Alice Nakanyike

Alice Nakanyike lives in Rakai district. She is the subject of a segment on the film I’m doing on children affected by AIDS. To meet her, we had an hour long drive from Masaka in Uganda. Beyond the town, beyond the highway, and though kilometers of dirt track, we pelted in a convoy of three landcruisers.


Eventually, we drove through head high grass to arrive at Alice’s village. She lives with here brothers and a sister in a small home. She is eleven and about a year ago, she lost her parents to AIDS. Since then, she is the head of her family. She is the primary care giver. She has an aunt who lives in the neighbourhood, but the aunt has her own family and her own pressures to give full time care to Alice and her siblings. To start with, Alice hardly smiled. But after a couple of hours we spent with her, she relaxed a little. We got to know the strong little girl who has the tough job of looking after the needs of all her family. The community in the villages are all too familiar with AIDS. So many have been affected by it, that there is hardly any discrimination. And they have pitched in to help the children along. At least, they have their own home and they have been given a pig to supplement their income from their fields nearby.

We went back to film with her the next day. And then moved on to across the equator to another village in Rakai district to film with a grandmother who lives with twenty grandchildren. The drive was through rolling country side. Green and remarkably beautiful.


Of the eleven children she had, only three survive. All three live away from the village. And twenty one grandchildren – twenty one little things, all polite and sweet and all. I tried to imagine the work load that she has!!

A Chaotic African Shoot

My trip to Africa started on a chaotic note. Already snowed down with fifty other thing that needed to get finished before I left, I didn’t really have time to cross check all the arrangements. Thankfully, on the equipment front (yeah, as usual we were on a shoot), my cameraman not only checked all the equipment (which is a part of his brief), but serviced the camera too (which is beyond this brief).

Our production department was conspicuous by its absence. The man who was in charge of the logistics of this film, went missing with my yellow fever vaccination certificate – on my return, there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t get quatantined for 10 days or so!) Three of us were waiting at the appointed time, early morning at the departure gate of the Mumbai international airport,. The idiot boy who was our script writer, decided to arrive late. Really late and go in through the wrong gate. And he wasn’t for some reason, carrying his cell phone. Brainiac!

Luckily, we decided to check in anyway and so we walked in. And there he was grinning like an idiot in the check in line that stretched into outer space.

Luckily, it was a public place – with witnesses and so on. So he survived. When our turn came at the check in counter, it was discovered that the sound recordist’s passport did not have the requisite clearances! That was brilliant! Our production department and the travel agent and whoever else was in charge of checking these things had not discovered this small fact. And so he had to take his bags and stay back. Luckily, the guy at the counter took pity on us and let in a huge deal of excess weight in our baggage pass without any charge.

That’s how it began.

The flight on Emirates to Dubai was uneventful (the in-flight entertainment sucked though). The staff at the Dubai airport, as usual, were aloof and showed no signs that they were about to jump up and offer assistance of any sort.

Then began the long and uncomfortable flight to Entebbe. The first part took us alongside the North East African coastline. The desert stretched out as far as we could see. Hot, completely desolate and dusty. Nothing beautiful about it at all. It was awesome and awful at the same time. I imagined being lost there somewhere and shuddered.

Many hours later, we were past the North African wasteland. The terrain changed to scrubland and later to greener ground. There were hills and the place suddenly was beautiful. A short stopover at Nairobi and we were on the last leg to Entebbe. Lake Victoria was amazing from the sky. I could see at least seven rivers/streams draining into the vast expanse of water.

Finally, we stepped out of Entebbe airport and hit the road to Kampala, the capital of Uganda. It was dark so I couldn’t see too many people. But my first impression was that it could be a North Indian state that I was driving through! The same kind of shops lined the highway and the ambience seemed similar.

Over the next few days we were to film with children who were affected by AIDS. A heart wrenching process often. Though over the years I’ve trained myself to stay emotionally detached and objective. I knew always, that my primary job was to tell their story.

And later in the day, we were on the road in this convoy of huge Toyota Land Cruisers with UN signage and massive Codan radio antennas attached to the front. It kind of felt like we were in clear and present danger. I had been told that the Northern part of Uganda was strife torn and the radio was essential for security. Whatever. Luckily, we were headed south.

And here was the second piece of chaos that struck us. We discovered that we had left a piece of baggage that contained spare batteries and cables at the airport. So one vehicle with the script writer (now our camera attendant and sound recordist as well!) was dispatched to get it and join us at the location.

Location was a small village in Masaka district. We got there at lunch time and checked into the hotel at Masaka town, a small and quiet place. The hotel itself was in a pretty avenue. And over lunch, we decided to visit the small family of children immediately and get to know them before charging in with huge cameras.

