Three years ago, I was responsible for finding seven children in seven different countries whose stories highlighted something particular about education in their parts of the world — children whose families would let us film them, and who were charming and articulate. All of this was to be done long-distance — without ever leaving WNET’s New York offices. My associate producer and I would start with UNICEF or another NGO to establish contact with a school. From there, we’d speak to principals and teachers who would fill us in on some of the first-year students. Then we’d narrow it down to two or three candidates. Even though we might have a strong hunch about one particular child, it would rest with the field producer/camera person to make the final decision.

The field producers, most of whom I’d never met, were phenomenal. I sent them a myriad of interview questions, shot lists, and suggestions for scenes, and we spoke on the phone during filming. But ultimately I had to have absolute faith in their judgment, which I did. And in every case, it paid off beautifully.

This time around, the groundwork had been laid. We were following up with the same seven children. For six of the seven segments, I worked with the same field producers as last time. What was astonishing to me while producing “Back to School” was how much had transpired in the lives of our students in such a short time. Our two students in Africa had each lost a parent since we’d filmed them last, and Neeraj in India was hanging onto her already tenuous schooling by a thread. The gap between the children in the industrialized countries and those in the developing world seemed to be widening at an alarming pace. And yet in terms of potential — their curiosity, questions, dreams — they were all at the same starting gate.

Over the next five months we spun the material from three years ago into the new film. One of the highlights this time was having our students meet each other on camera. We were able to show them the segments we had filmed three years earlier and have them ask each other questions. In Benin and India, whole villages came out to see the film — and for some it was the first time they had seen a portrait of their community or what life is like in other parts of the world.

Frederick Rendina, Field Producer in Kenya, 2006

When I first met Joab, he was a quite shy boy of 10 — and looked much younger. His living conditions were very harsh, he had little food, and his father was struggling with alcohol abuse. Joab spoke very little English then, so our communication was through a translator or our Kenyan sound recordist. Then, the bright light in his life was his mother, Leah, who was full of energy and dreams for her son.

We were all devastated to learn of Leah’s death just a few months after filming the first segment of “Time for School,” and we were gravely concerned about what had become of Joab. Visiting Joab for the second installment, “Back to School,” was therefore a mixture of happiness and sorrow. I was thrilled that Joab had grown to a confident, and sometimes tough and combative, young man. I was glad that I could converse freely with him now in English and conduct interviews in English. And I was pleased we could joke around more easily because of that, and that we had established a degree of trust that allowed us to talk about the very painful things in his life. Throughout the filming, Joab bravely spoke to me about his mother and the stigma attached to her death. At times, some memories were so difficult that the camera had to be turned off.

Nonetheless, Joab is back in school and doing well, despite the continuing hardship of life in Kibera

Hervé Cohen, Field Producer in Benin and India, 2006

Benin - The first time I laid eyes on Nanavi three years ago, I liked her right away. She was bright eyed with a big warm smile, and I was also fascinated by her story

Nanavi lives in Koutagba, a Voodoo village a few hours away from Benin’s capital. She was the first of her generation to attend school, hence defying her destiny and village tradition of being relegated to a Voodoo convent, like most girls of her village.

There, education is a privilege traditionally bestowed only on boys. I was excited to film the first steps she took on her way to school, and I also remember the difficulties she had writing the number three. In spite of her timidity, we hit it off quite well and built a trusting relationship.

Upon my return three years later, I was pretty touched to see that she had not forgotten me. But while she still had that wonderful smile, I could see in her gaze that something was broken. The lives of Nanavi and her family had changed drastically within the last three years. Nanavi’s father had passed away a year prior, and the family was left in sheer poverty. The corn mill, which was their source of income, had broken down and with the father gone, they had no means to repair it. Nanavi, her mother and siblings were forced to leave the family farm and settle in a small hut in the village center. And so this shoot, compared to the one three years ago, was a bit more of a challenge. Nanavi was very emotional especially when it came to invoking the memories of her father. I later realized that she was the one closest to him. Before Nanavi’s father passed away, he made the mother promise that she would keep Nanavi in school no matter the circumstances — a promise the mother kept in spite of all her hardship, and one that Nanavi was more than happy to fulfill. Difficulties writing the number three were now a thing of the past. She loves school and is one the most motivated students in her class.

During our visit, the corn mill was repaired, and I was able to see it function before leaving the village. The last day, before heading back to the capital, the entire team received blessings from the Voodoo priest. I left Koutagba happy, knowing that Nanavi and I had renewed and strengthened our ties. I told her that I would like to return in three years to film her again. She said she would be waiting.

India – The India segment of our show this year was the most challenging — and quite an adventure! Neeraj, who had been filmed three years prior by Oren Rudavsky, had to leave night school to go on the road herding the family’s cattle. Our mission was to track her down. Neeraj’s parents, though very cooperative, were not of much help in our search; they had no way of keeping track of their daughter on a grazing trip that could take her and other herding families hundreds of miles away from home.

But before embarking on my search for Neeraj, I attended a ceremony hosted by Neeraj’s mother and the other mothers of the village — a ceremony held at the crack of dawn on the morning after my arrival in Rajasthan. Through the ceremony, the mothers were asking the Goddess Sheetla to protect their children against smallpox. Although the disease has been eradicated, this tradition is still perpetuated.

The next day, while I was interviewing the parents, they received a phone call from an uncle, who informed them of Neeraj’s whereabouts a few hours’ drive from her home village. So off we went. We knew it was not going to be easy to find Neeraj in the vast region of Rajasthan, and alas, by the time we got to the place Neeraj was expected to be, she was already gone. No one could tell us in which direction she had headed.

After several other attempts, we settled for filming “around” Neeraj’s life: her parents, sister, friends, and even her school. Luckily for us, three months after our first visit, we learned that Neeraj was once again back home and back in her night school. Needless to say, it was impossible to let this opportunity pass us by. I was more than eager to pursue the second part of the adventure and finally meet Neeraj. No matter how compelling those images of her absence may have been, there was no one better to evoke Neeraj’s experience than Neeraj herself.

When I did finally meet Neeraj, I was quite impressed by her; she had grown and matured quite a bit since the young woman I saw portrayed in WIDE ANGLE’s last show. She was much more at ease, confident, and quite vociferous about her determination for a different life than her parents — one that only a good education could help provide. Her desire was to go to day school like most of the boys in order to get, in her own words, “a real job” such as a civil servant in the military or the police force. Though in the meantime she has to settle for night school, like most girls and the less fortunate of her village, and though she must carry on with her daily load of house chores, Neeraj is driven by her dreams of a better life. We all hope she will one day bring her dreams to fruition.

