Photokapi

2009-04-28T16:19:00.000+01:00

Changes!

2009-04-22T15:05:00.009+01:00

Photokapi has moved to:

http://photokapi.tumblr.com

For a while now Blogger has been bothering me. Like any pre-defined blogging site it's limited, and I've seen this page setup used about 10,000 times. My main issue with it is that the photos I post come up teensy eensy on the page, as if they're an afterthought. Plus with Congolese internet routed through Nigeria it takes me about 5 minutes to load one photo, during which time our unstable connection fluctuates and I lose everything.

So, I've moved the whole site over to Tumblr. Tumblr is also aggravatingly optionless in the details of its page setup but they have masses of pages to choose from, and my photos look HAWT. Large and vibrant and with a sexy black border. I couldn't resist. The upload rate is fast, the archive system is awesome, and Tumblr feels like the hipster of the blogging world--we all pretend we hate it but really all want to be it. My only enormous complaint is that I can't find a way to set up a comments section at the end of each post. I've pasted the links to comments on old blog posts but from now on there is no way to comment on anything I write. This almost broke the deal for me, as I believe the internet should be about dialogue and I love hearing people's reactions to my photos and writing. If anyone has any CSS code I can type in to my page setup to bring up a comment section I'd much appreciate it. In the meantime I've put my email address on the left-hand side of the new blog if anyone has questions or comments. I'm supposed to be teaching myself web design (I bought a Dreamweaver book and everything! ...and then forgot to pack it), but until then this is what I have to work with.

Part of the decision to move the site was because I am not leaving the Congo in three days. My job in the USA has been hit hard by the economy and they are unsure they can keep me on, so for financial, artistic and adventurous reasons, I have decided to stay here until the beginning of June. The economy is keeping me up at night--I hear stories of friends with college degrees, really talented incredible people, spending weeks or months searching for jobs, and as a fine art photography major with no mainstream marketable skills I'm terrified. When I first moved to Berkeley last July (before the economy slid downhill) it took me 8 weeks to find a job, and I have a good resume. I spent two year's worth of savings when I put down a deposit to rent a room, and I was borrowing money from my parents and applying to sleazy jobs as a bar waitress in pool bars (and I hate pool), or trying to convince potential employers that my goal in life was to sell organic baby clothing. The exhaustive blow to my finances and my ego are still fresh with me and I can't imagine going through that again. So I'm going to stay here until June and save a little money, then fly back to Berkeley for 3 weeks. In July I'm flying to upstate New York for a month to teach photography with my friend AJ, at a summer school for highly motivated high school artists. In the meantime, President Obama, I'd like you to put more funding towards the Arts so that come late July I'll be able to get a job to feed myself, and my cat, and be able to afford darkroom fees so that I can print my Graduate School admissions portfolio.

All of this stress around staying, going, jobs, options, responsibilities, my cat, my boyfriend, my photography, being seriously ill, and What I Want have been absorbing 90% of my mental energy lately, and I've felt this blog weaken. With the decision to stay in the Congo I've realized that I want to keep this blog going, in whatever way I can. So, from now on I will try my hardest to post AT LEAST a daily photo on the new site, if not a description or story. Hopefully I won't lose anyone on the way, though so far I only have evidence of Meghan, Colleen, Dan, Uncle Chris, AJ, Jess, my Maman, and Colette reading this blog so I could be overreacting. If there's anyone else out there, please change your RSS feeds and bookmarks to http://photokapi.tumblr.com.

See you on Tumblr! I have a new shiny colorful post waiting...

A Few Reminders That I Live in Kinshasa:

2009-04-20T23:50:00.005+01:00

When selecting vegetables in the supermarket today there was a power outage. Have you ever been in a pitch black crowded supermarket? I froze for the 60 seconds it took for the generator to start up and got a giddy feeling, like those fantasies I had as a kid of being locked in the Breyer Horse store overnight. When I left the store my hands were coated in earthy soil from picking up the unwashed potatoes.

The old woman trying to sell me plantains in the parking lot had one of the most beautiful wrinkled faces I've ever seen. I can't get her out of my head.

The BEEEEP CLICKCLICKCLICK BEEEEEPs of our UPS surge protectors regularly flicking on and off during a power fluctuation don't bother me anymore.

The war going on in my stomach between amoebas and antibiotics can only be compared to Goma (too soon?).

I sleep better under mosquito netting than without.

Five oranges were 12,000 Congolese francs. 890 francs to $1 (today), you do the math, and don't forget to look at the black market exchange rate written on the chalk boards on the side of the road if you're going shopping.

Never take any US dollar bills that have the tiniest nick or fold in them. They have to be PERFECT or no one will accept them. PRISTINE. No more shoving them in pockets, only gently curve them into wallets. Congolese francs however, can be taped together and worn to pieces and see through and look as if they've been through a french press. Refer to exchange rate above. A 500 franc bill is less than a dollar.

Running two forms of currency when one is grossly inflated means that no one will ever get exact change.

People will walk in front of our car. As we're going 35 mph. Pedestrians are completely fearless.

I heard a noise like a big cat rustling in the tree above our wall and it was just a lizard. An orange and blue foot long lizard larger than our kitten, doing push ups.

It's easier to drive 4 miles out of your way to avoid a traffic jam than spend 4 hours in it.

"Making" water is fun! Fill the kettle with tap water, boil it (at least once) to kill the parasites, pour it into the top of a huge water filter, let it sink down through clay tubes into a bottom chamber, fill up a jug with the trickle from the chamber's tap, put it in the freezer to cool, transfer it to the fridge to keep cold, pour it into a cup, and drink. Only three hours start to finish! Easy.

Hospitals and Parasites

2009-04-17T19:06:00.007+01:00

I have been incredibly ill for the past four days. Parasites and infections and abdominal pain and absolute hell. Without grossing you out with too much detail, imagine the worst diarrhea you've ever had, combined with complete constipation. And then add on a bunch of other unpleasant symptoms, and imagine being in so much pain that the only way to go to bed was to take sleeping pills. AGONY, I CAN TELL YOU. So on Ultra Bad Day #1 I went to a doctor and got some medicine for amoeba parasites and some painkillers and hoped I'd be okay.

However, the following night I thought I was dying, lying in the bathtub until 3am crying because it was the only thing that made me feel about 1% better. When morning rolled around I was frantically emailing my friend Danica who's an expert on infectious diseases and is currently working with the Gates Foundation in Vietnam, trying to figure out if what I had was actually deadly. Luckily it was decided by people here that I should go to the hospital, but I could barely walk through the house to the car, with two friends / translators for the day helping me. The first hospital we arrived at refused to treat me. There were no signs anywhere and I was having trouble walking, but we went up and down stairs and elevators and tried three different offices and kept being turned away, even as I was sobbing in the waiting rooms.

