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2007-11-01  MOVIES & TV | November 01, 2007 | Shades of grey
The Great Granny Revolution documents the relationship between women from a small
Quebec village and grandmothers of AIDS orphans in South Africa. Ruth Mestechkin reports.
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| | by Ruth Mestechkin |
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One
morning, at 5am, Brenda Rooney and her husband Robert propped up a
video camera in Alexandra Township, South Africa, to film a
documentary. But there was a hitch: They needed their car to be in a
safe place, but they didn't want it peeking out of the shots.
Then,
one woman, who was a subject in the film, had an idea. "I'll be back in
a minute," she promised. Five hours after the shoot, they walked to the
car. And there was someone guarding it.
"I realized," says Rooney, "that we were safe in Alex. These women were looking after us."
These
women are called Gogos and they are a group of grandmothers in
Alexandra Township, outside of Johannesburg, raising AIDS orphans. The
Rooneys' film The Great Granny Revolution documents the
partnership of the Gogos with a group of grandmothers from Wakefield,
southwestern Quebec, who extend moral and financial support.
The brainwave came a few years ago. "We made a film called Condoms, Fish and Circus Tricks,
looking at AIDS and how it affected Africa. It was shown in our little
village and it was a fundraiser for the United Church," explains Rooney
in a phone interview. "At the end of the showing, someone in the
audience said to the minister, "You should meet my mother.' It turned
out that his mother had been working in Alexandra Township in a clinic
with a group of grandmothers who were raising AIDS orphans."
A
few months later, Rose Letwaba, a nurse from the clinic, spoke to
Wakefield United Church about the Gogos. Then a bell rang in the mind
of 81-year-old Norma Geggie.
"She wondered what if 10 women from
our village partnered with 10 of your women," recalls Rooney. "It all
started as one individual deciding to do something. It's about hope in
the face of loss."
Rooney is a founding member of the Wakefield
Grannies. Today, North America is home to more than 150 granny groups
holding fundraisers for the Gogos and their children. "It's very easy
to be overwhelmed by the pathos of the challenges they face. To be 60
or 70 years old and parenting little children again," says Rooney,
softly. "It's difficult. But they're not defeated."
The
Wakefield women, together now for almost four years, send money and
support to Africa. They ship warm clothes for the kids. They help the
teens go to camp, where they develop their own AIDS training
activities. But the people of Alexandra Township aren't the only ones
gaining.
"We also benefit in our own lives, with our
collegiality with each other. And our village is benefiting because we
enrich the village with our activities," says Rooney. "Everybody wins
when we take action."
Forty-five thousand people per square
kilometre call Alexandra Township home. And the kids top the list.
Rooney admits that there's so little hope for many of them.
"There
was a day when we were filming at a school. You could see quite a few
of the kids were HIV/AIDS positive. You could see the school was
physically damaged. There were not many books around, and the kids
carried their chairs in with them when they moved from one place to
another," she says. "And it just hit me—what a huge struggle it was for
them. We owe those kids an opportunity."
The documentary, which
premieres at the Oxford November 4 at 1pm, also spotlights clips from
the Grandmother Gathering, a 2006 conference in Toronto backed by the
Stephen Lewis Foundation. Rooney says it was one of the most magical
things for her.
"One of the main images that isn't even in our
film from the conference stays in my mind. We would come out of our
meeting rooms and boil out into the halls. And the energy level and the
tears and the laughter would just be so intense. Then we'd grab a
coffee and off to the next workshop. There was just this incredible
energy."
Filming has long finished, but the grannies keep
going—they grouped together 1,000 women on Grandparents Day (September
8) and marched on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. "What you do matters. And
it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do something," says
Rooney. "One day a generation of white-haired women is going to take
over the world!"
The Great Granny Revolution, Sunday, November 4 at Oxford Theatre, 6408 Quinpool, 1pm, $10.
© Copyright 2007 Coast Publishing
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