meeting in hot, cramped little offices. Amy was amazing. Indefatiguable. Fresh. I think that had I not begged for her to take pity on me and offer me food after the last meeting she wouldn't have eaten--at 4 p.m. She is a smart linguist who gets along beautifully with the people. There was a lovely exchange with a money changer that I unfortunately didn't get on camera, but I will try to stage another. I think that getting her interacting with the locals in Krio (the dialect spoken in Sierra Leone) will be very nice. I also may take Amy into the field to give me the Helicopter Story.
And what, you ask, is the Helicopter Story? It's one of my favorites here: apparently, when the UN was first deploying here they were wont to use soccer fields as helicopter landing pads because they were the only clear ground. Soccer fields tend to be found in the vicinity of schools, and in Makeni alone four school roofs where torn off by the winds. Having now tried to film several helicopter takeoffs and landings this is not hard for me to imagine. The locals were understandably upset, especially after the rainy season hit and melted the walls that were no longer protected by tin roofs. For more than five months they have been waiting, more or less patiently, for the check to rebuild the roofs. One check has been sighted, and it would be nice if construction were beginning on my next visit to Makeni (on fantasy island).
So Amy and roofless school, is what I'm thinking. She also managed to slam her UN truck into a ditch, giving us the flattest of tires. We were in the middle of the market and drew a huge crowd-they were totally enthralled with Amy's difficulties getting the spare tire out from under our truck and would have suffocated us entirely with their curiousity had she not asked the local policeman, who'd been just standing there watching with all of the rest, to ask people to stand back. She radioed for help, which got us nowhere, but Colin (our British hero, as you'll recall) happened to be driving by and got the job handled with a couple of helpful local guys. It was a great scene that I managed to get on camera this time.
That's Makeni. I may also get a former RUF and/or CDF guy--one is working with pineapples now, the other owns a cashew farm. A friend suggested that they could get together and make a killing (pun excused) selling "peace trail mix." Perhaps I'll suggest that to them. I may also interview Willie, one of the Sierra Leonean cops who Colin and company are supposed to be mentoring. Colin told a story of giving a higher-up in the police force a lift and teaching him to use a seat belt, as he'd never seen one before. That's a small indicator of the level of preparedness in a police force that doesn't get descriptions of children whose disappearances they are investigating.
There is so much going on here at so many levels--more than one UN staffer has suggested to me that it will be interesting to see what happens to Sierra Leone after the UN resources have been transferred across the border to Liberia-a process which has already begun. Makeni, once a former RUF stronghold, has just seen the transfer of its battalion to Liberia, and is now left with very little in the way of protection other than the local police and our CIVPOLs (that's the acronym for Colin and co)--who are unarmed and have no right to make arrests. Others have suggested that perhaps the movement of energy and resources to Liberia has hastened the draw down of the UN mission here. Not everyone believes that their Sierra Leonean colleagues are prepared to take over the reins.
Which is a big question, one that I am putting to Sierra Leoneans as well. I have a couple of candidates for my Sierra Leonean characters, who will probably be based in Freetown. One is a neat guy named Mohammed Suma, who does outreach for the Special Court. Unlike a growing number of his countrymen, he is necessarily a staunch supporter of the Special Court, though I have yet to get to the bottom of his feelings for the UN.
What else can I say? My fingers grow tired. AFRICA, MAN. I had forgotten how much I missed it. The red red ground and foliage so lush and absurdly green that I have to manually white balance the camera, which reads the green as blue. I am going to make Rob tell me what it smells like, though. I miss my sense of smell here in a way that I didn't miss it at home. There is so much going on everywhere you look that my strategy for getting b-roll is letting the action come to me. I followed a group of small boys the other day, one carrying a large load of some sort of what looked like grain on his head. He set it down, doled out some food from the bag, and he and his buddies took a snack break. When they went to put the bag back on his head he dropped it, fell over, and everyone had a good laugh. It was one of those things that just happened.
