(spoilers) Newsroom: Help me out here in understanding the whole Africa thing...

[CurtEastPoint]

Who wanted the camera and why? They were filming 'the engineers'? The soldiers? They shot the bus and the little kid Daniel got hit, right?

I hate being dense!

[Ilsa]

1. I don't know why they wanted the camera, but

Yes, they had filmed the soldiers and engineers building the orphanage.

The child was hit by a bullet in the spine, I believe, as she was carrying him on her back to the bus. She feels like he took the bullet for her. She felt so horrible that she cut off her hair and dyed it red because the child had been enchanted by her blond hair. Also, the leader of the orphanages had joked about blond hair bringing trouble.

[CurtEastPoint]

2. thanks

So we both don't know why they (who?) wanted the camera. And thanks for the insight on haircut.

[davidpdx]

8. The quote is quite haunting when they use it at the end

"That color is blonde and it's nothing but trouble"

[SCVDem]

3. Remember when the kids first saw the camera?

They thought it was a machine gun.

The attackers may have wanted the "gun" not knowing it was a camera.

Poor Maggie. That was rough.

[applegrove]

4. I couldn‘t follow who wanted the camera

either.

[harrylimelives999]

5. Do remember when they drove to the orphanage?

The fixer joked that they would see drug lords, so Gary Cooper rode on the flat bed for a hundred miles filming everything. The group Maggie mentioned were cattle thieves from an isolated tribe with their own dialect. Cooper must have filmed something he shouldn't have, because they got paranoid and followed to get the film out of the camera. Maggie and Gary didn't understand, or they would have just handed the worthless b roll over.

In the escape, the cattle thieves opened fire, and the kid happened to be sitting between the sheet metal frame and Maggie. A bullet that would have killed Maggie, killed him instead.

Everything in Africa was bad luck, basically, mirroring the Genoa events, how multiple tiny screw ups will result in a really big bad thing to occur.

Hope this helps!

[CurtEastPoint]

6. Yep, I'd forgotten about his filming from the truck. That could be it.

And this whole Genoa/lawyer thing... can't wait to see how that resolves.

[davidpdx]

7. That makes sense about the camera

It attracted unwanted attention from those who were up to no good and they thought maybe something was on it.