A FILM MADE IN KENYA AND ANGERED SUDAN

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An IDP with a child strapped on her back against the backdrop of Kikopey camp for the internally displaced. Photo/FILE

An IDP with a child strapped on her back against the backdrop of Kikopey camp for the internally displaced. Photo/FILE
By EDDY NGETAPosted Friday, January 22 2010 at 18:48

Even as dark rain clouds pepper the skies over the barren hills overlooking Kikopey in Kenya’s Rift Valley province, inhabitants of these vast plains are unaware of an even larger shadow looming over their heads, occasioned by a possible international standoff over their participation in a controversial film.

The government of Sudan has petitioned its Kenyan counterpart to intervene and stop Danish film makers from releasing a movie. The movie blames Kenya’s northern neighbour for widespread genocide in the Darfur region. The film, Havnen (Danish for revenge), is centred around the war in Darfur and the vicissitudes of life for a group of refugees living in a town on the banks of river Funen in Denmark, and is scheduled to be released in August, this year.

According to media reports, the director of Sudan’s Department of Conflict Resolution and Management, Omer Dahab, has allegedly submitted complaints to the Kenyan embassy in Khartoum, saying that the film has racist contents. He contends that it will negatively affect ethnic harmony in Darfur.

The same reports quote S. Somaya, the Sudanese government spokesperson at its embassy in Nairobi, as saying that it is misleading for the film producers to shoot the movie in Kenya using 2007 post-election violence victims, and then claiming that the location in question is Darfur.

Ms Somaya claims also that the IDPs were lured with low pay, and taken advantage of because they could hardly afford to reject the offer. But IDPs who participated in the film beg to differ. Take 15-year-old Esther Nyambura who has called the IDP camp in Kikopey home for nearly two years now.

She and her parents were displaced from their Narok home at the height of the 2008 post-election violence and fled to the Naivasha showground, from where they were moved to the Ebenezer camp in Kikopey.

Absentee parents

Her mother Ann Waithera, and father David Maina are virtually absentee parents. They have been gone for weeks now, and she doesn’t know where they are. They occasionally drop by to give her money for food and then disappear again for days on end without telling her where they are.

The diminutive but energetic teenager, who at her tender age acts as both father and mother to her five siblings — feeding, clothing and taking care of their every need almost single-handedly — bubbles with enthusiasm and absolute joie de vivre, or the joy of living. True, life has been hard for the Standard Seven pupil at Mukinduri school, but when the film crew dropped by in October, bringing with them an unprecedented financial windfall, Esther was right in the thick of things.

For her trouble, she got five full days of sumptuous dishes and more money than she had ever had in a single day — enough to buy herself a new pair of shoes, a school bag and a new pen, besides presents for her brothers and sisters. It all started in early October when a bus-load of strangers drove up to the camp, clutching an introductory letter from the Naivasha district commissioner’s office and asked to see the IDPs.

The film crew first arrived at the camp on October 1 after scouting the country for an ideal location for their movie. After explaining their mission, they drew up and signed a written agreement with the IDPs, saying that the IDPs understood the purpose of the film shoot and that they had agreed to take part in it for a daily wage.

The crew then pitched camp on the hillside, peppering its slope with a sea of dark green tents. They stayed there for almost a month building the movie set, only leaving on Sunday November 1 after the shooting. For power, the residents say they used a heavy-duty generator which lit up the whole camp.

They brought with them also hundreds of tall, dark strangers whom the IDPs claim were of Nubian origin. “They spoke fluent Kiswahili and Sheng, so I think they are Kenyans,” says Lucy Wambui, a 30-year-old mother of three who was also chosen for a role as supporting cast.

“They told us that they had been picked from Kibera (slums) in Nairobi,” she adds. “I think they picked our camp because it looks like a desert. It is dry and windy, and has a lot of dust,” says John Mwangi, the Ebenezer IDP camp committee, who acts as their spokesman. The film was shot between October 20 and 24.

Internal refugees