Finally we gave up (turns out that section was a private "members only" sort of place) and drove across Gombe district to another hospital. The drive was agonizing; I was huddled in the backseat of the car riding through the dusty dirt roads of Kinshasa, wincing every time we hit a pothole (every ten feet), with ice packs around my neck, hoping the roulages (traffic police) wouldn't blockade our car and demand money.

In this hospital they were more helpful. They admitted me (yay!), took lots of tests, hooked me up to an IV, and argued incessantly with Perry and Becky, who I'd arrived with. I think on the nurses' parts there was a little bit of offense taken by the two white girls telling them how to do their job, but from my vulnerable perspective, it was needed as they were going to perform the most ridiculous unnecessary procedures on me. Finally Perry had a strong talking to with the nice smiley young doctor, and he asked the nurses to perform a procedure (which I will not talk about) that made me feel 10,000 times better. I only hope that the very sick baby and also the snoring, ranting feverish woman who were in the same room as me are feeling better too. The best part of the day was having a giggle attack at the mosquito netting above my bed, from all the pain medication they gave me, but the lowest point was when Becky was in the middle of translating the procedure that was about to happen to me, and the nurse slammed the door in her face and then approached me with a foot long tube and a bunch of needles. HORROR. Especially when the world was a little drugged and loopy.

All in all we spent a solid 4 hours in the hospital (one of which was just for paying, as a nurse disappeared with our $10 change). I left feeling a lot better, and with yet more antibiotics. I have ten days of internal hell ahead of me...but hopefully in the end I will win, and the enemies devouring my insides will lose. I have no idea how I got so sick, as there are about ten thousand potential possibilities that for the past four days have been floating through my head, and I'm still not ready to google amoebas. But now that I've experienced parasites and third world hospitals I can cross them off my list and never ever have to deal with them again. I hope.

sick

2009-04-16T13:44:00.000+01:00

very ill with parasites, will write more when I can be vertical.

Weeping Walls

2009-04-14T09:53:00.008+01:00

Last night it rained again. Which means the wall above our bed started flooding. We were out at a friend's house for dinner when the storm hit, and I don't think it is scientifically possible for rain to fall faster or harder from the sky than it did last night. I'm in love and humbled by thunderstorms here, yet they cause an enormous amount of death and destruction in Kinshasa every time they hit. Including, on a very tiny scale, our bedroom.

There were little rivers running steadily downwards, and bubbly pockets of water under the paint.

The walls were so saturated that they flooded the floors, and we filled half a bucket with rainwater from wrung out towels.

Last night we fell asleep to the steady drip, drip, dripdripdrip of water falling from our walls into plastic tubs. When I got up this morning and stepped on one of the towels we left out overnight there was a lovely squelching sound. Our room smells like stagnant rainwater.

Thank you, Jesus.

2009-04-12T23:42:00.007+01:00

Happy Easter!

I was invited out to dinner and ate like a queen. Five courses: first a vichysoisse soup with gorgonzola, followed by lamb with mint sauce, yorkshire puddings, french fries in an anchovy cream sauce, mini mushrooms, and sugar snap peas. Next was a green salad with a truffle vinaigrette, followed by a cheese plate with chevre fromage and camembert, as well as fresh baguette, pistachios and grapes, Finally, lamb shaped cakes and chocolate covered strawberries. I HAVE NOTHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT, and I aspire to one day cook a meal that fabulous. Now that is quite enough blog posting about food. I'm done making your mouth water.

Jama got tuna. Because I ran out of dry cat food. And he's cute.

Eat!

2009-04-11T14:39:00.005+01:00

Learning a whole new supermarket system filled with a whole new range of products from around the world has been interesting. I never realized how much I depend on those brands or stores I love in Berkeley--that every time I go to Berkeley Bowl I'll buy their homemade bagels, or pick up some fresh herbs, or peruse the entire aisle of cheese. I buy PG Tips tea and hormone-free Berkeley Farms milk and Classico tomato sauce. On Tuesdays I know which stand at the farmer's market sells the peaches and plums I like best (sweet, not tart), I'll spend ages finding that perfect head of romaine lettuce, and line up for as long as it takes to get Blue Bottle Coffee beans. I'll smile at the guy I buy my honey from and ask the lady who sells beets if she knows who's selling leeks today.

Granted I know I'm spoiled in Berkeley, a food mecca filled with fresh fruit I can purchase from the farmers' hands who grew it, and where I can stick everything in my backpack and bike home not using any plastic bags or paying any middle men or using any gasoline. I revel in that process. Instead, now I'm piling into a smelly diesel-powered car and driving to the supermarket and paying the guards to watch our Nissan and being confronted with an entire store full of packaged food in other languages, as well as some very questionable vegetables. Then we leave and have starving children reach their arms through the car windows begging and telling us how hungry they are, and I realize how ridiculously privileged I am to even be shopping in a supermarket, with aisles and aisles of groceries to choose from. The whole experience of food shopping in Kinshasa is not for the weak of heart.

Our regular meals here are good--I make a mean potato leek soup, we have lentils a lot, frozen pizza with our own topping inventions, stir fries of every variety (depending on what vegetables are not soggy in the store), steak frites, curries, and roast chicken. But I'm still teaching myself how to cook and I feel restless making the same things over and over.

So there's days like today, where for the past hour I've been perusing my favorite recipes sites online, like Simply Recipes and Foodgawker, and I FEEL LIKE COOKING. Carrot cake muffins? I don't have muffin tins. Pesto pasta salad? No cherry tomatoes, and a handful of pine nuts are over $10. Spinach and orzo? Only spinach I've seen comes from a can. Chicken enchiladas drenched in green chile sauce, with a tecate on the side? I won't even go there.

I think this is one of those instances where creativity is essential, as well as exploration and discovery. No, I can't seem to find those perfect little fresh mozzarella balls I love so much, but there are papayas growing in my garden. And mangosteen (though they're almost out of season) and safou, which is a mixture between an avocado and a artichoke (or an eggplant according to some). I have a friend here who made plaintain flambe, though apparently it wasn't a huge success. Maybe I should take tips from the Congolese men who keep telling me I need to learn to cook traditional food for Owen--fufu and manioc and saltfish.

I'm also learning that despite the outrageous prices there are advantages to shopping in an international marketplace. There's Belgian chocolate, rice noodles, and dozens of curry mixes. I'm hooked on chocolate-covered rice cakes, and I will never appreciate bell peppers quite as much as when they cost $3 each. The local carrots are those small stubby ones that are half purple that they sell at farmer's markets in California. And the cheese from Goma (out East where all the fighting is happening) is AMAZING--so soft and mild.

So I guess I'll live, and learn, and eat, and when I return to the USA I'll probably whine and gripe about not having the fruit I'm learning to love here. But then again Berkeley Bowl's produce section is pretty epic...

Keba Before the Storm

2009-04-09T15:47:00.016+01:00

There's a thunderstorm rolling in and the air has cooled down. Keba wants to PLAY!

