Africa changed me. It took me by surprise. Let me say first before I go on, that I’ve been to Dakar, Senegal twice now. Once to location scout and do early pre-production for a film about a year before the lockdown hit in 2019, and then the second time to shoot a film (a different one) in the summer of 2021.
I’m not including any photos of the film shoot. The film is called ZERO, and when the time comes next year, I will definitely share more about it then. All I’ll say about that for now, is that I fell in love with our entire production team and crew. I love them so much, and will never forget them. We were often sick, tired, and injured, not to mention filthy and sweaty, and it was a fucking dream come true for me. I had the experience of my life, and I realized one night when I was having beers at some Belgian bar full of crazy and rowdy Belgian soccer fans with my fellow lead actor, our fight coordinator, and our DP… I was hot and sweaty and laughing and looking at these fucking fascinating and amazing creative vagabonds and realized that these were my people. This is the life that I needed. I had found my home. I’ll share more about this ZERO when the time comes.
The first time, we pulled into the city at night. Dust filled the headlights as we went full speed through dirt roads avoiding mule-driven carts and random animals and people walking out in front of us. Half finished buildings were everywhere, giving it a false sense of being some war torn land like Beirut in the 80’s. I won’t lie, it was a little stressful. It’s what I wanted, though. I want the real thing, and we got it.
The thing that I find myself repeating to people is the fact that I have such incredible difficulty describing the experience, besides it being hot and sticky and full of car exhaust and horns in the city. The sensory overload is absolutely overwhelming. The women in their peacock-like and stunningly colorful and beautiful clothes. The animals in the streets. The smells of exhaust and fish and grilled meat. Kids lying in the hot dust, raising their hand up for you to give them anything. It bombards you, and it never, ever ends.
Both trips, we were invited into family homes for meals. One family was Muslim, and in their tradition, we sat on the floor and shared the food with our hands after afternoon prayers. The other was Christian (which is the 5% minority). In Senegal, Muslims and Christians live side by side with zero problems. The Muslim population tends to be Sufi, and is extremely open and tolerant. We often had to carefully and respectfully step over our security guard praying on his prayer mat in the dark early hours of the morning as we left to the set. It was things like this that reminded me of what a different planet I was on. The Christian family had killed the one chicken that they had and cooked it for us. It was a Sunday afternoon, and the entire family was there, just quietly enjoying each other’s company. There was no TV. It was just them, and they were so happy, and they had literally just given us, the two Americans who didn’t need it, their last chicken. They had taken us in with love and giant smiles and essentially gave us the shirts off of their fucking backs. We took some photos of us with them, because we were often funny enough treated like movie stars because everyone knew were were actors in the movie being shot there. I took a couple of shots, and teared up. I actually just tired up again remembering this as I write this. I realized that my family life had never been this happy, and this happiness seemed to be everywhere in what we might wrongly assume the least likely of places.
There is a ancient and sometimes dark energy there that is tangible, though. It’s a certain magic, and as crazy as it may sound, it needs to be respected. It can work into you. You can feel it around the Baobab trees that are thousands of years old, and many have entrances near the roots where ancestors are buried. You’re walking around on a continent that is the oldest one in the history of our human race, and you can feel it somehow deep in your soul. I felt alive there. I felt uncomfortable and challenged and alive.
About two weeks after I came back home to the states, I had a deep and dark blanket of depression come over me, and at the same time, I had a very strong pull to go back. Something calls me back. I had bad dreams and felt almost cursed, and then came to realize largely what it was. I was having an existential crisis, because I realized what from i’d seen and experienced that at least 80% of humanity… the vast majority of the human experience, you don’t have a chance. You struggle to survive and suffer and die young. You have no option for elevating your life spiritually, because you are too bust trying to live and not for very long. You’re stuck on an eternal hamster wheel, and it’s all just dumb random luck. I live in a country, where mostly all have the options. We all hear from childhood about how good we have it, and eat all of your food because there are starving kids in (insert country here). We hear it, and kind of get it, but not really. We can understand things intellectually, but that understanding is not full comprehension that comes through direct and real experience. We have the opportunity to elevate our lives and enlighten ourselves, and the vast majority of us just waste it getting fat and drooling and essentially lobotomized in front of a TV or bitching about something on Twitter, or trying to conform to the brain-dead herd the best way we can to get more likes on Instagram. The consciousness level is near zero, and yet we are in a situation where we actually have the option to elevate it, and elevate ourselves as individuals, and thus elevate the world. Instead, what I come home to are fat fanny pack-wearing people hurriedly pushing giant flatbeds of shit out of Costco with a hotdog in one hand so they can get home on time to watch The Kardashians (whoever the fuck they are) or the latest water cooler must-see internet trend show of the week. This sent me into a crisis, but once I got over the depression, it made me more aware of my own condition, and made me more committed to living the best life that I personally can, and do do everything that I can to increase my own consciousness. It’s all that we can do, and hope to do, really.
I love and miss everyone there so much. They’ve taught me many things, and have made me a better and more aware, realized, and loving human being..
I love you, Africa. I’ll see you again soon.