The Adventure Continues

A short post since I’m trying to upload some important things in a country where uploading should not take place…Count your lucky stars for high speed internet in the States—even for dial up for that matter!

The power cord/transformer for my Mac rather exploded the other day when I plugged it in at an office run by a generator. It was not a happy moment, and we scrambled a bit to see where we could find a new one. But then we figured, we’re in the land of cheap labor so why not try to get it fixed here. And this is where the adventure continues…

So while I was working this morning for Hope for Ugandan Students, Morgan was running around Mbale with a computer repairperson, fixing something that shouldn’t have been fixed, and it involved screwdrivers, hammers, pliers, running around on foot and motorcycle, pulling parts from various types of machines, and outstandingly, it worked. There’s more to this story but he’ll tell the whole thing at the slide show in the Spring. For the moment, here are a few pix.

A Photographer Again

I feel like a photographer again. Not always a great one. Not always an ethical one. But a photographer again. When I left DiversityWorks in 2005, my intent was to be a full-time photographer. I’ve failed. I think that what I soon realized was that I needed to be a three quarters-time lazaholic to reverse my workaholic ways, and photography was one of the things that got put to the side, unintentionally. So in the course of these past four years, I’ve done a lot LESS photography than I did during my time at DiversityWorks, and with the exception of a trip to West Africa and some jobs here and there, I’ve not really done any photography. It’s gotten to the point that when people ask me what I do, and I say “photographer”, I often feel disingenuous.

But now I’m a photographer, or at least I feel like one again. The feeling actually started about a month before the trip when I began contacting groups about doing photography for them. It meant me updating my resume, realizing that my work over the last ten years or so was really thin. It meant me researching groups that do work that I both admire, and that matches my style of photography. It meant me putting myself out there to groups and individuals, and trying to make a compelling case for why they should hire me for a day or a week or somewhere in between. And it was exciting, surprising, challenging, and fulfilling. I felt alive.

And not only have I felt like a photographer since arriving in Uganda, but I’ve acted like one. I’ve taken thousands of pictures in this, one of the most photogenic places that I’ve ever visited, and some of them might be really good. And I’ve also taught photography, both formally and informally, and I’ve not been all bad at it. The last several days, I’ve led two short workshops for women who will be documenting their communities through the Zion Project. The first group was in one of Northern Uganda’s many Internally Displaced Persons camps and the second was with Congolese refugees who are living in Gulu and often working as prostitutes. Both groups have stories to tell, and my job was to help them do it through photography. Many of you may know that I was soliciting camera donations before my trip, and Morgan and I carried 28 cameras and more than 40 rolls of film to Uganda to donate to this project. And while I cursed this extra bulk and weight in my bags for the first two weeks, I’m so glad that we did it, and so appreciative of the generosity of people who put their old cameras into the hands of new photographers. It’s of course impossible to say what the results will be, but I’m told that there will be a show of the women’s work in both San Francisco and the greater DC area in May of this year. And even if the photos suck, and some undoubtedly will, these women have an amazing story, and I hope those of you who live in these areas will come out just to hear some of these vignettes about their lives. Those absolutely will not suck.





Nor will the stories that I’ve collected along the way. I’m very conscious of the fact that I’m not telling all the stories on this blog, and that I’m even intentionally leaving out some of the most golden nuggets, because I know that there will be photography shows that come out of this trip, and I want all of you who are reading this religiously, even if it’s only a few of you, to be able to come and be delighted by new stories to accompany the many many photographs. And that’s likely all an ego thing, because when I do a photo show, one very clear goal is to have all the guests either 1) fall in love with me, or 2) fall in love with me all over again. So come to the show and feed my ego. Or don’t and I’ll add an epilogue after my show, along with a link to a photo gallery, to fill in some of the blanks.

With this said, not all of the photographs have been winners, and I realized yesterday that I shot a whole bunch of indoor shots in dark huts that are painfully out of focus. But I think it’s all part of the process of getting back into the game, remembering who I am as a photographer, and using the camera as an effective tool. And to be honest, I don’t know how good I am nor how good I can be since making good photographs here is like shooting fish in a barrel. And ultimately I will judge my work on this trip to a great extent by how it’s received by you, the viewers; how they attract you to want to learn more, engage you in discussion, inspire you to reflect, and do something the same or differently in your lives.

