Kahindi Changawa Galo is one of the most inspiring conservationists to have emerged from Africa.

Kahindi started work as a housekeeper at the Local Ocean Trust in Watamu on Kenya’s north eastern coast when his father retired from the job. He was fascinated by the work of the trust and used to sneak off from his housework to work with the turtles. Eighty percent of the world’s turtle population has been lost over the last 40 years, and as they have been swimming the earth’s oceans for the last 200 million years, Kahindi felt compelled to do anything in his power to help them. “They clearly need special attention,” he says. After several years working as a volunteer he became the field manager for the Watamu Turtle Watch.

The focus of his work is to persuade local fishermen from slaughtering sea turtles that they accidentally caught and to rather hand them over to the Trust for a small fee so the fishermen can repair their nets. Kahindi has dedicated his life to saving turtles, whether it be in nest protection, sea turtle rescue or rehabilitation. He patrols the beaches every evening at 10pm and again at 5am and the rest of the day is spent collecting, tagging and releasing turtles that the fishermen have caught. It’s been a long and difficult battle, but through his gentle but persistent manner Kahindi has persuaded hundreds of fishermen to release turtles back into the ocean.

This beautifully shot film allows us to encounter many turtles up close, be it under water or stranded on their backs, or ”flying” in the arms of Kahindi as he struggles to get them back to the ocean where they swim off like arrows shot from a bow, back to the freedom of the ocean.

Morné Jacobsz, cameraman and editor of the “Turtleman of Watamu”, first heard Kahindi’s story while flying back from Kenya, and he knew that I, Liz Fish, was looking for a new HPON story. Morné and I worked together on “Voelvry” in the first series. I immediately got onto the Watamu Turtle Watch and began to talk to Jane Spilsbury, a volunteer for the trust, about Kahindi and his story. Eight months later we flew to Malindi, Kenya to shoot the doccie.

But shooting the Turtleman of Watamu was one of the more difficult shoots we have done. The local people have been so badly treated by foreign tourists that they really hate being filmed. The tourists have “stolen” their images in the most disrespectful fashion: Jane told us stories of tourists buying bags of sweets and throwing them into the air, and taking pictures of the kids scrambling for them as if to say “look how desperate people are in Africa”. So filming an establisher or a cutaway proved tricky – we either had to pay people, something we never do in South Africa, or negotiate their permission, which is completely unwieldy, especially considering the time constraints.

Kahindi has had loads of experience of working with foreign volunteers and very quickly relaxed with us. Our first day began at 5am on his dawn patrol, it was a wonderful way to get to know him and embrace once again the incredible beauty of the Kenyan coast (I had lived and worked in Kenya 12 years before). During the course of the next few days we had only one turtle release and we were getting a tad anxious, but on Friday night, just as we had showered and were about to have supper, we got that call and rushed off into the dark. The fishermen in a remote village, a village we would return to several times in the coming week, had caught four massive turtles. It was as though a floodgate had opened - over the next seven days we filmed 18 turtles.

Although I had tried to set up as much as possible via email, and Jane was extremely helpful in booking the car and accommodation, liasing with Kahindi, Turtle Trust head, Steve Trott, and the local fishermen, nothing quite replaces doing the recce in person and building a relationship before you pick up the camera. I always put a lot of time and energy into connecting with my characters before the shoot begins, and I felt very off key arriving cold. Kahindi was not comfortable being the sole focus of the film which is a reflection of his humble nature. I showed Jane, Steve and Kahindi my two HPON 1 programs “Spirit of the Mountain” and “Voelvry” which really helped them understand where I was coming from and what I was trying to do.

It really struck me how extremely hard this small team of people work. Steve, Kahindi and Jane seemed to spend their entire lives working for turtles. Each night either Kahindi or Steve is out collecting turtles. No social arrangement or evening off is off-limits for a turtle call. It’s also very heavy work: turtles are extremely strong, and some are very heavy. The drive from the village to the beach can be very arduous because at times there are more turtles than boxes, so you have to “cuddle” the turtle, ie hold it on your lap with a towel over it’s eyes to try and calm it down. Frequently the turtles urinate on you and then it’s the awkward process of carrying them across the beach as they struggle to get free. It’s certainly not glamorous work, but freeing the turtles and seeing them swim off is so rewarding that it seems to keep them going.

