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To me the story in the Niger Delta is about the social injustice. That aspect of it
really grabbed my heart.
The subject is so important, it's so ripe, it's just, it's so connected to what is going
on today.
With rising oil prices, our dependence on oil, the fact that America takes 20 percent
of Nigerian oil. They're all very compelling reasons why we should care.
The local people there feel that if you're an outsider you must work for the
oil companies.
They see you as people who are coming to take something from them.
In these very poor villages they would say, "Oh, another one of you? Your kind
came here ten years ago to tell me that they wanted to tell my story to the
world, and look, I'm still living in a mud hut with no electricity and no running water.
You guys come and go, and nothing in my life changes."
I firmly believe
that to do this work
you have to be very clear inside of yourself
why you're doing it.
What is the purpose? What's the intention? What's the motivation?
And when you're at peace with those things,
you can overcome
the obstacles that invariably you meet.
We, we'd be stuck in traffic, which invariably happens when you're especially
in Port Harcourt, the main city in the Niger Delta. Traffic's absolutely horrible, the
roads are terrible. And there was one time where there was this
beat up old van
and
a bunch of the guys were outside it, pushing it because they couldn't get it
to start.
So I like jumped out of our SUV and I got out there and I started to push,
and like everybody looks at me like,
what are you doing? You know, and they're startled. And then I get back in the car and
my fixer she says to me
"Wow, you really taught me a lesson there. I've never seen a foreigner get out and
help any local person."
So you know to me, those are those little beautiful moments where I wasn't doing
it to gain
anything, it was just that was my reaction. When I see someone
who needs help
and if I am and position to help, you know and this is a simple gesture it's nothing
dramatic.
But, it's those sort of things where you start to, you know,
you peel the layers away
from what on the outside looks like
dreadful, violent, dangerous, foreboding situation.
But then you realize that most of the people there
are decent people and, you know, they,
you know, not to sound cliché but you know they're looking for the same things we're all looking
for. You know, and, and its these simple gestures
that humanize you
and that humanize them.