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Africa, Pt. XXI

September 15^th                                                                                                           Kampala

Started the day with another breakfast with the Newsboys. Now that I’ve been hanging out with them for a couple of days, I’m starting to get to know them a little better, and they’re all absurdly nice. Phil the Bassist is actually from New Zealand, not Australia. He’s actually pretty sarcastic, and he made fun of me for using real sugar instead of Splenda, since real sugar is supposedly less ‘healthy.’ He also made fun of my Australian accent, which I’ve been working on to impress Tiffany with when I get back. Granted, it needs some work. Paul the Guitarist is the newest member of the Newsboys. He’s seemed like the most philosophical of the group- he was very passionate about everything he saw in Africa. “Man, I’d love to bring my family here,” he said.

Jeff the Keyboarder is actually from Detroit. He started with the Newsboys by running cables for them during concerts. Now he’s been with the band for a long long time. He has kind of the geek/hipster persona going on, and wouldn't’t look out of place on a Weezer album cover. And he’s also super nice and easy to talk to. He’s been editing a lot of the behind the scenes footage previously shot for the Newsboys, so we had some good conversations about editing and video. Duncan and Peter are the quietest of the group. Duncan always raises his eyebrows in a funny way when I point the camera at him, as if he just thought of something really hilarious but can’t say it. Peter is just pensive—you can tell he’s always musing about something.

If I thought it was hard going to the Watoto Village or meeting the Gulu Orphans, I hadn’t seen anything yet. Our first stop that morning was at a nursery home for abandoned babies. Kenneth told me that many women will just abandon their babies because they can’t afford to feed them or are too desperate to keep them. They’ll put them in a dumpster in a plastic bag or leave them in bathroom stalls. We got to the place just in time for a mass-baby feeding. All the babies were lined up on benches with bowls in their chubby hands, and the sweet women who ran the orphanage doled out runny oatmeal to each of the babies in turn. The babies then hungrily gulped it all down—at least, any of it that didn’t get on their face. After their caretakers were able to clean up all the excess face-oatmeal (a formidable task), the babies were put down in a dark central room which I think was their playpen. At that point Jim and Dave had to go scout a location for a music video scene Jim wanted, so they left the big camera in the hands of the Newsboys with instructions for us to help them plan some shot setups and get some good footage. What happened next was basically pure chaos. I think they got some footage of some babies in a really dark dark room, and some footage of the resident nursery cow, and that was about it. But, it looked like they were having a lot of fun doing it, so that’s the important part.

I think the baby orphanage was one of the places the Newsboys liked the most. Most of them immediately picked up a baby or started feeding one.  Phil the Bassist even tried to smuggle one out under his jacket. Funny story about Phil: there’s a trinkets shop at the entrance of the orphanage that sells things to tourists and uses the profits to help fund the orphanage. Phil was trying on some bracelets in the shop, but everyone loaded up in the bus in a hurry and he ran out of the store, forgetting that he still had a bracelet on. Several hours later he noticed he had the bracelet on and felt really bad. So basically Phil stole stuff from baby orphans in Uganda. That’s about as despicable as it gets. I don’t even think Osama Bin Laden or Winona Ryder would do something like that.

Later that night, we drove out to Uganda Christian University, where the Newsboys were scheduled to do a concert. The band’s managers had been hard at work trying to find some decent sound equipment, and I think they found the only equipment in the country that would work a concert at their level. The concert was fantastic. Nearly 3,000 students packed the place out the University chapel, and the energy from the crowd was enormous. But that’s understandable- if I were a student in a small Christian University on the outskirts of Kampala, and the Newsboys showed up to play a concert from out of nowhere, I would definitely be stoked. Most of the students had heard of the Newsboys either through the radio or by watching their music videos on the Ugandan Christian television channel. They played all of their numerous repertoire of hit songs, including “Breakfast” and “Shine,” two of my personal favorites. At the end, they played through “Something Beautiful,” a song from their new album, three times so that Jim could film it for the music video. I got to be onstage for the whole concert to get behind the scenes footage, so that was definitely a unique experience. You’ve heard of backstage passes, this was an onstage pass. Ear your hearts out, everybody else in the world!

