Sunday Best

11/06/05

It was obvious that the girl had put on her Sunday best to be filmed, so it was a strange dichotomy as this girl who sleeps on the floor with a thin blanket, who can barely afford to eat, was breaking the ground with a jembe in a decent dress. The young boy was more sensible, he was wearing torn pink sweatpants and a green tank top with a picture of Ronaldo the Brazilian soccer star on it. Actually, that may have been his Sunday best as well…

Night. In my simba. I am up, I am down. I want to go home, I never want to leave. I wish I wasn't trying to make a movie, I want nothing more than to make a good movie. I need to shave, shit, cut my hair. I will do none of these things tonight. I will write and drink a little whiskey and then brush my teeth, go to bed.

I was reading and writing and waiting for my breakfast this morning at 8am when Elisha and Shikuku were at my door, ready to start the day. I got ready quickly and was just going to take a Clif Bar for breakfast, I was walking up to the cooking shed to tell Mama, but she wouldn't hear of it. "They have already had their tea, let them wait while you have yours." In fact she ended up serving them breakfast as well, and keeping with local tradition of always taking what is put in front of you, Mzee and Shikuku took a second breakfast.

We walked up through some rat routes and along the way I had Mzee tell me the history of Kanga. We held hands in the African way. The summary of Mzee's story is that 'Kanga' (which is a guinea fowl in KiSwahili) was so named because the area was full of them. It was officially started by SDA missionaries in 1919. Then a primary school moved in, where the secondary school is now, and when they came with the high school they moved the primary school to its current location, sometime around the 1940s. In the 1970's the tarmac road was built, and that's when everything started to spiral out of control.

We got up to our first destination. It was the home of two orphans. Of course, the place was filled with kids and even a few neighbors, all come to see the mzungu. The kids had just come from weeding in their maize garden, so I asked to film them doing that work. On the way out I took some snaps of a young girl holding a baby. The light was nice and they were ragged and telling, so I'm sure the shots will be good if they're tack. There are so many opportunities for good photos here, it's amazing. We went out to the shamba, I filmed them working. It was obvious that the girl had put on her Sunday best to be filmed, so it was a strange dichotomy as this girl who sleeps on the floor with a thin blanket, who can barely afford to eat, was breaking the ground with her jembe in a decent dress. The young boy was more sensible, he was wearing torn pink sweatpants and a green tank top with a picture of Ronaldo the Brazilian soccer star on it. Actually, that may have been his Sunday best as well… They dug until they were tired. Then we went in for the interview, and of course everyone followed us. I managed to get everyone but the kids and my people to leave the room. The kids started to talk, Brian, the 10 year boy, was near tears the whole time. It was one of those tough situations, of course what I wanted to do was console him, make him laugh, go run around outside with him, but then I knew that a ten year old boy crying for his situation would be good for the film, so I asked him to talk. (Later we laughed and ran around outside and played with the cameras.) The interviews were more difficult without Robert who knows what I am trying to do and what works well, and speaks English better than Shikuku or Mzee, but we did our best. When we had asked the kids a series of questions and they had answered, I fixed the light and changed the tapes and then asked the kids to say everything again, this time without us prompting them. They agreed, Brian was still near tears. And sometimes in tears. They started to talk, the light was good, sound was good, the emotion, the tone, everything was right. I'm sitting there thinking, "This is good. This is going in the movie." And then I looked down and noticed that after I changed the tape I had forgot to press record! FUCK! I didn't know what to do… Could I ask them to go through it all a third time? I felt like such an idiot. I didn't have a choice. I explained the situation and they laughed at me but went through it all again and it was just as good or even better. Then it was time for lunch and they went about picking veggies and collecting firewood and cooking their veggies and ugali. As we were waiting for the food to be ready I went outside and impressed Brian and the younger neighbor kids with handstands and flips, and then we played with the camera. I flipped the LCD screen around and they could see themselves and they loved it. Finally lunch was served and they served enough for Shikuku and Mzee and I so we sat with them and ate and it was nice, I asked if they had any questions about America and they had a few. And of course they laughed at me trying to speak mothertongue.

There was some sort of misunderstanding and I found myself sitting in a chair in a small mud hut a few homesteads away, talking to a kid from Moi University in Eldoret who had an epileptic seizure and then fell down a flight of stairs, breaking his hip. He's been home since July recovering. Shikuku and Mzee had talked to his mother and she had insisted we pay a visit to the son, and when I got there, the kid started asking me how we should start the examination. When I told him I wasn't a doctor he asked if I could have one of my doctor friends come take a look at him. It was a little awkward. I feel bad for the guy, but I wasn't about to start giving him medical advice.

We took an hour for lunch, Robert came and found me. We chatted and then walked on down to Mzee's place were I was meeting him. As soon as we got in the homestead Adrian ran up and started harassing me, that little punk. So adorable. I said hello to Mzee's wife and the rest of the kids, and Mzee's eldest son Richard was there and we got a chance to meet. Then we started walking up to Grace's place. The sky was just about to open up, and we made it there just as it started to pour. We had to wait out the rain to interview Grace, so Shikuku, Mzee, Grace, and an orphan she takes care of named Tommy (or Torry maybe) and me all just sort of sat there in the dark, listening to the rain pound down on the tin roof. Then Mzee and Shikuku started asking me questions about LA over the din, and we had that conversation for a while. It finally died down and I interviewed Grace. She was orphaned when she was young, she actually lost her father first and then was being cared for by her mother and an older brother, and then both of them fell sick, and died on the same day. An hour later I found myself taking tea and chapati and mandazis with twenty two Africans in a small little room. It wasn't as awkward as it could have been. Being a bit malleable helps. You just got to roll with it.