The Bank of Suubi follows Fred Ssewamala on a present-day journey back to his home in Uganda, where he conducts ambitious research, and flashes back to his life story, starting with a militia raid that left him orphaned at age twelve. Through archival images and Fred’s candid recounting, we learn how he narrowly escaped death, bounced between extended family homes, won Uganda’s most prestigious scholarship, and ultimately, came to the U.S. and pursued his life’s work.
As we return to Uganda with Fred, we learn that his mission is to dramatically improve prospects for orphans there, and we meet two orphans as they are enlisted to participate in Fred’s research. The predominant question -- for us, for Fred, and for the researchers worldwide who await his results -– becomes: will they find suubi (hope)?
Fred’s efforts are met with local resistance. He struggles to persuade families in remote villages to trust that their money will be safe in a bank ten miles away, and he must win the support of local clergy, who are politically powerful and socially conservative. They control the schools, and Fred knows that to make progress, he must convince them and the families that even girls can contribute to family income and deserve a chance at an education.
Fred travels between Uganda’s remote villages, where he leads a research team working with 400 orphans who have limited access to basic necessities, and Columbia University, where he is a renowned professor in the highest tiers of American academe. Briefly, we meet Fred’s siblings (who remained in Uganda), and their familial interactions highlight the sharp contrasts between Fred’s two homes and lives.
Fred’s success story is contrasted with that of two orphans who are at the center of Uganda’s child welfare crisis and who reflect the competing visions of child development in Fred’s study: one who receives standard, institutional support services, and who is unlikely to pursue education beyond primary; the other who receives a savings account and begins to invest in her future. As a creative device, we use imagery representing Fred’s flashbacks and the orphans’ “flash-forwards,” playing with time, space and the discrepancies in their outlooks. It is these visions, after all, and the suubi within, that is the crux of the story.
Our story is likely to end on a bittersweet note. While one of our orphans will head to secondary school with an unknown but hopeful future, the orphan who leaves primary with no assets or prospects will likely maintain a future void of hope. In this, we will learn the true power of the bank of suubi.
As the longest-running war in African history (between the Ugandan military and the Lord’s Resistance Army) nears a tenuous resolution in 2008, a million people, many of them children orphaned by war itself, by AIDS, and by conditions in refugee camps, will return to their villages. In our final scene, we walk behind these children as they navigate toward Uganda’s horizon of uncertainty.
