5 Tips for Taking a Really Great Travel Portrait

Portraiture is something I’ve increasingly aspired to as a photographer. I love a good landscape- in fact, my landscape shots are often what people seem to enjoy in my shots. Portraiture is a different skill-set though. While light changes over a landscape in such a way that you may only have a few minutes to get the shot you want, the challenge of portraiture is even greater- you may have just fractions of a second to capture the image that you have in your mind’s eye. On top of that, a really good portrait often communicates far more power and emotion to the viewer than any landscape; it’s the human element that makes it special.

The basic rules all apply, of course. You want to think about composition (the rule of thirds is a pretty reliable starting point), colour (one of the joys of travel photography are the different colour palettes you can find in both the natural and urban environments) and lighting (shooting in the tropics presents visceral challenges with regards to fierce overhead lighting, washed-out skies and high-contrast backdrops, but dust and moisture can enrich late afternoon sunlight to make it magical).

I’m sharing some specific pointers I’d like to suggest for taking a decent travel photograph. They’re not exhaustive, nor are they unique to travel portraiture, but I reckon if you can nail these, you’re well on your way to capturing the sort of image you’ll want to bring home and share with friends and family when your adventures come to a temporary halt. (I’ll leave it to you guys to decide whether these shots fit the title or not…)

Note: All these photos were taken on a 3-day field visit in rural Niger in September this year.

1. Create a Connection

This is true with any portrait. I find the most powerful portraits are those where the subject is looking straight down the camera lens. It can feel (as a viewer) as though the person is looking straight out of the photograph at you. To achieve this, you generally need some sort of relationship with the person whose picture you’re taking. It might only be a momentary one- a glance in the street- or you may have asked the person to pose for you.

In travel photography you’re often communicating across language barriers, but respect is universal, so always put it into action. Just pulling out a camera and shooting willy-nilly is a sure way to upset people. I rarely take a photo where I haven’t signalled my camera (usually pointed upwards) and waited for an inviting smile or nod, or made eye-contact with the person and waited for them to acknowledge me in some way. If I sense hesitation or hostility, I smile and move on.  Even asking in a foreign language, people usually get the idea of what you’re wanting and can communicate a reply.

While in photojournalism there’s a power and pathos that comes with shots of human suffering or deep emotion, I find the photos that people go back to tend to be ones where the subject is joyful. People are naturally drawn to beauty. With that in mind, have fun. Laugh with the person you’re shooting, give them a big smile, turn it into a game. That won’t work in all cultures: for many, having a photo taken is a serious business and they want to look their formal best. Kids, on the other hand, usually love it, and in many African countries they’re overjoyed when someone points a lens at them.

Earlier I’d asked this girl if I could take her picture, to which she’d agreed, and I got a really sweet little shot of her smiling shyly while clinging to the trunk of a tree. A few minutes later she came back to me with a cheeky smirk asking me if I’d take another photo, and when I raised my camera she giggled. I speak no Hausa and she spoke no French, but as you can see, the communication worked just fine.

2. Consider your Background

When you’re taking a portrait, the person is your main point of focus, but they exist in a context. In fact this is the major difference between travel (and candid) portraiture versus studio portraiture. With the latter, you control the background ahead of time. With the former, you need to manage it on the fly- itself a challenge that can be both satisfying and heart-breaking.

Background can become a part of your visual narrative, or it can distract from it, so think about the effect you want. Environmental portraits frame people in a shot with items that contribute to telling that person’s story. A merchant in a fruit stall, for example, may be best photographed standing with all her colourful pineapples sharply in focus. For this you probably want to use a wider-angle lens (not too wide, as wide angles distort images and can stretch facial features unnaturally) and a reasonably small aperture (f/8 and higher, light-depending). Again, the joy of travel portraiture is that backgrounds are often exotic and full of interest.

On the other hand, a child on a busy street may get lost in the clutter if you don’t defocus your background. Use a mid-range telephoto lens and open the aperture wide to get a really shallow depth of field, which naturally throws the background out of focus. Just make sure your point of focus is spot-on, or you may end up with a fuzzy subject too.

