#budondo

[weloveife]

On top of the first floor of the Suubi Maternity Ward. Someday it will be 4 stories high. The Mukisa family is changing #uganda #budondo #suubi 🙌 (at Budondo Intercultural Center)

[weareunderthetree-blog]

The Senses Reverse

The beginnings of the rainy season in Uganda.

“The sounds. The sounds are the hardest things to remember. I don’t know why. Because I think, in the end, without the sounds we don’t have anything else.” —Requiem for My Father, Isaac Green Diebboll

Boniface Menyang smiles, as usual, despite having one, gloved and bloodied hand in the mouth of a patient. “Good morning, Ryan!” “Wasuzé otyá!” “Haha! Wasuzé otyá!” He greets back. We’re both learning Lusoga, the local language in and around Budundo, Uganda. I’m here visiting Liz, Kyla, and the Suubi Health Center. The center was founded by Bernard Mukisa and his family less than a year ago. This month, it has already served 70 patients from Budondo and surrounding villages. Its trained medical staff of fourteen (three of which are part of the Mukisa family), come from all over Uganda. Patients are drawn here by extraordinary medical care. Staff are drawn here by Mr. Mukisa’s work ethic and bright vision for rural healthcare. Boni removes the rotten root and smiles again, he’s no exception. Later he would tell me, “Nothing makes me happier than seeing someone, who has reported to me, grinning and walking home laughing. No one can pay me money equivalent to that joy.”

The bottom of the passion fruit garden in the morning fog.

Islands of thick foliage float between layers of morning fog. The faint sun will soon puncture the blue and orange veil and heat will come. At 6 AM, Mukisa’s silhouette is a taut reflection of his gravely likeness in shade. Above him are wailing, vibrating wires grounded by a grid of long bamboo posts. He collects ripened, fallen passion fruit from the 2,000 vines that his son, Charles, has planted and cared for so long. Near the top of the bamboo and wire crosshatched hill, a rainbow of uniformed students file along the road. The bouquet of color becomes monochromatic streams as children section off to their destinations. Further still, a water pump squeaks. Around it, empty gerry cans are drummed on, conducting the pulse of water into those at the front of queue.

Charles Mukisa stands above a sugarcane field just before sunrise.

Can sound affect what we see? The way our senses (the 5 and beyond) conglomerate to provide us with our perception of existence is a darned thing. Manipulate or falsify one and where does our total perception now stand? Until smell-o-vision comes back into popularity, I’m limited in my means for this story, but I’m not too worried. Under fortunate art-school-film-class tutelage, I remember that Rob Parke, Elaine Chew, and Chris Kyriakakis did an interesting study called Quantitative and Visual Analysis of the Impact of Music on Perceived Emotion of Film. They took scenes from films like Amélie, Maria Full of Grace, Three Kings… and played them for subjects, only with entirely new soundtracks. Based on their responses, you’d think the participants had seen entirely different films. Amélie + Radiohead = anxiety, substitute Chopin and get contented. Parke, Chew, and Kyriakakis see an emotional equation/dimension as the result of the study. To me, the much more interesting product is what viewers literally made up about story lines. In Amélie, she “finds a box hidden in the wall and opens it”, but based on soundtrack, viewers experienced anything from giddy excitement for her, to fear that the contents were her “last hope”.

This study sounds obvious, but what it made me wonder is which is really the “film”? If simply changing soundtrack can make us see something so different, then which is more important? Which are we truly watching? According to Genevieve Rose Angelson, Pictorialism is “a stylistic device in which carefully composed shots function as individual units of information derived from the film’s plot or themes.” This definition is in the context of describing the legendary director, Terrence Malick. Malick has an incredible visual sense; connecting scenes, themes, and even philosophies, with pictorialism. But Malick’s other skill is voiceover narration. He uses it in droves, so much so, that I’d argue that his soundtracks are the real story. The real substance. His images, or pictures, are merely gorgeous context for the film that you are hearing.

Chairman Titi Ali enjoys a bite of sugarcane on break from driving the Suubi ambulance.

Here’s some confidence for you: spending my time filming is new to me. It has been exciting and interesting, but acclimating to the various technical and artistic challenges of filmmaking is tough. Thinking about sound has opened the door to a new challenge… One I’m more comfortable with. For my first documentary project, sound was the main character. I used photographs as a means to help viewers identify and sculpt the sound—cue cards to bring you back to a character or place. As I near the end of my time traveling, I’d like to lean more and more into this notion.

[bykito]

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Here is a hyper laps video of my ancestral lands. It ends at the house that my Father grew up in in a place called Budondo in the outskirts of Jinja Town. #familyhistory #budondo #home #uganda