It is great to be back. – I have been here for almost a week now, and even though the city was always on my mind during my absence to it, I had forgotten how amazing it is. I still can not completely believe that I am back. When I walk these ancient streets and cross the Bosphorus by ferry, drink cay with a friend or friends while looking at the most amazing views that no other city in the world has got, combined with the hospitality of the people and the rich history that makes it all even more amazing to walk these streets again, it feel like I am dreaming. Regardless of the totally crazy traffic

But this is not a travel blog, so let’s get to the point! I have visited several companies in film production. Either producers or Post-Production houses. Special thanks for making this possible goes to Dr. Nezih Orhon who taught me at the Anadolu University in Eskisehir back in 2008 in the Cinema & TV faculty. I hope to pay him a visit within my timespand as well. One of the companies I have visited is situated in both Amsterdam and Istanbul and shows some nice possible job perspectives for me. Through this company I will meet various Director of Photographers next week and more Post-Production houses and if everything goes well I can also be responsible for the communication between the establishments in Istanbul and Amsterdam and with various Dutch directors et cetera, since Dutch is my foreign language. Last monday I was already invited to the set for one of their commercials. It is now being broadcasted on more then 25 channels in Turkey already. The producer invited me to the shoot to get to know the team a little bit and as on any set, I felt right at home. If it’s possible, I will post the commercial in a later blogpost.

Apart from ‘filmstuff’ I have also met with a company that does fashion photography. Something new for me but it’s rather interesting. There is a full time job available for which I can apply, but there is also also one on a freelance based way of working within the same company. For the full time job I’ll need to get a working permit for Turkey as soon as possible and there will also be a test shoot where they will watch my performance in the studio. More news will follow next week or when I return to Holland on the 31st of may.

I recently expected, before I came back, that my memory might have played some tricks on me over the years, regarding to the city itself. And that in a way I might be disappointed by revisiting it in the future. But instead of that I was in total ‘awe’ all over again by gazing at all it’s wonderful streets and sights. You don’t have to go far from your hotel or house to run into something completely new that wasn’t there 30 minutes ago, while some of the oldest buildings in the world stand watch high above it. Grand palaces white as snow on the Bosphorus shore, the sea breeze, the busy life in Taksim, the diversity of the European side and the Asian side and everything in between make it impossible to get bored for even a minute in this city once called ‘the capitol of the world.’ And even though actually living in such gigantic city full of traffic and over 20 million people is a whole different thing, I’m still planning on doing this. – It’s great to be back. More news later.

During the week I stayed at Sydney Wilson her place, where she lives together with her boyfriend Gavin. Sydney is from San Diego and I first met her when I was an Erasmus student in Turkey, Eskisehir. She was also a student there. After Turkey we visited some friends in Poland and she also came to Holland. Not long after Turkey she found a job in London after she did an internship there as a graphic designer at The Perfect Day. She’s still working in the company today since they offered her a job when her internship finished. She decided to stay. With Sydney and Gavin I went out, had dinner every day, drank some beers and talked about our time in Turkey. We had a lot of fun I also met with Orsi, a girl from Hungary who was also Erasmus in Turkey during the same time period as Sydney and me. She’s also working in London nowadays and we visited Hyde Park, Piccadilly Circus and the British Museum together. Nice places I had been before, but many years ago! Good times. My time in London was a great week of networking, sightseeing and meeting old friends.

Apart from that, the first thing that really struck me while being in the city was that in ten years time everything had changed, and everything was still the same at the same time. All in all obviously, it’s still a city where Old meets New and I can’t wait to go back!

The way home was a little less friendly than the rest of my stay. Yesterday, while on my way back, there were riots in the streets of London. Students were protesting due to a lot of financial cuts by the government. It was also an act against capitalism and 66 people got injured, including 13 police officers. Orsi worked at Mc. Donalds at the time on Piccadilly  Circus and the windows were thrown in there, fires were set and fights broke out on the streets. I read in the newspaper in the plane home these were the biggest riots in London since 2003 (Iraq war protests) and before that in 1985. Orsi and her colleagues had to go downstairs and wait it out.

