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USA, IL, Chicago, June 4th, 2009. Young "mariachi" Ivette Espinoza is able to maintain a strong link to her Mexican cultural heritage through classes offered at several Pilsen schools. The solo in "El Cascabel" (The Rattle from the Snake) is difficult - the instrument is known as a "vihuela," unchanged in design since the Renaissance.
Veteran musician Victor Pichardo, of the band "Sonos de Mexico," and his son Yahvi, a former Chicago Public Schools music teacher, began a pilot program in 2008 which enables students to build upon their skills year after year.
Photographs commissioned by "Hoy" newspaper for a front-page feature story.
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USA, Chicago, May 28, 2009. Community within a community, Zapotec speaking Mexican-Americans and immigrants maintain their connection to San Pablo Guila in their native Oaxaca through religion, cultural traditions and food. A significant group lives in the Illinois suburb of West Chicago.
At one time, the Zapotec kingdom was the most powerful and populous in Mesoamerica, as evidenced by the monumental architecture of Monte Alban, their ancient capital, and the widespread dialects of the Zapotec language. That their modern-day descendants have maintained such a strong connection to their culture is surely due to both a strong sense of family and a pervasive faith in roots.
Photographs commissioned by "Hoy" newspaper for a front-page story.
USA, Chicago, May 3, 2009. The fifth of May, or "Cinco de Mayo," is celebrated with great fervor in Chicago's Latino community, with a three-day festival in Douglas Park and a sizeable parade along Cermak Road in the south of the city. Not to be confused with Mexico's Independence Day, which is September 16th, the holiday commemorates the Mexican Army's unlikely defeat of a better-equipped French force at the Battle of Puebla in 1862. Although it is not considered a major holiday in Mexico, a Cinco de Mayo event is seen in the US as a way to show Mexican pride. With national soccer hero Cuahtemoc Blanco as mariscal, or "field marshal," this Sunday's festivities were no exception: thousands of spectators lined the parade route to shout "Viva Mexico" at a long train of dignitaries, horseback riders, mariachi bands on floats, beauties in skin-tight outfits, even a squadron of tricked-out low-rider cars sporting US and Mexican flags. Photographs commissioned by "Hoy" newspaper for a front-page story.
USA, Chicago, May 3, 2009. The fifth of May, or "Cinco de Mayo," is celebrated with great fervor in Chicago's Latino community, with a three-day festival in Douglas Park and a sizeable parade along Cermak Road in the south of the city. Not to be confused with Mexico's Independence Day, which is September 16th, the holiday commemorates the Mexican Army's unlikely defeat of a better-equipped French force at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.
Although it is not considered a major holiday in Mexico, a Cinco de Mayo event is seen in the US as a way to show Mexican pride. With national soccer hero Cuahtemoc Blanco as mariscal, or "field marshal," this Sunday's festivities were no exception: thousands of spectators lined the parade route to shout "Viva Mexico" at a long train of dignitaries, horseback riders, mariachi bands on floats, beauties in skin-tight outfits, even a squadron of tricked-out low-rider cars sporting US and Mexican flags.
USA, Chicago, April 21, 2009. A moving funeral for community leader and philanthropist Arturo Velasquez at St. Rita of Cascia Shrine Chapel in Chicago.
Born in 1915, Mr. Velasquez entered the US at age 8, parlaying good business sense and a generous heart into multi-million dollar family enterprises.
He wished to be remembered with Violet Parra's poem "Gracias a la Vida."
"Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto, me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro, perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco, y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado, y en las multitudas el hombre que yo amo."
"Thanks to life which has given me so much, it gave me two eyes that when I open them I can distinguish perfectly black from white, and in the high heaven its starry background, and in the multitudes the man I love."
USA, Chicago, April 10, 2009. Images from a faithful re-enactment of the "Via Dolorosa," or the "way of suffering" in Pilsen, one of Chicago's many Latino neighborhoods. Beginning at the Providence of God Parish with Pilate's condemnation of Christ, the three-hour Good Friday procession follows the "Stations of the Cross," culminating in Christ's crucifixion and entombment, marked with a service at St. Adalbert's. Photographs commissioned for Hoy newspaper.
"Hamlin" versus "Garfield Park," "Matadors" versus "Old School", this is more than just neighborhood pride, it is boisterous, brittle self-confidence, real discipline, and necessary attitude. Started more than eighty years ago, the annual Golden Gloves boxing tournament is a rite-of-passage, a baptism in fire, if you will, a true test of character for the 16-and-over fighters who have trained hard to get here.
Affiliations, friendships, even devoted parents and entourages - everyone and everything drops away at the sound of the bell. One hooded sweatshirt said it beautifully - "Better to Sweat in the Gym than Bleed in the Streets.” Chicago was the birthplace of this event, and for many young men, these remain the toughest three rounds in the country.
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“Urban explorers” dare each other inside the decaying shells of once-useful factories - artist collectives paint whole buildings orange, the color of dereliction. A third of the population has left, never to return. The federal government lays down the law, former king-size industrial manufacturers choose bailouts, and foreign ownership, their days of designing and producing for the most part over. The mayor’s in jail, the city has laid off ten percent of its work force, irate citizens feel free to torch empty homes themselves, as there’s no more money for demolition.Were this scenario a movie, it might have more than a few characters out of Mad Max, future shock a storyboard item only. But this is very real in Detroit, USA, in 2009, which is down but not out, proud home of the Big 3, Motown and Eight Mile – still, not an easy place to ride out a depression. But this is a story about creativity, about being young, or old, and making the most of it, making art, making do, and reinventing, most of all, in a very different America.
Photographs & text coming July 2009.
"CHANGE" slide show click >> here <<
In the tumult and triumph of the recent US Presidential elections, there have been so many stories. For me, as a photojournalist who has been abroad for more than eight years, none has been more more inspiring than coming home to witness the quiet determination of these New Hampshire voters to have their say in history.
The tiny town of Hart's Location, population 29, has always been proud to be first to vote in the nation. At precisely 12:01:01 AM on November 4th, 2008, the voting began, and was completed by unanimous agreement three minutes and eight seconds later. Of the 29 votes cast for President, 17 were for Barack Obama, 10 for John McCain, and 2 for Ron Paul.
As the first national tally was announced, far away whoops were heard from Obama's sign-wavers still out by the road. And after a while, with little fanfare and more than a few shy smiles, those who has assembled well ahead of time drifted away, one by one, having started the ripple that turned into a tidal wave.
SWING STATE slide show click here
New Hampshire is a “swing state” in the 2008 US presidential elections, and symbolically important to both candidates, especially John McCain, who won it in the primaries. While it has only four electoral votes, it also boasts the first place it is possible to vote in a regular Election Day: tiny Hart’s Location, population 28, most of whom are likely to vote just after midnight on November 4th. Conway, at the center of Carroll County, is a rural community in the heart of the White Mountains, with an older population, and there has been a stark contrast between the Democratic and Republican strategies for getting out the vote.
The Obama campaign’s ongoing, technology-driven attempt to convince New Hampshire voters to go Democrat has impressed Conway, to say the least. With up-to-date techniques, paid staffers from the national effort, and a large volunteer force, they have put into place what Conway Town Chair and Democrat Dave Robinson called a “city” organization, with visibility events, sign waves, literature drops, and 24/7 monitoring of the “get-out-the-vote” plan.
The McCain campaign, on the other hand, has taken a different tack, with “victory offices” in major New Hampshire cities, but little representation here in Conway. Just across the street, the Carroll County Republican Committee office is housed in the lobby of the Majestic Theater. It has a single telephone and no computers, and in fact was closed on two visits, even on Saturday night three days before the election. Volunteers are friendly, but hard to find – they pencil themselves in on a desk calendar, and there is a lonely donation basket beneath a printout of the 9/11 rescue workers raising the flag Iwo Jima-style at Ground Zero. One can wander in, pick up a sign or two, and go back out without much of an interaction.
