Power Struggle

The solitary process of editing got a lot worse this week when we had not one, but two power outages that lasted over six hours. After patiently waiting for far too long the first day, we tracked down a old generator and fought for another few hours to get it working. But when each team is only given a day to edit, losing this kind of time leads directly to me losing my mind (and probably some hair).

I was already feeling a little in the dark after Bridget flew out on the first day of editing. She was working right until the very last minute, designing our upcoming gala’s brochures, banners, certificates, and everything else we throw under her title of Artistic Director. But now that we’re married we’ve got bills to pay, so someone has go back and bring home the bacon – even if it’s my beloved vegetarian.

In an extremely welcomed turn of events, we got news a few weeks ago that a friend and video editor from Ottawa decided she could come to Burundi and teach for a few weeks after all. So eight hours after I saw Bridget off to the airport, I was back to pick up Carolyn Lecorre (“Caro”) who arrived late in the evening to Burundi – and Africa – for the first time. So like all great adventures and vacations, we welcomed her to the continent by trapping her behind a computer for the first three days, 12-hours-a-day, to help edit our films.Somehow she knew this would be the pace and still came, and it terrifies me to imagine how we could have gone on without her. With the compressed schedule this year (half the time we had in 2007), I’m pretty sure that by this point we would have been lights out.