Forgetting the Past

Photos: Travel Documentary Scholarship

soly — Wed, 6 Oct 2010 23:06:00 GMT

Traveling to the Ecuadorian Amazon

Inner Worlds

soly — Wed, 6 Oct 2010 22:04:00 GMT

"Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water crawling impotently on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both at once?" I've read this quote before by Bertrand Russel and nothing could have expressed my feelings better about this journey. On my way to this beautiful country I thought about it as I was getting on the plane from Cairo. What a small planet our Earth is... I can cross it from it's far east to it's far west in a day. But meeting someone like Delphin, from literally a completely different world made me realize the vastness of our humanity.. my humanity. The depths of our lives, our souls are far more vast than the distances crossed to meet one another. In the jungle I forgot about everything in my other life, all the people, all the work, all the plans, all the worries..they all faded away and I found myself just within myself, delving deeper and finding so many worlds, inner worlds undiscovered. And I came out of it changed, as if reborn, with confidence, inner strength, peace and a crystal clear vision of what my life is all about. And so it begins :)

The Pachamama

soly — Tue, 5 Oct 2010 21:49:00 GMT

Delphin was his name. He was the truest form of man living side by side with nature, and he and his family were our hosts for this trip in the middle of the jungle. Apart from the genuine kindness this man and his family showed us, he opened my eyes to a whole new way of looking at myself by exposing us to the Pachamama (Mother Earth). I mean this wasn't just some new age Avatar cliche about being "one with nature". This man truly was one with nature. The Earth is where he came from, where he ends after he's gone, his creator and his mother. And every other human being is his brother or sister as they all come from the same mother, the Pachamama. And he doesn't just say it, he believes it with all his being.

We just walked and walked through the jungle as he stopped at every kind of tree, explaining to us it's specific role in nature and it's use to us as humans... from medicinal to music to food to self defense to shelter.

Yet there was one special use that caught my interest the most..spiritual healing. As we approached a little lake, Delphin and his son gathered certain leaves and roots from the jungle, ground them and mixed them with water into some form or potion. He then completely covered us with it and immersed us into the water asking us to "truly be allowed to be spiritually cleansed". And I'm telling ya..with the right state of mind..it absolutely works. It was as if you've become part of the jungle and it took away all your darkness, immersing you out of the water untainted.

Entering the Amazon!

soly — Mon, 4 Oct 2010 21:48:00 GMT

Time to leave civilization, or at least the modern one we know, and head towards the jungle. Our little team has grown a little bigger with 2 new members. Simon Monk, the founder of WORLD NOMADS and Bruce Poon Tip, the founder of GAP Adventures. 8 a.m. we all hopped in our little minibus and started our trip. The trick was.. in order to go down, we had to go up. In order to reach the Ecuadorian Amazon, which is at a lower altitude than Quito, we had to first cross the Andes, which is at a much higher altitude, close to 3000m above sea level.

The view was just getting spectacular, as the city fell behind us and we were driving next to volcanoes, with the clouds in our eye level. I realized a bit of altitude sickness was kinda getting to us as we went all the way up then started descending again, but I think no one admitted it in an attempt to rough it up :)
Fiver hours later we entered Tena, our entrance city to the Amazon. We left our minibus and got into more rugged pick up trucks that could withstand the terrain from there onwards.

Refusing to sit inside, we all sat on the back as we drove in deeper into the jungle. My lungs have never been exposed to fresher air as I stood up feeling the rushing wind just blow in me and through me. The magnificent greenery just devoured us sucking us deeper in. Gotta say, coming from Cairo, where green is not the most common color, I felt like I was not only in a completely different continent, but more of a completely different planet!

Our first stop was the local school that WORLD NOMADS funded it's building and renovation through it's micro-donations. It was just a completely different feeling to connect with those kids. What's funny is that I was comparing little children of my friends that would be so shy upon first meeting someone new, as opposed to these kids who would literally get thrown into your arms laughing!

Ecuadorian Serenades

soly — Sun, 3 Oct 2010 11:40:00 GMT

Finally landed in Quito, Ecuador after a 44 hour journey! But it was worth it :) Coming from Egypt it was such a refreshing sensation seeing all this greenery. And then going through the old city it felt like I went back in time. As if nothing has changed since the Spanish were here... little cobble streets and little 2 storey homes with colorful wooden windows with little dogs barking from behind them.

I was joined by Trent, my documentary mentor, Christina from World Nomads and Marcelo and Eduardo, our Ecuadorian friends and guides from Gap Adventures. My introduction to the city was from the roof of a magnificent church that overlooked the whole city. It´s always struck me, the significance of religion or faith in every city I´ve been to. Whether it´s the pyramids of the ancient Egyptians and Aztecs in Mexico or the mosques of modern Cairo and churches of Mexico city.

