貧民窟里的電影制作人

A few weeks ago there was a special outdoor film festival in Nairobi to celebrate filmmakers living in the slums. One of those presenting his work was Ugandan, George Nsamba, a 25-year-old who grew up in Naguru, a ghetto in Kampala. He now helps other street kids get the skills to make films themselves. George has been telling me how he came to live in Naguru.

I was born to a middle-class family. My dad worked in a hospital. He was a doctor. And my mom was working at the same hospital, was a little secretary or something like that. We lived really good till they had a divorce. That was in 1996. I was about six. Just one morning, my mom gets up and she just decides to wake up, get a truck, pack everything of ours and we had to move. We move to a slum called Naguru, which is really really a very very bad slum. Now my whole life I'd never lived around poor people. And it was really not well by, at the time.

Why did your mom suddenly decide to move you all?

At that point we actually didn't know. It just happened all of a sudden. And it was about a year later, after not seeing our dad, that we actually realised they had divorced.

So your mom moved you to the slum area. What were your living conditions like there?

First of all the house had no doors. It had no windows and it was a rainy season. So when it rained, I mean the floor, the whole house was muddy and it wasn't really a place for a kid to live in.