Jajas for Justice

Featured

Newsletter #1

Hello from Uganda!

Welcome to the Jajas for Justice newsletter! For those of you who don’t know, Jajas for Justice: Stories of Climate Change is an upcoming documentary on the climate crisis in Uganda. “Jaja” is the Ugandan word for Elder. In the film, we’re focusing on stories of elderly farmers. The title Jajas for Justice comes from the great injustice in elderly subsistence farmers contributing almost nothing to causing the climate crisis while being among the most vulnerable to its effects. You can learn more about our film at our website here.

After months of planning, team members Summer Spell and Rennie McVicker arrived in Uganda last week for the start of filming. Rennie is our operations coordinator. She is heading up logistics and communications. Summer is the director, and is launching into storyboarding and vision casting. Here in Uganda, we also have filmmaker and co-director Alvin Masagazi. Bringing years of filmmaking to the project, Alvin has already started shooting for our upcoming pitch video. Meanwhile, staff at Reach One Touch One Ministries, an organization that supports jajas in Uganda, are busy scouting jajas who want to share their stories. Back stateside we’ve got our financial manager Chloe Vann, hard at work coordinating our fundraising efforts.

If you’re reading this newsletter, it’s because we believe you are someone who cares about justice and hearing the valuable stories from people around the world. Climate change is a critical issue. Right now, it is supposed to be rainy season in Uganda, but everyone we’ve talked to has said it’s been so so dry – and we’ve seen it ourselves. According to the jajas, this disruption of the seasons has become commonplace over the last few years. Where they could once rely on regular seasons for farming, they no longer know what to expect and are losing crops because of it. We hope you’ll join us in putting the microphone in front of people whose stories desperately need to be heard. These jajas have been caring for the land and we have so much to learn from them.

If you’d like to support our efforts, you can donate to the project on our website as well. We won’t be able to finish this project without support. If you know anyone else who would be interested in this story, please let us know or direct them to our website. Stay tuned for more updates as we get into the full swing of production!

With Love and Justice,

Summer, Alvin, Rennie, and Chloe

November 2, 2022

As folks in the US settle into the rain, cold, and falling leaves of Autumn, Jajas for Justice is also entering a season of change.

In just a couple of days, Summer will be starting her journey back to the US, after spending the last 11.5 months in Uganda! After getting settled in the US, she and Rennie will prepare for the distribution and fundraising.

Meanwhile, Alvin will stay in Uganda and add the finishing touches to our mockup. Once he’s done, we will show it to a few people in both the US and Uganda. After they give their feedback, it’s on to the final draft! We are ecstatic to be in this next phase of the project!

Lastly, as our team transitions back to the US, we are feeling extremely grateful to everyone who has made it possible for us to spend our days in Uganda.

We want to extend an extra special Thanks to ROTOM, who has generously hosted us over the last 11 months! When both Summer and Rennie were in Uganda, they made a house available that allowed the team to store all of the film gear and provide and office space for Alvin. Once Rennie traveled back to the US, ROTOM prepared a smaller home for Summer, which was the perfect size for her just as post production began.

Their staff has been thoughtful and compassionate, providing help for all of the team’s needs. They brought the team, and this project, under their wing, and connected the team with Jajas as well as translators, drivers, and so much more. This project truly would not have been possible without ROTOM’s support over this past year.

We are excited to enter into this next phase of the project, and cannot wait to share this story with a wider audience in the (not to distant) future!

With Love and Justice,

Summer, Alvin, and Rennie

October 10, 2022

We are feeling awfully nostalgic this week, because yesterday marked 1 year since we made our Jajas for Justice email. We have come so far since then!

Speaking of progress, we are thrilled to share that we’ve chosen our narrator for the film! Shanita is currently studying at UMCAT School of Journalism and Mass Communication: a school in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. Shanita is a great addition to our team.

Alvin, Shan, and Summer have been busy putting together a mockup of the film, which is set to be finished by the end of the month. We have even set up our first showing, which is scheduled for later this month. We’re beyond excited to finally see the film come to life! After the mockup is complete, Summer will be heading back to the U.S. to focus on planning for distribution.

As we reflect on the past year, we can’t help but think of all of the support we’ve been surrounded by – from people who have been by our side since day one, to those of you who just recently found us. We are blown away by the selfless love and support we have received in the past year. We cannot thank you enough, and absolutely cannot wait to share these Jajas’ stories with you!

With Love and Justice,

Alvin, Summer, Rennie (and Shan!)

From the Director’s Garden: Eat Like A Jaja Part II

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how important what we eat is in light of the climate crisis. Especially how some foods like red meat have a much larger carbon footprint than others. But there is much more to be said about where our food comes from, and how it is produced. So, this is “Eat Like a Jaja, Part II”

Currently, the American food system is heavily reliant on large scale industrial agriculture and imports from around the country and around the world, and the market is dominated by a few large food corporations. With this system, our grocery stores are able to remain limetlessly stocked with all kinds of fruits and vegetables, even if they are out of season or unable to be grown in that particular region. This kind of food system comes with several major problems.

