week 1

You’ll forgive the length of this entry. You’ll also forgive my non addressing of my “living conditions”, “what i’m eating”, or answers to questions that you might find in a “travel log”. I’m more interested in writing down my thoughts and ideas about the things I am seeing and encountering in the story I am trying to tell and beyond. I can always take pictures of where I stay and what I eat (which I am doing) but days, months, years, or decades from now I’m sure I will be more interested in what I was feeling as a 27 year old filmmaker bouncing around a third world country with a camera and a baseball glove. So, that is what I intend to do with this blog… but first:

This is my 5th trip to Africa. 3 of the 5 trips have been film related. This is the second trip for the current film. Most people find it odd that I’ve never been to mainland Europe but I’ve been to Africa 5 times. I find that odd too. That statement isn’t entirely true now. I spent a week in Italy for this film following a 19 year old pitcher named Benard to the MLB Academy in Tirrenia. So, I’ve been to Italy, although my version of Italy was a baseball diamond and brief trip to the leaning tower of Pisa. Anyway, I digress… sort of. Africa, five times.

Mom and Dad know about the first trip (I feel confident that I can address them directly as readers of this blog). But for those who don’t know, it went something like this.

Mom and Dad set aside money for me to travel to Israel after my 11th grade school year, as many of my friends’ parents had also done for their sons and daughters. I said I wasn’t all that interested in going to Israel and wanted to use the money for a trip elsewhere. I don’t exactly remember their response but I think it was something like “well, then go ahead and find something”, half expecting me to just shrug it off and head to the holy land. But I poked around on a young internet and found a group called the Experiment in International Living, picked out two countries I knew little about but that sounded crazy enough to make my parents nervous… Thailand and Ghana. I didn’t care much which one I ended up going to, I was just a young kid looking to do something different. It’s the same personality trait that made me search endlessly for “indie music you’ve never heard of”. I think I’ve grown out of that somewhat angsty leaning… somewhat, I hope I never do entirely. The Thailand trip flew out of Los Angeles, the Ghana trip flew out of JFK. My parents wanted to see me off at the airport. We were 3500 miles from LA and only 100 from JFK, so Ghana it was. And that was that. My parents are wonderful parents for many things, but especially for letting me do this. If you aren’t my Mom and Dad and you are reading this and you have kids, consider this crazy idea. This blog is not about that trip, but I think it’s important to note its effect on me.

It was confusing. Africa is confusing. It was my first encounter with that level of poverty and history, and I wanted to somehow make sense of it. It’s taken me several trips to decide that trying to wrap my head around the endless stream of frustrations with the condition in Africa and my place in it is futile and the only way I can function and maybe even be productive for humanity is to just say… Africa is confusing.

This film started when a random connection I made while working in the marketing department for Major League Baseball Advanced Media led me to a man named Richard Stanley. Richard Stanley is one of the craziest, kindest, tireless men I have ever met. I sent Richard an email asking to learn more about his efforts in Africa of which I could only know this about this much “he was trying to do something with Baseball in East Africa.” He gave me a phone call and set a meeting at a diner in Chelsea for the next day. He wore a suit to the meeting, his gray hair was slicked back, and he gave a firm handshake. I don’t think I said more than 5 words in the 2 hours we sat. To say that Richard Stanley is a thorough man is like saying that Tim Lincecum is a good pitcher. He showed me about 150 pictures, non digital prints of course. He wouldn’t be bothered by a cell phone either. The first 145 snaps or so showed piles of dirt and an old bulldozer. I nodded as he told me of his plans to build a state of the art sports facility where there was now what appeared to be a swamp.

But when he got to the last 5 pictures they showed something different. They showed baseball. A team of young boys were playing the game on a small patch of dirt with some old equipment. It was eye opening and real. I knew right then that this was a story that wanted to be told.

Over the next two years, I did some graphic work for Richard, made several phone calls to gauge interest in helping him, all the while trying to figure out a way to get myself over there and confirm what I suspected was something I really had to get involved in.

I met Nick Goldfarb on my first job out of college. It was an editing job on a film he was producing called The F-Word for no money. We struck up a friendship and he recommended me for whatever paying freelance work would pop up. I was, and am, forever grateful to Nick for all he has done for me. One of those freelance jobs led to my first full time position as an editor for a small Upper East Side Ad Agency. The job was entirely wrong for me, but I’ll always remember it fondly as my first “real paycheck.” But that was 5 years ago. Back to figuring out how to get over to Uganda.

