Nelden Djakababa, Contributor, Jakarta, nelden.djakababa@gmail.com
This film documents the harsh realities of life in a fishing community in Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria, Tanzania.
There is no comforting voice of a narrator to smooth out the rough edges. The film is shot entirely on a handy-cam, further rendering the rawness of the harsh lives it captures.
And then there's the story itself. For some, life in Mwanza might be too real for comfort. The plot is edited in such way that it unravels one layer at a time, each more disturbing than the previous.
One of the earlier layers tells us about the Nile perch, a large, meaty fish that can grow as large as a three-year-old child.
We follow the fish as they are captured by traditional fishermen, and see them sent to a modern fish factory where fellow villagers cut the fish into juicy fillets, pack them and send them to Europe and Japan using giant Ilyushin cargo planes operated by Russian pilots.
We then discover that the guard of the Fisheries' Research Institute got his job because the previous one was murdered and hacked into pieces.
The guard earns about US$1 per night and still considers himself lucky to have the tough job, adding that he'd be earning more if there were a war and he was enlisted to fight with the army.
In contrast, Eliza, a prostitute who services the foreign cargo pilots, can earn $10 per client. Close to the end of the film, we learn the ugly fate that befalls Eliza, as we see her singing coyly from the handy-cam's LCD screen.
We are then shown a glimpse of the lives of Mwanza street children. Some of them are neglected by their parents who have to go to other areas to find work, leaving their children to their own devices.
But more disturbing is the fact that most of them have to live on the streets because their parents have died of AIDS. The fishermen's sheer poverty has inadvertently contributed to the quick spread of the disease.
In a particular fishermen's community with a population of around 300, some 45 to 50 individuals have died due to the virus within the last six months. We see a religious leader who says that he does not encourage his flock to wear condoms ""because it is sinful.""
Returning to the interior of the fish factory, we are introduced to the businessman who supplies packing materials for the fillets to be exported. But immediately after that, we are shown how the street children scavenge these materials from a landfill, melting them down to make glue for sniffing.
They find escape in the noxious fumes, which lessen the harsh pain of everyday life. But as they fall vulnerably asleep in glue-fume highs, they often fall prey to sexual abuse.
While the fillets are consumed in Europe, the fishermen cannot afford to eat the better parts of their catch. They are left to consume what is called ""fish frames,"" the rotting remains of fish bones and heads that are discarded by the fish factory.
You can almost smell the putrefaction as the leftovers are hung out to dry and maggots emerge from some of them: Yes, the film is that real.
Meanwhile, we learn from TV and the newspapers that famine is starting in other regions of Tanzania.
At the beginning of the film, we are told officially that the cargo planes fly in to Mwanza airport empty, returning full of fish fillets to Europe.
As the layers reveal, many of the cargo planes fly into Mwanza filled with smuggled weaponry to supply the war in Angola and other parts of Africa. Why to Mwanza? Because the chaotic airport lacks a security system.
Darwin's Nightmare does not make easy viewing. The title could refer to the Nile perch, an exotic species introduced to Lake Victoria around 50 years ago, which, in time, almost entirely wiped out most of the 300-plus indigenous fish species.
More fundamentally, it may well refer to one of Charles Darwin's most famous theories: The strong and powerful survive, while the weak and powerless eventually perish.
This film is a sad, sobering reminder of that theory.
Toward the end of Darwin's Nightmare, one of the Russian pilots admits movingly to having flown guns into Africa while shipping Angolan grapes to Europe.
With a blank stare, he says, ""African children get guns for Christmas, European children grapes. I want all children to be happy, but I don't know how.""
(Darwin's Nightmare will be screened Dec. 12 at 4:30 p.m. at Istituto Italiano di Cultura (IIC) and Dec.14 at 7 p.m., also at IIC.)