She likes us to chase her to get the kong.

Here she is cornered under the table. No escape now!

Anyone who's concerned for my safety in the Congo should be comforted by this photo. I'd like to say her bark's worse than her bite but I doubt it. Throw the kong! Throw the kong!

She likes drinking chlorine water from our pool, which is out of service because the pump is broken. The water is turning green and murky.

Now she's waiting for the cold rain to come so she can get soaked. I swore before I moved out here that she'd be sleeping on my bed at the end of the week, dismissing any claims that she was an "outside dog". One whiff of her pungent fur and deadly breath and I'd nixed that idea. Not to mention witnessing mango fly maggots being pulled out of her skin--but that's a whole different story.

Being so gorgeous almost makes up for it, though.

The Monsters Over My Bed

2009-04-07T12:59:00.012+01:00

Remember the flooding from a thunderstorm I casually mentioned? About...six days ago? Our floor was easy to mop up, but our walls are still damp to the touch. Every day I wake up to this monster above our bed, this chameleon of a monster that over the past week has slowly changed from a cheerful grey with promises of white re-emerging, to a slightly yellowish green of someone who's moved in without an invitation.

But how does one dry out a wall? We've tried running the air conditioner constantly, or opening windows, leaving the door wide to circulate air, and still whenever I lay my palm to the stains they feel cool, calm, and wet.

So I've started accepting this monster. In fact, when you look at it closely, so close that you can smell it's steadily increasing mildewy scent, there's some beauty in there.

When each piece is fragmented they turn into inkblots, and when my hands are pressed against that cool wet wall I can't help but start psychoanalyzing my interpretations.

On the left there is my friend the bat. And those two dots? A sideways monster with a long nose and skinny neck.

The top of this one looks like clouds and a bird with a very large wingspan.

This one reminds me of Western Europe.

Mmm this one is special. The photo is flattened out but it's really a little ledge that was covered with droplets of water the day of the flood. I think of ten thousand things when I look at this part, but strongest perhaps are burning plains on a horizon. Innate New Mexico fears.

What do you see?

I think I'll keep it, this monster of mine filled with worlds. If it starts to fade I'll lovingly touch up it's edges with a wet paintbrush. Someday maybe it'll grow a fuzzy thick covering of mold and then it will really be alive.

Or I could just wait until the next big thunderstorm and see what happens.

Settling

2009-04-04T19:40:00.019+01:00

We've shut down shooting for a couple of weeks, so that we can catch up with everything we've been capturing. For me that involves organizing, curating, and editing over 1,800 photos--a job I've just started and am not sure I'll finish in three weeks! But it's fun and I'm teaching myself Lightroom (which seriously rocks). Nothing like adding another adobe software program to my repertoire.

Because I'm in a cool calm office surrounded by humming air conditioners and a fridge full of Ceres fruit juices, and not spending 8 hours a day on the hot dusty chaotic streets of Kinshasa, at the moment I have less new photos and stories to blog about. I also feel like I'm finally settling in a little bit, and I'm probably getting more used to what initially seemed strange and exciting. I'll try to push my days in directions that give me more experiences I can write about.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of the photos I took of our parcelle, the house and yard that we rent to shoot some of the tv show at.

This is the outside of the house. I think I was told that it used to be two houses that were cut in half? There's no door, but there is a lace curtain that's pushed aside to hang over it. From what I've witnessed and heard, this is a pretty standard middle class house in Kinshasa. Two of our crew live here. There's a standard Congolese bathroom (cement hole in the ground) around back, and a tap with water by the front gate.

The house and yard are surrounded by a high wall, with a squeaky gate that locks. The bottle filled with rocks helps the door in the gate close automatically when you go through it.

Capturing the inside of the house is the closest I felt I've gotten to reaching a photographic aesthetic here that I'm really excited about. A lot of what I've been shooting is documentation, and while this is too, there's a whole other element that's pushing me to explore things deeper.

I'm finding myself being interested in walls in Kinshasa--inside and out, though the walls surrounding properties are fascinating. Most of them in the district I live in have razor wire rolled along the tops, or scary bits of spikey metal, or gorgeous pieces of sharp glass that flash in the sunlight. The emphasis is always on keeping people OUT. They succeed admirably in being impermeable...makes me think of the close-up series I did of skin. We'll see where it goes.

VW Vans I Have Known

2009-04-01T12:21:00.012+01:00

Volkswagon Vans, Mercedes Benz, and a variety of SUVs are the most common cars I've seen in Kinshasa. Also some bizarre "skidunks" (swahili for junky car) made of various bits and pieces that often spew black acrid smoke. But it's the Volkswagon Vans that seem to be the most useful, as they're used as taxis that drive people all over the city.

I've heard that all taxis have to be painted blue and yellow (the colors of the Congolese flag), like this one:

I don't know how strictly enforced that is though, because I definitely see a lot of taxis that aren't painted those colors. VW Vans are so common that when I decided I wanted to photograph some I stayed in the same 20 foot radius and captured all of these and more in about 30 minutes.

There are no seats in the taxis, except for the occasional blue plastic chair. They're stripped completely on the interior and almost every residential street I've walked down has a taxi driver fixing his taxi outside his house. I often see customers getting out and pushing a broken-down taxi or helping get it out of the mud. The sliding doors on the side don't always stay shut and there's often someone having to hold it closed as they bounce along the dirt roads.

Here's "our" taxi, that we own (okay, okay, it's a Toyota, not a VW). Note the press pass in the front window and the the lack of...well...anything inside. It's useful for packing in film equipment and coolers full of soda water and our wonderful crew.

I'm lucky and usually grab a cushy seat in one of our beaten up station wagons, so I haven't ridden in it yet. I like to sit in the very middle of the backseat in our cars so I can see straight out the front window.

The lights are flickering and there's a humongous thunderstorm raging outside. I bet the power's going to going out any second. It's getting to the point where I might have to write a love song to our trusty generator.

Update: That thunderstorm? Flooded our bedroom. As in, inches of water and dripping walls. We wrung heavy wet towels into a bucket and unplugged all the soaked electronics. Good thing I have a waterproof pelican case for my cameras! It was swimming in rainwater.

Etre en Feu

2009-03-31T21:20:00.003+01:00

This morning the fire station down the street from our house caught on fire. And burned, because the fire trucks weren't filled with water. Then a big fight broke out! There was a huge crowd. But I didn't see any of that. Just the charred smoking building as we drove past this morning on our way to the parcelle.

It's strange living in a land where fire trucks fill up with water after a fire starts, and there's no trash cans so people throw everything on the ground and burn piles of plastic, and there's no mail system, and when policemen try to pull you over you lock the doors, roll up the windows, and drive away very fast. Also mosquitoes are SILENT. What's even stranger is that I'm getting used to it all. And maybe when I return to Berkeley I'll be a littering, mosquito-bite-covered fugitive from the cops who smells like burning plastic.