You even have mud huts in some parts of Freetown--outside Freetown, that's mostly all you have--the round ones, thatched roofs. Some cement buildings with iron roofs, but not many.
Here they still do magic with chicken entrails and the occasional human sacrifice. The Makeni four are dealing with a case of possible child sacrifice now. The local witch doctor has told the police that he was bribed by the chief to stop doing his magic to find the girl--which makes me wonder who's doing the witchcraft, but I suppose I'll find out more later.
Sierra Leoneans are lovely-both physically attractive and friendly-especially when you leave Freetown. All of the UN personnel I've asked thus far what they'll miss most about this place have had the same answer: the children. Who do in some places still rub at the whitey's skin to see whether underneath it's actually black.
Makeni has one restaurant, Reconcile (restaurants with this name abound after the war). It sometimes has food, other times not. We lucky on the afternoon I needed to eat; we were told that we could have steak and fries or chicken and fries. We ordered one of each but both got chicken. I suppose the cow was gone.
But back to planning: Rob comes on Friday and we need to be out of the place I'm staying over the weekend. This was always the case but I had hoped that the person who is coming would decide in fact to go somewhere else, Cote d'Ivoire, for example. I hear there's a lot going on down there. I have halfway decided that, since I was blessed with half of a visitor's office at UN headquarters, I'll store the bulk of my gear here and then worry about renting a hotel for the couple of nights Rob and I will be in Freetown later. It seems a pity to waste the money and energy moving to a new place I'll only be a couple of nights in. And I was just told by my logistics friend that he doubted that Rob would be able to do the UN heli-travel. Which would be odd, given that my contact has always known Rob would be coming...it could alter our travel plans, especially Liberia.
So, early tomorrow I take the helicopter, if the right assistant has got me on the flight, to Kailahun, a far eastern province near Liberia. I'm to meet a Canadian MILOBS (military observer to you) there. He may be a character, maybe not. In any case, there is a lot going on out there--from all forms of diamond mining to LURD rebels, disarmament and not-so-disarmament.
I am trying to talk to everyone I can, take the opportunities as they arrive and not get too hung up on my notion of what I think the story is going to be. Because inevitably, it isn't.
Over and out, friends, family, and fellow wanderers.
Ah, yes, colonialism. Sunday was dedicated to lunch. Under a shady canopy. Overlooking a beach marred only by the presence of a couple of drunk sweaty white men eating their lobster on the sand. Lunch took about three hours to complete, because that's the way the meals are on Sunday at the beach. The wine was even chilled.
After dining we went to a beach for swimming (contrary to the beach I can walk to, which, I have learned, while good for jogging, is no good for swimming because the hospital dumps its waste there) and swam in the dark as a thunderstorm rolled in. Warm water in the rain really can't be beat.
Lest you think I don't suffer enough, however, when the generator shuts off at one in the morning and the air is that special sort of hot still and the one mosquito who managed to make it past the screen barriers has already bitten me twice and I get up in the middle of the night to take a second doxycycline pill because I might have missed the first one and you can't be too sure, and then I lie awake at night because I'm thinking that Johnny the helicopter supplier really should be a subject in this film I'm trying to make and wondering whether in fact I should go East or North first, and how, if nothing is happening in either of those places, to best cut my losses and move on to the next-that is when the night is long and the ease and comfort of America is far away.
And I say this now. Tomorrow, I take a helicopter to Mayamba to observe the Nepali troops' medal ceremony. What, you ask, might this have to do with my project? Well, they are UN troops after all, and my lovely contact, he-who-makes-things-happen-for-me-here, Kemal Saiki, will be pleased if I attend. I suspect that he'd also like a bit of the footage for himself, which is probably fine. There is also a Nepali actor-turned-peacekeeper who made me think: now
THERE is a man Americans will relate to, but the level of his English is still under debate. We'll see. There is also a connection between Mayamba and Makeni, a Northern province and the next place I need to go. I'll hopefully be able to hitch some form of ride with the Nepalis who've attended the ceremony in Mayamba because some of them are based in Makeni. You get the logic, yes? This is why I have to eat and drink so much with these people--I have to convince them that I am the type of person for whom they want to devise these hellishly detailed travel plans. In Makeni I plan to meet Amy Baker, who I'm hoping will be our American star. I won't say too much about Amy here for fear of jinxing my trip.
