I am still so green. As I start to balance my responsibilities as an Information Communication Technology (ICT) Trainer/Expert, as a documentary filmmaker and as an advocate for human rights, I am stumbling a bit. I have managed to make a comprehensive schedule (or as Freddy and Pascal call it, “program”) for our training. If we pack it into full 8-hour days, the training on various topics will take a full three weeks. However, right now, I await Freddy and Pascal’s return volley of their own schedule of things that must be done in order for them to stay at the forefront of human rights for the peasants, indigenous tribal groups and pygmies of eastern Africa. Once I receive that, this 3-week intensive training will, most likely, turn into a 6-week mini class.

Second, I am wrestling with video. Not with shooting it, per se, but with sharing it. I have shot quite a bit of footage: of me getting settled, of the city streets and people of Kampala and of my new flat; but to what end? Even though I have access to the Internet, all day, every day, the connection is, well, African. Thus, the only video that I have “successfully” uploaded to my youtube account is, to put it mildly, horrible. The pixelation is rampant because I compressed it to be small enough to upload in a timely manner. Oy. I had a friend in D.C. watch it for me on youtube and he said it was simply miserable to view. So, folks, as I wrestle with my training schedule, and work towards going out into the field with Freddy and Pascal in the coming weeks to shoot footage of peasants and tribes in southwestern Uganda, I will also try to find a solution to my video uploading issues.

Finally, I find that as a de facto human rights advocate (well, I guess I’m de jure, but sometimes I feel like an impostor compared with Freddy & Pascal), I am still learning the lingo. Migrant, peasant, indigenous, refugee. All are very different things. Of course, in the end, each one of these groups is peopled with, well, people. And it is Freddy and Pascal who remind me that it is these people that I am working for. The ICT, the video, the lingo; it is all for the eventual liberation of people who deserve to know and practice their natural-born human rights. Bear with me as I learn more every day. 😉