This Crude idea might just work

Location Boat back from big women's protest | Mood Caged animals planning escape | Date 20 April 2006
Filed in:
Author (full name): 
Franny Armstrong
Location: 
Boat back from big women's protest
Mood: 
Caged animals planning escape
Soundtrack: 
Franny, Lizzie and Layefa blasting out "My Heart Will Go On" in relief. Wouldn't have predicted Celine Dion to be sole artist in common.
Ailments: 
Sunburn (but helpful cos using as excuse to cover head with sarong and not talk to anyone)
Date: 
20 April 2006
Current crisis: 
Will turn to violence if one more woman grabs my arm, while filming, and says "film, film", pointing at the thing I'm filming and ruining the shot

Seem to have accidentally become some sort of focal point for the protesters. There's a constant stream of people coming for meetings at our hotel at all times of day and night - suspect it may be because Robinson is doling out free drinks with our money.

The hardest task, it seems, is getting them to agree between themselves who's going to do what where. Or what village the protest is going to be. Or who is the spokesperson. Or what the name on the press release is going to be. ("Women of the Niger Delta", soon got changed to "Concerned Women's Groups of Opwama village, Warri and XXX village"). If only they had a Medha Patkar to bring all the factions together. But then they had a Ken Saro-Wiwa and look what happened to him.

They asked me to read their new press release, but by the time I was completely rewriting whole paragraphs ten minutes later, thought we were getting onto dodgy ground and so retired to our room to watch fuzzy Terminator movies.

The protest came together in the end, though, and when I was up on a barge filming barrels of oil in the foreground with 150 shouting women behind, I suddenly had a flash of satisfaction that the whole Crude idea - joining the drops - is really going to work.