31 mars 2006
Getting technical
This week I tried to send my first tv piece by FTP. FTP stand for File Transfer Protocol, a technology that is used by more and more journalists to send files (text, stills, audio, video) to their news organizations from abroad.
Before that, there used to be different ways to send your story: over the phone for text and radio, express mail for stills or tapes, and if it was urgent, satellite. Now with the development of high speed connections, FTP is becoming a much cheaper option.
All you need to do to send a file by FTP is to download the software on the internet (some are free), get your recipient’s FTP address (which will look something like ftp.address.com) as well as their login and password. This will allow you to access their FTP folder. On your screen, you’ll see the contents of both your computer and of their folder. You then just have to drag your file from one to the other.
Very simple. There’s just ONE requisite: a high speed connection. And there is barely any in Kenya, as the construction of this type of infrastructure is tightly controlled by the government. It’s almost impossible to get a landline and dial-up internet (or even just the phone service). Don’t even thing about broadband, it simply doesn’t exist.
There is a way to get around this though: wireless. You can’t get a regular landline here, but you can use the cell phone network to connect your laptop to the internet from anyplace where there is coverage. Thanks to this technology, I was able to check my emails from Wajir, which is in the middle of nowhere but does have cell phone coverage.
Of course, my connection is very slow. You can’t have everything. Still, I wanted to avoid paying a company with a better connection to send the file for me, so I decided to try to do it on my own. When I saw that it would take me 60 hours to upload the file, I thought my computer was just trying to scare me. So I left it connected all night, hoping to have a good surprise when I woke up. But no, it was not kidding. In the morning I still had 35 hours to go. I had to abandon the idea and ask an internet service provider to send the file… it arrived damaged.
The bad state of telecommunications is probably the most frustrating part about being a journalist in Africa. Another example: calls barely go through from the UK to my cell phone (works ok from France or the US). So the typical conversation usually starts with “Can you hear me? Hello? I’m sorry the line is bad and I can’t hear you. Hello? You hear me?”. Before I give up: “I’ll call you right back”. Because yes, it does work very well FROM my cell phone TO the UK. Why it only works one way is still a(n) (expensive) mystery to me.
29 mars 2006
Charles Taylor arrested
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor was arrested in Nigeria yesterday as he was attempting to cross the border and flee to Chad. He was put into a plane and taken to Sierra Leone‘s War Crimes Tribunal where he was indicted on 17 counts of crimes against humanity.
Since he was forced from power in 2003, Taylor had been in exile in Nigeria where he was living in a luxurious villa by the sea. When earlier this week Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo responded positively to his Liberian counterpart Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf ‘s call to hand over Taylor, the former warlord suddenly went missing – but not for long.
Charles Taylor was born in 1948 to a family of Americo-Liberians, the elite group that grew out of the freed slaves who founded the country in the 19th century. He studied in the United-States before going back to Liberia.
He overthrew then-president Samuel Doe in 1989 and was elected president in 1997 after a long and brutal civil war: systematic use of rape, recruitment of child soldiers, mutilation. In 2003 he was himself forced from power by another civil war and Nigeria granted him asylum on the condition that he would not meddle in Liberian politics or finance criminal activity from exile – conditions that he never followed, up until now without consequences.
Taylor's profile on the BBC's website says that "he enjoys table tennis and lawn tennis which he used to play behind the high walls of his Monrovia residence".
He is also somewhat of a showman. In 1999 for example, when the UN accused him of being a gun runner and a diamond smuggler, he addressed a mass prayer meeting entirely dressed in white and prostrated himself on the ground to ask his Lord for forgiveness - although he also denied the charges.
As he was escorted up the steps of the plane that was going to take him to his Nigerian exile, Taylor had a “Terminator” moment. “I’ll be back”, he said. He probably didn’t think the next time he would be in the region would be handcuffed, wearing a bullet proof jacket and escorted by the police.
