War Dance Outdoor Screening in Northern Uganda

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We are traveling way too fast on a dirt road heading north. For purposes of safety, we are grouped in a convoy of four Toyota Land Cruisers and we've just managed to escape the city. For at least an hour now I have been bouncing around in the back seat. Everything rattles. Not only are we dealing with hundreds of potholes the size of kettle drums, but also an endless array of speed bumps. I have counted over 74 in the last one-mile stretch.

I am traveling with an American film crew to the war-zones of Northern Uganda to screen a documentary film to thousands of refugees. Somewhere between here and the Sudan is a truck full of equipment imported from the United States: a 25 foot inflatable movie screen, a mixing board, two DVD decks and hundreds of feet of tightly coiled power cords. The projector I hold tightly on my lap, hoping that somehow my bones will absorb any shock that might damage the fragile bulb. But its useless really.

We are scheduled to reach a refugee camp in Northern Uganda in about 8 hours, so with nothing else to do, I look back on the events that brought me here. About 4 weeks ago I happened upon a documentary called ?War/Dance' about a group of school children practicing for a dance competition in a refugee camp in Northern Uganda. I can honestly say that this was one of the most powerful documentaries I had ever seen. The difficult yet powerful stories were told without exaggeration and the imagery was spectacular. I had no idea that in 3 weeks I would be sitting with those children in that camp watching that documentary on an Open Air Cinema movie screen.

Our convoy finally reaches the camp, and I am feeling unbelievably beat. The sun is setting just behind the fields, and the clouds roll along the red horizon. I have seen War Dance a few times by now, so I instantly recognize the surroundings. Patong Primary School is just as it had appeared in the film: dirty yellow buildings set in the middle of the bush. Next to the school is a large football field full of dry grass and two shade trees. Under the trees I notice a large circle of school children, some banging drums as they spin, and others stomping barefoot in the red dirt. They are singing folk songs as loudly as they can.

I took a few pictures of those first few moments in the camp. The children are dancing in the beams of light coming from our Land Cruiser. Its dark out here, so their figures are all twisted into strange shapes.

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