Alexandre Lima, Field Producer in Brazil, 2006

When I started scouting for “Back To School,” I called up Leslie, the mother of our main character, Jefferson and arranged to go over to her place to have some coffee and talk about the shoot. Between this first afternoon in her house and the day we started shooting, I spent about two months visiting the community where Leslie and her four kids live.

Try to imagine a favela stuck up on a hill, with a population of almost 300,000 people. Here, families of five to eight members usually live in tiny two-bedroom concrete shacks, and yet they’re still able to smile everyday

It’s a place where you can hear all kinds of music, lots of noise, dogs barking, and always hundreds of people walking up and down the narrow streets.

This is Rocinha, one of the biggest favelas in South America. It is ruled and controlled by drug lords and their gang members — a place where the state powers don’t do much for the people unless they are using their police violence against them. It does not matter if a person is a worker or a criminal; the police will shoot first and only after they kill will they find out if the person hit was a worker or a criminal. Located in the most expensive neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, Rocinha is the most lucrative drug dealing market in town, coveted by drug gang rivals, the police, and the rich neighbors who consume its drugs. A war can start at anytime, without warning. Rocinha has its own rhythm — it plays by its own rules. Once you understand it, you must respect it, and then you will be safe.

Nowadays, a camera has became a threatening weapon in places like this, so in order to film or photograph in a favela in Rio you need to make it clear why you are there and what it is you are shooting. So before I started filming, I made sure I talked to the main characters in order to let them know what I was doing there. First I spoke to the school’s principal, then I went to the community association president, and finally I spoke to the drug dealers. I went to talk to a man surrounded by a few young boys carrying AK-47s, and after the man heard what I had to say, he smiled at me and said these words: “Fé em Deus e nas crianças,” which translates to “Faith in God and in the children.” Then he called me by my name, saying, “Alex, if your work concerns children and education, the favela is yours — you have it. The children are the future and the most precious thing we have; if you are dealing with the children ain’t nobody gonna mess with you around here! Go ahead, do your work, and if you need anything let me know.”

I put my people together, my camera, and my gear, and I started shooting.

By this time, I knew almost every little corner of the favela where we were going to work. The principal and the teachers of the school were willing to help as much as they could, and the community association president had one of his men walk along with us as our guardian angel. The great part was also that Jefferson was having the time of his life participating in “Back to School.”

In a favela there is not only violence and misery, but also much hope and joy among its people. Even knowing that most Brazilian kids won’t encounter the right conditions to go on and finish their education, I still believe that one day the right to be educated will be preserved for all human beings.

Yes, there will be a day when a poor Brazilian kid from a favela won’t have to choose between becoming a criminal or being a soccer star in order to get out of the ghetto.

Bruno Sorrentino, Field Producer in Japan and Romania, 2006

Japan - When I first filmed with Ken two years ago, he was five and just starting school. He was a little nervous about his first day. By then he was already conversant with Hiragana and Katakana, the two phoneticised scripts used in the Japanese language. He could already count and do basic sums, could pen the odd Kanji Chinese character and, to top it all, was already familiar with the Latin alphabet. He crammed in after school classes, and on it went. But this wasn’t to be the story familiar in the West: overworked automatons in Japan’s school system.

Two years on, Ken is one of his school’s best baseball players. He has a terrific sense of humor, is one of the most popular kids in his class, and he enjoys fooling around in the same way kids anywhere else do

Much of the teaching is designed to encourage free and creative thinking to allow the individual inside to develop as much as at any school in the West.

I’m looking forward to revisiting Ken in another couple of years when things may again be different: he’ll soon have to cram extra hard for higher grade exams. But his parents say they want him to just do what he loves doing best. If that means sport, and not bookish subjects, that’s fine by them. We’ll see!

On my last day, I was treated to the entertaining sight of an end-of-term tradition in Japan’s schools: The entire school (some three hundred kids in all) were cleaning their classrooms and scrubbing down the rest of their school — right down to the stairway steps. For an outsider, this was amusing enough, but these kids were cleaning their school by skateboarding and tobogganing across classrooms and corridors on an array of cleaning cloths, dust pans and brooms, sometimes getting up to breakneck speed. They were cleaning in the way only kids know how.

Romania – On our return to Bucharest, we were glad to see Raluca retains her hilarious sense of humor. She speaks a few words of English and French, but because of her ongoing passion for Middle Eastern TV soaps, Raluca sings numerous songs in word-perfect Arabic.

On the face of it, not much has changed in her life. She still spends much of her time outside of school hours in the care of her grandmother because her parents have to work long hours. But what happens in her country will have a profound effect on her future.

Raluca’s hard-working parents have to hold down a number of jobs between them in order to maintain their (by European standards) modest standard of living. When we returned to Romania for our latest update, I looked out for signs, however small, of economic improvement. Just outside of Raluca’s parents’ apartment block, a swanky new shopping mall has just been completed on the site of what used to be an old slum. Other malls and office blocks have sprung up in other parts of town.

But one thing in particular caught my eye at one of the three office jobs that Raluca’s mother holds down. Two years ago, I saw a local advertising publication there; it was just a little bigger than a magazine. Today, it’s the size of a regular telephone directory, with literally hundreds more businesses inside advertising goods and services — a sure sign of an economy that’s picking up.

When we next return, Romania will be a fully fledged member of the European Union. How will the inevitable changes around the corner affect Raluca and her family

Polly Hyman, Field Producer in Afghanistan, 2006

I first met Shugufa in early 2004 while filming for “Time For School.” Shugufa is one of 11 children and lives with her huge family in the village of Ashtagram, a few hours’ drive from the capital city of Kabul.

It was a pleasure to return this year to visit this charismatic young girl, now 13-years-old, and see how her life has progressed over the last two years.

I instantly recognized Shugufa’s welcoming smile in spite of the modest veil that now covers her head. She is still full of energy and enthusiasm for her studies, although there was a hint of restlessness that I didn’t see in her before. Perhaps this is typical of all girls of this age, but I suspect that she is becoming anxious about her life and the future of her beloved Afghanistan.

When Hamid Karzai was elected President in 2004, people dreamed that their lives would improve. But a recent increase in insurgent activity and countrywide poverty has created a frustration amongst the Afghan people that did not exist a few years ago. Shugufa and millions like her have seen little change for the better. She continues to go to school and studies hard, but all of this seems fruitless when there are few qualified teachers at her school. She dreams of a happy, educated future where she can earn enough to support her family. I hope that her dreams are possible.