For me personally, the main problem was getting back home. Most streets were locked down by the police, so my bus that would normally simply take me back to the airport didn’t go. I had to go to Liverpool Street using the Underground and from their take the train to the airport. I barely made it on time.

Last but not least, Sydney is going back to the States with Gavin around the 20th of april and proposed that if I wanted, I could take the house for the 10 days (and watch her fish ) while they will be out of London. If I can afford it, I might take them up on this offer to visit more companies in London, and hopefully even work on a project!

Parliament Hill

Crystal Palace & Around

Oxford Circus

Buildings of Grandeur

Back from Eiseb & Gam

For a small week we have been living in the bush amongst wild animals such as jackals, black mumbas, scorpions, spiders, cheetas and leopards. Luckely it’s not summer yet in Namibia so most animals are still pretty far away from most settlements and villages and vast asleep.

However, our trip with Henk Olwage was amazing. We have been living in a Herero settlement just outside of the small village of Gam, in the middle of nowhere where people are still pretty much self relient from hunting for survival and for example herding goats and sheeps. Using the Herero settlement as our basecamp (Henk Olwage had work to do here) we explored Gam & Eiseb sometimes on our own, sometimes with Henk and the others. The reason we came here was to create an image for ourselves and possibly for the film to realise what makes people move away from areas like this in the region of Omaheke and their decision to move to Gobabis for a new life. The main reason, we came to learn, is that people want a better future by going to the city. This is obviously something that happens everywhere around the world. However, most people end up in the slums of Epako. And this ‘better future’ thing is not so much meant for the parents themselves, but mostly for their children so that they can go to pre-schools, primary schools and one day to university.

The San

Especially the San people are still considered the lowest people on the list, and not many chances are being given to them. In fact, just one San child in the whole region (the region is twice the size of Holland) has ever made it past class 7 before dropping out because of various reasons such as obvious financial problems in the family, are being unable to get along with the education because of cultural differences and simply because they are considered the lowest people on the planet and therefore don’t get enough attention. I would like to add a quick note that one day I hope I can enter or start a project myself in or out of Gobabis to give San children a better future with education. The important thing (I think) is to realise where they come from originally, and how their culture works and start to build things up from there. They have been forced out of their hunting grounds and have been enslaved for many years by the Herero and others. And now they have to find different ways of living, but they simply don’t know how. Henk Olwage told us when we met arrived at a San settlement not far away from eiseb, that in the old days the San people had so much respect for nature, that they would actually talk to the wild animals before killing them for their survival. They were connected to everything in nature and understood it better than anyone (they still do). They would tell the creature “Sorry my friend, but I have to kill you because I have to survive too.” and more things like that. They would calm the creature down. It would would not run away from their presence anymore but the talking of the San soothed them somehow (almost hypnotic?) and would just sit down before they would kill it. Now that’s nature!

But now that they have lost all of their hunting grounds and their ways of life, they are suffering and considered more primitive than basically anyone or anything else on the planet, which off course is ridiculous because each and everyone of us is unique as a person and no better or worse than anyone else. Just different.

Starlight

The nights were great! I loved it. you sit there at the campfire, eating your dinner that had been caught and prepared that very same day and you share stories with the people. Even though some of them don’t understand English at all, some things are so universal that it just makes sense to everyone. Nothing else matters…

I also spend a lot of time with Henk while sitting around the fire and during the day. He told interesting mythical stories about Namibia ranging from voodoo and miracles up to tracking wildlife and learning to guide your way around using the stars for example, while doing so. We shared some direction finding techniques with each other and for me this is always an interesting subject. And when you look up at night here at the southern hemisphere side of the world and you see all those billions and billions of stars – including the milkyway – brighter then you can ever imagine it because there are no city lights while in the background listening to Jackals and other wild animals, just ask your self: what can be better in life than this?

