Preparing to film

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Today we travelled to Machimba, a village just outside of Dar es Salaam, to inspect the building site that we’ll be shooting at over the next few days. It had rained heavily yesterday afternoon and all last night, so the troop-carrier did a few creek crossings on the way out there! We passed many mini-vans (the local form of public transport here) stranded in huge mud puddles… Obviously drainage is not a big thing here.
On the way back from the site we drove through a really poor area of the city and we asked our escort, Property Secretary Major Fraser Chalwe, if we could get out to take a few shots. He quickly advised against it, saying that getting out in this neighbourhood with a video-camera was a sure way to get stoned! (And by that I mean having rocks thrown at you, not feeling relaxed after a green cigar or two!) So we decided against getting out of the vehicle shot what we could out the window.
We’re having real problems here with the internet. We were subjected to a good 40 minutes of the Back-Street-Boys and Britney Spears this afternoon as we waited to get a spot at an internet place only to find that our computer crashed right when we got on… Frustrating but this is Africa I guess.

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Photos

The local posse
The local kids come to check us out!

site inspection
Richard and Property Secretary Major Chalwe discuss the building site we’ll be filming at for the next few days.

shooting on the road
Luke and Richard prepare for some out-the-window shots in order to avoid getting stoned by the locals.

online?
Richard’s patience is tested as he tries to communicate with the outside world.