sai hankuri, again

my thoughts were with my friends this week, as the peace corps program was closed in niger. i can't imagine how it must feel to be uprooted so abruptly from an experience like peace corps, where every day is such a beautiful and bittersweet war. because as much as i loved my two years, every moment was a struggle - a struggle to understand others, to understand yourself, to constantly convince yourself that you're where you need to be. and at the end of the day, i often found that i didn't want to be anywhere else. so to be ripped away from that, from the kind of conviction that takes months to build, the kind of love that comes from a hard-won argument with your own demons... it must be something like being taken out of the race when you're 22 miles in. i used to laugh when nigeriens told me 'sai hankuri' (have patience) in the face of a disappointment or failure; it never seemed like enough. but now i understand that these small words, passed along with a slight shrug of the shoulders and some sympathy, are sometimes all one has to offer. so sai hankuri guys, better days are on the way.

hard to explain

if a picture speaks a thousand words, than maybe a 4-minute video can help me put the last two years into words...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XoM5bxlVFo

If you catch me at the border, I got visas in my name

I haven’t left this country since April. Understandably, I’ve started feeling restless, ever-so-slightly unhinged. It’s definitely time for a vacation. But since I have too much work to take time off until next April, I thought I’d post about my last vacation, the one I never got around to talking about. Most of this is just scribble from my journal on the road, snapshots, definitely not a complete picture of the trip. Also way overdue, but better late than never.

April 2009

We hadn’t left Niger in 9 months. 9 months of living in a fishbowl, minus the water. So our goals were simple – anonymity, adventure, and alcohol. We would avoid big cities, stay within our $600 budget, and sit on no-name beaches until our brains fried. Five girls, four countries, three weeks – easy. We stumbled into each new city with no place to stay, no maps, no friends, no language – just a 7-year old Lonely Planet guide and our wits and charms.

Niamey to Cotonou (Benin)

The ride was stifling, almost painful, humid and cramped, sweat dripping down my chin and neck. The air from the windows felt like the blast of a blowdryer. We passed through N’Dali and Parakou and Berekembe, a film strip of drooping mango trees, the ground littered with rotting yellow fruit. Immediately after crossing into Benin, there were signs of development: roofs made of tin, cement-bricked houses, an abundance of shade trees which hadn’t been felled and carted off to make fires. Watching the countryside’s slow transformation from behind our bus windows, we waved at slim topless women with shorn hair and thick bone necklaces. When it got dark, I drifted in and out of sleep, watching small campfires and lanterned shacks waft by, enjoying the growing scent of sea air, dreaming of coolness. In Cotonou, near midnight, over the thrumming motors, we woke to the scream of an ambulance – the first we’d heard in almost a year.

Typical Day

Around mid-trip, we settled into a stride. Typical day: The two filthiest travelers wake up at 5 or 5:30, in order to allow time to bicker over who gets to shower first (the second shower is undesirable, as the cumulative steam from two showers makes it too steamy to get pants on afterwards), the rest of the pack is up by 6, pinching the air out of the inflatable mats which were a mistake to bring but are being put to use in order to avoid looking like an overpacker, slathering sunscreen, grumbling about toploading backpacks, sniffing & slipping on yesterday’s clothes, patting selves down for passports and ipods and digital cameras, waiting for the overpackers, and we soar out the door by 6:30 to find a taxi for the next great destination.

Ouidah

A small voodoo village on Benin’s coast, Ouidah was a primary departure point for slaves boarding ships for the New World. We trekked up and down the Route des Esclaves, the weight of our packs and the oozing sun a weak simulation of history. The red-walled cobbled streets housed an air of spirituality. Unlike the snap-happy kids of Niger, children in Ouidah shied from our cameras, covered their faces. Women sold akasa – pounded corn, boiled into a gelatinous mound – and we smothered it in oily fish sauce. The bars were outdoors, we were shocked to discover, and filled with both women and men in broad daylight. Our Muslim-attuned sensibilities bristled subconsciously.

Grand Popo

We’d heard rumors of Grand Popo – white sands slung over Benin’s coast, rum punches and miles of nothing. We stumbled onto a silent beach, rows and rows of brown shacks battered by the sea, fishermen pulling needles through wiry tangles of net. Our bikini tops felt obscene. Long pirogues were nestled into the dunes, resting, overlooking the heavy waves and the promise of fish. It was paradise, just not the kind we were expecting. Not a flash of white flesh to behold, just black bodies carved out of long mornings hauling nets, shirtless marvels strewn in the sand, trawling for fish.

