Heading to Gulu

We're headed to the airport in a few hours to head to Entebbe, where we'll meet a former IC roadie who will drive us to Kampala. Tomorrow, we take a long bus ride to Gulu. As a former IC employee myself, I'm pretty thrilled to be heading to Uganda, finally. It will be good to see it with my own eyes.

Kenya has been nothing short of lovely. We arrived about a week ago, after a red eye from Bamako, Mali we had some breakfast and got on a six hour bus ride to the Nyanza(?) province, where, incidentally, Obama's father hails from. I had the flu and wanted to die. Luckily it only lasted one day.

An aside: I want to send a quick thank you to the US of A for Obama's victory. My companions and I were huddled around a small radio listening to the BBC broadcast at about 4 am local time when we heard the news. Perfect. Hearing the reactions from Africans has been fun and inspiring. There is tremendous hope here. It's nice to be optimistic.

Anyways, Kenya is stunningly beautiful. The skies are storybooks and the sunsets are art classes. We stayed with week with a Bishop in the Church of God of Prophecy, a denomination I had never heard of either. He lives in rural Kenya and the house had no indoor plumbing and few amenities but his large family and many of his parishioners cared for us so completely--making our meals, cleaning our clothes, helping arrange things for the film, translating--it quickly felt like home. We are incredibly thankful to have become a part of that community, however briefly, and they insisted that we bring their greetings back to that states so I do. The people of Kenya say hi.

Before Kenya was Mali. A much different place. Both countries are poor by American standards, of course, but the poverty in Mali was unlike anything we have encountered in Kenya. In Mali even nature works against you. It is a dry, desolate, harsh landscape, and the city air was filled with dust and smoke. It rarely rains and little grows. Nothing is easy in Mali. Nonetheless, through the support of a local Pastor and his friends, our work went very smoothly. I'm proud of the work I've been doing so far, and I can't wait to share it with my family, my friends, and anyone Pray With Africa reaches.

I better upload this while the internet still works. Greetings from Nairobi. Quick Nairobi fact: if you order a chocolate milkshake here, you just get bad chocolate milk. The more you know.

Take care.

Africa

I'm going there. Tomorrow. For reals.

Nine AM tomorrow I embark on a ridiculous adventure. I will be heading to six (six!) African countries: Mali, Malawi, Liberia, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa. Not necessarily in that order, but I can't actually remember the order.

I'm headed to Africa with two lovely people, Cary and Ciona, from an organization called Pray With Africa, based out of Nashville. They were looking for a video/documentary guy to shoot some stuff. I was looking for a chance to go to Africa. Hurrah!

I will be shooting a series of short subject documentary portraits, attempting to tell the larger story of some of the continent's most critical development issues through the lens of an individual's story and prayers.

We're basically going to be hitting a country a week. Which means essentially a doc a week. Which is, in case you were wondering, crazy. But crazy in a good way.

We've got a lot of contacts lined up. Please pray that doors open.

I'll do my best to keep this blog updated with thoughts and photos and videos and the like in travelogue/blog form and I hope that will help some of you to share in just a little of the adventure with me.

Ummm... yeah, so that's it. Holy geeze. Tomorrow morning. I need to pack.

Also, I made this movie last week for my church. I hope you like it. It was shot on the crazy cool camera that Pray With Africa bought for this trip... so hopefully I will be making some beautiful movies indeed.


Carlos from Austin Flack on Vimeo.

Cult of Personality

Tough, plainspoken, attractive, with easy to digest views on issues like energy and national security, and a (disputed) reputation for standing up to corruption, Sarah Palin is easy to like. However, I find the zeal with which she has been embraced by America pretty astonishing. Like Obama, Palin has become a 'celebrity'. Unlike Obama, her celebrity seems to be driven primarily by identification. As Marc Fisher of the Washington Post points out, Palin is being widely celebrated for her relative ordinariness--she is an everywoman, thrust upon the national stage, duking it out with the big boys, juggling career and family, dealing with familiar domestic crises:

"In this time of American Idol, bedroom bloggers and the belief that experience, knowledge and education don't necessarily mean a whole lot, Palin is a symbol, a statement that anyone can make it if he or she really tries."

While Obama is dismissed for being an arugula-eating, Harvard-grad elitist, Palin is celebrated for her Wal-Mart-shoppin', moose-burger-eatin', hockey mom persona.

What is shocking to me is that this sort of folksy charm still appeals to the American public in the wake of George Bush, a profoundly unpopular president whose own persona is so distinctly similar. Bush has always been seen as a guy you'd like to have a beer with (never mind he doesn't drink). Sure he's clumsy with words, a bit simple minded, maybe even willfully ignorant, but hey, aren't we all?

For all the talk about Obama's celebrity, at least his cult of personality has developed around a persona primarily defined by intelligence, judgment, dispassion, and dialogue. In his most celebrated moments, Obama has attempted to elevate the political discourse and appeal to our 'better angels'. He has compromised those ideals many times, but that's still the basic appeal of his persona. The cult of Palin, on the other hand, celebrates gut-level thinking, simplistic reasoning, home-spun wisdom, and hockey mom toughness--a feminized version of the Bush mystique.

