All tallied, I got about 3 hours of sleep last night. It wasn’t a really big deal, because all we were doing today was:
-busing to Kazo with the students
-filming all day long
-busing back
-going straight to our movie screening and community conversation that followed, hoping to lead a stimulating discussion
Who needs energy for that? Not me. To be honest though, I did feel decent considering it was an awful night. Again it was boring breakfast of bread and coffee, and by 9 am we were downtown waiting for the bus. People said the bus should be coming soon, but it could take up to an hour. So we started arranging moto rides to Kazo and just as we had 5 motos ready the bus arrived and we took it instead. The road out to Kazo is maybe a 15 minute drive and insanely bumpy. All I could think is how much fun it would have been to moto!
We stopped in at the district office to say hello and from there walked maybe 15 minutes to the school. I found it hilarious that as we were walking, we somehow ended up fanned out into a straight line, spanning across the entire road. We rolled into town, and there was old houses and people looking at us walking into town in this posse, and I turned to Kara and said, “It feels like we’re in the wild west!” and we laughed because it honestly did look like a scene of out a western. So I ran ahead and snapped a photo of the gang:
the posse rolling into Kazo
The school at Kazo, and everyone we met there, were great. The kids were awesome, the staff was awesome, the grounds themselves were very pleasant. The UNATEK students helped to do all the shooting. Sometimes I would tell them what I wanted and how I wanted it done, and they would set it up. Other times I would ask them what they thought, and they always had good ideas. Their framing was excellent most of the time, although they loved framing objects dead center, but I was interested in getting a lot of negative space so we’ll have room for text. Regardless, they were doing a really good job.
There was a lot to get, interviews to shoot and locations to cover, and we shot right through lunch. Eventually after we were done shooting with others and it was just pick up shots, I took the camera myself and went to get everything I could think that we might need. Everyone was hungry and tired so I just wanted to move as quick as possible. When I came back from my lone shooting, we were all packed up and ready to go, except that the cover for the boom pole was missing. We didn’t move it around to too many locations and we back tracked and double checked but it was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t imagine anyone would take it, it is a very slim, small, essentially useless device EXCEPT for carrying a pole inside. The handle isn’t even that good. And I wouldn’t have cared at all, really, if it was mine. But it was Martin’s. I did not want to have to buy him a replacement, or for that matter even explain I lost his boom pole cover. After maybe 30+ minutes of scouring, I was ready to give up. Camille, one of the students, promised it’d turn up. Kara and I scoffed and said “You promise? What are the chances of it coming back? You can’t promise when the odds aren’t good!” and he said that the odds were good. I said that I’d call the odds a snowball’s chance in hell.
What made things even better, was at the EXACT same time we found out we couldn’t find the boom cover, we also found out Casimir had canceled our movie night. He said we didn’t go through the proper protocol to hold an event and so it was being canceled. Protocol? We did everything they ever asked of us, including(!!) holding an event that we would introduce ourselves to the community with. We were ASKED to do this BY Casimir. Yet somehow, at every possible junction, it feels like he was doing everything to stop us, short of saying out loud, “I don’t want you to screen that movie”. And that’s why it is extra frustrating. Every time we meet him, face to face, he’s all smiles and buddy buddy with us, saying he wants to work together, and then every time we hit a bump in the road, it is directly Casimir’s doing, like he’s trying to thwart us. The level of resistance we are encountering because we are trying to screen a movie and have a dialog with students is absolutely jaw dropping. The amount of time and energy spent, and now wasted, was ridiculous in comparison to how simple the intended outcome was. We jump through stupid hoop after pointless hoop after worthless hoop, just so we make sure we’re doing it right and play by the rules. And still, LAST MINUTE, it gets canceled. Maybe I don’t have all the information. Maybe I don’t understand the way things work here. Maybe I’m dead wrong. But to me, this is how I see it.
So Casimir managed to stop us (so far) from screening our movie. And I don’t know what we’re going to do yet. But I know I don’t want to roll over and take this. If we just sit quiet and appease Casimir and his ego, what is ever going to change? On one hand, it’s just a movie and it’s not a big deal and we have a lot better ways we can spend our time, money and energy. But on the other hand, it’s the principle! If we give up on this, on something as simple as the right to screen a movie, then the terrorists have really won. Whoops, I mean the bureaucratic ego maniacs have won. What I really mean is it is unbelievably stupid there is such a big deal over screening a movie.
Everything I just spewed out in those last two paragraphs, those thoughts and feelings, had come flooding over me when Lama told me about the screening being canceled. We were now walking back toward the main road of Kazo to catch the bus back, and it felt like defeat. But we had a huge boost in spirits when down the road, we saw one of the Kazo teachers on the back of a pedal bike taxi holding up the boom pole bag! He had found it! I actually felt AMAZING seeing that thing come back. I couldn’t believe he found it. Apparently, some kid had seen it and thought it was cool and took it, hoping to maybe store pens in it (haha?). Providence, the principal had said she knew someone took and and she knew the students knew who it was, so they better fess up or they’d be in trouble, and sure enough they told and it was recovered. Losing the screening was a blow but this was an equal boost in the other direction. At least the day wasn’t all wrong.
So we were extremely hungry and thirsty at this point, and we went back to our house since we didn’t have the screening to worry about. We invited Canisius and Camille back to our house, and Kara and I had told Camille that if we did recover the boom pole case, we’d buy him 2 mutzigs on us. So they came for lunch and we made good on our promise, since Camille had made good on his. After lunch we looked through all the photographs that had been taken that day and talked, but eventually everyone slipped in silence. I decided that was my cue to take a siesta, because I was tres exhausted.
I woke up a couple hours later, and my head felt like bricks and my face felt stupid and I was basically a cave man. I was up at 5:30 so we could walk to school and hang out around where we WERE going to hold the movie, so we could at least talk to students who planned on coming and maybe even salvage the discussion part. After waiting well past the start time and seeing no one, we threw in the towel and went home. At the house Regina came by and ate with us, and we all talked until about 9 pm when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. Since we were getting up at 5 to bus to Kigali tomorrow, I knew I needed the sleep, so I went to bed. The day had a lot of ups and downs, I probably hit a new level of frustration I’ve yet to experience here, but overall I felt good still. None of it got me down, it just makes me want to work that much harder. Tomorrow is another day.
