Wing Cutting
October 31, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Things you need to know before you read this conversation:
1. It was in French, thus why I had to ask the woman to repeat herself.
2. Madame means you’re married. Mademoiselle means you aren’t.
At a boutique in the Mermoz neighborhood of Dakar, Senegal. 15:30H Dakar time.
Me: Good evening.
Senegalese woman: Good evening Madame.
Me: Ah, I’m a Mademoiselle. Not a Madame.
Senegalese woman: Oh, really? Then you must cut your wings.
Me: Huh? Cut what?
Senegalese woman: Your wings, your wings.
Me: Never!
Senegalese woman: You don’t want to become a Madam?
Me: I do, but I don’t want to cut my wings!
Sw: You must cut your wings to become a Madame.
Me: Can’t I keep my wings AND become a Madame?
Sw: (laughter and a smile). Ah, maybe…
Photo game of the day: Spot the wings in this photo
Luxury Moving: Senegalese Style
October 30, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Most of the time when people move they hire a horse cart to lug their furniture through the jammed traffic of Dakar.
But Naomi and Theo, being the high-class people they are, hired an actual truck to move Megan and Johan’s furniture into their new apartment here in sunny West Africa (Background: One of my bestest and oldest friends in the world, Megan, will be moving to Dakar with her dashing husband Johan NEXT WEEK!).
Here’s a shot of them lugging off Kari’s old furniture, AKA Megan and Johan’s furniture, to M and J’s new apartment down the street…
UNICEF photo shoots and such..
October 29, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 2 Comments
I’m doing more work for UNICEF (yay!), and they have now put one photo essay I did for them up on their site. Check. It. Out. ( Click on the “Photo Essay/Reportage) box in the mid-right of the screen. Much to do today on the work side…. So sorry to be so brief! Here’s some originals from the photo essay now online (it’s about breastfeeding awareness)..
Seeing
October 27, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
We arrived an hour after the meeting was supposed to start. Our taxi driver had been fifty minutes late, and we hadn’t been all that on-time either. Getting up at 6:30 on a Sunday is hardly easy, even if you are excited about the prospect of interviewing and filming traditional healers.
When we arrived at the Traditional Medicine Experimental Center, I was greeted with a pleasant visual surprise. Instead of the closed-in, white-walled conference room I had pictured when Noami said we were going to do a story on Traditional Healers and their monthly meeting, we arrived at a bright blue gate, and found about thirty bou-bou clad men and women sitting on a raised platform underneath a thatched room in the middle of a sandy scene. Scattered below the rasied platform were dozens of round, white huts, also with thatched roves. The huts had doorways closed in with sheets of bright colorful fabric.
At one point while I was filming, I lost track of Naomi. I found our cab driver for the day, Assan, who had parked the cab smack in the middle of the hut collection, propped open the trunk and then reclined his seat to sit for a nap. I asked Assan where Naomi was. He pointed to a small hut off the left, with a bright red fabric flap for a door.
I carefully tip-toed up to the flap. There was a group of elder Senegalese healers shading themselves under a tree ten feet in front of the red-door hut. I tip toed up to the entrance, lugging my camera with my right hand. The ‘door’ was closed, and a forgiving breeze was tickling the red fabric so that it opened a little at the bottom every few seconds. I saw Naomi’s sandals at the entrance, perhaps tossed off out of respect. What was going on iin there? Should I go in and take a peek? Would I be interrupting some delicate ceremony. I decided to risk the accusation of instructions, and I slipped of my sandals and slowly opened the flap.
Inside the dark hut, there was a man sitting on a stool in a long white robe. He was hunched over a rectangle of sand. TO his right sat Naomi, and to her right sat a middle-aged Senegalese women in sophisticated Senegalese garb. She had on reading glasses.
I did the wide-eyed, tense-mouth, shoulder-shrugged sign for, “Sorry.. can I come in?” And Naomi, the woman and the man all smiled at me. Besides the smiles, there were no words, and the man, who I guessed to be a tradtitional healer, continued with his business.
He was making designs in the sand with his forefinger, and Naomi had her ‘sound catcher’ propped up to record the sound of his words—a prognosis for the middle-aged woman. When I closed the flap behind me, the red fabric screened the afternoon sun, and a red tone threw itself on everything on the hut. There were amulets hanging on a line about the man. White stones strung up on brown rope. There were two beds, and the only light besides the red-tinted graze were hints of sunlight that were prying themselves into the room through slits on the cone-shaped ceiling above.
This was a traditional healer, and the woman had come all the way from Dakar (a 2.5 hour ride – in a good car—to get his advice). It was a family matter she said, and she didn’t know where else to go. She had done everything she could do, and after that she decided to turn to the answers that had been in her culture the longest, the ones that belong to the traditional healers.
The man read the signs in the sand, threw bottle caps on the ground, and dispensed counsel. Not all traditional healers are Voyants, like this man. Most of them use plants to treat maladies and sickness. But some are voyants, and some help with matters of the mind and the heart more than blood and bones. I couldn’t help but wonder, how much different is this than psychology? How much more science does psychology use? If talking to someone in the West makes us feel better about our problems, why can’t going to see someone, who claims they can see “what is happening.. what is going on…” make other people feel better about theirs?
The man in the white robe said he has had his powers since birth, but it was only six years ago when he began to practice, because that’s when his father died, and he could not practice while he was still alive.
