One woman’s daily round in sub-Saharan Africa

(Photo By Learning about women's lives in Uganda. Image: Getty)

A Day in the Life of Polly Apio
BBC World Service

A documentary for the Women Farmers series followed one woman’s daily round in sub-Saharan Africa (21 October). The presenter/ producer, Cecile Wright, spent time with Polly Apio in Uganda, accompanying her to and from a distant well, grinding millet and bedding down in her hut. We opened to the sound of soft snoring followed by a Disneylike catalogue of morning noises: cocks crowing, birds cheeping, the sun and light and air inherent in the sounds potent and optimistic.

On the face of it, the programme idea was simple – just the two women, presenter and subject, talking on the way to the well, Polly quite open and humorous, Wright clearly someone to whom the correct question or most fruitful line of inquiry is obvious, nudging the conversation in directions that made good listening. Except it never felt manipulated. This was an honest chat over a four-kilometre walk, with the speakers growing more physically tired, and with the narrative weaving all over the place in the way that discussions on walks tend to do.

Polly spoke about everything from the lot of women in Uganda (“Some people say there are improvements, but . . .”) to her broken marriage (“He stopped coming home, so I followed him to his place of work . . .”). “Are your sons decent men?” Wright asked. Polly gave a low laugh: “They say to their wives, ‘Don’t tell Mamma or she will harass me!’”

You were increasingly aware that this conversation – the whole programme so far –had been mostly one long, continuous take. Even the unstoppably enquiring Clare Balding on her Radio 4 walk-and-talk show Ramblings has never managed such a protracted exchange. And most programmes wouldn’t allow it anyway – the trend having long been (nervously, maddeningly) to cut in and out. But the gentle intensity of the dialogue here, the faith in its natural rhythms, the many areas meandered over (infidelity, heartbreak, family traditions in Africa) effortlessly reminded us how protean and complex the human personality is.

Polly came alive as though the programme had plucked out her mystery and captured what made her so charming and strong. And then, later, to sleep. “D’you mind my kid snoring?” she asked exhaustedly, from the other side of the hut. Her walking companion just laughed, and shook her head.