When it Rains it Pours

2009-03-30T18:37:00.012+01:00

Success

2009-03-28T16:06:00.005+01:00

What I did this afternoon:

I only brought developer and fixer chemicals with me and they sort of survived in my luggage, though my photoshop book got soaked (irony?). I can't believe the negatives came out so crisply, without stop bath or fix remover and with me having no idea what temperature the water here is and hence how long to develop them for. The roll on the left was also using a new camera I'm borrowing and had never shot with before. Luck, or instinct? I've always thought photography was a little bit of both.

Aside from messing up when winding the second roll onto the spool (hence the chemical stains) I'm pretty happy. I got impatient--try spending 20 minutes in an airless hot sweaty closet with a huge steel door in equatorial Africa, trying to roll film onto metal spools in the dark, with light leaks sneaking out from holes in the wall threatening to ruin everything. All in a day's work.

Scavenger Hunt, Kinshasa Style

2009-03-27T20:32:00.001+01:00

The past few days have been a blur of location scouting, prop hunting, and shooting in the hot sun. On Wednesday I went out with a few of the crew to hunt down such miscellaneous items as a machete, a couple of wigs, men's pyjamas, a full size bed, etc. In an American city that would be hard but in Kinshasa? Let's just say that in five hours we'd collected a mere four or five of the items we needed. It was like a slightly dangerous very sweaty scavenger hunt involving some crazy driving skills.

The first place we stopped at was the Commerce district, a bustling "downtown downtown" that was packed with people and various shops and cars and men helping people park their cars. I hadn't brought a camera case with me and had to leave my Canon with our driver to keep it safe, as theft in that area is huge. Sure enough, as soon as we'd slammed the car doors this man ran past us at full speed, pursued by two others. He'd stolen someone's bag and when they caught him they beat him up. I couldn't look after the first punch but I heard it.

Entering the Panya (traditional Congolese fabric) Store was a breath of fresh air--literally. They had a huge fan blowing and fabric covering all of the walls in beautiful folds (I wish I'd been able to take photos), and in the middle of the room was a MASSIVE pile of cloth and women sifting through it. In the middle of the cloth pile there was a man standing on a cardboard box dancing to the hip hop music that was playing, holding up bits of fabric and measuring them with his arms and talking about how beautiful they were and complimenting women and basically being a salesman. He had so much energy! In the 45 minutes that we were there the song continued on repeat and he never faltered.

Afterward we drove the two blocks to the Grand Marche, a huge outdoor market I'd heard about but could never actually imagine. This time Coco and Francis insisted on holding me and Mimi's hands as it's not a safe area at all. I've been stared at a lot in the Congo for being white but never as much as in the market--people couldn't believe I was there, AND holding a Congolese man's hand. All the comments they made were in Lingala but I wish I knew what they were saying. When we stopped in a salon to buy some wigs Coco put an afro on me and the ENTIRE store including everyone on the street outside stopped and stared and laughed so hard I thought they were going to fall over. Coco was trying to tell me in French what was so funny but could he could only gasp out "mundele...mundele!" (white person). There's photos of this somewhere out there...

For the past couple of days we've been filming in our Parcel, the little plot of land and house that we rent in a middle-class neighborhood as our permanent set (more on that later). After spending hours sitting right outside the gate in the residential street and watching people go about their lives and making faces at the staring children I feel so lucky. I doubt that the majority of the foreigners and expats here have seen the neighborhoods and things I have in just the past few days--even Owen has never been anywhere like the places we were prop hunting. I am so grateful to be surrounded by a crew of people who push me and show me the depths of the real, and sometimes harsh Kinshasa. It's difficult and exhausting and confusing and at times a little terrifying for me but I'm never unappreciative of the experience.

Food = Death

2009-03-24T14:21:00.006+01:00

In the past three weeks hardly a day has gone by where I don't feel like my stomach is trying to kill me. The varieties of pain and discomfort are in some ways astonishing--I swear I just saw my stomach ripple, like an alien was trying to get out. About 75% of the meals I consume make me sick in about half an hour, regardless of their ingredients. I swear I could eat snowpeas raised on evian water tended by people in hazmat suits in sterile greenhouses in sweden right now and still get sick.

Luckily my stomach's suicidal tendencies are remarkably un-symptomatic. I hung around with horses too much as a kid and somehow inherited their inability to throw up, so as soon as I start feeling nauseous and dizzy I go lie down on my bed and fantasize about how wonderful it would be to lean slightly to the left and upchuck the entire meal I just ate. As I lie there in unexplained agony my thoughts inevitably turn to potential reasons I feel like death: parasites and food poisoning and a bad reaction to malaria pills and ebola virus and our kitten (didn't a sick kitten kill that guy in Trainspotting?). In spite of my short-lived hypochondria in about 10 to 120 minutes I feel okay enough to walk around again.

Despite my obvious inability to handle just about anything edible I'm not letting it affect what I eat. All of this is just building character (thanks, Calvin's dad)! If I keep suffering through this I will only get STRONGER (leading to an eventual intestinal invincibility, obviously). Surely it must just be a lack of practice on my part? Growing up eating nothing but pasta and white bread until I was 17 years old? Bring me the barbecued goat from stands on the street! Pile on the mysterious sloppy greens! Feed me more slightly raw chicken! Crickets, you say? Snails, and vegetables I've never heard of? BRING IT ON.

The Congo River

2009-03-23T09:16:00.011+01:00

Yesterday a group of us spent about 6 hours playing on the Congo River. We rented a boat and drove out to one of the long sandbar islands in the middle and had a feast and swam and played with Honey the dog and got sunburned and exhausted and it was wonderful.

The drive on the way to the river was the worst of Kinshasa I've seen yet. It was a small paved road with open sewage drains on either side and there were just PILES of trash everywhere. There were naked babies running around with no shoes and people washing in stagnant black pools. It smelled horrible and the poverty shook me. I realized Kinshasa is so huge and I've only seen a few neighborhoods, all of which would be classified as high or middle class.

After a few miles of the worst living situations I've ever seen we took a sharp left and ended up at the Yacht Club. I kid you not. Landscaped parking lot, men to wait on us, a lovely patio with drinks, and lots of expats milling around waiting for their boats to be ready. I descended the rickety steps to the dock and saw boat after gorgeous boat, beautiful and pristine, looking like they'd never been used. It felt so surreal and strange at this point, so unbalanced and weird. I was so happy when I realized our boat was clunky with peeling paint and what looked like bullet holes in the front window. The seats were falling apart and it was hideous. By then Honey had jumped into the muddy sewage and was covered in thick brown slime, and was chasing cats and slamming into people. The expats in their pristine white linen shirts stared at us. I felt a little better.

Our boat:

On the way to the sandbars there were some amazing sights--ramshackle houses on stilts and half-sunken boats with people living on them, and men fishing. The boat was flying fast upstream and so most of my photos are blurry and I was scared of being thrown out of the bumpy boat or losing my camera, so I didn't do them justice with the photos I took. There's talk of shooting a piece there--hopefully before I leave.