When we woke in the morning to scour Benin’s unplucked coastline for seashells, there were huddled masses dotting the shore. Kids with their pants down, crouching where the water kissed the sand, waiting for the tide to whisk their excrement away. The boats were mere pinpoints on the horizon.

We settled in with a small group of fishermen. Moustapha, who spoke to us in Hausa, and Espoir, whose name, fittingly, means ‘hope’. They made the beach feel like home, invited us to dine on steaming silver trays of fresh catch. We sat in the sand, licking spicy sauce off our fingers.

Transportation

Transportation was the melanoma, the great festering scab on the skin of our travel plans. The eagle-eyed porters who snatched our bags and pinched our elbows even before we stepped off the bus, desperate to secure a fare, demanding that we ride with them. The ticket sellers who couldn’t meet our eyes when they swindled us, only seeing money in the color of our skin. We spent hours arguing with them in French, in Hausa, and when all else failed, in a combination of high-pitched English and irate sign language. Most times, holding a tenuous grip on sanity, I had no choice but to settle into my corner seat and let my anger blow out the window with the wind.

Good Samaritans

Crippled by our sudden inability to communicate in local language, we found ourselves relying on the kindness of complete strangers. Good Samaritan #3: Abdul Salaam Abba, a taxi driver at midnight in an unfamiliar city. Five girls fresh off the bus, big backpacks, no hotel. We crammed into the backseat, eyed each other in increasing panic as he drove us up and down dark alleyways, rambling on in French, then dropped us off in front of a brightly lit auberge, and refused to take our money. Good Samaritans #5&6: two curly haired and tan French ladies who spotted us on the cusp of a two hour walk in the sun. They pulled up in front of us, called “hey, America!” and beckoned, insisting on giving us water, and then a ride.

Marveling

We couldn’t help marveling at the luxuries that our West African brothers enjoy – Trashcans! Polite children! Seafood! Toyotas! Bridges! Grass! We marveled at the subtle presence of non-Muslim spirituality. For example, shop names: “Fear God Bakery”, “Christ is in Me Fashions”, and the ever-popular “Only Jesus Loves You Auto School”. We marveled at the fact that, in some places, the language was different, but the words remained the same – marry me, give me your watch, where are you going white devils?

We Drove to the Middle of Nowhere and then Walked Back

I had grand plans for the group to do a canopy walk, sleep in a giant tree, and then take a day-long boat ride to some magical rocks. Turned out the canopy walk took only 15 minutes, the giant tree was on the wrong side of the jungle, and the boat ride wasn’t worth the price. So we drove to the middle of nowhere, couldn’t find a taxi, and had to walk back.

Hot Hot Heat

It was the peak of our first hot season, temperatures soaring above 110 degrees. At night, sweating into our pillows, tossing and turning with just the tease of a breeze evaporating across our ankles. The humidity gathered like a crescendo during the day, conjured heat lighting at night. The ragged limbs of the trees stenciled black against the silver of sky, over and over, spelling out the darkness in an unknown language. No choice but to sit up, facing the amorphous throbbing night, praying for sleep.

The Green Turtle

The last official stop of our West Africa Tour – the famed eco-tourism lodge on Ghana’s hidden coast. We splurged on a honeymoon-style bungalow, ate eggs and thick slabs of brown toast and honey for breakfast, fried chicken and plantains for dinner. The ocean was freckled with wet heads, so we plunged in to flounder in the surf with the other expats. Heart pounding, head swirling from a two-beer buzz, the current was terrifying, relentless. The sky inhaled the water in waves. A storm rolled in and we stood on the shore, gaping at the roiling ocean and black sky, laughing when the pelts beat on our shoulders. The heavy tide gathering fistfuls of seawater, curling and pounding and retreating. The offshore clouds were as red and ragged as some sunken reef.

48 Hours

Eager to get back to Niamey, and disappointed in Ouagadougou’s stark resemblance to the bleaker parts of Niger, we jumped off the STC bus after a 17-hour ride through the night (Kumasi to Ouaga with a three hour “layover” in an abandoned bus station), and hopped right into a bush taxi. The plan was to suck up the pain for 6-8 more hours on the road, and to be home just after nightfall. We were elated at the possibility of catching the bureau before it closed on Friday, pleased at our own knack for travel efficiency. But the plan hit a snag when our bush taxi halted 172 kilometers from the Niger border. We were to stay overnight in this village, they informed us. What village? we wondered, gazing skeptically at a small collection of straw mats and food vendors gathered beside the road. There were bandits on the road ahead and it was unsafe to traverse at night. Enraged, we settled into our straw mats, watching as bush taxis trudged into weary lines along the street, male passengers unloading and milling around. There were no female travelers, save for the five of us – young, white, unprepared. We demanded to sleep in the car, but quickly evacuated when two stubborn men edged their way in and bedded down in the backseat. Stretched out on a mat, under a hangar, lying next to my travel-weary companions, clutching my camera bag in one hand and my pepper spray in the other, dreaming of pirates, I was able to fall asleep for about an hour before the lightning started. We hightailed it back to the car, which was immediately infiltrated with foreign bodies as the rains came. We hunched down in the strobed dark, a carful of people going nowhere, exhausted from over 48 straight hours in a vehicle, but unable to sleep in such cramped and humid quarters. The windows fogged, the Africans dozed upright, the lightning snaked down from above, and we sat starkly awake, watching the storm until the sun rose weakly over a bleak, wet day.

