After spending a whole evening trying to organise a crew that we would enter the gypsy village with, we crashed on our bed. We didn't get much sleep that night because of the intermittent downpours. There was an anxiety about whether or not we would even be able to film the next day in these weather conditions. As we woke up in the morning, we could still hear the crashing of rain on the tin roof of our dorm room. There was nothing to do about the weather. Everything had been arranged. We had a great topic and a great opportunity and we were going to film come rain or shine.
We came loaded with two cameras, a Sony A7 III DSLR and a Sony a6400 DSLR. We had a Sony Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 lens on the A7 and a E PZ 16-50mm F3.5-5.6 OSS on the a6400. We used the Rode Go 2 for the mics and we plugged them into the input mic of the A7. For capturing video we found this to be a very good set up but we could have improved on the audio which we will touch on a bit later in this blog series.
Ekim and a crowd from the village
Entering the village, the children ran to greet us again. They were interested in the camera equipment and all the commotion. We found our gypsy leader, Kumar from the day before and chatted with him for a while whilst huddling under an umbrella to keep the cameras dry. It was important that we made it clear what our intentions were. Obviously, we needed them to act natural and feel comfortable or it wouldn't be good documentary material. To gain what footage we needed, we decided to hang out with them, eat what they eat, go where they go, talking to them along the way. We also decided that we would want to interview a few residents of varying ages.
Two young gypsies, outside their home
We started out by trying to answer the biggest question that we had about the village - are these people here out of choice or by some unfortunate turn of events? Kumar took us to his tent home where he showed us a large pile some incense sticks. He told us that he sells these for money to tourists in the area for 70 Sri Lankan Rupees a packet. Kumar also had a tuk-tuk which he sometimes used as a taxi. Although, we never found out how successful he was in getting money from fares, we knew at the time that tuk-tuks were considerably expensive to buy, own and fuel. So, Kumar couldn't have been that impoverished.
Kumar showing us his incense
Despite that from an outsider's perspective, the village may have looked littered in plastic and cluttered, the inside of the tent homes were organised and relatively clean. Most of them just had mats on the floor with some things pushed to the side, but it certainly wasn't unsanitary.
They cooked in metal pots on top of embers. They showed us some rice that they had cooked earlier. There is no great skewer of meat on any fires or anything like that. Everything is cooked in pots, and the only options are rice and lentils.
They had a good washing system going on in the nearby river. There were loads of clothes left on the rocks to dry, although we doubt anything dried that day. The villagers would wash themselves in the river whenever necessary, but of course, there was no shower or fresh running water source.
As for the toilet, well, we didn't need to go during our time with them, but there wasn't anything like a toilet to be seen in sight. The village was surrounded by trees and bushes and the most logical answer to "where is the toilet" is probably "it's all around you".
As the rain continued to pour down, the villagers were fiddling with their tents, pulling ropes and sheets here and there to help the inside of the tent remain as unimpacted as possible by the downpour. So, it was difficult to find a moment with one of the adults for a nice, sit-down interview.
We managed to find a 10-year-old who was happy to speak to us. He said that he sells incense sticks with his family to earn money. With the money, he hopes to buy books to use for studying. In the future, he wishes to somehow support his family by selling incense sticks.
Some rice that had been cooked recently
Although the overall tone of the interview caught on camera seemed a bit dismal, the kid seemed happy enough when he wasn't being recorded. At this point, we were still trying to figure out if the situation was a dire as they were making it out to be.
Later on, we got talking to a lady who was a young mother to some of the children in the village. Squatting under the black, plastic tent, we asked how life was treating them in this village. She said that there is nothing available for them to eat and that they've got children to think about which means living is hard. Away from the camera, she was looking busy attending to the children and trying to reassemble tents in the torrential rain. In fact, all of the woman in the village constantly looked occupied with some kind of housekeeping or childminding activity.
After a few hours we realised that the rain wasn't going to ease off. We had attempted to talk to the majority of the people who were in the village that day, but a lot of them were occupied trying to keep their tents together, or they were out selling incense. In any case, we agreed that we would come back later on in the night or the next day to spend some more time with them,
Continued in part 3...
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