Early in 2009, on a preliminary visit to the palace of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the rather engaging President of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, I felt I knew exactly how it would go.  Obiang and his advisors would repeat on camera the astonishing claims they were making off camera about the involvement of foreign powers in the oil coup of 2004.  We would track the perpetrators from Madrid to Washington.  On the no-smoke-without-fire-principle, there might be truth to Obiang’s claims.  If there was, we’d find it.  The President agreed we could come back with a crew in several weeks to start the process.  On a first meeting he seemed an intelligent, charismatic man with a story worth following up.  In my mind, he would be the star of the show.

If it didn’t turn out that way, it sure wasn’t our fault.

Lots of stories begin with arriving in places that are like nowhere else. Malabo Airport in Equatorial Guinea really is like nowhere else. Standing in line at immigration, I and other arriving passengers eye a group of what appear to be French gendarmes, white men in quasi-Pink Panther uniforms, who are restraining large dogs. Barking penetrates the silent terminal. Beyond the gendarmes are ruined airplanes, not unusual in Africa except for an Antonov that was to be used in the coup attempt and a couple of newish-looking executive jets, stained and corroded in the tropical air. Are they like the Saudi Bentleys of legend, discarded because they ran out of gas? In the arrivals hall, the luggage carts have been chained together and the key lost. Luckily, local lads – possibly related to airport officials – are taking advantage of this unhappy situation. Passengers hand over dollars, pounds and yen. There is no place to change money at the airport and Equatorial Guinea is a cash-only economy. No credit cards, no ATMs.

The President has kindly provided an official Mercedes for the trip into town. Forget the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower; the landmarks here are different. One is the airport road itself, now a magnificent highway. Beside the road, the previous President used to crucify his enemies. Arriving diplomats would pass bodies dangling from stakes.

But that was the past. Today’s Equatorial Guinea does not, on Day One, strike me as a particularly grim or fearful place. I am more afraid of the Malabo Sofitel. My small room, with its non-functioning light bulbs and empty shampoo bottle, costs $500 a night. Cash. This is plainly Big Oil territory, the preserve of men who fly in from Houston on private jets. Men with briefcases full of $100 bills. Why are credit cards not used in Equatorial Guinea? Because the President forbids them, a check-in person tells me shyly. Why? There are security issues. What? She cannot say.

Next to the Sofitel is Malabo Cathedral, whose hauntingly beautiful music – Africa meets Spanish Catholicism – stops you in your tracks. Next to the cathedral is one of Obiang’s palaces, painted a startling shade of tropical terracotta. The Sofitel seems an extension of the palace. Air France crews mingle with Armenian entrepreneurs and earnest men from the government, talking sotto-voce in the bar. The country is all about deals. There are new roads and harbors. Huge construction contracts are on offer. Corrupt it may be, but it seems nothing like the murderous backwater described by journalists before me. But then I am in the Sofitel, not the slums.

The following night, with the President’s charming lawyer Henry, an Englishman who practices in Paris, I walk down Malabo’s main drag to a pizza restaurant favored by foreigners. We pass a small tank with its gun pointing out to sea, presumably to deter further coup attempts. The street is empty. A few children come out of the darkness to politely ask for money.  In Lagos or Nairobi we’d be dead by now. The only other third world city I’ve walked at night in near-total safety is Havana.

Obiang isn’t in Malabo, we discover. He’s at his other palace at Bata on the mainland. We fly to meet him. He rarely talks to the Western press so it has taken all Henry’s charm and persistence to get us an appointment. Bata is a city in waiting. Our hotel – newly built by the omnipresent Chinese – is full of men who need just half an hour with the President. In the restaurant, the same faces appear at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some, I’m told, have been here for weeks. They stare at Russian paperbacks or leaf through draft contracts. From time to time the tension explodes. An angry beer-bellied Ukrainian storms into the elevator followed by a young African girl in emerald leggings. Everyone wants to pitch, persuade or ask forgiveness. Obiang makes all the decisions, even trivial ones. As you learn fast in Equatorial Guinea, it’s pointless talking to anyone else.

A palace car arrives to pick us up. There is a brief crisis. Henry has lost his shirts, last seen in Malabo. He finds one that is slightly presentable.

The palace lies at the end of a long driveway, behind high walls patrolled by soldiers in green fatigues. Its architecture reminds me faintly of EPCOT in Disney World. Tomorrowland in Africa. Inside, a Moroccan guard ushers us towards an airport metal detector. Obiang has long used Moroccan guards. Presumably he can’t entirely rely on his army, which reflects divisions within the ruling clan. In the waiting room are friendly Ghanaians, a glum Ukrainian and a man with a black armband. We glance at each other, trying to figure out who counts – who will be whisked in to see the President and who will wait. The man with the armband sits in silence while everyone else is called. He is still there when we leave.

On our way to the President’s office I am reproved by a guard for not buttoning up the top two buttons of my new Harrods suit. We enter a dark, tasteful room.  The Head of State appears receptive, charming even. Claims by an exiled opponent that the urbane man sitting before us is a cannibal who “devoured” his own police commissioner seem absurd.

I outline our plans. Henry translates. I had been afraid Obiang would be bored with the coup but far from it. He chats animatedly about what happened – about the country’s troubled relationship with its former colonial master, about how elements In Spain backed the plotters and why George Bush reluctantly approved the coup.

How does Obiang know? Because, his counselor says, as a young man he trained with Spanish officers at a military academy in Spain. They subsequently rose to high positions in the Spanish military and diplomatic service and from time to time pass information to their old classmate.

Henry and I leave with a firm commitment from Obiang to discuss the coup and what lay behind it on camera, to grant us visas to return within several weeks, and to allow us to interview Simon Mann, the British mercenary currently serving a 34-year prison sentence for leading the coup attempt. I am delighted and slightly surprised. Clearly intelligent, Obiang has seemed by no means the monstrous figure his enemies claim. On the basis of today’s meeting I expect our shoot to begin in Equatorial Guinea, with Obiang re-stating on camera his claims of Western complicity. Then in Madrid, Washington and South Africa we will follow them up.

