Rachel's Reflection #3 on "The Human Factor"

It started as a normal Wednesday night. Nothing out of the ordinary happened: come home from Christel House, eat, take a short nap, procrastinate, do homework, and talk to Ben our RA. As usual a few of us were hungry enough that we did not want to make our own food, so we decided to turn to our good friend Mr. Delivery. We decided to order some food, and Ben and Steph Yacenda were craving chocolate cake and decided to order some from Cocoa WaWa (it is a very delicious restaurant that also has real iced coffee, which is a staple in the house).

It was no more then five minutes after Ben placed our order when he received a call from Mr. Delivery saying that there was no more chocolate cake left at Cocoa WaWa. Ben and Steph were devastated. They were counting on some delightful chocolate cake to satisfy their sweet tooth. Another alternative needed to be found quickly, or the house would erupt into sugar-craving madness. The decision was promptly made that a magnum bar run was necessary right after we finished our food. Magnum bar’s are ice cream bars from heaven, and can solve any issue that you are having as soon as the chocolate touches your tongue.

So, we finished our food and Ben, Steph, Julie, Jordan, and myself set off to find magnum bars. We quickly found that we could not drive down the road necessary to acquire said magnum bars, due to a police block. Naturally, we decided to find a second route to the gas station that had our ice cream since a silly little police block could not stop our urge to stuff ice cream in our mouths. We turned down a side street and found yet another block. Okay, we need to find out what is so important that it is interfering with our mission. We asked a woman who was standing next to the block why we could not go down the street. She informed us there was a movie being shot. To those who do not know, Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon are starring in a movie called “The Human Factor,” with director Clint Eastwood. The movie is about Nelson Mandela’s first term as President and the 1995 Rugby World Cup. As you would expect, after finding out there was a movie being shot down the street, all five of our mouths dropped and demanded to know who was in it. The woman informed us that it was the Morgan Freeman movie. OH MY GOD. The car immediately exploded in squeals of joy. Immediately forgetting about magnum bars we decided that we were going to try to sneak up to the set and watch. Ben parked his car down the road and we walked, very stealthily, to the street – not realizing that we were still very far from the actual set and were whispering for no reason. We then proceed to walk up the street to the set, giggling and excited the whole way.

We get up to the street corner where the fancy equipment was set up, joined the crowd that has formed and saw Clint Eastwood! Clint Eastwood was 20 feet away from the five of us, and we all struggled to control our star-struck screams, with the exception of Julie, who could not even form sentences, only names of movies Clint Eastwood had been in.

Ben, Julie, Steph Y, Rachel, Jordan reenact their sighting of Morgan Freeman & Clint Eastwood

Somehow we ended up at a corner store and fulfilled our original plan, eating magnum bars. We bought the bars and walked back to the set and waited for about 15 minutes and then Morgan Freeman rolled up in a Mercedes-Benz, and swaggered to the set. Mo-Free, as we affectionately nicknamed him, did not do much unfortunately. There was a lot of standing around and make-up applying. Finally, the camera was rolling, and they filmed a scene. Granted it was only Mo-Free walking down the street, all of us were so excited to see such amazing actors.

The irony of the story for me is that during my time here I have been asked many times if I knew or seen any famous people and my answer was always, “no.” So, the first time I’ve ever seen an American celebrity is outside of the United States and in South Africa. What are the chances of that happening? It was an ordinary day that turned into an extraordinary night.

Last night was special not only because we got to see huge movie stars that I would never be able to see again in my life, but also because of the movie they were shooting. The movie is about two things that I love and are dear to my heart: rugby and South Africa. The movie is trying to show how Nelson Mandela used the rugby world cup to unite a previously divided country. South Africa, having just recently ended the apartheid era needed a common goal to bring the people together and I like the idea that Mandela used rugby to do so (especially because I love the sport). There are many examples of sports teams uniting a country, take the Olympics for example, so why not use rugby to help a struggling country.

I am very excited to see how this movie turns out and if it can live up to the expectations I have placed on it. Also, I am excited to see if the scene that I saw being shot will actually be in the movie, so I can tell everyone I know that I was there when it happened.