A Boat for Bangladesh


Video

While living in Hong Kong I was approached about a film project in Bangladesh on the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior II. The first one, Rainbow Warrior I, was blown up in New Zealand by the French secret service. That ship was replaced with the Rainbow II and it performed beautifully for 22 years. The ship was then given a new mission in southern Bangladesh after it was donated to an NGO called Friendship and renamed, “Rongdhonu,” Bengali for rainbow.

I was brought on to document the work Friendship does, provide medical care for underserved communities around the country — and there are a lot. It was like no place I had ever been. If it had not been for my news organization experience working in underdeveloped countries I’m not sure I would have been so calm. Though, finding the chaos beautiful visually kept my hand steady. I wanted to film everything. But, on a shoot like this you need more than a steady hand. It takes planning and thinking about basic things like where do you get power to recharge your batteries? What’s the voltage there? What if it rains? Or, in our case, what if there is a city-wide curfew imposed by radical muslims the day you are suppose to fly out?

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