TRAVERSE 114
And Now For Something Completely Different KAYAK THE KWANZA
When we hear people speak of having an adventure, our minds tend to go to places we have seen on film and TV. We imagine high adrenaline type moments or picturesque views. What I had the privilege of seeing today, truly defined an adventure. As it is a Friday night, I pour myself a glass of wine, place myself on the couch and hit play on Kayak The Kwanza. With a length of 54 minutes, it’ s the perfect duration for my attention span after a full week’ s work.
The opening scene immediately grabs my attention – a very picturesque view of a country in Africa. The words“ Written and directed by Oscar Scifadi” appear neatly at the top of the screen.
A voice-over begins-“ Hi I’ m Oscar, in June 2016 I travelled to Angola to meet up with my friend Alfie. Together we completed the sourced amount of navigation on the Kwanza river, a journey of over 1300 kilometres.”
Oscar introduces what’ s to come in the documentary. A few facts stand out, that had me very much intrigued. They use the following in the same sentence to give you a picture.
1.“ Chased” and“ hippos”( the word hippos is used so many times, it is worth doing a drinking game around it. A swig of your drink for each time Oscar or Alfie mentions it)
2.“ Detained” and“ deportation”
R E
The documentary is split into 9 parts. Each part depicts the journey of our adventurers and while all are worth talking about I won ' t ruin the flow of the story for you by describing each however, I will say that one of the films highlights is part 8, where our adventurers get arrested and aren ' t able to film the outcome. What follows is a South Park-esk artist impression of what happened during this time. This is too good for words and complete with impressions of cartoon police officers and immigration officers, this section is a treat, hilarious.
Spoiler alert They make it to the end. For a documentary that only goes for 50 minutes, Kayak the Kwanza is equipped with a good punch of personality. Oscar’ s style of narration is both quirky and hilarious and
Saj Sinniah
V I
the format of the documentary complements his sense of humour. I laughed at so many peculiar moments that were not kayaking related, that make me wonder what Oscar and Alfie would be like if I hung out with them at our local pub.
I have so many questions I would like to ask them like; what was travelling like in TAAG airlines? Where did Oscar buy his Air Jordan ' s that replaced his lost boots? Was the fried chicken for the last meal any good? What did the dehydrated food taste like? Is Oscar still with his girlfriend?
When the end credits commence, I am filled with happiness and empowerment. A journey has been captured around moments in the life where two people whose strength of passion got them through. While there were struggles of physical damage and run ins with the law, combined with serious uncomfortable conditions, the two adventurers barely complained. They embraced adventure and shared a common goal.
It is a remarkable effort by Oscar to have this documentary available for the world to see. I hope I get to meet him one day.
E WS
Kayak The Kwanza will soon be available as a book, a diarised version of this fantastic film. It will certainly make for an interesting read and help a great organisation in The HALO Trust.
More information of availability of the book and The HALO Trust can be found at- www. KayakTheKwanza. com
TRAVERSE 114