That these efforts are just across the street from each other in small-town Conway is fitting, it seems, to the life-and-death, “red-state, blue-state” mind-set Americans seem to have gotten themselves into. It remains to be seen whether the desultory Republican effort here will complement the predicted last-minute, “72 hour” thrust toward Election Day, but if the election is to go to the candidate that has been better-organized, and has the energy, it will have to go to Obama...
Full set of images available November 2nd. SWING STATE slide show click here
Wutai Dreams, China copyright 2008 Focus Agency
Wutai Shan, or "Five-Terrace Mountain," as it is known, is one of China's four major monastic communities. Spared destruction during the Cultural Revolution, in part due to its remote Shanxi location, modern-day Wutai Shan is still a wonder of religious history, home to a national treasure of more than forty Buddhist temples set among some of North China's most rugged alpine scenery.At 3,000 meters, Yeduo Feng reigns over the valley. Northernmost of the five peaks ringing the village of Taihuai, it is often snow-capped far into the summer. For the most devout of Tibetan and Mongolian pilgrims, every one of Wutai Shan's temples is a spiritual destination - for the tourist and traveler, who often come only in the warmth of high season, a poignant reminder that in today's hectic cities the spiritual world can sometimes feel far, far away.
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Humanitarian Issues and Cultural Tradition Worldwide
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT COPYRIGHT JAY DUNN 2008
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Hands of Pride, China copyright 2008 Focus Agency
Much of China today is about modern and money, admirable for its singular focus and determination to make up for lost time. Yet the public reality of progress in the cities masks an elusive and often passionate China of the countryside, a land of hard work and strong opinions. While there have been tremendous improvements in people's lives, many of the visible realities of labor in years past have been simply buried by an avalanche of cars, steel, and concrete. In most places, labor and farming remain powered by pride and the human back - pickaxe and flat shovel are the tools, four men to push a cement container and twenty-five to dig a trench are the machines. Away from major cities, only the most telegenic projects benefit from contemporary building techniques. Here, at least, only a job impossible to do by hand seems to be done mechanically. Deliveries of bricks to building sites are still done by donkey cart. If they go home, one can see crews of exhausted men, some clad incongruously in suit coats and thin canvas shoes, bicycling out of town long after dark, or if they don't, worker's laundry drying on the skeletal upper floors of an office tower under construction.
Much of China today is about modern and money, admirable for its singular focus and determination to make up for lost time. Yet the public reality of progress in the cities masks an elusive and often passionate China of the countryside, a land of hard work and strong opinions. While there have been tremendous improvements in people's lives, many of the visible realities of labor in years past have been simply buried by an avalanche of cars, steel, and concrete.
In most places, labor and farming remain powered by pride and the human back - pickaxe and flat shovel are the tools, four men to push a cement container and twenty-five to dig a trench are the machines. Away from major cities, only the most telegenic projects benefit from contemporary building techniques. Here, at least, only a job impossible to do by hand seems to be done mechanically. Deliveries of bricks to building sites are still done by donkey cart. If they go home, one can see crews of exhausted men, some clad incongruously in suit coats and thin canvas shoes, bicycling out of town long after dark, or if they don't, worker's laundry drying on the skeletal upper floors of an office tower under construction.
Lost on Chaoyang Lu, ChinaThe price of change in China: swept forward or left behind.
gallery slideshow
A Stranger's Eye, ChinaAt once essential and neglected, Shanxi is fiercely independent.
Wutai Dreams, ChinaA mountain-top treasure of more than forty temples retains its mystery.
Hands of Pride, ChinaLabor and farming remain powered by the human back.
Outside the 5th Ring Road, ChinaRelentless construction in Beijing offers choice but also marginalizes.
Ordinary Days, ChinaAway from the new urbanization, life as it has always been.
Spirit Matters, ChinaGlimpses of the magical, the emotional and the illusory.
Single Images from "Agadez to Accra"In search of one story, there remain so many others.
The Singers of Bani, Burkina FasoMosques of mud, and Muslim singers soaring skyward.
Tribes of Gorom-Gorom, Burkina FasoBella nomads, Fulani vendors, Hausa farmers & Tuareg traders.
Nomads of Tidene, NigerResilience means survival in a remote desert.
Life Inside a Tuareg Family, NigerGood friends who once were strangers.
Water from the Desert, NigerGood friends who once were strangers.
Volta River Villages, GhanaTraditional skills and hard work in Titikope.
Kwame Nkrumah Memorial School, GhanaEducators do their best with too many students.
50 Years of Independence, GhanaFlags fly high, and so they should.
Social Conditions in Accra, GhanaThree neighborhoods with confidence, and a lot of history.
Pilgrims of Sehwan Sharif, PakistanMiracles, mercy, or just a change of luck.
Truth, PakistanNot hostility, but kindness, not the closeted but the curious.
Mother Theresa of Islam, PakistanAbdul Sattar and Bilquis Edhi open their doors to everyone.
Beyond the War, Sri LankaAn identity of her own, whole and full and alive.
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Humanitarian Issues & Cultural Tradition Worldwide
Ordinary Days, China copyright 2008 Focus Agency
While Chinese are rightly proud of their country's economic expansion and increasing influence in world affairs, skyscrapers, widened streets, and modern housing have made unrecognizable many of the hutong neighborhoods that were the traditional backbone of Chinese cities.
But away from the frenetic new urbanization, some of these communities still remain, and day-to-day street life continues much as usual, with cottage industries hard at work, children playing everywhere, and card games and gossip on the corner. In these fast-disappearing areas, it is easy to forget the clamor and the traffic jams - the world is small, and the days are ordinary, businesses like the tailor and the egg-pancake lady making daily trade, as they always have.
Spirit Matters, China copyright 2008 Focus Agency
Spirit Matters is about the other China, the one of magicians, ideas, and history books, of power plays, and colliding giants, the China of brilliance, evanescence and inventiveness. This is what an image maker hopes for, and rarely finds, when the clamor of the city recedes for a second, when the traveler stops moving and starts really seeing.
In the crush of culture and religion these moments have no beginning or end, they are references, and illusions, they flash by and then are gone, a moment's peace frozen in time by a camera shutter then remembered forever. Every photograph here has a story, but then, so do we all, where glimpses of times gone by mix in our imaginations with those of the present and those of our dreams, to yield the fleeting, the emotional, and the mysterious.
Lost on Chaoyang Lu, China copyright 2008 Focus Agency
For all the Chinese who will enjoy the very real benefits of Beijing’s Olympic-related improvements, such as the renovation and indeed rebirth of the subway system, there are ordinary citizens far from the spotlight who have simply been overrun by civic transformations made with little regard for those who are displaced.
Grand avenues are a tradition in China, in keeping with the aspirations of an exploding economy gripped by rightful pride and thousands of new cars. But for those who live and work in the dusty, flat outskirts of the city, there is little reason stated in public for the removal of every single shade tree on Chaoyang Street, or the wholesale destruction of hundreds of small businesses. What are no doubt necessary improvements for all have become bitter pills to the proud, patriotic Chinese who posted this public plea for help in their windows, their restaurant now standing alone in a sea of rubble close to three miles long.
______________________________________________________
“To All “San Jian Fang Xiang” Small and Medium-Sized Business Owners:
Dear Mayor (of Beijing Municipality)
We are individual store owners in the San Jian Fang, Chao Yang area. Today, we get down on our knees to beg the authorities to give us justice. First of all, we are Chinese citizens – we love our country, and we love the Party. As individual businessmen, even though we are in different fields, we all contribute to the State’s development in our own way.