On one of the releases I drove Jane with one of the smaller turtles cradled on her lap. He was a wild creature who managed to scrape her arm badly. I drove with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the turtle’s head to help calm him down so he did not do too much damage to either Jane or himself.

The project car was in for repairs while we were there so they were using Steve’s car and when that broke down, they hired a taxi, and then the taxi man was roped in to carrying the turtles (it helped that he was Kahindi’s uncle.) But what impressed me even more was that no matter how late the release is, Kahindi will still parole the beach every evening and again at dawn and each patrol lasts two to three hours. He really is a turtle midwife, hence the title of the programme, ”The Turtleman of Watamu”

Kahindi and Jane were incredible, they pulled out all the stops making themselves completely available and while we were out shooting with Kahindi, Jane was back at the office setting things up for us. Without them we would not have a film because the local processes and protocol are so delicate we would have had to be there for months to achieve what we did in 8 days. Needless to say it was extremely intense, and we worked non-stop. I was producing, production managing, catering, driving, directing, and doing sound. Morné shot long days, coped with “weird” food and unpredictable schedules, and the humidity was intense - at 5am when our day started we were already sweating.

The fishermen were initially highly sceptical of us because another filmmaker had filmed them and promised stuff and never delivered. So we printed out our stills at the office and presented copies to them the next day, which did wonders - by the time we left we were all really comfortable with each other. They allowed us to film their homes, wives and children and were really disappointed when we were not there when they caught the seven turtles in one fishing trip!

We spent the last few days and nights anxiously waiting for the nest to hatch and for a turtle to come ashore and lay her eggs. It happened finally on the last morning just a few hours before our flight. The nest Kahindi had been watching for the last 52 days finally hatched! We filmed the most touching scene of tiny hatchlings running the gauntlet past the ghost crabs to the beach. It was a very emotional end to a fantastic and exhausting nine days. That night as Morné and I were flying back across Tanzania, Kahindi was sitting on the beach with a turtle for three hours while she was laying her eggs. I guess you can’t have it all, and as Jane said in an SMS, hatchlings make better television!

But we had an absolute jorl being on the water, in the mangroves, and on the most spectacular beaches. I was in my element, I loved the people, the beauty, speaking my broken Swahili, and waking to the magic of the East African pre-dawn bird chorus, something I really miss living in Cape Town.

.My only wish was to spend a day in that magnificent ocean, and to go birding in the forests and hang out with Kahindi without a camera anywhere near us. When I got home and looked at the images I regretted that even more.

DIRECTOR PROFILE: Liz Fish- Director/Producer/Researcher

Award winning TV documentary Director and Producer Liz Fish has been in the Television Industry since 1983 after graduating from UCT in 1982. Liz is a skilled documentary producer/director covering a wide range of issues from anti-apartheid issues, to human rights, youth programs, current affairs and environmental issues. She worked as an anti-apartheid film maker and in community television in the 80’s as the director of the Community Video Education Trust, CVET. She began to work for foreign TV news agencies in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and then worked as a South African-based editor and producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s National TV News. “The Long Journey of Clement Zulu” is one of her best-known works, a film that has been acclaimed as a landmark development in South African documentary film making.

The Long Journey of Clement Zulu” commissioned by the BBC, and which has won several awards locally and been widely shown at local and foreign film festivals. It has just been selected as one of the 10 best Encounters documentaries for the Encounters 10th celebration

She is noted for her “remarkable ability to make intimate stories about ordinary people” Mail and Guardian.

Last season of HPON, Liz Directed and Produced “Spirit of the Mountain”, which won a merit award at the SAB Environmental Journalism Awards in 2007. Her other HPON film, “Voelvry”, had been shown at four local film festivals and two foreign festivals.

She is currently a Carte Blanche Producer.