Back to shooting pictures for the MA course, and it feels good – it felt frustrating getting bogged down in critical theory and the like. Peter Fraser’s recent talk on intelligent still life, just like his talk to us last semester, was thought-provoking and inspiring.
He wanted us to shoot with our emotions, let the subject control us, and not the other way round. Take pictures as you feel them and not doing anything contrived or ‘designed’. Using the technique he’d recommended when I was shooting VISIONS – closing one’s eyes for twenty minutes, shutting out all visual stimuli thereby unloading any visual baggage and then opening one’s eyes again and letting emotions guide you as you shoot. He wanted to see where this would take us.
I opted to do the assignment at the house where I used to live, up in what used to be my bedroom – a room I’ve been clearing out bit by bit. The twenty minutes of shuteye must have made me very introspective. I’d already decided I was going to shoot in black and white, and would concentrate on tight details around the room, but had no idea what I’d shoot specifically.
Here are the results - a reflection of my quiet, reflective, nostalgic yet partly foul mood.
MAPJD Past Life - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Dear Me,
Paul’s asked us for a letter to ourselves, a spot of reflection on how the course is going, what we think our strengths and weaknesses are at the moment, where we hope to find ourselves in the future, and areas we need to develop further.
To be honest, I don’t think there’s much I can add to what I wrote in my blog Visions a couple of months ago. I still think I need to be a better editor of my own work, and need to work more on developing relationships over time which will enable me to shoot better pictures, get closer to my subjects and create more meaningful bodies of work. I also need to start to trust my gut instincts better, particularly during the editing process. I'll continue to play with audio and improve on that - there's no doubt in my mind that multimedia is the way of the future (and present for that matter), and printed newspapers are pretty much a dying breed. And whilst I’m starting to shed my newspaper mode of shooting, I realise I still have a long way to go till I find my own voice or style in the documentary work I do. That’s why I’m doing this Masters. I know the academic side of it is going to continue to be particularly tough, but let’s face it, there’s nothing like a real challenge to set our pulses racing, is there?
To be honest, I don’t think there’s much I can add to what I wrote in my blog Visions a couple of months ago. I still think I need to be a better editor of my own work, and need to work more on developing relationships over time which will enable me to shoot better pictures, get closer to my subjects and create more meaningful bodies of work. I also need to start to trust my gut instincts better, particularly during the editing process. I'll continue to play with audio and improve on that - there's no doubt in my mind that multimedia is the way of the future (and present for that matter), and printed newspapers are pretty much a dying breed. And whilst I’m starting to shed my newspaper mode of shooting, I realise I still have a long way to go till I find my own voice or style in the documentary work I do. That’s why I’m doing this Masters. I know the academic side of it is going to continue to be particularly tough, but let’s face it, there’s nothing like a real challenge to set our pulses racing, is there?
Thursday, September 3, 2009
WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE…
Published in The Times of Malta, August 24, 2009
Ugandan children sing beautifully. I’m drawn towards the classrooms by the angelic sounding voices tempered with an unmistakably African rhythm. The songs are more than just a welcoming ritual - they’re an everyday part of life, something quintessentially African.
The outside walls of Katoosa Primary School in Kyenjonjo in western Uganda are colourfully painted, an extension to the classrooms themselves as they’re covered with maps and biology diagrams. The dimly lit rooms are packed with enthusiastic children, peering through the large windows with more than just idle curiosity.
There is no such thing as a typical Ugandan school - Some are no more than open air classrooms under a tree in the middle of a field, the blackboard hanging from a low lying tree branch. The teachers have few or no teaching aids.
At Loro Primary school, in Oyam in the north of the country, the classrooms are huts with corrugated iron roofs. Barefoot pupils sit on the dusty floor cross-legged for hours on end, deep in concentration as they try to follow lessons. The children tightly clutch onto their bundles of pencils as though they’re their most precious possessions – maybe that’s exactly why.
Many of the young pupils don't have a meal throughout a whole day at school because their parents can't afford the 5000 shillings (2 US $) a term to pay for school meals. How must that hungry child feel, when he has nothing to eat and the student sitting in the grass next to him is gobbling down his food? How can that child be expected to learn and develop at school, listen to the teacher, when the only thing he can hear is his rumbling empty stomach?
Whilst primary education is supposed to be universal, many families can't afford to send their children to school, for the simple reason that they're expected to pay for the child's meals. The government is trying to eradicate the practice of schools charging for school meals, but much remains to be done in that area. There is also a chronic lack of teachers. Government policy only allows districts to employ a certain number of teachers, but given the rapid population growth, those numbers are nowhere near sufficient.
Some children are luckier and attend private school. The Kyamusansala Primary School in Masaka in southern Uganda, run by nuns of the Sacred Heart, is one of the better schools in the region. The pupils, all girls, are boarders, many orphans who lost both parents to AIDS, and they're guaranteed to get their meals every day. Teaching standards are high, classrooms are well equipped, the pupils wear smart, meticulously cared-for uniforms, discipline is strict but fair, and by and large, things appear no different to a well-funded school in the West.
Reminders of the scourge of AIDS are never far away. A wooden signpost nailed to a tree near the main entrance reads “Be aware of HIV/AIDS”. At the Katoosa Primary School in Kyenjonjo in western Uganda, a patch of grass in an otherwise dusty field is dotted with boulders with similar messages painted on them “AIDS kills,” Together we can fight AIDS, AIDS Petients (sic) need care and support.” With Uganda having been one of the worst affected countries, authorities are making sure that AIDS awareness campaigns target children by the earliest possible age.
According to UN figures, some 75 million children worldwide are denied the basic right of a primary school education. These children, left without the chance to learn, will grow up in poverty, with no hope, no ambition and no future. Uganda appears to be one of the success stories – in only 5 years, the country managed to double the number of children in primary schools to over 90%.
Yet, the issue is not so clear cut. The Millennium Development Goals, which were agreed internationally to reduce poverty levels and improve education and health worldwide, were imposed on African countries as a condition for debt relief. The pressure this exerted on the education system has almost brought it to its knees, according to Madeleine Bunting writing in The Guardian. Classes of over 75 students are commonplace; there aren’t enough books, blackboards, teaching materials. The priorities are access, equality and quality - in that order - putting the Ugandan authorities in a dilemma over whether to go for quantity or quality, which is no choice at all.
Some pupils at Kyamusansala School are intently watching me, but they shyly turn away when they realize I’ve noticed. They’re interested in my cameras. We strike up a conversation of sorts, I show them some pictures, and ask them what they want to do when they grow up. One wants to be a doctor, another wants to join the Sisters of Sacred Heart. All the children have dreams, and given the chance, given the right education, many will achieve those ambitions, however lofty they may appear.
This is the fifth in a series of reports from Uganda raising awareness about the UN Millennium Development Goals with the cooperation of SOS Malta.
WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Ugandan children sing beautifully. I’m drawn towards the classrooms by the angelic sounding voices tempered with an unmistakably African rhythm. The songs are more than just a welcoming ritual - they’re an everyday part of life, something quintessentially African.
The outside walls of Katoosa Primary School in Kyenjonjo in western Uganda are colourfully painted, an extension to the classrooms themselves as they’re covered with maps and biology diagrams. The dimly lit rooms are packed with enthusiastic children, peering through the large windows with more than just idle curiosity.
There is no such thing as a typical Ugandan school - Some are no more than open air classrooms under a tree in the middle of a field, the blackboard hanging from a low lying tree branch. The teachers have few or no teaching aids.
At Loro Primary school, in Oyam in the north of the country, the classrooms are huts with corrugated iron roofs. Barefoot pupils sit on the dusty floor cross-legged for hours on end, deep in concentration as they try to follow lessons. The children tightly clutch onto their bundles of pencils as though they’re their most precious possessions – maybe that’s exactly why.
Many of the young pupils don't have a meal throughout a whole day at school because their parents can't afford the 5000 shillings (2 US $) a term to pay for school meals. How must that hungry child feel, when he has nothing to eat and the student sitting in the grass next to him is gobbling down his food? How can that child be expected to learn and develop at school, listen to the teacher, when the only thing he can hear is his rumbling empty stomach?
Whilst primary education is supposed to be universal, many families can't afford to send their children to school, for the simple reason that they're expected to pay for the child's meals. The government is trying to eradicate the practice of schools charging for school meals, but much remains to be done in that area. There is also a chronic lack of teachers. Government policy only allows districts to employ a certain number of teachers, but given the rapid population growth, those numbers are nowhere near sufficient.
Some children are luckier and attend private school. The Kyamusansala Primary School in Masaka in southern Uganda, run by nuns of the Sacred Heart, is one of the better schools in the region. The pupils, all girls, are boarders, many orphans who lost both parents to AIDS, and they're guaranteed to get their meals every day. Teaching standards are high, classrooms are well equipped, the pupils wear smart, meticulously cared-for uniforms, discipline is strict but fair, and by and large, things appear no different to a well-funded school in the West.
Reminders of the scourge of AIDS are never far away. A wooden signpost nailed to a tree near the main entrance reads “Be aware of HIV/AIDS”. At the Katoosa Primary School in Kyenjonjo in western Uganda, a patch of grass in an otherwise dusty field is dotted with boulders with similar messages painted on them “AIDS kills,” Together we can fight AIDS, AIDS Petients (sic) need care and support.” With Uganda having been one of the worst affected countries, authorities are making sure that AIDS awareness campaigns target children by the earliest possible age.
According to UN figures, some 75 million children worldwide are denied the basic right of a primary school education. These children, left without the chance to learn, will grow up in poverty, with no hope, no ambition and no future. Uganda appears to be one of the success stories – in only 5 years, the country managed to double the number of children in primary schools to over 90%.
Yet, the issue is not so clear cut. The Millennium Development Goals, which were agreed internationally to reduce poverty levels and improve education and health worldwide, were imposed on African countries as a condition for debt relief. The pressure this exerted on the education system has almost brought it to its knees, according to Madeleine Bunting writing in The Guardian. Classes of over 75 students are commonplace; there aren’t enough books, blackboards, teaching materials. The priorities are access, equality and quality - in that order - putting the Ugandan authorities in a dilemma over whether to go for quantity or quality, which is no choice at all.
Some pupils at Kyamusansala School are intently watching me, but they shyly turn away when they realize I’ve noticed. They’re interested in my cameras. We strike up a conversation of sorts, I show them some pictures, and ask them what they want to do when they grow up. One wants to be a doctor, another wants to join the Sisters of Sacred Heart. All the children have dreams, and given the chance, given the right education, many will achieve those ambitions, however lofty they may appear.
This is the fifth in a series of reports from Uganda raising awareness about the UN Millennium Development Goals with the cooperation of SOS Malta.
WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Friday, July 24, 2009
VISIONS
It's been a busy time these past months which goes some way to explaining why this blog's been neglected for so long, apart from posting stories I'd written for my newspaper and a couple of audio slideshows, my first proper attempts at doing them. I have an exhibition about the L'Aquila earthquake on at the moment, but I'll write about that another time.
Coursework these past months has all been taken up with photo essays. After doing a number of smaller picture essays during my travels in Uganda and the Italian earthquake zone, (my submitted photo essays during tutorials showed me very clearly that I need to work on my editing skills - it didn't take me long to realise I was often including the wrong pictures and leaving out some good stuff), I moved on to a more in depth photo essay. I was tipped off to the subject matter by the TV programme Xarabank. Since then, for the past three months, I've been documenting what's happening at the hill of Borg in-Nadur, outside Birzebbugia, in the south of the island, where a visionary/stigmatic has been leading prayer meetings and seeing apparations. It's been interesting and is probably a project I'll keep revisiting on and off over the coming months, though it will of course have to shift downwards on my list of priorities. I'm planning on moving on to something else for my big final project which will be shot over several months - actually I started shooting it ages ago, though for purposes of the MA course I'll keep it restricted to what I've shot since starting the course.