It was a perfect day, completely. Enough food and wine and beer and gin and tonics to keep us happy, good company, and the weather was not too steamy. We had a lot of food and gave our two drivers heaping plates with chicken and avocados. The water was shallow quite far out and was HOT in some places from being warmed by the sun. It was quite murky from all the soft sand, and I'm SO happy I didn't watch the 4-part BBC documentary on the River before I swam in it. I didn't want to know what fabulous creatures live in there until after I got out of the water. I was definitely warned by my travel doctor not to swim here but it was so wonderful. It's a difficult compromise to make between living one's life intelligently and living one's life without so much fear--I'm tired of being afraid of people and guns and Congolese cops and food and tap water and rivers. Time to live a little.

Honey pursues the frisbee:

Staring back at our tent with the massive sky behind it was one of the first moment where I felt "I am in Africa", whatever that means. Maybe it resembled a scene from all those movies I watched over and over and over as a kid--Born Free and that one about the cheetah. It felt so incredible to be outside of the dirty crazy loud city.

We left by boat just as the sun was setting over Kinshasa. We drank warm white wine and Honey, tired and soaking wet, sprawled across my lap. Today I'm still sunburned and dehydrated and exhausted and feel so quiet and happy.

Bienvenue Jama!

2009-03-20T15:26:00.009+01:00

Say hello to the newest member of our crew. Her name is Jama, and we rented her from some guys on the street for a shoot. But...anyone who knows me should think twice before handing me a homeless kitten and then telling me they're going to take it away again.

She's teensy eensy and way too young to have been taken away from her mother. Don't let the closeups fool you, she fits in the palm of my hand. She's learning how to eat itty bitty pieces of fish in sauce and is already practicing pouncing and hissing so I'm sure she'll survive. Congolese cats are skinny scrawny tough things, not like pampered American kitties (hi Suki!).

I'm hoping that nature will kick in and when she's starving enough she'll eat more solid food. I thought about getting her baby formula but my conscience can't handle it when there's millions of children dying in this country from malnutrition. Sorry Jama, it's already in short supply! She has a cardboard box in the office and has already stolen my milk-soaked t-shirt to sleep next to.

I'm taking care of her for the next six weeks until I leave, and then Coco and Francis have promised they'll take her (but only if we could call her Jama). Maybe everyone will get accustomed to her in the office and she can remain the mascot. She sounds like a little bird when she cries and is charmingly unsteady on her feet.

I knew that I'd have a hard time seeing stray animals in Kinshasa and I'd warned Owen to keep me away from them. Too bad he didn't stop Coco from literally dropping her in my lap out of a plastic bag. What could I do?

My dad just emailed me to tell me that my childhood cat Sage passed away a few hours ago. She was 16 so it was her time, but the irony is not lost on me. After I read the email I went and checked on Jama and she's curled up fast asleep next to my t-shirt, smaller than a tennis ball. She already has quite a legacy to live up to. Bonne chance, Jama.

A L'Ecole

2009-03-19T16:58:00.024+01:00

Today's post is going to be photo-heavy and you'll see why. We shot a short piece about a superhero at a school in Kinshasa.

This little boy was hovering around when we were setting up but was scared of the teachers. My guess is either he was supposed to be at school that day or didn't go there and wanted to. After he ran out the door in the gate I didn't see him again.

The inside of the classroom we used:

When they march to and from classrooms all the students have to have their arms crossed.

Students were shy at first, peering around doors and running away when I said bonjour.

But soon they started crowding around the windows at recess or sneaking out of class to watch us.

I think our technical equipment intruiged them. Future filmmakers of the DRC?

Here is Pascal, our cop, who we pay to protect us and keep order when we're out shooting. His fan was giving him Congolese military salutes before I took this photo.

As soon as the superhero appeared everyone got REALLY excited.

He had them all chanting after him in the courtyard and the teachers had to chase them back to their classrooms.

A totally amazing day. These are a handful of about 200 photos I took. I'm filthy and exhausted and so happy to have spent all day with them. Merci, petits enfants!

Mangosteen

2009-03-17T17:38:00.009+01:00

Let's move on from war to fruit. These gorgeous mysterious creatures go by the name "Mangosteen". Anyone who has ever eaten one should have their mouths watering by now.

The closest thing I can compare them to is a lychee, but they're much creamier, and come in slippery little segments, like an orange. I love them because the skin is so thick I don't have to worry about scrubbing them with bleach before I eat them. There's a reason they're called the "queen of fruits".

Mangosteen only grow in very hot climates and are rumored to have the same antioxidant properties and pomegranates, blueberries, and the ever-trendy acai berry. Unfortunately they're incredibly difficult to find in the USA because of fears that they carry the Asian Fruit Fly. Rumor has it that they can only be found in specialty New York City stores for $45 a pound.

With that in mind I'm eating as many as I can get my hands on. You'd do the same if you had them offered to you on the street at 10 for $4.

The season is ending and I'm seeing less and less women with overflowing baskets of mangosteen on their heads. I was mourning the loss of them just as I'd discovered their lusciousness, until I learned that soon the papayas in my garden would be ripening. I can see them out the bathroom window as I shower and I'm watching their green skin slowly turn slightly yellow. I'm already plotting ways to get them down from their tall trees...

The East and Rwanda in a Simplified Nutshell

2009-03-16T12:21:00.025+01:00

I just got back from scouting out locations at local schools for a shoot we're planning, but the trip was cut short due to rumors of unrest in Kinshasa and the Prime Minister resigning. I thought that since my photos and stories of the schools are postponed I'd provide you all with a brief (trust me, the epic section below is BRIEF) background of some of the conflict occurring in the East of the DRC.

To begin this discussion we have to have some background on the DRC's tiny neighbor Rwanda. Rwanda is run by Tutsis, who were persecuted during the Rwanda Genocide in the mid-1990s by the Hutus. There are about 7,000 Hutu militia forces living in Eastern Congo who fled there in 1994 after the Tutsis came into power, working under the acronym FDLR, which stands for Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.

Since the FDLR's migration, Rwanda's Tutsi Government has invaded Eastern Congo several times, in 1998 contributing towards an international conflict known as "Africa's world war". The Rwandan forces who invaded to wipe out their Hutu enemies indiscriminately raped women, pillaged towns, and killed masses of Congolese civilians.

In January of 2009 the Rwandan Government entered Eastern DRC and arrested a rebel leader named General Nkunda, an ethnic Tutsi and long-time enemy of the DRC's government. Nkunda led the CNDP, which stands for The National Congress for the Defense of the People. Nkunda is adamantly opposed to President Kabila and has become the face of the anti-government militia forces in the DRC. In recent years Nkunda's army has also been responsible for horrific crimes against Congolese civilians, and the extreme level of fighting has led to hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their towns to live in refugee camps or hide in the jungle. Almost half of the 2,700,000 people who have died in this conflict since 2004 have been children under the age of 5. I can't even touch on the extensive sexual violence that is occurring against women and girls--that is a post for another day.

