Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Blog to Blog 2
Here's another blog post I wrote for the ORI site. This time about one of my favorite students, Janvier, who took me on the trip to the market I mentioned a few posts ago.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
IMDB.com, Here I come
A few weeks ago my roommate Nichola received an email looking for white guys in Kigali who would be willing to dress up as Belgian UN soldiers for a movie about the genocide. It sounded like fun, so I told him to count me in. I met the director a week later and he said that as long as I was willing to let them cut my hair, they'd be glad to use me in the film. Nothing wrong with a free haircut.
The movie is being produced by a Belgian company, and the director is French. The story is about a woman who is working as a nanny for a Belgian family in Kigali. When the genocide starts, the family evacuates from the country, and the movie then follows the story of the nanny as she flees Kigali and tries to survive. The soldiers show up to help the family evacuate the house and then drive them away to safety.
The film set was a house in a neigborhood called Kiyovu, which is close to the city center. After we arrived and got into costume, the director assigned us to various spots on the street, which we were supposed to be guarding from the interhamwe militia while the family exited the house. Initially the director placed me in the back, facing away from the center of the action. The scene called for a militia member to threaten the family with a gun as they exit the gate and get into the convoy of waiting vehicles. One of the soldiers was then supposed to aim his weapon at the guy. Apparently the director didn't like the way the first looked when he held up his gun. He told me to try it, decided I could get the job done, and moved me into the other guy's spot. This meant that I was in the middle of the whole shot, and meant that I actually got to move around a bit. Way more fun than just standing around.
After we filmed the scene with the militia member (who was only a teenager), we filmed the convoy of cars leaving the house. I had to sit in the back of a pickup truck and keep my eye on the kid who had been pointing his gun at the family. Residential roads here are really awful, so when the truck took off and starting rattling over potholes and rocks, I came really close to falling out! But since they weren't about to offer me a stunt double, I held on a little tighter for the next few takes, and managed to make it through without serious injury.
All in all, I had a great time pretending like I was a real actor for a day. Here's me with my most convincing soldier face. There are a few other shots in the photo album.
The movie is being produced by a Belgian company, and the director is French. The story is about a woman who is working as a nanny for a Belgian family in Kigali. When the genocide starts, the family evacuates from the country, and the movie then follows the story of the nanny as she flees Kigali and tries to survive. The soldiers show up to help the family evacuate the house and then drive them away to safety.
The film set was a house in a neigborhood called Kiyovu, which is close to the city center. After we arrived and got into costume, the director assigned us to various spots on the street, which we were supposed to be guarding from the interhamwe militia while the family exited the house. Initially the director placed me in the back, facing away from the center of the action. The scene called for a militia member to threaten the family with a gun as they exit the gate and get into the convoy of waiting vehicles. One of the soldiers was then supposed to aim his weapon at the guy. Apparently the director didn't like the way the first looked when he held up his gun. He told me to try it, decided I could get the job done, and moved me into the other guy's spot. This meant that I was in the middle of the whole shot, and meant that I actually got to move around a bit. Way more fun than just standing around.
After we filmed the scene with the militia member (who was only a teenager), we filmed the convoy of cars leaving the house. I had to sit in the back of a pickup truck and keep my eye on the kid who had been pointing his gun at the family. Residential roads here are really awful, so when the truck took off and starting rattling over potholes and rocks, I came really close to falling out! But since they weren't about to offer me a stunt double, I held on a little tighter for the next few takes, and managed to make it through without serious injury.
All in all, I had a great time pretending like I was a real actor for a day. Here's me with my most convincing soldier face. There are a few other shots in the photo album.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Rwanda 3 - Mauritania 0
Soccer matches on foreign soil are really fun to be a part of. Because we Americans live in the only land on earth where the sight of raucous fans cheering for men playing football with their feet is a novelty, not only do we get to enjoy the game, we get to tell ourselves that we're having a true "cultural experience."