I learnt a lot from this project I called VISIONS, primarily the value of patience,and sticking with a story in the long term, even if at times one almost despairs at getting the sort of shots one needs (there were a couple of occasions when I considered dropping the project altogether and moving onto something else, but both my tutors John Easterby and Homer Sykes convinced me to keep at it). I learnt the value of really discussing pictures in a profound way with my peers (they know who they are!),of blending into the surroundings, letting people get used to my presence, getting to know people so they can let me have a peek into their lives. Admittedly, I got off to bad start in that respect, as in the first minutes of my first visit there, I was standing right where the apparations are supposed to take place, much to the horror of many people present!
One interesting technique I picked up from Peter Fraser during a tutorial was - once I got to the location, I sat down and closed my eyes, and just listened to sounds around me. Peter had suggested doing this for about twenty minutes, I lost all sense of time and carried on for forty. Opening my eyes after that long stretch, I started to see things in a different way from the norm (I did this on one of my later visits), the pictures I took were different from the usual stuff, and though none of them made the final edit as they didn't quite fit in with the rest of the set, I still think they're some of the more interesting images. Naturally it's not the sort of thing one can do when covering a news assignment, but it's certainly something to consider doing more often.
There are still huge gaps in VISIONS, but access to some things I needed to shoot has proven to be next to impossible, though there have been some positive indications that that may change for the better sometime soon. That's one of the things which is motivating me to continue monitoring this story. The door hasn't been opened to me, but it seems the window has... so I might get there eventually. It's taken a long time for the inner circle of people involved in this to come to trust me, to accept me - in this regard, my working for the biggest newspaper on the island worked against me, as they have a deep distrust of the media, having been ruthlessly attacked by some sections of it in the past. They've now understood this is something I want to follow in the long term, and that I haven't been doing this as a newspaper assignment. At the same time though, I'm not keen on the occasional suggestion that it's ok to shoot something as long as it's just for an MA assignment but not for publication. I don't see the sense of that - out in the real world, it's always going to be for possible publication, isn't it? So may as well get it right to start with.
These events will probably carry on for a very long time, so in a sense, there's no rush. In the meantime, I'll look deeper into how to widen the scope of the story, build on the trust I've garnered, meet more people in their homes and so on.
Re the story itself, whether it turns out to be true or just the result of fraud, deceit or some form of mental illness, shouldn't affect the importance of the work I'm producing. It remains something that needs to be documented journalistically because it has anthropological, historical, social and religious value.
So, what is VISIONS all about?
Once a week, come rain or shine, a growing number of religiously devout people walk up a narrow slippery path to what was once a Bronze Age settlement at the top of a small hill of Borg in-Nadur (meaning ‘group of stones on a hill in an archaic Maltese dialect). They come out of religious piety and a good dose of curiosity to see and listen to Angelik Caruana, a telephone operator in his early 40s, and now a visionary and stigmatic, who claims to receive apparitions from guardian angels and the Mother of God, who he calls The Lady.
What first started as a private matter at home in 2006, with a statue of the Blessed Virgin shedding tears of blood (now kept away from prying eyes due to ongoing scientific investigations), soon became a growing phenomenon. The apparition, visiting Caruana on a regular basis, told him to go to the hill of Borg in-Nadur as that is where she wanted to appear in future. A cross was erected at the spot indicated, and that has now become the focal point of the activities.
The devotees, many carrying chairs and stools, come to the hill to pray, to recite the Rosary, and to listen to any messages from The Lady passed through Caruana. They also hope to see a miracle for themselves, such the sun spinning on its axis and descending on them before retreating again; a vision of The Lady appearing in the sun; a Eucharist host appearing on the palm of Caruana’s hand out of nowhere. Unusual shaped clouds become supernatural visions. Because they are told it won’t hurt their eyes, they spend several minutes, practically unblinking, staring into the setting sun in the hope of seeing something.
At the end of the prayer meeting, several pilgrims go to the cross, to touch it, to ask for blessings, or to put a note or a photo of a departed loved one in between the rubble stones.
Caruana is surrounded by an entourage of “chosen ones” who include a spiritual advisor, his wife and a small number of friends. They are the only people allowed at the foot of the cross during the apparitions (apparitions of The Lady, angels, and occasionally - of hell), with one exception – a psychiatrist who is closely monitoring the case, carrying out scientific investigations, looking out for anything that might indicate fraud, deceit and mental illness. The investigations remain ongoing.
Once a month, the apparitions also take place on Malta’s sister island, Gozo.
Caruana also claims to receive the stigmata every Friday afternoon, when he goes rigid in a crucified position on his bed, and marks form on his hands and feet. It remains a very private moment however, strictly off limits to all except the “chosen ones.”
The Church authorities have yet to pronounce themselves on the matter, waiting for the results of scientific, psychological and theological investigations. In the meantime, it takes the position that nobody is obliged to believe in apparitions, even if they are officially recognised, but if it helps people in their faith and daily life, then they shouldn’t be rejected.
VISIONS - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Coursework these past months has all been taken up with photo essays. After doing a number of smaller picture essays during my travels in Uganda and the Italian earthquake zone, (my submitted photo essays during tutorials showed me very clearly that I need to work on my editing skills - it didn't take me long to realise I was often including the wrong pictures and leaving out some good stuff), I moved on to a more in depth photo essay. I was tipped off to the subject matter by the TV programme Xarabank. Since then, for the past three months, I've been documenting what's happening at the hill of Borg in-Nadur, outside Birzebbugia, in the south of the island, where a visionary/stigmatic has been leading prayer meetings and seeing apparations. It's been interesting and is probably a project I'll keep revisiting on and off over the coming months, though it will of course have to shift downwards on my list of priorities. I'm planning on moving on to something else for my big final project which will be shot over several months - actually I started shooting it ages ago, though for purposes of the MA course I'll keep it restricted to what I've shot since starting the course.
I learnt a lot from this project I called VISIONS, primarily the value of patience,and sticking with a story in the long term, even if at times one almost despairs at getting the sort of shots one needs (there were a couple of occasions when I considered dropping the project altogether and moving onto something else, but both my tutors John Easterby and Homer Sykes convinced me to keep at it). I learnt the value of really discussing pictures in a profound way with my peers (they know who they are!),of blending into the surroundings, letting people get used to my presence, getting to know people so they can let me have a peek into their lives. Admittedly, I got off to bad start in that respect, as in the first minutes of my first visit there, I was standing right where the apparations are supposed to take place, much to the horror of many people present!
One interesting technique I picked up from Peter Fraser during a tutorial was - once I got to the location, I sat down and closed my eyes, and just listened to sounds around me. Peter had suggested doing this for about twenty minutes, I lost all sense of time and carried on for forty. Opening my eyes after that long stretch, I started to see things in a different way from the norm (I did this on one of my later visits), the pictures I took were different from the usual stuff, and though none of them made the final edit as they didn't quite fit in with the rest of the set, I still think they're some of the more interesting images. Naturally it's not the sort of thing one can do when covering a news assignment, but it's certainly something to consider doing more often.
There are still huge gaps in VISIONS, but access to some things I needed to shoot has proven to be next to impossible, though there have been some positive indications that that may change for the better sometime soon. That's one of the things which is motivating me to continue monitoring this story. The door hasn't been opened to me, but it seems the window has... so I might get there eventually. It's taken a long time for the inner circle of people involved in this to come to trust me, to accept me - in this regard, my working for the biggest newspaper on the island worked against me, as they have a deep distrust of the media, having been ruthlessly attacked by some sections of it in the past. They've now understood this is something I want to follow in the long term, and that I haven't been doing this as a newspaper assignment. At the same time though, I'm not keen on the occasional suggestion that it's ok to shoot something as long as it's just for an MA assignment but not for publication. I don't see the sense of that - out in the real world, it's always going to be for possible publication, isn't it? So may as well get it right to start with.
These events will probably carry on for a very long time, so in a sense, there's no rush. In the meantime, I'll look deeper into how to widen the scope of the story, build on the trust I've garnered, meet more people in their homes and so on.
Re the story itself, whether it turns out to be true or just the result of fraud, deceit or some form of mental illness, shouldn't affect the importance of the work I'm producing. It remains something that needs to be documented journalistically because it has anthropological, historical, social and religious value.
So, what is VISIONS all about?
Once a week, come rain or shine, a growing number of religiously devout people walk up a narrow slippery path to what was once a Bronze Age settlement at the top of a small hill of Borg in-Nadur (meaning ‘group of stones on a hill in an archaic Maltese dialect). They come out of religious piety and a good dose of curiosity to see and listen to Angelik Caruana, a telephone operator in his early 40s, and now a visionary and stigmatic, who claims to receive apparitions from guardian angels and the Mother of God, who he calls The Lady.
What first started as a private matter at home in 2006, with a statue of the Blessed Virgin shedding tears of blood (now kept away from prying eyes due to ongoing scientific investigations), soon became a growing phenomenon. The apparition, visiting Caruana on a regular basis, told him to go to the hill of Borg in-Nadur as that is where she wanted to appear in future. A cross was erected at the spot indicated, and that has now become the focal point of the activities.
The devotees, many carrying chairs and stools, come to the hill to pray, to recite the Rosary, and to listen to any messages from The Lady passed through Caruana. They also hope to see a miracle for themselves, such the sun spinning on its axis and descending on them before retreating again; a vision of The Lady appearing in the sun; a Eucharist host appearing on the palm of Caruana’s hand out of nowhere. Unusual shaped clouds become supernatural visions. Because they are told it won’t hurt their eyes, they spend several minutes, practically unblinking, staring into the setting sun in the hope of seeing something.
At the end of the prayer meeting, several pilgrims go to the cross, to touch it, to ask for blessings, or to put a note or a photo of a departed loved one in between the rubble stones.
Caruana is surrounded by an entourage of “chosen ones” who include a spiritual advisor, his wife and a small number of friends. They are the only people allowed at the foot of the cross during the apparitions (apparitions of The Lady, angels, and occasionally - of hell), with one exception – a psychiatrist who is closely monitoring the case, carrying out scientific investigations, looking out for anything that might indicate fraud, deceit and mental illness. The investigations remain ongoing.
Once a month, the apparitions also take place on Malta’s sister island, Gozo.
Caruana also claims to receive the stigmata every Friday afternoon, when he goes rigid in a crucified position on his bed, and marks form on his hands and feet. It remains a very private moment however, strictly off limits to all except the “chosen ones.”
The Church authorities have yet to pronounce themselves on the matter, waiting for the results of scientific, psychological and theological investigations. In the meantime, it takes the position that nobody is obliged to believe in apparitions, even if they are officially recognised, but if it helps people in their faith and daily life, then they shouldn’t be rejected.
VISIONS - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Thursday, June 25, 2009
BEADS OF HOPE
Published in The Times of Malta June 25, 2009
Women in colourful headscarves are out in the scorching sun on the rim of the quarry, sitting among mounds of granite rubble, lost in the rhythmic motion of hammering. Their young babies are next to them, oblivious to the danger posed by flying shards of granite as the women smash the rubble stones into smaller pieces using crude mallets.
Condemned by fate and circumstances to a life of hard labour, these are the Acholi tribe people who have fled their homes over the last twenty years because of the civil war raging in the north of the country.
For close to two decades, the cult-like Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda has carried out civilian massacres and mutilations on a horrifying scale. Its enigmatic leader Joseph Kony wants to run the country on the lines of the biblical Ten Commandments, yet his methods could hardly be more evil.
The United Nations estimates that over 20,000 children have been abducted by the LRA to serve as child soldiers or sex slaves. More than 1.6 million people have been displaced and ten of thousands of civilians have been killed.
To date, a comprehensive peace agreement remains elusive.
The internally displaced people's camp, the Acholi tribe quarters in Mbuya, on a hill on the outskirts of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, is dominated by two granite quarries on either side. The land belongs to king of Buganda, one of the traditional but politically impotent kings in Uganda, and is now home to over 5000 people who were forced to flee their villages in the north.
