Year's End

Over a year since I started the blog and over a month since I last posted an entry...I've been very inconsistent with this. Seems to work better when I'm living in a hotel room in the middle of a scary city, rather than being rushed off my feet on my home turf as I have been recently. So that means lots of blogging soon then.

The end of 2007 is fast approaching. So many people say this I know but, really, I can't believe how fast this year has whizzed by, how much has changed.

Some of it has been sad and uncertain and then out through to the other side with everything feeling like it's falling into place.

Fantastic.

Friday Pics

Friday Photo

Goree trip

Dakar

Just back from a week in Dakar for work.

But now....

it looks like this......

New flat

This was how life looked for the past few weeks....exhausting.

Recently

A recent visit to catch up with Karen and Nathan at Castle Rising.

Great Yarmouth

I was invited on a day trip to Great Yarmouth with a bunch of artistic types. probably the most kitsch sugar fuelled day I've had in a long time.

Residency Work

Here is the work I produced from the residency.

Residency in Norwich

Some of the photos I took during the residency that I was doing in Norwich. Two weeks of photography and audio everyday. I've just finished producing the final product which they'll be screening - a slideshow with sound I suppose.

Deepest Darkest Hampshire

Don't venture this way much. But graffiti is a problem here too. And Chinese imports.

Panning in the Park

Bank holiday weekend in Hyde Park and the National Steel Pan Championships. Lovely sunny day, pity the sound system wasn't cranked up.

July

July already...not sure how that happened.

I've been updating my website myself these days - plans afoot to add pages but at the moment there are pics from South Africa, Zim and Senegal. Have a look.

South Africa Project

Watch the digital stories and work the Orange Farm group produced by clicking here

A meeting in hospital

I read a great article a few weeks ago in the Independent by Basildon Peta who I really rate as a journalist.

He was giving an update on the medical conditions of the opposition members beaten up by police and what Tsvangirai was saying about it all.

Apparently some of the injured were being looked after in the same hospital as Mugabe's sister. Mugabe had to literally walk past the bed of the seriously injured secretary general of the MDC to get to see his sister. What an image. Apparently neither men said anything.

Rant

The diatribe on Zim seems to have quietened down a bit in the past couple of weeks. Except for mine.

I'm wondering why the media haven't explored the reason for the failing of the two day strike called recently in the country. Beatings, arrests, court appearances continue - the situation hasn't improved or changed - so why no reporting?

It's easy to become cynical and (more than) irritated by how Africa is reported. Many people talk of the laziness journalists exhibit in reporting on an event/ civil war/ election in Africa or the personalities themselves. There's little context - historical or political - and a sort of despairing shaking of the head and the tinge of 'Look how badly the children are behaving.'

Newspaper commentary is amongst the worst.
One recent example: "This is a story of war and bunfights. Start with the party thrown by Robert Mugabe to mark his 83rd birthday. Herds of cattle were slaughtered and drums of beer imported for a banquet that filled a football stadium. Outside, the people starved and the morgues filled up....In Zimbabwe, the hangover of excess and brutality goes on."

None of this is untrue and it's supposed to be a dramatic opening but we've heard all this sooooo many times. Where's the sense of the complexity of Zim these days? Yes the bald facts are that Zim is in meltdown, Mugabe has lost touch with many of the wants and needs of his voters. His hold on to power has become a thing of ego and repression.
But surely there are other ways to comment and discuss this huge issue. Surely the journalist needs to ask - What or who enabled him to reach 83 and still be president? Why this show of power by Mugabe on the day to mark this grand old age? Who is he trying to impress - Zimbabweans or the region, China even? Who is he trying to provoke? He knows the economy is in serious trouble and he's hated by many. Anyone wondered who's having the last laugh?

The same journalist goes on. Apparently beefing up existing sanctions with travel bans and freezing assets will stop "dignitaries from buying their shoes at Gucci and having their varicose veins fixed in Harley Street". The height of outrageous behaviour obviously.

But British Airways can continue to run direct flights to Zimbabwe, British companies can continue to operate in the country (however unstable it may be). That's OK.

Rant over.

Lectures

Jeffrey Sachs is giving a series of lectures on the BBC giving his take on the world. The audience was mostly non-plussed, including Sir Christopher Mayer and a woman from GlaxoSmithKlein but Geri Halliwell and another young woman who said she was an 'optimist' are obviously devoted.

He says it's all about Choice. I like the idea that there are people who are powerful or friends with people who are powerful who think with gusto and make new connections between people and between people and places, rather than just shrug their shoulders because of corruption, donor fatigue and the way it's always been. People in the audience asked again and again 'But how...?' and although they're right, where's the passion?

The next lecture will be broadcast from China but today's lecture is from the Royal Society

The UK's The Independent featured a reaction which also makes interesting reading.

Absence

It's now two months since I last posted anything on here - I don't understand how that happened. I'm now back in England and obviously I seem to have been struggling to find thoughts to post.

Zim has been kicking off since I was there just before I came back and when the first of the demonstrations happened. Driving into one suburb and seeing riot police and water canons was a surprise and came out of nowhere.

A few streets away people didn't even know what had happened. The demo had been given the go-ahead but then apparently the police didnt think they had the manpower to cope so instead the shields, dogs and canons were called in and beat people up. A ban on all demos - government and opposition - followed. Opposition members were arrested.

And since then articles, new pieces and commentary on Zim and Mugabe haven't been far off the lead story.

Jingles

Two jingles sung on TV at the moment:

'Reliable Music Warehouse' and 'Pharmacists who care'

Who are the people responsible?

Sugar Packet

Rather an apt saying on the back of my sugar packet

Happiness is a direction...not a place

Not sure I agree at the moment.