A quick reminder of the wild

About a week earlier a black mamba (deadliest snake in the world) with a length of over 3 meters came in one of the settlement houses and was killed by one of the elderly kids of the camp. He took us out to the place at night where he had put the snake after he had killed it. It was just a quick reminder to always close your tent in these areas. A bite by a huntsman spider, black widow or a black mumba, or cobra, or a black scorpion for example is not something to look forward too! Also consider that the neirest hospital is over 500 km away and you’ll be driving over various gravel roads.

The long road home

Furthermore it might be interesting to know that this will be our last week in Namibia. Therefore most likely this will also be my final blog post while I’m still here. We will be flying from Windhoek airport on friday the third of september at 19:00 (local time) and we will land at 05:45 (local time) in Frankfurt, before taking the train back home where – hopefully at the latest time we will arrive around 14:00 (waiting time included) but probably a little bit earlier.

So, enjoy the last pictures below that I have taken in and around Eiseb & Gam.  I put the full collection on Facebook and a smaller collection here below. Next blogpost will most likely be from Holland!

I love Africa!

The only downside for me personally in Namibia is safety. You can’t go out at night on foot for too far or too long. For example: Whenever I want to use the internet at the Goba lodge, it’s a little over 1km walk from Horizons (the place we are staying at) If we take a taxi it costs quite an ammount of money! And, let’s face it.. it’s just a little over 1 km, right!?

So every now and then I walk. But here comes the inside scoop. Every time I’d go on foot (especially after sunset) the owner of our hotel gives me a baseball batt to bring along. ‘Just in case,’ he says. A nice enough guy, really, but you kind of feel like you are back in the middle ages. On your way from one place to another, always alert for someone (or something) jumping out of the bushes and trying to rob you or worse.

These restrains of freedom truly annoy me. You feel like you are in a prison. Something that is normal for us in Holland (allthough we think of it as ‘normal’ while in really I think it is not), to go out alone at night, is not considered normal in Namibia (and many other places around the world off course).

Especially in the weekend it’s not safe to go out. Especially in and around the slums it’s best to stay away. This is because everybody gets payed for their jobs or they get some money from the government et cetera on friday.. Because water for many people is too expensive, a lot of people buy alcohol (tombo, also read ‘Namibia part 3’) instead.. and no good can from that, under these surcomstances.

So here I am, typing my blog Part 6 in the Goba lodge, complaining about safety in Namibia.. something the people in the slums have to deal with each and every day (it’s not just foreigners that aren’t safe) and Jelmer and me are only here for nine weeks in total! For them it’s life, for us it’s adjusting. I actually feel strange thingking/writing about it..

It’s 18:45 now, already dark outside. Better decide to take a taxi or walk tonight, from Goba lodge. I came here on foot, so I guess I’ll just take a taxi back this time.

Getting in shape!

After spending about 2,5 weeks in Namibia without sports, I’ve started running again and working out a little. I really started missing it so I figured it was time for a run around Gobabis. An extra motivation for me is  that I was curious what I would come across while doing this. On my second run a construction worker that was on his break and sat beside the road with some of his collegues started running with me. We talked while running about what I was doing here et cetera. After five minutes of running and talking he wished me goodluck and went back to where he came from. A nice moment!

Another motivation for me here is that running is different here because of the altitude level. Gobabis is situated at an altitude of 1500 meters. Quite nice because Holland is situated below sea level. On higher grounds your fatigue drains quicker.

However, I’m not the only thing getting in shape. You see, our scenario is working out to become pretty great! For my opinion there still are too many interviews in it (too many ‘talking heads’ should be minimalized as much as possible, in my opinion..), but we’re getting further and further each day! The main story is getting clearer with every passing day. Things are starting to roll!