Currently Reading The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead By Max Brooks see related

Africa, Pt. XX

September 14                                                                                         Kampala 

Jim completely slated off today to film a drama he came up with to complement the Newsboys song “Let it All Come Out.” I’m not sure if we’ll make a music video with it, but it’ll at least be in the documentary. Jim and Dave had filled out a nice shooting schedule with a bunch of setups and the idea was for the Newsboys to be our slaves… uh, I mean crew for the day. To help with the drama, Kenneth had leveraged the help of a local Christian drama team and a place called the White House. It was actually the base of operations for Martin and his college crowd, so there were a lot of pro-abstinence posters on the wall that said things like “end abstinence stigma,” and “if you’re not a prostitute, don’t dress like one.” It wasn’t the White House, but it was very similar because it was a house and it was white.  Only it didn’t have electricity. But that was okay because we had the Newsboys to stand and bounce light into windows with reflectors all day. That was the job of Phil the Bassist and Jeff the Keyboarder. Duncan the Drummer held the boom pole for the mic, and he was also the official shouter. Every command Jim gave Duncan would yell out loud. “Quiet on the set!” “Lights!” “Duct tape!” He sounded exactly like a over- enthusiastic director’s assistant on a 1950’s Hollywood set… so enthusiastic, in fact, that everyone would crack up anytime he yelled anything.

Poor Paul the Guitarist and Peter the Singer (see, I’ve made up a clever epithet for each Newsboy according to what instrument he plays) elected to be on camera crew, probably thinking that it would be exciting and danger filled. Unfortunately for them, since Jim ran the camera the whole time, their only job was to move the dolly-ladder every hour or so. But they had met up with a super cool missionary from Australia who’s working in the war-torn North, so they were able to talk with him most of the morning. The drama involved a guy who’s struggling with sexual addiction. He gets up in the morning and sees all these beautiful girls—but they’re only in his mind. So there were a lot of girls on set and they were all in the kitchen trying to mentally get into the role of being beautiful apparitions sent from Hell to torment the mind of a young man. I’m not sure if it was a role-they were used to playing, since they were in a Christian drama team. But it seemed like everyone had fun acting, and the whole production went pretty smoothly. Until the end, that is. The last shot of the drama needed a little girl, around five or six years old. Somebody had mis-communicated and instead a twelve year old girl showed up on set. But God had already arranged things ahead of time, because right as Jim found that out, a little girl passing by on the street came up to him and shook his hand. She was with her father, and Jim turned around and said, “Can I shoot your daughter?” That’s usually a pretty threatening statement, but the dad said it was okay and Jim got the last shot without any trouble. The end.   

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Africa, Pt. XIX

September 13                                                                                                 Kampala 

Woke up, had breakfast with the Newsboys. Despite the whole surreal aspect of hanging out with a Christian super-group, they all seem like nice, down to earth guys. You can tell that they’ve been together a long time—there’s a lot of teasing that goes on between them. We drove to a Christian primary school an hour or so away and attended a big rally there. It wasn’t really anything we needed for the documentary, but somebody had put it in the schedule and we couldn’t back out of it. When we got to the school, students from 6^th grade up were standing at attention in rows in a courtyard. The rector of the school was giving them what sounded like a very boring lecture on school pride or something like that. Then Martin spoke and was his usual dynamic self. Meanwhile, the Newsboys were tuning up some mangled old wooden guitars the school had let them borrow. Most of the guitars looked like they had just barely survived the L.A. riots, and one especially beautiful guitar was spray painted bright blue. Jeff Frankenstein was handed a keyboard that wouldn’t plug into the sound system. “This is the same keyboard I had in third grade,” he told me. Despite the equipment shortcomings and the fact that they decided to perform on the spur of the moment, the guys did a good job at getting the crowd energized. Granted, the rectors monotone school pride speech wasn’t a tough act to follow. Peter sang a couple of praise and worship songs and pulled several of the students out of the crowd to sing and dance for him. Fun stuff.

