Yesterday was a very full and long day. By the end I was exhausted, but it was a lot of fun and my spirits were kept up throughout the 14 hours out in the field.
I was supposed to be picked up at 7am so I woke around 5:30 to shower and get ready. It was good I gave myself so much time to get ready; my ride showed up 30 minutes early which is pretty uncommon here. We made one stop and then left straight for the field.
The day’s goal was to take a bunch of videos and pictures for the media team. The whole day had been organized and set up, so there was a schedule to follow—but if I’ve learned one thing here, it’s that watches and clocks are just decorative pieces.
After an hour drive to the rural village of our first “scene”, we met the lady who was to be interviewed and show us some activities from her daily life. It was 8:00am at this point, and life was already active and moving. She had picked a lot of tomatoes earlier in the morning so she could give us a nice scene of her selling them. (One of the significant outcomes of the WFG program is women empowerment—the time they save fetching water lets them start businesses, take care of other household chores, and other things).
It was cool being behind the scenes on this type of thing. There was so much going on throughout the day that giving it a cohesive narrative would be tough. But, I have a lot of pictures that will hopefully tell the story better.
This house was also the one I had visited before with the cute kitty cat that reminded me of my Daisy back home.
We spent over three hours at this first household. And that pace was not ideal. If all five places we needed to shoot went like that… well I just knew it was going to be a long day.
We got to the second household around noon. Unfortunately the same commotion and unpreparedness occurred here. The scene here was meant to be a conversation about children in the household, but there were none. I’m very glad I’m not on the media team who was having to deal with all of this through translators (which seemed stressful and frustrating)—I just kicked back and enjoyed the show.
The third site was for filming some people fetching water in a village that is currently unserved by WFG. I had also visited this place before. It was interesting to be out in the middle of this rural land and feel like I knew my way around.
The second to last scene being filmed was of a WASH training.
Finally we went to a household that again, I had been to before. At this point everyone was really tired, the sun was setting, and crankiness was coming out. The team was getting impatient and even the household members felt the evening arriving. Everybody was very happy to get done with the day.
On the drive home, the sun set completely, marking the close of our day in a very cinematic way.
There was no food while out in the field, which only added to everybody’s irritability. It was such a relief to get back to the hotel, take a shower, and have a nice meal of french fries and chicken.
Today is another day in the field, I had to wake up early again, but thankfully I got to have breakfast. I’m not sure what we will be doing or how long it will be, but I’m feeling surprisingly good after such a long day yesterday!