astronomigirl's Xanga

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 04:55:30 GMT

closed doors & open windows

my video submission for nicholas kristof's 2011 win-a-trip competition, which will give a student an opportunity to accompany him on a reporting trip to africa or india/pakistan/nepal. comments and feedback are appreciated!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viEBFiB5BOQ

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 20:11:23 GMT

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.

Monday, October 04, 2010

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 21:32:48 GMT

two years in three minutes

one of the hardest parts of the readjustment process has been trying to summarize my experience. people keep asking me for the highlights and the low points, the best and the worst - but how can you summarize 27 months of living abroad with the peace corps?

so here's two years of photos from niamey, zinder, guidiguir, dakar, marrakech, fes, essaouira, grand popo, cotonou, lome, kpalime, accra, cape coast, tunis, el haouaria, palermo, barcelona, inca, madrid, toledo, and more...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utngN1zYbP0

**music by amadou & mariam (mali) - "sabali"

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:43:46 GMT

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

Monday, December 28, 2009

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 14:30:26 GMT

Broken cameras, unbroken spirits, and a change of perspective

Every day I rode into work last week, there was a kid waiting for me with a broken camera. Burned out batteries, prematurely rewound film, jammed shutter buttons, and frowns all around. I did my best to survey and patch the damage, but mostly I just had to shrug my shoulders and tell the kids what I’ve been told so many times here: have patience. Turns out that some of my donated cameras are just too old, too vulnerable to whatever power Niger exerts on technology. The kids are putting on brave faces while I order some more cameras online, and despite the snags and bumps in our plans, we had a great critique last week. I’ve posted some of my favorites below. The print quality isn’t fantastic, since we’re working with some old film and chemicals, but the creative intent is definitely there. These kids see everything with new eyes, take every picture with new and unsure hands. Last week I was talking to a dear friend about how difficult it is for me to take pictures here now, how everything seems so ordinary and blasé. He told me, wisely, knowing me so well, that I should just take my camera with me everywhere anyway. Take pictures of the ordinary, instead of the epic. That sometimes the mundane can be beautiful. And he was so right – these pictures, these tentative steps towards self-expression, are simple proof of that fact.

a girl on her way to class, by ramla

a woman reading the koran, by bibido

baby sister, by lalla

accidental self-portrait, by nana

something high up, by ramla

different levels, by bachir

kids, by bachir

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:26:13 GMT

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.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:50:15 GMT

A brief list of things which are routinely screamed at me as I ride down the street on my bike

- Anasara! (White man!)

- Anasariya! (White woman!)

- Japonais!

- Chinois!

- Ma cherie! (see: Stevie Wonder)

- Kay! (Hey, you!)

- Ssssssttt!

- *Kissing noises*

- Hee haw! (Bastardization of “ni hao”)

- Ching chong chow! (Bastardization of the Chinese language)

- Ba ni cadeau! (Give me a gift!)

- Cadeau! (Gift!)

- Dauka mu hoto! (Take our picture!)

- Sakina! (My Japanese next-door neighbor’s name)

- Samira! (Name of the Japanese volunteer who lives on the other side of town)

- Amina! (Name of the Japanese volunteer who lived in my house 4 years ago)

- Chamsia! (My name, used seldom to never)

Lights, camera, action…

I think I’ve mentioned before that kids in Niger don’t have art classes. Even in a larger city like Zinder, there is little evidence of art or creativity in the streets – signs are monochrome and poorly lettered, most architecture is square and functional. And this makes sense, after all – how can someone worry about painting rainbows when they are confronted daily with meeting their family’s basic needs?

We kicked off our photo sessions last month with an informational meeting for parents and school directors. The kids filed in nervously, sat down next to their fathers, shyly eyed the two point-and-shoot cameras I’d brought as examples. When we explained that each kid would be in charge of his or her own camera, their faces lit up like flashbulbs. “My kid can’t be trusted with a camera!” one father crowed. Flashbulbs extinguished. The other fathers were immediately in agreement. “We should hold onto their cameras for them! They have to be supervised!” It took an hour to calm everyone down, to convince the parents that their children could handle the responsibility. Thanks to my counterpart and his word magic, everyone pumped my hand and thanked me at the end of the meeting, and we were off to a good start.

