Sometimes It's Surreal

Life in Africa can be consuming… intimate and exhilarating. So much is going on in this area of the world! Nigeria is erupting. Zimbabwe is facing severe food shortages. Sierra Leone is struggling through a media crisis… (the Sylvia Blyden case is exploding) Guinea continues to abuse people’s rights across the spectrum including the judiciary, health, children and women. And it just goes on and on. Yet, life seems to continue to tick along…

On Saturday, I loaded up my “shooting vest” (thanks to Mom and Dad) and spent the day lugging around my “big” camera, memory cards, glasses, notebooks, etc. while sweltering under the 40-degree sunshine. I walked down to a local football field, a dusty stone field where a group of 16 year olds were playing. There are some amazing players here and for many of them, soccer/football is an optimistic ticket out of the area. (Think inner city American basketball courts or home-based ice rinks in Canada) They are incredibly serious about their training, the games, their coach, etc. despite playing in flip-flops, sandals or even bare feet. I don’t know how they do it… but the dedication to the game was remarkable.

Then, I took a taxi into town to meet with a group of photographers I’d met last week. They operate a studio, of sorts, opposite one of the grocery stores I’ve frequented. The studio isn’t more than a room with an old Polaroid passport camera perched on the street in front. I’d stopped in there to have my picture taken for yet another identity card… this one for my IMC membership. Anyway, the group of up to fifty photographers hang around the studio… occasionally shooting a wedding or funeral. None of them have regular work and they shoot with the most basic of equipment… But, each of them have images from the war and I’m meeting with them again today to talk to them about preserving the images and documenting the re-development of Freetown and Sierra Leone. I emphasized the importance of those photographs to the history of Sierra Leone and I’ll try to encourage them to continue shooting… and documenting.

The four or five guys I met up with on Saturday are very keen to develop their connections with newspapers and magazines in the area so one of my workshops will be to bring these shooters together with newspaper reporters and editors… At the moment, the papers don’t use photography at all because they don’t have cameras. So, it kind of makes sense to try to get the cameras and photographers hooked up with the newspaper reporters and stories… and maybe get them all working together.

On Saturday, a very keen photographer named Samuel Karoma, offered to take me around Freetown to do some shooting… and in the middle of the afternoon, I jumped on the back of his little motorcycle and we zipped through traffic to central Freetown, a place called “PZ”, which is the busiest street/area in town. Kissy Road is the only street that connects the poorer area of East Freetown with West Freetown… and is the only artery through the city. It was chaos… and after parking his motorcycle, we strolled through the stalls, traffic, crowds, etc. Samuel kept very close… and repeatedly told me about the pickpockets, thieves, scammers and “nasties” that regularly hang out in the market. And, he kept telling me that as a white man, I was a prime target… So, he acted as security guard, tour operator, photo-guide and translator.

Samuel is a very interesting young man… very smart, eager and thoughtful… and a decent driver. Although, I had to keep telling him to “go slow” as he zipped between cars, curbs and crowds and my knees are rather banged up from getting a bit too close to neighbouring parked vehicles. Samuel ran for political office during the previous election and was very narrowly defeated in his efforts. He’s got all kinds of thoughts on how Freetown and Sierra Leone can rebuild…

After shooting at the market, Samuel took me to his apartment… in a place called Kroobay. The slums of Kroobay and Kingtom are linked by a bridge over a drainage ditch that regularly floods in the rainy season, hence the teetering scaffolds we gingerly traversed. The area, one of the poorest places in Sierra Leone, is home to about 5000 people who live in shacks, huts and small, makeshift buildings built on landfill, sewage and garbage that accumulates during the rainy season. I photographed the children, pigs, chickens and rats that occupy the area… and met some incredibly hard-working, proud people. One group was melting tin cans and moulding them into pots and pans. Another guy was building a two room house out of bricks of garbage for his family of five. I also met the local chief who sat in a darkened room with his three wives… officiating over the area. Despite the poverty, dirt and garbage, these people were proud, welcoming and open to my visit.

After visiting with Samuel’s sister in their room, we zipped back to the studio where we shared a drink… and talked about the importance of politics and people.

I’ll try to post some pictures to give you more of an idea of what it was like…

On Sunday… Jordan and I chartered a taxi to take us to Kent Beach, a deserted area about an hour east of the city. The beach was incredible… and not a soul in sight as we pitched our towels and bottles of water into a small, shaded hut. Then it was into the water… the gloriously warm, wavy Atlantic Ocean. The beach went on and on and I managed to stroll for almost an hour in one direction without seeing a single person.

I couldn’t help contrast this experience with the hustle and bustle of Kissy Road and the Clock tower market in central Freetown. On Saturday, I was pressing my way through hundreds of thousands of people… and on Sunday, I was alone with the birds, sand and waters of the Atlantic. It was surreal.

More later,
Stephen