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Jane Rogers on Mako-mere - The Open College of the Arts

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Jane Rogers on Mako-mere


A couple of months ago we reported that Creative Writing Course Leader Jane Rogers was off to Uganda to develop a pilot for a radio soap opera. Here Jane updates us on progress.
The Radio Mifumi project has now produced 10 episodes of a ready-to-air soap opera, Mako-mere (Making Friends). We had to put the whole thing together in a month, and its strengths and weaknesses reflect that urgency: it was an extraordinary and completely absorbing experience.
For the first two weeks the writing team were at work: six of us staying in a house near the Mifumi village, about 45 mins drive along bumpy dirt roads from the sleepy town of Tororo, in Eastern Uganda. Dennis Muhumuza (postgraduate student and freelance journalist) and Jennifer Okech (recent graduate in Literature and member of FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers’ Association) came from Kampala; the other three, Atuki Turner, Tara Paricia and Evelyn Schiller, are respectively Executive Director, Information and Policy officer, and Senior Manager PR, for the charity Mifumi (which takes its name from the village where it is based).
None of the Ugandan writers had ever written for radio – in fact radio drama is pretty much unknown in Uganda. Our brief was to devise a radio soap opera that would explore some of the negative effects of bride price customs – according to which, a man pays his wife’s family for his bride, and so their daughter becomes his possession. Research has shown that bride price is an underlying cause of domestic violence, and can create wretched situations for victims who try to flee abusive husbands. Women’s families are often unwilling to take them in again, as they are unable to repay the bride price. Bride price can be financially crippling for young men, as well as reducing women to the status of a commodity.
We also wanted to show listeners that help is available for victims of domestic violence, in a storyline revealing the work of a local domestic violence advisor. Following the model of The Archers, we were aiming for an educational strand blended in with entertaining and amusing drama: drama that would accurately reflect the lives of people living in rural Uganda.
By the end of the first week we had a clutch of favourite characters. I particularly like Jennifer’s brainchild, Posh – a sulky rebellious teenager who’s been dragged unwillingly to the village by her mother. Posh yearns for the bright lights of Kampala and is appalled by the lack of running water and electricity in the village, and disgusted by the pit latrines. Then she meets Junior, cool son of the village chief Teko, and Junior wins her heart by helping her get a solar-powered mobile phone . . . Teko himself (his name means ‘Trouble’ in Japadhola, the local language) is a charming, outrageous egotist, whose bull rampages through the village trampling other people’s crops. The bull meets his untimely end chopped into small pieces and handed out to the villagers as part of Teko’s election campaign – to induce the villagers to give him their votes.
As part of our research in week one we heard first hand stories (via a translator) from women who’ve survived domestic violence. They revealed very little emotion, describing their experiences with restraint and dignity; but it is hard not to feel somehow ashamed or embarrassed about taking notes in such a situation. The idea of putting these personal stories on display made me uncomfortable, and in practise, the drama has fictionalised and softened this very raw material. There are little gems that one couldn’t invent, though, that make the research invaluable. A woman whose husband took all her produce and gave her none of the income from it, told us he left her with no money ‘even for matches or soap.’ For subsistence farmers who grow or make almost everything they consume, lack of any money at all makes it impossible to cook (matches light the charcoal cooking fire) or to keep clean. It is the final humiliation.
Besides telling us their stories, the women sang, danced and drummed for us with extravagant and hilarious energy. We’ve recorded their singing to top and tail each episode. Also by way of research we visited Mifumi primary school, where the kids sang, danced and put on a display of Karate. The karate girls produced such good sound effects that we decided Posh must join the school karate class, and we went back and wrote a karate scene for her. It was duly recorded in the school hall, where the girls’ bare feet made satisfying slithering sounds across the polished concrete.
The second week was one of intense work, story-lining 10 episodes, interweaving the different characters’ strands on pages of a flip chart which were stuck up all over the walls of the dining room where we wrote; agreeing scene by scene breakdowns, then farming out the episodes so that each writer wrote 2. Once written they were read aloud, discussed (and those who had nicked stories from later episodes were put right), rewritten, and given a final edit. On Friday afternoon we printed off the scripts, and on Saturday morning we started auditioning.

