(Darwin's Nightmare)
His eyes reddened by a lack of sleep, and probably from the ammonia used in a fish frying operation nearby, night watchman Raphael guards a fish research institution with his hands steadfast and ready to fire poison tipped arrows at trespassers. The edict is simple, kill anyone who comes on site. He’s working for a paltry $1 a night, and hopes for a civil war so that he can join the army and earn a higher salary. ‘We need more education’ he speaks of others like himself. Education is certainly necessary, but what Raphael and his kinsman of Tanzania need is a miracle.

While researching Kisangani’s Diary, his previous film about Rwandan refugees, director Hubert Sauper learnt of cargo planes that flew into Mwanza carrying arms for nearby Military units and flew out with tonnes of Nile Perch, a fish accidentally introduced into Lake Victoria, which has all but destroyed its ecological balance.

"Children of Angola received guns for Christmas day. European children received grapes," quips Dima about the consequence of his routine flights into the area. In every way, the transaction is imbalanced, favouring only those willing to exploit the situation, or become impervious to its ramifications: A plastics distributor talks proudly of his sales records with the fishing industry, only to be intercut with shots of 8 year old children melting down that very same packaging to make a homebrew glue for sniffing, their only method for numbing the terrifying ordeals they endure while sleeping on the streets. While everyone involved seems to acknowledge the inherent grotesqueness of the situation, nobody seems to have any idea how to cope with it.

Darwin is the perfect theoretical model to describe the situation that seems to be engulfing Lake Victoria. An evolutionary anomaly, the people are suffering at the hands of a fish that feeds on it own, and has caused extinction of several species of other fish in the lake. The women of Mwanza have become prostitutes; their children drug addicts and their husbands exploited by a fishing industry, which is the only significant source of employment. The European Union representatives and factory owners believe their ongoing trade benefits the impoverished and financially devastated regions around Lake Victoria, but their business only adds fuel to the chaotic life around its shores. In every way, Darwin’s notion of survival of the fittest has become an arduous reality for the fishing communities around Lake Victoria who are ironically are being destroyed by the fish they are over-harvesting. Even more significant than the devastation caused by the fishing industry, is the prospect that the lake’s Nile Perch population will probably become depleted, which would financially cripple the already ravaged Tanzanian economy.

Saupers extraordinary film conveys institutional hypocrisy not through policy or politicians, but through the very ordinary lives that are impacted on by those in positions of power. Darwin’s Nightmare is ostensibly, ours too.—Shahir Daud