For the voyants and healers, this is not their professions, the head of the center told us. They are farmers and merchants. That is how they make their living. They come to the centers as healers and seeers (what Voyant means), because they have a special gift that should be shared to help the community.
Later on that day we were talking to another voyant. We asked her to show us what methods she uses. She told a young man to grab her sack, from which she pulled out little white shells. But she needed someone’s life to see, so she used Naomi and I. Here’s that woman, the Voyant I met yesterday, reading my .. ummm.. life. She said it was good… 
in the classroom
October 23, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments
I went to an all-girls school on an island today to shoot a story. I’m doing the story basically on spec for a major US magazine I’ve been trying to break into to for three years. Thus, I’m gonna wait and see if they will publish this to tell you the story and upload the best photos. But I liked this one, because there is so much action in it….
I believe I can fly.
October 22, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 4 Comments
Today, while in the Madrid airport on my way to Dakar I met a German journalist, on his way home from Central America, who told me all about this year’s first Democratic elections in Bhutan. And THAT is one of the reasons I love traveling: I just crammed four continents into one sentence.
Anyways, the journalist told me that he covered the Bhutanese king’s attempt to hold the South Asian country’s first ever democratic elections earlier this year. Bhutan is a mostly Buddhist country, and my new friend told me that spills over into their politics:
“When I would ask one politician what he was going to do if he lost, he would say something like, ‘Well, then, that is probably what is best for the country. Besides, I have some fields beyond my house that need to be cultivated, and then I would have time to get that done.”
Annnnddd… here’s an iPhone photo of the sky over Philly (my route this time was Chicago to Philly to Madrid to Las Palmas. I was in Madrid for 10 hours. I fell asleep at three different café tables, which is better than last time when I had to sleep on the cold concrete, because it was 4 am and the ticket booth wasn’t open yet. Another reason I love airports: it’s perfectly acceptable to sleep almost anywhere).
Good Night, moon..
October 17, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Last night I had a dream that I was at the ocean. I was with a bunch of people. It was one of those groups that are only assembled in your dreams—a smattering of random people form random periods in your life that have no seeming connection. The guy who sat behind you in Econ 1 your Freshman year of college. The girl who played point guard on the opposing team during a junior high basketball tournament. Your great-grandpa. Brad Pitt.
Anyways, during the dream, we were all at some random ocean. And the tide of the water all of a sudden started risign and rising. And we were running to gather all of our belongings (though I can’t remember what they were) to save them from the water.
The only reason I decided to share this dream is because today’s photos are starring the moon (and Kevin.. and me). And the moon, my dear friends, controls the tides. Want to know how? Good, because I did too.
Seems water on the side of the Earth facing the moon is more attracted by the moon’s gravitational pull than it is the pull of the center of the Earth. So water on Earth forms an ellipse (ummm .. think flexible, 3-d oval) with two bulges—one nearest to the moon and one furthest from it.
Seeing as how the earth rotates on its axis once a day, the two bulges are constantly moving. And so water constantly rushes to the ends of both bulges. Voila, tides! (ok.. way more complicated than that, but you know.. ). I also like this, because someone once told me that of course horoscopes have some truth in them, because they are determined by things like the moon. And if the moon controls the water on Earth, and our bodies are 75% water, why wouldn’t the moon have an effect on humans, too? Don’t know how true it is.. but I like it.
Tides and horoscopes aside, the moon was purty the other night, so I set up the tripod, and took some photos…
It was all yellow.
October 15, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments
My first fall in four years. I decided I really wanted a shot of a leaf falling toward the camera. So I went and stood underneath trees for 45 minutes. My neck started to cramp. Everytime I felt even the slightest wind, I got my hopes up that one of the leaves would fall. Then it would—on the tree twenty feet away. I briefly considered throwing a heavy stick up into the tree to make a leaf fall. But the journalist in me wouldn’t allow it. So I sat and waited. No leaf this time. But I still think the shots are pretty.
Encore
October 14, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Just across the street is The Metro. It’s a music venue that has a live show every single night, and I adore the way you can gauge the evening’s genre by the people who line up outside the door beforehand.
Sometimes it’s all people in brightly colored tights and loose t-shirts hanging to their knees. One day every other person had on flannel (wasn’t aware this was on the upsurge). And of course there’s often a steady hipster crowd with skinny jeans and flat-topped hats and short hair for the girls and long hair for the dudes.
Last week, after one of the show’s, a couple people from the band decided to perform an encore right under our balcony. I don’t know who these guys were, but there were healthy dozens of onlookers who did seem to know who they were, and they stood by and snapped cell phone shots while I (as always) almost fell of the balcony trying to get a good overhead shot.
And in further music news. I just bought the new Ray Lamontagne album , “Gossip in the Grain.” His voice makes me happy.
getting hitched in West Palm Beach..
October 13, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 5 Comments
Amy was the first babysitter I can remember.
Amy let us eat Swiss Cake Rolls after school.
Amy let us jump on her parents’ trampoline every afternoon in front of the backdrop of a crisp fall.
Amy taught me how to tight rolls my jeans.
Amy grew up and became more than a baby sitter and another big sister—Amy became a good friend.
Then, this weekend, Amy got married to a wonderfully nice guy named Ryan in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Amy is beautiful, intelligent and kind.
Lucky Ryan.