Its very hot here and I'm insisting on coffee after lunch.

Crime & a poll

This is always the big topic of conversation in South Africa - it was when I lived here in 1998 and even more so now. The concern is that with the 2010 World Cup the country's reputation is being tarnished. But really whether the football comes here or not it's a major problem.
Mbeki and other top dogs including the police chief say crime isn't out of control and crime figures are down. But talk to any South African anywhere and they'll say the opposite.

A recent poll printed in today's paper has the following findings:
What South Africans think:
Crime going up: 81%
Crime dropping: 15%

and then
What S Africans feel:
Proud South African: 96%
Happy: 59%
Well: 61%
Unsafe: 75%
A failure: 6%
Depressed: 10%
Anxious: 6%

What S Africans have:
Work: 48%
Indoor water: 55%
No clean water: 6%
Flush toilet: 57%
Electricity: 88%

How S Africans live:
Households: 12.4 million
Houses: 9.4 million
Shacks: 1.3 million
Huts: 1.7 million

Education:
None: 12.5%
Primary: 10%
Matric: 27%
Diploma: 8%
Degree: 3%

It's believed that Mbeki doesn't want to open the can of worms labelled Crime because he's stepping down soon and it could be problematic for his successor and could lose precious votes. So instead people grumble and worry.

Dakar Impressions

The Paris Dakar race came to town - lots of men in lycra or khaki outfits, bikes and trucks revving their way through the streets. In the Cafe de Roma which is supposed to be a pretentious Dakar hangout, they had invaded. I asked the waitress why there were so many men there, forgetting. She reminded me and then suggested I sit with my back to them which is apparently a Wolof phrase translated, I thought it a good idea but it looked like I thought I was better than them with my dusty clothes and sandals. Which I did.

It's funny how this belief in being superior to others kicks in so easily in Africa...

I spend a lot of time in taxis and the street life passes by slowly. Flashes of gold jewellery, the indigo stained hands of a tailor sitting at his sewing machine, piles of pots and pans, wheel hubs for sale hung on walls, men selling ear buds and lights and cashew nuts to drivers in traffic jams.

Oprah

The big story here recently was that Oprah opened a school for girls near Jo'burg. She'd invited lots of her friends to donate a book to the school's library and some were even there to see the opening.

She was interviewed at the event and explained she'd been involved in the whole process from building to hand-picking the girls herself. She knew them all by name.

I wondered why people only talk about African dictators.

Will she sue me for saying that?

Dakar

After a week of meetings, meetings, meetings with Anna in Jo'burg I sneaked in a trip to Senegal. It's about as far from South Africa as from Europe it seems. But I felt I deserved it.

Dakar is hectic and almost a 24 hour city. I was treated to seeing lots of Senegalese musicians, sight-seeing in the traditional way and hanging out with Katharina and her family and then Damian coming down from the desert.

Here are some pics from the trip....

Soweto Tour Part 2

Anna and I spent the week together working on follow up with the project but squeezed in a proper trip to Soweto - unlike the last time when Jimmy showed Tiff and I off in his car and that was about it.

We were taken to Soweto by a guide whose dad owns one of the oldest black-owned tour companies in South Africa. He was full of facts and figures which I'm not good at remembering.
The area later named Soweto began at the turn of the last century as a place where blacks working in the mines were allowed to live, out of eyesight of the whites and with very little infrastructure provided. Miners had to walk to and from work sometimes over 2 hours one way. In the 50's the administration divided townships according to ethnicity. It came to the world's attention in June '76 when school children demonstrated against being forced to learn in Afrikaans and the true colours of the regime were captured by the media.

We visited Nelson Mandela's old house, jam packed with photos and certificates and tour groups, and Desmond Tutu's house too. It's flagged as the only place you'll find two Nobel Peace prize winners living on the same street. We also spied on Winnie's house which has mirrored windows and fences and cameras. In 2002 apparently 75% of Jo'burg's residents live in Soweto whilst the 2001 Census put the population at nearly 900.000. It has one of the biggest hospitals in the world.

The photos are taken in an informal settlement a place where people build a house or shack on a piece of available land but aren't given the rights and laws from the government. But this one has been there for decades and I suppose moving the population en masse would hark back to the bad old days so instead they are provided with chemical toilets, communal taps and some electricity. The government is building houses for just this sort of person all over the country but they're often far away from the community they come from and are as basic as the shacks they've built themselves.

It's a big problem for those in power and you could say that if they dont play their cards right they'll lose precious votes.

More Zim Snaps 2

Zim

When you visit a place which receives so much media coverage like Zimbabwe it's hard to know what you're really seeing driving around its capital and meeting some of its people.

And Christmas is a strange time anyway - lots of the Diaspora had come back so the shoppers and holiday makers were out in force. The Victoria Falls Hotel was full to bursting -but perhaps with Chinese tourists rather than the Europeans or Americans. But inflation meant that the price of petrol or bread, say, were in free fall. And according to statistics a low income family of five needs Z$350,000 a month to buy basic foodstuffs but the average labourer is paid around Z$8000.

Does all of this really come down to one man? Why is it recently that he's been ostracised when he's been talking about the Land Issue since the 80's? Why does the criticism and sanctioning only come from outside the country, can the structures within really be so weak? These are the kind of questions I asked myself.

It's so hard to make pronouncements, and why should I?

The welcome I received was warm and gracious and the landscape breathtaking. And however hard life becomes, there's always beer.

More Zim Snaps

Zim Snaps 1

My second trip to Zimbabwe, this time for Christmas and New Year.

Here are some photos from Domboshava, just outside Harare - ancient cave paintings and a sacred space.