Wow! Where to begin?
Yesterday I was in town doing some shopping with my sister, and good friend when I heard all of this ruckus and chaos coming from down the street! Before I knew it, there were cars, trucks, and bodas filled with people holding signs, screaming, yelling, playing loud music – all coming up the street towards us! I quickly realized they were campaigning for the parliament elections coming up in a couple months. I quickly grabbed my camera and jumped out of the car – not wanting to miss this opportunity for a video shot! I scrambled out and ran up the street a little ways to catch more of them before they got to me!
While playing with the aperture, I flipped on the camera, and started shooting. “Ha! This is nuts!” I thought to myself. There were people EVERYWHERE running, screaming, yelling, shouting from cars, trucks, and bodas! They were holding up signs of the man they were voting for – big signs of a large picture of his face. They were also wearing the posters all over the vehicles and themselves too!
I had not even been shooting for one minute before a boda came driving straight at me! On purpose, this crazy boda driver sped straight at me, missed hitting me by only inches, and then swerved to avoid crushing my feet! Haha! I then decided to move behind a short car, and shoot over it. It made for some very interesting footage! I’m hoping to keep following the campaigning over the next month and get some more still shots. I then hope to put together a video of the craziness that it is!
After I got home, I later learned that riots often break out from opposing campaigns and the police will often times come in and throw up tear gas grenades to break up the riots – to “keep the peace” as they see it. Entire streets full of shops will close down for 2-3 hours because of the tear gas. Also, I learned that the people campaigning will often just break car windows, slap or punch people, throw rocks or anything at shops- all during their street campaign craziness just because they are excited and don’t care what they do while they are going crazy!
This was all very interesting to me, and we will see what I can catch capture over the next weeks to come!