First of all, are the huge amounts of greenhouse gasses produced in the process of shipping food thousands of miles. The typical American meal has traveled 1,500 miles from farm to plate. That’s about the distance from Seattle, WA to Tucson, AZ!

Additionally, fruit and vegetable varieties in this system have been selected (or modified) for their long shelf life and durability in transportation, but often at the cost of taste, which is just a bummer for consumers.

The scale of food production is also problematic. Big companies tend to rely heavily on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which kill off beneficial insects—negatively affecting biodiversity. Chemical runoff from industrial farmland is also common, and can affect the health of nearby communities and ecosystems.

Large companies have very few, if any, personal ties to the land they grow food on, so they are less likely to take care of the land.

Some might argue that large industrial farms are necessary because they produce food more “efficiently.” They do tend to bring in larger profit margins, but large farms also tend to degrade the environment faster than small farms, which is very inefficient in the long run as it renders entire swaths of land unsuitable for farming.

The alternative to this large scale/fossil fuel reliant food system is to go small and local.

Small/medium scale localized agriculture carries numerous benefits.

Obviously greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically cut when food comes from nearby, but there is more!

Eating locally rencourages communities to become educated members of the ecosystems in which they live.

People begin asking questions like, “Where does our water come from?” “How much water do we have?” “What can be grown here?” “When is this fruit in season?”

When community members know how food is grown and who grows it, they are able to make better decisions as consumers. They can choose to buy from farmers who they know to be taking good care of their environment and who are treating farm workers well. Our current system disconnects us from those realities. Localization reconnects. In general, small scale farmers are much more likely to use sustainable practices in their farming, because they are personally invested in making sure the ecosystem stays healthy for generations.

Producing food locally keeps money within the local economy and supports families directly instead of just a few shareholders. Local farming also helps foster the development of local food cultures based on an area’s particular climate, something that is rare in the United States, compared to other parts of the world.

Eating like a jaja—eating food grown by your community, fosters relationships between people and ecosystems, and is key to a sustainable future.

If you want to learn more about all of this I highly recommend the book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver and my favorite documentary “The Biggest Little Farm.”

Happy September!

This week has been a busy, yet exciting one!

We had two interviews with ROTOM staff – it was great to hear their perspectives on the struggles the Jajas are facing and get some more detailed explanations on things like pesticide use in Uganda.

Our team also went with ROTOM staff to a Senior’s Fellowship. Once a month, seniors gather in their different villages to spend time together. There is a big lunch, time for the Jajas to share their experiences, and always singing and dancing. Along with aiding in food security, ROTOM seeks to make sure their seniors have a group of friends to lean on and do not feel alone.

In editing news: we have the first full draft of our script done! This includes select pieces of the Jajas’ interviews, what our narrator will say, and cues for music and graphics. Alvin is working hard to start putting together a mock up of the film that we will be able to show editors.

On that note, if any story-minded folks are interested in volunteering to help with the editing process, let us know and we can talk about the best ways to help!

It has been exciting to see things start to come together over the past couple of weeks, after a year of hard work. Some of you have found us just recently, whereas others of you have been with us since day one. We are grateful for each and every one of you who has walked with us on this journey, and are beyond excited to be making our way through post-production!

With Love and Justice,

Summer, Alvin, Rennie, and Chloe

September 8, 2022

This week has been a busy, yet exciting one!

On that note, if any story-minded folks are interested in volunteering to help with the editing process, let us know and we can talk about the best ways to help!

With Love and Justice,

Alvin, Summer, Chloe and Rennie

August 16, 2022

This week of documentary making has been all about:

rewatching and transcribing interviews
sorting out the timelines of each garden we followed
filling in our script-skeleton with narration from the jajas
figuring out how the narrator will tie the individual story lines together
and, of course, so much labeling footage

It’s a lot of work and all a bit overwhelming at times, but it is incredible to hear months of interviews in a short amount of time.

The feel of the film is starting to reveal itself – our new goal is to listen to that and craft a story based on the things the jajas really care about, even it it’s not quite how we first imagined it would go.

That’s the amazing thing about documentaries, though: the stories tell themselves, and our job is to help them be heard!

With Love and Justice,

Summer, Alvin, and Rennie

From the Director’s Garden: Eat like a Jaja

The average American produces almost 16 tonnes of CO2 per year. Meanwhile, the average Ugandan produces just 0.13 tonnes per year, and that’s counting city dwellers. Subsistence farmers like the jajas are likely closer to the 70’s level of emissions, which was 0.03 tonnes per capita.

How are the jajas’ lifestyles so gentle on the planet?

A huge part of it is how they eat- specifically what they eat and where it comes from.

