SDI Archives

Running with canoes

While camping in Canhabaque, we did not get a minute of solitude. Our tent became a point of entertainment for children and adults. Whenever we got back to base we had to switch on the generator in order to recharge batteries. Of course we were greeted by a long queue of people wanting to recharge their mobiles (mainly used to play music) and another long queue hoping to watch TV. It appears there is an association between the sound of a generator and television. Meal times were a bit tricky, with 20 pairs of eyes looking at everything we put into our mouth. We managed to 'consume' 12 kilograms of rice in five meals!

Louisa and Marianna

Just before we left we did a quick interview with one of the young women who hung around us. Marianna is 20, and her dad has been away for several months to do his initiation. He too appeared at our door step and she was taken aback to see him. However, tradition does not allow him to talk directly to his wife and children. He needs to use a child as a messenger to pass along updates. The sad thing is that even once his initiation is over, he will not be allowed to return to his wife and children. He will have to marry again. This part of the tradition is now being questioned by many young men who emotionally suffered from that rupture of family.

Imagine this sacred drum playing throughout

3 days in Canhabaque...

We got invited to a unique event: the crowning of the new queen of Canhabaque. Here, you can only be queen if you are beyond 60, in the last phase of your life, and of course having done all the various initiations. The potential queen needs to have several meetings with her family to decide if she accepts the position. It means saying goodbye to her family, friends and village. She moves to a new home and a new village and will reside there till death.

The ceremony is three days of festivities with the sacred drum playing messages throughout. The queen-to-be sits in her hut with a screen in front her door and can only communicate or watch the festivities by peeping through it. The drum is meant to be the mode of communication for the queen, her mobile!

Many chiefs of villages come to take part. They too can only be made chief once they are 60. This age class is so important to Bijagó culture. The young work for the elders who, bit by bit, give them their knowledge. We are very curious to see what is happening now, with the young having access to schooling and others forms of knowledge. Will killing a chicken in order to make decisions persist over other avenues of information?

Village chief

The chiefs are all dressed with colourful drapes, an extraordinary choice of hats, and objects around their necks. They all carry lovely handbags with important objects such as their wine tumbler made from a horn. They all have a dog. When the chief dies, the dog is killed and buried with the chief in order to protect him in his afterlife.

Local network was down – now back online!

So far we have been following characters in villages around the island of Bubaque, the main urban space, if we can call it that. Today we left our modest but comfortable hotel for a trip to another island, Cahabaque.

We landed on a paradisal beach but then had to walk several kilometres through a forest, beautiful but hellish having to carry our equipment, tent, food and water for five days. Thank goodness a few kids were waiting for us on the beach and delighted at the prospect of earning a few bobs. What a workout! And of course we are wimps next to those skinny kids, all muscle and strength!

This had been my shopping list to survive 5 days:

No matter how experienced you are in documentary filmmaking and all things African – no shoot is like any other. And in particular, this shoot is like no other. Trapped in what has been described a 'closed society' – the Bijagós archipelago – Noé Mendelle struggles to find some sense of balance between traditional and modern influences. When a blog becomes your only place to vent, irony is inevitable. Raw, unfiltered and dispatched on the same day, here is the latest post in her series. 

A presidential pain

Insect bite cream tubes: 3
Ibuprofen for headaches: 32
Meeting with presidents so far: 1

Extra security for our documentary production?

This must be the most presidential week of my life. Having met leading candidate for presidential elections at breakfast four days ago, we returned to our hotel today to find it surrounded by a crowd of performers and taken over by strong military presence, only to meet the ex-president of Timor in our hotel. We are staying in Casa Dora, a modest hotel with small traditional huts: a bed, a cold shower and a great cook – wonderful but not the place where you would expect to find VIP clients, let alone presidents. This little island is getting very crowded, and those official visits seem to become bank holidays for everyone, bringing our characters into town... and costing us another day of shoot.

I hope that, if you managed to put up with my extreme sense of humour so far, you got curious enough to go and check where the Bijagós are. Everything is extreme here:

Recipe for talking to the dead

We got up really early this morning to try and catch up with those 'initiated' guys I talked about. I'm really puzzled: why would someone give up his village, wife and children to wonder about for months or years? 