If the background is unremarkable you probably want to use this technique too.  In the photo at the top of this page, the background was burning white sand- totally uninteresting and threatening to wash out the photo- so blurring it into white made the most sense.  This has advantages (declutter and an element of the abstract) but also disadvantages (the photo is placeless and has no context).

In this first photo, I chose to use a really shallow depth of field as the background was fairly dull, and I wanted the farmer to stand out. Using a small f-stop number (f/1.8) also means that the part of the shot that is in focus is REALLY sharp. The blurred green trees give just enough information to let you know you’re in the countryside, but don’t pull the eye away from the man’s wrinkled face.

In this next shot, the girl is standing against the wall, so both she and the wall are in focus. The wall is painted with a map of Africa. Although the girl herself doesn’t stand out quite so much from the background, the colours and textures are pleasing to the eye, and the map itself tells a story and gives the girl a context which (in my opinion) adds something unique to the photograph that might have been lost had she been against an empty or blurred background.

In this third shot, the boy is in focus while everything forward of and beyond him starts to blur out. There’s just enough detail, however, to give him a context- the cows, the harness and the water containers, as well as the rural backdrop. Because he alone is in focus he still holds the viewer’s eye, but there are other elements in the image that contribute to telling the viewer something about who he is and what he does.  Note: You could argue that this photo would have benefitted from a broader depth-of-field (something around f/4) to keep the cows sharp but still blur the background, and I’d accept that criticism, although I also like how isolated the boy is from everything around him; you can see just how precise the depth is by looking at how much of the yoke, front-to-back, is actually in focus before it blurs out.

3. Be Ready for the Right Moment

Facial expressions are fleeting, as are connections. If you’re in a place where you think you might see something interesting, have your camera out and switched on, with the right lens fitted, the correct mode selected, and your eyes scanning. You might be looking for a gesture, an emotion, or a fleeting glimpse of eye-contact. People may be moving. Think about your shutter-speed- will you be able to freeze motion given the light available to you? And think too about point number one and the importance of communication and respect; even in a crowded place, have you made eye-contact with the people you’re wanting to photograph, or made sure they’re comfortable with the camera? Stand-off lenses are all very well, but as a photographer you need to be asking yourself these ethical questions.

In both of these photos, these kids made eye-contact with me for just a few seconds where they were caught in a crowd of others. The children there had been watching me for some while and I’d been looking back at them and smiling, and noting those that smiled back at me and at the camera. I already had the aperture opened up so that when my opportunity came I knew I’d be able to isolate whichever children gave me a moment to photograph, and these two did.

4. Go for the Eyes

If there’s a cardinal rule in portrait photography, it’s this one. Eyes are all about moment and connection. They communicate emotion to the viewer, and a simple glance of a couple of degrees off-lens can make the difference between a missed opportunity and a wow moment. This is particularly true of close-ups.

For eyes, think about placement; rule of thirds is usually the way forwards here, so try and get one eye onto that sweet-spot at the intersection of the thirds-lines. An eye-line straight down the barrel is usually what I go for, and almost all of the portraits I’ve loved have involved that sort of eye contact. If using shallow depth of field, ensure that the eye itself is the point of focus. It’s all too easy to accidentally focus on the forehead or the tip of the nose, and even with a really strong facial expression, you’ll lose some of the punch of the image.

These two shots were both taken at a school in Niger (one inside the classroom and one outside), and they are both among some of my favourite portraits of all time.

5. Tell a Story

This is optional, but the difference between a techncially good photo, and a photo which makes people sit up and take notice, is that with the latter, they’re experiencing something new. The beauty of travel photography is that there’s always a story to be told, something new to see, something that’s exotic to the viewer back home, so try and think of what that story might be. A facet of daily life, a curious setting, some exotic produce, or just an unusual face that communicates a sense of place or time- it can be any number of things. Put this together with capturing the right moment and working on your background, and you’ll have a photograph that will really help you remember a place.

