She lived in a high density urban area but had spent the last month
with her uncle, her mother’s brother. We were bringing her back home
and she pleaded with her uncle to get her mother to let her stay for a
while longer:

Her mother, nervously declined and explained that her father wanted
her home now:

She was nervous, because she herself knew that it was a breach of
custom. The maternal uncle has more authority over the children of a
family than a biological father. That is the way a matriarchy works.

It was an awkward moment, a clash between traditional and modern
values and he felt the clumsiness of the situation. Deep down, he felt
it wasn’t a good reason. His niece was crushed.

Travelling to and working in Africa means meeting people, for me. The work we do is important in the long run, but there are plenty of people in whose lives you can play a role in the short run as well. You can’t save the world. You learn to say no. I guess this is a story about how I chose not to say no.

Meet Philip Tambala:

Philip
Philip

He wasn’t a beggar. I bought his “calendar elephants” of wood (12 elephants, from large to small). I paid too much for them so he could buy seed (too much = I didn’t haggle). I even bought 6 more in order to make a down-payment on fertilizer.

My only request was that I wanted to see the receipts.

We met on the first day.

Two days later he was back with a long story about why he didn’t have the receipts with him (bought on the black-market). But he needed a lot more for fertilizer.

I explained that I had done my part. I appreciated his situation, but I wasn’t made of money. I still wanted proof of what he had done.

He was a fast talker. His command of English was amazing, but his mastery of logic and disposition was somewhat confusing.

He came back more and more. I was firm. Not a penny more.

But his story made sense.

After 10 days I put him together with the Chief Exectutive Officer:

CEO

All I wanted to know was if his story was straight or not. You really need fertilizer after planting corn (once knee-high and once again as “top dressing”). Each bag cost, subsidized, around 6 USD. But the coupons for claiming the subsidized price were not getting distributed. The market price was about 5 times more, per bag (50 kg), and he needed 4 bags. That’s starting to look like 120 USD and I wanted assurance.

The CEO and him had a long talk. After two hours I came in. I asked if I could see the fields and we agreed on Friday (the last day of my visit).

We had had a long running discussion and our agreement felt like a resolution.

The day before we were supposed to go they, my colleagues, started hesitating about taking me there. The CEO more or less made sure I would be safe, but there were other security aspects.

Blood-suckers.

It was well-known that blood-suckers were attacking the people. Ripping up holes in roofs, sneaking in at night and sucking out blood. Anyone coming in a vehicle might be seen as coming to negotiate with the chief about when they could come and suck blood. They would then stone the car and us before asking why we were there.

But on Friday morning I came to work early, 7 am, and Philip was waiting for me. He was for real.

We bought the fertilizer and headed off. The kids greeted us.

The girl on the left took a liking to me.

Another picture of her.

That’s her in the background, disappearing into the hills with my green camera bag (and all my cameras) on her back.

I called her back.

Told these guys to keep trying, I used to work the streets of East St. Louis.

Philip is a gentleman and helped his wife pick up the 100 pound bag.

He took the next one.

And his oldest son took the last one (the fourth one I had sent out in good faith days before).

And there goes my camera bag again.

The village.

Philip’s sister-in-law died and in a matriarchy her husband was required to move out of the house, but also required to leave the children behind. There were four.

Philip is now responsible for 8 children, one wife, two grandmothers and himself.

The property is still owned by the mother’s family, but they are not there anymore.

He was telling the truth. He had planted the seed and he did need fertilizer (I had already come to trust him so I had brought the fertilizer sight unseen).

His youngest son is sick with malaria, the deadliest kind.

This is where they live. The outer room is about as big as a coffee table and the inner room is about as big as two coffee tables.

No pictures. I was invited in but had to tactfully leave after a minute of fighting off the mosquitoes and holding back puke.

The grandmothers. Again and her hands.

The 3-bedroom house he is building.

He can’t afford a roof yet (I think I see some work cut out for me in January when I go back).

He paid about 85 USD to have others build the house for him (he baked the bricks himself right there in the front). You didn’t need to ask what they were smoking.