The densely populated slum, much like any other slum around the country, is a haven for diseases such as malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis, HIV, scabies. Sanitation is poor, drainage facilities are virtually non-existent.
The quarries are huge gashes in the side of the hill – what were in themselves hills ten years ago are now deep gorges, providing what for several years was the only way of earning some sort of livelihood for the people in the camp. On a good day, a woman might fill twenty jerry cans with the small stones, for which she’ll be paid 2000 shillings, equivalent to around 60 euro cents, barely enough to feed herself and her family.
Haggard looking men, their features worn by long hours in the sun and the sheer hardship of working in the quarry, carry sacks of rocks from the bottom of the gorge. Others perch perilously on the side of the steep slope, yielding sledgehammers to smash the rocks off the cliff face into smaller manageable pieces.
The heat from burning tyres is used to crack large rocks, making the quarrying process moderately easier.
It’s the sort of place where there’s no such thing as health and safety. The job is extremely dangerous. Accidents ranging from a smashed hand or finger because of a mis-aimed mallet, to rock falls which leave workers buried with every bone in their bodies pulverized, are a frequent fact of life and one the workers have become fatalistic about.
“You never know if you will return home in the evening,” says one woman in between shoveling stones into her jerry can. “We don’t quarrel or fight because we’re all working in a dangerous place together; when the stones fall on you, then you die together.”
There is an alternative.
Recently, many residents have found a safer work, making cosmetic jewellery out of paper, glue and varnishing. A traditional handicraft of the Acholi tribe, the beads are hand-rolled using scraps of paper, usually from old magazines, glued and handpainted with a layer of protective lacquer. Each piece of jewellery is unique as they are all handmade and individually designed by the makers.
The beaders got organized into a cooperative through BeadforLife, instigated by three American women - Torkin Wakefield, Ginny Jordan, and Devin Hibbard – who, while on a visit to Uganda, stopped to admire the beads being made a Ugandan woman named Millie and learned that there was no market for her jewellery, and that Millie worked for a dollar a day in the rock quarry crushing stones.
Sensing a business opportunity, they set about training the women to improve the quality of the beads, come up with several styles of necklaces and bracelets, as well as develop a marketing strategy. It had now grown into a cottage industry, complete with beads parties in the US, along the lines of Tupperware parties, and all profits go back into the community projects aimed at helping people work their way out of poverty. The beads have come to mean income, health, dignity, education and hope, in a place where hope is so desperately needed.
This is the fourth in a series of reports from Uganda raising awareness about the UN Millennium Development Goals with the cooperation of SOS Malta.
BEADS OF HOPE - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Women in colourful headscarves are out in the scorching sun on the rim of the quarry, sitting among mounds of granite rubble, lost in the rhythmic motion of hammering. Their young babies are next to them, oblivious to the danger posed by flying shards of granite as the women smash the rubble stones into smaller pieces using crude mallets.
Condemned by fate and circumstances to a life of hard labour, these are the Acholi tribe people who have fled their homes over the last twenty years because of the civil war raging in the north of the country.
For close to two decades, the cult-like Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda has carried out civilian massacres and mutilations on a horrifying scale. Its enigmatic leader Joseph Kony wants to run the country on the lines of the biblical Ten Commandments, yet his methods could hardly be more evil.
The United Nations estimates that over 20,000 children have been abducted by the LRA to serve as child soldiers or sex slaves. More than 1.6 million people have been displaced and ten of thousands of civilians have been killed.
To date, a comprehensive peace agreement remains elusive.
The internally displaced people's camp, the Acholi tribe quarters in Mbuya, on a hill on the outskirts of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, is dominated by two granite quarries on either side. The land belongs to king of Buganda, one of the traditional but politically impotent kings in Uganda, and is now home to over 5000 people who were forced to flee their villages in the north.
The densely populated slum, much like any other slum around the country, is a haven for diseases such as malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis, HIV, scabies. Sanitation is poor, drainage facilities are virtually non-existent.
The quarries are huge gashes in the side of the hill – what were in themselves hills ten years ago are now deep gorges, providing what for several years was the only way of earning some sort of livelihood for the people in the camp. On a good day, a woman might fill twenty jerry cans with the small stones, for which she’ll be paid 2000 shillings, equivalent to around 60 euro cents, barely enough to feed herself and her family.
Haggard looking men, their features worn by long hours in the sun and the sheer hardship of working in the quarry, carry sacks of rocks from the bottom of the gorge. Others perch perilously on the side of the steep slope, yielding sledgehammers to smash the rocks off the cliff face into smaller manageable pieces.
The heat from burning tyres is used to crack large rocks, making the quarrying process moderately easier.
It’s the sort of place where there’s no such thing as health and safety. The job is extremely dangerous. Accidents ranging from a smashed hand or finger because of a mis-aimed mallet, to rock falls which leave workers buried with every bone in their bodies pulverized, are a frequent fact of life and one the workers have become fatalistic about.
“You never know if you will return home in the evening,” says one woman in between shoveling stones into her jerry can. “We don’t quarrel or fight because we’re all working in a dangerous place together; when the stones fall on you, then you die together.”
There is an alternative.
Recently, many residents have found a safer work, making cosmetic jewellery out of paper, glue and varnishing. A traditional handicraft of the Acholi tribe, the beads are hand-rolled using scraps of paper, usually from old magazines, glued and handpainted with a layer of protective lacquer. Each piece of jewellery is unique as they are all handmade and individually designed by the makers.
The beaders got organized into a cooperative through BeadforLife, instigated by three American women - Torkin Wakefield, Ginny Jordan, and Devin Hibbard – who, while on a visit to Uganda, stopped to admire the beads being made a Ugandan woman named Millie and learned that there was no market for her jewellery, and that Millie worked for a dollar a day in the rock quarry crushing stones.
Sensing a business opportunity, they set about training the women to improve the quality of the beads, come up with several styles of necklaces and bracelets, as well as develop a marketing strategy. It had now grown into a cottage industry, complete with beads parties in the US, along the lines of Tupperware parties, and all profits go back into the community projects aimed at helping people work their way out of poverty. The beads have come to mean income, health, dignity, education and hope, in a place where hope is so desperately needed.
This is the fourth in a series of reports from Uganda raising awareness about the UN Millennium Development Goals with the cooperation of SOS Malta.
BEADS OF HOPE - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
A TOWN CALLED DIRT
Published in The Times of Malta, June 16, 2009
The buzzing of flies, the whining drone of crying children, a cacophonic humdrum of sound of people going about what I imagine must be their miserable lives, numbs my mind. A child, no more than two years old, squats all alone in the mud next to a puddle of stagnant murky water, crying for his mother who is nowhere to be seen.
The overriding stench of urine mingling with frying of fish and other cooking are nauseating. Open sewers crisscross the village, their filthy effluent trickling through. Smoke from cooking fires lazily wafts through the air, catching the sunlight, creating a sense of drama where there is none.
Heavily laden clothes lines traverse the streets, creating a kaleidoscope of colours, unintentionally giving the place a surreal festive air. Cows, pigs and hens mingle freely with people, as though out for an evening stroll.
I’m in the sub county of Nyendo Senyange, in the Masaka district of south western Uganda, in a slum known to the locals as Kachuf. Kachuf is also a word in Luganda, the Ugandan language. It means "dirt" – enough said.
People coyly peer out of their homes from behind curtains, most very quick to vanish back into the shadows the moment they see a camera. Among the mud brick houses are some that have been painted in a variety of bright colours, others have their facades tiled. Many are housed by prostitutes, women forced by dire circumstances to sell their bodies, as a consequence of which most are now HIV positive.
Some see the arrival of Europeans in the midst as an opportunity to get new clients. Two simply but strikingly dressed women follow me as I wander through narrow alleys, catching up with me and ask me to take their picture. Another strikes a dignified pose in her doorway as I lift my camera while her naked baby walks gingerly on a fly-infested piece of sackcloth. Yet another invites me into her tiny shack of a home, on the façade of which hang skewers of dried fish. I politely refuse.
Outside her house are more racks with skewered fish from the nearby Lake Victoria and Lake Nabugabo. Meals meant for humans, but the flies have got there first in full force.
On the main street of the village, a man stands besides a small wooden stall, meat hanging from rusty hooks. Parts of the meat appear black, moving and alive - It’s the hundreds of flies crawling over it.
A drunken man, soaked in sweat, roams through the village, shadowing me, trying to attract my attention with unintelligible ravings. He’s clutching a dirty beer mug, drinking potent alcohol derived from fermented pineapples. The heat is intense, yet he wears a thick cardigan.
It’s overwhelming but intoxicating.
Vincent Ssempijja, Chairman of Masaka District, seems out of place as he walks around the slum. A tall imposing man in a smart suit, he is passionate about wanting to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants.
“We have problems of children who are malnourished, who don’t go to school,” he laments. The parents cannot afford to send them to school, to buy books, even though there is universal primary education in Uganda.
In addition, most people in the densely populated slum live in makeshift homes with no sanitation. The lack of latrines and safe water is acute.
“We have managed to extend piped water to the area,” explains Ssempijja. “People take water home in a jerry can. A 20 litre jerry can may have to serve ten people in a single home for a day, so that’s a severe lack of water, but that’s all they can afford - water is sold, not given free.”
In the hills outside the town, in a small nameless hamlet, a young widow whose husband was killed in the civil war lives in a small simple two-roomed brick building in a field of mud with her four children and her elderly mother-in-law. The inside is sparsely furnished with dusty straw mats on the mud floor and a couple of wooden stools. The children are barefoot, runny-nosed and dressed in mud covered clothes. A small black piglet is tied to a stake outside the house.
They survive on the little income they get from the surplus from the tiny banana plantation they have round the house, using the money for medicine when the children go down with malaria. If they have no surplus, they remain without money to buy anything. Their situation is dire - they cannot afford to pay for transport, usually provided by the boda-boda motorbikes taxis, to go to a hospital, even if their lives depend on it.
Yet, I remain impressed by the resilience of the people. Could it be that their lives are not so miserable after all? The children might be walking barefoot, and yet they’re still smiling.
The buzzing of flies, the whining drone of crying children, a cacophonic humdrum of sound of people going about what I imagine must be their miserable lives, numbs my mind. A child, no more than two years old, squats all alone in the mud next to a puddle of stagnant murky water, crying for his mother who is nowhere to be seen.
The overriding stench of urine mingling with frying of fish and other cooking are nauseating. Open sewers crisscross the village, their filthy effluent trickling through. Smoke from cooking fires lazily wafts through the air, catching the sunlight, creating a sense of drama where there is none.
Heavily laden clothes lines traverse the streets, creating a kaleidoscope of colours, unintentionally giving the place a surreal festive air. Cows, pigs and hens mingle freely with people, as though out for an evening stroll.
I’m in the sub county of Nyendo Senyange, in the Masaka district of south western Uganda, in a slum known to the locals as Kachuf. Kachuf is also a word in Luganda, the Ugandan language. It means "dirt" – enough said.
People coyly peer out of their homes from behind curtains, most very quick to vanish back into the shadows the moment they see a camera. Among the mud brick houses are some that have been painted in a variety of bright colours, others have their facades tiled. Many are housed by prostitutes, women forced by dire circumstances to sell their bodies, as a consequence of which most are now HIV positive.
Some see the arrival of Europeans in the midst as an opportunity to get new clients. Two simply but strikingly dressed women follow me as I wander through narrow alleys, catching up with me and ask me to take their picture. Another strikes a dignified pose in her doorway as I lift my camera while her naked baby walks gingerly on a fly-infested piece of sackcloth. Yet another invites me into her tiny shack of a home, on the façade of which hang skewers of dried fish. I politely refuse.
Outside her house are more racks with skewered fish from the nearby Lake Victoria and Lake Nabugabo. Meals meant for humans, but the flies have got there first in full force.