Back at the hotel, Henry finds his shirts have reappeared. The mainland has a tradition of magic so their mysterious teleportation from Malabo doesn’t faze us. The meeting has gone so well we don’t even mind when the plane that was supposed to take us back to Malabo gets stranded in Cameroon. At the airport one of the President’s men roars up, hauls us aboard a pick-up and drives us at high speed through the moonless African night to the runway. There, a military transport plane is waiting, ringed by SUVs. Passengers are stumbling up and down its ramp, lit by car headlights. A wild-looking Russian with a shock of blonde hair is taking names. “I hope he’s not our pilot” Henry says. He is. It appears that African women are being offloaded so we can travel. There are metal benches either side of the plane. Luggage is piled up in the middle, not tied down. United Airlines it isn’t. A stowaway is found and removed. Apart from us the only other passengers are jolly Ukrainian helicopter pilots. As we take off one of them runs around the cabin, arms outstretched, making vroom-vroom noises.

We fly low over the Gulf of Guinea. Everyone seems to be on the phone. Henry takes calls from his foreign clients. We lurch into Malabo where the Ukrainians disappear into the night. Dragging our cases, we stumble blindly across what seems to be the active runway. We have no idea how to get to the terminal but we don’t mind. It’s fun.

I don’t know it yet, but this is the high spot of the making of Once Upon a Coup.

Back in Malabo, after Henry’s return to Paris, I’m taken to see new housing for slum dwellers. There are neat rows of Chinese-built homes. Are the tenants really from the slums? Strangely, some have an SUV parked outside. I move out of the Sofitel, dismiss the Mercedes and take local taxis, in the hope of getting a clearer sense of the place. I assume I’m being followed. The slums are nowhere near as bad as those of Nairobi or other third world megacities. But perhaps that is not the point.

In London we book a film crew, expecting to return almost immediately. The country’s ambassador is courtesy itself but can’t issue visas without a request from Malabo. No such request is received. Henry does his best to rescue the situation. He calls the official appointed by Obiang to look after us who says there’s no problem.

Evidently there is a problem. With the days turning into weeks, we have to do something. I and senior associate producer Michael Chrisman decide to go to South Africa to pursue the mercenaries, which we’d planned to do much later. With no preparation, the trip begins disastrously. South Africa’s soldiers of fortune are affable but don’t want new wives or business partners to know of their part in an abortive coup. We have titillating meetings with intelligence people who tell us great stories but won’t be filmed. One day Jacob Zuma, the newly-elected President of South Africa, gives a press conference at our hotel. The international press is here in force, bristling with dynamism and purpose. We watch them from the lobby. We have nothing to do and nowhere to go. Not a soul will talk to us. The crew and equipment are costing a fortune. I’ve never had such a miserable filming experience. We’re doing this entirely the wrong way round.

We decide that Michael should continue chasing coup plotters while I drive eight hours to Pomfret on the edge of the Kalahari desert. Pomfret is an abandoned military base where black soldiers who once served the apartheid government were put out to grass. Today, it’s a recruiting ground for mercenaries.

To save money, I will do the filming myself. On the way north, the new South Africa does not seem that new. We eat at a fast-food joint where all-white servers sing a faux-African version of Happy Birthday. The only black in sight is an elderly man in the street who wants our biscuits.

A few hundred miles later, we confess to BBC Health and Safety that Pomfret is built on an old asbestos mine. Initially the BBC wants us to turn back. That night I stand in the desert talking to a man in London who speculates about my lifespan should I ingest a speck of asbestos dust. Shooting without a crew seems fun until, in a church, I’m attacked by an elder who snatches my camera and throws it against the rocks outside. Hearing rumors that there is plan to seize our vehicle and get rid of us, we beat a hasty retreat.

Back in London things are not much better. The visas have still not materialized. I text and e mail Henry so often I worry he’ll get sick of me. If he is, he doesn’t show it. Obiang has no more loyal or faithful advocate. He transmits our pleas to Malabo. WNET’s deadline is getting nearer. We have no idea why the visas are taking so long. Does someone, somewhere want a bribe? Are we being blind or just stupid? Regardless, we have to keep shooting. We have to make sure we can fill fifty minutes of airtime even if Equatorial Guinea doesn’t allow us back.

Our researchers in Spain can do nothing without hard information to follow up. Nor can we explore the financial sinews of the coup without documents connecting Simon Mann with his backers. We opt to go to the States to film interviews. There is nothing else we can do.

Achieving balance is not easy. In this context, what does balance mean? I found Obiang interesting and approachable but I’m a novice. Few respected foreign experts have a good word to say for him. The only positive voice we can find remains that of Johann Smith, filmed in South Africa. Even getting him to talk had been a struggle. Of recent international visitors, Manfred Nowak of the United Nations is particularly harsh, claiming his life was threatened during a UN torture investigation late last year.

By now our visa problems are changing the shape of the project. The film was never meant to be a foreign view of Equatorial Guinea, positive or negative; it was meant to be the story of a coup and the countries that may have promoted it.

Suddenly, just as we finish shooting and are about to start editing, the visas arrive. We return to Malabo in some confusion. At the airport not much has changed. The gendarmes are still here. The dogs are still here. The luggage carts are still locked. The key still hasn’t been found.

The President is celebrating his birthday. The only reliable way to know what he’s going to do next is to follow his noisy motorcade. Visually at least, fabulous opportunities present themselves. The President in his new city, Malabo II, opening Chinese-made buildings. The President at mass. The President receiving birthday gifts like an ornate walking stick and a pair of prancing silver leopards. No other TV crew has had a chance like this.

In his baseball cap, Obiang seems every inch the 21st century politician, at ease with himself and the crowd, speaking fluently without notes, looking younger than the 67 years he admits to.  By contrast we are ageing fast. We have 26 cases of camera equipment and the heat is unbearable.

Taking refuge in an air-conditioned building where a reception is being held in the President’s honor, we learn the Evian has run out. The only liquid left is whisky. After several glasses I feel even better disposed to Obiang. I talk to a man who describes himself as his banker. Look, he says, it’s not Sweden or the Netherlands here. Perhaps it should be. But you have to compare the President with the other old men of Africa. What did President Bongo do for Gabon, just down the coast of West Africa? Very little, in several decades. Sure, you can say not enough oil revenue has been spent on development, but now at last things are changing.

Henry’s efforts to get a date for the interview finally pay off. It will be on Obiang’s actual birthday, sandwiched between a marathon run and his afternoon engagements. It swiftly becomes apparent that it will be not so much an interview as a press opportunity.  Our plans for a long session with the President have been mangled by officialdom. Soon an official tells us our time is up. We have barely begun our questions about the coup.