Later on that morning we stopped by a recording studio to meet what I had been told was the “Gulu Children’s Choir.” Now I don’t know if you know anything about what’s going on up in Northern Uganda, but basically a group of evil men masquerading under the name of The Lord’s  Resistance Army have been kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing women and children for the last twenty years or so. Then they force children to do the same things to other children, and then those children are added to the ranks of the army. If you’ve seen The Invisible Children you’ll know what I’m talking about. So this Gulu Children’s Choir is actually made up of children that have escaped from the Gulu region, which is one of the areas most affected by all the bad, bad stuff going down up there. I don’t know about you, but if you were beaten, raped and tortured as a child you would have some issues to work through. I mean, the worst thing that happened to me as a kid is that I ran full speed into a sliding glass door (curse you, Windex!) , and I’m still pretty weird. So there’s a lot that needs to happen for these kids to heal from all the damage inflicted on their minds and bodies. Which is where the choir comes in: smart people have found that a good way of speeding up that healing process is through art- dancing, singing, and all that good stuff. So the choir was formed as a therapy of sorts—the kids can sing about their experiences and it’s an easier way for them to open up. So within minutes of entering the recording studio I found myself packed in a small soundproof booth with twenty or so singing children, half of the Newsboys, and two or three cameras. The kids were great. They sounded great, and had an irrepressible energy about them: stomping feet, swaying, clapping, hurrah! Most of the songs were in English. Funny thing is, most of the kids didn’t know English only a couple of months before. You would have never guess these kids had just walked out of one of the worst humanitarian disasters on this side of the millennium. And that’s saying a lot. Peter got in with the kids and taught them the song “He Reins.” They picked it up after only listening to it once. My behind the scenes camera almost exploded with the sheer force of awesome footage it was getting.

Later that afternoon, we visited the orphanage where the Gulu children lived. It was in the middle Kampala, and looked like it used to be an old school. As we walked in, the children greeted us by singing “He Reins,” the song they had just learned only a couple hours before. Wow. The orphanage was run by a small family that had left a successful business in Canada and come to Uganda only a few months before. They had gone up to Gulu with the intention of only checking the situation out and ended up bringing back twenty children, as many as they could cram in their car. They still had that deer-in-the-headlights look in their eyes. The building we were in was what they were able to get on short notice—they lived there with all the children. We sat in the courtyard, and the children sang some more songs for us and danced. Then we listened to the stories of some of the kids. One little girl, too small to talk, had been a twin. One day, her older sister took her twin out to see their parents in the fields. While they were gone, the LRA came in and massacred everyone in the field. The little girl was left alone in the hut. Her twin, all her other brothers and sisters, and her parents had been killed in one afternoon. She was alone. An older girl told us in halting English about how she had been beaten and abused by her step-sister. Each kid had a story, an unbelievable story. Rain started pouring down into the courtyard, so everybody crammed into the living room of the missionary’s home. The newsboys sang some more praise and worship with the kids. It was probably one of the most moving things I’ve seen in my life—kids who have been through such horrible stuff, who have every reason to be angry, singing worship to God. When the Newsboys started singing “He Reins” with the children, the missionary wife who had been there started crying. That had been the song that convinced her family to come to Uganda. She didn’t know the Newsboys had written it, and now they were here in her living room singing it.

Cool.

Africa, Pt. XVIII

September 12                                                                                                  Kampala - Bombo

Loaded up into the van for an early morning trip to the Bombo province, about an hour and a half away. Kampala is green green green, but it just gets greener the further away you get from the city. I continue to be amazed by the fact that I haven't seen any roadside accidents so far. This is a miracle, considering there are only narrow roads and they're usually full of comby vans and motor scooters and pedestrians and street sweepers and whatnot. I guess the mayor of the city-- one of many people Martin introduced us too-- is trying the keep the streets clean, because every morning I've seen rows of hunched over women literally sweeping the median edges on the road.  For some reason neither the brooms here or in Botswana have handles... hence the hunched over women.

