Top 11 pics of 2011 (post 4 of 9: roofless school)

In March of 2011, our team set out on a project that appeared to be pretty straight forward and would really help a nearby community provide more consistent education to the younger children.

In a village just a few kilometers up the road from my house sits a 2-room school house built by the Portuguese Catholic mission before independence. For the past few decades, it has had no roof. That really puts a damper on education during the rains, or during the hot sun for that matter. Usually in Africa a large shady tree substitutes for a school room and, personally, I don’t see a problem with that. But when you’ve got a school that has been built but just lacks a roof and a few tidying up issues, it seems like a simple thing to remedy that can go a long way towards providing a better level of education.

This image is from our initial visits to the school when we got a quick tour and saw what the work would entail for us: purchasing tin sheets, nails, a few bags of cement, encouraging the community to cut down some trees to act as supporting beams for the roof…

We got to work in short order, combinaring with the Department of Education so this could be a joint project with their official oversight. Within a few months, the roof was up and it was starting to look like a real working school again. But then the winds came and, on one particularly gusty day, the tin was completely ripped off once again.

Was this school cursed, the spirits engaged in a battle to keep education at a nearly non-existent level?

We chalked it up to the fact that the roof hadn’t been finished completely and just wasn’t as secure as it should have been. The second issue came from the indigenous trees which were so bent as to make the tin sheets difficult to nail down properly.

And so here we are early in 2012 and eager as a team to just get it done! This February, we hope to see a renovated school that can attract a live-in school teacher even (she currently walks from town each day).

January 29, 2012 | Categories: documentary photography, Mozambique, Yao | Leave A Comment »

Top 11 pics of 2011 (post 3 of 9: Cundaje)

During rainy season, a LOT of folks in our area relocate temporarily to a land where the soil is more fertile and the rains come just a bit earlier. It’s only a half-days walk away but, as it is on the other side of the small mountain chain, it can feel a bit like a world away.

It’s a place referred to in general as “Chigulu”. This sign indicates which way to head for two of the areas within the larger Chigulu region.

I got my first chance to visit the area while out biking on an exploratory trip with Shawn and Janet in March of ’11. It was the day (only one so far; exhausting but rewarding it was) when we successfully completed a 50+ KM visit to a number of villages and chiefs we had heard about but never came across as they are more than just a bit off the beaten path.

In this image, a teen boy of the Yawo tribe pauses on his way towards Cundaje to watch three white folks (azungu in Ajawa, brancos in Portuguese) bike by. Foreigners like us are a rare sight and people usually don’t know what to do with us other than simply stare. My favorite, though, is when family members grab the youngest child around and thrusts them toward us as the child screams in fright at our sheer horridness.

Yawo boy pauses for a rest on his way to Cundaja near Mandimba, Mozambique

Cundaje, Mandimba, Mozambique

January 29, 2012 | Categories: documentary photography, Mozambique, Yao | Leave A Comment »

Dr. Ian Dicks: head shot

A head shot is a useful type of photo to have handy for authors, speakers, musicians, actors and others who are planning to have their image posted in a professional manner. In this case here, my friend Ian, an anthropologist working in Malawi and soon to be publishing a new book about Yawo culture, asked me to create a head shot for his book cover. Yeah, published authors need head shots too.

It is my second attempt at doing a head shot for Ian. A few years back when he published a book about Yawo proverbs, what we came out with was an image too smiley and a bit unprofessional looking. Most locals couldn’t even recognize him when shown the book. We needed to try something different for this more erudite publication.

This go round, we wanted to go for a soft look (which helps to minimize aging) that conveys professionalism with an air of mystique (as can be felt from the darker side of the face). Our studio was simply a bedroom with good available sunlight pouring through a nearby window. I grabbed a yellow bedsheet and draped it over a door to give a nice background that doesn’t distract in any way. No flash was used.

Wikipedia mentions that “headshots are intended to show a person as they currently are (age, look, style, etc.) and reflect their best qualities.” I think we got it!

Dr. Ian Dicks, anthropologist

December 5, 2011 | Categories: Malawi, Mozambique, publications, Yao | Leave A Comment »

Chasing Hippos and Zombie Cucumbers: 2 reads from Mozambique

I recently finished reading two very different books about Mozambique. One is a memoirs-style e-book I downloaded on my Amazon Kindle entitled “Chasing the Hippo: Memoirs of a Misfit Missionary” by David Ker. On the other hand, we have the accounts of a seemingly anti-missionary, anti-NGO British travel writer, Nick Middleton, who visits the land both before the war’s end and after the peace accord is signed. His early 1990s work, “Kalashnikovs and Zombie Cucumbers”, takes account of his travels via Maputo, Beira, Cuamba, Tete and Songo (near Cahora Bassa dam).

Ker’s book starts the journey in the U.S. as he tries to figure out where he believes God would have him work as a linguist. Settling on Mozambique, their family first must spend time in Portugal learning the national language of his adopted land-to-be. His memories of that unfriendly land make any future missionaries to Mozambique, especially those with young kids, think twice about that option. Upon completion of their language training, they head to South Africa to stock up on supplies and prepare for life in post-war Mozambique, specifically in the Tete Province (God bless ‘em) but via armed robbery in Zimbabwe first. Nothing like induction into the fire with kids in tow!

