For the record, Rwanda is actually trying to make the name Hillywood stick, I didn’t just make that up. So today was our scheduled-day-off-cum film shoot, which to me is more fun than relaxing, but I’m not sure the whole house hold shares my sentiments. Either way, we had to go downtown to meet our actor and start our shoot. His name is Regis, he is the 12 year old brother of Alysse and son of Solange. Some of the scenes called for us to shoot downtown, so as soon as we met Regis I set the camera up on the tripod and we went to work. I thought that we were spectacles before, but now we were drawing huge crowds. Somehow though people didn’t ruin any shots by looking into the camera, or staring or getting in the way, everything went smoothly, but we did have Lama running crowd control.
For the most part, Regis was a pretty good little actor. Directing over language barriers was pretty interesting. It wasn’t necessarily harder, just slower. Every direction needed to be simplified and straightforward to keep it from getting too confusing. We completed filming of the first half of the movie, and had to postpone the second half because Sigfried couldn’t make it anymore and he plays the other character in the second half. I am pretty pleased with what we shot today though, and I think once the short is done it might be a nice, simple piece.
So we wrapped early in the afternoon, and everyone was tired from lugging all the equipment and shooting in the hot sun. Lama and Kara took naps, and I really wanted to but Regis had nowhere to go and nothing to do so I felt bad to leave him alone. I showed him how to play SNES roms on my computer, and how to play Super Mario World. He really liked it and it was fun to teach him only by demonstration and not words, and then see his mind processing things and figuring out how to play. After awhile he said “music” so I turned on some music for him too while he played, and he had said earlier he really liked rap music and wants to be a rapper when he grows up. So I put on some Aceyalone for him and he said “No”. So I played some Aesop Rock and he said “No”. I put on some Saul Williams and he said “Yes.” and so we listened to a couple of Saul Williams albums.
We did a bit of work, and then Lama asked if we wanted to head out and get some fresh air. We said sure, it’d be nice to take a walk. We agreed to walk somewhere we’d never been, get off the beaten path. Except in Kibungo, off the main road is straight onto the beaten path because it’s nothing but dirt roads. We walked past an Evangelical church and it was AMAZING. First off, somebody was ripping it up on keyboard. Like the music coming out of that church was awesome. EVERYONE was clapping, I could tell from really far away. Whoever was on the tambourine should be sponsored by Red Bull. When we got close enough to see in the windows, it got even better. Everyone was dancing too! Well, it’s called dancing, but it looked like convulsing. Or flailing. And I am saying that without any judgment, in fact I really loved it, but to a deaf person it could have looked like there were fire ants all over them. I wish there was something in my life that made me move like that, I could tell they were just feeling it!
So right past the church, there was a bunch of kids playing soccer on this small little soccer field with a banana leaf ball. They were playing 3 on 3 with no goalies. We stopped to watch, and I wanted to join in so bad. I asked Lama if he wanted to be my partner and he said no, but go ahead. So I jumped into the game and Lama told me who was on my team and off I was, getting owned by little African kids. They were like 5 and running circles around me. And it’s funny because the field is SO dusty, I was covered in red dust by the end, but you can’t let that stop you. You’ve got to play, so if the ball is shot, you have to block it with your stomach even if that will make your shirt all red (the kids are playing without shirts, but I didn’t want to show off my glow-in-the-dark-muzungu body). If the ball is up in the air, you’ve got to head it. All the kids are running around with little red heads, it looks hilarious. But man, they’re good. I think my team won, but by the time I called it quits (like 10 minutes) I thought I was going to throw up from running.
During the soccer game, Kara’s family had called her cell so she was up the road talking to them. Lama and I were walking behind her, and when we came across a big pile of rocks I needed to sit down I felt so sick. Some people say it could be the altitude, but I’m going to point fingers at my malaria medication. Since taking it my hands have begun to shake so bad, my pupils are the size of dinner plates, and maybe I’ve even getting paranoid. I mean how can you not get paranoid when they tell you that’s one of the side effects? I’m going paranoid thinking about going paranoid. So I might as well chalk up “getting sick after moments of exercise” to my ailments list.
While I was resting, there were some kids around and Lama was chatting them up and all of them, Lama included, were laughing really hard. They seemed like such cool kids, and I was acutely aware of how I would love to be their friends, or at least understand what they were saying so I could laugh with them. A woman came out of her house and saw Kara in the distance and yelled “Bonjour! Muzungu!” and was getting so excited about seeing her. Since Kara was on the phone she promptly ignored her (I’m pretty sure she didn’t even hear her). She saw me next and waved to me, so I waved back and said bonjour, and it made her really happy. While we walked away Lama explained that she was saying that white people are good luck and since I had waved to her and said hi, she was now going to be lucky.
By that time it was getting dark and walking around at Pitch Black time, I mean night time, isn’t that fun, so we started making our way back home. We got home and ate dinner, did a bit of work, and since we were all up early and had quite a busy day with the film shoot, we were beat. We went to bed around 10 pm, my favorite bed time as of late.