You can see a “loosely-based” Hollywood version of Taylor in the recent movie “Lord of War” with Nicholas Cage. Cage plays an arms dealer doing business with the world’s worst warlords and dictators including Taylor. The movie didn’t work in the US, I’m not sure why.
26 mars 2006
Social bashing
Have I spent too much time in the US? Apparently yes, as I had time to forget everything about American bashing. I rediscovered it (I was very well aware of it while in France) in the past couple of weeks. In the last 2 dinners that I have attended, at some point or another the conversation focused on the United-States and what was bad about them.
Apart from the traditional "the Americans don't know anything about the rest of the world and they don't care", I also had to listen to a long and angry complaint about the security at US airports. The good thing is that it gave me an opportunity to practise the art of argumentation.
I have to precise something that I feel is important: the people I'm talking about were not regular Kenyans, but members of the African elite educated in Europe and holding high positions in famous multinationals - AMERICAN multinationals. So what I'm describing here is not an overwhelming feeling shared by the entire population but more some kind of social posture, a subject topic that is expected to break the ice during semi-formal dinners. After the social smokers who "only" smoke cigarettes when they're at a party, the social bashers who critize the US as a way to release the pressure before going back to selling their American products and enjoying their American stock options?
Wajir pictures
Several people told me that the Wajir pictures looked great. They're extracts from Andrew's footage. I hope you'll soon have the opportunity to see more of his work. Thanks Andrew!
20 mars 2006
Dangers of the road part 4
So I was coming home from one of my friend's house today when I realized, as I was going down a hill and arriving at a junction, that my brakes were no longer working. Scary.
But TGIWS (Thank God It Was Sunday), which meant that everybody was at church and not on the road. This is what saved me (is that what you call a miracle?). Somehow I managed to get home without crashing the car and me in it. Which proves that I'm becoming a better driver, by the way. I have to say I was quite shaking when I turned off the engine.
18 mars 2006
Journey to Wajir
Wajir is the name of the region in Kenya that is the most badly affected by the drought and this is where I spent most of last week. I went there to shoot a story for a French tv. I had been pitching the story for weeks, and they finally woke up at the end of last week. I wanted to do the story as soon as possible because the rains are expected any time now. But tv is always waiting for things to get worse.
So the first question was how to get to Wajir. Wajir is situated in north-eastern Kenya, 2 hours away from the Somali border. I had been in touch with UNICEF but going with them would have meant spending 4 days on the road (2 to go there and 2 to go back). I would also have had to sort out some paperwork and wait for 5 days so that they can organize our security. So when the Kenyan Red Cross told me that some Norwegian guy was taking a journalist there from March 14th to March 17th with only 2 travel days and that he had some room in his car, I decided to get in touch with him.
I met with Sveinung on Monday. He told me he had been in Kenya for the past 11 years. He came for an exchange program after high school and never left. He’s 29 now and runs a few businesses here and there, I didn’t really understand what kind. But he is also part of a church and is helping them build a school in Wajir. Considering that Wajir is a very Muslim area, the real goal of building a school is of course to try to convert as many Muslim kids as possible to Christianity. I have to say that Sveinung looked a lot more like a mercenary than like a church guy. We agreed that he would first pick up Andrew, my cameraman, and the equipment, and me last at 6am the next day.
When they showed up on Tuesday morning half an hour late, Andrew was half laughing and half terrified. In the car he told me that they were late because Sveinung decided to do a hit and run on a matatu (14 seats buses that are known to drive like crazy in Kenya) at 5:30am. When the matatu carelessly overtook them, Sveinung said “You know, I used to have a problem with matatu drivers. I am much better now. BUT, this one is going to see what he’s gonna get.” He pushed on the accelerator and went crashing into the matatu, turned around it and drove away. Andrew was “Er… what just happened here??”. The matatu driver went mad and decided to chase Sveinung’s car, with passengers on board. They were late because they had spent 20 minutes driving around Nairobi trying to loose the furious matatu.