Neighbors.

Our departure:

Sending us off. Another of the same.

I was privileged to be allowed such a personal tour of his family, but the trust is there now. Africa is about people and you don’t dump each other.

Trains, trains, trains. The Swedish train company should simply be liquidated, not even sold or privatized, just liquidated, but I’ll not go in to that.

The platform in Kungsbacka …

The station in Copenhagen …

And all they lead to is a table of your own, eating by yourself at a restaurant …

Or … sitting over a cup of coffee at a bookstore …

All taken with a Kiev 4a and a Jupiter-8M (normal lens), Tmax100 (scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to film lying around the house).

There are more in the shoebox.

Many of my photographs are taken on walks to and from the office or train stations. There are unusually many joggers in the woods along the stream that runs through the town. This one was taken in the evening. I can tell by how the light is falling.

I am still using my FSU cameras, a Kiev 4a, after having my Leica CL stolen a couple of weeks ago. This one was taken with a Kiev 4a from 1970, a Jupiter-12 (35/2.8) from the early sixties and Tmax400 developed in HC110.

There are some more photographs from this week in the weekly shoebox.

A couple of weeks ago I lost a Leica CL and a couple of lenses to a pick-pocket style theft while waiting on a train at Copenhagen station. Losing that kind of equipment gets old.

I have quite a few FSU (Former Soviet Union) cameras and lenses. Most of them are the Contax style Kiev camera with the rebadged Zeiss lenses from the 40’s: Jupiter-12 (35/2.8 Biogon), Jupter-8 (50/2.0 Sonnar) and Jupiter-9 (85/2.0 Sonnar). They all perform as well as older Leica lenses (which is all I have, that is, older ones, not the newer aspheric lenses).

So why risk expensive stuff when the quality can be just as good … as long as you can find a body that holds up. I have been fortunate enough to find one.

I ran some tests first, just to be sure, and this informal portrait of Rebecca, in the doorway of the livingroom that leads out into the backyard, is one of the results:

On Tuesday last week, Sept. 18, I was sitting on the train that had pulled into the station in Copenhagen. The train westward comes in early (it starts there) and I went on, put my bags overhead and started reading or staring out the window; I don’t remember.

People come and go as the train fills. There’s plenty of commotion. When I got off in Odense I discovered that my bag was gone. A sly “pick-pocket” had raked it off the shelf as we waited in Copenhagen. The train only stops once between Copenhagen in Odense, so it couldn’t have happened anywhere else.

I had a Leica CL, 40/2.0 Summicron, 90/2.8 Tele-Elmarit (Wetzlar, not Canada), Samsung Digital (compact) and the Domke briefcase alone was worth more than the Samsung. Clothes, receipts, … a general insult.

I was away from home (if I really have one) the rest of the week without a camera. Came back over the week-end and tried to get a decent PAW:

The following were taken with an old Rolleiflex:

I wasn’t sure if that one, the one above, was really taken in week 38; it was on the roll, but was in the beginning of the roll and might have been taken during week 37. So for the main, on my PAW page I chose the following one:

There is a little collection of others from the same rolls in the shoebox.

Pbase (www.pbase.com) has a nice collection of PDF magazines.

I just read number 9 with, among other things, a helpful article on a photographer’s perspective on Linux

For the money, they can’t be beat: The magazines

#9 has a little write-up of Lightzone (not Lightroom, but Lightzone, freely available for Linux).

All taken with a Pentacon Six. The first one used a Flektogon 50/4.0 and the other two were taken with the standard lens, Biometar 80/2.8, 1/60 @ 2.8.

Gunn, Ewa’s mother, came over to eat a birthday meal together with Simon.

I’ve wanted a portrait of her for a while. I feel ok with this one.

Ewa and I went in to Liseberg to see the last concert of the jazz week, Jean-Luc Ponty.

It was raining, but once the band started up, you really didn’t notice that anymore.

Leica IIIf, 50/2.0 Summitar

I hadn’t really planned on taking pictures so I used what I almost always have with me anyway.