Before I left Finland for the Wild West Eki and I talked about developing a new project: teaching the
Navajo language to kids on the reservation (working title)
Tses-naa-Snez (
Belong"). I´d read that it´s been compared to
Finnish in difficulty. And both languages were suppressed by the US and Finnish governments at one time. But when I got here I found out that you don´t just walk into a reservation and start shooting. There´s a thick layer of bureaucracy to wade through.
So when I met a guy (an ex-cop from Wisconsin) who said he had a daughter who worked on the Navajo reservation in Arizona I perked up. But it got better. She was gifted, had got scholarships to Rosemary Hall (a posh preparatory school) and Brown University. Plus, she was beautiful and had been a contestant in the
Miss Navajo Beauty Pageant. Where you not only have to be a knock-out but able to eviscerate a sheep and know what to do with the parts afterwards. Now she was back on the reservation trying to help her people.
I was excited, gave him my card and waited. And waited. He did warn me that she wanted to move to LA and I warned him that a documentary was a long-term commitment. It´s been three weeks and I just heard at the local hang-out that my ex-cop-connection had put air in his tires and embarked on a 2,000 mile bike trip. Big Disappointment. But I think Eki will agree with me that it´s still a good idea.
Lesson 48 When all else fails have a good cry.
Next week:
49 Make ´EM Sign on the Dotted Line
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