Some of the subjects/elements we might include in our film are:

• a brief introduction & history of Gobabis
• the twinning between the municipality of Gobabis & Smallingerland
• project Sida Sores
• a quick overview of all the projects
• HIV/AIDS project
• I&I Explorers
• the sanitation project
• the slums of Epako
• future tourist attractions of Gobabis & around

I’m not going to explain all these projects. The people that have to know, will allready know about them because these projects have been (more or less) up and running for quite some years now. For all the people that don’t know about it yet.. They’ll just have to wait a little longer (or they can just google them)!

I also added some new pictures from Gobabis & the slums of Epako below.

The Harnas Wild Life Foundation

A few days before Albert and the others went back home, we went to the Harnas Wildlife Foundation. It’s about an hour and a half drive away from Gobabis.

Harnas is a wildlife park where you can go on a safari trip by 4wd and on foot and watch lions, cheetas, crocodiles et cetera. But the Harnas Wild Life Foundation is more than just a park where you can watch wildlife. Here they help injured and orphaned animals grow up and they prepare them to go back into the wild again. If you are lucky you can even cuddle baby lions, cheetas and leopards if they’re around.

In our case we were able to get really close to two cheetas. An old cheeta fella named Goeters and a young female cheeta named Duma. Goeters has been around here since the beginning of the Harnas Wild Life Foundation project (26 years) and is basically as tame and friendly as a housecat, just a whole lot bigger! We also played with a young giraffe. Be carefull though, because he tends to kick every once in a while when he’s in a real playfull mood (there are signs warning for this in the park). The giraffe walks freely next to the bungaloo houses, so enjoy your breakfast with a giraffe breathing down your neck or stealing your food

Another nice thing to know is that Albert and Judith have been coming here for quite some years now, and they love Goeters so much that they even named their own dog in Holland after the cheeta. When Albert explained this to the owner of Harnas, she really appreciated to hear this.

Have a look at the pictures below, they’ll give you some idea of what you can see in Harnas. And for the record… I totally fell in love with this cheeta Duma  (as you will see in some of the pictures).

The last two pictures (with me, Judith and ‘our’ giraffe) are made by Emma Bloemhof. And the pictures of me and Duma were made by Judith.

welcome to Africa!

So here we are, Namibia! Departed from Holland with Albert Scheffer, his daughter Judith Scheffer, and Albert his collegues Thea Seinen, Date de Vries and and my fellow grad student Jelmer de Jong we drove for 6 hours to Europes largest airport which is placed in Frankfurt, Germany. From there we took a 10 hour flight to Windhoek Airport in Namibia.

But our journey didn’t end there. From the aiport we drove in two cars and drove another 2 hours to Gobabis, the place where Jelmer and me are shooting our film.

Along the way we came across a wildebeest and a gazelle running along with us next to the car and a small group of baboons crossed the road about 50 meters ahead of us. Welcome to Africa!

The way into Botswana

Instead of staying in Gobabis and relaxing a little (something a normal person would do), Date had invited us back in Holland for a trip into Botswana to the Okavango Delta. This was something I personally didn’t want to miss for the world, so we decided to go. We left our film equipment and other unnecessary luggage at hotel ‘Die Dam’ where Albert, Thea and Judith were staying, and we went for another 10 hour trip, this time by car, to the Okavango Delta, in the middle of Botswana.

At the border stop we had to fill in forms, forms and more forms. When we had crossed the border we had to fill in more forms again. On the positive side, we did get some nice stamps in our pasports. But 9 hours later or so, things went a bit bad when we arrived in Maum (pronounced as ma-oom).

We did not have enough fuel, our bank and credit cards didn’t work anywhere in town (we tried about 6 different ones) and we still had to pay for the fuel where we had so desperately looked for earlier. Before we were able to find a place where our cards actually did work, it was allready dark and we had no way of finding our way around properly, ever since road signs don’t have lights here (we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, after all), and road signs are even hard to find during the day around here! Apart from that, at night people walk on the streets, the roads have big holes in them and wild animals from dogs up to hyenas come out – especially at night. So drive carefully ‘cause you won’t see them easily.

