YOU OUTTA BE IN PICTURES...

Cameras were rolling in early March as orphans and bibis chronicled their sad stories of loss to AIDS.

But children singing, dancing, studying and playing were also captured by Old Dog Documentaries, Inc., an American film production company, at our project in Mbagala outside Dar es Salaam.

“The Grandmother to Grandmother Documentary Film Project” is a collaboration involving Dartmouth Medical School, Dartmouth College’s John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Bibi Jann Children’s Care Trust, The Grandparent Family Apartments Project (New York City), and the documentarians.

In late August, several African-American grandmothers and their grandchildren will travel from the Bronx to to Dar to meet their counterparts. I'll be there too, welcoming sister Americans and being interviewed myself.

The documentary - to be shown on television and in universities - will show the commonalties of grandmothers who have taken over the raising of their grandchildren because the young parents are on drugs, in prison or victims of the AIDS epidemic.

"We were all inspired by the positive images of the trip which are filling 15 hours of video tape," documentarian Anne Macksoud said after four and a half days of filming.

She continues: "When we got to Mbagala and met the grandmothers, we realized that our idea of bringing them back to NYC was not realistic - we had not imagined the conditions of poverty that we would see. Resources spent for a trip to NYC could better be spent on food."

Instead, they hope to film the Americans joining the African bibis in their Saturday craft-making sessions - and taking some lessons in batik-making and weaving. We may also take everyone on a field trip to a nearby animal park, the beach, etc.

How exciting! My hope is the Americans will "discover their roots" and feel a sense of kinship, and the Africans will realize even further what a caring and friendly nation we are.

Old Dog has graciously offered to cut a shorter version of the film for us to use for fundraising-purposes for GRANDMA-2-GRANDMA (known locally as BIBI-2-BIBI).