LES MAIRUUWAS’ (Trond Waage, 60 mins, 2015)
portrays four men who have left harsh living conditions in The Central African Republic (CAR) and who lives the dream of succeeding in the city. The men portrayed, are among the thousands that annually comes from the CAR and other neighbouring countries to Cameroon searching a better life. The film describes in an observational style their daily struggles to make a living and create meaning in life.
Through portraying these persons with very different carriers, but somehow similar destiny, the film gives a narrative about hardworking adventurous men who’s lives are turned into despair, frustration and in some examples rage (and often death in young age!). The comparison these narratives invites us to see how life is lived, how work is organised and how uncertainty is dominating their days. We understand that they have to follow strictly rules for behaviour to be able to ‘succeed’. Doing mistakes, as quarrelling publicly or being arrested, might have fatal consequences.
The film can bee seen as an reaction to the increased anthropological literature on street life in urban Africa, which (very often) lacks ethnographic data on social processes, have little time-depth and which tend to ‘romanticise’, underlining flexibility, bricolage and creativity in analysis of informal economies and life on the street. It is extremely hard to achieve any kind of ‘success’ for people living at water-post. Many are those not succeeding. They have to leave. They have to start over again. These are the vulnerable and ignored, both locally and in the anthropology of integration processes in urban Africa.
Watch the ‘jerry can-clip’ TC.00.04- TC 00.08