Africa
Moments and missives from our world
June
22
2010
Bafana Bye-Bye
The vuvuzelas will continue to bleat like stunned cattle, even after Bafana Bafana has been eliminated in the World Cup.
Twelve years ago, South Africa made its initial appearance in the World Cup, opening against France in Marseille. A few thousand gathered at a drive-in theater in Johannesburg, braving the winter chill to support the team, with barrel fires keeping the fans warm.
April
20
2010
Flowers turn to cow food
The Kenyan floral industry, which customarily airlifts 45,000 fresh flowers each day, is in disarray after the recent volcanic activity in Iceland.
“If farmers in Africa’s Great Rift Valley ever doubted that they were intricately tied into the global economy, they know now that they are. Because of a volcanic eruption more than 5,000 miles away, Kenyan horticulture, which as the top foreign exchange earner is a critical piece of the national economy, is losing $3 million a day and shedding jobs.”
Read the full piece from the New York Times here.
March
18
2010
James Nachtwey Fights TB, With Pictures
James Nachtwey, preeminent living chronicler of war received a TED Prize in 2007 and has used the $100,000 to help fulfill “one wish to change the world,” by cataloging Tuberculosis in seven countries that are struggling with this disease.
“I wanted to do it through the lens of people actually being cured for TB or treated in some way, to show that there was care going on but it’s difficult,” he said.
See the image gallery and complete piece here.
February
11
2010
In Paarl 20 Years Ago
Nelson Mandela walked as a free man for the first time in 27 years.
This image is from a rally in Johannesburg a few years later.
October
15
2009
June
16
2009
Sam Nzima and Hector Pieterson, 33 Years On
The story of Nzima’s iconic photograph of the Soweto uprising in South Africa in 1976.
“The photograph has also passed through its own history, and in time, has accrued multiple layers of meaning. It is a history that began when photographer Sam Nzima took six quick shots of the three children coming toward him, shots taken before he helped take them to the nearest clinic. Realizing that he had captured a “powerful” image, he also knew that the police would want to confiscate the film. “So I quickly gave the film to our driver and told him to go straight to our office. By the afternoon the image had been transmitted worldwide.”
Full article here.
April
13
2009
Mogadishu Calling
Richard Phillips’ rescue off the coast of Somalia was the first bit of good news from that tragic and doomed land in ages. A third of the Alabama’s cargo was food, destined to aid people in Somalia, Kenya and Uganda.
I’ve got a personal connection to the place, having spent about a month there in 1992, photographing the famine and civil war. Memories of the people and place still hold firm. The month I spent in Somalia whacked my senses. I could not comprehend how warring sides could be so inhumane. Food, and access to it, was being used as an instrument of war. Non-Governmental Organizations were creating feeding centers across the south of the country, but convoys would be attacked and the payloads looted.
The stability and security of the place was so bad that every Western face needed to travel with a security team. In December, 1992, the US led an international force to restore a protective umbrella for humanitarian operations. The mission to distribute food was an initial success, with famine declining, but the fractured nation devolved once again into chaos.
Black Hawk Down dramatizes a battle in Mogadishu which killed 18 American soldiers in October 1993. Within five months, American Forces left Somalia. My reasons for working in Somalia were simple. I believed then, as I do now, that photographs can have an impact. My goal was to get the images published to show what was happening. I self-funded the trip there, taking money I had made from working in South Africa to tell the story about this tragic land and its people.
When outgoing President George HW Bush announced that he was sending troops to the Horn, he stated that images of the suffering compelled him to act. In a sense, some good had come from the combined efforts of the journalists who told the story of the Somali people.
Baidoa was the epicenter of the famine, and each morning, a lorry would go about the town, collecting the remains of those who had perished in the evening. The bodies were brought to a plot of land on the edge of the town, where graves had been freshly dug. Omar, my guide and translator, informed us that the patch of land had once been flat. Now, there were small hills of displaced earth, each covering a victim of the famine.
There’s something about that crazed, wild, insane, hosed, beautiful, screwed madhouse that will not let go of my attention, nor do I ever expect it to. It’s been 15 years since my last trip to Mogadishu, but I can still sense the clean, piercing light of that equatorial land. The world’s attention will again shift away from the Horn soon, and the people who struggle each day with existing in Somalia will likely receive smaller amounts of outside aid, due to the difficulties of safe distribution. Which will then begin the terrible cycle again.
April
13
2009
July
17
2008
May
15
2008