We were tired, did not have enough food and water with us (I never went on a trip this unprepaired before, but it was quite an adventure) but in the end we made it to the Backpackers Lodge just outside of Maun at the start of the Okavango Delta. Unfortunately they didn’t have a place to sleep for us, but what they did have in stock was a great dinner in this atmospheric location in the middle nowhere surrounded by the weirdest wild animal noises  that I have ever heard in my life (truly amazing!).

After dinner and a huge healthy fruit shake later, we felt sort of reborn and thanks to a manager at the Backpackers Lodge we were able to find a place to sleep at Audi Camp for the upcoming nights, just a few minute drive away. We were also able to book a ‘Mokoro trip’ for the next day there – this was the reason we came to the Okavango Delta, after all.

The Mokoro Trip

A mokoro – or in plural a mekoro – is a shallow-draft canoe traditionally hewn out from ebony wood or a sausage-tree log. We were able to take a tour through the Okavango Delta with one of these traditional canoes. You are so close to the water level that you really start to feel one with nature. It’s relaxing but also chalenging somehow because after all, you’re in the wild and in the river where crocodiles, hippo’s and other animals rule.

To get to the actual riverbank of the Okavango Delta you have to go by 4 wheel drive, otherwise you’ll be stuck for sure. Big puddles of mud and overthrown roads by riverfloodings will block your way if you don’t have have 4 wheel drive because some are deep and have quite dangerous rapids in them. Also the roads (as for as you can call them that) itselfs are graveled roads and impossible to drive on with a normal car. After this adventurous trip we ended up at a quiet area at the river bank. We were guided by a man and woman who were polars for the canoes. They push the mokoro forward with their sticks. After about an hour in the mokoro we continued further on foot to spot some wild life. No lions, leoperds and cheetas unfortunately, but we did see giraffes, zebras and eliphants. Have a look at a small collection of the pictures at the end of this blog!

Village life

The day after our Mokoro trip we had to go back to Gobabis. Date had work to do there and obviously so did we! But on our way back we stopped at several villages along the way. We had plenty of time for that so why not make the best of it? When I say village, i basically mean 5 till about 10 ‘houses’.

These villages of wood are still pretty untouched by western life, but you can feel the change. They wear more western clothes instead of traditional ones, and they now use money like everybody else to buy their food, allthought traditional way of life (hunting et cetera) still goes on. Have a look at some of the pictures at the end of the blog.

Sandune safari

After Botswana we went back to Gobabis and got to know the place a little better, and each other. Albert is so well known in town by almost everyone (he’s been coming and going here since 1991 for his job) so obviously Albert knows the in’s and out’s of Gobabis by heart. I’ll be writing a seperate blog about that later, though.

By the end of the week Date de Vries had to go back home, his work here was done, and he wanted to finalize his stay with a last safari on the day of his departure back to Holland. And for this departure we went to Sandune, about a 30 minute drive away from Gobabis. Have a look at the pictures below. The day after Date left, two other people came. Another collegue of Albert, Anke de Vries and her daughter Emma.

Thank you!

Today all the Dutches that were with us have left. I would like to use this blog to thank each and every one of them for making us feel home away from home and for introducing us to all these amazing places such as the Okavango Delta and Harnas (Harnas will be coming in a blog post soon and it will be filled with lions and cheetas et ceterea) restaurants and for letting us meet with so many interesting new people for the last 2,5 weeks. Now Jelmer and me are on our own, but we had a great introduction that will help us greatly in making our film.

On the second of july 2010 I’ll be flying with fellow CMD student Jelmer de Jong towards the second least densely populated country in the world which also happens to be one of the driest continents on the planet. This country is positioned above South Africa and is called Namibia.