Now, for the Olympics, Chao Yang Street needs to be widened. As Chinese citizens, it is our responsibility to sacrifice our personal benefit for the country’s development. We hope that giving up the businesses we live on contributes toward the success of the Olympics. But no government body or demolition group has explained this to us or even sent us a notice. We are facing mandatory eviction. We really do not understand why, when the Government and the Party has repeatedly announced this kind of ye man or “savage destruction” will no longer be permitted, this is still going on. On top of this, we have been deprived of our right to know why this is happening.
We are all small and medium-size establishments. In other words, among us, there are no big players. We don’t have money or power – we’re living at the lowest level. Mandatory eviction means taking the food from our mouths. We believe that the Government and the Party will not give up on us or ignore our deaths, seeing people like us lose their means to survive.
Many of us are laid-off workers, ex-soldiers, people with handicaps, and those who are retired. When we lost our jobs, we did not become the country’s baggage. We reacted positively to the call, and found a new way to make a living without adding to the Government’s burden. But today, in return for this, we have gotten no compensation at all, not even for closing the doors of our businesses permanently. We have to just leave.
Some of us have had our water and power summarily cut off, or faced groups of demolition workers, told only that they should break down our walls. Some of our roofs were demolished while there were elderly people and children still under them. These methods are odious, and have caused lasting emotional and economic distress. The Government has stated “Proper demolition should leave no one crying,” but now, more than one hundred business owners are living with both tears and blood.
Today, the water and power cut-off will be widespread. Tomorrow, there will be more stores facing mandatory eviction. We have nowhere to go. We can only depend on our Government. We are humans, made of flesh and blood, love and emotion – we cannot experience these events without any feeling or reaction. Negligible as we are, we are still our mother’s children, and have our legal rights. If we want to protect these rights, and our personal safety, we can only rely on the Government and the Party.
Today, we get down on our knees to beg the authorities to give us justice. We’re asking the mayor to give us an explanation. We believe that the Government will not be completely indifferent to our plight, and that justice will always prevail. We also deeply believe that our legal rights will be protected and supported under the law.
Today, our country’s children have tears in their eyes and hearts that are bleeding, asking their mother for an explanation, begging the city authorities to help us find a way to live.”
On our knees, the San Jian Fang Xiang Small and Medium-Sized Business Owners Translated from the Chinese by Zhao Ting Ting
On our knees, the San Jian Fang Xiang Small and Medium-Sized Business Owners
Translated from the Chinese by Zhao Ting Ting
www.jaydunn.com www.ritualandromance.com Humanitarian Issues and Cultural Tradition Worldwide ALL PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT COPYRIGHT JAY DUNN 2008 Bookmarkz
In The Clouds, China copyright 2008 Focus Agency
In the Clouds is a meditation on the endurance of Tibetan Buddhist culture in two western provinces in China. Long a part of Tibet, Qinghai retains its flavor today as a separate jurisdiction, encompassing almost 720,000 square kilometers of high-altitude grassland, spectacular mountain ranges and forbidding saline stretches. Gansu is alternately dry and dusty, lush and lonely. Caravans along the famed Silk Road made stops at its many oases, and threaded their way through the province’s mountain paths. Both provinces still seem neglected in a way, places to travel through perhaps, but not to stay, despite a wealth of attractions.
Qinghai’s remoteness, for instance, made it an ideal match for those banished by kingdoms and governments alike. But perhaps because of their minimalist and often hostile environments, Qinghai and Gansu remain strongholds of Buddhist belief for many who may prefer the freedom and space of traditional occupations over the homogenization of city life. Labrang Monastery in Gansu is a shadow of its former self, where once a thousand monks were housed and educated. But it is there – as are those who pray and practice, farm and tend their flocks, and live the lives they always have, whether or not, for the nomad, the motorcycle has replaced the horse.
The Singers of Bani, Burkina Faso copyright 2008 Focus Agency
The singers could be heard clearly as I reached the top of the escarpment looking down over the village, their exhausted counterpoint thrilling me still, in muted echoes so far from the small yard with high walls that made their cathedral. The dusty green of sheltering trees stood out against the gold and russet of this place, crafted of mud and straw and hard work from the unforgiving landscape of northern Burkina Faso. Nothing is over one story high in Bani, which makes the seven mud mosques that were built here so remarkable, minarets like the voices of the singers reaching up to the sky with their brown arms outstretched. Imposing walls mark the outer edges of the grand mosquee in the middle of town, its empty courtyards bare to the sun. Six other smaller structures grace the barren plateaus like sentries, each façade elegantly carved and guiding the eye toward heaven. I had come here to see these buildings, after catching a fleeting glimpse of the spires from the long hot bus journey to Dori. But it was the sound of the singers that mesmerized: something about the emotions I could feel in the air really resonated with me. My friend Cisse Souabou assured me they were not going to stop, but as we approached through the maze of alleys, I couldn’t move fast enough. In a small, shady courtyard, two groups of men and boys stood facing each other, arrayed by height so one and all could see. There were perhaps fifteen in each group, their voices ragged already. It was a call and response, each wave flowing back as the other came forth, overlapping in an unearthly harmony my years of music had never prepared me to understand. Everyone had a tall forked stick on which they rested, arms holding up their tired heads, eyes rimmed already with red from six straight hours. No one sat. This was devotion. Across the Muslim world of North Africa, Cisse explained, people sang like this in praise. Later that afternoon, I would go up to the flat terrain above town, to think about the big picture, to watch the distant shepherds, and the boys playing football in the wide expanse below that was flood plain in the wet season. Gardens fed by well water yielded beautiful vegetables, and at dusk, the cows came in of their own accord, plodding steadily along gray tracks worn soft from use. A lone zebu sat by the road, his proud curving horns the longest in the valley. I had only heard singing anything like this once before, in a church half a world away, full of enthusiastic Baptists who raised the roof every Sunday morning. Their heaven was a place of joy, and the back of my neck still can feel the fever pitch of their emotion. And as I walked slowly back along the road at twilight, I could still hear the singers of Bani. I asked Cisse how often they celebrated this way. He said simply “Every day…”
The singers could be heard clearly as I reached the top of the escarpment looking down over the village, their exhausted counterpoint thrilling me still, in muted echoes so far from the small yard with high walls that made their cathedral. The dusty green of sheltering trees stood out against the gold and russet of this place, crafted of mud and straw and hard work from the unforgiving landscape of northern Burkina Faso.
Nothing is over one story high in Bani, which makes the seven mud mosques that were built here so remarkable, minarets like the voices of the singers reaching up to the sky with their brown arms outstretched. Imposing walls mark the outer edges of the grand mosquee in the middle of town, its empty courtyards bare to the sun. Six other smaller structures grace the barren plateaus like sentries, each façade elegantly carved and guiding the eye toward heaven.
I had come here to see these buildings, after catching a fleeting glimpse of the spires from the long hot bus journey to Dori. But it was the sound of the singers that mesmerized: something about the emotions I could feel in the air really resonated with me. My friend Cisse Souabou assured me they were not going to stop, but as we approached through the maze of alleys, I couldn’t move fast enough.
In a small, shady courtyard, two groups of men and boys stood facing each other, arrayed by height so one and all could see. There were perhaps fifteen in each group, their voices ragged already. It was a call and response, each wave flowing back as the other came forth, overlapping in an unearthly harmony my years of music had never prepared me to understand. Everyone had a tall forked stick on which they rested, arms holding up their tired heads, eyes rimmed already with red from six straight hours. No one sat.
This was devotion. Across the Muslim world of North Africa, Cisse explained, people sang like this in praise. Later that afternoon, I would go up to the flat terrain above town, to think about the big picture, to watch the distant shepherds, and the boys playing football in the wide expanse below that was flood plain in the wet season. Gardens fed by well water yielded beautiful vegetables, and at dusk, the cows came in of their own accord, plodding steadily along gray tracks worn soft from use. A lone zebu sat by the road, his proud curving horns the longest in the valley.