Being back in the photo game is also challenging me to ‘do the right thing’, or to call myself on it when I don’t. I’ve been guilty of taking photographs of people without asking them, something I claim to never do. I’ve been guilty of aiming my wide angle lens at a landscape or cityscape and including a non-assuming bystander in the picture…by design. And I’ve not hatched a plan to get photos to everyone I’ve photographed, also something that I like to think that I try to do religiously. But at least I’ve got 5-6 more weeks to right this ship, to be the photographer that I want to be, or to come to terms with the fact that I’m not only a flawed human being, but a flawed photographer.

250,000 Shillings

I want to start by saying that I love the comments that people leave, and if you want me to blog more, please leave more comments (or at least send me notes via email). With this said, the bandwidth and electricity have not been good of late, and that’s one of the real limiting factors for blogging, as is my time. I find it interesting that I’ve been busier on this trip than when I’m at home (at least when I’m doing NGO work along the way), and find that a good number of my hairs are turning gray. At this rate, I might be all gray by my return to the States. Now onto the subject at hand…

I had a really interesting conversation with an Anglican priest earlier this week. He was one of the town leaders in a community where the Bushenyi Alliance for Rural Health and Development, one of the groups with which I was working, was inaugurating a health clinic. He told me about the problems facing his community, as well as the resources, and shared with me that the typical farmer in his community will earn 250,000 Ugandan Shillings in cash over the course of the year. Mind you, this is above and beyond the food that they use to feed their families and crop payments used to pay rental on land, but it’s still only $130 in family income for an entire year! And to think that I’m struggling to live on $130 for a week around here. I don’t know how they do it. Or maybe I do, but the thought of it is so exotic that I refuse to really consider the possibility.

The cost of living in Uganda is quite cheap, and consistently so across the board…that is to say for people traveling with dollars. The boda boda rides that I wrote about in an earlier entry run anywhere from 25 cents to one dollar for the typical city ride. And today, we went for a ride to a refugee camp likely 30-35 km away from Gulu that ran us $2.50….and I found it expensive. Hotel rooms at decent places run $10-20 a night, food can easily be found for $2-5 a meal, and bus travel runs about a dollar an hour.

In terms of Ugandans who are not rural farmers, some folks with formal employment make as little as $60/month. Some, of course, make more, but even food service folks in the capital—where things are not always cheap—make only twice that amount. And today we met two groups of Congolese refugees who are supporting themselves through prostitution—they refer to it as “through any means possible”—and learned that the typical screw makes them fifty cents to a dollar, just about the same price as a boda boda ride. Honest question: which would I enjoy more?

But while Ugandans don’t make very much money, or at least a good slice of them don’t, there’s not a lot of poverty. In the North where I am now, there is definitely more since many people are displaced by war and without jobs and/or land, but conditions are certainly not dire. Uganda is a rich country. A rich country with problems, but that can be said about most places. What’s clear is that Uganda has it a lot better than many countries I’ve visited, perhaps most.

Quick Hits

I’ve been in Southwest Uganda the last several days, working with a group called the Bushenyi Alliance for Rural Health and Development. Between the seven hour drive from Kampala and the relatively full days of work, I don’t have a lot of time to write something really substantive. But here are some bits and pieces from since I last wrote (and some from before that):

•Rural Uganda is beautiful. Pretty green everywhere, and full of banana trees in this part of the country. Streetside stands with beautiful fish, tropical fruit, and one photogenic moment after another.

•Ugandans don’t seem to litter all that much. And what is littered gets cleaned up pretty fast. I see people sweeping everywhere and all the time, and while their bodies don’t always smell fresh and clean, there’s a real premium on keeping public spaces clean and tidy.

•Morgan noted the other day that we’ve not seen any public drunkenness, which I would have expected to be commonplace in the not-so-smart part of Kampala where we had been staying. But we’ve seen very little drinking and not too much smoking (and one man was sure to ask me if I’d be bothered by his smoke before he lit up). One booze-related tidbit is that many types of hard alcohol are sold in sealed plastic capsules—holding maybe 2 shots—and it’s quite interesting for me to see people pull those out in a bar, or suck directly from the capsule.

