23min., VHS. c Global Voices Nairobi/University of Reading/Oxfam, 1998
Susi worked as tutor and mentor to MA students Christina de Leon (from Philippines)
and Kole Odutola (from Nigeria), as they in turn trained young local activists in participatory
mapping, filming and editing stories from their own communities in the informal settlements
– slums, some were happy to call them – of Nairobi.
The rough-sleeping ‘Solidarity Boys’ of Majengo, most of them glue-sniffers, show us
their daily routines and describe their hopes, fears and dreams. Tapes are screened to
some of their mothers, who express their own points of view. Then the boys watch an
early edit together and discuss their ‘public image’.
In the second half of the film, a set of older boys ‘rescued’ by a textiles workshop initiative
in Korogocho, criticise the greed and inequality that corrupt people’s lives.
This film was finished back at the University of Reading for Christina and Kole’s MAs
in ‘Television for Development’, but the Nairobi team of Carolyne Atieno Ongito,
Lawrence Apiyo, Zahra Ashkiya Guled, Immaculate Kagendo, Tom Mboya and Ezekiel Rema
went on to make at least two more films themselves.