Rwanda's decision to arrest Nkunda has been controversial. While wiping out a major force in Eastern Congo's chaos, they are also rumored to be sympathizers with his cause, as he is ethnically Tutsi. There were also theories that they had ulterior motives in mind. Sure enough, soon after the Rwandans arrested General Nkunda President Kabila gave the Rwandan military permission to enter North Kivu in Eastern DRC and work with the Congolese forces to eliminate their enemy, the FDLR.

Most of this you can find in Western Media sources such as the NYTimes or BBC News. However what is not discussed is that the Congolese people are generally unhappy with Kabila's undercover authoritarian decision to allow Rwandan forces into the DRC, due to their history of violent rampaging and war in the past. The Rwandan genocide has been simplified and romanticized in the Western world as a tragedy with good guys and bad guys (see Hotel Rwanda). I saw Bill Clinton speak in Washington DC a few years ago and when asked what his biggest regret of his 8 years as President was, he replied "not doing more to prevent the Rwanda Genocide". It's easy to turn a blind eye to the injustices that the current Tutsi regime is carrying out because they were persecuted so heavily in the 1990s, and the USA did almost nothing to protect them (a matter which is obviously loaded with guilt, as evidenced by Bill Clinton).

The Rwandan forces have pretty much pulled out the Democratic Republic of Congo by now, claiming to have "greatly reduced" the FDLR (though the only numbers I could find in the media list only 90 Hutus dead). Despite this the situation in the East remains tense, though people are returning to their villages.

SO. How did this affect my day and our location scouting? Today the DRC's Prime Minister decided to resign, due largely to Kabila's decision to allow Rwandan forces into the DRC. Vital Kamerhe has only been Prime Minister since September of last year, after the last Prime Minister resigned due to health reasons. President Kabila gave him permission to resign but declined his request to do so on National television. Kamerhe is trying to build up enough of an image and reputation to run for President in two years, and hence refuses to resign if he can't do so in the public eye. Maybe he wikipediad his country recently and realized his name is not listed anywhere under government or politics (I had to do a google.fr search), and that he was going to have to step up his game if he wanted to be a presidential candidate. His supporters have been holding a peaceful demonstration downtown but this is Kinshasa, and rumors fly, so when we were scouting out schools today and received phone calls with stories of gunfire we quickly headed back to the compound. But who knows? When taxis backfire there are rumors of grenades being launched. It's hard to tell if this city loves gossip or is still recovering from a raw history of pillaging, riots, and violence.

UPDATE: Apparently Kamerhe's speech to his supporters was very emotional, as he stood up for the injustices he feels that Kabila has inflicted upon the DRC.

That in a nutshell is a very small portion of the chaos that is going on in the East, without the added complications of introducing MONUC (The UN forces), Mai-Mai (the independent pro-government militias), and the 90,000 strong DRC Army. Another HUGE issue that is going on is Uganda, Sudan and the DRC's combined attempt to wipe out the Lord's Resistance Party, which has slaughtered 900 civilians in Northern DRC since Christmas 2008. I left out a lot of important details and the knowledge I have is based largely of Western news sources and Congolese word of mouth. I recommend you do your own research and come to your own conclusions. The most comprehensive resources I've found on the conflict in the East are here and here and here.

Here's hoping that for everyone's sake (including the gorillas) calm is erupting.

Unfinished Stories

2009-03-14T17:08:00.010+01:00

I haven't left the compound in two days and all I have are unfinished blog posts that need more details or photos to go with them. Claustrophobia is metamorphosing into slow days that involve studying French vocabulary and drinking fanta until my head explodes from sugar overdoses and playing with Keba and swimming in the pool when it gets dark. Also contemplating The Wall that we're surrounded by and noticing the parts that have spikes on top (other walls surrounding other compounds have glass or rolls of barbed wire). The color of the mold changes depending on what areas get most light and in some places the cement is flaking off. At night time there's randomly placed florescent bars that light up the perimeter and all the geckos go crazy catching the bugs that are drawn to their glow. I'm thinking of photographing the whole thing, square by medium format square for some future installation, and then filling in the details inside.

Owen is teaching me how to swim better. I used to be good! When I was little I lived in an apartment complex for a while that had a pool. I'd spend so many hours swimming in it that my (then very) long blond hair turned slightly green from the chlorine and would lump into dreaded mats. My dad would call me his little fish. Somehow after being on the swim team in 6th grade I lost all knowledge of how to move efficiently through water--it's not like riding a bike. Now I've forgotten how to simultaneously hold my breath and stop water rushing up my nose. Whenever we submerge ourselves Keba loses it and runs around the pool barking hysterically.

I'll try to hunt down the missing pieces of the things I want to share. The ancient decades-old reused beer bottles and the writing on the wall advertising the club next door, and gay culture (it exists!) and the disgustingly rich Congolese couples I saw at a restaurant the other day who profit off the gold and diamond mines in the center of the country. Those mines are some of the richest in resources in the world and epitomize the grossest forms of human rights violations. Makes me never want to own diamonds.

Bandal District

2009-03-12T16:35:00.020+01:00

We didn't get the chance to shoot or photograph any Sappeurs yesterday. But we did drink a lot of local beer and ate a lot of goat and went to a couple different terraces in the Bandal District of Kinshasa and had a blast. Except for the part where I accidentally made eye contact with two Congolese Military men across the way who then approached me asking for money and this enormous screaming match erupted around me, with Coco taking photos of them for evidence and everyone yelling at each other and people at other tables joining in and me squeezed in my seat between the blue plastic table and a crowd of angry people, frantically asking Owen "what do they want? what do they WANT?"and him telling me to be quiet and ignore them (somehow).

There was also a "bonjour petit chevre! vous etes tres mignon! oh!!! ...au revoir petit chevre..." moment. I need to get over my Americanized disassociation with meat on a table and where it comes from. It did look like an exceptionally happy healthy goat before it was sacrificed for food.

And of course, there were the children weaving in and out of tables selling tissues and cigarettes. The little boy in the white shirt overheard me learning how to say "Nakanga Photo?" (can I take your photo) in Lingala and got all shy and stood at a distance watching for a while before asking Owen to ask me to take his picture. The other children nearby joined in and giggled when I showed them the image on my camera (thank you digital era) and when we moved locations to another terrace they came too. I didn't have any money on me to give them otherwise I would have emptied my pockets the minute they started telling me they were hungry. I feel better for them, who at least have something to sell, than the tiny skinny kids chasing cars and begging outside the supermarkets.