I sat down with Nick over sushi sometime after I had decided I was going to go to Uganda to see this baseball thing one way or another. My job at MLB had fizzled out, although they were still helping me figure out a way to continue to work with them on this project. But my schedule was suddenly wide open and there was nothing holding me back from diving into this project. I didn’t go to the sushi lunch with the intention of pitching this documentary, but once I told Nick about it, he was just as intrigued as I had been 2 years earlier. He decided he wanted in.

He, along with Richard’s support, got me here in May and June of 2009 to film for just over a month and see if there was really something here. It was something of a fact finding and casting trip. There was something here, something big. I met and interviewed countless kids of all ages and skill levels who were playing baseball. There are hundreds of stories worth telling but for the sake of a good film we’ll only be able to pluck out a few. I’ll first introduce you to a player I met named Benard.

Benard is a 19 year old pitcher who grew up in a small town called Soroti. Soroti was not a safe place to grow up. It was in the center of the Lords Resistance Army violence when Benard was young. He relayed stories of running from gunshots and fearing for his life and losing friends and family members at an alarming rate. He told me that he left home at 15 because he could no longer stand the violence. He made his way to Jinja to a boarding School called St. Noa where he worked on a teacher’s farm to get a reduction on his school fees. This school had a partnership with a Japanese organization that was bringing baseball to the school. There will be more about them later (I have some filming set up with a very influential coach who pushed the program there). Benard took up baseball and found that he was quite good with a knack for pitching. He has a tall thin frame with big hands and long legs naturally suited for a nice slider. He is also a quiet shy young man who often seems to retreat into his own mind and memory.

Some people who I worked with at MLB sat down and saw an early teaser video we put together which featured Benard. They were impressed with his talent and invited him to the MLB Academy in Italy (which I’ve already mentioned). I won’t go into it much now, but he had an incredible experience, pitched remarkably well, trained with former players and hall of famers, and now enjoys a certain kind of celebrity in the small baseball community here because of the trip. He doesn’t seem all that comfortable wearing that celebrity at this point.

And now after that Richardesque introduction, I’m finally ready to get to the real “bloggness” of this blog and start telling you what the hell I’m actually doing with my days over here and write this:

12/01/09 - Through a recommendation from a local TV station, I’ve teamed up with a talented cameraman named Godfred. We’ll split the shooting about 50/50 with him mostly taking over when I need to be free to interview and direct the action. So, to get into a groove with him (and test him out a bit), we started with some b-roll of a gym at Sharing. I guess you should know what Sharing is as it will be coming up a lot. It is a sort of YMCAish facility started by Dutch Catholics in the early 80’s. It serves a ghetto community called Nysambia. It’s open and free to anyone and holds scheduled events like dances and christmas parties but mostly focuses on providing a place to play. The most active sports they have are Badminton, Ping Pong, Karate, and now Baseball.

The baseball in Nysambia, and really all of Uganda, owes a lot to the efforts of a man named George. Although you rarely hear his name in Uganda without the word “Coach” before it. Coach George has several people living in his small house now includingBenard. Benard finished up his final year of high school just as I arrived in the country. His life is at a sort of crossroads now. He lacks funds to go to a University and reliable decent paying jobs are rarer than unicorns in Uganda. Most graduates of his income level may return home and help the family while working on a farm or driving a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) to earn some small money for food.

Benard, though, has a tremendous love and dreams of baseball, and he even had a glimpse of a future in the game in his time in Italy. If I had to put a percentage of him returning to Italy next year and being offered a small contract by an MLB team I would put it around 1%. And that 1% would be contingent on him working out and adding plenty of muscle to a very slight frame. A more realistic personal goal may be an athletic/academic scholarship to play in an American University as he is also a very intelligent young man. Anyway, we’ll see, he is about 6’3” and may only weigh 135 pounds.

So, on this day I interviewed Benard on a walk from Sharing to George’s house. He told me about some jealousy from the teachers he encountered on his return from Italy at his school. I wasn’t entirely surprised by this, and I just toss it into the “africa is confusing” bin in my brain. It’s disappointing, but understandable, like much of Africa. But Benard is smart and strong and seemed to shrug any negativity off. He was also happy to see me, and vice versa, of course. I really like Benard and see something special in him. There is that saying about “old souls” or people who have “lived more than their years.” All of those are true about Benard.