•People are relatively healthy here. There seems to be a lot of natural resources, and I’ve not seen any malnutrition or blatant public health problems that weren’t being addressed. Even at the rural clinic today, I would have expected to see far more patients with advanced medical problems than I did. This is not to say that there aren’t health concerns here—and HIV/AIDS remains big—but it doesn’t feel like it’s at a crisis level. The one glaring problem seems to be with dental health. Rotting teeth everywhere!

•Ugandans continue to be some of the nicest, most gracious people who I’ve met. If only I could leave my aggression at the door, as they seem to have, the world would be a better place.

•If I could make all of the potholes in the world go away, that would be one of my priorities after food, shelter, health and justice, peace, love, and harmony.

•The rain is really really really coming down hard right now! And it’s nice to be in a room with a very sturdy roof.

• The generosity of relative strangers amazes and delights me, and I need to be more generous.

•I had a wonderful dress-buying experience at the equator, and will tell the story at my slide show upon my return. And no, it’s not for me.

•And speaking of stories that I’ll be telling, I’m looking forward to sharing some from my day at an all girls school. Apparently, I melt the hearts of at least some Ugandan high school girls, and was delivered a few love letters today after I photographed and talked to their class. I actually felt like quite a celebrity in their company, thanks in no small part to Obama. All liked that I voted for Obama, and wanted me to carry their regards for the president back to the States.

•The internet is everywhere. Slow high speed access is available in what seem to be the smallest of towns, and here in Uganda it’s quite reasonably priced (half an hour for the price of a soda).

Ugandan Cameraman

First I want to say that I’ve been remiss in acknowledging that all the videos from yesterday’s post were taken by Morgan, as have been about half of the photos on the blog so far. Morgan has, in fact, made many pictures of me in the first week of this journey, yet the title of this blog entry does not refer to him. While as a tandem, we might rival just about any other camera-wielding duo in the country, at least in terms of quantity of shots, we were both humbled by one of our encounters yesterday.

Yesterday, Morgan and I spent a rather sublime day just walking around central Kampala, meeting people, having interesting conversations, buying a few things that we didn’t need, and taking some pictures. At one place, we stopped to talk to some boda boda drivers, who were themselves delightful, and one of them upon learning that we were photographers, ran over to find a real life Ugandan “cameraman” for us to meet. Kavuma Johnson was very handsomely dressed in a dark suit, offering up his services for weddings, graduations, birthday parties, and portraits to the Valentine’s Day revelers. Around his neck hung a twenty year old Canon AE-1, and as we took some pictures together, he mentioned that he’s been trying to get into digital photography.

Now I’ve never been one to fully embrace the generosity tenets of Karma Kitchen, where I’ve been volunteering once a month for over a year, and I’ve certainly not been as generous as I could have been thus far on this trip, but when I heard “digital photography”, it was as if Nipun and company from Karma Kitchen were the ones whispering it in my ear. Quickly I ran back to the nearby hotel and grabbed one of the many point and shoot cameras donated for this trip, this one an early digital model, and brought it to Kavuma. He was so flabbergasted. He asked “this is for me?” and then promised to pray for us (I get prayed for a lot here, mostly because I am Jewish—clearly in the wrong camp as far as many Ugandans are concerned) as he tried out his new camera, courtesy of either Skater and Liz in Tucson, or one of the teachers at the College Preparatory School in Oakland. Your camera has gone to a good home, even if it didn’t make it all the way to the resettlement camp in the north (we still have 27 cameras for that purpose, and I’ll write about that project in a future entry), and Kavuma was so thankful that within a few hours, he was at the front desk of the hotel, delivering 4x6 glossies of the three of us with our cameras, that he had printed from his new camera. There were many other lovely things that happened yesterday, and others that are sure to happen today and in the upcoming days, but this one will stick with me for a while.