I'm not sure I'll ever get used to how much people stare at us. It makes sense--we are white in an African country that has absolutely zero tourism industry and where the few expats that live here tend to work for government organizations and seem to keep to themselves. I'm struggling to take discreet street photos where everywhere we go we're a spectacle. Unfortunately the first thing people notice after my skin color is the camera around my neck.

Last night we woke up to the most terrific thunderstorm--much MUCH bigger than the last one. The lightning was so huge and bright that it lit up the entire room, and the sound of water on our tin roof and booming explosions were deafening. Every minute or so there would be another huge flash of lightning and immediately with it an enormous clap of thunder. For over an hour it felt like the storm was right on top of us. I got up to look out the window and the back garden was a lake, inches deep in water. Congolese soil must be like a sponge because this morning the lake was gone and I thought it had all been a dream. The only sign that it happened at all are my slightly muddy bare feet as I walk around the yard with Keba.

The Compound

2009-03-11T13:30:00.015+01:00

I've been ready to go shooting since 9am this morning. Unfortunately due to the crowds and locations we were planning on perusing combined with the fact that we're white with large expensive camera gear it's too dangerous to go out as planned. There's thousands of people on the streets today and everything is congested. We might go sit on the terraces downtown later and drink beer and try to catch Sappeurs as they walk by.

I knew before coming out here that my freedom would be drastically limited and yet it's hard not to become frustrated. When talking to one of the bureaucrats at USAID last night I asked him if he thought it was safe enough to go on walks outside the compound with Owen and he said absolutely not. The economy is forcing people into more desperate circumstances right now and in Kinshasa white skin = money. I intentionally don't carry cash or my passport on me, but I often have a camera. When stopped at traffic lights with car windows down I have to be careful people don't reach in and steal things off my lap.

Anyway to postpone afternoon boredom I thought I'd share our "compound" (ie office headquarters, house, and garden, surrounded by a huge wall). Here is our ramshackle yet charming center:

Here is our circular pool and fantastic guard dog Keba:

She deserves a close-up because she's utterly gorgeous.

This is the Congolese kitchen in our backyard. They cook over coal fires and make masses of food every day for the crew. It's delicious! I was shy taking this because I haven't formally introduced myself yet (I'm not positive they speak French) and I want to do a whole series on their cooking processes sometime soon anyway.

Here is our kitchen inside. I could stand at this window and watch the garden for HOURS. All sorts of lizards and birds dash by when they think I can't see them.

I'll save the rest of the interior for another day. Time for more tea! And to double-check my cameras are loaded with film in case we actually make it out tonight.

Avoiding Parasitic Invasions

2009-03-10T22:27:00.000+01:00

By the time I return to the USA I think I'll be so used to not consuming tap water that it'll take me a few weeks to re-acclimate. Part of me wishes I was a scientist so I could truly understand better what can harm me and other times I'd rather not know exactly what parasites lurk in the water I shower in.

Preventative Actions:

1. Never ever drink the tap water. Bottled water only, or water in plastic BAGS which is an awesome concept.
2. Brush teeth with bottled water only.
3. Shower in tap water but don't open your mouth. The effects may not be as instant as Montezuma's revenge.
4. Soak all leafy vegetables in water that has a splash of bleach in it. Yes, bleach. mmm!
5. Scrub all other veggies with soap and water and peel them whenever possible.
6. I'm ashamed to say I'm still not sure how our dishes get washed...we seldom do them ourselves...but today I think it was with rainwater!
7. Don't breathe in when Keba the guard dog pants in your face. She's never had her teeth cleaned and eats fish bones and lizards and prefers drinking chlorinated water.
8. Wearing rubber-soled shoes at all times helps prevent the significant electric shocks that happen when touching electronics, or touching people who are touching electronics or touching people who are touching people who are touching electronics.
9. When water runs, shower (even if it's yellowish). If it turns off mid shower wait, maybe for five minutes, and pray that enough will trickle out eventually to rinse the shampoo from your hair. Don't even bother trying to shower when someone is running water anywhere else in the house.
10. When it rains search out the leaks in the house and make sure they get contained in ways that won't leak to our powercords and computers and editing set ups and sound decks and camera battery chargers.

I'm still waiting to find out what the water here will do to my film when I develop it. But today I was lent an awesome Pentacon Six medium format camera that a friend at USAID bought at a pawn shop in Romania. It was made is East Germany sometime between 1950 and 1990 (come on wiki camera fans, can't you give me something better than that??). It's gorgeous and in pristine condition and I can't wait to play.

Tomorrow we're planning on going out to film and photograph the "Sappeur"s, who as far as I can decipher are men in Kinshasa who dress up extravagantly and stroll the streets. Perhaps the Congolese version of bling? It's obscure to me and seems indescribable through words but hopefully I'll have loads of photos and stories tomorrow to post.

Note to self: Don't google image "parasites" for "fun".

Running on Empty

2009-03-09T18:39:00.000+01:00

The power's been fluctuating since this morning and has been officially out since early afternoon. I woke up to the beeping and clicking of our massive box-like surge protectors. It's a national holiday (Women's Day? Victory over Ghana in a soccer game? Who knows?) and so the power lines probably won't be fixed until tomorrow. We have a generator fueled by gasoline to run such important things as lights and stoves and computers but if we run air conditioning it'll use too much energy and so...it's hot. And since I'm cooking Leek and Potato Soup in the kitchen it's REALLY hot (imagine a sauna and then triple it). I'm only hoping that the power magically comes back on in time for dinner so that we don't all have to eat naked.

Gin and tonics with lime help. A little bit.

postscript, 1/2 hour later: IT'S BACK! Blogging = magic. Tomas doesn't have a million dollars. Now maybe it will happen.

post-postscript 4 hours later: We have no running water.

The Ambassador's House

2009-03-07T18:39:00.000+01:00

I wish they'd let me keep this invitation. The entire crew was invited to the US Ambassador's house last night for a concert by a Brooklyn hip hop band that had been flown out for the occasion. Rap and hip hop are HUGE in the DRC and they're supposed to be playing for a crowd of 10,000 in Kinshasa tonight but there's a massive thunderstorm going on so I'm not sure it's happening.

The event was surreal--a bizarre mixture of expats and Congolese and politicians. I chatted with the Ambassador about his awesome chocolate labrador Sydney and he showed me the house's art collection, which included Warhol and Lichtenstein. Apparently the Embassy curates the house's exhibition every 15 years and it had just been updated.

Some of my new friends and coworkers:

I've been observing and acknowledging and trying to find the words to explain my experience of being a white person (mundele) in Kinshasa. It is a bundle of privileges and expectations and assumptions that I have never encountered before, even when previously traveling in countries where I stood out for my skin color, and whatever race theory and activist practice that my college education and social groups in the USA have taught me are completely irrelevant here. I can't fight racism in the same ways because everything is completely different. I don't know how to be an ally in a culture I don't yet understand or in a language I am still learning. And through it all the core issue is that my skin color equals money, and if it was "just" a class issue the situation would feel more transparent, but of course one seldom comes without the other. Not only that but there is the enormous issue of my safety in a corrupt country with no infrastructure that is in the middle of a massive war. I'll try to put into words my experiences and struggles with these issues once I've got over my (expected but overwhelming) culture shock of being in the middle of them. Stories or experiences by other people who have traveled to anywhere in Africa would be much welcome, so maybe I can sift through this all with more perspective.

