My name is Ampuriire Shiela, and I’m from Rukungiri, but now married in Kabale and I have one child. I very much wanted to complete school, but my father fell sick of cancer when I was in Senior Four. They took him to Mulago hospital and he died. I went for a nursing course thereafter, but I dropped out due to lack of money.
I could not complete my studies, and I did not know how to get skills for a job. Then one day I heard on the radio about this training, and I thought it would be great to have a certificate, so I applied. I’m very determined to learn filmmaking, and to make new friends who I know will help me get a career.
You see, I’ve come with my baby. He is only a few months old. I could not leave him at home because I have no baby-sitter. Yet I could not let this chance go by, which is why I came for the training.
I don’t know if I should take the training as having had a positive impact on my life. It was a very practical training, which prepares you for a job in a particular field and I got a certificate that I can use to apply for a job with the TVs or Radio stations. Maybe I’ll end up with a drama group and earn something little, or I might end up producing my own shows. Of course, the reality is difficult.
I thought that immediately after the training we shall start earning money, which is not the case. I actually thought that we shall start earning money even as we are being trained, and I must say I’m a little disappointed with that. It’s like any other training; it gives you a skill and you have to see how to use it.
However, it is a unique kind of training. You see, at nursing school, you learn things from a textbook. A teacher tells you things and you follow without questioning. You just cram what they tell you. With this film training, of course there is the technical part where you learn how to operate a camera, how to record sound, and how to edit videos, but it is a very creative training.
You have to think of stories to tell. I didn’t know it is very hard to come up with stories. It’s very, very difficult. But then, I saw that it is easier to tell stories from my own life experiences, from things that happened to me or to people close to me. Or just to people that I know of. So this thing opened my mind and I started to think about things that I had not thought about in a long time. I started to say things that I had kept hidden in my heart. I don’t know if this is a good thing.
One of the films I made was inspired by my real life experiences. In the film, a young girl loses her father to cancer and, with no one to pay for her fees, she drops out of school. She meets a man who convinces her that he will educate her, if only she marries him. She agrees.
However, after some time, she asks him to take her back to school, and he tells her it won’t happen, that she should focus on giving birth. In making this film, I remembered things from my own life that I had kept to myself. These things have pressed me for many years, and it made me sad, and I’m not sure if opening up and talking about them is a good thing. Click here to watch the short film.
I don’t know if it will help me forget the past and move on to build for myself a career, but now that I’ve told the story, it will always be there. I can never forget. So I don’t know if this is a good thing. What is strange about this film is that the woman who played the main character also suffered a similar fate, so she was playing her true life story. Many women in my area tell me similar stories, about how men took advantage of their problems, and I don’t know if speaking out will help other women. I don’t know. I just felt relieved to speak out.
I’m married, and I now have a child, and I’m not sure I can go back to formal school. I really like to study, and I wish I get another chance, and maybe a miracle will happen, and a Good Samaritan will pay for my fees, but I don’t know. Working on this project made me remember all these things and it sometimes hurts and I don’t know if that is a good thing.
I chose the title “I like to study” because it reflects what I’ve always wanted in my life, and it’s also the story that I told in the film I made. It is the preferred title of my film.