Full Circle

We rode buses until the heat drew sores on our backsides. The days slipped through our hands in a blur, frozen in photographs. We carried no watch, instead measuring our days by the crux of the sun, a gnawing in our bellies, the heaviness of our lids. Everything we owned was damp and stinking, sweat-laden, worn three or four days in a row, and then balled up and shoved deep into a bag which sat under the sun all day. Over and over, we penned our names and origins into customs forms before stepping across imaginary borderlines to unfamiliar territories. Pushing west, shouldering our packs, turning one cheek to the impending fatigue. Twenty-odd passport stamps and 21 days later, we rolled across the Burkina-Niger border, back to everything that was strangely familiar.

On Travel

The magic of travel is that you leave your home secure in your own knowledge and identity, but as you travel, the world in all its richness intervenes. You meet people you could not invent, you see scenes you could not imagine. Your own world, which was so large as to consume your whole life, becomes smaller and smaller until it is only one tiny dot in space and time. You return a different person.

Many people don’t want to be travelers. They would rather be tourists, flitting over the surface of other people’s lives while never really leaving their own. They try to bring their world with them wherever they go, or try to recreate the world they left. They do not want to risk the security of their own understanding and see how small and limited their experiences really are.

If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small, and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; we don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

Travel, no matter how humble, will etch new elements into your character. You will know the cutting moments of life where fear meets adventure and loneliness meets exhilaration. You will know what it means to push forward when you want to turn back. And when you have tragedies or great changes in your life, you will understand that there are a thousand, a million ways to live, and that your life will go on to something new and different and every bit as worthy as the life you are leaving behind.

- Kent Nerburn

Kodachrome

“To be a photographer, you have to be a child, always full of wonder, looking at the world with wonder.  Making a photograph only takes a moment of time, but then you spend the rest of your life figuring out what it means.”

- Leonard Freed

I learned how to use a camera when I was 14. Those first few years, running around with my friend’s grandfather’s heavy Minolta, making horribly exposed images of mundane things, counting down the seconds in front of a glowing enlarger, they shaped me as a person, changed me forever. And now I (with your help) have the opportunity to bring the same amount of creative splendor into the hearts of the kids I work with here in Niger.

This November, I’m kicking off a Youth Photography Project in my village. I’ll be putting cameras and film into the hands of 14 middle school students, and teaching them how to tell stories and express themselves creatively. Students in Niger do not benefit from art or music classes; critical thinking and self-esteem are seldom encouraged. These 14 students will have the unique opportunity to document their lives, to communicate with the rest of the world about this little-known landlocked country in the Sahel.

Over the course of 8 months, the kids will learn how to compose images, critique their work, and curate a final exhibition. They will also produce and market a collection of Niger postcards to generate income. In collaboration with the San Francisco First Exposures program, the students will exchange photographs and letters with American youth, fostering cross-cultural exchange and friendship.

So, I am asking for your help. I need to raise about $2000 for film development and other project expenses. I want you to think back to your very first artistic endeavors, how it felt to hold a paintbrush, play the piano, or write a story. Think about the creative images, words and music which have changed the way you view the world. Now think about the possibilities of putting a camera in the hands of a child. By making a donation to the Zinder Youth Photography Project, you will not only be helping a Nigerien child develop a roll of film, you’ll be giving them an opportunity to express themself, incentive to continue their education, and most importantly, a voice.

You can make a tax-deductible donation and find more information on the project at the following link:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=683-173

I would like to thank the people who have helped me get this far in the project, by donating cameras, film, batteries, and precious words of encouragement: Zach Williams, SF Camerawork’s First Exposures, Erik Auerbach, Jamie Lloyd, Hayes Firestein, Kyle Yugawa, Joyce Liao, Remy Chang, Peggy Mahlik, Randahl Matsuno, Christi Hernandez & the Academy of Art University, Will Mosgrove, and all of the other individual donors who slipped rolls of film into my care packages. The project would not have been possible without your support!