I, for one, would like our nation's leaders to be vastly more knowledgeable, experienced, intelligent, and thoughtful than myself, my family, my peers, or for that matter, our current Commander in Chief. I admire candidates who know more than I do about foreign relations, tax policy, or environmental degradation, and I certainly welcome candidates who would rather consult experts and analysts than their own small intestine.

I, for one, am tired of leaders who are "just like us."

Skyler's Guide to Thai Beer

Goodtimes at the Casa Mia.

Arrival

After three flights, a six hour layover in Bangkok, and a stretch of 50+ hours of sleeplessness, I hit the sack last night in Chaing Mai, Thailand, united with the rest of the Eleho team at last. We are staying in a charming air conditioned guesthouse, with the river as a backyard.

I am happy to be here and happy for beds. I'm happy about the meeting we had yesterday with Partners, happy about my new Nikon D80, and happy to get started doing the work I came here to do.

More updates to follow soon.

God bless,

Partner with me for hope in Burma

Dear friends and family,

At the end of the month I will be traveling to the Thai/Burmese border with an organization called Eleho (www.eleho.org) which is seeking to bring some attention and relief to the long-suffering Burmese people. I don't really have the resources to take this trip, so I'm trying to find people that might like to partner with me, financially, prayerfully, and otherwise, and help make this trip a reality. I've included the text of my support letter at the bottom of this blog entry. I'd be very thankful if you would take a moment to read it. If you are interested in partnering with me financially, know that anything you can spare would be an enormous help to me. Just so you know, Eleho is a registered non-profit and our application for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status has been filed and is pending approval.

If you would like to learn more about the situation in Burma and what Eleho is trying to do about it, please click here: http://www.eleho.org/about.html

If you would like to contribute financially to my trip, please click here: http://www.eleho.org/austin.html

Thank you so much for your time.

God bless,

Austin

My Support Letter

As some of you may know, my first job out of film school was a brief stint at Entertainment Tonight. I gleaned little from the experience save this: it takes dozens of remarkably talented and intelligent people to make that stupid show. In my subsequent employment in reality television, I have continued to find incredibly creative people making compelling television out of some of the most banal and useless content imaginable.

With so many good Hollywood folks working so hard to entertain and distract us with reality television, no wonder it’s so difficult for real reality to compete for our attention. And with so many tragedies around the world--Uganda, Darfur, human trafficking, AIDS--it’s no wonder that when they are confronted with reality people often get overwhelmed and turn on Project Runway.

There are lots of non-profits and NGOs trying to make a difference in Burma. Many of them are much larger and better funded than Eleho and they do incredible, invaluable work. But this summer, in late June, I’m traveling to the refugee camps near Mae Sot, on the Thai/Burmese border because I believe that Burma needs storytellers as much as they need aid workers. People who will not only help disseminate the awful truth, but do so in arresting and dramatic fashion, attracting eyes and capturing hearts. I am taking this trip in the hope that if I can help attract enough eyes, or manage to capture the right hearts, I might play some small role in bringing peace and comfort to the Burmese people.

I want to produce creative, compelling media about the crisis in Burma that inspires people to care about Burma at least as much as they care about America’s Next Top Model. I want to get cameras into Burmese hands and help them tell their own stories. I want to use social networks and new media to forge connections between distant nations. I want to bring peace to this war-torn nation and freedom to its subjugated populace.

It’s a tall order, but my experience working for Invisible Children has shown me that people are thirsty for substance and cause and that when talented people tell powerful stories creatively, people get involved and things change. With your help, Eleho can do the same for Burma.

In order to make this trip a reality, I need to ask for financial assistance. Sadly I’m not yet to the place where taking two or three weeks off and flying to Thailand is a fiscally-responsible decision. I’m not going to let that stop me but I would be profoundly thankful for any money you might be able to donate to my cause. And I promise to write exceptional thank you letters.

Here's where it’ll go:

$1,300 will be spent on airfare,
$200-300 for room and board for 2 or 3 weeks
$500 for sandals, rice, medicine for children and refugees
Any extra raised will go towards the kids.

I know this is a tough economic climate and that many of you might not be in the best place to give money but anything you can give will be greatly appreciated. Also, if you’re the praying sort, please pray for me, that I might be wise and humble and attentive to God’s guidance.

Thank you so much for your support.

facts about my memorial day weekend

I went to two Dodgers games. Both times I had great field-level seats.

One of the games had an hour-long rain delay with one out and a full count in the bottom of the ninth.

I sat in a hot tub.

I saw a massive firework show.

I ate kebabs.

I got a job.

I went on a date.

I played whiffleball and had two hits, and an RBI, and plenty of costly errors. I also struck out with two on and two outs in the top of the ninth inning of a tie game.

I had my best ever experience at an Albertsons.

I saw Speed Racer with Korean subtitles.

I ate at Crazy Hook.

I decided to go to Thailand this summer with Eleho.