Yesterday I filmed the helicopter pad here at the UN. Literally, you look out the office window, there's the pad. Which makes for some noisy meetings, but people here no longer hear the helicopters. The wind created by those things is no joke, and not so easy to film around. I need to perfect my heli-shooting.
Got a first dinner from our house cook last night-chicken in a very thick and oily peanut sauce with white rice. I had two helpings.
This morning I got up early and filmed my neighbors living in a glorified hut behind our house. Half of the family got really into directing and would direct the other half to walk in and out of the frame, to get closer, to redo laundry scenes, etc. I've had kids clown for the camera, but this was something new-I'll go back to visit them again and probably take them some of those silly American-flag stick pins I brought for Liberia-I don't think I'll be spending much time in Liberia. Across the stream from the family is a Christian "semi-private" school for 300 children who wear green outfits. I was allowed to film them buying pre-school snacks of fish and some sort of fried balls with mayo on what looked like a hotdog bun and then shot a rousing series of Jesus-related singing and physical movements-half P.E., half church. I've promised to go back to the school and buy myself a fish sandwich. They actually didn't look so bad.
I'm getting used to carrying the camera and tripod bags with me basically everywhere I go. When my back is killing me and the sweat is rolling down my freshly-showered neck I remind myself that this is my job. The locals don't appreciate me trying to squeeze into the back of a taxi with all of my gear, however. The Nepali medal ceremony invitation (yes, there was an invitation!) requested "formal" attire, but I'm going to assume that camera people are exempt from such niceties.
All right now, I'm over and out. Off to the provinces (doesn't that just Sound colonial?).
Moving right along. The last time I was in sub-saharan Africa it was as a Peace Corps volunteer, so coming at this from the perspective of the men in the blue hats is a bit of a mind game for me. Because make no doubt about it, we are the colonials, and the rules for us are different. Rules? I think that's one of the things that distinguishes expats from their patriot bretheren-they lose touch with any need or desire to follow society's rules-because the rules in the societies they've been living in don't apply to Europeans. We get into clubs without paying, and have get-out-of-jail free cards for bar brawls, speeding-and forget about drinking and driving -that's not an infraction in these parts (although interestingly, they do fasten their seat belts). It's a culture of working late nights and weekends and dinners that regularly don't end until after midnight. Some of the restaurants serve steak, though I've not yet seen a cow. We eat and socialize with other Europeans. Most locals can't afford to eat in these places.
Forget political correctness. We all (minus this part of we) smoke heavily, drink copiuous amounts and stereotype certain races and creeds and women with impunity. We frequent bars where local women aggressively try to solicit a "good time" for money and yet feel free to mock them (even as some of us employ their services, which we don't joke about). This is one of our verbal pastimes. We hire drivers, cooks, people to wash our sheets and our underwear. In fact, we do next to nothing for ourselves because we are, after all, working for the people here.
And they are trying to help, and, in many cases, helping the people of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leoneans I've met and am working with seem to take it all in stride. Yesterday I met a Sierra Leonean guy who does outreach for the Special Court and he was the most eloquent proponent I've yet heard for its existence. He told me that he hoped that, in his country where judges in the provinces "levy fines before hearing the case," the Special Court could become a model for judical reform, with due process and real justice. I may head to Bo, about 4 hours away, with this guy, to see how he spreads the good word of the Special Court to the people in the provinces.
I finally shot a little bit yesterday-though the sun didn't come out until an hour before sunset. I was in downtown Freetown, getting basic people shots. Other than the man who "befriended" me and held the rest of my admirers at bay, I was basically unmolested. I had the usual crowd of kids around me, but they were mostly quietly observing, which appreciated. Lugging around the gear is no fun, but our new tripod is worth its weight. I have so many offers of help carrying the 3 bags that I try to make it seem as if I'm not a packmule, though by the end of the day I'm sure that I resemble nothing more.