We’ve had four sessions so far, talking about creativity and self-expression, getting to know each other. I asked the kids to bring an example of art to class, something from their everyday life. One girl brought a TV remote control, said the buttons were pretty. On another day, we looked at famous photographs throughout history - Capa’s images from WWI, Salgado’s work on Africa, Yosemite through the eyes of Ansel Adams. The kids kept begging to go back to Margaret Bourke-White’s image of Gandhi, just sitting next to his spinning wheel, reading.

Last week, they got their cameras and a roll of film. We called their names one by one, and each kid came up solemn-faced, holding out two hands as if receiving a gift. They took the cameras back to their seats, stared at them. We showed them how to load the film, talked about respecting boundaries, gave them a scavenger hunt for homework, and they were off. 15 normal kids, suddenly empowered with a mission to tell a story.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:00:28 GMT

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

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:40:24 GMT

Peace & Conflict Studies

The past few months have been so rocky here, and most of it is stuff I can't talk about. Be assured that when I'm finally cleared of the censor, there will be lots to tell. In the meantime, here's some reading material on the current state of affairs in Niger:

http://www.state.gov/p/af/ci/ng/prs/2009/132170.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8181537.stm

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/world/10/05/09/norway-tops-un-human-development-index-china-moves

In a Niger State of Mind

I haven’t written anything in months. These days, it’s impossible to get anything out that’s honest, complete. Life has expanded to the point where I can’t get my head around it, can’t communicate it to anyone else, on any terms. I’ve stopped eating books as a form of escape, stopped leaving my little trail of blog crumbs to help find my way back. I’ve started to lose myself in all this. During my first 12 months, it was easy to sit around with other volunteers asking ourselves “what does it all mean??” Trying to rationalize this crazy experience was part of everyday life, a means of survival. Our sanity and well-being demanded that we constantly reaffirm our reasons for being here, our goals and sense of purpose. I spent hours dreaming up the perfect blog entries to describe my state of transition, trying to define my emotions. So much to say, to share! But now, with the clock ticking down the months (only 9 left!), I’m so swamped with plans and activities and responsibilities that I can’t find room to take a step back. This is the only life I know now, the life that has me eating and breathing and sleeping small development projects, the life that thinks in three different languages at once. It’s a life that feels so far away from where I came. Sometime after my first year, I crossed over to this side of the world, and haven’t looked back. And I’m starting to think that I’m addicted to feeling displaced, uprooted. Next year I’m supposed to return to what’s “normal” – a job with a time card, friends that are only a muni ride away, and everything I could possibly want at my fingertips. Everything, that is, except for this bittersweet feeling of not belonging, of reaching for something intangible, the conviction that my path in life isn’t a straight line. No, life out here is more like a boat awash in a choppy sea. No particular destination or deadline. Only the stars to guide me, the waves to continually nudge me along, the dream of some far-off shoreline, and the fire inside telling me that I’ll get there eventually. It doesn’t matter when. So I’m starting to feel like I’m not done yet. Not ready to go back to what’s familiar and normal. Not ready to plant my feet, not ready to halt the momentum of this train wreck I’ve initiated. I know it sounds crazy. To some, it may sound as though I’m afraid to return to my responsibilities, to real life. But what could be more real than this? What life could be more rewarding?

I’ve written to my country director requesting the possibility of extending for a third year in another country. On to the next adventure, the next crooked road, the next state of mind…

Thanksgiving 2009

Another thanksgiving, another year of things to be thankful for. As we sat around our two-week early no-turkey dinner, I looked around the table at the people who have become my family over the last year and a half, and I felt so grateful. Spend two years in a foreign country with a group of people, and you’re bound to form some close ties. I’ve been irrevocably altered, rounded out, molded by the hands of everyone I’ve met on this journey. At home, I knew one kind of people, people from one state, one country, one ethnicity, and I never thought it strange. I surrounded myself with people who looked, talked, lived like me. But now I’ve filled my life with friends from around America, people with strange tastes in music and different upbringings, exotic tales of varied travels around the world. The COSers are leaving in a couple weeks, and I can't believe it's already time to stay goodbye to these people who have stamped a little part of themselves on my soul.

not thanksgiving, but an example of the crazy people i'm surrounded with here

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:47:04 GMT

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!