We are however given all the time we need with Simon Mann. Finally the government is being genuinely helpful. We seem to be able to go more or less where we want. Maybe they just didn’t understand we had a budget and a deadline. But we’re out of time and money, and the main prize – a long Presidential interview – has eluded us.

The mystery is why Equatorial Guinean officials, given a unique opportunity to answer their critics and show how things are changing, with exposure either side of the Atlantic and the clear commitment of the President, did not cooperate earlier. We went there with no pre-conceived agenda. Our initial focus was not human rights but the possible complicity of Western government in the coup attempt. We were ready to follow up what Obiang had to say about Spain and the U.S. with all the resources available to us. It was inept of officials to keep us waiting so long, then to schedule an interview with the President on a day when he had no time. In the end we put together a balanced film that covers most of the big issues and provides a unique glimpse of a land that few journalists see. In the longer, international version of the film there will be more detail and an interview with a justice official about the Simon Mann case. But Equatorial Guinea would have done much better to put its President center stage. Had we been allowed to do what Obiang himself offered at the beginning, this would have been a different film – with more of the President, less of his foreign critics.

Producer Eli Cane writes from the field.

I’m sitting on the roof of my hotel at sunset in Humera, sweating. The temperature is dropping, but it’s still up around 115 degrees. It peaked earlier today at around 125, when we were in the middle of a parched sesame field getting shots of gojo bets (traditional family huts) and watching the heat shimmer its way up from the cracked black earth.

Wicker cots on the roof in Humera

By nightfall, the temperature should dip to a refreshing 90 degrees — with a breeze, thankfully — and we’ll line up our wicker cots side-by-side on the roof to sleep. We’ll share this makeshift open-air bedroom with Ben Aschenaki, head of business development for the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange.

Humera is in the northwest corner of Ethiopia, on the border with Sudan and Eritrea. The borders are closed here, but you can still feel a certain tension in the air. Ethiopia and Eritrea have fought two wars in the past century, and Ethiopia and Sudan had their own border dispute in 2003. The most popular accessory around here is a Kalashnikov. We’ve come to catch up with Ben and his team, some of whom have been here for a few weeks meeting with farmers, agricultural societies, cooperative unions, and commercial farmers, and trying to convince them to deposit their sesame into the recently opened ECX warehouse.

Ben Aschenaki meeting with traders in Humera, Ethiopia’s sesame capital

Sesame is Ethiopia’s rising export star — production has grown by more than 200 percent in export value in the last few years, and Ethiopia now sends vast quantities to India, China and the Middle East. In part because coffee exports are down, some are saying that sesame will surpass coffee as Ethiopia’s biggest export commodity in 2009. Despite its inhospitable climate, Humera produces some of the finest sesame in the world.

We arrived yesterday, just in time to see a small farmer chugging his way into the ECX warehouse on an old rusty tractor to make the first deposit. Ben and his team were elated; until now, they’d met with fierce resistance and mistrust, as the sesame community was understandably skeptical of a major new player moving into their market. The first deposit is monitored by local observers who closely watch the ECX’s modern grading and receipt systems. Ben tells us that this is a major breakthrough for the ECX and sesame farmers. If the team back in Addis can arrange to launch sesame trading by the end of the week, these farmers will have money in their bank accounts by next week. This is just a small start, but a symbol of bigger things to come.

Producer Eli Cane writes from the field.

Eleni Gabre-Madhin and her staff at the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) are struggling to free themselves from the complex and thorny world that is the international coffee industry, and to refocus their attention on domestic markets and food security for Ethiopia. As they do so, their entry into the sesame market has taken on a heightened importance. In December 2008, a law was passed requiring most coffee to be traded through the ECX, but no such legislation exists for any other commodity. With sesame, Eleni and her team will have to convince farmers and traders to accept the new modern market system, voluntarily. A successful entry into the sesame market will mean a major victory in the war of public perception, which Eleni sees as vitally important.

Eleni Gabre-Mahdin at a lunchtime meeting with sesame traders in Gondar, Ethiopia

Yesterday, we filmed Eleni in Gondar, the ancient capital of Ethiopia and a sesame market hub. She toured the wholesale market, met with a small group of traders, and inspected warehouses for the ECX to rent. Eleni appears to be in her element in these situations; the vast majority of her graduate research was conducted in street markets all over Africa, and she has an uncanny ability to navigate an unknown market as if she’d spent years there. She seems totally at home chatting with these small and medium-scale traders, discussing problems of default, quality control and risk management. And although we’ve seen her doing it a lot throughout this production, she still seems to learn something new each time.

At one stall in Gondar’s wholesale market, a crowd grew around us. Listening through my headphones I heard a growing chorus of coughing and sneezing. I glanced over at Hugo and saw that his eye — the one not trained on the camera’s viewfinder — was red and watering. Giant sacks of hot red peppers surrounded us, baking in the midday sun. The heat must have been activating the oils in the peppers, and we were all enveloped in an unhealthy quantity of volatile airborne hot pepper oil.

Hot red peppers for sale at the market in Gondar

Eleni was encouraged by her trip to Gondar, but her optimism was measured. She thinks that some of the traders she met with are 70 percent convinced about the ECX, but it’s clear that she’s anxious they’re not going to get this going before the season is over.

Just before Eleni caught an early flight back to Addis, she spoke to the ECX’s head of business development, Ben Aschenaki, on the phone, imploring him to make progress on sesame: “Just one bag! Just get me one bag in the warehouse and we’ll sell it!”

Next, we’ll be traveling with Ben to Humera, the epicenter of sesame in Ethiopia. As we were checking out of our hotel in Gondar, the concierge inquired about my onward journey. When I told him we were headed to Humera, he issued a stern warning: “Humera is NOT a tourist destination!”

As we set off on the 185 mile off-road excursion to Humera, I began to think about what an important piece of the puzzle we’re witnessing here. If Eleni and her team in Addis can put the other pieces together and launch sesame trading this week, we will have captured the ECX taking a monumental leap towards accomplishing its original mission. That is, if our equipment survives this heat. This afternoon we had technical failure within the first 3 minutes of filming — a big TOO HOT warning flashing on our hard-disk recorder. What I’m really looking forward to is doing a full systems check while sitting poolside at the Sheraton Hotel in Addis tomorrow afternoon. But for now, one last night under the stars out here in the desert….

Sunrise in Buré, Ethiopia

April 24th, 2009
Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

Director Hugo Berkeley writes from the field.