So before we had even left we had established that we were going to depend on a guy that was capable of anything ;-) And indeed he was. The first 5 hours of the ride went fine as there was actually a road. But then the road disappeared and we were driving in the bush, in the sand, the dirt, with weird animals crossing the road ahead of us without notice. Sveinung drove at 120 km/hour most of the time. As we chatted along the way, he warned us that it was probably a good idea to stay away from him once in Wajir because there had been a “few tensions” between the Muslims and the Christian missionaries there, and everybody knew who he was. He said you had to take this seriously because Al Qaeda has a quite dynamic cell there. I asked him how he knew that. He said that one of his friends used to be part of it. “How can he possibly be friends with you then??” “He became a Christian” ‘Interesting… would he be ready to give an interview?” “Er… he’s trying to be discreet these days…” “No problem, we won’t show his face”. Sveining said he would ask. Too bad he never did.
Every 20 kilometres or so, we had to go through road blocks. They are there to discourage carjackers. As we were stopping at one of them and Sveinung was chatting with the police officer, he took something out that looked like a big pen. I wondered if he was going to give it to the cop, but then he opened it and I saw it was a syringe. He then shot himself calmly in the stomach. We were being driven at crazy speed in the bush by a diabetic whose blood sugar was so low that he had to make himself an insulin shot on the spot…
We finally got to Wajir at 8pm and Sveinung dropped up in front of the guest house where Yussuf, our Oxfam contact was waiting for us. He was supposed to have reserved 2 rooms for us. I don’t understand Somali, but I quickly saw that something was wrong when the guest house guy was showing Yussuf one finger and not two. “There’s absolutely no way you’d share a room, right?” asked Yussuf. “Er… no.” ‘Ok, let me see what I can do”. Yussuf drove away, leaving us in the middle of nowhere. While waiting for him I decided to go to the bathroom, as of course there hadn’t been any gas station along the road during our 8 hours of crazy ride in the bush. When I saw the hole in the bare floor, I really hoped Yussuf would get us out of there.
He did indeed. We ended up in a guest house which, by Wajir standards, was perfectly decent. At least it had real toilets. I actually slept very well.
At breakfast the next morning, we saw that we were not the only guests at the hotel. We met a 50 something man named Henk. He was Dutch he said, and there to help the needy. He was a member of a Dutch church and was investigating what could be done to improve the livelihoods of the people of Wajir. I didn’t have a chance to ask him if it involved building a school and converting a few kids on the way because he started talking about strategies and processes, and “learning by doing”, and I got a little lost. He seemed very interested by the fact that we were tv journalists. “I suppose you’re the reporter”, he said to me. “Well, why do you suppose that?” said Andrew, “She could be holding the camera”. “Yes, I could”, I said. “Well, no, see, I can tell… well… it’s what people want to see… young women like you…” It seemed like HE definitely liked to see young women. Then he said that he would be interested in buying our footage for his church. I told him that we were not planning to shoot anything that had to do with a church but that didn’t seem to bother him. So we exchanged contact info and we agreed that he would pay for the dubs and let us know if the church was buying the footage.
It is interesting to see how disasters attract all sorts of shady people who are more looking out for their own profit than for anything else. (Disasters also attract another kind of people – journalists)
We then met with Yussuf. He introduced us to our driver and to our guide, a short guy called Issa. Then he told us we had some “formalities” to do before we could start shooting. We had to go pay a visit to the District commissioner and the Arid land officer, to introduce ourselves and basically explain what we were doing here. The real reason of all this is to make them feel that they are important, and also to sign their guest book so that they can show their friends and family that journalists from “a French tv” came to see them. Because they are so important, you see.
