Horror

10/28/05

Last night was straight out of a horror film. This lightening storm started after dinner. It was some miles away, to the west and northwest, but the sky was mostly cloudless so each bolt was dramatic. They came, one after another, again and again. I stood and watched them for a long time. It was a very apocalyptic scene. Finally I came in, tried to write, tried to type, but the bolts kept illuminating the dark room, this lightening without thunder. That may have been the creepiest part, all those hundreds of lightening bolts, and not one clap of thunder, just the eerie deafening silence of the African night. But then a noise started deep in the village, somewhere near the church. It was a strange chanting, a mumbling, incantations. Like a thousand people whispering, all quietly talking at once, the sheer multitudes making the sound travel through the narrow footpaths and across the tarmac to my ears. I couldn't tell what the sound was, all I could tell is that it was creepy, which the thunderless lightening was compounding. My actual first thought, and one I couldn't shake, despite all of my rationalist leanings, was: zombies. The lightening has surely awakened the dead, and they are coming for me. I got the DVX and shotgun mic and headphones out, geared up to see if I could discern the noise better, but the amplification made it no more clear, just creepier. And then I could hear footsteps everywhere, coming closer and closer. I put the camera away and brushed my teeth, steeling myself for the final zombie battle (I actually at one point almost put shoes on because I wasn't sure I could effectively fight zombies in flip flops, and then realized how silly I was being.) The thunderless lightening kept on. I double bolted my door, then started hearing weird footsteps and scratching sounds to go with the zombie moans and lightening bolts. I think they had let the dog out of his house. But it was straight out of a horror film.

I set my alarm for 6:20am, got out of bed at 7:20am, and went for a jog, up my same footpaths, cut my arm on a bush, two women stopped to say 'pole sana.' Now I am going to take a bucket shower. Then eat weetabix and mashed bananas. Then go run some errands in Rongo, then meet up with Robert and translate some of the 20 or so hours of footage that we've filmed in Ki'Luo. It's a trip doing these translations, some of these tapes are from when I first got here, and I was just so wrapped up in everything that I hadn't sat down and figured out a good system for translations, and now I'm finding out what some of the people said… Its like, 'oh man, I didn't realize their situation was so desperate' or 'that lady really asked me to buy her a house? Again? Three tines?!' Then tomorrow is church, and then Sunday we have more people to go interview. I keep waiting for that one story to really jump out at me, like 'oh this is the documentary, I need to follow this person, this family, live with them for a few weeks, see their trials and tribulations'… but none have jumped out at me like that. They are all equally desperate and therefore equally compelling, yet somehow it never seems right, like it would make a filmic and interesting two weeks of documentation. But I'm not giving up. I'm still looking. I'm still trying. Trying and trying.

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