Beatrice Taisamo (Fatuma), Ayoub Bombwe (Mwanyusi), Cathrine Credo (Neema), Kathum Maldad (Senyinge), MacDonald Haule (Kidevu), Tish Abdallah (Sheena), Sudi Muhamedi (Ali), Producer/ Director, Jordan Riber; Director of Photography, Talib Rasmussen; Screenwriters, Andrew Whatey, Jordan Riber; Producers, John Riber, Lousie Riber. © 2018
Fatuma is a pastoral story. It’s about a corn-farming family of Mwanyusi (Ayoub Bombwe) and his wife Fatuma (Beatrice Taisamo) and their teenage daughter, Neema (Cathrine Credo). Like every pastoral story, the struggle for survival could be precarious and paramount because they live by nature. Revenue from the farm’s annual yield couldn’t support the family of six at times. Heavy domestic chores for Neema are letting her fail in school. After school, she washes her siblings’ clothes, cooks for the family, and finishes late to do her homework or study for the next day. With less work at home, she follows her mother to the farm. Her mother, Fatuma, tills the farm by herself, alone. She drives the birds from her crops in the field for a whole day.
One family member we don’t see in the picture is Mwanyusi (Ayoub Bombwe), the father of the house and head of the family. He drinks all day gets himself in debt to get money in his pocket to support a younger girl in school. His drinking habit becomes a burden on the family. When he comes home in the evening, he shows his wife and family fake love so that Fatuma can give him money. Since he is often cash strapped, he is in a hurry to send Neema into marriage to an older man, against the wishes of Fatuma and Neema.
The head of the women’s group in the village tried coming close to Fatuma but was not welcoming and even advised Neema against neighbors and gossip. She had done so to protect her husband’s idiotic behavior in the village and avoid shame among her fellow women. The strain on her is written in her face overwhelmingly. The head of the family doesn’t care. See when Neema gets hurt in her palm while tilling the land and yells, “And it is my writing hand!” “How will you go to school when we have no food? Let’s go. Keep going.” She’s not so much concerned with the girl’s hurt.
“Mom doesn’t think any good can come from schooling. I was top in mathematics and physics, but I’m now nowhere because I have no time to study.” Neema tells the head of women and a community nurse, Senyinge (Kathum Maldad). “It’s not true, Neema, she worked so hard to get you here….Your mother has a lot on her plate. Tell her to come by. I will try to talk to her.” And that same evening, Mwanyusi welcomes three men to his home. They are here to formally introduce themselves and the gentleman who wants to marry Neema.
“Gentlemen, here’s my daughter…I know you don’t need one who’s too educated. But she’s the top maths student in her class.”
Later, Fatuma and Mwanyusi are in the bedroom.
Fatuma, “Where did you find them?”
“I didn’t find them…they know this is a good family.”
“And who’s this…you met at the bar, right?”
“What do you think I am?”
“Honestly, I don’t know who you are. Maybe at the bar, they know you better.”
The relationship between Senyinge and Fatuma proves fruitful. Their friendship introduces Fatuma to the women cooperative in the village, which helps her procure seedlings for her farm. Fatuma’s husband, on the promise of a bountiful harvest and him needing money so badly to sponsor a younger girl to go to school in the city, take an advance loan on the farm. The entire family of women cooperatives comes to Fatuma’s rescue against Kidevu (MacDonald Haule), the village monopolist crop buyer, who had paid advance money for the crop. Then too, Mwanyusi gets beat up by the younger boyfriend of Sheena and ends up in the hospital. He senses how a fool he had been. “Without you all, I am dead, Fatuma.” He says with regret. For the first time, he joins Fatuma till the land.
Mwanyusi assumes that because Neema has a whole breast, she’s matured to go into marriage. But he says nothing when Fatuma asks him, “Because she has breast, she can go and marry a fisherman?” Here is what reminds me of A Fisherman’s Diary (2020), when Ekan’s (Faith Fidel) uncle almost sold her into marriage to an older fisherman. Mwanyusi has gone way deep into recklessness as head of the family. When the girl’s boyfriend beats him and ends up in the hospital, he comes to reality on his discharge. With a bandaged head, standing in front of Fatuma, “I took you and all your hard work for granted…I destroyed all hope of your success. Fatuma, you are everything to me. The family we have is my life. Forgive me, my wife.”
Screenwriters proved their understanding of the script when they cut short on the developing relationship between Neema and her study-mate, Ali (Sudi Muhamedi). The community had already gotten wind of the relationship when Senyinge made a sarcastic statement about Neema’s wound. She refers anecdotally to her relationship with Ali. When Ali goes, that plot curve ends, for the scandal of the ties would steal away the confrontation in the story. Neeme couldn’t leave her mother and run away to town with Ali.
John Riber and Louise Riber are not merciful of the lead in this pastoral story, just as they didn’t in The Envelope. In The Envelope (2017), Kitasa (Ayoub Bombwe) plays chairman of a local community. He quickly begins to live big, buys his family a flat-screen tv, and drinks more. He lets estate developers corrupt him with lots of fat envelopes and gives them authority to build a residential unit next to the school. The school authorities and the community were unhappy. A few bribes here and there got them to continue the project.
Soon, he finds that his world in the community is closing in on him when no one wants to talk to him or have business with him. The labor union, a graduated form of organized crime against the community, wasn’t the one he could with whom to do business. He later goes back on his word with the labor union, but he receives a severe beating from the goons. Lastly, the serenity of his life breaks when one of the workers at the building project rapes his daughter. He spends the entire night demolishing the walls and sits on top of the rubble as the community looks on. He looks away from the community as he sits in disappointment.
Both The Envelope and Fatuma are projects geared towards curbing corruption in African or third-world countries and the resilience of the wives in the homes. It shows how one man sells his soul for individual benefits and hurts his community. Later on, he gets afflicted and disgraced by his daughter, raped by one of the workers. Feed The Future, Africa Lead, and USAID sponsored this project to show the ugly face of corruption and its effect on the average African. And they also invest in Fatuma, which celebrates communal efforts over individualism. See how all the females in the village jubilate their victory over Kidevu. All of them chanted, “Let’s build the nation.”
One appreciation for this village tract is that they use pictorial shots of foggy mountains far into the distance. Imagine the breathtaking grandeur of dusk scenery in Neema’s background as she passes along the foothills of the far-away mountains. Shots of concrete jungles of the Mombasa skyscape. New York’s Manhattan, downtown Lagos and conjure up their mental poems that stick with us forever. Kilimanjaro and other memorable hills and mountains paint us a picturesque canvas we can never forget, like Neema looking away from the elevated point at the mountains and vegetation far below her.