After that we went to the hospital, and straight to the children’s ward. Some of them were in pretty bad shape, dying from malnutrition and other infections they’re too weak to fight off. Before I left Nairobi I had wondered what it would do to me to see that. Well it didn’t do me anything. I guess the job does that. I was too busy thinking of what to shoot, who to interview, how to politely convince the mothers to speak. And also, I felt that I really knew what I was going to see and that I was prepared. I was happy to see that Andrew was being at the same time pro active and sensitive, shooting was needed to be shot with respect.
We had heard from the District commissioner that quite a few people would give a briefing on the road to a village called Hadado because it was where the BBC had set up its live location. BBC has probably the best Africa coverage of all the Western networks. They had flown in with a satellite dish and were going to be live all day. Because we were going to Hadado anyway, we decided to stop by the live location and grab a few of their guests for interviews. It’s crazy how a white tent, a few big cameras, black cables and a satellite dish can make a desert area look like a movie set. Adam, the BBC bureau chief and a friend of mine, was wearing a white handkerchief on his head in between live shots, regularly wiping his face with it and putting it back on his head.
We found out that we couldn’t shoot anything because we were constantly in their shot. But we finally grabbed the WFP spokesman for an interview. He was mastering the art of the soundbite and the interview was going very well. At some point, I began to see everything in white. I was going to faint, I knew it, but he was in the middle of his last sentence and it was good. So I told myself that I would go back to the car as soon as he was done. But that bite was long. I did make it until the end. I then just had time to say “I think I need to…”, and next thing I knew Andrew was shaking me and asking me “Marie, are you okay?? Are you okay??”. Apparently as I was falling I held on to the tripod and he had to choose between the $50 000 camera and me.
I woke up and went to the car to drink some water. It wasn’t that hot outside, about 35 degrees Celsius, but I knew I should have drunk more water. I hadn’t drunk enough because I didn’t want to find myself in the situation of having to go to the bathroom when there is absolutely no bathroom, or even any kind of room, around. I was in the car desperately trying to open a sealed bottle of water, telling myself that if I couldn’t make it in the next 20 seconds I would faint again but that at least I was seated so I wouldn’t fall. I heard somebody calling me and saying “Marie, Marie, should I pay you now?”. I turned around and saw pervert Henk. What was he doing there??? He wanted to know if he could pay me for the dubs. In the meantime, I still hadn’t opened the water. “Hold on”, I said. I drank, forgot about him. But he was still there. “Marie, is there anything I can do for you?”. “No.” “Okay, take care, bye then”.
The WFP guy then came to see me. “I’m flattered”, he said, “you fainted when you were about to ask me for my name. Here it is”.
Then we drove off to Hadado, a village where we had been told 250 pastoralist households had recently settled after they 
had lost all their cattle. On the way, we could see more and more carcasses. We stopped to shoot them. The rotten flesh smelled bad of course. But once again it didn’t do me anything. I have to say Andrew was the one closer to it.
In Hadado we interviewed a village elder and a woman whose child was very sick – she was complaining of stomach pains and had stopped eating. Now she was so weak that she couldn’t hold her own head up. Everywhere around the village and especially around the borehole where the animals go to drink saline water that is not fit for human consumption, there were more carcasses.
Marabou storks, these ugly huge birds, were feeding on the dead animals. Some of them flying in circles in the sky waiting for the next one to die to get some “fresh” meat. A crowd of kids and adults were following us everywhere. As I was interviewing people, I began to realise that they all had the same answer to my last question, which was always “Is there something else that you would like to say? Something that I haven’t asked you?”. “We need more help”, they would say, “food and water. What we get is not enough”. When I asked them how they saw the future, they would also all respond “I can’t say, it’s in the hands of god”.
We went back to the guest house. We had new neighbours. A guy was sitting outside filling his stories with his satellite phone. At dinner, we learnt that his name was Chris and that he was a photographer for Getty. He had taken one of his friends along for the journey to have some company. His name was Mat. Their Kenyan driver was Joseph. They had also come to Wajir by road - but with a police escort. They asked us if they could follow our car the next day as we were planning to chase a water distribution truck. It seemed that they didn’t really know what they wanted to shoot, so it was comfortable for them to rely on us for the schedule.
