Further input was required, and DV camera in hand, I therefore decided to travel around and interview other South Africans; black workers on the street; a white prison officer; the well-educated young - both black and white - as well as the people in the black townships. I asked all of them to give me a personal definition of Love, Hate and Reconciliation. It was gripping and strange, and provided a glimpse of a people, who still have a lot to talk about. It was clear that this new direction my film had taken had to be followed up, but it was with a sense of fear that we traveled to Honduras in November - this time to land right in the middle of a presidential election. Honduras is a country, which is armed to the teeth; where the rich live in constant fear of being kidnapped, and the poor rightly fear torture and oppression. The goal of the journey was to interview Juan Almendares, who is a doctor and human rights campaigner. Although not directly persecuted, Juan is still under surveillance. He comes from a home, where the father was murdered and the mother had fight alone to raise her six children in poverty. Juan has been persecuted in the past as well as imprisoned and physically tortured by the secret police, and he was forced to go underground, where for years he was cut off from his family, friends and his work.

Juan initially assured me that he was not bitter, but in the weeks we followed him the answer to this question was not always so unequivocal. When confronted by the prisoners and their heavily armed guards in one of the infamous prisons, his anger was clearly visible. Yet the guards themselves are young men recruited from the very people they are oppressing. And by virtue of this fact, these 'torturers' have a high level of anxiety, which they deny when pressed by Juan. Juan is always to be found in the eye of the storm, surrounded by people, who have lost all their rights, and have been tortured and destroyed. Perhaps his pain is no longer personal anymore; rather it's a collective wound that he is trying to heal. Although it is unlikely that he would acknowledge this himself, I none the less suspect that there lies an unconscious act of revenge behind offering the police, his former torturers, treatment at his practice.

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