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| 'Vacation' Plans |
| 03.29.04 (12:13 pm) [edit] |
Well. we've officially started Easter Break (3 whole weeks), and it's already booked solid. Here's a rough breakdown of what we currently have planned:
Tomorrow we leave by train for Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. We'll lay around on the beach for four or five days, then head up to the city of Beria. The port there is one of the major logistical hubs of the World Food Program, so I'm going to try and shoot some footage for my doc while were there.
The next day (big breath)... we head to Harare, capital of Zimbabwe. Challenge One is crossing the border: foreign journalists are banned, and we'll have a pretty nice video camera with us. We're going to try and pass off as tourists, and if that fails we'll pull out the phone numbers for the WFP offices in Harare and hope they can talk us out of it.
Assuming we make it into the city, we'll stay the night at a fairly nice backpackers lodge - swimming pool, food, even internet for tblogging. All the luxuries come at a price, unfortunately - we'll be paying a whopping $6 US per night (or 4,800 Zimbabwe dollars, if you happen to like big numbers).
The next day is when the fun part of the trip begins. We will rendezvous with the WFP and they're gonna help me start shooting. With the Zimbabwe government prohibiting journalism, we'll only really be able to film anything when the WFP is actively distributing food - and even then it will be a little shady since we're not actually WFP personnel. A few people (none from Africa) are worried I'll be arrested and tortured by the 'Green Bombers' (the Government's paramilitary army) but that's pretty unrealistic. According to the WFP press officers here in Jo'burg, the worst that ever happens to journalists that travel with them in Zimbabwe is a few hours of police detainment. We'll see how it goes...
Anyway, the rest of the trip will be spent operating out of Harare, and we'll return to Jo'burg on Saturday, April 10th. We'll try and post as many blogs as possible during the trip - I can't seem to find anyone that's ever posted something from Zim, so maybe we'll be the first to ever do so... 512 Operations in Africa are about to get hectic, and you don't want to miss the live coverage!
DL Fitch
512 Blogmaster
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