I had only heard singing anything like this once before, in a church half a world away, full of enthusiastic Baptists who raised the roof every Sunday morning. Their heaven was a place of joy, and the back of my neck still can feel the fever pitch of their emotion. And as I walked slowly back along the road at twilight, I could still hear the singers of Bani. I asked Cisse how often they celebrated this way. He said simply “Every day…”
To those of you who have been wondering how one so sympathetic to the Burmese cause could have been silent recently, I report it has not been quiet here at all.
Here, in Beijing, in the company of my wife Ting Ting, the past ten days have for me been full of a bitter, muffled anger eating away from within at the duty I feel to be reasonable, to try to see both sides, to tread the middle ground.
Against the dull swallowing of the hourly updates, the frenetic news-checking, the explicit photographs now choked off by the junta, there was what I knew of Burma to hold onto, a Burma of beauty and tranquility, of innocence forced upon a whole generation, and a miraculous faith held high but never shown off.
When I wrote Cycles of the Sun in 2001, it was naïve, perhaps, to think that the “resilience, strength, and humor” that sustained them before could do so forever. But it is just that which needs to hold them together now, as the utter moral vacuum in which Burma’s leadership exists is finally bared for all to see.
We have both cried in helplessness at what has happened, at the whirlwind of ineffectiveness generated by stern-faced diplomats, at the thought of what will happen to the people I met, at the hypocrisy of one of our governments, and the inaction and platitudes of the other, and at a world so anxious to point fingers anywhere but at its own collective failure.
But as tears flow from a dead space inside, I also know what I need to sustain me. It is a memory now, but it is likely to be the finest sight I will ever remember: arrayed before the world in peace, thousands of Burmese Buddhist monks leading their people in daily mass prayers for change.
What they chose to do was unspeakably brave, and does more than just honor the spirit of Gandhi’s “satyagraha” or non-violent resistance. No one could disagree it was time. After finally saying “enough is enough,” each and every person who demonstrated in peace, who made his or her voice heard without violating the dharma, each of them honors our humanity, and becomes principle incarnate. In a world so full of violence without sense, they are examples for us all.
Nothing can stand up to such rightness for long. Every sacrifice made by a monk, a monastery, or a bystander, of their lives or livelihoods, becomes a brick removed from the wall that is imprisoning them.
Never again will the generals re-gild the great golden glory of Shwedagon Pagoda in the hopes that the Sangha will legitimize their continuing rape of Burma. Nyapidaw is hollow, and it will soon fall.
Jay Dunn, Beijing, China September 30th, 2007
Life and Death in Burma copyright 2008 Focus Agency
To the colorful procession coming from Wan Tha’s village, the magic of the moments to come were to be worth whatever pain they might feel in their feet from over a day’s walk. It is Palaung tradition for the man’s delegation to come to the woman’s home for the ceremony, and the weather was auspicious for the journey. Wan Tha was to marry Ma Ko the next day, January 7th, in Peinnebin, her community, and the approaching party was quietly excited. They had stopped for the night at a smaller village fifteen miles away, so this morning everyone was pretty fresh. Slowly but surely making their way along the reddened track, they took shortcuts where it seemed appropriate, following well-worn paths that led at right angles steeply upwards to meet the next curve, and resting occasionally on the shoulder.
Thirty strong, and mostly women, they stopped a mile or so down the road from Peinnebin to make final preparations to be seen by one and all. Baskets and bundles, slings and shoulder bags were carefully set down. Within a few minutes, after some shy jokes about their curious guest, long hair was let out, and brushes and combs appeared, along with a few small mirrors and some bottles of water. With the self-possession only a lifetime’s experience can give, the older women quickly took over, adjusting the elaborate headdresses of the girls not yet married. After almost an hour, the local boys who had skipped school to come down and watch sensed the group was ready, and scrambled back up the hillside to herald the grand entrance.
This is a mountainous region, and only ten or fifteen years ago much of it was planted in poppies, which thrive at high altitude. While the volume of that illegal crop needed to be large to be profitable, it required relatively little regular care other than a watchful eye. One could still see, on impossible inclines, tiny lookouts built with just that in mind. Under the somewhat ironic supervision of the Burmese government, however, the poppies were eradicated here and these slopes are planted now with oranges, tea, and cheroot leaf.
A young Jamo man led the march, a battered tape player powered by a motorcycle battery slung casually over his shoulder. Curious onlookers peeked in on the parade as it slowly went by, a pair of shaven female monks in brown robes, a farmer on his journey home. Burmese pop songs accompanied us, warbling their way through the cool morning air, bittersweet reminders of cities far away. Wan Tha’s family members made up only a small part of this procession, as friends, relatives and children came too, wearing their best. But the most beautiful finery was reserved for the women, whose brilliant red longyis, bright swaths of fabric, and iridescent hats took everyone’s breath away. This was to be a day none of them would forget, a small part of history made in a place I can’t help but remember.
A Night’s Rest
The night before the ceremony was crystal clear and cold. The elders gathered in the wedding house, which had been set up for many guests. Cooking was to go on all night, in a giant pot illuminated by the light of candles and the occasional flashlight. It was the only house with enough power, from a hydroelectric source far down in the valley, to run one light bulb, plus a single black and white television broadcasting a Burmese army meeting. Some of those present had walked all day from Wan Tha's village, and the mood was happy but subdued, many of the children already asleep, despite the din. Plied with homegrown oranges, and brown sugarcane candy, their foreign guest soon felt right at home, and was not noticed any more.
Well into the evening, the silence of this village was striking. But for the crickets there was a sweet envelope of quiet that came down upon us, making blankets warmer and the dreams of scenes imagined all the more vivid. Five families shared the space of a single long room under this roof, yet not a sound disturbed the peace. Around five in the morning, Grandmother, who was at least eighty years old and as strong as any of us, got the fire going again, and in minutes had some tea ready. By the time it was light enough to see, villagers could be heard outside doing morning chores, and the shape of the nearby mountain slopes slowly became clear.
Wedding Day
School lessons are put to music here, in order to make them more memorable, and although today was a special day, no one was allowed to skip their studies. Around the wedding house, even the sister of the bride could be heard, quietly singing out her mathematics. Most houses are raised off the ground, in order to make room for livestock beneath, and by six or so, most everyone was awake, water dripping quietly down from the bamboo floor after a morning wash, towels and toothbrushes wielded and put away. Fires were stoked, and in the smoky haze within the long house grandmother started on her weaving, loom braced between her lower back and the door, wan sunshine just starting to filter in.
All of a sudden it began, without fanfare. Voices carry here, and the commotion up the hill from our house told us things were ready. During the earliest part of morning, in a room specially prepared for the occasion, ten women had gathered. Some would help dress the bride, and the others would continue preparing the wedding house, which was next door. Excited children were everywhere outside, and most of the men good-naturedly chased them about and made jokes as they waited.
There are seven distinct tribal religions in this area, and according to Palaung tradition, if the bride is of a different belief, she will convert to the man's religion. Wan Tha, the groom, was of the Maung Thay faith, and therefore Ma Ko, who was Jamo, would hereby adopt her new husband's practices. Both seventeen, their marriage had been arranged several years ago. In a unique and compassionate arrangement, each has the right to a trial period. Should they not get along well or have other reasons to split, it is accepted by everyone that they can part friends.
In the darkness of the bride’s house there was humor, too, and a good amount of nervous activity, as the sun’s rays made great slants of light across the room. Ma Ko gave herself over to the most experienced of the mothers, and shyly kept her eyes averted and her head down whenever she could. With much patience and many onlookers, she allowed herself to be dressed in the elaborate fashion of a Palaung bride, two handmade longyis knotted together and multicolored cane rings around her waist, a green shirt and a knitted sweater covering her top.