In this photo, I managed to combine moment, background, eye-contact and connection, and the setting was such that I’ve been able to capture a little slice of existence in this rural African village. Girls in Niger, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, are the ones mostly tasked with collecting water- even quite young girls like this one. Here, I love the colour, the bright light, her expression, and the pouring of the water all framed crisply against a blurred backdrop of other women and girls waiting at the well behind her (and again, contrast this with the image at the top of the page which has no background).

Travel photography- and portraiture- is a personal thing, and it’s up to you as the photographer to decide what you want to remember, and how. Really, if you take a photo, and it reminds you of something special, and you’re proud of it, that’s all that matters. I wish you all the best of luck out there, and most of all, I encourage you to have fun. If you’re not enjoying yourself with you camera, seriously, what’s the point?

Photo Essay: Nutrition Program Walk-Through

 

I’m managing our emergency response program addressing malnutrition in Niger for a few weeks. For those who work in the aid sector, you probably have a fair idea of what that actually means. For the rest (those of you who are interested), here’s what we’re doing.

First, some background, so we’re all speaking the same language.

Malnutrition, simply put, is the state that results when a person’s body doesn’t take in enough nutrients- the chemicals that allow our body to function correctly, which we do generally by consuming a balanced and sufficient diet. Malnutrition can be due to the overall food/calorific intake being too low, a poor diversity of food-groups, or an illness that inhibits the body’s correct processing of those chemicals. Malnutrition has a large number of indirect causes, and a large number of direct results. Key among the latter are nutrient deficiencies, poor physical development (‘stunting’), rapid weight-loss (‘wasting’), susceptibility to disease and, in extreme circumstances, death (although direct death through malnutrition is relatively rare- it is more likely to be caused by disease which is more virulent in a body weakened by malnutrition).

We deal with two main types of malnutrtion: Long-term, or ‘chronic’ malnutrition, and short-term, or ‘acute’ malnutrition. Chronic malnutrition exists where populations consistently lack access to sufficient or balanced diets, or are exposed to regular and frequent cycles of acute malnutrition. Acute malnutrition exists where there are substantial short-term shortages in food availability.

Niger experiences both chronic and acute malnutrition. It is a landlocked country which is two-thirds desert, so growing food is a challenge. Rainfall is erratic and unreliable, and the desert encroaches into arable land. Roughly 90% of its agricultural harvest is a single crop (millet) which grows well under the circumstances, but means that diets are unbalanced. Traditional childcare norms (non-exclusive breastfeeding, early weaning and poor hygeine and sanitation practices) mean that children are health-disadvantaged from an early age. So the background chronic malnutrition is high, primarily among children. It means childrens’ bodies do not develop as well as they should. They are stunted (small for their age), and their brains may also not develop as well as they would have with a good diet. It has huge implications for Niger’s development as a country.

The harvest is brought in once a year. Depending on how good the harvest is, villages will have enough to eat. However stocks will dwindle through the year, so as the months go by, people will drop back to having two meals a day, one meal a day, and sometimes not even eat every day. This is known as the hardship or hunger season (saison de soudure). The onset of the dry season (February through May) reduces the availability of wild foods, and also puts herds of cattle under pressure. The worse the prior year’s harvest, the earlier this hardship season begins, the more pressure this puts on communities’ abilities to cope, and the deeper the crisis.

The rains traditionally arrive in late June (although as the world’s climate changes, they are becoming increasingly erratic and unreliable) and last until September. This enables the next year’s harvest to grow and flourish- depending on how good the rains are. It also brings with it malaria. The relationship between disease- especially malaria and diarrhoeal disease- and malnutrition is such that children who are malnourished are more likely to get sick because their bodies are not as well equipped to defend themselves; and children who are sick are less able to maintain their nutritional status. It is a vicious cycle.