Let me digress and describe the lunch. Beef stew, Ugandan style with cooked banana, mashed (this is their staple much like rice or wheat is for us). And some steamed rice. Absolutely delish. This was washed down with vast amounts of passion fruit juice, which had to have substantial quantities of sugar added to fix the sourness.



The shoot took a couple of days and then we drove across teh equator to Rakai for one more day of shootingbefore heading back to Kampala. Our last day in Africa was spent shooting in Kampala, which has a gurudwara, a temple, a Bank of Baroda – all a stones throw from our hotel. People here were cheerful and friendly. Some were strikingly good looking. We went to the morning market and spent a little time there filming. We saw grasshoppers being sold. Yes, grasshoppers. (Thats grasshoppers in the picture!) Apparently they are a local delicacy. People have contraptions made of sloped corrugated iron sheets with a strong light put on at dusk to attract the things in thousands. The slippery sheets funnel them into large drums into which they fall. In the morning, I can imagine lots of happy Ugandans clapping their hands in glee and collecting them to either cook or to pass on to the market! I asked to be given some to taste. But no one obliged. No one took me seriously enough. But I swear I was. I really wanted to taste them. Not the same thing catching a couple of the green winged things here and frying them up. I wanted to eat them African style.

The afternoon was spent on more driving. Like idiots, we were convinced that we just had to see the source of the Nile. So after a long hour and a half drive, we went to a spot that looked like, well, a river. We couldn’t see any source at all. We were told it was just around the bend andn a boatman could take us to show the spot. The spot as it turned out, was a place from which the water sprang from an underwater source. We declined. I was singularly unimpressed.

What I did though, was eat a monster sized fish. Freshly caught on the river and deep fried. Deep fry cardboard and I’m sure that too will taste great. But the fish, called Tilapia was really nice. I had ordered a small size. I wonder who could tuck away a medium or a large one!

Well, that was that. The evening saw us struggling with our baggage as we checked into the flight back. The seven hour layover at Dubai passed smoother than we had anticipated and next thing we knew, we were back in Mumbai, driving through more chaos.

Kerala Musings

Kerala. Green and beautiful. I went twice in the recent past to villages spread from central to the southern part of the state. I was filming for a documentary on the issues facing children. No actually, the issues connected with children that the new leadership of the panchayats who have been voted in recently.

Was interesting as usual, the variety of people I met. The new leadership. Some dynamic, full of optimism and energy. With a vision. And some clueless limp types who seemed to be surprised that they had a job to do!

I met someone who till recently was a porter who carried loads on his head. Today, as a Panchayat President, he has a cellphone with which he is in touch with all his officers and contemporaries in neighbouring villages. He is learning how to use the net and he is a man who knows every detail of what is happening in his charge. His panchayat has put in the resources to renovate the local school. Now the children have classrooms instead of all of them being packed into a huge hall. They have temp teachers who will come and take their classes should their teachers be absent for whatever reason. The panchayat provides supplemental English classes at another school in the area.

I met a community development society president who till recently was a housewife. Today they run a community farm and aid several small enterprises like tailoring units and a leather bag unit that have been set up by members who have got loans through them on soft terms.

I met a bureaucrat who comes to work every Sunday for at least half a day. When the rest of his office (he heads the office!) holidays.

These are the people who will transform my country one day. These are people who make me feel good about our collective future.

The process of tying up with people who work at the grassroot levels for filming is interesting too. Having to figure out the local vested interest and politics and get at the facts that are behind the propaganda.

But the evenings when the filming for the day was done, were great fun too. A senior local journo who looked after all the setting up of shoots in the villages knew the best places to eat (or drink) I went with him and the client – who was one of the best client reps that I’ve had the pleasure to work with) to a village home where we drank fresh toddy with a particular type of mango pickle.

One of the days we were there, we woke up early to shoot a sequence where a toddy tapper climbed a tall palm (he literally seemed to run up the tree) and poured out the fresh stuff off the earthen pots that had been tied into collect the sap.

Needless to say, we had a couple glasses of the stuff directly as the man came down!!

And the food! Ah the food!!! Fish, and exotic meats (I shan’t say more) for a song at the best of places. Washed down with chilled beer.


Eventually after the shoot was finished, we went down to Kovalam beach and a little beyond. There are several beaches actually. Almost all overrun with hordes of tourists, so we took a couple of pictures and exited hastily.

We went on to a Ayurvedic Treatment centre and met the son of the founder there. He claimed that they were the first place that started popularising Ayruveda all over the west. Neat place. All ethnic and what not! With a super secluded beach below it’s slopes.

I dreamed what it would be like to take time out and get pampered with massages and generally staring out at the sea as the sun set!

Well… One more place visited by the reluctant traveler (me).


Foot note: The film is done. Relatively painlessly and the clients love it. Yesss!!