His followers call him the 'prophet' and each week he preaches to
thousands in his mega-church and heals the sick with just a touch of his
hand.
afewthingsivedone | notsomuch a blog, more a braindump - a library of thingsivedone so that I can remember
Friday, 27 December 2013
Saturday, 21 December 2013
Blog post for AFP.com: Fighting vice (and self-doubt) with sharia squad in Nigeria
Read the post at AFP.com
It's a familiar conundrum for video journalists. Quite different from a reporter's pad or a discreet radio microphone, a camera and the prospect of being “on TV” causes some people (the ones you want to talk to) to shrink away and others (the vain and the bold) to step forward, hold court and “inform” -- often with opinions that are not even theirs, but ones they hope I, as an outsider, will be wanting to hear. It's a nagging I often get when filming in Africa.
A sense that what I've just seen and filmed, whilst seeming real is in fact something that I have created, an event that would never have happened had I not been there, pointing a camera at it. Faced with a strange man in a strange place, wielding a Sony video camera and a tripod, crowds can emerge, opinions may form or tempers flare from nowhere.
Shooting a story in Nigeria about Kano's sharia vice squad, a force charged with seeking out and correcting un-Islamic behaviour such as drinking, prostitution, homosexuality or even hip-hop haircuts, the feeling that I had triggered a story rather than merely witnessed one, was more than a niggle; I was sure.
Would the girl now sitting hunched over in the back of the pickup, arrested on suspicion of prostitution have been there, if I hadn't insisted on joining a patrol? I'm in the back seat of the cab of the truck, she's six inches from me on the other side of the glass looking afraid, surrounded by a group of six or seven 'Hisbah' officers with truncheon-like sticks.
We found her at the end of a dash through a part of the city littered with half constructed homes and scrub. A plain-clothed informer (was he genuine?) had tipped off the Hisbah that the girl might be lurking in the area. So we'd run (was that just dramatic effect for the camera?) through the undergrowth, round the back of some shacks -- and there she was, 'lurking'.
Seeing her scared face through the back window, I want to shout “cut”, and for all the actors to break into broad smiles before heading back to the costume department, make-up or on-set canteen. But I don't -- and they don't.
I'd been given permission to film with one of the Hisbah patrols only a few days before, thanks to the persistence of AFP's stringer Aminu Abubakar. So a 12-day features trip to Lagos quickly took on broader horizons with a two-day flying visit to Kano.
An interview with the deputy commander had gone well and the brief tour of the Hisbah's various rooms -- used for questioning suspects, gathering evidence or helping to resolve family disputes -- had also been fruitful. But on day two and with only a handful of hours before my return flight, still no “patrol” -- a gaping hole in my story.
So Aminu and l insist, we interrupt the commander and his council of elders who are busy deciding whether a veiled girl sat on the floor should indeed marry a sheepish young man who claims to have protected her honour -- and we ask if, finally, we might get our promised “patrol”.
Conversations are had (what did they say?), smartly uniformed men mustered (do they always dress so well?) and within half an hour there we are, bouncing down the back roads of Kano scouting for vice.
Tip-off. Running. Girl found. Girl caught.
I get the shots I want -- without them the story is a non-starter. There is drama, even the sound of a startled chicken, but still the nagging guilt that this has been contrived for the camera - and that wasn't part of the plot at all.
I share my concerns with Aminu who says he feels the same - but had been assured by the Hisbah that she is a genuine suspect, had been brought in before and is also likely to have been high on codeine.
I'm relieved, in a way, that what I had filmed was real, though saddened by her story and concerned for her fate.
But the nagging I know will return, the next time I lift my camera to witness and observe the “reality” before me.
It's a familiar conundrum for video journalists. Quite different from a reporter's pad or a discreet radio microphone, a camera and the prospect of being “on TV” causes some people (the ones you want to talk to) to shrink away and others (the vain and the bold) to step forward, hold court and “inform” -- often with opinions that are not even theirs, but ones they hope I, as an outsider, will be wanting to hear. It's a nagging I often get when filming in Africa.
A sense that what I've just seen and filmed, whilst seeming real is in fact something that I have created, an event that would never have happened had I not been there, pointing a camera at it. Faced with a strange man in a strange place, wielding a Sony video camera and a tripod, crowds can emerge, opinions may form or tempers flare from nowhere.
Shooting a story in Nigeria about Kano's sharia vice squad, a force charged with seeking out and correcting un-Islamic behaviour such as drinking, prostitution, homosexuality or even hip-hop haircuts, the feeling that I had triggered a story rather than merely witnessed one, was more than a niggle; I was sure.
Would the girl now sitting hunched over in the back of the pickup, arrested on suspicion of prostitution have been there, if I hadn't insisted on joining a patrol? I'm in the back seat of the cab of the truck, she's six inches from me on the other side of the glass looking afraid, surrounded by a group of six or seven 'Hisbah' officers with truncheon-like sticks.
Seeing her scared face through the back window, I want to shout “cut”, and for all the actors to break into broad smiles before heading back to the costume department, make-up or on-set canteen. But I don't -- and they don't.
I'd been given permission to film with one of the Hisbah patrols only a few days before, thanks to the persistence of AFP's stringer Aminu Abubakar. So a 12-day features trip to Lagos quickly took on broader horizons with a two-day flying visit to Kano.
An interview with the deputy commander had gone well and the brief tour of the Hisbah's various rooms -- used for questioning suspects, gathering evidence or helping to resolve family disputes -- had also been fruitful. But on day two and with only a handful of hours before my return flight, still no “patrol” -- a gaping hole in my story.
So Aminu and l insist, we interrupt the commander and his council of elders who are busy deciding whether a veiled girl sat on the floor should indeed marry a sheepish young man who claims to have protected her honour -- and we ask if, finally, we might get our promised “patrol”.
Conversations are had (what did they say?), smartly uniformed men mustered (do they always dress so well?) and within half an hour there we are, bouncing down the back roads of Kano scouting for vice.
Tip-off. Running. Girl found. Girl caught.
I get the shots I want -- without them the story is a non-starter. There is drama, even the sound of a startled chicken, but still the nagging guilt that this has been contrived for the camera - and that wasn't part of the plot at all.
I share my concerns with Aminu who says he feels the same - but had been assured by the Hisbah that she is a genuine suspect, had been brought in before and is also likely to have been high on codeine.
I'm relieved, in a way, that what I had filmed was real, though saddened by her story and concerned for her fate.
But the nagging I know will return, the next time I lift my camera to witness and observe the “reality” before me.
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