These factors then give rise to acute malnutrition. In Niger, acute malnutrition traditionally starts to rise from May and June and continue until after the harvest in October, but on a bad year may begin to spike in February, and can last throughout most of the year, with substantial caseloads still recorded in November and December. It affects mostly children, and mostly those children under the age of five. Child deaths also spike during this time. It is inevitable, and the less work that is done to manage acute malnutrition, the more children will die. We focus on children because physically they have the fewest bodily reserves to handle shortages of food and therefore they become malnourished quickest, and also die quickest. It’s worth noting that children who are chronically malnourished already will be the first to drop into acute malnutrition once food runs out.

There are different ways to manage malnutrition. In refugee camps, malnutrition is typically done on-site in feeding centres, where women bring their children to receive a cooked ration directly from the supporting organization. ‘Wet ration’ feeding centres are expensive to run, as they require staff to prepare and distribute the food, often for hundreds of children at a time, but they work well in relief-camp settings where tens or hundreds of thousands of people may be in one physical location which can be easily accessed- so they are efficient. The biggest advantage is that staff can actually watch the malnourished children receiving the ration, so they know it has been received.

In a peace-time context like Niger’s, where rural populations are low and spread over large areas, wet feeding centres are too expensive to put into every village, and distances too great to expect women and children to travel to twice a day. The solution is a model called Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM), which brings women to distribution points once a week or once a fortnight to receive a ration for their child, which they take home and give their children as instructed. This has the advantage of being far more affordable to reach a population spread over a large area, but requires trust that the women will in fact give their children the ration- not always the case, when they might have two or three other children at home also not eating properly.

The first stage of the program is ‘screening’. Community volunteers are trained to identify children in their village who they suspect could be malnourished. They encourage those children’s mothers to take them to the nearest government health-centre.

There, program staff working alongside government health workers assess the children for malnutrition. This is done using something called a MUAC (mid upper-arm circumference) tape, which goes around the child’s bicep to assess how badly wasted it is (apparently that circumference does not change greatly in young children above the age of six months). It is marked in millimetres to measure the actual circumference, and colour-coded. A green reading indicates the child is healthy, a yellow reading indicates moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) and a red reading indicates severe acute malnutrition (SAM).

If the child is malnourished, it is then weighed on a hanging scale, then placed on a measuring board to take its height (which generally encourages loud wailing from the hapless child). The child’s weight for its height is then assessed against the average weight for a child of that size; obviously, the lighter a child of a particular weight, the thinner it is. These measurements are taken at intervals while the child is in the program to track changes in its weight. Additionally, they are assessed against a chart of ‘z-scores’ which plots the average weight for a child of a particular height. If the child is more than two standard deviations below the average weight for its height, the child is moderately acutely malnourished, and if it is more than three standard deviations, the child is severely acutely malnourished.

It may sound a bit technical, but in fact it takes no more than half a minute per child using MUAC, or ninety seconds to weigh, measure and score children using weight-for-height. The child’s information (name, village, score) is then recorded on a health card which is given to the mother- blue for moderates, and pink for severes. Program staff also assess children for possible medical complications (e.g. malaria, oedema), and if these are present, children are refered to an intensive care facility, managed by another organization.

So to sum up, we have four categories. Healthy, Moderately Acutely Malnourished, Severely Acutely Malnourished, and Severely Acutely Malnourished with Medical Complications. Our program looks after the moderates and the severes. And because the physical needs of moderates and severes differ, we treat them differently.

Moderates receive a bi-weekly ration of a reinforced meal-mix (‘reinforced’ meaning the staple has had things added to it to increase its nutritional value). This is usually a cereal flour (in our case Corn-Soya Blend, or CSB), sugar and oil, mixed together. Mothers take this home and feed their children the ration over two weeks, then return to have the child re-measured for progress and receive another ration (if required).

Severes receive a weekly ration of therapeutic food. We use a product produced locally in Niger called Plump’ynut. Each ration is self-contained in a small foil packet and tastes like sweetened peanut butter. It is specifically designed to address severe acute malnutrition, and generally speaking, the kids (and, sadly, sometimes the adults too) love it.

