Run and Gun on the road (and then edit)

July 2019. After more than a weeklong wait in Amman, I finally get my visa and air ticket to go the capital of Yemen, Sana'a, which I had not been able to visit in prior trip to the country. There is just one catch: the local authorities (the "rebels" known as Houthis, who had ousted the internationally recognized government in 2015) are categorical: no photographic equipment allowed in. When I get the news my head goes into a tailspin. Based on my mission to Yemen a year prior, I had come up with a well thought-out list of items to bring with me, which would allow me to "run-and-gun" without sacrificing production value. Now, not only I'd have to leave everything behind, but the local authorities ban on any form of electronic equipment (with the exception of laptops and smartphones) is like a sentence on my mission, which would later take me to the South of Yemen (controlled by the legitimate government) and Saudi Arabia - for both of which the respective authorities had already cleared my gear. After a few hours of frantic phone calls with colleagues in and out of Yemen (should I smuggle stuff in? should I ship it at least to my following destinations? should I at least carry a small camera and pretend it's just a personal belonging?) the breakthrough comes when a friend of a friend who works at the UN offers me to use her Sony A7R, which she had managed to bring in without running into trouble at customs. I did have to hide in my toiletries a cheap wired lav mic and a mini shot-gun mic, and a couple of memory cards. That's how far I went into not abiding by the stringent ban.