Africa

I went round to see Gina this morning and saw the film she made about the trip to Uganda that people from her Church made to build houses for children orphaned by AIDS and the war. It's a fabulous film- that part of Uganda is full of colour: bright green vegetation, trees and plants, bright blue sky and bright red mud roads, plus hand painted signage everywhere the camera pointed. Especially funny was a beautician's sign that advertised all sorts of treatments, plus a miracle from God to make the woman beautiful. Twenty Brits went, from the age of 68 down to 5, and the film is full of singing and mud. There are the teenagers, trying to sulk until they discover drawing on their legs in scarlet clay; the youngest children, Honey and Lei Lei, splodge mortar on to the bricks as they carefully position them on to a wall that proper builders corner and finish. The bricks are made one by one with a manual brick-making machine, painstakingly piled in the sun to dry for three days. There is a lot of music; Gina composed a song for the helpers to sing to the African builders. A baboon shiftily gobbles up a banana, looking from left to right constantly, like a gangster. Teachers describe the school; toddlers topple off paths as they make their way home to the completed houses. The orphaned children talk a little bit about their past lives and how happy they are to be loved and looked after
It's a film full of beauty, love and optimism, the last things you'd normally associate with Africa. I was bowled over.