BBC Adam called me to ask how I felt. He hadn’t seen me faint, he was on air, but he had been told. Poor thing, he said. “So I was the talk of the live location, uh?” “Yeah, the only interesting thing that happened today indeed”. British humour.
The next day, we started by a visit to the warehouse where the relief food is stocked before being given out. The rations are distributed once a month, but they are so small that they only last 2 days. Most of the bags were “gifts from the people of the United States”, as it was written in big bold letters on each of them. Aid has been very slow to come and Kenya has only received about one third of what it needs to face the crisis. But as usual, the US are the biggest donor. More surprisingly, the Kenyan government comes next, which is very impressive for an African country. According to all the people we talked to, they’ve been doing a really good job. Probably because they’re under so much scrutiny at the moment. With all the corruption scandals, the world is looking at them and they can’t afford to make any mistake in the handling of the drought crisis.
Then we went to the cattle market. This is where the pastoralists usually sell their livestock. But right now, it’s pretty empty, as there are not many animals left, and most of them are camels. As we were getting out of the car, we were rapidly surrounded by a crowd of angry nomads. They were saying that we had to go, they had seen too many journalists and aid was still not coming. They were fed up. As our guide Issa was trying to convince them by explaining that we were journalists and that our job was to show the world, the rest we couldn’t control, I stayed around to keep the attention on us while Andrew discreetly went to shoot whatever he could. Issa really played it well. A very little guy in the middle of a crowd of tall, skinny Somali pastoralists, he managed to gradually win them over. The power of education. We then asked them to designate 2 of them who wanted to speak and called Andrew over. But it soon became impossible to do anything. The crowd came back, this time arguing among themselves. Some wanted to speak and wouldn’t get out of the shot, some wanted us to leave. I told them that if they didn’t keep calm and quiet nothing would happen and we put the camera down. But it didn’t change anything, and Andrew felt it was becoming too risky for the equipment, so we left. Now they were angry because they hadn’t been able to express themselves.
We went back to the hospital to check on the kids. Two of the more critical ones just had been fed but they couldn’t hold 
any food and they were throwing up. I felt that this was too much and that we shouldn’t shoot it because it would shock people in the wrong way, not the one that would make them want to help but the one that would make them want to forget everything they had just seen. After a few minutes, we were joined by other journalists. There was Chris from the Getty, but the WFP guy had also brought a woman journalist from ABC Australia, another impatient-looking tv journalist, and a photographer named Jihad. Yeah, first of all, what kind of a name is that? He had scary black eyes, a pony tail, and skinny jeans. He actually looked more like a fashion photographer. He was probably one, making the kids pose, turning their faces towards his camera. He never said a word, no please, no thank you. We were happy we had been there alone the day before. On our tape of that day, you can hear the flashes of the still cameras.
In the afternoon, we went to another village. Chris and Mat created a little diplomatic incident. They started shooting right away and didn’t bother to introduce themselves to anybody. When a village elder heard that journalists were in town, he came to tell them he had things to say. But Chris said he was only taking pictures. So the guy got angry and tried to throw them out. Chris went to us looking worried and saying that there was a problem. This is not a problem, we told him, this is a question of being polite. You’re taking something from them, so if they want to speak you have to listen. We eased up the situation by doing an interview with the guy. Totally useless for our story, but he got to stay what he had to say and to make his requests for his village: more food, more water, but also alternative means of subsistence and fuel to burn the dead animals before they start to propagate diseases.
On our way back, we stopped at a water distribution point. Water is being taken to selected locations twice a week by 
truck. The truck hadn’t arrived yet and the people had been waiting for more than 8 hours. We waited for an hour and then decided to leave. But after less then one kilometre, we saw the truck coming our way. So we turned back and raced to get to the location before the truck and be ready to shoot it arriving. The people got 20 litres per family, which means that each person would get about 3 glasses a day.