As the sun set down we had a soothing warm ¨Canela¨..a drink made from cinammon and Amazonian fruits, which was sipped whilst listening to Ecuadorian serenades played by two old brothers with guitars. And that is when I realised änd told my new friends with a smile ¨Hey, I´m in Ecuador.¨

The Twilight Zone

soly — Sat, 2 Oct 2010 11:25:00 GMT

There´s something about airports late at night. That time when it´s too late to be today and too early to be tomorrow. It was around 3 a.m in Bogota airport. I´ve been here for 12 hours and had no idea how much longer it´ll be as there´s been a coup in Ecuador and no flights were allowed in. I´ve been in so many airports around the world and they all have this feel around this time, as if I was in the twilight zone. Shops all closed yet long bright aisles with zombies half asleep walking slowly and aimlessly for hours. All caught in this timeless and spaceless zone in the middle of their journey from somewhere to another.

I took off my jacket, fashioned a pillow out of it, put on my headphones to some jazz music and laid my body on the floor to sleep. And then it hit me... I´m alright being just with me. I´ve been used to traveling with my girlfriend every where and it became the usual to have someone when being in a distant land. And between that and being constantly busy with work or projects with friends I haven't had time to be just with myself. And since it´s been some time since I was just with myself, I felt that loneliness would creep in on me. Yet to my surprise it didn´t. I remembered that I like myself. And I guess that´s what differs a tourist from a traveler.

Emergency Landing in Columbia

soly — Fri, 1 Oct 2010 08:43:00 GMT

"The army has taken over Quito airport so we will be making an emergency landing in Bogota, Columbia". I waited for the young Ecuadorian lady sitting next to me on the plane to finish calming down an older lady sitting across the aisle, then I asked her "Did the captain say the army took over the airport ??". "Si", was her reply with eyes wide open. "Si !!!"

And so it was, the plane landed in ElDolrado airport in Bogota amidst so much rambling that sounded like a Spanish courtroom drama. Walking past the tv screens I could see the news with the headlines "Crisis en Ecuador"... Just to back up a little on why an Egyptian like me was heading to Ecuador on the day their president was kidnapped... I'd won the travel documentary scholarship to Ecuador and I was to spend a week in the Ecuadorian Amazon to shoot a doco, along with the founder of World Nomads, GAP adventures and the acclaimed producer/director of the positive footprints documentary series. However the date of my arrival was just bad luck.

Whilst in the air from Madrid, a coup had taken place in Ecuador, in an attempt to overthrow the president and so the airport had been shut down forcing us to land in Columbia. All the passengers in my flight were going to be checked into a hotel until further notice. Upon hearing this I thought great, a chance to see Columbia. I hand in my passport at customs for it to be stamped on my way out , then I get this look from the customs officer. He asks me in Spanish where I'm from. I answer that I'm Egyptian. He walks out of his cubicle and walks to his supervisor. They both look at me and ask me to walk over to them. I do and they start questioning me in Spanish, which I don't speak. The only word I got was "visa". I answered that I don't have a Columbian visa since there was no plan for me to land here, but I would be happy to get one at the airport. Well, since I didn't say that in Spanish, they didn't get it and took me to the migration and police office at the airport. I sat there for two hours feeling like I was in an episode of "Banged up Abroad", caught for smuggling drugs out of Columbia, until someone bothered to talk to me. When an officer finally did, he seemed to be repeatedly questioning me about why I'm in Columbia without a visa. I kept trying to explain to him with sign language, a bit of English and French (that I speak a little of) but still nothing. His tone started getting more aggressive so I started repeated "Iberia" "Iberia" "Iberia" over and over again, like Al Pacino yelled "Attaca" in "Dog Day Afternoon". Air Iberia was the flight I flew in on and the only way I was gonna get out of this huge misunderstanding was to get someone on that flight to come and talk to this guy. After yelling "Iberia" for like 10 times he picked up his walkie talkie and walked out of the room. I waited in anticipation, hoping I didn't just piss him off. 10 minutes later, a lovely lady with an "Iberia" tag walked in with the officer. I felt like marrying her on the spot! She took my name and after seeing it on her passenger list apologized to me and explained to the officer the situation. That was it, I was free to go... however I still couldn't leave the airport because I still didn't have a visa and It's not possible to get one in the airport. So I was told to just wait in the airport. Wait until when? ... Until Quito airport in Ecuador is open again... When is that gonna happen? ... Nobody knows, there's a coup going on and the president has been kidnapped......Oh..I see.

My Video scholarship 2010 entry

soly — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:19:16 GMT

It all started when I traveled to Northern Uganda with an organization that helps war effected children through soccer. After hearing the atrocities that happened to those children, I couldn't imagine how they still found a way to keep laughing like they do. Yet what I really wanted to know was not just the collective facts, but the individual feelings of the children going through that experience in their own words.

And so my plan was to simply make those children trust me and just listen.

My main challenge, apart from the limited resources of the village I was in, was getting David who was a shy kid affected by his past, to open up to me. To make him feel that I truly cared about listening to him just talk. And when he did bare those rawest of human emotions, it was an empathy between 2 human beings that I've never experienced before.

It's those raw human emotions that I aspire to portray as a documentary filmmaker, and portray them in a poetic form, through film, so that empathy I felt gets shared between us all.

Mohamed Soliman

solyjazz@gmail.com