Blog Details

Four years, and then he just walked in

The last time I saw him properly, the channel did not exist yet. No subscribers, no camera worth the name, no reason for anyone outside our street to care what we were filming. Four years later he came through the door without telling me he was in the country.

I keep the camera running through most of the day now, and usually that is a habit rather than a decision — you film everything and throw away the ninety per cent that turns out to be nothing. This was in the ten per cent. You can watch the exact moment I stop being someone making a video and go back to being a person who has not seen his friend in four years, and I would not have been able to act that if we had planned it for a month.

• Filmed with no set-up and no second take
• Cut the same night, while it still felt like it did in the room
• Left in the long silences instead of tightening them

People ask why the surprise videos sit on the same channel as the drama serials, as if one is the serious work and the other is filler. I have never seen the difference. A serial is me building a moment out of script, cast and three days of shooting. A reunion is me catching one that arrived on its own. The thing I am chasing is identical — I want you to feel something before the video ends.

The other thing that surprised me was how the comments went. I expected the usual noise. Instead it filled up with people telling me about their own — brothers in other countries, friends they had not spoken to since school, someone who had been meaning to call an uncle for two years and went and did it that night. That is a better result than a view count.

You cannot script the second somebody realises who is standing in front of them. You can only be ready when it happens.

So the plan stays what it has been since March 2022. Keep the camera close, keep writing the serials, and keep publishing in Somali for the people it was made for. If something real happens in front of me, that goes out too.