It is so hard to interview through translators. Our fixer/translator speaks very basic Portuguese which means exploring any abstract thought a challenge. And yet here we are, trying to find out about spirits, death and religious ceremonies with a complex set of rules and signs.

I can't say I'm anywhere near to understanding our 'initiated', but at least I was able to ask about the toys they carry around their neck. Those teddy bears are their spokespeople to the spirits. It is reassuring to know that teddy bears and spirits go hand in hand!

Teddy bear becomes spirit spokesperson

Later on we went to talk to a spiritual facilitator communicating with the dead. One of the guys in the village wanted his father's spirit to come home. When someone dies, a chicken gets sacrificed in order to decide whether he gets buried at home (if he was good) or in the forest (if he was bad). But somehow the wondering spirit needs to be lured back home through a special ceremony. Women do not appear to be so demanding, they just get buried in the forest, and their spirits just wonder off without creating any trouble. So we filmed another ceremony:

I could have screamed with frustration this morning!

• Number of appointments for the morning: 3
• Number of characters not there when we turned up: 3

The cost of petrol is the same here as in the UK. We spend a fortune on transport that is not even reliable. Our motorbike broke down, and only two hours later we managed to get an old car without any suspension. Had we been assaulted and battered, my body would have felt the same! The owner was very proud of this pile of iron. When it seemed that my door was not closed properly, the driver proudly said: "A good driver knows every sound produced by his car." In this case it was an entire cacophony of screeching sounds.

Thank goodness the afternoon was a lovely surprise.

Today was a messy day

We have such a long list of characters and stories that we want to explore. Transport, of course, is one big challenge. Then people not having a concept of time, saying "yes, I will be around" but not being able to pinpoint a specific time – and if by miracle they do then it is us who are being delayed... And if that was not bad enough, the unpredictable keeps happening.

This morning we were meant to carry on filming with our sculptor. However, he happens to be one of the elders, and one of the candidates for presidency decided to visit our village. We had to hang around till the distribution of free T-shirts and leaflets were over. But who knows, we may have shaken hands with the next president, who may last for a few months before getting shot or removed by a military coup.

Today is International Women's Day

Women in Bijago culture hold a very important role and are feared by men! They definitely talk louder than men... and very direct. But their role in the villages is still locked to farming, fishing and looking after children.

However, they have a phase in their life around their 20s when they abandon children, husband and family to move into a dedicated female house in order to allow their body to be taken over by male souls in need of purification. Then they can do anything they like except having sex (with men). They go wild dancing and doing mischief. Completely possessed, they have their own language, only understood by other women who went through that phase – and by the sacred drum player. We are talking to one tomorrow.

Anyway, today we remain in town to attend a football game with a difference: The first female football team in Bijago and Guinea-Bissau played to half a dozen admirers.

No matter how experienced you are in documentary filmmaking and all things African – no shoot is like any other. And in particular, this shoot is like no other. Trapped in what has been described a 'closed society' – the Bijagós archipelago – Noé Mendelle struggles to find some sense of balance between traditional and modern influences. When a blog becomes your only place to vent, irony is inevitable. Raw, unfiltered and dispatched on the same day, here is the latest post in her series. 

Cinema on a motorbike

Today we went on filming our sculptor and our canoe maker doing some interesting interviews, but you can catch up with those once the film is finished.

Living up to the Scottish Documetary Institute's philosophy of bringing films everywhere, we did the first-ever cinema screening on the islands of Bijagos. In fact it was the premiere of a film my co-producers Luis and Sana had shot in the villages we are now filming. The idea is to bring back the images to the people who had taken part in that film and also welcomed us in their space.

We had to travel to the village on our motorbike which keeps running out of petrol. Of course we ended up carrying a generator, white sheet, speakers, projector, etc. Most of the people tonight had never seen any moving image, let alone a two-hour film. It was mayhem trying to put up a screen against a house. No nails to fix it!