What makes this book so endearing is David’s self-effacement. He recognizes just how much work goes in to doing what he does and how little return there seems to be; the massive amounts of mistakes created, lessons learned, and sheer exhaustion that come with such a life. It’s a ten-year journey beginning in the late 1990s and his work comes out just as his family prepares to leave Mozambique for good, settling next in South Africa where his work as a linguist on the Nyungwe Bible morphs into one promoting free access to Biblical texts in both print, electronic and media format.

Anyone that knows David, whether online via his blogs and websites, or face to face, knows he’s got a great sense of humor and that comes in very handy living in Africa. When one starts to take themselves too seriously, it’s time to go home.

Middleton’s work is, of course, more on the professional level and falls squarely into travel-writer material. While the last 1/4 of the book begins to lag and he seems to have trouble knowing how to end the book, I found the first 1/4 fascinating as he works at explaining the history of Mozambique, including the reasons behind the Frelimo-Renamo war. Naturally, he falls on the side of those who see Renamo as simply a rebel organization backed not-so-secretly by rich white countries determined to prevent the further spread of communism in Africa. But it is clear that the atrocities committed during the long civil war were from both sides, though it’s often the victor who writes the history books.

Still, it truly was a horrible war played out soon after the war of independence from Portugal. In each area Nick travels to, we catch a glimpse of the kind of poverty people face every day. Hopelessness is spelled out in the way the employees of a hotel near Beira, built at the height of Zimbabwean (Rhodesian) tourism, still come to work each day (even though they’ve not been paid a salary in years as the owners fled to Portugal years before) simply because they have nothing better to do. We learn of the work of NGOs who spent tons of cash, and have nearly as much stolen by employees on the ground or wasted on food gone bad while the red tape holds up life-giving relief.

I learned a lot from this book, both in history and in getting a better understanding of the resilience of the people. His chapter dealing with magic and the spirit world was simply fascinating and also enlightening, though obviously he reports as someone not coming from a Christian perspective but simply trying to understand how the locals do it and what kinds of beliefs begin to go into an African understanding of the world around them.

August 7, 2011 | Categories: book reviews, Mozambique, travel | Leave A Comment »

Head chopping

Yesterday was a Tuesday which, for me and some colleagues, means we are out and about on bike visiting friends in the village. We learned about a sadaka that had already started (basically a memorial service for someone who has died, usually celebrated 3 days and 40 days after death). I ran into a number of friends who are chiefs in nearby villages and one thanked me for the photo I had taken of him back in January. He commented, however, that his head was cut off above the eyes.

I remembered vividly the photo. It was one I really liked and it made me start to wonder: do they see photos the same way I do? My coworker mentioned after that comment that a friend of his in another village I gave a photo to also said the same thing. Something to the effect of “yeah, it’s a really nice photo… except for the fact that my head is cut off.”

This is an eye-opening insight into the minds of those I live amongst. I have already learned that, to give someone a black-and-white copy that I’m particularly fond of, doesn’t necessarily mean that the recipient will understand that it’s a “classic” look. They want color, hands down, every time. Heck, my own mom (an American with artsy tendencies, though more of a “country crafts” style) doesn’t understand the point of black-and-white.

I’ve become a celebrity of sorts in nearby villages, in part due to the whole photography thing. Kids run after my bike yelling “ajambule!” (take my picture). Grown men practically are begging me to take their photo because they know they’ll not be charged for a memorable keepsake they’ll be proud of for years.

Or will they… even if their head is chopped off?

From an impromptu photo session at the sadaka, as I succumbed to the pressure being put on me by numerous chiefs all wanting a “one-one” shot of themselves (as opposed to being in a group). Some non-chiefs snuck in, but what am I to do?

July 13, 2011 | Categories: documentary photography, environmental portraiture, Mozambique, Yao | Leave A Comment »

The Cabaceiras and “Mozambique Mysteries”

It was during my last trip to the Cabaceiras, just opposite Mozambique Island on the mainland, that I first learned about the author Lisa St. Aubin de Terán and her book “Mozambique Mysteries”. I was doing a google search on the area to learn what I could of the historical significance of a number of fascinating, derelict Portuguese edifices that dot the landscape a few kilometers behind the idealic, hidden gem of a beach my friends and family were vacationing at. It was my third trip to the area and something interesting stood out to me: amidst the ruins, the old convent/naval college, situated within sight of the Governor’s summer palace, looked strangely and surprisingly good for its age. It had had a complete facelift and now a quaint little restaurant/bar was attached to its side, in a lush garden setting.

Upon wandering in and quizzing the guard on duty, I learned that it was not currently in operation and the building was now under ownership of a foreign national who lived in another city. I wondered who, but didn’t think too much about it until I was on another early morning jog and came upon another interesting development. Further up the beach from our cottage at Carrusca Mar e Sol, a spectacular (and pricey) new lodge had been built at the site of a lagoon: Coral Lodge.

As I read “Mozambique Mysteries”, the pieces began to fall into place. The new “owner” of the old naval college must be none other than Ms. Terán (though, in reality, it is probably a community-owned project that was kickstarted by an outsider). And now that I’ve finally gotten my hands on a copy of her book, I was pleased to see the kind of effort that she and many others associated with the Teran Foundation have put into lifting up the Cabaceiras, a unique and enchanted place.

While the descriptions given to us in the book are fantastic, I wanted to add some visual aids to help fans of the book get an idea of what the area looks like. I’ve included several here, and will also link to some other pages from my personal blog that I uploaded in 2010: