Pilars of Kenya

I'm just letting you know that through 7Directing facebook page you can reach a gallery of photos by Aurelia. "Pilars of Kenya" is a series of photos portraying women from Kibera and rural areas who, I must admit, usually work much harder then men and are a real power of this country.

Give them a like!:)

TVP and 7Directing

I know it's been a while, but I'm still getting used to living in Poland and having to work again. The four reportages Aurelia Frydrych and I prepared during our stay in Kenia have been optioned by Krakow division of polish public television. They also optioned one material of our Cyprus friend Ivan Charalambous and our another Czech college - Vojtěch Pařízek.

For starters TVP Cracow published some of photos from our trip on their website here. Some of them were shot by Aurelia Frydrych and some by other people connected to the project.

On this one you can see Aurelia getting the sound and me shooting.

Farawell Kenya!

So today we are living. Tomorrow at this time I'll be back in Poland. We have to finish packing so I have to be really brief with this post. All in all this trip was a very pleasant time, but also had some quite controversial moments. You can expect a summary review of a trip, shooting conditions, our stories and my equipment soon. Keep reading!

It's a wrap!

Today we finished shooting! In the morning we got some really nice pictures from Kibera that would nicely bind our "Flying toilet" story and later I met with Kevin (the Miraa Raper Guy) to get some music for the soundtrack of the Khat Movie.

And that is it! All stories completed! After nearly three weeks of constant shooting I will have some time for myself. Tourism time! Tomorrow we are heading for our Safari! I'm really excited because after all this hard time I will finally have a chance to witness just magnificent glory of beautiful nature. It will be a really pleasant relax time. But 7D of course goes with me. I'm sure will get some really beautiful shots.

And below a "Brandy New Car" photo by Aurelia Frydrych ©:

Heavy trials

After nearly three weeks of shooting in Africa, I must admit that I'm really tired of being on alert all the time. The shooting conditions in term of safety are not really good. Today we nearly spent a whole day in Kibera again. It seems that all of our topics are related to it in one way or the other.

We spent a day with a main character of our "Albino Story" (working title;) - Gideon, who is the presenter of Pamoja Kibera Community Radio. Here below you can see me, while having a break over a cup of tee at Gideon's place.

You can see some of my equipment tagged on this blog's Facebook page.

Deeper and deeper

First of all let me apologize all of you who started wondering whether something happened to us. I know that we promised daily updates, but we were really unable to connect to the Internet, as last few days we spent in the Interior, that is deep into the country.

We visited some Miraa (the drug I write earlier about) plantations and were able to see how is it cultivated. It is a commodity that everybody desires here, either to chew or to make business with. Some people try to steal it, but on most occasions they are easily stopped by guards, that patrol heavily secured fields. The punishment? Just cutting the arms. Ouch.

Here courtesy to Aurelia © you can see how fresh Mirra just from the tree looks like. That is what most people in Kenya (up to 80% of populations here are users!) want, as Miraa is only effective up to 48 hours after cutting. The fresher the higher it gets you.



Than we went to some Masai settlements, where we interviewed witch-doctor who is the one conducting female circumcisions - the process of cutting out clitoris (at least!) of girls that come to the aged when they can be married. It's a cruel and dangerous process that leads to many health hazards and can even mean death to the "patient". It's been banned illegal by Kenyan government, but is still conducted in many regions of the country. It is even common for Kenyans that live in Europe or USA to take their daughters on vacation to "visit grandparents" - a code name for bringing them to their motherland for a procedure.

Courtesy to Aurelia a photo of one of the Masai's women ©:



Other than that we had plenty of nice and not so nice adventuress that included loosing a phone (pickpockets!), getting some stomach problems, meeting Swedish woman that is trying to change the world with hers husband invention and... finding out about Majini - evil African spirits that are most common in Mombasa... but that is another story that I should not start during night time. You may laugh, but I have witnessed a Majini activity and I would not like to angry them while on their territory.

KIbera again and again...

Today we spent a day in Kibera... again.