Loving Boda Bodas on Valentine's Day

I LOVE boda bodas. And if I were to die on one of them today, I’m pretty sure that I’d die happy. Much like India’s motor rickshaws and Benin’s scooters, Uganda’s motorcycles weave in and out of traffic like whirling dervishes, almost with the grace of synchronized swimming gone a tad awry. I’ve never been a huge fan of amusement park rides, but somehow I think that the rush is a similar one. I’m certainly not following my father’s common mantra “safety first” as I ride them, but it is one of the first things that I utter to the driver, and remind him every so often to rein him in just a wee bit. In any case, here in Kampala, they’re certainly the fastest and cheapest way to travel, especially during rush hour, though it seems a bit ironic that I use them to travel back and forth to the main hospital in a city where traffic accidents are often fatal, and where there’s no EMT services.




While the hospital is perched on one of Kampala’s seven hills in a rather serene setting, the ride back into town jolts me back into the realities of urban Africa. And not just because of the boda boda ride. Morgan and I have been staying in what is described as “the smartest place in this not-so-smart part of the city”, and the throngs of people, plumes of dust and diesel, and products moving every which way certainly excite and enliven the senses. Whereas in other parts of the world, or for other people, central Kampala near the old taxi park could be described as “terrifying”, “exhausting”, and/or “chaotic”, for me it’s none of those things, though it’s very close at times. Morgan and I were discussing the fine line between “vibrant” and “overwhelming”, and we concluded that the dividing line between the two is aggressiveness. It would be a bold statement to say that Kampala has none, but Ugandans here seem to be some of the more polite and kind people who I’ve met, and that becomes especially clear and important when you pack a thousand of them into one city block, and reduce the walking space perhaps in half with people hawking shoes, tomatoes, and magazines/newspapers. This should not come as a surprise since the two Ugandans who I’ve had any real interaction with in the States are sweet as sugar, but still it is, because if you packed even half the number of Americans into the same city block, there’d likely be no shortage of drama, and I imagine that I’d quickly feel overwhelmed.



I remember when I first traveled to sub-Saharan Africa almost two years ago and was shocked that I didn’t feel shocked by it. I expected swarms of humanity, poverty as far as the eyes could see, and a fevered sense of sexuality and aggression. As I tried to describe in the slide show following the trip, I’m not sure if these preconceptions were due to my racism or the media, or a combination thereof, but for the most part none could have been further from the truth. Outside of the markets, there weren’t so many people, there was poverty but not dramatically so, and Ghana happened to be the least sexualized country that I’ve ever visited (I've not yet been to the Vatican). So prior to this trip, I wondered if I’d be shocked this time around, if things would feel so new, so different, so foreign. I DID expect to be humbled by the poverty, the victims left behind by AIDS, the impact of years of civil war. And all those things may come, but I’ve been struck by how little abject poverty I’ve seen. While most Ugandans are by no means rich, most people seem active and employed in some fashion—many in the informal economy—and beggars are a far less common sight than in Berkeley or San Francisco.

Speaking of Berkeley and San Francisco, there are many people here from there, and from other parts of the States and Europe. International development and relief-type work is a major industry here, and “wazungu”, Swahili for white people (and more commonly used for anyone who is not black), are quite a common sight because of it. My friend Erin had told me that people would be yelling “mzungu” at me all the time, and I’m sure that will be true in more rural areas, but it’s not been at all the case in the cities we’ve visited so far. In fact, much more common once people know that I’m from the US is a string of Bugandan words which I don’t understand followed by “Obama”, which I do. And not only that but bumper stickers, calendars, and framed pictures of “the first African leader of the United States” right next to the framed picture of president of Uganda. It’s no doubt that Obama’s been excellent for the American brand. My contact at the hospital wasn’t sure whether it was because he’s black, he’s got Kenyan connections, or because of his politics, but people here love Barack Obama, and perhaps they now like me just a little more by extension. If nothing else, it’s nice to be able to quietly chant “O-bam-a, O-bam-a” as I walk down a crowded street and see smiles come to people’s faces. Can’t imagine that if I were saying “Sar-ko-zy, Sar-ko-zy”, and that’s kind of nice to be associated with something/someone so positive.