Personal Reason

We were asked by a teacher at our faculty to make a film in Nambia. Jelmer and I were both still looking for suitable graduation film subjects, and this subject (which will be explained below) touched us both. So we decided to do some research, meet some people and take the job!

Purpose

For the last 15 years the Namibian municipality of Goababis and the Dutch municipality of Smallingerland have had a fellowship that is connected by development aid. Several projects have been set out in Gobabis for the last 15 years such as HIV/AIDS prevention, housing projects and many more.

The municipality of Smallingerland wants us to make a film about the last 15 years of development aid that has been brought to Goababis. They want to know how things are going today. So in short: what’s going great and what could be better?

They want us to shoot from our perspective – from a new way to look at the whole piece – and also with an eye to the future.

Symposium

The film will be played in october on an international symposium in Drachten which obviously is about development aid. the film is set to inform and create a discussion between the people at the symposium to create steps for the future.

On the 4th of september we’ll be back in Holland. I’ll try and post as many text and video blogs as I can about the proces, but it will be hard staying online where we are. I’ll also need a USB device so that I can connect my MacBook Pro with a telephone based internet connection but so far I haven’t been able to find one yet, not even the Mac Store.

More news coming soon, about the pre-production, the production and the post-production.

]]> http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/index.php/2010/06/25/namibia-part-1/feed/ 5 http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/index.php/2010/06/02/an-interview-in-turkey/ http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/index.php/2010/06/02/an-interview-in-turkey/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 09:31:54 +0000 Jaap Ruurd Feitsma http://www.jaapruurd.com/journal/?p=1002 In 2008 I studied and lived in Turkey for about 8 months. I was a participant of the Erasmus Student Network (ESN), an exchange program that gives students the oppurtunity to study in a foreign country. I chose to do this in Eskisehir (Eski = Old, Sehir = city), Turkey.

In Eskisehir I studied at the Anadolu University at the Cinema & Television department. During my studies there I made several films and photography projects, learned a little bit of Turkish language and about it’s history and travelled the entire country and some of it’s middle eastern neighbours, many photo’s I have taken on this great journey can be found in my portfolio up till today (allthough I am currently making a new selection of pictures).

Apart from all that, during my study, me and some other Erasmus students were asked to be interviewed for a Turkish TV channel at the University about the Erasmus program and our experiences with it. ‘Why did I choose Turkey?’ ‘What are the biggest differences between the university in Turkey and the one I study in at Holland?’ And a whole lot more questions like that.

I was never able to actually (re)watch the interview myself either online or on TV, but my dad came across the following article from the ‘Anadolu Haber’ a Turkish newspaper from the Anadolu University.

Basically what the article says is that I had been in Istanbul a year earlier -  before I went there for Erasmus – and fell in love with the city and it’s people (this is true ).

It also says that I talked about two Turkish Students (Pinar and Fikeriye) who went for Erasmus in Holland at my faculty from Turkey and when I became friends with them. I decided to study in Turkey myself for a couple of months. The article goes on about how ‘special’ it was for me and then continues with the questions about our cultural diversities and stuff like, all very interesting!

Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you, I found it quite nice to see this article.

And for the ones who can read Turkish, enjoy

On december the 29th I flew back to The Netherlands from Lisbon, Portugal. My internship at CheckTheGate had come to an end. After very nice goodbyes with both company CheckTheGate and other people that I’ve met over the past 4 months that I was there, I was packed and ready to go back home to work on my graduation project.

I’ve decided to make a documentary and at this point I have several options, both local and abroad. The most important thing for me right now is to find a place to put the film. What I mean with that is that I need an institution, a channel or a website that’s interested in what I would like to make and possibly, if necessary willing to finance it. In the upcoming posts I’ll write about the various subjects and options that I have at hand.

I would also like to use this blogpost to share some of the pictures on the filmset I worked on for the NGOL Commercial in Lisbon for CheckTheGate.