This evening it started raining, big fat drops that were larger than quarters. Soon they blended together and then turned into a flood. The desert girl in me has never seen rain like this and it's fascinating. Owen and I sat on the front porch and watched the water collect and I counted seconds and miles for each clap of thunder. Keba our Belgian shepherd panted flat-out in the wet grass and got soaked, occasionally rubbing her wet face against the garden plants to get the rain out of her eyes so she could see us better. The storm is still building, with the palm trees bent sideways in the wind out our bedroom windows and thunder rolling almost constantly like white noise in the distance. Only routine power outages for a few minutes so far today and nothing storm related yet...

Dix-Sept Ans

2009-03-06T16:10:00.000+01:00

In the two days since I was last at the docks they've raised a boat that's been under water for 17 years. They use these enormous tanks of acetyline that were carefully slid down a staircase by three men to fuel their blowtorches, and they were hacking the boat to pieces for scrap metal. Apparently there's two more underwater in the Congo River awaiting the same fate.

The Docks

2009-03-05T11:29:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I spent my first full day on set. We'd arranged access with the government to shoot on their docks along the Congolese river, just on the other side of Congo-Brazzaville's border. Bribes had to be paid at every level along the way, but we were scheduled to do 35 shots before it got dark and all arrived there early, at about 8:30 am, with crew and supplies in tow. Unfortunately the "Waterfront Ambassador" (tack Ambassador onto any title and you're instantly important) was late, so we sat in the sun and smoked cigarettes and chatted and waited. And waited. And waited. And while waiting I got bored and Owen suggested I photograph our "henchmen", ie the bad guy extras we'd hired for the day.
The minute they saw me with a camera they were jostling to get in the way. This experience is something I'm trying to get used to--the macho almost narcissistic desire men here have to throw themselves in front of my camera. I LOVE IT. Even walking down the docks I kept hearing "mundele! mundele!" (white person!) and men would strike a pose. Here are the henchmen:

I made the mistake of letting one of them (Master Poison, 2nd photo, his real name) see the tiny digital image on the back of my camera, and after that any time I took a photo of anyone there would be a huge crowd around me and serious nods of approval before they walked away.

It was hot that day, SO HOT, hot like I'd never felt before. I squinted through my dark sunglasses and burned through my 45spf sunscreen and sweat through all my clothes. At 4pm, coated in warehouse dust, we were kicked out even though we'd been promised the location until 6. In order to get it back for another day one of our staff had to go drink beers at the Waterfront Ambassador's house and fuel his power-ego. We're going back on Friday. And today? I'm staying in the compound re-hydrating.

Peloustore

2009-03-04T17:09:00.001+01:00

Last night we went grocery shopping in the dark. The traffic is insane--imagine Los Angeles but with no lanes, everyone honks at everyone else to get out of the way. I learned today that the "traffic lights" are really just men (called roulages) who stand on enormous cement stands in the middle of intersections and wave cars to and fro. It seemed ridiculous to me, but when I asked if people obeyed I was told that if they didn't the traffic cops would hail a car from the side of the road to cut them off and they'd have to pay a hefty fine. They're fierce and everyone is terrified of them.
Regardless traffic was terrible last night, and in the heat and dirt and pollution approaching lights look like mysterious shapeless beasts flying by. We waited for about 10 minutes to take a left turn into the parking lot, with the hired help of a boy standing in the middle of the road who waved us through. Just as we were turning in we accidentally backed into a car behind us (to get out of the way of an SUV barreling at 40mph into our path) and a man started screaming at us in Lingala, and came and tapped on our window in French asking us to come see how we'd destroyed his car. I didn't even feel us hit it, so we ignored him and went inside to go shopping.
The price of food is mind-boggling. Two heads of red lettuce were $28, plums were $3 each, and a small tub of sugar was $8. Luckily I'm not paying for food! Everything is imported from Belgium and my carbon footprint is flying through the roof.
When we came out of the supermarket the man whose car we "hit" was waiting for us. There was a small dent in the driver's door (to match the dozens of other dents all over it) but he wouldn't let us off the hook, bargaining and arguing with Owen and making a fuss until we finally agreed to pay him $20.
I was on set for 8 hours today in the docks on the Congo River. Once in a lifetime experience as that area is government run and totally off limits. It was utterly exhausting but I'll try to post photos and more about it tonight or tomorrow.

Bats and Geckos and finally Tea

2009-03-03T10:27:00.000+01:00

When I stepped off the plane last night the first thing I noticed, apart from the wall of heat and the men with guns guiding us to the terminal, was the dozens of bats flying in and out of the floodlights glare above me. I thought they were birds at first, but they were too fast, and spastic in their movements dipping and diving and obviously chasing.
Papa Lokose met us at the airport and pulled us into the diplomats and VIP line to get our visas reviewed. I had stacks of letters and proof that I was being employed in Kinshasa but I wasn't even looked at--perhaps the officer knew that if he gave me trouble he would have to argue with Papa Lokose, who is huge and charismatic with such an enormous powerful presence, but so soft spoken.
In the parking lot the car had to be pushed to start by four young boys, and broke down once on the way home. It's amazing the smells of Kinshasa on that one paved road (one of two in the whole city of 9 million). Everyone drives diesel cars in various states of disrepair and I found myself leaning out of the windows whenever we passed a bonfire or sulfur-scented body of water just to escape the smell of petrol. I hope I'll get used to it.
The house is beautiful, ramshackle and without glamor, but surrounded by plants and a round shoulder-deep swimming pool and Keba, the Belgian shepherd. She's fabulous and leaped on me the minute I stepped out of the car, covering me with kisses before she got kicked by one of the three Papas who guard our front gate. Her kong in her life.
There are geckos in my bathroom and this morning I saw the tiniest bird I've ever seen outside the kitchen window, covered in green shimmery feathers with sharp black eyes.
I'm jetlagged and exhausted but more soon. I have tea! First caffeinated beverage in three days, SO HAPPY!

Berkeley to Kinshasa

2009-02-24T07:41:00.000+01:00

On March 1st I will fly from San Francisco to New Jersey to Brussels to Cameroon to Kinshasa, where I will spend two months working on a new photographic body of work. I'll also be working for smallpower, an organization that created Rien que la Verite, a telenovella for the Congolese people that focuses on educating the community about HIV/AIDS.

I'm bringing 4 cameras, 80 rolls of film, a tripod, a laptop, photoshop, darkroom chemicals, developing tanks and reels, 24 granola bars, and this blog.