Six and a Half Percent

6.5%. Of the Ugandan population, 6.5% are HIV positive. And shockingly that’s very positive news around here. Not long ago, I was told that close to 20% of the country was HIV positive, so great strides have been made to curb the epidemic so dramatically (and George W Bush should be thanked for pouring a huge amount of resources into this arena—this may be his one positive legacy in my book). Yesterday I had the opportunity to work with doctors, nurses, public health workers, and teachers who are on the front line of the epidemic, and to spend a day with an entire clinic for the HIV positive. And I spent a lot of time wondering how this group, mostly women, had contracted the disease when in many cases, their husbands were HIV negative. I look forward to learning more about HIV and AIDS today as I return for a second day of photographic work at the Infectious Diseases Institute. And now would be the time to put in your order for nicely boxed three packs of Ugandan condoms. Smooth. Lubricated. And available free of charge. Perhaps the perfect way to show the one(s) you really love that you’ll be keeping your infectious diseases to yourself on this Valentine’s Day.

Uganda’s improvement in AIDS-related care may be coming at a great cost to other sectors of the health care delivery system. I had a conversation with one of the surgeons in the anatomy department here at the hospital who told me that there are almost no resources for surgical services—quite a marked contrast to how medicine is delivered in the States. He said that a fractured leg, generally addressed within 8 hours in the States, will often take up to 8 months here in Uganda, 8 months that the person misses work, 8 months when rehabilitation could have been taking place, and 8 months of time to develop permanent disabilities. It seems that so many people have gone into primary care and general medicine that there is a real dearth of surgeons and anesthesiologists, the latter’s work often done by people with far less training, leading to a very high fatality rate for such procedures. This has led to some interesting mental gymnastics for me, since I’m not sure that I ever really made the connection between the work of the primary care physicians, in the fields of AIDS care or otherwise, and the surgeons that sometimes are called upon to serve the same group of patients. Nowhere did that become more clear than today during a visit to the cancer ward here at the hospital, where AIDS patients, hundreds of times more likely to contract many forms of cancer than the average Ugandan, were awaiting advanced procedures. I hope that you won’t ever have to see the pictures of the three men who I photographed today whose private parts had become ravaged by disease, the first of whom had a penis that was so swollen that it was the size of a coke bottle…of the two liter variety. You won’t be getting a picture of that on this blog.

I’ve got lots more to say about my impressions, but I think that I’ll save that for another entry. So stay tuned for that.

Finally in Africa

While today is my third day in Uganda, it's my first day in the capital. And it's vibrant,  full of people, and smog.  The last few days were spent in the sleepy little airport town of Entebbe, made famous by Idi Amin and the Israeli raid on a hijacked plane. We were there to meet with folks from the Nile Basin Initiative, the group that is threatening to hire me to do work for them in nine countries from Egypt to Burundi.  That could extend my trip significantly and push me over fifty countries.  I have nothing more profound to say, so I'm going to keep this short and say a lot more after my next couple of days when I'll be photographing at Uganda's largest hospital.  Should be an eyeful.

PS. you all are invited to the Opening Night Party of Effendy's Inn tomorrow night. Live music, free buffet, and lots of Turkish Delight.  We're sitting here now, and they've asked us to come back tomorrow for this 500+ person party.

Ways of Flying

Many of my friends have been asking me this week about whether I’m excited about my trip. Sometimes I take the easy way out and say “yeah, it’s going to be great”, but that’s not really the truth. The fact is that when it comes to travel, I rarely get excited until I get on the airplane, and then I’m generally excited about the flight more so than the destination (and then I’m excited about the destination once I’m there). I’d like to say this is so because I’m living in the moment, but that’s just not the case. I know of few people in my circle of friends who live less in the moment than I, and it sometimes haunts me. I’m a planner. I look ahead. I have dreams that I never will come close to achieving, and that seems simultaneously OK and doesn’t stop me from coming up with new unattainable ones. Even when I’m watching my beloved TV shows, I’m multi-tasking, reading email invitations to do things, checking out baseball trade rumors, and doing other things to take me out of the moment. And I guess that means that I’m generally not happy with the moment, or at least that it’s not quite enough.

