So true to life

Over the course of the last year, NTV Uganda has screened three South American telenovelas, La Tormenta, El Cuerpo del Deseo (translated, oddly, as Second Chance), and Sabor a Ti. The three promotional pictures are a fairly clear indication of the fare on offer. Impossibly beautiful heroes and heroines battling against scheming villains whose objective is to keep them apart...... Throw in some magic and comedy and the recipe is complete. Like soap operas everywhere, the directors have perfected Scheherezade's strategy from the Arabian Nights and end each episode with a cliffhanger, keeping their audiences in keen anticipation for the following evening's events.

As a keen follower of La Tormenta, and the trials and tribulations of the heroine, Maria Teresa Montilla, and hero, Santos Torrealba, I had regarded it as nothing more than an entertaining and harmless fantasy romance. But in Uganda, where the belief in magic remains powerful, where family feuds and disputes over land holdings are common, the story is more believable. Yesterday, at a small clinic in Kampala with La Tormenta screening on the waiting room TV, I overheard one lady say to another "It's so true to life". And in a way, it is. You can certainly see why Eastenders and Coronation Street don't pack in Ugandan viewers with this sort of competition.

I recently re-read a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, entitled Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. The scriptwriter of the title refers to Pedro Camacho, a diminutive Bolivian writer with a gift for writing radio novelas for the Peruvian public. Sadly, the stresses and strains on Pedro Camacho to keep churning out new episodes for three or four separate novelas running simultaneously become too much for him, and his novelas collapse in chaos and confusion. No risk of that with La Tormenta, now rapidly approaching its 216th and final episode, when Maria Teresa and Santos will no doubt be reunited in marital bliss having vanquished all their enemies. So true to life!