We followed him to his new bed in George’s house. He shares the bed with a teammate named Aron. I’ll have to tell you more about Aron another time. But he is 18, a self proclaimed leader, and a very determined player dedicated to helping his country through baseball. He seems to be very affected by the Japanese style of coaching he received in his discipline and focused work ethic. That will have to suffice for now. But he is also a full grown 18 year old. The bed they share is a twin size foam mattress. I don’t know how they do it. But they do.

Benard showed us some of the balls that his friends in Italy had signed that he moved with and told us more about his plan to help George coach and improve his pitching as much as he can. He says he is happy to be finished with his school and ready for what comes next. If he is uneasy about his uncertain future, he doesn’t let it show. He doesn’t let much show in general.

After the interview we follow Benard and Aron to a practice that evening at a primaryschool called St Peter. I love a shot I get of the two carrying an enormous and very heavy bag through this back alley on the way to the field. The practice is actually in a beautiful setting with a great backdrop of downtown Kampala in the distance. I’m impressed in the improvement I see in many of the kids I saw back in May and June.

12/02/09 - Then there is Alex. He is 14. His “father” died when he was 10 in a car accident. I put father in quotes because I’m still not exactly sure who he was. I know he wasn’t his birth father. There is a major problem with fatherhood in this country. Most men take multiple wives and many don’t care for their many children. It’s a pretty huge problem and puts a lot of these young boys in a vicious cycle. I’ll be interested to see if any of them fall into this pattern when they grow up. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m optimistic that their playing of baseball may provide some lessons that steer them in a different path. That may just be hocus pocus and my fanciful love of a game talking, but who knows, I still believe it. Many of the young boys call Coach George “Dad”, so maybe there is something to it. George actually got a roof over Alex’s head, a small roof in the ghetto that houses 3 other boys on two beds.

George collects a small salary from Richard for his work at Richard’s complex. George does some carpentry and makes the bunk beds for the dormitories. Richard knows George is one of his best allies on the ground here and doesn’t mind helping him so he can help boys like Alex.

Alex plays catcher, and he loves and studies the game. Since I left, he plastered his wall with pages from an old baseball magazine from 1998 that he found. It makes for great filming, although I don’t think that’s why he did it. There are pictures of youth teams from Cuba, the US, Mexico, Dominican etc… on his wall now. And an advertisement for a bat (which I think I used growing up coincidentally) that has a slogan of “Hit Better Under Pressure.” There is something I like about that ad in this setting.

Alex has a crush on a girl named Lillian who I met on the last trip when she came to play softball. I don’t know if she likes him or not. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like him as much as he likes her. Being 14 is being 14 it seems. He calls Lillian while I film and tells her to come see him tomorrow. He has a huge smile while he does it.

His roommate/friend/teammate Roger does a word find next to him. I’m not sure where the boys picked up the word find but nearly all the boys are doing it in the ghetto. They look for words like “bible” “disciple” “eden” etc… Roger actually says “I found ‘Jesus’” While we’re filming.

Alex then takes us on a walk around the ghetto so I can get some b-roll of ghetto life. Some good shots of two girls playing jumprope and a lot of good stuff of people doing their work (fixing shoes, making wicker chairs, cooking, etc…).

He then gets ready for practice. I’m sure to film that. I can see a good sequence in the film and plenty of places to use those kind of shots. Then we follow him to practice at Sharing and get the usual shots of gameplay and people watching in wonder.

Oh these first two nights, I stay at Richard’s Complex which he graciously offers to me on my visits. It’s comfortable and quiet, but a bit of a drive out of the city (maybe 35 minutes).

12/03/09 - I get into the ghetto early and intend to follow Alex most of the day. I tell him that I’d like to interview his mom. I’m hoping to find out about this “father” and of course learn more about Alex and his upbringing. I film Alex walking around looking for his mother. She lives in the same ghetto but in a much smaller place with a dirt floor that doubles as her bed.

She isn’t at home so we follow Alex down to a small stream on the other side of the ghetto where people gather water. Alex finds her there picking some greens from the ground to put in a soup. I, of course, go to greet her and step all over several “greens” which I thought were just some weeds. They probably were. She laughed. She knows no English. I am trying to learn Luganda (the local language) and picked up a basic book the other day, but I can’t hear it yet.

We walk back to her home with Alex and she shows us around with Alex acting as my translator. Alex tells her she should come to his practice at Sharing later so I can ask her some more questions. She says she will. She says “thank you” as best she can and I say “Waybale” as best I can.

