Christmas gave me the Blues, but we've got to forage ahead.

We had a nice Christmas day, filled with even more Harrison Ford movies (that guy made a lot of movies!), some wine, some steak, no presents, a marathon of skype phone calls and silly crepe paper hats. Chris asked me yesterday if I am tired of traveling, and I had to think about it a bit. I think the initial euphoria is definitely wearing off in the face of the Holidays, but I don't feel ready to come home either.

We are busily editing this eight minute short, (to be perfectly accurate, Eric is editing it.) Chris and I are making commments and looking through all the footage for what we think is worthwile. I have a renewed appreciation for the importance of editing in shaping an interesting story. We have about 60 hours of material, and whoever ends up watching this thing should thank their lucky stars that someone took out the most boring stuff. I'd say that only about 20 percent of what we have is interesting enough to include in a longer version of the film. What we have at present is mostly talking heads, experts talking about malaria in a really academic sense.

What we need to go out and find now, are the people who are dealing with this disease to give this problem personal resonance. This will challenge us, because it requires that we invade people's privacy. We will have to be aggressive and capture people in a really vulnerable moment. I know that I wouldn't want to be filmed in the grip of fever and delirium. The good news is that we have amazing contacts who can connect us with sick people. Our objective is to enlighten people in the U.S about this issue. What really continues to move me about all of this is how preventable the deaths are. There are many many many other problems in Africa, this is only one. But to me, this is one that can and should be solved. No one should die of a treatable disease, but it happens here every day. We are about to understand the malaria burden in a totally new way. My only hope is that we can capture some of that information and move people back home closer to action.