We got back at night. I logged the tapes of the day and went to bed for a couple of hours as Sveinung had decided that we would leave at 3am. He was on time. As we were loading our bags at the back, I noticed a big luggage that wasn’t there on the way to Wajir. I asked what it was. “Well, some of my friends got in trouble”, he said, “and they were asked to leave Wajir within 10 days. So I’m helping them how I can by carrying some of their stuff to Nairobi”. What had happened is that his friends had managed to convert a few Muslims and the sheiks had gotten angry. They had called a meeting, and had told Sveinung’s friends that unless they left they would kill them. The District commissioner, who was heading the meeting, backed up the sheiks and asked them to leave. I asked Sveinung why he hadn’t been thrown out yet. He said that the year before his church had given out some of its land so that they could build a mosque. Smart move.
The way back to Nairobi was a lot more painful than the way to Wajir had been, because we were all exhausted and we had a lot on our minds. But as we were leaving Wajir in the dark, we saw a giraffe wandering in the streets – a pretty exotic image.
Download the BBC Afrique story: RADIO_FEATURE_1_2.aup
To listen to it, you need to install Audacity on your computer. It's free, just click here
14 mars 2006
In the streets
The week after the police's crackdown on the media, the leaders of the opposition organized a "Press freedom" demonstration in the capital.
I was expecting a huge turnout - it wasn't really the case. I followed the demonstration from my office's window as it passed in the street below. I would say there were a few hundred people. I was disappointed. If the same thing had happened in France or in the US the whole country would be in the streets.
So I asked my kenyan friends why it wasn't the case here. Their answer was:
- Middle class. Kenya's economy has been steadily growing over the past few years and the middle class has been expanding. What matters to them is to work, make money, enjoy life. They were not going to skip work to go protest for - probably - no result.
- Fear. Of getting shot. It's as simple as that.
- The lack of young political leaders capable of stirring up the revolt and proposing concrete actions and solutions.
This "Press freedom" demonstration was just a way for the opposition (which just a few weeks ealier was criticizing the media because of some unflattering articles) to do some PR. It wasn't a spontaneous mouvement of public outrage.
A few days later, I was walking downtown when I heard screaming and yelling. Two trucks full of people were going down the street, holding "We want responsible media" signs. I stopped to watch them drive by. What was that? A counter-demonstration? Against press freedom??
As the trucks came closer, I could see that the demonstrators were very excited, aggressive young men. When they saw me, they started calling me "mzungu, mzungu" - white in swahili. This NEVER happens on a normal day in Nairobi. People are used to seing foreigners and they leave you alone.
For me it was clear that these young men had been recruited and paid to stage this demonstration. This was confirmed by my friends - although they said they were probably not even paid, they had just been promised some kind of service that will never materialize.
04 mars 2006
Assault on the press
When I woke up Thursday morning, the local channels were not broadcasting CNN as they usually do early in the morning or late at night because they don't have enough of their own programming. Instead, I could see images of a fire - 
something was burning but what? NTV was on breaking news mode and was taking calls of outraged Kenyans saying that it was a very sad day for Kenya.
It took me a few minutes to understand that what I was seing was the day's copies of the Standard (the oldest newspaper in Kenya) burning.
At 12:30 am that night, two squads of hooded police officers carrying AK-47 had stormed into the Standard's headquarters and printing plant, beat security guards, dismantled computers and seized the staff's cell phones. They had disabled the newspaper printing plant and set fire on the day's paper that 
were getting ready for the morning's distribution. At the media group headquarters, they made their way to the transmission room and put KTN, the country's first private channel, off the air.
Press freedom is usually very largely respected in Kenya, but these past few weeks the government had been getting more and more nervous over the corruption scandals. It started putting pressure on the media and at the beginning of last week journalists were arrested and 
charged with "fabricating stories".
