This morning, breakfast at our Kibungo house was extraordinary. Two Kigali trips ago, when we went to La Gallet, I had bought a box of cereal, but we never had milk to go with it. Today, there was a cold bottle of milk and the box of cereal waiting on the table, and I felt like a kid again. I was so excited to see that box of cereal! And it was delicious! Milk and cereal ohhhhh man. It could quite possibly be the best meal I’ve had in Rwanda yet.
At 10 am, I had scheduled with the UNATEK students to teach the second film workshop, this time on capture, logging and organizing footage, and an introduction to editing. I didn’t get there until around 11 am myself, and I was still the first one there. We had bought a firewire PCI card to install on the computer, and I needed to get a screwdriver and do so before we could begin the lesson. Clement didn’t have one, so we had to wait until Prosper tracked one down. Once we had cracked open the tower, even though there are 4 open slots at the back, there is actually only one PCI card slot. And it is being used by the wireless receiver card. So in order to capture the footage, it would have to be removed. The internet could always be fed to the computer through hard line, but installing this card was the only way to capture footage, so in my mind it was a no brainer. Unfortunately, Clement had stepped out, and I wanted to make sure I had permission before I started rearranging their computer hardware. It took almost an hour for Prosper to find Clement and get permission. Needless to say, our lesson was way behind schedule.
I showed the students how to use the controls and the proper way to log and capture footage, and then I made them actually sit in the pilot seat while I watched to make sure they were doing it correctly. Things were going well. But we all know that never lasts. The computer crashed right before we were done 45 minutes worth of capture, and we hadn’t been saving, so we lost all our progress. It made for a really good teachable moment, to demonstrate first hand the advantages of frequently saving. Sure, I could stress to save often, but now they knew why. By this time, it was well past lunch, so we decided to take an hour break and then reconvene for the second half of the workshop, introduction to editing.
I ate my lunch quickly and returned alone to the computer lab, as Lama and Kara had work to do at home. I was anticipating Regina being present, since she speaks English and could act as my translator, but she never ended up making it to the second half. It was only Prosper, Kayumba and I. 1 English speaker among the 3 of us. So I was teaching an editing workshop through charades. It was kind of hilarious. I had to use things in the room to demonstrate what was happening in the program. I took two cell phones and butted them together, saying each was a clip. An “insert” edit squeezed a new cell phone in between the two clips. An “overwrite” edit replaced one of the cell phones with a new one. They understood. We had to do demonstrations like that to explain every little thing. And editing is confusing when you have a foundation to work from, and these students have none. The language barrier wasn’t helping much either. But I showed them how to do something, then I undid it all and made them do it for themselves. I think they understood for the most part, and I only wanted them to get used to seeing the software and feel comfortable messing around pressing buttons to find out what each did, and by the end they had come that far. We spent a couple hours together, and I was pretty pleased with the results.
I made it home in time to do a bit of editing myself before dinner. I am not really sure why, but there was significantly less chatter and conversation, and we just quietly ate our meals. Kara broke the silence by saying, “Well, back to our respective corners!” and so respective corners is where we went. I worked until about 9, then I watched the Science of Sleep, until I was asleep myself.