But I’m quite delighted with the current moment of being on this airplane. Even though I’m thinking ahead to how this writing might be published, I’m also very reflective of the fact that the woman next to me on my KLM flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam has taken a dramatically different approach to her travel experience than I. Shortly after take-off, she began to very systematically pull out her flight paraphernalia, which included her blanket, eye cover, inflatable neck-ring, a pillow, and presumably some sleeping pills. And she hasn’t moved in more than four hours. Sometimes I have to look over at her to make sure that she’s still there.

I, on the other hand, have read parts of a travel guide, watched a delightful movie, had a tasty vegetarian meal, and have reflected about how two people right next to one another and traveling to the same exact place can have such a dramatically different experience. And she’s slept through it all! Now this is not a value judgment, mind you, and I’m certain that I’m often the one who’s sleeping through things, but it’s got to make me think that when I’m in a car with a friend, and we’re going to the same place, that I could very well be having the experience of having just thoroughly enjoyed “Flash of Genius” while the other person could have just experienced a nightmare about his or her childhood. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it would be like to be able to have an out-of-body experience and watch myself as I interact with others around me, finding myself sometimes charming, sometimes repulsive, but regardless learning so much from the experience. And this seems to take it to a whole other level, the level of experiencing or knowing what the other is thinking and feeling. And it makes me think of a conversation that I had on my first flight today, where I sat between an oncological nurse and a popcorn salesperson, and the latter shaking his head and saying ‘I don’t think I could do what you’re doing, it just seems so foreign’, and me thinking that I can’t imagine my life any other way, AND that I’d also like to learn about popcorn, popcorn-making, and popcorn sales sometime in my life.

The last bit about today that I don’t want to forget is that I realized after my brother dropped me off at the airport today that I had forgotten to give him my wallet and all the stuff in it. This is a common thing that I forget to unload when I travel internationally, and it’s silly because I don’t need my library card, my Best Buy receipts, or my East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse credit slip in East Africa. And moreover, these things have value to me and I don’t want to lose any of them along the way. So I asked the nurse “can I ask you a favor. I’d like to give you my wallet, and leave you some money in it, if you could just mail it back to my place in Berkeley.” The only response that she could muster was “yeah, right”, presumably thinking ‘who’s stupid enough to give me their wallet with money in it’. And what it made me realize is that I am almost never shy to ask people something that seems totally reasonable to me and that I would absolutely do for someone else, and it’s not uncommon that it’s met with a less reasonable sounding response. And while we only spoke for 10-15 minutes on the flight, I have absolutely no doubt that she will indeed mail me back my wallet. It makes me realize that I have a lot of faith in humanity, and even though I love to judge people and call many of them idiots, I really believe that there’s good in everyone once we can get past all the other stuff.

Prologue

I want to first start off by saying that I never ever expected to have a blog. What important things do I have to say that I can’t say in front of a crowd of people at one of my slide shows? And when people are coming to my slide shows, they have what I hope are beautiful pictures to look at, pictures that help move along the story. I have always thought of writing—even though I do it a fair amount—as pain and suffering, much in the same way as I experience reading. My older brother, now he is a great writer, but I lack the elegance with words, the creativity about how to put them together, the sense of when to stop because I’ve said enough, or said too much.

Yet here I am endeavoring to put something out there, something that will likely be read by others, and I want to be very sure that I’m doing it not for them (or should I say “you”), but instead as a tool to crystallize my thoughts that I will certainly otherwise forget over time. I see myself as a storyteller, and I believe that ultimately the only thing that I’m collecting in my life is stories. There was a time when I thought that I had some really good stories in my life, and that if I could only string 10-20 of them together, I’d have something, and I could often keep a group of people rapt in attention going from one to the next. But I’ve started to forget these stories, or at least the details of the stories, and the specifics of how I felt at the time, and that process of forgetting makes the stories feel cheaper to me and makes me think that I’m not quite as interesting as I once was. So if I’m being most authentic through this process, I hope that the result will be to prove to myself that I can be interesting/reflective/relevant, that writing can be a tool for remembering, and that I can still have a slide show where people will show up to see my work and I won’t have told all the interesting stories beforehand.