At 3:30 a.m. this morning, we were shivering on the side of a desolate road near Buré, a provincial town seven hours north of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the country’s fertile Amhara heartland. We had come to film Mekonen Motbaynor, a small-scale grain and fruit farmer who, it turned out, was a very early riser.

We found Mekonen outside his thatched-roof hut, harnessing his plow to two oxen under a dense quilt of stars. This is the beginning of the planting season, when farmers like Mekonen make crucial decisions about how much seed to plant and fertilizer to use for the next harvest. But even though Mekonen and his ancestors have been farming this way for generations, their science is far from perfect. If the rains fail, as they did in 2008, then too much upfront investment can mean financial ruin. Conversely, if the harvest is plentiful, local prices will plummet and Mekonen will sell his crop at a loss. Even though Mekonen works some of the most fertile soil in Eastern Africa, the risks he and other farmers face in bringing their crops to market have played a central role in Ethiopia’s enduring food instability.

In January of this year, Eli Cane and I set out to document the story of the new Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), the country’s first modern commodities market, and of its founder, Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin. We’d heard about Eleni from many sources, watched her inspiring video on TED.com and finally had had a chance to meet her in New York when she was attending the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2008.

Ethiopia Commodity Exchange founder Eleni Gabre-Madhin

Five minutes with Eleni is more than enough time to understand the force of her charisma and the conviction that lies behind everything she does. As she described her mission to create a fair, transparent system for Ethiopia’s farmers and traders in order to improve food security in her country, we knew that we wanted to be there with our cameras to watch it all unfold.

Our first two-week shoot in Ethiopia was a whirlwind of excitement and activity. The ECX had been operational for eight months and was weathering stormy seas as it entered the coffee business, Ethiopia’s largest source of foreign exchange and a vital cog in the national economy. Eleni and her staff were scrambling to provide enough warehouses, grading centers and technical facilities for the industry, while the unfolding global financial crisis wasn’t doing anything to convert those skeptical of a market-based solution to Ethiopia’s agricultural problems. From our point of view, it was all fantastic — big personalities confronting issues of national importance in front of our cameras — and all we had to do was blend into the wallpaper.

On this second shoot, we focused more on understanding the different constituents in the ECX system; farmers and traders in different parts of the country. After a couple of quick days catching up and planning in Addis, we hit the road in a Land Cruiser. The drive north from Addis is dramatic, especially when you plunge a thousand meters into the Nile gorge and cross the Blue Nile as she flows north to Lake Tana. As we wound our way up and down precipitous slopes, we praised the recently completed road facilitated by Ethiopia’s double-digit economic growth over the last five years.

Director Hugo Berkeley (left) and Producer Eli Cane (right), with Mekonen Motbaynor and his family

Starting your day at 3:30 a.m. means you can fit a lot in before nightfall. Anyway, Buré’s flea-ridden hotel didn’t make for a very restful sleep, so I was happy to be off the mattress and on my feet early. By the early afternoon we had filmed with Mekonen for several hours, interviewed him and accompanied him to his local farmers’ union, where he had discussed his concerns with the union officials who buy his crops. Then it was back in the car and on the road north to Bahir Dar on the banks of Lake Tana, where I am writing from now. The fresh lake breeze and sunset over the islands are a far cry from Buré’s hot, dusty intensity. But I guess it’s good to get acclimatized in stages, as we’re heading into far more inhospitable terrain in the days to come….

The tragic death of 12-year-old Ahmed Khatib drove his family into deep despair. But in the first decisive hours after his death, his father Ismael was presented with a great decision and chose to transform his personal grief into a miracle for others. I heard about Ismael’s story on the morning of Ahmed’s death, and that same evening I began to film the incredible sequence of events that ultimately lead to the operations on the children who now live happily with Ahmed’s donated organs.

The families of these children owe Ismael Khatib thanks because he gave them the gift of life. We are indebted to Ismael Khatib because he gave us hope.

Marcus Vetter

In the fall of 2007, I received a call from the production company EIKON in Berlin asking if I was interested in joining this film. I quickly agreed: the theme intrigued me, and I was excited for the opportunity to work with an Israeli director.

Leon Geller had already begun work on the film. Geller is Jewish, and the two of us often had different opinions, especially regarding the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. More than anything, he wanted to tell the personal story of the relationship between Ismael Khatib and Samah, the Druze girl who received the heart from Ahmed. My goal, on the other hand, was to use Ismael’s story to shed some light on the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

Perhaps the most important goal of the film was to help break down prejudice. In the film, one comes to know only friendly and good people — for example the happy Bedouin father who is always laughing, even when explaining that his house could be destroyed at any moment. For me, the whole cast of protagonists is truly special, and they help expand our understanding of peoples and cultures.

I’m Irish, but I’ve lived away from the country for almost ten years. This has helped me recognize what is special about the people there.

The thing that struck me most about the workers at Waterford Crystal was their good humor at a time when they were under immense financial and emotional pressure. Even when things were at their worst the workers, who were not far from retirement, would joke about things like retraining as a pilot or an astronaut. There was constant storytelling and banter as well as endless cups of tea.

We spent most of our time with three men who had worked at the crystal factory since they were teenagers: Tom Power, Ian Paul and Liam O’Rorke. After forty years of hard but rewarding work, they were looking forward to a comfortable retirement for themselves and their families. But all of this has changed.

Such tragedy is now a common global problem, but meeting tragedy with humor is something quintessentially Irish. It may be a small thing, but I think it’s another piece of our cultural heritage worth holding on to.

Lauren Kesner

One of the first people I met when I arrived at the Waterford Crystal Visitor’s Center was Tom Power, a master glass cutter who had spent four decades with the company. He had also helped to lead an eight-week long sit-in to protest the factory’s closing. Power brought me to see his cutting station, switched on the engine, and demonstrated how he carved perfectly symmetrical patterns into glass.

Later that day, he brought us into the empty gallery store, lined with shelves of delicate vases, bowls and glasses and showed us a table where master craftsmen like himself had formerly autographed the crystal pieces for tourists. It turned out that Power was not only a skillful class cutter but also an ambassador of the historic Waterford Crystal brand. For years, he has traveled throughout America setting up tables at department stores where he would explain the crystal making process.

Sitting in the empty store, at an empty desk, it was clear Power wanted to tell the story of Waterford Crystal before it was too late. Fewer workers were showing up at the sit-in, and maybe he sensed the end was near. Like somebody recording a family history, he relived the glory days of learning and perfecting his craft, of cutting Super Bowl trophies, and of the friendships he made traveling across America.

