Casting, Location and Mombasa!

Ramping up to shooting SAINTS this week has been very productive.  All the leads have been cast and supporting roles for the first 7 episodes have been pretty much worked out.  This week we will contract the rest of the cast. 

Before we launched into all that production last week, we had a trip to Nakuru National Park.  There we were fortunate to rhinos, giraffes, monkeys, baboons, lions and flamingos at Lake Naivasha.  What a great place!  Here are some photos:

Ken - our driver

I was having a good time!

That trip set us up for a great week and a major accomplishment...

Although we had secured a hospital location before I left for Nairobi, it was not the most ideal of locations.  The main hallway we had to work with was only the width of an average hallway in a house and we didn’t have access to a reception area.  The walls were not the right colour and the exterior would not provide us with the shots we needed.  Luckily, the hospital I had originally worked in back in March, contacted us again and our producer, Dorothy Ghettuba, managed to reach an excellent agreement with the hospital CEO.  It’s a much better location with wide hallways, nice reception area and nurses’ station, waiting rooms and so forth.  I am very excited to say the least! Oh, and the best thing of all, there’s a Java House across the street!    

So with casting and location secured, we can now confidently move on to finalizing the colors and materials necessary for the sets and props with the art department.  

With all that behind us, the staff at Spielworks decided to have a bit of a break before we launch in to heavy duty production with a road trip to Mombasa.  Mombasa is a Kenyan city on the coast of the Indian Ocean.  It’s a tropical paradise with a huge natural port that has been the centre of trading for many centuries.  The Portuguese, Turks, Arabs and British all have had their hand in the control of the port at one time or another.  In fact, Swahili, on of the national languages here (English being the other), is derived from Arabic.  I believe the Arabs were here for a couple of centuries or more.  

Mombasa is very multi-cultural.  More so than Nairobi.  All the trading of goods and spices brought people from far away lands like China, Thailand (Siam), India, United Arab Emirates, Britain and Portugal.  

The hotel we stayed at - very reasonable rates!

At Fort Jesus - built by the Portuguese in 1506

It took us 7 hours to drive to Mombasa in a safari-type van that fit all 8 of us comfortably.    We left Nairobi at around 4 p.m. and got to Mombasa at around 11.  Driving on Kenyans highways is quite an experience.  The road was far better than I had expected with only a few areas that had potholes.  But it’s single lane traffic most of the way and the trucks, of which there are hundreds, travel at a very slow speed.  So there’s lots of passing and flashing of headlights as a form of communication that we don’t have in North America.  I haven’t totally figured it out yet but everyone driver here seems to know the language of headlight flashing.  

At one point on the way to Mombasa we passed the weighing station for the trucks heading into the interior of the country from the ships.  Mombasa’s port services several land-locked countries as well like Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. So there are many trucks carrying everything from cars to oil to fabrics.  The weighing station was backed up with at least 200 trucks waiting to get through the station.  This is on a single lane road.  So, the other traffic that didn’t have to get weighed - cars, buses and the like - used our side of the highway to get by.  There we were in the dark driving down the highway with these headlights heading straight for us.  Eventually the traffic coming at us would give way and drive in the ditch while we drove between them and the trucks.  Here were these huge, very modern buses driving in the ditch!  What a sight! 

Regardless of the infrastructure’s condition, life finds a way to move.  There is so much life here and people are so determined that things get done no matter what.  What is most interesting is the ways they find and the routes they take.  It’s pure survival working through whatever means necessary.  The solutions are so very innovative and interesting.  What’s cool is they still have the freedom here to come up with these ideas and execute them.  The people here are not as constricted with a bunch of rules and laws.  There’s an understanding between the law and the people.  Like the buses traveling right at us and then driving in the ditch.  A policeman isn’t going to give them a ticket because the understand the problem and the bus driver’s immediate solution.  And so things get done!

Okay.  It's now time again to get a series done - SAINTS.  Looking forward to a great, productive week!

Cheers,

Neil