Les Mairuuwas - Masters of Water

‘LES MAIRUUWAS’ (The Masters of Water) is an ethnographic film about young male migrants and their dreams of succeeding in the city. The filmmaker has followed a milieu of water transporters in urban Cameroon over many years. The four men portrayed, are among the thousands uneducated poor, that annually migrates from the Central African Republic to Cameroon searching a better life. The film describes their daily struggles to make a living and create meaning in harsh and highly vibrant urban surroundings. We meet Coco the youngest of them, as he prepares to get his own room after years on the street. We follow Uncle as he strives to earn enough money to take care of his son. Abel expresses the felt stigma and his deeply desired wish for another way of life, after more than 15 years as a water transporter. Their belonging as a group and their possibilities to get work in the neighborhood is dramatically challenged when Bachirou is arrested.