Once we got far enough out, the pavement took an abrupt ninety degree turn into a bumpy dirt path. Bumpy dirt paths aren't such a great place to be if you've gotta go to the bathroom, by the way. The leader of the town, Godfrey, met us once we drove down the bumpy dirt road far enough. An older man, he looked regal and dignified as he marched through the jungle towards us-- though slightly out of place in his faded business suit. Later, Kenneth told me that Godfrey was a guerrilla soldier in the war to overthrow Obote and put the current president, Museveni, into power. One time, Obote’s henchmen discovered that Godfrey had hid Museveni in his home, and they came and beat him within an inch of his life. That was 20 years or so ago. But Godfrey still has the sprightly step and rigid posture of a fighter. Our first stop for the morning was the village clinic. An African doctor showed around the spartan interior- a series of bare walled rooms and a handful of lumpy, thin mattresses. A worried mother huddled over one of the mattresses, caressing her sick child. The doctor showed us the medicine supply closet. It seemed pretty small and empty to me. Luckily, Kenneth and Jim had arranged to donate a much needed box of medicine to the clinic.

After that, Godfrey led us on foot down a muddy jungle road, past thatched African huts that intermittently dotted the way. We stopped at one of the huts, home to a woman dying of AIDS. There was an unsettling quietness about the place. The woman’s sister met us at the door and invited Jim to come in. I could barely see the sick woman through the doorway of her hut. She was resting on a thatched mat, just out of reach of the sunlight streaming through the hut’s door. Kenneth shook his head sadly. “You may think this woman is maybe fifty or sixty years old, but she’s actually quite young. She’s probably only 35 years old.” It’s true—in fact, I’m surprised to learn that the girl who met us at the door was the woman’s sister, not her daughter. At another home, we met a woman dying of AIDS who couldn’t have been more than 27 or 28. Jim took a portrait of her sitting on a bench outside her house, surrounded by her children. Another woman showed us a massive, red tumor that had grown all over her body because of AIDS. What seemed strange to me is that all the women we met thanked us profusely for coming out and video taping them—they were all so grateful. Is it because they wanted their story told, or because they don’t want anyone else to go through what they’ve experienced? Or was it because they were just grateful for some attention?

Later that day, Godfrey took us to a funeral. If we didn’t feel intrusive enough coming into sick people’s home with a  camera, it was definitely awkward showing up at a funeral with all our gear. The funeral actually took place at the home of the deceased. Women and children sat around the outside of the home, while the men dug a grave in the garden and lined it with clay bricks (everywhere in that village, I saw stacks and stack of bricks, looking like a cubist version of the huge termite mounds. Kenneth told me that the villagers make them out of clay and stack them so they can harden. Then they build homes out of them.) Nobody seemed particularly sad, although those close to the home kept a respectful silence. Then men digging the grave, though, laughed and joked as they worked. Or I guess I should say all the men standing around watching one guy dig the grave— how is it things always work out like that? The only sad person, it seemed, was the departed woman’s sister. She wailed from inside the house, clinging to the clay doorframe to support herself. I never saw the body, except when they brought it outside of the house wrapped in sheets. A priest began a solemn litany of words I didn’t understand and the women around the house started to sing—a low, mournful chant, but beautiful. I had to leave at that point to go pick up the Newsboys at the airport, but Matt Doane told me about what happened next. Evidently, as soon as the priest was done, and the body was in the casket, the men picked up the coffin, ran as fast as they could to the grave, and threw the coffin in. Then they started shoveling cement over the grave as fast as they could. Nobody explained this tradition to us, but probably it has something to do with getting the woman’s spirit into the grave before it decides to wander off and rattle windows and doors and whatever wandering spirits do for fun.

Back at Entebbe Kenneth and I picked up the Newsboys and helped them with their luggage. It was a little surreal to meet Peter and the band, in Uganda of all places. These guys were my heroes in middle school, and now I find myself riding with them on a bumpy bus in the middle of Africa. Weird.