Shipping foods from around the world, especially to have fruits out of season, is a major contributor to CO2 emissions. What we eat also matters. Animal products, especially red meat require much more land, water, and other natural resources to produce compared to plant foods. In fact “industrial meat is the single biggest cause of deforestation globally.” Of all types of meat, beef is the biggest culprit— “beef production requires 20 times more land and emits 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of edible protein than common plant based protein sources such as beans, peas and lentils.”

Clearly, if we are to address the climate crisis, we need to reshape our relationship to food. Who better to look to for this than those who have been eating sustainably their whole lives?

The jajas are all subsistence farmers. They have spent their whole lives eating mostly what they can produce themselves. Therefore, they know exactly which foods are most resource efficient. Now most of us in the States can’t go become subsistence farmers, but we can adopt that mindset when we approach what we eat, by asking ourselves, what would it take for me to produce this myself? Foods like potatoes, beans, tomatoes, take a surprisingly small space to produce an abundance of food. A consistent supply of eggs is not too hard either. Our family in the U.S. keeps two ducks in our backyard who each lay an egg a day. They require more work than plants though, and eat more food than they can find in our backyard. But if our family wanted to eat a constant supply of bird meat? That would be an entirely different story. Eating chicken just once a week would require dozens and dozens of birds, and all the space and food to provide for them. A single cow can produce quite a lot of milk in a day, easily enough for a family to drink a little milk, but again, just imagine what it would take to raise a cow. But eating milk, cheese and beef regularly? I can’t really wrap my head around what it would take.

Many environmentalists, in light of this information, choose to eat entirely vegetarian or plant based diets. And many other people say, “are you serious?? I can’t give up bacon!” Meat dishes often carry fond familial and cultural memories. It’s hard to imagine giving up the flavors of childhood or holidays.

That’s why I propose another option: eating like a jaja. For them, resource intensive foods are reserved for special occasions. Chickens are saved for when guests come to dinner. A cow is primarily used for milk but sometimes one is shared between multiple families for meat during a holiday. Everything is in realistic proportions.

So rather than going “cold turkey” (get it?) let’s practice being mindful of where our food comes from and the resources it takes to produce it. (And I don’t just mean meat and cheese- I think it is important to consider the source of all our foods.) I bet eventually, those special holiday foods will become even more special and memorable.

Sources:

https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/ https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/why-meat-is-bad-for-the-environment/

July 30, 2022

This week we would like to take the time to introduce you to the wonderful organization that has been hosting us and facilitating our relationships with the jajas. Everyone, meet Reach One Touch One Ministries, also known as ROTOM.

If you’ve been wondering how the jajas are able to survive in the face of all these environmental challenges, this is how. Reach One Touch One Ministries is a local organization that supports vulnerable seniors and their dependents. They help seniors get access to clean water, seeds for planting, basic farming equipment, and direct food assistance when times get particularly hard. Their health center also provides some of the best geriatric care in Uganda.

Their vision is “to see older persons living dignified and fulfilled lives”.

It is through ROTOM that we have been able to meet these jajas and schedule our interviews with them . This documentary would not be possible without their amazing staff.

You can learn more about their work here.

From the Director’s Garden: Stopping for Tea

“We would wake up very early, while it was still dark and cold outside, and go to the garden with our parents. Sometimes we would even cry from being woken up. We would work hard all the way up till ten, when the day started getting hot. But then, we would go home and grandma would have tea and breakfast for us. We were really happy those days.”

-Jaja Margaret

Sometimes getting up and going to work can be brutal, even as an adult. Actually, especially as an adult, I would argue. But it has to be done, doesn’t it? Young Margaret had to learn to wake up before dawn to garden in order to be ready for adulthood. We all have to work to survive.

But it is equally important to stop for tea at ten.

Or simply rest, whenever your “heat of the day” kicks in. Rest might not feel productive, but we weren’t just born to be productive. We were also born to take naps in the sun, read good books, chat with friends, and enjoy sweet beverages and nice snacks.

I won’t ramble on. This is your friendly reminder to take a break. You were born deserving it.

July 16, 2022

*By the way, we are adding old newsletters to our blog. Don’t mind these backdated blog posts 🙂

A short but important update this week:

With harvest wrapping up, it’s time to switch gears to fully focus on post production! While we will occasionally be going back in the field for extra b-roll or to ask additional questions, our main focus will now be putting the pieces together.

This process includes refining our script, additional research and interviews with experts, recording voice-overs, adding sound effects, and so much more, We’ve really got our work cut out for us, and it currently looks like this process will take several months.

So, we want to thank you all for your support as we take the next big steps towards making this dream a reality. We are feeling immensely grateful for everything that has happened to to this place of our project, and are excited for what’s to come. You all are the best team we could have asked for!

With Love and Justice,

Summer, Alvin, Rennie, and all our Jajas