In support of Red Nose Day in the U.S., Jack Black flew to Uganda. Once on the ground his intention was to tell us what “I see, smell, taste, and hear.” Just a sentence later he adds, “I’m not going to cry, it’s not going to be that kind of situation.”
Well, Jack hadn’t met Felix at that point. According to the video, Felix is “an average 12-year-old boy forced to live on the streets.”
Jack spends the day with Felix, helping him pick up empty plastics bottles he can later sell to recycling stores, talking to Felix about his family (his mother died, he never knew his father), and bedding down with him outside, amongst piles of garbage and hundreds of other people.
Perhaps what’s most important however, is Black’s own breakdown at the end of the video. The tears he promised would not come, arrive easily enough. Because he has been forced to face a reality that too many of us in the west can so easily ignore.