Selma's War

I have never, ever, in my life, heard a story quite like Selma’s.

Imagine Job. You know, the guy in the Old Testament book of Job. Now add rape, sexual abuse, physical abuse and a severe beating with a machete, add a life-time of rejection by an alcoholic mother, being sold by her to the sex trade, a string of men who added to the rejection and abuse she felt, and you start to get an idea of what Selma’s story is all about.

Being a journalist, or in my case, a documentary film maker, opens up portals into stories and lives one could never enter otherwise. I remember interviewing a lovely woman in Sierra Leone who was finally, a few years after the war there, recovering her sanity. She was buried in a deep hole for days, was raped, assaulted, tortured, and made to hold the severed head of her aunt for hours on end. That happened during a war so in some bizarre, strange way, maybe the fact of war somehow lessens the horror of her experience for those that hear her story later.

But Selma’s story takes place in Guatemala. Today. The war officially ended in 1996 but even so, her story really had nothing to do with the “official” Guatemalan war.

When Selma finished telling her story to Tita and, in effect, to you the reader of this blog and eventual watcher of the film, Tita and Selma hugged each other tightly and they both wept for several minutes. It was a most holy moment there in Selma’s house. Iron sheets on a narrow spit of land on the side of the steep ravine that is La Limonada.

After catching my breath, Tita told me that Selma’s story is actually not that unusual. Women in Guatemala are abused and beaten all the time. “At least 50% of them,” she said.

I suppose poverty is a war of sorts. It assaults its victims and puts them in situations and predicaments that would seem unimaginable in peacetime. Selma, the men that beat her, the impoverished alcoholic mother, the men that used Selma when she was sold as a nine-year-old girl; all part of the violence of poverty.

Does it really have to be this way? In a world that generates so much wealth, does Tanya have to beg on that corner every day, and does Selma have to suffer so much?

Today, as I write this blog entry, Selma is experiencing yet another chapter in her life. She’s having surgery somewhere in Guatemala City to try and remove her cancer.

For her, the war goes on.

Yes. It matters.

You’ve probably heard a variation of this very cheesy story: There’s a beach with tens of thousands of fish washed up onshore and they’re dying. An annual migration of sorts.

A boy is on the beach picking up fish, one at a time, and throwing then in the water.

A man tells the boy that he’s wasting his time, he can’t possibly save all the fish and it really doesn’t matter.

The boy stops and, looking at the fish in his hand, says, “it matters to this one.”

I’ve been rather astounded over the past few months as I’ve spoken to groups and individuals, of the number of people who are like that boy.

They hear the “one billion” but then they immediately want to know what they can do to help a person or a family. “How can we make a difference in the lives of the poorest of the poor?”

My own family is on an odyssey of sorts. Jovelyn is the 15-year-old daughter of Jose and Elvie Alquino, the family under the bridge in Manila. Jovelyn is a shy girl, bright-eyed and eager to learn.

Working with some very very fine people in Manila, we’re exploring the possibility of having Jovelyn come live with our family here in Iowa, finish her last year or two of high school in our small town, then go on to Dordt College where I teach.

It’s sort of like the kid on the beach. That kind of opportunity can matter—big time—to one family. And who knows what the ripple effect will be?

Many others want to know what they can do for the one billion.

I suspect there’s a way to create connections, but it needs to be done without reinventing programs and opportunities that other fine organizations are already involved with.

I’m delighted there are so many out there like that boy. I hope his attitude prevails, and that of the “it-really-doesn’t-matter guy” become a very small minority.

What's In A Name?

“The Slum Documentary Film Project.”

Not a real grabby title, is it.

Not like, “Warehousing the World’s Surplus Humanity,” or, “Zone of Silence” or a few other ideas I have for a title (in fairness, that first one about the “warehousing” comes straight from Planet of Slums by Mike Davis. I include it to make a point.)

So why the vanilla title?

As you may have read in a previous blog entry here, documentaries are definitely works in progress. They evolve. Heck, as of this writing, I’m still not 100% sure of the final direction this film is going to take. And I probably won’t know that ‘til I’m much further along in the shooting. To date, all I have is footage from Manila. Next month is Guatemala, and later this year, Africa. In between these will be interviews with a variety of experts.

As all this wonderful footage comes in, the ideas begin to gel, things come together, and yes, a title begins to emerge.

The title may come from something I read or a comment made during an interview. Some of the best titles come quite by accident in an off-handed remark made by someone, or the unusual juxtaposition of ideas when you see images cut together inside the Avid timeline.

