Seattle student documents life in Uganda | Community Spirit

As a teenager living a semi-cloistered life in rural northwest Montana, James Reeves dreamed of exploring the world.

But even in his wildest fantasies, he never imagined he’d one day be sitting in small underground bunker in Uganda with a group of destitute street kids.

Yet that’s exactly where Reeves, a film student at the Art Institute of Seattle, found himself earlier this summer.

Along with a film professor named Dan Fabrizio, Reeves recently spent three intense weeks in sub Saharan Africa working on documentary exploring the lives of some of the poorest kids in one of the poorest regions of the world.

Despite his inherent wanderlust, Reeves had somehow never managed to become the world traveler he once envisioned. In fact, save for a few short trips to Canada, he’d never left the friendly confines of America prior to boarding a jumbo jet set for Uganda.

His static life might have continued had it not been for Fabrizio, who often spoke to his students about the many times he’d been to Africa. Fabrizio wanted to film a documentary in the country he loved so much, and he asked Reeves if he’d like to join him on the trip to work as a cinematographer.

Once they arrived in Kampala, Uganda’s capitol and largest city, the pair met up with Herbert Anderson, a reformed “street kid” who would act as a liaison and tour guide during the trip. Apparently not wanting to sugar coat the social problems of the city, Anderson immediately introduced Reeves and Fabrizio to a gang of street kids who lived in a small, man-made bunker under the streets in the city’s bustling downtown core.

Once the interviews got started, Reeves said he was shocked by what he heard from the kids, some of whom were as young as seven-years old.

“Being in the capitol city of Kampala and being right downtown, they’re faced with rape and starvation every day. They have to pay off the cops just so they don’t beat them up,” Reeves said.

He said most of the children aren’t from Kampala, but came to the city after being cast off from their remote villages when their parents could no longer feed them.

Forced to adapt to a cutthroat urban life at such a young age, Reeves said many of the kids turned to marijuana, which is cheap and readily available, to help dull the pain and give them the courage to steal food and money.

 “Most of them at some point have committed a crime,” Reeves said. “They’ve been pushed into that by the need to survive.”

After wrapping up the three-week trip, Reeves said he returned to Seattle a changed man.

“It made me recognize that I have the ability to make a difference,” he said of the experience. “Even in small amounts, it can affect the people around me, and those people can do the same thing.”

Fabrizio is now editing the hours of footage into an hour-long documentary, which he hopes to sell to a news agency.

Footage of the trip is available here.