The Translator

As I (Caleb) was writing this post, I realized that I forgot to mention that three years ago I had already traveled to Rwanda with a woman named Edwina Portocarrero and had the idea for this project.  Not until now, however, have I been able to return (this time with Jules) to work again on the film.  Now, back to the post.

Several days into our stay in Rwinkwavu, we met with our translator, a schoolteacher from Kigali.  She seemed very helpful at first, as we walked into a village where I thought we could find Desire, a man I remembered as the coach of the local soccer team.  She even got the group of children who were following  us to sing songs which we'll use as part of the soundtrack.  

When we met with Desire, we set up an interview for the next friday at the ruins of an old Belgian stadium where the local kids still play every day after school.  It was during that interview that I realized that we would need to find a new translator.  She frequently couldn't understand the questions I was asking, and ultimately the entire interview went awfully and we had to schedule a new one (which starts in half an hour).  

To be fair, though, the interview's failure wasn't completely her fault.  Desire himself had little interest in answering the questions, and instead he wanted to talk about how he needed money for jerseys and shoes for the team.  I was unable to get any information about his own life, or what he thought about soccer, even though I remembered some very interesting details from when I had talked to him three years earlier.  I'll write more about him after our second interview later today.

An image of the coach Desire:

  

Anyway, I've been searching for a new interpreter, but so far I've been unable to find one, and it looks like we might be stuck with our current translator for the rest of our stay here.  Perhaps we could incorporate this problem into our film, and weave it into the storyline about the difficulties in making the documentary itself.  I'll post more about Desire, the translator, and our progress later, but now we have to go make a second attempt at the interview.