On the main street of the village, a man stands besides a small wooden stall, meat hanging from rusty hooks. Parts of the meat appear black, moving and alive - It’s the hundreds of flies crawling over it.
A drunken man, soaked in sweat, roams through the village, shadowing me, trying to attract my attention with unintelligible ravings. He’s clutching a dirty beer mug, drinking potent alcohol derived from fermented pineapples. The heat is intense, yet he wears a thick cardigan.
It’s overwhelming but intoxicating.
Vincent Ssempijja, Chairman of Masaka District, seems out of place as he walks around the slum. A tall imposing man in a smart suit, he is passionate about wanting to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants.
“We have problems of children who are malnourished, who don’t go to school,” he laments. The parents cannot afford to send them to school, to buy books, even though there is universal primary education in Uganda.
In addition, most people in the densely populated slum live in makeshift homes with no sanitation. The lack of latrines and safe water is acute.
“We have managed to extend piped water to the area,” explains Ssempijja. “People take water home in a jerry can. A 20 litre jerry can may have to serve ten people in a single home for a day, so that’s a severe lack of water, but that’s all they can afford - water is sold, not given free.”
In the hills outside the town, in a small nameless hamlet, a young widow whose husband was killed in the civil war lives in a small simple two-roomed brick building in a field of mud with her four children and her elderly mother-in-law. The inside is sparsely furnished with dusty straw mats on the mud floor and a couple of wooden stools. The children are barefoot, runny-nosed and dressed in mud covered clothes. A small black piglet is tied to a stake outside the house.
They survive on the little income they get from the surplus from the tiny banana plantation they have round the house, using the money for medicine when the children go down with malaria. If they have no surplus, they remain without money to buy anything. Their situation is dire - they cannot afford to pay for transport, usually provided by the boda-boda motorbikes taxis, to go to a hospital, even if their lives depend on it.
Yet, I remain impressed by the resilience of the people. Could it be that their lives are not so miserable after all? The children might be walking barefoot, and yet they’re still smiling.
Monday, June 15, 2009
REJECTED GIRLS AND THEIR UNWANTED BABIES
Published in The Times of Malta - June 15, 2009
11 year old Jacinta Kayemba (not her real name) was walking back home through the fields with some friends, carefully balancing a bright yellow jerry can of water on her head which she had just filled at the village water borehole. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a totally inebriated man jumped out of the bushes, terrifying the girls who broke into a frantic run away from the area. Jacinta ran as fast as she could, all the while trying not to drop her can of water. She looked back to see if the man was chasing them and tripped. She crashed to the ground, looked up from the dust, and saw with horror that her precious cargo was pouring out of the jerry can as the cap had come off with the fall.
It was a slight relief to see that the drunkard didn’t seem to be following her, but she now gripped by a greater fear – returning home without water would surely incur the wrath of her parents. Her friends had disappeared from sight. After some moments of hesitation, Jacinta decided to return to the borehole and refill the jerry can. Keeping her eyes peeled for any sign of movement in the bushes, she cautiously made her way back, placed her can under the spout, grabbed the large handle and started operating the pump handle, soon getting distracted by the rhythmic movement. She never saw the drunken man approach her from behind till he was pushing her to the ground, ripping her clothes and violently raping her.
Jacinta was too young to have ever had her period, yet it wasn’t long before she and her family realised she’d become pregnant. Despite the circumstances of the pregnancy, her parents disowned her and threw her out into the streets. It made no difference that she was pregnant through no fault of her own - she had dishonoured the family. In a sense, she was lucky. Many girls in similar predicaments over the years have been thrown off high cliffs by their parents.
Many girls have no-one to turn to, nowhere to go. Some lucky ones may have relatives who may take them in, but with abortion being illegal unless the pregnancy endangers a woman's life, many resort to back street abortions, often with devastating results. Unsafe abortion, often from untrained personnel using unsafe methods, is a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality in the country. There are reports of poor women in villages resorting to desperate measures ranging from poisonous remedies from traditional healers to drinking detergents or inserting sharp sticks into their vaginas.
A 1993 study in Kampala hospitals found that 21% of maternal deaths were due to abortion-related complications, the second leading cause of death. A 1988 survey among women aged 15-24 years found that 23 per cent of all the women that had ever been pregnant had had one or more abortions. There appears to be little indication that things have changed much - a 2005 study by the Guttmacher Institute in New York and doctors at Kampala's Makerere University found that a staggering 85,000 Ugandan women are treated for abortion-related health complications each year.
The Wakisa Ministries institute was set up by Vivian Kityo Wakisa to combat this trend. Funded by friends in the USA and Australia, as well as some benefactors in Uganda itself, it receives no funding from NGOs. Primarily a crisis pregnancy counselling centre, it also serves as temporary shelter for pregnant girls who have decided to go ahead with their pregnancy and have been rejected by their parents. It provides vocational training and the girls take care of household chores such as cooking, cleaning and gardening.
Several pregnant teenage girls sat under a canopy in the spacious front garden as I walked in, weaving baskets and knitting colourful blankets, all part of the handcrafts they do in order to raise funds for the ministry. In the dormitory, a young mother, 17 year old Sylvia sat on her bed cradling her newborn child, aptly named Faith. Soon she would have to leave the institute and go and stay at an aunt’s place as both her parents are dead. Sylvia wants to go back to school, so her aunt will look after Faith, a beautiful child born out of a mistake made one fateful night. She may do as many like her have done before her, return to Wakisa Ministries to help run the centre and provide support to others who find themselves in a similar predicament.
Ms Kityo Wakisa contributes to regular columns and supplements in newspapers aimed at young people on the dangers of early sex, and what to do if it does happen to you or members of your family. A strict Christian, she doesn’t believe the solution to the promiscuity that appears rampant in the country and the unwanted pregnancies is the wider use of condoms. Most of the condoms distributed are old and expired; they tear easily so provide little if no protection against AIDS and other diseases as well as pregnancy. Coupled with the fact that so many unwanted pregnancies are due to rape, particularly in the north of the country which has been ravaged by civil war since the early 1980s, the scale of the problem comes as no surprise.
REJECTED GIRLS AND THEIR UNWANTED BABIES - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
11 year old Jacinta Kayemba (not her real name) was walking back home through the fields with some friends, carefully balancing a bright yellow jerry can of water on her head which she had just filled at the village water borehole. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, a totally inebriated man jumped out of the bushes, terrifying the girls who broke into a frantic run away from the area. Jacinta ran as fast as she could, all the while trying not to drop her can of water. She looked back to see if the man was chasing them and tripped. She crashed to the ground, looked up from the dust, and saw with horror that her precious cargo was pouring out of the jerry can as the cap had come off with the fall.
It was a slight relief to see that the drunkard didn’t seem to be following her, but she now gripped by a greater fear – returning home without water would surely incur the wrath of her parents. Her friends had disappeared from sight. After some moments of hesitation, Jacinta decided to return to the borehole and refill the jerry can. Keeping her eyes peeled for any sign of movement in the bushes, she cautiously made her way back, placed her can under the spout, grabbed the large handle and started operating the pump handle, soon getting distracted by the rhythmic movement. She never saw the drunken man approach her from behind till he was pushing her to the ground, ripping her clothes and violently raping her.
Jacinta was too young to have ever had her period, yet it wasn’t long before she and her family realised she’d become pregnant. Despite the circumstances of the pregnancy, her parents disowned her and threw her out into the streets. It made no difference that she was pregnant through no fault of her own - she had dishonoured the family. In a sense, she was lucky. Many girls in similar predicaments over the years have been thrown off high cliffs by their parents.
Many girls have no-one to turn to, nowhere to go. Some lucky ones may have relatives who may take them in, but with abortion being illegal unless the pregnancy endangers a woman's life, many resort to back street abortions, often with devastating results. Unsafe abortion, often from untrained personnel using unsafe methods, is a leading cause of maternal morbidity and mortality in the country. There are reports of poor women in villages resorting to desperate measures ranging from poisonous remedies from traditional healers to drinking detergents or inserting sharp sticks into their vaginas.
A 1993 study in Kampala hospitals found that 21% of maternal deaths were due to abortion-related complications, the second leading cause of death. A 1988 survey among women aged 15-24 years found that 23 per cent of all the women that had ever been pregnant had had one or more abortions. There appears to be little indication that things have changed much - a 2005 study by the Guttmacher Institute in New York and doctors at Kampala's Makerere University found that a staggering 85,000 Ugandan women are treated for abortion-related health complications each year.
The Wakisa Ministries institute was set up by Vivian Kityo Wakisa to combat this trend. Funded by friends in the USA and Australia, as well as some benefactors in Uganda itself, it receives no funding from NGOs. Primarily a crisis pregnancy counselling centre, it also serves as temporary shelter for pregnant girls who have decided to go ahead with their pregnancy and have been rejected by their parents. It provides vocational training and the girls take care of household chores such as cooking, cleaning and gardening.
Several pregnant teenage girls sat under a canopy in the spacious front garden as I walked in, weaving baskets and knitting colourful blankets, all part of the handcrafts they do in order to raise funds for the ministry. In the dormitory, a young mother, 17 year old Sylvia sat on her bed cradling her newborn child, aptly named Faith. Soon she would have to leave the institute and go and stay at an aunt’s place as both her parents are dead. Sylvia wants to go back to school, so her aunt will look after Faith, a beautiful child born out of a mistake made one fateful night. She may do as many like her have done before her, return to Wakisa Ministries to help run the centre and provide support to others who find themselves in a similar predicament.
Ms Kityo Wakisa contributes to regular columns and supplements in newspapers aimed at young people on the dangers of early sex, and what to do if it does happen to you or members of your family. A strict Christian, she doesn’t believe the solution to the promiscuity that appears rampant in the country and the unwanted pregnancies is the wider use of condoms. Most of the condoms distributed are old and expired; they tear easily so provide little if no protection against AIDS and other diseases as well as pregnancy. Coupled with the fact that so many unwanted pregnancies are due to rape, particularly in the north of the country which has been ravaged by civil war since the early 1980s, the scale of the problem comes as no surprise.
REJECTED GIRLS AND THEIR UNWANTED BABIES - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Saturday, June 13, 2009
WHEN THE SOURCE OF LIFE DRIES UP
Published in The Times of Malta - June 13, 2009
The widow has been queuing to fill her three jerry cans with water in the village of Namungalwe in eastern Uganda for two days. She's tired and very frustrated. Her children are home alone waiting for her to return. Suddenly, her patience runs out, she roughly bulldozes her way to the front of the queue, knocking over other people's water containers, and shoves her jerrycan under the water spout. People shout, hair is pulled, the fallen cans spew their precious contents into the mud. She clutches the hand-operated pump and resolutely refuses to budge as two other women try to drag her away.
It's a common occurrence. The single water pump from a borehole is the only source of clean water for over two thousand people in the area, about half of whom live in the village. Queues are always long. Hours spent queuing feel even longer.
Similar scenarios are repeated all over the country. Water boreholes, and to a lesser extent springs, are the main source of water throughout most rural areas of Uganda. When they dry out or fall out of action for one reason or another, the community finds itself in deep trouble. There is a mammoth problem of water shortages in the country. Rain water harvesting hasn't really been exploited on a large effective scale, especially in water stressed areas.
One major problem with springs is that they don’t always provide a source of clean water. Springs are not protected – they are often contaminated by people and cattle bathing, and then that same water is collected to drink and cook with.
More water points are an urgent necessity for communities throughout rural Uganda. Because of the long distances to walk to waterholes, young girls, who are often the ones responsible for collecting water, end up missing school, or worse – several have been attacked and defiled on the miles-long lonely walks.
It’s not enough for foreign NGOs to come into the country and drill boreholes or build reservoirs. At the Katoosa Primary School in Kyenjonjo in western Uganda, a reservoir with a capacity for 80,000 litres of water is bone dry. There are no gutters on the roof to harvest water and feed it into the reservoir. Built in 2002 by the German federally-owned Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), it was then left with no maintenance, nor was any instruction given to the community as to how to maintain it. Nor were any funds for maintenance available. Consequently, a mere seven years later, it doesn’t hold a single drop of water, while the community continues to suffer from a chronic water shortage.