What I’m saying is: “The Slum Documentary Film Project” isn’t the final title. It’s just a working title for a work in progress.

Eventually, something much better will reveal itself.

And then I’ll reveal it to you.

In the meantime, I’m wide open to ideas. If you suggest the title that ultimately gets used, be assured I’ll give you the credit when the credits roll on The Slum Documentary Film Project.

The Power of Media

“Slumdog Millionarie” is sweeping up awards and nominations around the world as people fall in love with the scrappy kid who wins it big in India’s version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”
Danny Boyle and his crew did an excellent job of capturing life in the slums of Mumbai. The grittiness of life there, and the desperation of slum dwellers is evident in many of the scenes in the movie.
Today, the news talks of some of the child actors from the movie who actually live in the slums. Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, who plays the young Salim, elder brother of the film's central character Jamal, recently had his slum neighborhood razed and is now hoping for an actual house.
His father, Mohammed Ismail Mohammed Usman, who sells cardboard to eke out a living, said that since the movie came out, "The only thing that happened was that I became well-known because of my son. That's it. Nothing else changed. My kid became a hero and I'm living like a zero. This is my shack," he said.
The power of a film like “Slumdog Millionarie” is the power to get public attention focused on a subject like abject poverty. These people were acting, yes, but when the lights went off for the final time and the camera crew left, not much changed and the world is taking notice … at least of the few who appeared in the movie.
I really don’t think our documentary is going to sweep the world in quite the same way this movie did (but I can always hope). But our movie, like this one, will do its bit to help focus public attention on a subject that really needs the public’s attention. Mohammed, mentioned above, gathers up cardboard in hopes of getting enough money to live on. The Alquino family in Manila does that too. So do several families I shot in various parts of Nicaragua. As do people all over the world and yet the vast majority of these people will never be featured in a theatrical release or a documentary film. That doesn’t make them any less important. It just makes them less known.
Meanwhile, this very popular movie will eventually come out on DVD, then move to the “old” section of the neighborhood movie store. Eventually our documentary will come out, perhaps make a splash then also fade from the scene.
But the poverty won’t fade away, and if projections are correct, the one billion slum dwellers will grow to two billion and maybe more.
The power of media is to focus that spotlight. But that’s where it ends. To actually do something about it takes people who are committed to seeing real change.

"Poorism"

In case you’ve never heard of it, “poorism” is a term used to describe what some tour companies and individuals are now doing: offering tours to foreign visitors of the poorest slums in the city.

Mumbai, for example, has tours through the slums. Visitors come from around the world to gawk at the malnourished children and see the cardboard and iron-sheet structures that they call home. Some think this is a good form of responsible tourism as it exposes the more affluent to the reality of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Others call it exploitation.

One person in India took this accusation of exploitation one step farther by saying,

"If you were living in Dharavi, in that slum, would you like a foreign tourist coming and walking all over you?" he sputtered. "This kind of slum tourism, it is a clear invasion of somebody's privacy....You are treating humans like animals."

A tourism official called the tour operators "parasites [who] need to be investigated and put behind bars," and a state lawmaker has threatened to shut them down.

Those are the thoughts I had in mind as all 10 of our students here in Manila accompanied our team of three into the garbage dump and slum in Cavite. We brought them in so they could experience first-hand what their teammates were filming, and to get a taste of what life is like in such a place.

Was this irresponsible “poorism”?

I sure hope not.

Did it feel weird to go in with 11 foreigners while dozens of Filipinos of all ages were scrambling … again… in the muck and garbage to accrue the approximately $1 or $2 that most of them get by on a day? You bet it did. Ask any one of those students and they’ll tell you of feeling out of place, perhaps a bit exploitive.

At the same time, ask any one of those students if they have different thoughts now of what a slum is, of the reality of its awfulness, of the horrid, filthy conditions these people live in, and you might wonder if they’ll ever stop talking. These folks have now experienced firsthand what this stuff is all about.

I think there was a cost for us as Westerners to gain this empathy and understanding. The cost was some of the dignity of the people living in that slum. They knew what was going on. They knew rich people were coming to look at poor people. That’s a definite cost.

Was it worth it?

Time will tell. These students are on their way to becoming leaders in many different arenas of life. This experience won’t leave them. Perhaps they won’t leave the experience. Perhaps one, or two, or all of them, will use their considerable gifts and talents in the years to come to make a difference.

In my mind, that’s different than “poorism.” That’s tourism with a purpose.