But the police raid was particularly brutal and stupid. Because when you attack a media group you attract aaaaaaaaaall the other medias' attention. Journalists rushed to the scene and everything was filmed. Regular people started calling the radio and tv stations to express their anger and their shame, some weeping on air.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, human rights and press freedom organizations, the US ambassador in Kenya and many others immediately published press releases stating their outrage.
The impact on Kenya's international image was awful... and predictable. So why did the raid even happen?
The police rapidly acknowledged its responsibility and said that the raid had been conducted for "national security reasons" - it was intended to collect evidence about a plot by corrupt journalists to destabilize the government. Very shady justification. People started to ask: but why storm in the middle of the night with no warrant then?
It seemed a very stupid move on the part of the government. But... the story managed to push the corruption scandals out of the first page for a few days, buying some precious time for the implicated officials. They were, of course, also particularly interested in the Standard's computers and the information they contained.
See the CNN wire here
01 mars 2006
The Constant Gardener
Rachel Weiss received the award for best supporting actor at the Oscars yesterday, for her role in the Constant Gardener. If you haven't seen it, the movie is based on a novel by John Le Carre and takes place in Kenya. The wife of a British diplomat (played by Rachel Weiss) is tragically killed during an ambush as she is coming back from Lake Turkana to Nairobi by car. Her husband is devastated of course, but also determined to find out the reasons of her death. He discovers that his wife was investigating the not very ethical practises of a powerful drug company that was testing unsafe drugs on people from Nairobi's biggest slum, Kibera.
I saw the movie more than a year ago in New York, a long time before I even thought of moving to Nairobi. I liked the story, but at that time I didn't even realize where it was taking place.
I had the opportunity to see the movie again a couple of weeks ago when I went to cover the premiere here. Yes, the movie came out here A YEAR after it did in the US. I did ask why, but nobody was able to give me a satisfactory answer (release schedules, business considerations, bla bla bla). I was supposed to bring back some b-roll and reactions from the Kenyan public. But the premiere was organized by the British High Commission (that had helped fund the film), and all the guests were white. We did manage to find a couple of black Kenyans to interview. They had liked the movie. According to them it truthfully portrayed Kenya - and I agree. You can see a little bit of cop corruption, a little bit of slum, a little bit of posh residential suburbs, even a few matatus.
The cast of the film created a foundation to help the communities where the movie was shot. The producer of the film also told me that more than half of the staff on the shooting had been Kenyan. Well, it's probably true, but what he didn't say was that the Kenyans were given the lower jobs, assistants, technicians, and not encouraged to learn from the international staff. I know that from some of my friends who have been part of the team or know people who have.
Anyway, the producer fell in love with Kenya and he is working on a new project that will be filmed here also. Couldn't get more information unfortunately.
For those of you who have seen the movie, what did you think about it?
Dangers of the road part 3
I got my little ugly car yesterday. I think that's how I'm going to call it. It is white with " TOYOTA" written in big bold letters on each side. People here do that because it makes the car a lot more difficult to steal.
But I am traumatised since my accident last week… I went to try out a car (same model that I ended up buying), and after 5 metres on the road I realized that the brakes were not really working… I did stop in the end… against someone's bumper.
It was a very small shock, nobody was hurt and I just had to replace one indicator light. Otherwise the cars were fine. BUT, the result is that now I'm scared to death. Yesterday I drove my car from work to my new home (6 minutes), and that was so stressful!
Otherwise, it's raining now. Pouring more precisely. The roads are turning into pools and you feel like you're in a boat and not in a car. Because most of the sidewalk is made of earth and dirt, well now it's mud. When it rains, everything stops – people, cars in the middle of the road – because you can't see where you're going. I didn't even try to drive home yesterday, and it took me an hour by cab (instead of 10 minutes).