Catherine Amal, the Chief Administrative Officer of the Kyenjonjo district, laments that foreign aid has too many conditions attached and the time has come to relax those restrictions. “You’ve taught me how to fish, but you haven’t given me a fishing rod,” she complained.
“We would like more infrastructure development because when you look around the community and district, the area is full of poor people and poverty can only be removed by improving infrastructure services such as roads, water, electricity, better hospitals, better schools. Most of the aid given to us through donors and NGOs is for training. What is needed is money to address the gaps in our infrastructure. The government and donors should change from giving us money for training to money for infrastructure development - the people have been empowered, they know what they can do, they just lack the money to do it.”
In fairness, this has already started happening. Development Consultant Christina Roberts explained “Originally, all aid was directed towards infrastructure and nothing was left for training or maintenance. However, because things would need to be rebuilt from scratch after falling into disrepair, donors went to the other extreme and only funded training and skills development and didn’t give them anything to play with. But now they’re beginning to find a balance.”
Meanwhile, people are forced to improvise. In a small hamlet outside Masaka in southern Uganda, a young widow in a small brick hut she shares with her four children and her mother-in-law uses a single strip of corrugated iron perched on a stick tilting into a battered jerry can as a rudimentary form of water harvesting.
Without water, there can be no life, and it appears clear that the lack of clean safe water is one of the root problems in the country. From it stem the problems of poverty, lack of sanitation, disease coupled with poor health care, infant mortality.
The United Nation’s 7th Millennium Development Goal, that of ensuring environmental sustainability, speaks of halving by 2015, the proportion of the world’s population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The latest progress report indicates that Uganda will probably achieve that goal.
According to the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2007/2008, the number of Ugandans accessing improved water sources shot from 44% in 1990 to 60% in 2004, but there are fears the trend may be reversed if urgent measures are not taken to address the challenges of population growth, increased urbanization and industrialization. Uncontrolled environmental degradation and pollution also threatens the quality and sustainability of the country’s fresh water resources.
The Times photojournalist Darrin Zammit Lupi was recently in Uganda accompanying a field-trip which was part of an EU-funded project entitled Media Engagement in Development Issues and Promotion (MEDIP). The project, led by SOS Malta, aims at promoting awareness among policy makers and the public, through the media, in six of the new EU Member States about development issues and the eight Millennium Development Goals.
The Times will carry a series of reportages over the coming weeks.
When the Source of Life Dries Up - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
The widow has been queuing to fill her three jerry cans with water in the village of Namungalwe in eastern Uganda for two days. She's tired and very frustrated. Her children are home alone waiting for her to return. Suddenly, her patience runs out, she roughly bulldozes her way to the front of the queue, knocking over other people's water containers, and shoves her jerrycan under the water spout. People shout, hair is pulled, the fallen cans spew their precious contents into the mud. She clutches the hand-operated pump and resolutely refuses to budge as two other women try to drag her away.
It's a common occurrence. The single water pump from a borehole is the only source of clean water for over two thousand people in the area, about half of whom live in the village. Queues are always long. Hours spent queuing feel even longer.
Similar scenarios are repeated all over the country. Water boreholes, and to a lesser extent springs, are the main source of water throughout most rural areas of Uganda. When they dry out or fall out of action for one reason or another, the community finds itself in deep trouble. There is a mammoth problem of water shortages in the country. Rain water harvesting hasn't really been exploited on a large effective scale, especially in water stressed areas.
One major problem with springs is that they don’t always provide a source of clean water. Springs are not protected – they are often contaminated by people and cattle bathing, and then that same water is collected to drink and cook with.
More water points are an urgent necessity for communities throughout rural Uganda. Because of the long distances to walk to waterholes, young girls, who are often the ones responsible for collecting water, end up missing school, or worse – several have been attacked and defiled on the miles-long lonely walks.
It’s not enough for foreign NGOs to come into the country and drill boreholes or build reservoirs. At the Katoosa Primary School in Kyenjonjo in western Uganda, a reservoir with a capacity for 80,000 litres of water is bone dry. There are no gutters on the roof to harvest water and feed it into the reservoir. Built in 2002 by the German federally-owned Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), it was then left with no maintenance, nor was any instruction given to the community as to how to maintain it. Nor were any funds for maintenance available. Consequently, a mere seven years later, it doesn’t hold a single drop of water, while the community continues to suffer from a chronic water shortage.
Catherine Amal, the Chief Administrative Officer of the Kyenjonjo district, laments that foreign aid has too many conditions attached and the time has come to relax those restrictions. “You’ve taught me how to fish, but you haven’t given me a fishing rod,” she complained.
“We would like more infrastructure development because when you look around the community and district, the area is full of poor people and poverty can only be removed by improving infrastructure services such as roads, water, electricity, better hospitals, better schools. Most of the aid given to us through donors and NGOs is for training. What is needed is money to address the gaps in our infrastructure. The government and donors should change from giving us money for training to money for infrastructure development - the people have been empowered, they know what they can do, they just lack the money to do it.”
In fairness, this has already started happening. Development Consultant Christina Roberts explained “Originally, all aid was directed towards infrastructure and nothing was left for training or maintenance. However, because things would need to be rebuilt from scratch after falling into disrepair, donors went to the other extreme and only funded training and skills development and didn’t give them anything to play with. But now they’re beginning to find a balance.”
Meanwhile, people are forced to improvise. In a small hamlet outside Masaka in southern Uganda, a young widow in a small brick hut she shares with her four children and her mother-in-law uses a single strip of corrugated iron perched on a stick tilting into a battered jerry can as a rudimentary form of water harvesting.
Without water, there can be no life, and it appears clear that the lack of clean safe water is one of the root problems in the country. From it stem the problems of poverty, lack of sanitation, disease coupled with poor health care, infant mortality.
The United Nation’s 7th Millennium Development Goal, that of ensuring environmental sustainability, speaks of halving by 2015, the proportion of the world’s population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The latest progress report indicates that Uganda will probably achieve that goal.
According to the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2007/2008, the number of Ugandans accessing improved water sources shot from 44% in 1990 to 60% in 2004, but there are fears the trend may be reversed if urgent measures are not taken to address the challenges of population growth, increased urbanization and industrialization. Uncontrolled environmental degradation and pollution also threatens the quality and sustainability of the country’s fresh water resources.
The Times photojournalist Darrin Zammit Lupi was recently in Uganda accompanying a field-trip which was part of an EU-funded project entitled Media Engagement in Development Issues and Promotion (MEDIP). The project, led by SOS Malta, aims at promoting awareness among policy makers and the public, through the media, in six of the new EU Member States about development issues and the eight Millennium Development Goals.
The Times will carry a series of reportages over the coming weeks.
When the Source of Life Dries Up - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Thursday, June 11, 2009
SHOOTING GSSE 2009
I got back from the Games of the Small States of Europe in Cyprus a few days ago. It was an exhausting week, but well worth it. The overall performance of the Maltese team may have been disappointing, but I'm pretty happy with the photos. I wouldn't have minded having more time shooting athletics and swimming, and I missed the gymnastics events completely, but that's what happens when you have several events to cover which are huge distances apart. Don't know if I've ever worked so hard all my life actually - never managed more than 3 or 4 hours sleep a night for the whole week. We'd meet for breakfast at 7 or 7.30 in the morning, travel from Larnaca to Nicosia or Limassol, and not be back at the hotel before half midnight, and only then start thinking about dinner (or maybe I could say a very late lunch?).
But on the whole, in retrospect, no complaints (apart from the lousy organisation and wifi that wasn't working half the time at the venues) - only thing still irking me is that my two favourite pictures from the games don't show Maltese athletes, hence rendering them somewhat useless for the paper.
Games of the Small States of Europe, Cyprus, 2009 - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
But on the whole, in retrospect, no complaints (apart from the lousy organisation and wifi that wasn't working half the time at the venues) - only thing still irking me is that my two favourite pictures from the games don't show Maltese athletes, hence rendering them somewhat useless for the paper.
Games of the Small States of Europe, Cyprus, 2009 - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
Saturday, May 16, 2009
PORTRAITS
I've transferred my blog onto Blogspot as it can handle slideshows, unlike Wordpress.
I've been slack lately, I should have blogged about the portrait assignment we were set quite a while ago. My tutor John Easterby said that this assignment usually proves to be the most difficult of all, one which most students struggle with, and he sure was right. Portraits are something I do on a regular basis for the paper, but it's always a pretty straight forward shoot, we never want anything complicated for that. Portraits to run with interviews are usually shot during the interview itself, often with whatever available light there is. There is no direction of the subject on our part, we just shoot throughout the interview whenever it looks right.
This time round I had to be more careful. John specifically wanted us to direct the shoot, pose the subject and so on. I had a few ideas of who to shoot, but time constraints meant I had to make do with newspaper assignments, and just be more creative than we normally are.
The first assignment was to do portraits of retired tenor Paul Asciak at an exhibition of his career as an opera singer. In the image which worked, I posed him in front of a photo showing him much younger when he played the title role in Verdi's Otello. Other images of him next to costumes he'd worn on stage didn't work too well.
MAPJD Portraits EDIT- Paul Asciak - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
The second assignment was with choreographer and dancer Felix Busuttil, who'd just hung up his dancing shoes for the last time, though he was at pains to stress he would continue working as a choreographer and director. The interview took place in a dark cafe, so once it was over, I took him out onto the shaded terrace of St James Cavalier, and placed him against the old stonework of the fortifications. I did a variety of close ups and long shots. The shots with his hands against his chin didn't look right, looked too posey.
Once those were out of the way, we moved to another nearby location, the ruins of the bombed out Royal Opera House, as it featured prominently in the interview. There has been talk of using the site to build a new houses of parliament, while the arts community is dead set against that. Felix was quite categorical when he stated that the site belonged to artists, and it should be returned to artists. The photos there, however, appear a bit forced as an idea, and didn't work too well. The light wasn't right either. The images of Felix on the terrace were the most successful of the three shoots, according to John.
MAPJD Portraits EDIT- Felix Busuttil - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
The final assignment was with artist Eman Grima in a gallery hosting his latest exhibition. I had more time on my hands than is the norm for this, so I was able to get a variety of images, partly thanks to Eman's full and helpful cooperation. Some images worked better than others. For some shots, I went wide, using the depth of the gallery. I also went for tight face shots, the guy's got a very interesting face. Most were done with available light - the few when I used a bit of flash to help out didn't work well.
The results, according to John, were competent, more than good enough for any newspaper anywhere, but I need to go beyond that - I need to break out of my newspaper mode, which won't be easy, considering I've been in that mode for some 18 years.
MAPJD Portraits EDIT- Eman Grima - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
I've been slack lately, I should have blogged about the portrait assignment we were set quite a while ago. My tutor John Easterby said that this assignment usually proves to be the most difficult of all, one which most students struggle with, and he sure was right. Portraits are something I do on a regular basis for the paper, but it's always a pretty straight forward shoot, we never want anything complicated for that. Portraits to run with interviews are usually shot during the interview itself, often with whatever available light there is. There is no direction of the subject on our part, we just shoot throughout the interview whenever it looks right.
This time round I had to be more careful. John specifically wanted us to direct the shoot, pose the subject and so on. I had a few ideas of who to shoot, but time constraints meant I had to make do with newspaper assignments, and just be more creative than we normally are.
The first assignment was to do portraits of retired tenor Paul Asciak at an exhibition of his career as an opera singer. In the image which worked, I posed him in front of a photo showing him much younger when he played the title role in Verdi's Otello. Other images of him next to costumes he'd worn on stage didn't work too well.
