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Shot over 5 years, Yumyum is the remarkable story of 3 members of a Sierra Leonean street gang. Yumyum is the general, A Class is the brainy one, KKdog is the ‘notorious criminal’. Yumyum was given his own camera to record their lives and was expected to sell it but instead he shot 100 hours of footage. Candid, brutal, touching. This feature doc is a mix of his footage and the filmmakers and the story of what happens when you try and help. Extraordinary access, a personal insight and a lot of patience make Yumyum a film like no other.

Shot over 5 years, Yumyum is the remarkable story of a Sierra Leonean street gang. There are over 200 members including: Yumyum- the general; A- Class- the brainy one and K.K.Dog- the ‘notorious criminal’.
Yumyum was given his own camera to record their daily lives. He was given no direction, just a little technical help, as the idea was that he would shoot what mattered to him. He was expected to sell it after a few days but instead he went on to shoot 100 hours of footage - candid, brutal, touching. He handed over his footage without ever asking to see it and making no apology for anything in it. This feature documentary is a mix of his footage and the film-maker’s. It is a film in two parts. Part one introduces life on the streets with all its hardships, mayhem and joy. Part two takes us on the journey of what happens when you try to help. Extraordinary access, a personal insight and a lot of patience make Yumyum a film like no other - moving, shocking and ultimately uplifting.

When the film starts Sierra Leone is the poorest country in the world. Thousands live on the streets.  General Yumyum, a name that means ‘Bad Bad’, rules a gang of boys aged between five and thirty. He is 22 and was a child combatant, his parents having been killed in the war. Life in the gang is hard and often brutal but it is not chaotic. There are rules and punishments for breaking them, but there is also fun and camaraderie. Yumyum’s sense of outrage often gets him into trouble. His story is marked by constant arrests and his fear that they will one day lock him up and throw away the key, leads him to eventually leave Kenema. K.K.Dog means ‘dog to be put down’ and he is 11 years old when the film starts. Rejected by his parents, he has become one of the more notorious members of the gang but the tough, ganja-smoking exterior hides a kid who just wants someone to love him. A-Class is the brainy one. On the streets since his parents were killed in the conflict, he just wants to get back into school but girlfriends, babies and corrupt teachers block his progress.

The first half of the film takes the audience on a journey into the world of street life as never before seen. Arrests, raids, robbery, hunger, injury are all part of the course as is hanging out with your friends talking the nonsense people talk when they have food in their bellies and are with those they know best.

There was never a plan; there simply came a point when it did not seem right to keep filming these boys without trying to help. So the second half of the film follows Yumyum, A-Class and KK Dog as the filmmaker tries to get them off the streets and into education or employment. Things may have seemed chaotic before but were about to get much worse.  Keeping tabs on them was no small achievement. When the police raided they scattered and sometimes had to be searched out in another town. Fixer Eugene Swaray plays a role, again unplanned, but his constant explanations to the filmmaker as to what was going on became an essential part of the story, that and his penchant for going shopping.  One of the more poignant scenes being when KKDog had been beaten up by the police and Eugene, feeling sorry for him, decides to buy him some clothes. KKDog has no idea how to choose anything. He doesn’t know what he likes and has to ask Yumyum to pick for him.

As a filmmaker I had many fears. When I gave Yumyum the camera I worried about him using it to make porn or deliberately setting up scenarios so that he could film them but this did not seem to occur to him. I worried about Yumyum moving to Freetown, for him and for the kids left behind. There was no one like Yumyum to step in as leader and they would be left to their own devices. I worried about helping just a few. Would that make them the subject of envy? How could I justify not helping the others? But I did in fact try and help more than just the three in the film. You can only do what you can do.

I know that my interventions did not solve all their problems. They remain very vulnerable. KKDog lives in a village that is very poor and everyone runs out of food in the rainy season so the rice I supply is shared around and only lasts a week or two.   AClass has finished high school and now needs a job but there are no prospects. Yumyum’s bike is continually in need of repair and he does not make a living. His sense of outrage, whenever anything happens that he regards as unjust, can still get him into trouble as he tends to want to solve it by fighting whoever done him wrong.

This is the story of 3 boys and their attempts to get off the street, aided or hindered by the filmmaker, depending on your perspective.
It shows what life is like in all its shades of helpless drudgery, violent resolution and peaceful affection. It shows how hard it is to make a difference and how long it takes to get to that place where you begin to see how things work and can actually begin to do something meaningful. Since making this film a charity “WAYout” has been formed which continues to work with street youth in Sierra Leone and the filmmaker has adopted Yumyum, K.K.Dog and A-Class who are now known only by their proper names, Amara Kosia, Aruna Jusu and Allusine Sessay whilst the filmmaker is now only known by the nickname “Mammy Hazel”