Power’s pride was palatable. It made me want to buy my first piece of crystal, but the gallery store was closed. After the factory tour and glass cutting demonstration Power thanked me for having recorded his last and final cut.

]]> http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/raise-the-last-glass/filmmaker-notes/4899/feed/ 1 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/field-trip-to-the-dmz/filmmaker-notes/4523/ http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/field-trip-to-the-dmz/filmmaker-notes/4523/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:50:01 +0000 lauren feeney http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/?p=4523 Jong Suk Lee

“Family” is the word that came to mind when I first met North Korean students at Hangyeore High School. This is the first time I had been so close to North Koreans in my life. They reminded me of my brother and sister — talking, eating, playing and laughing like my own family. In fact, we are one family that has been living in two different worlds, pointing guns at each other for nearly 60 years.

I was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. Both of my parents were born on the north side of border but raised in the South. My grandparents were born and raised in the North but died in the South. The border established after the Korean War in 1953 separated ten million families. Many people have since passed away without having a chance to talk to their family members across the border. No wonder I felt the North Korean students were family, because, actually, any one of them could be one of my distant cousins.

The separation of families continues as North Korean defectors leave family and relatives behind to seek a better life in the South. Thus, this awful national tragedy of dispersed families continues to grow.

Nowadays, reunification is not a critical issue in South Korea. Most of the population born after the war does not have any relationship with the North. But every teacher and student in Hangyeore High School hopes and believes that the reunification of Korea will come sooner or later.

My uncle, who left his brother in the North, also believed that reunification would happen, until his death a couple of years ago. He was on the waiting list for the South/North Separated Family Reunion Meeting for a long time. He had lived his whole life with loss and regret over his brother. Before he died, he asked me to deliver a letter to his brother. I personally wish for the reunification of South and North Korea and an end to this national tragedy, regardless of whatever political or economic conditions reunification might bring. Then, I could deliver my uncle’s letter to his brother in person.

Micah Fink

It was a strange time to be in Seoul.

A few days before I arrived in early February 2009, North Korea unilaterally abandoned all peace agreements with the South and warned that growing tensions might lead to “uncontrollable and unavoidable military conflict and a war.” Over the next few weeks, the North Korean government began preparing to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile.

And yet almost no one I met in South Korea seemed particularly concerned.

Most of the people I encountered during my travels seemed utterly disinterested in what was widely dismissed as North Korean saber rattling.

Instead, what I did hear about, constantly, was the economy. South Korea has undergone an economic miracle of sorts over the last two generations — rising from the one of the world’s poorest countries to one of the wealthiest in just forty years. But that growth is dependent on global capital and global markets. And those markets are now in turmoil.

North Korea, it seems, is yesterday’s news here.

The reunification of Korea is further away today than it’s been for a generation — and outside of Hangyeore High School, few of the people I met seemed to mind.

“Reunification was very popular among young people about ten years ago,” one man in his mid-thirties told me, “but nobody is really interested in it now.” He then drew a parallel between the Koreas and Germany, remarking on how hard it had been for the West German economy to absorb the underdeveloped East after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was a story I heard several times, with most people adding that the gap between North and South Korea is many times greater than what it was in Germany.

“Reunification,” another South Korean told me bluntly, “might just ruin our economy.”

A Pakistani friend told me the story of Ihsan Ulaan Khan, and I was immediately intrigued. I had just completed a film on Muslims in far western China and was looking for a new topic. There was certainly enough material for a film here — an immigrant from Pakistan to the U.S., Khan was a taxi driver for many years until he won a giant lottery, winning almost 50 million dollars (he took a buyout that brought it down to about $30 million). Khan decided to return home to Pakistan and ran for the mayor of his small town, Batagram. While he was mayor, Batagram suffered the devastating earthquake of 2005, which killed almost 80,000 in Pakistan and several thousand in the town of Batagram.

While filming Khan I came to believe that his heart is in the right place — though I think the film makes clear what an ambiguous mix the combination of philanthropy and political action can be. Last fall, Khan ran for a seat in the National Assembly in Pakistan but after losing he’s decided to dedicate his efforts full time to philanthropy.

Shortly after I left Batagram, the troubles that plague the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan, and in particular the nearby region of Swat, erupted. There were some riots in Batagram, and the CARE headquarters which had been newly constructed was burned down. I had filmed Khan dedicating this very building at its opening. Most international NGOs left as a result.

My strongest memories of Batagram are not, however, of Khan, but of my translator, Said Umar Wazir, with whom I am in regular email contact. Umar is a fundamentalist Muslim — with a beard down to the middle of his chest — and is one of the most admirably pious men I have ever met, whose religious devotion and gentle nature I admire. He is still trying to convert me to his faith. Umar unfailing reminds me that his mother prays for my soul every night. So far their efforts have not succeeded, but Umar’s piety has left a permanent impression on me.

I initially planned to cover the election from the perspective of two or more female candidates for the same seat, but after consulting Nighat Saeed Khan, a leading Pakistani activist and friend of Abida Hussain, I jumped at the opportunity to follow Hussain on election day.

Hussain is something of a legend, a colorful personality in Pakistan’s colorful political world. She has run for parliament as a candidate for different parties at different times in her career, as has her opponent and cousin, Faisal Hayat. She is from a political family; her husband ran for this seat in the past, as did one of her daughters. She was also one of the first women to run for parliament from central Punjab. Hussain, in her first election, defeated a radical Islamist, which to me makes her an interesting person in the current political environment in Pakistan.

There was another reason I decided to follow Hussain. She is an elected and an active politician, unlike many female politicians who are appointed, as per former President Pervez Musharraf’s policy stipulating that each party fill a certain percentage of its seats in parliament with women. Many of these appointed female legislators are just figureheads, wives of other legislators with little stature in parliament. Once, during Musharraf’s rule, the parliamentary chamber had to be vacated during an important vote for a veiled woman parliamentarian to cast her ballot because her husband, also a parliamentarian, insisted.

Hussain is a landowner contesting a rural seat, so this was an opportunity to assess the feudal culture of Pakistan. I tried to show the complex loyalty of tenant to landowner or landowner-politician. To a degree it also shows how elections are manipulated, and how election day can be a ruthless business. Polling stations are forcibly closed for a period of time, tempers run high, fights happen. Through it all, the dependents of each side — the employees and tenants of the candidate — campaign hard for their sides. They have a lot to gain and lose if the election is won or lost.

Nancy Durham is a Canadian journalist who reports from around the world for the CBC.