MAPJD Portraits EDIT- Paul Asciak - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
The second assignment was with choreographer and dancer Felix Busuttil, who'd just hung up his dancing shoes for the last time, though he was at pains to stress he would continue working as a choreographer and director. The interview took place in a dark cafe, so once it was over, I took him out onto the shaded terrace of St James Cavalier, and placed him against the old stonework of the fortifications. I did a variety of close ups and long shots. The shots with his hands against his chin didn't look right, looked too posey.
Once those were out of the way, we moved to another nearby location, the ruins of the bombed out Royal Opera House, as it featured prominently in the interview. There has been talk of using the site to build a new houses of parliament, while the arts community is dead set against that. Felix was quite categorical when he stated that the site belonged to artists, and it should be returned to artists. The photos there, however, appear a bit forced as an idea, and didn't work too well. The light wasn't right either. The images of Felix on the terrace were the most successful of the three shoots, according to John.
MAPJD Portraits EDIT- Felix Busuttil - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
The final assignment was with artist Eman Grima in a gallery hosting his latest exhibition. I had more time on my hands than is the norm for this, so I was able to get a variety of images, partly thanks to Eman's full and helpful cooperation. Some images worked better than others. For some shots, I went wide, using the depth of the gallery. I also went for tight face shots, the guy's got a very interesting face. Most were done with available light - the few when I used a bit of flash to help out didn't work well.
The results, according to John, were competent, more than good enough for any newspaper anywhere, but I need to go beyond that - I need to break out of my newspaper mode, which won't be easy, considering I've been in that mode for some 18 years.
MAPJD Portraits EDIT- Eman Grima - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
LIFE ON RENAISSANCE BOULEVARD
Originally published April 23, 2009
The rocking horse is familiar – it’s identical to the one my 3 year old daughter loves playing on. She’s safe at home, but this rocking horse is outside a rain-swept tent in the Piazza d’Armi tent city in L’Aquila. Something about it makes me pause, think, chokes me up. It all feels too close to home.
Yet, whereas walking around the city centre of L’Aquila left me with a foreboding sense of death, loss and despair, the ‘tentopoli’, tent cities which have mushroomed all over the earthquake-affected region, served as a welcome reminder that life goes on, that the human spirit is indomitable and cannot be crushed. People’s initial feelings of hopelessness has changed to a growing sense of community and solidarity – strangers have become friends, neighbours who’d studiously avoided each other for years have now become best buddies. The inhabitants have slowly begun to resign themselves to their fate and realise they will not return to their homes for the foreseeable future.
Some 7000 tents have been mounted throughout the area, the vast majority by the Rapid Response Aid Centres and Logistics Directorate of the Home Office Public Rescue. Working out of the enormous logistics base purposely set up in Avezzano, a town some 50 kilometres away from L’Aquila, the directorate has shipped supplies to places much further afield than initially expected.
I joined one unit of the Home Office Rapid Response Aid Centres and Logistics Directorate on a long trip to the remote mountain village of Collepietro, a drive of some 80 kilometres. The picturesque village appeared quiet, all doors were closed, the few shops shuttered. The whole population had moved to the rapidly set-up tent complex on the far edge of the village. The residents are afraid to return to their homes, even though damage in the village was negligible. So they’re all housed in tents, and now they were getting a large tent that can be used for social gatherings, town meetings, as a dining hall, school, church and so on. It’s a scenario repeated throughout the Abruzzo region. People are nervous and scared, and in places such as Collepietro, they’ll stay under canvas until mobile homes are brought in by autumn, or till they tire of living in tents and decide to return to their houses as long as the buildings are safe.
Closer to the epicentre, things are different. Even once they tire of living under canvas, thousands have no home to return to. Buildings which remained standing after the earthquake are unstable – an as-yet unknown but large quantity of them will have to be demolished.
The ‘tentopoli’ have taken on an air of permanency. Well-equipped field kitchens provide a steady stream of hot meals, gravel paths with rubber matting have been laid down in order for it not to get muddy. Tents are numbered, it’s only a matter of time before street names start appearing. One man has hung a sign outside his tent reading “Boulevard de la renaissance o deju recominciu” which roughly translates as “Renaissance Boulevard… Or we have to start again”
A remarkable infrastructure is falling into place – apart from the tents which house six people in each, one finds veterinary services, mobile post offices, information centres, internet service, dental clinics, medical centres providing psychological support, refuse collection, and even a tent where one can get a massage. Doctors dressed as clowns roam the camps, providing essential psychological support and cheer to children and adults alike. The large social tents, which serve as dining halls, are packed for daily mass. People who in some cases hadn’t stepped into a church for years are now flooding back.
People queue in an orderly fashion for anything from clothes to soap and toothpaste, relying on a remarkable influx of charity.
There’s a growing sense of resurrection. In Onna, the small hamlet where not a single building remained standing and 40 of its 300 inhabitants were killed, the church of stones has fallen, but the church of people remains alive, albeit wounded. The church bells were retrieved by fire-fighters, and a hastily improvised new belfry, built with steel poles and wood, with those same bells, now dominates the camp outside the hamlet. Last Sunday, the church bells of Onna rang out once again.
Outside nearby Paganica, children released balloons with messages, their thoughts and feelings written on them. They watched them catch the airflows and climb higher and higher towards the towering mountains that surround the region.
Some 35,000 people are living in the tent cities – that number is set to grow, as around 20,000 people who were evacuated to hotels along the Adriatic coast will now have to make way for the thousands of tourists who will soon flood into the holiday resorts there.
It’s probably just the thing to put you off camping holidays for life.
This trip was made possible through the initiative of Koperattiva Kulturali Universitarja (KKU) and will be followed by a photographic exhibition which will take place during Evenings on Campus 2009.
Life on Renaissance Boulevard - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
THE END OF THE WORLD IN TWENTY SECONDS
Originally published April 20, 2009
There’s a rumbling in the ground, a couple of seconds of shaking. It gives me one hell of a fright, but then I notice that the hotel receptionist doesn’t even bother to look up from behind his desk. He’s evidently grown used to the tremors which continue to strike L’Aquila in the region of Abruzzo in central Italy several times a day.
“Around 3 on the Richter scale,” he tells me afterwards, a far cry from the 6.3 magnitude earthquake which struck the region on April 6 with devastating ferocity. I relax again, and before long, I’m hardly taking any notice of the tremors myself, or that’s what I try to tell myself. Yet that night I sleep with my hard hat next to my bed, my boots ready to be jumped into instantly and more clothing than I’d normally wear in the bed, and not because the room is cold.
My hotel is right outside the old city walls, only a couple of hundred metres away from scenes of indescribable devastation. However, if it weren’t for the countless fire engines, police vehicles, army trucks going around all the time, and the tent cities which have sprouted up in every available large open space, you’d never know the region has just been struck by one of Italy’s worst natural disasters in years.
Most of the destruction in L’Aquila itself is concentrated in the historic centre of the town, a place of narrow cobbled streets and sweeping piazzas, beautiful churches rich in art and history. Other parts of the town also suffered damage, but it’s not so evident at first glance because it’s spaced out.
The city centre is off limits to everyone apart from the emergency services, and a steady trickle of residents who are allowed in, in small numbers and under escort, to retrieve personal belongings such as documents, jewellery and money, as well as journalists, also under civil protection escort. The fire-fighters who drive the residents to their homes do not allow them into the houses. The residents have to tell them where their important possessions are, and the fire-fighters go and find them. The residents have to apply to go to their homes, and often have to wait several days till their name is called. The gathering points on the peripheries of the centre are full of people with empty suitcases, holdalls or boxes, patiently waiting their turn.
People appear calm, resigned to their fate. It was a very different story on the night of April 6. Tremors had been shaking the city since December, but few people thought to leave. A few who did mere days before the big one were lucky. Most of the population however was asleep in their beds on that soon-to-be catastrophic night. When the shaking started at 3.32am, accompanied by a terrifying rumble from deep in the earth, buildings shook not from side to side, as one normally expects during an earthquake, but up and down. In those fateful twenty seconds, the lives of the people of L’Aquila, and several other towns and villages through Abruzzo and further afield, were changed forever. For several others, 295 at the last count, their lives stopped there.
People in the city centre rushed in their bed clothes to the Piazza Duomo, screaming and wailing, hugging whoever was closest to them, friend or stranger made no difference. “It’s the end of the world,” they screeched. All around them, they could see the city crumbling, the magnificent dome of their beloved Duomo di San Massimo collapsing.
Not far from the Duomo, a students dormitory collapsed in on itself in seconds, resulting in the largest single loss of life in the whole region. Now, close to a fortnight later, it’s a mound of rubble in a gaping hole among the rest of the buildings on the ill-fated XX Settembre Street, a street where in all likelihood, practically all the surviving buildings will have to be demolished. Flowers and soft toys lie on the ground next to the remains of the dormitory, placed there by students who were allowed to visit the site to pay their respects to their dead friends, to try reliving some of the memories so savagely torn to shreds that night. Two students hold onto each other across the road, gazing tearfully at the rubble. They have happy memories of their time living there, but also the horrifying recollection of being trapped in the remnants of the building of twisted beams and smashed concrete till finally being rescued through heroic efforts by the Civil Protection. One of the girls wants to go closer, to touch the stones that were her home until a few days before. I lend her my helmet, and a fire-fighter takes her up to the edge of the rubble.
Moving through the streets, taking care to always try to stick to the middle of the road when on foot because of the ever-present danger of falling debris, given the regular aftershocks, I pass the orphanage where a nun died while saving five children by covering them with her veil so they wouldn’t suffocate. Cars lie buried in rubble, people’s possessions lie abandoned in the streets. Their lives have been exposed for all to see – their private bedrooms opened to prying eyes after the walls fell out, even if the buildings remained standing. It is a ghost town, the eerie silence broken only by the movement of civil protection vehicles driving slowly, fire-fighters clearing debris away, trying to make safe places where masonry is hanging by a thread.
Nothing can prepare you for this kind of sight – seeing it in photographs or television doesn’t even come close to seeing it for real. Though the damage is not as widespread as in other major earthquakes that have taken place, such as in China last year, even hardened experienced journalists who thought they’d seen all the horrors that the world could throw their way, feel that this is one of the places that has most affected them – maybe because it’s closer to home. I’m in a place of death, of hell - I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for the people who lived through it.
Their lives will never be the same. A part of each of them died alongside those who would never see the light of day again.
This trip was the initiative of Koperattiva Kulturali Universitarja(KKU) and will be followed by a photographic exhibition which will take place during Evenings on Campus 2009.
“Around 3 on the Richter scale,” he tells me afterwards, a far cry from the 6.3 magnitude earthquake which struck the region on April 6 with devastating ferocity. I relax again, and before long, I’m hardly taking any notice of the tremors myself, or that’s what I try to tell myself. Yet that night I sleep with my hard hat next to my bed, my boots ready to be jumped into instantly and more clothing than I’d normally wear in the bed, and not because the room is cold.
My hotel is right outside the old city walls, only a couple of hundred metres away from scenes of indescribable devastation. However, if it weren’t for the countless fire engines, police vehicles, army trucks going around all the time, and the tent cities which have sprouted up in every available large open space, you’d never know the region has just been struck by one of Italy’s worst natural disasters in years.
Most of the destruction in L’Aquila itself is concentrated in the historic centre of the town, a place of narrow cobbled streets and sweeping piazzas, beautiful churches rich in art and history. Other parts of the town also suffered damage, but it’s not so evident at first glance because it’s spaced out.
The city centre is off limits to everyone apart from the emergency services, and a steady trickle of residents who are allowed in, in small numbers and under escort, to retrieve personal belongings such as documents, jewellery and money, as well as journalists, also under civil protection escort. The fire-fighters who drive the residents to their homes do not allow them into the houses. The residents have to tell them where their important possessions are, and the fire-fighters go and find them. The residents have to apply to go to their homes, and often have to wait several days till their name is called. The gathering points on the peripheries of the centre are full of people with empty suitcases, holdalls or boxes, patiently waiting their turn.