We film Alex and the boys practicing at Sharing later and I wait for her to show up. I can see Alex keeping an eye on the outfield for her too. I’m about to give up and figure that something came up and she couldn’t make it, but then she comes walking up.

I position her next to the field for the interview and grab Eric (another player/coach) to be my translator. I ask her about the game and what she thinks and all that, but really I’m hoping to get a good answer about Alex’s “father”. When I finally ask about him, she has no idea who I’m talking about. Alex’s real father is apparently alive and well somewhere in Kampala but has never had anything to do with him or her as far as I can tell. Through some conversation I figure out that the “father” that Alex was referring to was a good friend of the mother and someone who Alex obviously loved and took on as his “father” figure. But she doesn’t appear to be the right person to talk about him. I’ll have to dig deeper into that I guess. Anyway, I think we film some precious moments when she watches Alex bat. He hits a solid fly ball to left field but it’s caught. He comes over after and explains to her why he is out. She smiles and asks him why he didn’t hit it on the ground. He laughs.

That night I sleep at Eric’s apartment in the ghetto. It is very comfortable. They live in a little more spacious part of the ghetto. He and his roommate who also plays baseball put a foam mattress on the floor for me and I sleep the best I had since I arrived. Eric has a story to tell that I’ll have to get on film. He was one of the early pioneers of baseball in the country but is about 23 years old now. He was one of the best players but seems to be giving up on the game as he feels his opportunity has passed him by. This is entirely true, but George is trying to convince him that the real opportunity is for the country and he needs Eric to help coach the younger kids. One 12 year old boy I interviewed in May listed his favorite baseball players as Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, and Eric.

12/04/09 - I get to Alex’s early as he is expecting Lillian to come see him. As soon as she arrives he gets nervous. I film them hanging out all day. They go to Sharing and hang out with some other friends and teammates and walk to one of their friends houses. He keeps telling me that he is going to ask her out, but he gets way too nervous. They speak in Luganda all day, but I can pick out enough to know that nothing monumental is said, just plenty of teenage heart flutters. He does tell her he has been working out. She didn’t seem impressed.

I head up to George’s after lunch to interview George. We go through his home and count 12 people who now are staying with him, Benard being the newest. He loves the feeling of a full house and seems optimistic about baseball in Kampala. He has some interesting ideas about Benard and his shyness. He tells me he thinks he will have to address some of his emotional scars so he can more effectively coach the boys in the ghetto. It is definitely something I hope to capture during the filming. It probably is the essence of why this entire story interests me. Benard’s journey will have to be as internal as it is external, or else it will fail at both.

Another practice at St. Peters. I pick off some good shots of Benard coaching as it is fresh in my mind from George’s interview. I also grab some good shots of a promising physical talent named Paul who I will discuss another time. He takes a half swing and hits a long home run to center during their scrimmage game.

I stay at Eric’s again and get some good filming of the boys hanging out late at night. They tease Alex about his crush on Lillian. I also have some pretty good food in a little restaurant of sorts in the ghetto. Chicken, matoke, rice, peanut sauce.

12/05/09 - This day is with Benard. First, we head to Jinja to pack up some things he still has at the St. Noa School. He wants to bring them to his home in Soroti. Aron comes with us to help him move. It’s an hour and half taxi (a van with 20 people basically) to Jinja in the east. We film him packing up at school. He fills a big bag with clothes and school materials that he will bring home to Soroti. The packing up may be the last time he is at school. He seems happy about that.

Aron stays in Jinja and the rest of us continue up to Soroti. This is a 2 taxi journey with a stop and switch halfway there. They tell me that it can be done with one bus or taxi but they are all full now with people traveling during the festive season. There is some decent filming of Uganda scenery as the landscape changes quite a bit as you go north. It gets flatter, poorer, and hotter (seems those things often go together). There are some really cool rock formations and mountains popping up from time to time as we get closer to Soroti. The whole trip takes about 6 hours.

When we get out, we hop on bicycle bodas to ride to Benard’s family home. He actually rides a bike which he bought for his sister. We follow him and film from the bike during the short ride. We turn a corner and it just so happens that Benard lives right below one of the incredible rock mountain formations. It makes for a great shot.

We film Benard coming home and getting a huge greeting from his Mother. We sit down for a meal with them and film a great conversation with his Mother and Aunt preaching to him. They are obviously much more religious than he is. He remains fairly quiet, as usual. The conversation reveals some nervousness from his family that his baseball may interfere with searching for jobs or helping the family. It will be a major part of his story.