But I am still trying to figure my place out here. In a Peace Corps flashback I got into a fight with a taxi driver last night. He charged me 10 times the going rate. In the end, I had a fit and paid. I doubt that most of my European friends would have fought over the difference between .20 and $2, but for me it was a matter of principle. Which is probably silly. We'll see where I end up. I took photos of fishermen on the beach yesterday. They want me to give them a copy of a photo and I will try to see whether I can print one out. But I AM part of the system, and of course they are going to ask me for money-they believe that I'm taking something from them-it's an old dilema, and I'll see where I come out this time.
Otherwise, I plan to head "upcountry" once or twice this week. I need to get out of Freetown. I need to say, in case you were getting the wrong impression from my words above, that I have been warmly welcomed by my fellow expats here and that I like most of them. They are smart and speak many languages. They know and care about the outside world, and, more importantly, the third world. I think that many of their faults are situational and that in order to work well in UN headquarters or in TRC offices maybe you need air-conditioning, cold drinks and drivers on command. Whatever it takes to stay relatively healthy and sane here, I suppose. More on that later.
This is a quickie to all to say that I've arrived, well and sound, in Freetown, after an uncomfortable stopover in Lagos.
Green and hot, those are my prevailing impressions of Sierra Leone after day one. Freetown is much larger than I'd envisioned, though the red clay dirt roads are exactly as I had imagined, complete w/nasty potholes, as rainy season has just finished (good news for the shooting). I've already met and dined w/my UN man-who-gives-me-access, which is great. I'm actually writing from his office. We've just met Bridadier-General Adrian Foster, Chief of Staff, Acting Deputy Force Commander, or something like that. In any case, he's what we'd call the Moheem, or big dude around here. He was a bit less welcoming, and wanted to know what editorial control he'd have over my end product. --Here we go--none, I told him, while keeping my mouth shut abt my nice man-who-grants-access's guarantee that the UN would keep clear of all editorial anyway. Hopefully, this won't be a problem.
Otherwise, I pay $50 extra/month to have air conditioning from 8 p.m. -3 a.m. in the room in the guest house I'm staying in, which is a bargain. I get the room for $200/month, plus an additional $25 for laundry and I put into a food kitty when I dine chez nous. It's a great deal for the first two weeks -I'm still figuring out what happens after that. I have cell phone and cash, and am lining up my first travel--to see a medal ceremony for the Nepali troops. Supposedly, they have both a bar named and decorated for Mt. Everest and a former Nepali film star in their ranks. I'll be checking out the film star, of course. If I can work him in maybe I'll use him as the "American" angle.
I also tagged along with the guy who runs our guest house, who is a researcher for the International Crisis Group, as he went to cover a press conference given by the Special Court's David Crane. The most interesting thing about it, other than Crane's unequivocal call for Nigeria to give back Charles Taylor, was the interaction between Crane and the press. They were definitely not afraid to ask him the hard questions, although it seemed as if there was a lot of advocacy and rehashing of old issues going on. I'll be meeting Mr. Crane later.
That's it for now. I've forgotten what it's like to passionately discuss malaira pills over dinner (I feel comfortable w/my doxycycline choice, interested parties.) and I had forgotten the quality of African light. Which is really burying the lede, bc it's all about the light here. In addition to the green heat, of course. Truly, that piercing softness that makes even noon daylight gorgeous--I swear, I'm going to shoot some at noon just to demonstrate. That, w/the red roads and the colorful decaying buildings and the men and women laughing together all over-not a darn thing like Algeria would have been. I lugged the camera and tripod over to the UN this afternoon w/the fanciful idea of shooting helicopters and a little "compound" life, but there were people to be met, UN's own promo films to watch, and now the light is gone.
Please send words and understand if I don't email you personally right away. The intrepid or those who just really miss me can get me on my new cell phone:
00232 76 714 655.
Keeping the faith in SL-