For nearly an hour, an intricate and lovely cloth whose fabric was of beads and tassels and embroidered motifs was twisted into a turban around her head. Two women held the length of it carefully the whole time, as they wound it all round her like a queen. From her dresser, a few words of advice about the significant moments to come were whispered quietly. And with a great white smile, Ma Ko broke the spell and had a last laugh with her friends, ready at last to brave the bright sun outside.
Union
First out the door were women, each gently carrying a plate of fruit, a pile of blankets, a small box in which branches had been laid. There was quiet for a moment, then, as they stepped gingerly down the cut-log steps, everyone waiting in the sun burst into hushed whispers. Ma Ko came out third, trying not to smile, or wave to anyone, and followed the others into the wedding house, the rest streaming in behind them.
Sitting cross-legged before the elders of the village, their mothers and their fathers, Wan Tha and Ma Ko bowed their heads for a moment with great solemnity, then put their hands together in prayer. There is no dowry custom in Palaung culture, so a ritual exchange was made between the parents, a small amount of money, a few handmade pieces of clothing, and then the ceremony began. One of the elders then stood up, and dipping flowers into a bronze bowl, he blessed the couple by sprinkling holy water onto their heads.
It became very quiet when the village chief opened his parchment book. He began to read the rules of marriage, which speak of their duty to each other, their families and to the community. For five minutes there was little sound in the packed room but his calm voice, and the occasional bird singing outside. Wan Tha listened without moving at all, looking off to the side, and Ma Ko seemed as if she was in a trance, sitting in a pool of light that made her seem otherworldly.
Suddenly then, and with a great relief, it seems everyone came forth into the morning sunlight, to smile, and cry a little, and pose for pictures. Wan Tha made all the celebrants laugh when he put his arm shyly around Ma Ko's shoulders. She shrugged it off with a smile and a show of pique, for they had hardly ever been together before that day. I was told she was sad, too, to leave her village.
The Funeral of Aung Thein Thay
It began with the construction of a raised bamboo platform, about a meter off the ground. On this, in the shade of a large tree, the body was laid out, in a simple coffin, decorated with flowers and paper cutouts, and here for two days people slowly came by, stopped for a while, and paid their respects. At first it was only women, and when the men came in the beginning they sat quietly off to the side. He was the Myinkabar village chief, and had, after an operation, died of heart trouble and was brought home from the hospital in Mandalay. Only forty-five years old, he had been well liked. The night before the burial, the men sat up the whole time, playing card games and keeping watch, and by three o'clock the next day most of the village was waiting expectantly.
The procession slowly formed, and by the end it would travel a mile or more to an open field by the temple. At the head of it, two men carried a triangular bronze bell on a pole slung between them, which they would sound in time. Next came a dignified old man, who every so often from a large silver bowl flung about handfuls of grain, and wadded-up kyats, which sent many of the attendant children scrambling about in the dust. And, under a beautiful tall white paper canopy, seven or eight volunteers lifted up the coffin, and carried it slowly along a side road, followed by perhaps a hundred mourners. A small pickup truck with loudspeakers on the roof carried the singers, whose recitations from sacred texts were broadcast with the help of microphones dangling inside the truckbed, and whose voices filled the plain that afternoon.
The monks were waiting, their offerings had been set out, and the whole group silently squatted down, the men all in front, and the women off to the side and all together. After a short time for prayers, during which only the senior monk spoke, the men gently removed the body, which had been wrapped in bright woven mats, from the coffin, and carried it about five hundred yards further to the grave. By now it was only men in attendance - the one in charge directed the lowering and correct placing of Aung Thein Thay's body, and a young boy clambered down inside to adjust the mats and place the cloths just so. Then, as if with one mind, all the men began to push, with their hands, dirt into the grave, and it quickly filled up. There was no headstone, only a large rock to hold up for a day or so the funeral flowers, and the coffin was taken back to the village, not in a wasteful manner perhaps to be used again.
Peinnebin, Burma February 2001
Cycles of the Sun, Burma copyright 2008 Focus Agency
Burma seems a land out of time, possessed of a strange, slow, and beguiling innocence. Before I can look deeper, the images I would be dreaming about somehow float forth, children playing inside orange boxes, bells jingling round the neck of my horse cart, the sweet bitter smell of spices and dust and wood fires, rust-red robed monks barefoot on the golden paya path, glimpses of water and houses on stilts, giant green banana bunches and curious beaming girls. Everywhere I go I am soon encircled by a shy and smiling people, yesterday's Christmas day celebrated by a bicycle ride through a town I don't know but which seems to know me. The snap and rhythmic thump of the beating of dry sesame stalks, the six or eight clear glass bottles, filled with amber liquid, sitting haphazardly on a wooden rack by the side of the road, a gas station in the Burmese midday dust, my negatives have become timelines, markers to hold on to as impressions swirl by.
Beneath all that is political is our essential human truth, and nowhere I have been is it clearer to me that this spirit is alive than in Burma. One hot day in Thanlyin, as I was watching some children playing on the side of the road, an older man approached, and asked me, gently, and in perfect English, why I wanted to photograph poor people. And I told him, as best I could, that to me, there was nothing on earth as beautiful as the smile on that little girl's face, that in my search for a poetry of life, any moment might show itself in that brilliant, unpredictable way to be just what you remember forever. Sure, there were to be instances of dread, of doubt, and apprehension, the cold expectancy of trouble, the restaurant I sat down in that turned out to be full of soldiers, rifles propped casually against the wall, but for any time like that there were a hundred times as many experiences that cried out to be described, and for which there would be few words.
These are people who know how to do things, and for whom it seems the technology we take for granted means less and less the more they are denied access to it. Most of the toys I saw were handmade, tops made of wood, rope and a single well-placed nail, kites fashioned from bamboo strips and found plastic flown high, on cotton string wound round simple wooden reels. It is a heavy burden, for instance, that electricity here is neither reliable nor inexpensive. Those who can afford it have generators. The fuel, of course, comes at its own price. But how sweet becomes the sound, in a village tuned down to the cycles of the sun, of an acoustic guitar, strummed lightly, of actual conversation, of people singing, and I heard this everywhere, unaccompanied by music, singing loud and unabashed, their favorite songs. Perhaps I betray my romanticism by suggesting there is something good to this, but in all I saw in the Burmese there is resilience, and strength, and humor.
Kalaw, Burma, February 2001
Single Images from "Agadez to Accra" COPYRIGHT 2008 FOCUS AGENCY
In search of a story, there remain so many others, the simple mystery of each one just a remembered fragment of worthy lives.
50 Years of Independence, Ghana copyright 2008 Focus Agency
In 1957, the former Gold Coast became the first West African country to gain its independence. Fifty years later, Ghana has a lot to be proud of, and a long way to go. It is today one of the most stable and prosperous democracies in Africa, yet has not fulfilled the promise many people hoped for in its youth. Many citizens feel a disconnect between rosy government economic figures and the reality of their lives on the street.
But in the heady days leading up to the Fiftieth Anniversary of Independence on March 6th, 2007, ordinary Ghanaians of every stripe could not have been more positive about their prospects. “Championing Africa Excellence” was the slogan of President Kufuour and the “Ghana 50” committee. And celebrate they did, treating heads of state from all over the world to a massive display of national enthusiasm, as hundreds of thousands of citizens descended on Accra’s Independence Square, each marking in his own way a positive outlook for the future.
I hope you will have a chance to visit "Social Conditions in Accra," now up on this site and the first part of this series. An outline of all the Ghana stories is posted below.
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Ghana at Fifty Years of IndependenceOn an important anniversary for a proud people, a series with three parts: real life at street level, the outpouring of national pride on Independence Day, level, and a glimpse into Ghana’s future, education.
1. Social Conditions in Accra: A view of the everyday: people in Kokomlemle, Jamestown, and Adabraka, three neighborhoods with a good deal of confidence, a lot of history, and a long way to go.
