Time for some “meta”
June 1, 2011
Filming: Day 4 (5-30-11)
Nairobi is a technology hub. Bustling with fresh energy, the city is kept alive by the entrepreneurship of young people. This angle of development is precisely what we’re trying to capture in our Kenya shoot. Of course, the intersection of technology and media with microfinance is the more specific subject of the Kenya shoot. And I think this is where things have started to get a little “meta”…at least in my head.
In continuing the search for our woman (our “story”), we started our day with an interview of the CEO of K-Rep, Kimanthi Mutua. K-Rep is a large and reputable bank that relies on a mobile money framework. When we asked Mr. Mutua about how globalization played a role in starting K-Rep, he explained that “the beauty of microfinance is interconnectivity.” By that he meant that countries with existing and sustainable prototypes for microfinance create great models for others to follow—a fairly simple concept, stressing the importance of inter-national communication and collaboration.
Before our next interview, we made a food run to the YaYa shopping center. On our way inside, Bea and I ran into one of her good friends, a woman she’d worked with previously on another documentary. There was an energy about her friend that was young and vibrant and relentless. The woman—a documentary filmmaker herself—was carrying a bag full of newly purchased books on women athletes in Kenya. Bea later told me that her friend is currently working on a documentary about Kenyan politics. The film they’d worked on together in January was about demystifying Kenya to the rest of the world. In Bea’s words, “we wanted to show people that Nairobi isn’t a place where people have giraffes roaming wild in their backyards.” Something about both women intrigues me. Apart from being absolutely beautiful, they share a curiosity driving social engagement and change. Together, they are a part of what seems to be an emerging network of young activists, something that has only been facilitated by social media. And of course, the art they are making is a form of social media itself. Definitely meta.
Our second interview was with an agent of M-PESA, a woman named Sylvia. Immediately, I was impressed by her ability to communicate passionately with the camera. We never had to fill an awkward pause—Sylvia had enough to say, and she invited herself to say it. Apart from her work as an agent for M-PESA microlending, she specifically talked about chama group lending, which decreases the formality of lending practices by replacing accountability to a faceless bank with accountability to a group of lenders. Chama lending is very much a social form of banking.
In reflecting on the day from a macro perspective, I began to trace some commonalities shared by the people we interacted with today. Whether through cross-generational education/transmission (as we saw with yesterday’s interviewees), through inter-national communication (K-Rep), through mobile banking (K-Rep and M-PESA), through social networking (activist networks), or through organized chama lending groups (Sylvia), microfinance in Kenya has become very much a social movement. The form of social or mobile media utilized exists merely as a matter of scale in these various contexts. And there’s a huge parallel between what we are trying to do with this documentary and what microfinance has begun to do with mobile/social media. In the same way that the dynamics and proliferation of microlending has been dependent upon the adoption of social/mobile frameworks, the message of this film can only truly be transmitted through the film itself. That is to say that we, too, are using social media to promote a social cause. Documentary film itself is very much a form of social media. And as we are starting to discover, the “meta” just keeps unraveling.
Neha