The actors are all amateurs, and none had radio drama experience, so this stage was difficult. In the end the standard of acting is very variable; but the actors’ commitment to the drama was impressive. Our daily routine was for the van to collect the 15 or so actors from Tororo at 8am, and bring them out to the village, where we recorded everything on location – including the scene where Teko sacrifices a cockerel to appease his mother’s ghost. The cock we used was weirdly silent, and only squawked after the actor – who was holding it under one arm with his script in the other – flicked its comb repeatedly. We were told we should have killed it, because only then does it make the right kind of shriek. Actors in two’s and three’s settled all around the house and garden, feverishly rehearsing their lines together; the cooks and farm workers gathered to be cheering election crowds/ hymn-singing congregations/ angry chasers-after an escaped bull; and to look on, bemused, as cushions were thumped with logs and sugar cane hacked to pieces with machetes, in an attempt to simulate the public chopping up of the bull. Highlights of the week included recording our theme song with an 82 year lead lead singer and chorus of around 30 women; recording a deafening swamp-full of frogs at dusk; recording an election meeting in a tin-roofed hall during a thunderstorm, and a domestic row in a thatched mud hut.
Clive Brill (producer) worked with two trainee technicians (Tara and Shalom) to teach them recording and editing skills, and the final few days were devoted to editing.
The ten episodes are now ready to air and will go out on a local Eastern Uganda radio station in Jan- Feb. The writers already have detailed plans for the next five episodes, and stories which can go on unfolding as endlessly as the village lives upon which they are modeled.
Expenses for the initial month, plus the cost of some equipment, was generously met by a British Academy Small Grant.
For Dennis’ account of the writers’ workshop, published in the Daily Monitor, see here
For more on Bride Price, and the change in the law relating to it, which Mifumi has campaigned for in the Tororo district, see here
Jane Rogers


Posted by author: Genevieve Sioka

4 thoughts on “Jane Rogers on Mako-mere

  • As a photographer I do empathize with Jane when she says that putting other people’s distressing personal stories on display can make you feel uncomfortable. This is an ethical minefield that those of us doing documentary sometimes have to cross.
    Is it ethical? is it morally right? My own take on this is that it is all down to intention. Why am I doing it? do I believe that my skills – as a photographer, as a writer – can help improve the situation of this person, of this community, however tangentially? or am I doing it for my own career-development purposes? Has ego anything to do with it?
    I’ll paraphrase Don McCullin and say that I would like the viewer to go away with a ‘conscience obligation’. I would then consider it a job done. Note that I’m not talking about a guilty conscience here, that’s very easy to do. I’m talking about a conscience obligation, a commitment to further action – donation to a charity? volunteering?
    We need to believe that our storytelling abilities can trigger positive outcomes. That’s the basic tenet for social change for us, photographers and writers.

  • I was interviewed and photographed (in silhouette) a few months after leaving my own domestic violent situation with my four young children. The experience was therapeutic, especially knowing that it would be calling out to other women in domestic violence situations (albeit in the Western world). The published article in a local newspaper encouraged more women to seek help. By being interviewed publicly, I felt I had helped other women who had been previously too afraid to seek help.

  • Thanks for this, Hellena. This is what we are hoping for, in creating Mako-mere: that we will encourage abused women to seek help, and to know that they are not alone. We also wanted to make them aware that they have legal rights. And I agree with Jose that it does come down to intentions, on the writer’s or photographer’s part: there’s voyeuristic writing that wallows in misery for its own sake, and writing which reveals distress but does it in order to promote change. And then again there’s the kind of writing that explores pain and distress and brings the reader through it to a point of catharsis – without having any kind of message or agenda. (like KING LEAR)
    I guess what interested me was that it is very easy to make up sad, bad, horrific things – but the process of actually researching them, and coming face to face with those who have experienced them, is much more uncomfortable and disturbing, and really does force one, as a writer, to examine what one is doing and why.

    • Congratulations, Jane, on undertaking such an important project with artistic sensitivity.
      Your report reveals a completely different way of life which, in itself, has opened my eyes. It also demonstrates that human struggles and strength of character cross cultural boundaries. I very much look forward to reading about the community response to the radio series after it has gone to air. Good Luck!

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