2. 50 Years of Independence: Millions of Ghanaians descend upon Independence Square to share their joy and celebrate an African first.
3. Kwame Nkrumah Memorial School: Named after modern Ghana’s founder, an Accra school dedicates itself to improvement, but struggles with the demand.
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Volta River Villages, Ghana - A look at daily life in Titikope, on the Volta River, and how traditional skills and hard work keep a community happy.
Water from the Desert, Niger copyright 2008 Focus Agency
Where many see only sand, Rissa Ixa and his team of Tuareg workers have drawn water from the ground by marrying ancient methods to solid engineering skills. They have invested in serious rigging and safety equipment over the years, and have built reliable wells in almost forty places, supporting a community of nomads marginalized by the government. At this isolated location lies an Eden of green in the desert, made possible by a single plentiful well. Acres of tomatoes, potatoes, beans climbing up corn stalks, peppers, gourds, rice and herbs all grow here, thanks to a rotating crew of Tuareg, who take turns cultivating and then guarding the produce. Visible reminders of failure lie close by. Bores are made to no avail, and some wells deteriorate or simply dry up. But with little funding, and under tough conditions, the Tuareg are undaunted and are often rewarded for their efforts.
This is one of three stories from Niger. "Letter from Agadez," which in part describes the search for water, can be read in its entirety on this site in "Life Inside a Tuareg Family."
Kwame Nkrumah Memorial School, Ghana copyright 2008 Focus Agency
Named after modern Ghana’s founder, Kwame Nkrumah Memorial School in Accra dedicates itself to improvement, but struggles with the demand. In one of three stories examining Ghana on its Fiftieth Anniversary of Independence, the principal, Peace Agbezuge, is forthright in her appraisal of the strengths and shortcomings of this neighborhood school.
Too many students are vying for too little public space in buildings suitable for classrooms, forcing the Accra New Town Primary School, for instance, to share time during the day with older students. Ghana’s government has done a good job in providing the basics, but the private sector needs to become more involved at the community level. There is no shortage, however, of qualified teachers and enthusiastic students, creating a good atmosphere for learning.
And this a place where I was welcomed, though no one knew me, and treated like an honored friend. During assignments I always try to visit a school, and this time I was lucky enough to land right in the middle of a parade - the kids couldn't march in the million-strong Independence ceremony the following day, so the teachers organized a march around the schoolyard and around the neighborhood, to my delight and their everlasting credit.
I hope you will have a chance to visit "Social Conditions in Accra," now up on this site and the first part of this series. An outline of all the Ghana stories is posted below. ___________________________________________________________________________
Volta River Villages, Ghana copyright 2008 Focus Agency
Countryside communities such as Titikope receive little government money to invest in agrarian infrastructure, so traditional skills such as blacksmithing, basket weaving, and carpentry are in high demand to keep residents in good shape.
Although the majority of Ghanaians are involved in agriculture, few banks in a stagnant economy are willing to loan small amounts to improve farming or fishing practice. Relying on the resourcefulness of its citizens and the fertility of the land and water around it, this Volta River village gets by on local knowledge, making do with small-scale transactions and close relationships to survive.
But from what I could tell, in this green world of river and sky the people of Titikope were happy, and that, in the end, is all that matters.
Life Inside a Tuareg Family, Niger copyright 2008 Focus Agency
An invited guest to the home of Mohammed Ixa, once right-hand man to Manu Dayak, leader of the minority Tuareg’s rebellion against the government, finds himself charmed by the gracious hospitality of his hosts. Over the course of a week, this photo essay documents a unique way of life. Friends, family and customers to a small shop in front come and go with easy familiarity.
Made up of several small buildings set around two beautiful shady courtyards, this is a home where everyone is at home, a place with an ever-changing cast of characters flowing through multiple entrances. Meals are taken together, usually from a single platter piled high for everyone, and beds brought outside at night to share the evening cool. Relatives catch up on the family news, take care of the children, and cope with unforeseen circumstances with poise and character.
"Letter from Agadez," which is appended below, describes all three of the singular experiences I was to have in Niger. Please also see the stories Water from the Desert and Nomads of Tidene. I hope you can take some time to read about this remarkable country.
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Agadez - a desert legend, an apparition, recalled in my mind’s eye as if from an old film, a child’s black and white memory, of Saturday afternoon alone with a tiny television, transfixed by the sight of camels, cargo and slaves slowly moving in single file towards the gates of a movie Khartoum. But this is Niger, not Sudan, and I am no longer young.
The station swirls with activity, eddies of dust playing around the bus, which radiates heat. Exhausted passengers emerge into the hard light of afternoon. It is too bright to look anywhere but down, at discarded water bags and paper wrappers, at the pile of dirty transport sacks bursting with pots and pans, people’s shopping and trading items, nameless suitcases full of clothes disappearing into the crowd. Motorcycles jam the entrance, waiting to whisk their fares into the ochre city beyond. On this last stop, I am all too happy to follow my hosts. A tall Tuareg clad in blue hefts my pack, and with a quick smile steers us through the traffic towards a waiting car, too hot to touch in the unsparing sun.
As a destination, one could hardly have chosen a place that seems more remote from the world, yet is so central to the great Sahara trading routes it still straddles, and to some of Africa’s most dramatic natural spectacles. Though the markets for salt and gold have long since dried up, the vitality that permeates this arid crossroad is undeniable. From Niamey by bus, Agadez is a headlong sixteen-hour journey east, flying first through Dogondouchi and Birni N’Konni, near Nigeria’s northern border, and then due north for the longest part of the trip, a departure at four AM forgiven for a few welcome hours of cool at dawn.
Strong impressions tend to linger when one is passing through at this speed, especially from the varied landscapes in the south of the country. Straw roofs like Vietnamese conical hats perch upon thick-walled huts, clinging somehow to the slopes of raw yellow sand dunes. Brilliant vermilion and tamarind fabrics stand out against monochromes of brown and black, and, where mud and dust are often all there is to life in this harsh place, there are glimpses of green fields, an orderly miracle where water blesses the lucky.
Though it has only now just reached nine AM, the sun is slowly but surely heating up the eastern side of the bus, and a seat by the open window is now much like a giant hairdryer. Most of the passengers wedged in their seats are unfazed, though, pulling the heavy curtains close, or simply adjusting their turbans and taking things as they come. Trees dropped away long ago, replaced by long vistas of pale scrub and rocky soil, our forward motion arrested only by occasional rough spots in an otherwise tolerable road. At each stop, the bus is quickly surrounded by a sea of snack sellers, in their few moments with us trying desperately to earn some francs from fried dough, small sacks of peanuts, barbecued meats and lukewarm drinks of every description.
On the outskirts of every town, ragged black plastic bags are spiked on every tree and shrub, a windblown phenomenon, and a true plague upon the land. In the expanses of this minimalist world, in the great empty spaces between a shell of an abandoned house, then a wall that leads nowhere, tiny humans navigate the desert, two or three children trudging ahead of a woman under a huge basket, a donkey pulling a water cart. Under a clear sky, they are equal to the task but dwarfed by the vast distances. Men are nowhere to be seen, the faraway domain of camels, sheep and goats to be tended for the most part theirs.
An image haunts me from these days, a visual fragment, if you will, frozen in time. Two great birds wait out the day under the shade of a single low tree, around them the blinding shimmer of surfaces burning under the sun, alone in the middle of nothing. But as I would be reminded by my Tuareg guide, “nothing” is a relative term, and no space once regarded is empty, either of substance or of value. One has only to know how to look.