To be fair... I have to say that after nearly two weeks of going on pretty much every day to Kibera and back I really can't stand this place anymore. It's becoming really hard to be in this place everyday for a whole day. I really start to get into this situation and understand how bad it is. I should stay there for a few nights though to really get a good impression. Still even with the little exposition I had, it's getting to me.

Aurelia is tired also, but still she is bringing her stuff to you ©:

Khat, Kibera and birhday:)

Just a quick post today. We researched a Khat and Kibera Community Radio today, but I would not write anything more about it, because I have like a Birthday today! So I will only post a picture that Aurelia Frydrych took today. Keep reading and advertise my blog to your friends as my birthday gift, ok? Cheers.

The biggest slum in Nairobi

Kibera is the biggest slum in Nairobi. No one knows the exact number of people living there but the estimated number is 1,2 million. It is supposed also to be the most dangerous slum.

We went there today to start shooting footage for our documentary, titled "Flying Toilets" about the sanitation problems in the slums. If you are wondering what are Flying Toilets then I will tell you that this are just plastic bag filled with human excrement thrown away from the window. It is a common thing here and there are many health problems related to it.

There are some NGO's (non-governmental organizations) that try to fight with it and on the photo below you can see a sign about some planned investments to build public toilets. Unfortunately one has usually to pay for it and most of the slums people can't afford paying every time they need to use it. So the problem remains unresolved.



Photo courtesy to Aurelia Frydrych ©.

Mira and Sikh hospitality

Today we did some research on Mira as I mentioned yesterday.

For those of you who don't know what it is. It is a plant that is legal here in Kenya but is a strongly addictive drug that can cause a lot of health problems. It works like something between cocaine and amphetamine.

You can read more about it here.

We went to the River Road (probably the most dangerous part of the Nairobi). We didn't really shot a lot of material but we interviewed some people, found an interesting bar just for chewing Khat and bought some leaves to gain a trust of the sellers. The people were not really hostile but the atmosphere of endangerment was definitely in the air, so I think it will be quite difficult to film it.

Other then that we had quite a pleasant day. We accidentally found a Sikh temple. We wanted to visit it for a minute but actually we spent there like three hours. They were so friendly! We talked to them about religion, god and meaning of life. They showed us their rituals and shared a meal with us. It was fantastic! The Sikh are amazing and wise people. I think we will visit them again soon.

And here again a photo courtesy to Aurelia Frydrych ©:

Slums tourism feels just bad...

Today we visited a school of Kenyan Salesian Volountary Mission. We were contracted by their polish department to do a small documentary about kids that live and learn there and... guess what ... all the kids have a winter break and are gone! That is just hilarious! I have no idea how could they not checked it before sending us here.

But to be honest I don't really mind. I have more time now to pursue other topics I want to shoot during my stay here;)

We also visited one of the Nairobi's slums today. It was quite a terrible experience and I felt quite bad being there and taking photos. It feels like being a vulture, feeding on a poverty.

Still I have one of the photos for you. Again courtesy by Aurelia Frydrych ©:



Tomorrow I will start shooting some footage for a movie about a drug Khat (also called Miraa). So stay tuned!

African Rush on 1st day in Kenya;)

So we reached our final destination last night. We are staying at the outskirts of Nairobi. It's called Karen. At first I was like... there is a Karen's hospital, there is a Karen's high school. Who is this Karen? He has to be some kind of fat cat here. But sadly there is no Karen (would be good topic for a movie though) - it's a name of our district.

We just researched a bit, looked for interesting stories, meet some local contacts of ours and took a nice walk. It seems that doing documentaries here would not be easy. Day is pretty short here. It's pitch black at 7PM already. Besides you can definitely sense why Nairobi is called one of the most (maybe the most!) dangerous cities in Africa. It's not like people were hostile but we could see that they are not to friendly as well.

So our first day was quite slow but it's not so easy to get anything done here really. People are sooooo slooooow. It's called African Rush:) And here you can see an example of their style of work.

Photo courtesy by Aurelia Frydrych ©:





It was done with a Sony Cybershot DSC-HX5V that I bought lately. It seems to be quite a handy camera for both photos and videos and I will definitely write something more about it soon.

Keep reading us and please add 7directing to your friends on Facebook! Cheers!