This week in the Lab we’ve had a presentation from Dennis Ringersma, former student and colleague from the Crossmedialab. The past years he dedicated himself to volunteer with the Bobbi Bear Organization in Africa. This organization helps sexual abused children.

Teaching Africans in rural communities with little experience in video how to work with this equipment in four days seems impossible: yet the organisation Self Help Africa is doing exactly that and in a promising way. We met Keelin and Tara, two Irish undergraduates working for Self Help Africa (SHA) in a concrete, congested and polluted city called Lusaka. In the rural communities surrounding this Zambian capital they are training locals how to work with a small digital video camera. But they are not just explaining what one can also find in a technical manual. Lighting, sound, framework, interview techniques,  storyboards, editing and other techniques related to making short films are also important topics. The results are short films and interviews by the local community itself that can be used to report to funders. In four days.

As a special bread roll, as a dish, as chewing gum, on backpacks, flags and t-shirts: U.S. president Obama is well represented and endorsed in Malawi. But why is America’s foremost citizen so popular in a country that -apart from aid- has so little to do with the States?

Can you imagine having to bury your loved one, creating a program in which his or her life is remembered in a respectful manner and having an entrepreneur talk about life insurance to the gathered grievers? This would be unheard of in the Netherlands. Yet, in Malawi it is common practise. In Malawi commercial messages and eulogies are a match.‬

In the Netherlands television commercials change every month or so, posters on bus stops are changed on a weekly basis and social media campaigns adapt their messages in real time to current headlines. Lifespan of commercials is short and, if anything, abundant. Not so in Malawi. One of the most striking forms of Malawian marketing is through stone and masonry billboards that have their messages painted on. Their lifespan is somewhat longer than most Dutch advertising forms: it will last until the paint fades. 

A bloody diaper of a baby. This gruesome photograph is well known throughout South Africa, as it is depicted in hospitals, police stations and other public buildings throughout its provinces. Originally targetting the belief that sex with an infant would cure HIV/Aids, the poster later was meant to open the general public’s eye concerning child abuse. This is not the only poster that will make your stomach make a 360. Here in Malawi posters that adress crime issues are graphic as well. On one poster we see a woman burning her child’s hand and on the other we see a man who has just defiled a small girl. Looking at these posters from my Dutch point of view, I cannot help but think that posters like that will never be hung up in the Netherlands. I have been trying to find out why I feel this way. I think there are a couple of reasons.

One of our team members is on a mission…in Africa. Dennis Ringersma travels through Africa the coming three months, researching a new educational method on HIV/Aids. He will blog on his journey and experiences on edutoy.wordpress.com. As a simple way to do some ethnographic research I asked Dennis to take a picture each day of his journey of his ‘confrontation’ with (new) media. His first observation is from Malawi.