I am here in Agadez as the guest of Mohammed Ixa, once right-hand man to Manu Dayak, leader of the minority Tuareg’s rebellion against their marginalization by the government. He is now owner of an expedition company, and it seemed fitting that in the end I would never actually meet him, since, as proudly befits a nomad of this stature, he was always away in the desert. His daughter Halimata Ixa-Graille, an acquaintance from the bus, had invited me to stay, and a day in their home had somehow turned into a week, while I got to know a little about the town, and a lot about their lives from the inside.
Since we had arrived in the hottest part of the day, most everyone inside the Ixa’s compound had retired to a big dark room set slightly below ground level, as many houses are to keep them cool. Stillness was welcome in this space, which was lined with carpets and cushions, a ceiling fan slowly stirring the air. Halimata and her “belle mere” Fatima caught up with the news from home, while Iman, Hali’s one-year old daughter, curled up in the corner. By the warm light from a yellow curtain hung in the doorway, tea was made in the elaborate traditional way, brewed atop coals resting in a neat wire basket, poured out from a height into small clear glasses, and made stronger and sweeter each time.
It would take some time to rest up from the journey, and I spent most of it watching in amusement as friends, family and customers to a small shop in front came and went with easy familiarity. Made up of multiple small buildings set around two beautiful shady courtyards, this was a home where everyone was at home, a place with an ever-changing cast of characters coming and going through several entrances. The structures themselves were often much bigger inside than they appeared, with few windows and great thick walls to keep temperatures reasonable. Tiny red birds swooped in and out, picking up crumbs and resting in the flowers of thick thorn trees, and hordes of flies shared the greenery in the heat of the day, but never seemed to bother anyone.
Life here was almost completely public. Meals were taken together, usually from a single platter piled high for everyone, and beds brought outside at night to share the evening cool. Exuding a quiet authority, Mohammed Ixa’s sister Takita was at home most often, a woman of many skills and few words, in French at least, preferring Tamashek, her native language. She ran the shop in front, where friends and neighbors often just dropped in for tea, only taking the milk powder or washing soap they came for after spending a while talking. Takita had created many of the elaborate weavings and colorful handmade necklaces I saw, including one remarkable thick quilt that had taken her twenty-five years to make.
Rissa Ixa, a big man with a cheerful gap-toothed smile, was Mohammed’s brother, and as a well-driller, knew every twist and turn in the vast landscape over which his tribe held sway. He had reportedly found water on Tuareg lands in over forty places, and would be my escort to the Tidene Valley, where some of his own family lived, four hours north and more than an hour from the nearest road. Among my fellow guests at the Ixa’s in Agadez was an elderly woman from that same area who had suffered a brain aneurysm, paralyzing the right half of her body. They had brought her here, bundled carefully into Rissa’s big Land Cruiser, only to be told by a local doctor that she needed an MRI, available at only one place in the country, in the capital, sixteen long hours further south. Before I left Niger, I would stay again with relatives of the Ixa’s in Niamey, and see her safely in hospital, attended to with a graciousness I will remember.
The sandy streets outside the gates can be disorienting at first. There are few structures in Agadez over a single story, the distinctive mud-brick walls of virtually every building seeming to blend into one another, roads beyond the center of town unnamed. The city appears to stretch out in every direction, with minarets occasionally puncturing the sky. One learns to navigate by remembering the names of landmarks and prominent businesses. Being willing to hop on the back of someone’s motorcycle is helpful, as there are not many private cars and no public transport. Shop schedules have become fluid, perhaps more so since this is the low season for tourists, and regular hours fall by the wayside.
Power is erratic these days, and sometimes even water, as the city was frantically preparing for a visit from Moammar Qaddafi, a devout Muslim and principal donor to the elegant central mosque in Niamey. Airplanes from Libya have jump-started the tiny airport, used to receiving a single flight a week. As a result, there are a few new folks in town, remarkable for their shorts, a rarity in Agadez, and colorful floral-print shirts. New curbs are hurriedly being installed on the main road by laborers working in the hell of mid-day, along with some better streetlights, and many doors refreshed by coats of Niger’s signature electric blue paint.
But when the sun is not high, walking is a delight, as is just getting lost, for the curious and the friendly are always rewarded by the unexpected, a young boy practicing handsprings in the middle of the street, the sweet sight of a row of green saplings against a brown wall, carefully cordoned off with chicken wire to protect them from goats, a glimpse into a schoolyard flag-raising, rows of boys and girls at attention, each holding close their study books and precious pencil cases.
On one of these wandering occasions, near a sprawling dusty market, I ran into a religious school. Bathed in a golden afternoon light, boys of all sizes sat outside under a porch of sorts. Though they understood neither the script nor the language, each wrote Arabic on their upright wooden boards, and at their own pace memorized lines from the Koran by repeating them, creating a pretty dissonant chorus. Many seemed to want to be photographed, but a few clearly didn’t, and there was a lot of shy staring at the foreigner. In halting French, I negotiated for permission with the headmaster in the middle of the street, attracting a small crowd as I broke out my family photographs and a few clips from magazines, but as light ever so slowly disappeared, so did the conclusion to our discussion.
With little more than an hour’s notice, I found myself in the Land Cruiser bound for Tidene in the north, with Rissa Ixa and his driver Heishi Ahi stopping over the course of two hours in a few places around town picking up essentials. Bags of flour, heavy ropes, some unmarked boxes, cooking oil in hefty containers went in the back, two heavy curved steel well segments, and a custom-made wooden stand were lashed down to the Toyota’s uncomplaining roof racks. As we waited in one market near the Vieux Quartier, I made friends with a genial tailor, who was embroidering away on a solid-looking machine the fancy patterns that characterize fine fabric for clothing. The biggest of the walls in his tiny shop was adorned with a calendar depicting Hajj participants circling the Kabaa in Mecca, the bodies of the faithful garbed in white flowing together in time-lapse like a forest stream, above a large poster of the 9/11 planes flying into the World Trade Center, Saddam, Bin Laden, Bush, and Qaddafi all lumped together in collage like a big happy family. Agreeing with him that they were all bad, and secretly wondering if Kim Jong Il was feeling left out, I took a few quick pictures, and left with a handshake and a smile.
The outskirts of town fade away quickly, and within twenty minutes we were leaving behind a desultory checkpoint and the giant cell phone tower that seems to mark the known edge of earth. On a cloudless afternoon where the temperature was to reach a debilitating 42 C, on the slowly unfolding landscape before us, everything was being punished by the sun. Dark escarpments in the distance are veiled by heat haze, and mini tornados of dust and brittle brush flit through wide pans of blinding white. Sporadic flashes of yellow and green mark where solitary plants have somehow hit water. The tarmac has deteriorated under these conditions, in one place memorably littered with hundreds of thick black tire shreds, where less careful drivers have blown out in hard ragged holes. The spidery pylons carrying power to faraway Arlit have disappeared, and within two hours we have left the road entirely, turning onto a deep sandy track. Heishi Ali stops to adjust the four-wheel drive, and our journey in the slanted light becomes a hunt for the path of least resistance, humping over dry creek beds, and between stands of cactus and the hardy olive-like bushes tall enough to hide the occasional wild camel.
We slowly cross an empty plain, as desolate as the moon, covered with black glassy chunks of pumice as if from an ancient explosion, and wind down into the valley, which beckons in grey green tones even through the heat. After half an hour, in the middle of an open area save for a group of trees, Rissa stops and waves to someone I cannot see. Soon a man materializes beside the vehicle, swathed in dark green, with a leather belt and scabbard slung low on his hip, and while they talk, I begin to see that I had missed their camp, low domed structures indistinguishable from the nearby natural materials from which they are made. For each of the two families that live here, thorn bushes, brush and heavy knotted branches tightly encircle raised sleeping platforms under arched hide covers and an open cooking area. Two or three big stockades for goats keep the herd close at night.