People appear calm, resigned to their fate. It was a very different story on the night of April 6. Tremors had been shaking the city since December, but few people thought to leave. A few who did mere days before the big one were lucky. Most of the population however was asleep in their beds on that soon-to-be catastrophic night. When the shaking started at 3.32am, accompanied by a terrifying rumble from deep in the earth, buildings shook not from side to side, as one normally expects during an earthquake, but up and down. In those fateful twenty seconds, the lives of the people of L’Aquila, and several other towns and villages through Abruzzo and further afield, were changed forever. For several others, 295 at the last count, their lives stopped there.
People in the city centre rushed in their bed clothes to the Piazza Duomo, screaming and wailing, hugging whoever was closest to them, friend or stranger made no difference. “It’s the end of the world,” they screeched. All around them, they could see the city crumbling, the magnificent dome of their beloved Duomo di San Massimo collapsing.
Not far from the Duomo, a students dormitory collapsed in on itself in seconds, resulting in the largest single loss of life in the whole region. Now, close to a fortnight later, it’s a mound of rubble in a gaping hole among the rest of the buildings on the ill-fated XX Settembre Street, a street where in all likelihood, practically all the surviving buildings will have to be demolished. Flowers and soft toys lie on the ground next to the remains of the dormitory, placed there by students who were allowed to visit the site to pay their respects to their dead friends, to try reliving some of the memories so savagely torn to shreds that night. Two students hold onto each other across the road, gazing tearfully at the rubble. They have happy memories of their time living there, but also the horrifying recollection of being trapped in the remnants of the building of twisted beams and smashed concrete till finally being rescued through heroic efforts by the Civil Protection. One of the girls wants to go closer, to touch the stones that were her home until a few days before. I lend her my helmet, and a fire-fighter takes her up to the edge of the rubble.
Moving through the streets, taking care to always try to stick to the middle of the road when on foot because of the ever-present danger of falling debris, given the regular aftershocks, I pass the orphanage where a nun died while saving five children by covering them with her veil so they wouldn’t suffocate. Cars lie buried in rubble, people’s possessions lie abandoned in the streets. Their lives have been exposed for all to see – their private bedrooms opened to prying eyes after the walls fell out, even if the buildings remained standing. It is a ghost town, the eerie silence broken only by the movement of civil protection vehicles driving slowly, fire-fighters clearing debris away, trying to make safe places where masonry is hanging by a thread.
Nothing can prepare you for this kind of sight – seeing it in photographs or television doesn’t even come close to seeing it for real. Though the damage is not as widespread as in other major earthquakes that have taken place, such as in China last year, even hardened experienced journalists who thought they’d seen all the horrors that the world could throw their way, feel that this is one of the places that has most affected them – maybe because it’s closer to home. I’m in a place of death, of hell - I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for the people who lived through it.
Their lives will never be the same. A part of each of them died alongside those who would never see the light of day again.
This trip was the initiative of Koperattiva Kulturali Universitarja(KKU) and will be followed by a photographic exhibition which will take place during Evenings on Campus 2009.
The End of the World in Twenty Seconds - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
TRAVELLING AGAIN
Originally published April 16, 2009
I haven’t been particularly prolific with this blog in recent weeks. I’m still going through the long process of editing my Uganda photos and writing up a series of features on the place, so won’t be posting any of the pix here till then. Things have been very busy at the Times too, which hasn’t left much time for anything else.
As far the MA is concerned, we’ve been on a long Easter break, which has upset the rhythm we’d built up somewhat, but I’m sure we’ll quickly get back into it once we resume sessions next week. One blog that’s still missing from here concerns the portrait assignments I had to do, so I’ll try sort those out next week.
Right now I’m in Rome, and going over to the earthquake zone in Abruzzo first thing tomorrow morning… a bit late in the day story-wise, admittedly, but it’s only over the past couple of days that the opportunity came up. I certainly wasn’t actively seeking it out, having just returned from Uganda and still not settled back down.
Besides, I do believe that just because the media circus is over, it doesn’t mean the story is… perhaps this way I won’t have to worry about other members of the press straying into my frame!
Anyhow, I’ve no idea how this will go – got a few ideas, some good plans, so am just hoping those plans work out fine and I come out of the zone in one piece and with some good pix and stories.
THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Originally published April 2, 2009
I’m currently on my way back to Malta after spending a couple of weeks on assignment in Uganda, working on a series of photo essays and features dealing with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by 189 nations at the UN Millenniun Summit in 2000.
Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop and global partnership for development
I’ll be showing plenty of pictures here of course, but not before the features appear in The Times over the coming days (not sure when the series will start yet) – suffice to say I’m really excited by the images I’ve got.
I joined up with an SOS Malta led mission, called MEDIP, to the country, meant to sensitise the media, and hence the general public, to the MDGs. So my thanks are due to them for allowing me to essentially gatecrash the whole thing and make the trip too, even though it was only meant for TV stations from the new EU member states.
RELATIONSHIPS - AUTISM
Originally published March 9, 2009
For the second part of my relationships assignment, I set up a visit to the Eden and Razzett Foundation , aiming to document the close relationship between the therapists and the clients. I did it over two sessions, the initial one having been cut short by some breaking news coverage. The Foundation’s CEO Nathan Farrugia put me in touch with the head of the STEP unit, Doreen Mercieca, who cleared the way through the minefield that is data protection in this country. On both visits, I had to be careful who I had in the picture, as some children could not be photographed – keeping track of who could and who couldn’t took some getting used to.
The Foundation’s website describes STEP (Structured Training and Education Programme) as a specialised programme for children and adolescents within the autistic spectrum. The STEP programme is offered through a team made up of tutors who are supported by the speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists and the programme’s psychologist. Parents are considered to be key members of the team and work alongside tutors and the other professionals. Their commitment and cooperation is considered to play a major part in the child’s progress. Parents are an integral part of their child’s assessment and teaching, constantly providing information about their child’s needs, behaviour, interests and dislikes, and also voicing their own concerns and priorities for their child.
The unit provides intensive specialised training, education and support allowing the development of the child’s full potential and level of independence appropriate for his or her age, as well as provides assistance and support to ensure full inclusion at school and within the community.
I found autism particularly interesting within the scope of the relationships brief as autistic children are normally considered to be incapable of forming normal social relationships.
However, whilst doing some internet research before the shoot, I came across a fascinating piece called Six Principle of Autistic Interaction, written by James Williams (http://www.jamesmw.com/), a high-functioning autistic person, proved very revealing.
Williams writes
“ Autistic individuals typically have problems interacting in normal social environments. This leads some parents and professionals to think that they are naturally antisocial. However, autistic individuals, if allowed to interact with other autistic individuals, develop complex friendships that are based on social rules that are unique to autistic relationships. These social rules are not necessarily the social rules of neurotypical individuals.”
I resolved to see if I could capture that.
As on earlier assignments, I was still restricted to one camera, one lens and manual everything. However, we were now allowed to uprate the ISO to 1600 and shoot colour if we preferred. I stuck to black and white, feeling it would work better for this kind of thing. I used a 16- 35mm f/2.8 lens on my 5DMkII, taking care not to operate the zoom at all but just leaving it on the 35mm end. Being all indoor work, being able to use an ISO of 1600 was a welcome addition. I was looking for moments of interaction among the children and tutors, as well as amongst the children themselves. I wanted eye contact, eye lines, expressive body language, physical touch. There were also the moments of interaction between the children and the world around them that needed to be captured.
At first, some of the children took a keen interest in me and the camera, but they soon got bored of me and started ignoring my presence, which is exactly what I wanted. Towards the end of the second session, when all the children were playing in the same space and all but two couldn’t be photographed, I had to use slow shutter speeds and pan with my main subject so as to blur everyone else. It’s a bit of a hit and miss technique, but I think it worked in a few instances. I wanted to show them playing together, and at times not playing together, and this seemed the only way to go about it given the restrictions of who could be shown in a photograph. I did find myself deleting several images, something I don’t normally do unless the image is technically a total washout, because the wrong person could be seen in the background, or the person remained recognisable despite the blurring technique. Some good images are lost because of that, but one has to accept that without too much bother. The fact that some parents did give consent to having their children documented was a blessing for which I’m very grateful, so why push my luck?
MAPJD Relationships 2 - Eden Foundation EDIT - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
MAPJD Relationships 2B - Eden Foundation EDIT - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
DANCING JELLIES - MY FIRST AUDIO SLIDESHOW
Originally published March 8, 2009
I find jellyfish hypnotic – I’ve been working on this audio slideshow on and off for months – the pictures were taken with it in mind 11 months ago when I was visiting California. I’ll probably keep tinkering with it for a while yet, but need an improved version of Soundslides Plus to do that (hopefully the features I need will be available in upcoming releases of the software). Image size is on the low size because of the sheer number of photos in it (over three hundred pix) – you’ll need a very fast broadband connection to view it properly. Music is by Kevin MacLeod from a royalty-free website I found on the net.
I’m just about starting to play around with gathering audio on location myself , having just bought a digital audio recorder, so in the near future I’ll start working on documentary audio slideshows.
RELATIONSHIPS - DANCE
Originally published March 4, 2009
The latest assignment I’ve had to do as part as my MA deals with relationships. Taking relationships in the wider sense of the word, it’s seems I’ve taken the approach of why keep things simple and straight forward when you can make them impossibly complicated? I’ve just completed my first shoot and am seriously considering a reshoot. I opted to try document the relationship between a contemporary dance teacher and her students, most aged around 15, during a dance class. I was also looking for what sort of relationship there is among the students themselves.
The thing with contemporary dance is that there’s little physical interaction during the lesson, it’s all done by voice and through the teacher doing the moves and students following her actions, most of the eye contact is done via the large mirrors at the front of the room. The relationship dynamics move via the mirror. It’s not close and intimate in the way a music teacher and a pupil would be; it’s not like in classical ballet where the teacher will go round the students one by one, adjusting the position of a hand, a foot and so on. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen in contemporary dance, but when it does, it’s usually over in half a second and tends to be on the far end from where you’ve placed yourself. So when you’re limited to using one lens (a 50mm in my case), you’ve got to almost fly across the room as though you’re a dancer yourself (and believe me I’m not!) in order to get the right angle, whilst taking care that another dance doesn’t back kick you as she goes through her paces.
Sandra Mifsud is one of the top contemporary dancers and choreographers on the island. I’ve followed her work for many years and she’s come up with some terrific and memorable pieces. The chance to photograph one of her classes at the Brigitte Gauci Borda School of Ballet was too good to pass up. But do the shots work? I’m not too sure… yes, there are some decent images but whether they fulfill the brief of capturing relationships is something I’m not sure of. One thing I’m certain of is that most of the pictures don’t really deal with the relationship at all but work as dance pictures in their own right.
Perhaps I should give it another go and cover a classical ballet lesson instead?
MAPJD Relationships 1 - Dance class EDIT - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
HITTING THE STREETS AGAIN
Originally published February 23, 2009
I’ve been back in action for a few days now, but haven’t had the chance to concentrate on shooting course assignments until this morning. It’s been a busy time, mostly covering Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping’s visit to the island and carnival activities for the paper. For one who dislikes the carnival here in Valletta, I’m quite surprised at how much I’ve shot. The one bit I really did enjoy was the masked Ball at the Manoel Theatre. There’s a small selection of photos from that here
This morning I had to cover yet another carnival parade for the paper, but decided to try shoot the continuation of my street photography assignment at the same time. Not easy, since the requirements for both are totally different. In the case of the college assignment, I had the usual restriction of one fixed lens, one camera, black and white, manual focus and exposure and 400ISO, whereas whilst shooting for the paper I normally use two cameras, one with a 16-35 and the other with a 70-200. So I had to do a bit of a juggling act.
I didn’t want to do the usual carnival pix. So I decided to concentrate on making pictures of people with cameras, engrossed in shooting the carnival themselves. I looked for combinations of facial expression, harsh light and shadows and juxtaposing the photographers with carnivalesque elements. I did get some weird looks when a couple of photographers caught on to the fact I was shooting them. Perhaps here shooting for the paper helped as well, as I’d simply lift the second camera with the long lens and shoot some detail in the parade.
