Fin

My contract officially ran out on Friday. All done.

Not really, of course. There's still a few videos to wrap up and a few loose ends to take care of around the office. I'm hoping to spend the next couple weeks getting to know Tamale a bit better and seeing friends, etc. My time has suddenly become very valuable. Supply and demand.

I've been running a film workshop over the past few weekends. It's Hafiz's dream to eventually set up a film school in Tamale so we've started this class with a few local kids. We have some attendance issues but it's going well overall. We wrapped up the camera lesson today. They're getting it. Hopefully we'll shoot a short narrative film next week. It'll take some supervision but it's exciting too. They're getting it. I feel warm and fuzzy.

The local film scene here is this fantastic grass-roots thing. Making cheap movies for a grand or so and showing them in markets and small communities for a few cents a head. Why can't it be like that in Canada? I miss movies, putting one shot in front of the other. Scenes and scripts instead of budgets and connections. Friends and favours, too. I don't want to be successful or arty, or have a career. I want to tell stories for no money and show them to my friends.

Smile

Photo credit to Jacob.

We had the new benches made just in time. When Jacob and I arrived at the office Wednesday morning we found a mob of SHS 1 students, all arrived a day or two before they were due to pay fees at their new schools. I don’t know how many students we ran through, but we laid out around 9000 GHC in school fees.

This is the big crunch for the organization, the time of year when the office always has at least one person waiting in the foyer. Samson and Benedicta skip lunch. We improvise, lining up students, scrawling names on pieces of scrap paper and holding them up for database photos, associating names with faces. It’s easy to confuse them. Seems like everyone has the same haircut.

Ran out of ink in our whiteboard marker. Ran out of space on the camera. Ran out of the office to grab water for twentysomething people.

Today we’re picking up the bits and pieces. Everyone we couldn’t get to yesterday comes back. The photos are all processed. I’ll pick out a couple of students to interview, good talkers with a bit of energy.

Entering girls into the database, taking down names that I still don’t hear right the first time – could you spell that? Trying new ways to make them laugh, or relax, loosen up. Interview technique. Learned the dagbani word for smile – it’s lama. I think they’re only smiling because I make such a mess of the word. But a smile’s a smile so I can play it up a bit and get what I need. Everyone I meet here is someone who’ll talk a bit more when we roll by the schools in a week or so, collecting interviews. Everyone who smiles here opens up a little more next time.

The Plural

Saliminga saliminga saliminga. I can make fun of Samson when he’s talking to a group of students, telling them I need their photo. Saliminga saliminga saliminga, I have a name you know. An introduction is made.

Except now it’s come to Salimisi. That’s plural.

Jacob got here a few days ago. I took the government bus down to Accra to pick him up at Kotoka airport. There’s a list on the lonely planet website of the most disappointing cities in the world. Accra’s number two. He’s from number one, Detroit. I think this means he’s moving up in the world, or I could have the ordering of the list confused.

It’s a different

For the record, 24 hours is a long time to spend on buses.