Twilight came quickly after our arrival, silent dogs greeting the truck. Within a few minutes, a cooking fire was lit by Rissa’s wife, and from the storage area up under the dark recesses of one of the sleeping structures, a pair of camp beds were produced for Heishi Ali and myself, who would sleep out under the stars. Wrapped tightly around an anchoring tree, their enclosure was made in the same ingenious way, each well-worn part made of gnarled wood designed to be freed from its lashings and moved within a day should circumstances prove unendurable. Insufficient rains have become a fact of life here, and though the Tidene Valley has been a hospitable location, the family was clearly prepared to move on if necessary.
Wheat is a staple food in these dry lands, and both pasta and couscous, for instance, keep well and are light to carry. As appetites return with quickly dropping temperatures, the men eat first, as is the custom, digging into generous helpings of elbow macaroni and bread from town, all of us accompanied by the murmured bleating of hundreds of goats settling in for the night. On woven mats made of palm fiber, tea is once again served, and it becomes all too easy to just sit and watch the coals burning brightly in the darkness. Although we were way out of range for anything but a satellite phone, the kids and I had some fun playing with the ethnic music on my mobile, then all of a sudden it was time to bundle up and go to sleep.
A great inverted bowl of blackness was my gift that night, sprinkled by stars the clear cold night soundless but for perhaps imagined singing from a faraway Tuareg camp. Dreams came and went, of walking through a ghostly field illuminated by the bright sliver of moon now up off the nearby ridge, of the emptiness of the plain, and idle wondering where camels went after dark, twisted shapes coming and going but never staying still, and finally an unbroken peace that went on long after pulling the blankets tight around my my neck
Pale blues, gray green and dusty brown, a pastel yellow with the faintest hint of red – colors of a morning just barely begun, to my new eyes as I padded through the sand away from camp the softest beginning to what would be a very long day. I would remember what I saw that day, diminutive animal tracks skirting a bleached white rib bone, a hornbill in branches above us surveying the land, a perfectly circular corral, intricate and strong, made without a single nail, the unfathomable look in the eyes of a bare-chested boy, too young to know he was beautiful in that faint light, restless goats circling behind him.
Within an hour Rissa and Heishi Ali were ready to go, having managed to make strong coffee as well, and we drove off without ceremony to the west, the sun already warm through the haze. For a time we drove in silence, stopping only to exchange lengthy customary greetings with solitary men who would suddenly appear along the way as if from thin air. Few possessions weighed down these herders during the day, only a stout crooked stick for the animals, some grain cereal cakes, perhaps, in an anonymous sack, and a burlap-covered plastic jug for water. As the day progressed, my eyes would grow sharper, and I could pick out a nomad camp from some distance away, but each was set so far apart in that landscape one couldn’t say for sure until the Land Cruiser was right upon them.
Suddenly we reached our first stop, one of the valley’s most successful and certainly low-profile enterprises. Behind an extensive network of piled brush, wire fencing and thorns lies an Eden of green in the desert, made possible by a single plentiful well. Acres of tomatoes, potatoes, beans climbing up corn stalks, peppers, gourds, rice and herbs all grow here, thanks to a rotating crew of Tuareg, who take turns cultivating and then guarding the produce. Tomatoes too fragile to ship over rough terrain are sliced and left to dry in the sun. These go to market, while much of the rest of this necessary bounty is shared within the community.
A tall wooden scaffold looking much like a catapult sits over the well, which is clad to the bottom in concrete and held fast by custom-made steel well parts like the ones we had brought in the truck. Using a complicated arrangement of ropes and pulleys, large baskets of water are brought up to the surface by donkeys, and then sluiced into irrigation ditches among the gardens. There are some places in the valley where two camels and two scaffolds can be used in tandem at one well, doubling the amount flowing into the fields.
Visible reminders of failure lie close by. In one location, an animal had fallen in early in the process, forever poisoning the possibility of water at this spot. Bores are made to no avail, and some wells deteriorate or simply dry up. But Rissa’s team is undaunted, their fearlessness and good cheer in these tough conditions truly admirable. On this hot morning, we would visit two more successes. They have invested in serious rigging and safety equipment during the work, and usually manage a smile even when sweating away at the bottom, forty feet below the scorching sand.
Like visions from the Bible, a group of nomads will spend the greater part of a day watering their herd of goats, zebu and camels, using methods unchanged for a thousand years. A boy tightens the thick palm fiber straps hitched to an uncomplaining donkey, and fixes the guide ropes expertly to his saddle. Mounting his charge, he spurs it into action, pulling up a full goat-skin water bag as he heads away from the well. Working together, a young woman will do the same, waiting to raise the next container, now on its way down to fill up. All will take turns emptying the bloated skins into bigger jars for transport, and into a nearby trough for the milling herd. Goats crowd around the wetness, and are given their fill, but no more - donkeys will drink several times, for they are doing the hardest work. The biggest zebu can only approach one at a time, their elegant curving horns making sharing impossible.
Over the course of four or five hours, everyone in this group of twenty will labor at this vital routine. Not everyone would envy lives as hard as these, but I can’t help but feel that these hardy souls will be the ones that survive, should all our fragile technology crash down around us. Like many Africans eking out a living from the earth, they will always be able to live here at least, to wait out a change of fortune, a change of government, or to just make do, once again, with the patience, grace and pride of people who know themselves and the land they live on.
Jay Dunn Agadez, Niger 2007
Nomads of Tidene, Niger copyright 2008 Focus Agency
For centuries, nomadic Tuareg and Fulani herdsmen have made the Tidene Valley in Niger one of their homes. Living in low domed structures indistinguishable from nearby natural materials, these resilient and welcoming people face the daily hardship of life in an inhospitable desert with grace and equanimity. Thorn bushes, brush and heavy knotted branches tightly encircle their open cooking areas, while raised sleeping platforms under arched hide covers protect all from the elements.
Made from well-worn gnarled wooden parts, these are homes designed to be moved within a day should circumstances prove unendurable. Two or three big stockades for goats keep the vulnerable herd close at night, while donkeys, camels and cattle stay within sight of camp, dependent on their resourceful hosts for water. Insufficient rains have become a fact of life in Niger. Though the Tidene Valley has been a hospitable location, the nomads are clearly prepared to move on if necessary.
The following is an excerpt from "Letter from Agadez," which can be read in its entirety on this site in the story "Life Inside a Tuareg Family." I hope you can take a few minnutes to read about this remarkable country.
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Social Conditions in Accra, Ghana copyright 2008 Focus Agency
A look at three neighborhoods in Ghana’s rambling, chaotic, and energizing commercial capital. Home to two million people, Accra tumbles over gentle hills and away from the sea more than twenty kilometers to the south, more a collection of communities than a city with a central plan. Makeshift soccer pitches lie under half-built highways, new shopping malls make the best of dusty locations, and winding streets meet long avenues radiating like spokes from colonial-era rotaries in an urban sprawl with few equals. In the self-respect of Kokomlemle, a working-class district of small shops and warm welcomes, the oceanside industry of Jamestown, one of Accra’s poorest but proudest areas, and the good cheer of leafy Adabraka, Ghanaians can be seen at their best.
An outline of all the Ghana stories is posted below. ___________________________________________________________________________
Tribes of Gorom-Gorom, Burkina Faso copyright 2008 Focus Agency
The small town of Gorom-Gorom, in the sand-locked northeastern corner of Burkina Faso, is host each Thursday to an extraordinarily vibrant market: Bella nomads and Fulani vendors, Hausa farmers and Tuareg traders come from miles around, on foot, by donkey or camel, and in vehicles of every kind, to buy or barter animals, spices, goatskins, medicines, pottery, produce and dry goods, everything and anything essential to life. In full swing by ten o’clock in the morning, the town square from which the market starts expands in every direction, the available shelter from the sun eclipsed by the demand for sales space. By nightfall in the desert, one can still see exhausted vendors returning to their villages, babies fast asleep, trudging familiar paths in the dusk.