The handful of futbol matches I attended when I was in Spain, and the many more I watched at a bar over Cruzcampo and olives, still rank as some of the fondest memories I have from my semester there. Since being here in Rwanda, I've made a point of watching as much football as I can. I watched one European match with some friends at a hotel bar (boring game, sleepy atmosphere), another match at a dark, spartan "bar" called VIP where I was one of just a handful of mzungus staring at a the game as it was projected on a wall (great game, even better atmosphere), and I caught the European Champions League final with a Rwandan friend at another bar where the game was projected onto a screen that was propped up in the middle of the crowd. Jean Paul and I sat behind the screen, so we watched a mirror image of the game that was actually being played. It wasn't until I saw a replay two days later that I realized Ronaldo's incredible goal-scoring header had come from a pass from the teammate on his right, not his left. The two teams vying for the championship, Chelsea and Manchester United, are English, but both have huge fan bases here in Rwanda, so there was plenty of euphoria and hand wringing going on as the teams traded goals, squandered their opportunities in overtime, and eventually settled the score with penalty kicks. (Man U brought home the hardware)
Last weekend the Rwandan national team, known here as the Amavubi Stars, played their first qualifying match for the 2010 World Cup, which will be hosted by South Africa. We went over to the stadium in Nyamirambo to check it out. Of course, the ticket buying process lacks any semblance of order. Imagine if the scalpers we know just had stacks of tickets in their hands and the only way to be sure you got into the game was to mob around the ticket seller, shove money in front of his face, and hope he takes it from you and not the guy next to you before the tickets run out. And you thought hitting refresh on the TicketMaster website was annoying. The stands were full, so some people took seating matters into their own hands. Though Rwanda's team isn't supposed to make it to the World Cup, they looked good in their opening match against Mauritania. They scored a beautiful goal early, then again on a penalty kick, and a third time late in the game. The celebrations in the stands were especially fun to watch (again, totally normal to everyone but Americans). We'll see if the team can keep it up this Saturday against Ethiopia.
The handful of futbol matches I attended when I was in Spain, and the many more I watched at a bar over Cruzcampo and olives, still rank as some of the fondest memories I have from my semester there. Since being here in Rwanda, I've made a point of watching as much football as I can. I watched one European match with some friends at a hotel bar (boring game, sleepy atmosphere), another match at a dark, spartan "bar" called VIP where I was one of just a handful of mzungus staring at a the game as it was projected on a wall (great game, even better atmosphere), and I caught the European Champions League final with a Rwandan friend at another bar where the game was projected onto a screen that was propped up in the middle of the crowd. Jean Paul and I sat behind the screen, so we watched a mirror image of the game that was actually being played. It wasn't until I saw a replay two days later that I realized Ronaldo's incredible goal-scoring header had come from a pass from the teammate on his right, not his left. The two teams vying for the championship, Chelsea and Manchester United, are English, but both have huge fan bases here in Rwanda, so there was plenty of euphoria and hand wringing going on as the teams traded goals, squandered their opportunities in overtime, and eventually settled the score with penalty kicks. (Man U brought home the hardware)
Last weekend the Rwandan national team, known here as the Amavubi Stars, played their first qualifying match for the 2010 World Cup, which will be hosted by South Africa. We went over to the stadium in Nyamirambo to check it out. Of course, the ticket buying process lacks any semblance of order. Imagine if the scalpers we know just had stacks of tickets in their hands and the only way to be sure you got into the game was to mob around the ticket seller, shove money in front of his face, and hope he takes it from you and not the guy next to you before the tickets run out. And you thought hitting refresh on the TicketMaster website was annoying. The stands were full, so some people took seating matters into their own hands. Though Rwanda's team isn't supposed to make it to the World Cup, they looked good in their opening match against Mauritania. They scored a beautiful goal early, then again on a penalty kick, and a third time late in the game. The celebrations in the stands were especially fun to watch (again, totally normal to everyone but Americans). We'll see if the team can keep it up this Saturday against Ethiopia.
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