THE BAGAMOYO ROAD

Our first encounter with the Bagamoyo Road was in May, 1994 when we went location scouting. Bagamoyo is approximately 40 miles from Dar-es-Salaam, but in 1994 because the road was unpaved and pocked with crater-sized potholes it took three hours by car.  In Martin's Land Rover (or on the bus) it was definitely an "E" ride.

 Strange things happened in Bagamoyo.  Sometimes, after midnight, mysterious drums would sound in the distance and no one seemed to know where they were coming from. In 1994, two of our drivers , Mussa and Rammadan were locked in their rooms from the inside.  It wasn't until the winds rose out of nowhere when the crew started believing.  Whenever we would shoot scenes with "Bibi Maangamizi", the ancient ancestor, the winds would appear. The day would begin without a cloud in the sky and just as we set up a shot with her, dark, ominous clouds would rush to our location and loom over us.  It didn't take long before the cast and crew began to view these events as something out of "Twilight Zone." After awhile, when any unusual phenomenon would occur, you could hear them saying, "Ma..an..ga..mi..zi." 

In Africa, everything moves at a slower pace.  This is especially so in Bagamoyo. As independent filmmakers we tried not think in terms of slowness for fear that we might conjure it into being. I don't think we had much choice in the matter.  Having only so much film and needing things to work, it seemed as if that "Slow Spirit" would overtake us and hold up everything until all we could do was surrender, or as our Islamic friends might suggest, "submit to the will of God." Its a very different experience to do a film with submission as the production's foundation, for it left the entire process open to being influenced by the Spirits. In the end what you see on film is what 'they' want you to see. And it is quite interesting how that mesmerizing quality lures in the film's audiences.