Benard then takes us to a school where he used to walk to in order to sleep during the violent years of his childhood. He describes the scenes of classrooms packed with people from wall to wall who came to sleep as it is safer than their hometowns. Benards walk was 2 hours each way every day for several years. He shows us where he slept on a ledge in a classroom. The school is empty now and is extremely photogenic wherever we point the camera.

I also ask him about his family and religion and he gives me some incredible quotes to this affect, “my family had some hardships and saw some difficult things and their answer was god… my answer was baseball.”

He then takes us to his primary school where he last saw his best friend named Vincent. Vincent was abducted by the rebels and no one knows where he is. Chances are he is not alive. And if he is, he has joined the rebels. He tells me about Vincent and about his very quiet personality. He explains how he didn’t talk to many people but that Benard liked him so much. He misses him. Benard shows me where he and Vincent used to sit, on a tree stump. A storm is coming over the horizon. It fits the scene. It would be an incredible thing to try to track down Vincent during the course of this film. I don’t intend on doing it but I want to dig deeper there and at least talk to his family or film Benard talking to them. There are many places and moments where Benard became who he is today, but Vincent’s abduction seems to be a major point in his life. I’ll see what I can do with it. The storm comes and it pours. I’ve been in several rain storms in Africa in my 5 trips, and there is something amazing about being at a school during one. Benard and I play catch in a classroom while the rain passes. That also seems to fit the scene.

When it clears up we stop off and meet Benard’s grandfather on the way back to the hotel. This is probably just a bit of African hospitality where I am expected to meet the elders in the family as a guest, but it is actually very beautiful filming. They have a small farm with some cows and mangos. He is a nice man, although people in the family tell me he drinks too much. Probably true.

12/06/09 - This day is mostly for gathering b-roll. So, we go back to the same spots as the previous day. I grab some great shots of the mountain Benard lives under. My favorites are a shot of these men who break the rock to grind it up into a type of concrete for construction and a shot of women sifting through millet. At the Pioneer School (the one for safety) I film this toy that these young kids made. Its a juice box that they tore into a little car with bottle caps for wheels and toothpicks for spindles. Pretty inventive. It even has doors.

At Benard’s home I get a bunch of nice cooking shots and some nice ones of his baby niece getting a bath. Her name is Peace.

Then we climb the mountain. I wasn’t planning on doing that on this day but we had some time. It was a great climb with a decent path. There were some tricky moments with a camera and tripod to deal with, but the view at the top was awesome. This was my first African mountain so you’ll allow me to relish it a bit. There were monkeys following us and eagles flying all around. Pretty breathtaking. There is a water tower for the community up there so there is a 24/7 security guard who lives on top. Not a bad spot. While we were up there, a young man came up who was arrested. I guess they have problems with thieves at the water tower. I’m not sure what happened with him, but he was in trouble. He sat quietly while we worked. Africa is confusing. I may spend a night up there at some point to get a sunrise/sunset shot.

I interview Benard at the top with a great backdrop of Soroti below. We debate staying until the sun goes down but we can see some rain coming so we go down before it hits. It only lasts a few minutes, but it would have made the walk down pretty deadly.

12/07/09 - We visit Benard’s mom at her work. She is a nurse at a government hospital. I interview her there which is great. She tells some crazy stories about running away from the rebels and breaking her leg. The rebels used to raid hospitals to abduct nurses and doctors and take drugs. They would force the nurses and doctors to care for their wounded and sick.

I want to film in the wards which would make for great settings for her to talk to us, but the doctor who could grant us permission to shoot there isn’t there that day. We’ll have to do it another time. I looked in there and I’m sure there is some very good filming to be done. Most of the patients are there with malaria spells or HIV complications. It’s a free hospital but they seem to lack enough medicine or staff to really do much for most people. There is also a separate ward for priority patients who are able to pay something. This is where Benard’s mom’s rotation is on this day. She deals with an older woman who has cancer.

We leave Soroti to head back to Jinja. We stop on the way to visit with Benard’s Aunt. This is certainly African hospitality and there isn’t much to film there. But she cooks us a nice meal. I ask her some questions about the things on her walls which are mostly religious posters and then we take off.

We spend the night in a hotel in Jinja and I plan on taking the next 2 days off and staying at the complex before continuing on thursday.

And yes Mom and Dad, I’m healthy.