Once done with the parade, I stopped outside an old church, wanting to get some interestingly composed photos of the highlights and deep shadows as people walked by. I couldn’t shoot for long. Within a few minutes, the light was gone as heavy cloud cover moved in.
Later in the evening, back roaming the streets shooting the celebrations for the paper, I shot a few more frames with this assignment in mind.
Regarding carnival photos, perhaps next year I should try something a bit different and more daring. I’ve got some ideas in that department so watch this space!
MAPJD Street Photography 3 EDIT - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
ALLEVIATING THE BOREDOM
Originally published February 19, 2009
What an absolute and utter pain it’s been, stuck at home for the past three days feeling rather unwell. On top of that there’s the total frustration of knowing I’m missing good photos out there because there’s so much going on, and also realising that it’s going to be pretty hard to meet my college assignment deadline now. I’ve been trying to alleviate the boredom by reading up on other photographers and by taking pictures round the house – turning the camera on food crumbs left on the dinner table, the goldfish, who must be far more bored by now than I ever could be. The Peter Fraser influence is still there, and I don’t see it waning away too quickly. I guess the goldfish pix are more ‘me’ in a way, there’s a sense of dance in them, which is right up my alley. There isn’t any Photoshop manipulation in the images, apart from adjusting of levels, as well as boosting the contrast and saturation slightly in the RAW conversion software.
STREET WALKING
Originally published February 16, 2009
I finally got cracking on my street photography assignment on Sunday morning. Sun was shining brightly but heavens, was it cold or what! I was squeezing it in between shoots for my newspaper, walking around the main street of the capital Valletta and hitting the Sunday flea market just outside the city walls. Originally I’d planned on just taking one camera after removing its vertical grip and one lens, but because I was still technically speaking working for the paper I had to take my full kit, albeit packed away. So I couldn’t remain as inconspicuous as I’d hoped. I guess my thick blue fleece jacket didn’t help in that respect either. The restrictions of one camera, one lens (a 28, 35 or 50), black and white and 400 ISO remained in force. I opted to stick to 35mm.
I was primarily looking for interplay of highlights and shadows, using deep black shadows to create graphic shapes. At the same time, I had to try capture those decisive moments when everything comes together in a split instant. Though shooting in black and white, it was pretty clear to me that many of the images I was making work far better in colour. Not a problem really, as I was shooting in RAW anyhow, so converting back to colour is pretty straight forward. In some cases, the images don’t work at all in black and white, but once seen in colour, I find them rather more striking.
People can sometimes be a bit confrontational here so I had to try very hard to be discreet. Occasionally someone may take offence at having their picture taken and start spouting all sorts of nonsense about data protection laws, even though it’s very clear they have no idea what the law actually says. Other times people will make it a point to walk around you or avoid you when they see your camera. Lifting the camera at the very last second doesn’t always solve the problem, because in that instant you don’t always get your carefully thought-out composition perfectly right. In one case though, it worked out just fine when I reacted instantly to an elderly man in a slow run across a square. None of it was preplanned, not the angle, not the composition, I even had to instinctively run a few paces after him…. but it’s one of my favourite shots from the morning.
I also found myself thinking hard about how long one should stay in one spot, where the stage is set and you’re just waiting for your actors to walk into the space. Is it time to move on when you’ve made one decent shot of it? Or hang around because something even better might come along? in the end, wanting to get a variety of pictures and also because of the biting cold, I decided to move along once I knew I had an image which felt right.
It took a while to get into the zone, to really warm up to the shoot, but by the time I got to the flea market, I was being more daring. The hustle and bustle of the place naturally helped, as did the presence of many camera-toting tourists, but it actually is the place where one should be most careful about shooting. I afterwards found out that it’s not the first time that a market vendor has practically assaulted someone for taking pix of him.
All in all, I was pleased with the photos. Some were also used on the Reuters wire, so presumably, I did something right.
I’m attaching some of the pictures in both colour and black and white.
LOOKING AT A DUMP IN A WHOLE NEW LIGHT
Originally published February 14, 2009
An online session with British photographer Peter Fraser, considered by many to be the photographer who has most absorbed the post-World War II American tradition – found in literature as well as the visual arts – of finding the sublime in unlikely places, left me looking at places I had become over-familiar with, such as the photographers’ office at the newspaper where I work , in a new light. Fraser (http://www.peterfraser.net/), one of the most important British colour photographers, has made incredible photographs of the most mundane things we see around us all the time – he has a fascinating series on dirt, for instance. Admittedly, I started off the session as something of a skeptic. I wasn’t familiar with his work apart from a quick look at his website before the session began. Pretty much the way I’d felt about American photographer William Eggleston (incidentally a huge influence on Fraser) when I first started going round his exhibition at the Barbican a few years ago…. and yet, then as now, the pictures grow on you, and by the end of the viewing, you’re hooked.
The room I was in is in desperate need of remodelling (in all fairness, it’s due to be done pretty soon), but immediately after the lecture was over, I started shooting details in the room I’d never really given much of a second glance before. Maybe I was wasting my time, but perhaps because I found myself in more of a meditative state of mind due to countless reasons I won’t go into here, there was a new found beauty in the grottiness of the room. As the lecture was drawing to a close, I was already taking pictures.
It’s certainly not really photojournalism in the classic sense, but it is a form of documentary photography.
As soon as I get a free hour or so over the next couple of days, I intend to go over to the apartment I’m currently having done up, and continue doing some pictures along these lines.
An online session with British photographer Peter Fraser, considered by many to be the photographer who has most absorbed the post-World War II American tradition – found in literature as well as the visual arts – of finding the sublime in unlikely places, left me looking at places I had become over-familiar with, such as the photographers’ office at the newspaper where I work , in a new light. Fraser (http://www.peterfraser.net/), one of the most important British colour photographers, has made incredible photographs of the most mundane things we see around us all the time – he has a fascinating series on dirt, for instance. Admittedly, I started off the session as something of a skeptic. I wasn’t familiar with his work apart from a quick look at his website before the session began. Pretty much the way I’d felt about American photographer William Eggleston (incidentally a huge influence on Fraser) when I first started going round his exhibition at the Barbican a few years ago…. and yet, then as now, the pictures grow on you, and by the end of the viewing, you’re hooked.
The room I was in is in desperate need of remodelling (in all fairness, it’s due to be done pretty soon), but immediately after the lecture was over, I started shooting details in the room I’d never really given much of a second glance before. Maybe I was wasting my time, but perhaps because I found myself in more of a meditative state of mind due to countless reasons I won’t go into here, there was a new found beauty in the grottiness of the room. As the lecture was drawing to a close, I was already taking pictures.
It’s certainly not really photojournalism in the classic sense, but it is a form of documentary photography.
As soon as I get a free hour or so over the next couple of days, I intend to go over to the apartment I’m currently having done up, and continue doing some pictures along these lines.
Friday, May 15, 2009
REVISITING PEOPLE AT WORK
Originally published February 9, 2009
The first tutorial, just under a fortnight ago, with British photographer Homer Sykes went well. A two hour session shared with three other students, giving us around half an hour each going through our first three people at work assignments. We were all free to contribute to the discussion and learn from each other’s mistakes and good points. The main gist of what came out concerned making sure all the elements in the picture contribute something to the shot. Composition is everything, and try getting it right first time round in the frame and avoid having to crop images in order to make them work. The background is as important as the foreground or main subject, as it’s what makes or breaks the picture. Without the luxury of switching lenses or using a zoom lens, you’ve got to really squeeze yourself into tight corners sometimes in order to get the framing right, or use your legs and move when you want to get closer to the subject. Try getting a higher or lower viewpoint, work those thigh muscles. Timing is equally important, catching that fleeting expression or movement, capturing the instantaneous moment when all the elements come together. Homer wasn’t bothered with whether a picture was sharp or not (good job about that, seeing the number of soft images we all had since we were using the long-dormant or lost skill of manual focusing), all he was interested in was the composition, the quality of light and the decisive moment.
I got good critical feedback on my photos of Freddie Fenech at the Association for Abandoned Animals and the silversmith Chris Aquilina. Unfortunately, time constraints meant we couldn’t go through the pictures of the actress Irene Christ, basically because there were too many pictures, the result of doing a six hour shoot with so many different evolving scenarios.
Assignment for the following fortnight was to go do three more people at work, trying to utilise what we’d learnt from the first three. The original restrictions of one fixed lens, a 35 or a 50, manual everything, black and white and 400 ISO remained in force.
My first shoot was at the Malta Mounted Police stables. I wanted to spend some time with a stable hand doing a behind the scenes piece, but learnt that it’s the police officers themselves to take care of all that. I met up with Sergeant Francis Seychell, a twenty-one year career officer one afternoon. He’s been in the mounted section for the past ten years. He quickly tagged on to what I was after picture-wise and he let me get on with it. I photographed him cleaning the stables, giving a horse its shower, cleaning hooves, grooming a horse…all the sort of things he’d do on a quiet afternoon at the stables. I did have the option to return early the next morning when they’d be lots more activity with several more officers around and horses being prepared to go out on patrols or ceremonial duties, but thought the pix when the place was relatively quiet might work better. The afternoon light was better too. Once again, because it was a long shoot with different things happening, I found myself shooting more than the 70 or so images we were expected to take.
The second shoot was with an immigrant named Jimmy from the Ivory Coast, at the Wasteserv Sant Antnin Recycling Plant. Jimmy arrived in Malta a few years ago, one of the thousands of African boat people who have ended up on our shores while crossing from Libya to Europe. Once the would-be immigrants are granted refugee or humanitarian status, they are allowed to work, though practically all end up in manual labour or other low-paying jobs. Jimmy works in a sorting room, where different recyclable materials are sorted. The day I was shooting Jimmy and his colleagues were sorting white from green plastic bottles, and detergent containers. I’d arrived at the Plant unsure of who I would be photographing – their Maltese shift leader asked them there and then if they’d mind being photographed. Jimmy, being the eldest and the only one who knew some English, was acting as a go-between, asking his colleagues if they wanted to be my main subject. When it became clear that we weren’t getting anywhere, as most of the migrants didn’t want their pictures taken because the police might see them (which is odd, they’re not working illegally – this is after all a government-owned plant), I told the foreman that Jimmy would make the perfect subject. Jimmy agreed, and proceeded to ignore the fact that I was there, which was exactly what I wanted in the first place. Catching the moment proved tricky – apart from having Jimmy as my main subject, I wanted plastic materials being flung into their pit in the foreground, the guy opposite side of the conveyor belt to lean forward to grab some bottles at the exact same time Jimmy did a similar movement, and I wanted Jimmy’s face to show up from beneath his baseball cap. Don’t think the elements ever all came together in a single shot, but all in all, results weren’t too bad.
The last shoot proved to be the most challenging in a sense because as I got underway I felt it wasn’t really coming together, though things did improve as we went along. I met up with Kurt Vassallo, a historical re-enactor with the National Heritage Trust (Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna) at the Upper Barrakka gardens Saluting Battery in Valletta. Kurt is one of the full-time re-enactors in Royal Malta Artillery uniform taking care of the battery and its artillery pieces, recreating scenes from the Victorian-era. He’s been doing the job for the past three years, running guided tours and giving talks on artillery and ammunition of the period, as well as being overall commander during the daily midday gun salute.
He was giving his talk in the shade of a canopy in bright sunlight when I caught up with him, a bit late on my part after getting held up on an earlier assignment. The picture possibilities seemed limited but they did improve once he moved out of the canopy and showed the different cannons to the assembled tourists. By the time it came to the midday gun salute, I knew I was getting more usable pictures and making it a relatively successful assignment.
Here’s to hoping Homer agrees :o)
MAPJD People at Work 3-6 - Images by Darrin Zammit Lupi
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