This is the 3rd, and final, in a series of blog posts about my recent trek to Africa to shoot the film END OF AN EPIDEMIC. (you can read posts 1 and 2, here and here)
Once our small production crew had found our rhythm, shooting in and around Balaka, we began to branch out into smaller villages and conducting ‘man-on-the-street’ sort of interviews. With the help of our next local fixer, McDaphton Bellos, (who was wildly popular wherever we went and is just about as likeable as is humanly possible), we took to the streets and villages nearby.
a contemplative McDaphton (I caught him during the ONE moment he wasn't smiling)
Everywhere our small crew went, we attracted a good deal of attention… but what became fascinating to me, were the answers to questions we were asking of the people we conducted impromptu interviews with. These were not researchers or academics or people with an ulterior motive of any sort, these were people on their way to somewhere else when we’d intercept them to talk about HIV/Aids, the biggest problems in Malawi in their eyes, what could be done to change things, and their beliefs about condom use, infidelity, etc. (you’ll have to see the film at some point in the future to hear all of the wonderful sound bytes). These felt incredibly timely and honest, and even with the translation happening between question-answer-question-answer, I think that we captured some honest to goodness, well informed thoughts on our subject and a slice of what people really believe.
From there, we interviewed the Chief of a small village, where one of his wives was so incredibly excited to show me her still (which was creating the equivalent of moonshine) that I momentarily got separated from the crew and had this wonderful moment of not understanding a word she was saying – but realizing that this was such a fantastic thing for her to be able to give me a show and tell about, I listened intently and nodded constantly.
some of the kids in the Chief's Village -- very excited to have their picture taken
We photographed a street performance that we had commissioned, to illustrate some local ideas and issues related to HIV and Aids in Malawi. (when we started shooting, there were 6 total people, counting cast and crew, involved — 30 minutes later, we were surrounded by more than 75 locals who were watching us as much as the street performance itself, and they became the backdrop for everything I was shooting — you can find me with a white bandana on, dead center, in the middle of the photo below).
our quiet street performance draws a crowd -- photo by Gregory Collins
And over the next bunch of days, we filmed people in markets and on bustling streets, setting up cameras in the busiest and the quietest places we could find, to try and capture the life and movement in Balaka and surrounding areas. And I think we did just that.
On our final night, we were invited to the nicest of dinners we had had all week, at a local Italian Architect and his wife’s home. A surreal experience, as we were now in a big beautiful sprawling estate with a gigantic pool and it felt so much like a mini-mansion that could be found in any number of cities around the US. But the dinner and the dinner conversation reminded me of what we were headed back to — what the ‘other life’ sometimes included.
mid-sentence, probably speaking some broken Portuguese or Spanish -- photo by Gregory Collins
It was the near-capper on the trip, but also the beginning of a long trek back to the world we live in. (we did have to stop, one last time, at a local bar where we had become temporary residents… and after 3 beers and being accosted by a man, who literally said, “Gregory, you speak such gooooooooooooooooood Chichewa” more than 50 times — we decided that that was the perfect finale.)
the last stop -- final beers and some pool
our one night off in Liwonde National Park -- a safari story for another time
On more than 24 hours of flying to get back home, I watched 3 films, MICHAEL CLAYTON, I AM NUMBER FOUR, THE MECHANIC, read Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “What the Dog Saw”, copied more than 200GBs of files from hard drive to hard drive, drank two cups of coffee and one cappuccino, drank two beers and slept ever so briefly.
And now, the trip, only a little over a week completed, already seems a distant memory. I feel like I only am able to touch on the highlights (or lowlights). But as we pushed through exhaustion and continued to shoot day after day in wildly different places with the help of our local crew, I can say that I found myself in a wonderful sort of rhythm. As Gregory wrote in a piece he recently published, we started to fall into a technology-less, more interpersonal, simpler way of life. Aside from all of the camera gear and sound equipment, hard drives, and the more than dozens of cables we were traveling with, the computer wasn’t something I needed on a daily basis and if I needed to speak to someone (in whatever language it would be), we found our way to them and spoke in person.
I got to exercise my Portuguese, the handful of Spanish words I can cobble together, and I found my English taking on some sort of hybridized broken-British-accented tone… and I was okay with that, because I was talking… I can recall a specific moment, when I found that a lot of my anxiety had dipped away… and I think that it had to do with the fact that the computer and being online (at least in what I do professionally) comes with so much baggage and the necessity of replying and maintaining so many different ‘action-items’. This is all a bigger diatribe, but it’s of interest to me, someone who uses the computer as a main source of human interaction.
An altogether life changing experience… and one that will hang with me for a long, long time. We’ll find ourselves back in Malawi again, as we continue the documentation and photography for END OF AN EPIDEMIC, and I have to wonder what new lessons I’ll learn, and will the romantic notion of the journey continue in repeated visits? I don’t know. But I am so very thankful to have gone and been able to step into a new life, if ever so briefly.
Fantastic.