I have always been drawn to stories of survival in war and revolution. I covered Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution in 1989 and spent the ‘90s reporting on the Balkan wars from all corners of the former Yugoslavia. In 2004, I was embedded with the U.S. Marines in Fallujah for 11 days. We came under random rocket and mortar fire day and night. The Marines told me this was the frontline of the so-called “war on terror.” And it had become that. But for me it seemed clear that the source of the problem lay outside Iraq. Three years later, I had the opportunity to meet some of Saudi Arabia’s ex-jihadists.

As I entered Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation center on the outskirts of Riyadh, to meet men we’ve heard so much about since 9/11, my minder from the Ministry of the Interior stopped me at the last minute to point out that I was showing a sliver of skin at the nape of my neck. I wound my head scarf round my neck one more time to cover up and tugged on my stretchy black cap to hide any stray hair. My black flowing abaya covered the rest of my body. Rather than feeling hidden, my costume left me feeling oddly exposed.

For all the emphasis on covering up in Saudi Arabia, rehab turned out to be a rather laid back place not far off, say, an American seventies retreat where you might have gone to get in touch with your inner self by sharing experiences in group therapy. But these were men who had previously been slinking off to Iraq to “kill Americans,” as one told me by way of explaining he hadn’t meant to hurt any Iraqi civilians. I interviewed a failed suicide bomber, spent an afternoon with men just back from Guantanamo Bay, and chatted with others who had merely considered making jihad and got caught along the way.

Negotiating access had been challenging. My producer, Seamus Mirodan, and I had asked for a week at the center and were told it would be just one day. In the end, we were given the better part of three days. Although we had a minder with us the entire time, it was clear the Saudi government wanted to show off their program.

It’s been a year since the center opened, and Saudi authorities claim their program has been 95 percent effective. While a handful of graduates have tried to reconnect with their extremists roots after their release, their efforts were thwarted and they were brought back to the center for more counselling. Saudi authorities say they are planning to build three more rehab facilities across the country to meet the growing challenge of deprogramming extremists.

The day we met, Vilma picked me up at the hotel in her red SUV and said that she still did not quite understand what I was doing there. We ate lunch at a Marie Callender’s and spoke for a long time. She was in tears for much of it; she was in tears before we even got out of the car. She couldn’t utter her son Diego’s name without breaking down. She has never seen WIDE ANGLE’s 18 with a Bullet and has no desire to see it. She wondered aloud why WIDE ANGLE, or anyone for that matter, would care about anything she had to say.

I am a second generation Salvadoran-American, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants. My parents were bright and educated young people; my father was an engineering student and my mother was a teacher. They came to the U.S. for the promise of bigger and better things. They would come, work in their craft and learn, and go home to help make their country a better place. That was the plan.

When they arrived, my mother worked as a nanny and housekeeper. She received room and board and $100 per month. On her time off, Friday afternoons and Saturdays, she worked in a beauty salon in the Bronx. My aunt Dolores left five kids behind, only to care for and clean up after someone else’s kids in New Jersey. She also worked in a factory and she and my mom pulled all-nighters washing and styling wigs.

My mother and her sister also left behind three younger siblings. In the early 1980’s, amid El Salvador’s bloody civil war, it was nearly impossible to get into the U.S. While the U.S. government financed the conflict, it refused to recognize the victims or provide them political refuge. My mother, who had originally intended to return to her beloved El Salvador, became a US citizen instead and worked relentlessly for almost four years to bring her little sisters and brother to safety. They arrived in 1984.

In 1992, the Salvadoran government and guerilla groups signed a peace accord. Despite great hopes, post-war El Salvador has failed to bring peace, democracy and economic prosperity for all. In fact, only five years after the war ended, El Salvador was the most violent country in the western hemisphere, according to the World Health Organization. Many demobilized young former combatants had few opportunities to change or improve their lives. Small arms were readily available. Furthermore, the U.S. increased its deportation of violent gang members who violated immigration laws. Put these elements together, and you have a social and economic minefield.

This is the world in which Vilma raised her sons, alone. Then a fire destroyed the San Salvador market where she sold her baked goods. Her dwindling resources soon made it impossible to pay for housing, the car, and food. Vilma decided to leave for the United States with the hope of earning more money. For Diego, the very act of his mother leaving to make his life better had the opposite impact. He sought family and found it with the gang. For Vilma, it was an ironic and cruel consequence that nearly invalidated her sacrifices in the United States.

One thing has remained constant across the generations of immigration. It is never easy to be far from home. And yet immigrants make Americans’ lives easier on a daily basis: cleaning our homes, caring for our children, parking our cars, or cooking our meals (if you eat out in New York City, I bet you have at least one meal per week prepared by an immigrant). Free of these burdens, everyone else has the time to be professionals, doctors, entrepreneurs, and even filmmakers.

Vilma works hard: sweeping, mopping, wiping; stovetops, venetians, under the sink, behind the fridge, inside the vase, on top of the bookshelf where no one even looks…it is backbreaking work. And I know that now. One day when we were filming, a homeowner asked that I not film in their house. I wanted to be helpful, so Vilma agreed to let me clean. Let me tell you, I was exhausted after about an hour. Vilma took one look at my work and suggested that I stick to making TV.

It has been eight years since she left El Salvador. Vilma did not think she would be here this long and does not know when she might go back; she very much wants to see her son and family. I sensed a streak of resentment in Vilma because she feels forced to stay in the U.S. Despite the accusations she sees on the evening news that illegal immigrants steal our public services, Vilma contributes here and pays taxes like everyone else. She has no health insurance and despite my own observation of her less than optimum health, she says she has never gone to the hospital. “Whenever I feel ill,” she says, “the cure is thinking about the bill!”

Vilma is a fighter with a heart of gold. She is keen about helping the immigrant cause. After evading the idea of being on TV, she concluded that she was in a better position to do this than others who do not have legal status. She has a heart, a conscience and admirable empathy.

Diego’s mom inspires me and devastates me. She makes me proud of her, of my mother, my aunts and all the women who have left entire lives behind to make life a little better for their families back home and especially us, their children. I hope Vilma’s future and that of her family are more like my own. I hope Vilma can not only improve the lot of her family, but also improve her own life and be happy. My own mother survived 35 years of racism, classism, and xenophobia, but never wasted an opportunity. Today she is a public school teacher and a PhD candidate in Education. She is and has always been an asset to this country, and so is Vilma and millions like them. Perhaps the acknowledgment of this fact is a necessary step in improving U.S. immigration policy.

Photo credit: Simon Vanquaethem