There are tweaks to the program beyond this, but this is the core. Our biggest challenges include ensuring the malnourished children receive the ration they are supposed to, and that it isn’t shared with other children (or worse, adults). In fact it’s not unusual for mothers to deliberately underfeed their children so that they remain on the program, so that they can continue to access the food ration which can contribute to their whole family’s wellbeing. Sometimes, an additional ration is given to the families of malnourished children to try and prevent this from happening.

The harvest is slowly coming in. Between now and mid-October it will be gathered, and during this time the food situation in the villages here will gradually improve. Malnutrition levels will lag- October is the peak malnutrition month historically. Millet is fine for adults, but kids under two will not get its full nutritional benefits (we push as hard as we can for mothers to keep breastfeeding). During the 2005/6 crisis we were still seeing kids in the program as late as April and May the following year, and I’d certainly expect to see some of the same patterns this time round.

The nice thing about working on a nutrtion program- as opposed to many other programs aid and development workers can often get involved with- is the short-term horizon. It’s normal for us to phase out of a place and never actually see the work that we do bear much fruit, beyond, perhaps, the provision of some basic goods and services. Here, however, it’s pretty easy to tell when a really sick kid shows up at the nutrition centre. Most of the kids in our severe program are ill enough that if they were to get malaria or cholera, they could die in a matter of forty-eight hours. Getting them out of that state and to better health is the aim of the program, and if the mother is feeding the child the ration, stays in the program, and the child doesn’t get ill during this time, then we can turn them around in a matter of four to six weeks. The really sick ones- the ones we refer straight on to the intensive care clinics- may only have lived a day or two past when they come to us.

It really is the business of saving lives out there. The teams on the ground (across several organizations) do amazing work, and there are many children who will live who would otherwise have died without their assistance. It’s a privilege to be able to drop in and be a part of the work they are doing for a few weeks.

Narciblogger Sunday: Two Years On

It’s been two years since I wrote my first blog post from the depths of Papua New Guinea.  A bit of an anniversary for something that started off as a bit of an uncertain project.  So many of these internet whims end up as nothing more than virtual book-ends collecting motes of cyberdust, abandoned a few weeks in after good intentions stall.  So I’m excited to be able to look down the pages of this website and see a ream of memories captured, stories told, and interactions shared.

Thanks all of you for being a part of that.

I started this blog as a place to share where I’m at and what I’m doing, to let readers, both known and unknown, catch a little glimpse of the world as I see it, a world I feel very privileged to pass through.  I’ve found the mix of words and images very cathartic for me, and it’s been a great place for me to be able to process some of the challenges I come across, both personal and professional.  I feel honoured- and a little surprised- that so many of you have joined me for that journey.

A few days ago my [extremely talented] writerly friend Lisa, amused by her findings, posted some of the search hits that were leading people to her blog (about she and her husband moving to Laos with an NGO)- my personal favourite being “giant snake bites electric fence” (why don’t you try it and see if it leads you to her blog…?).  I was amused by the post and thought I would look at some of my own stats and share, in a thoroughly narcissistic fashion, some of the highlight reel.

I hope you like numbers as much as I do [insert geek emoticon here].

All up, as of the time of writing this blog, I have written 307 posts including this one.  This works out as one post every 2.4 days for the last two years, which I feel is a fairly good and consistent average, all things considered.

I am gutted that there isnt a total wordcount widget for this site, as I would love to know how many words I’ve churned out.  Given that most of my posts are on the lengthy side of concise, I suspect the total tally is probably fairly high.

On the flip side, I am imensely relieved that there is not a widget telling me how much time I’ve spent writing, uploading, tweaking and maintaining this blog.  Given that I don’t earn any money from it, this is one uber-time-consuming hobby…

In total, I’ve had 169,737 visits since I launched this blog.  Given that it was originally started as a place to share stories with friends and family, I think this is a fair running tally.  In 2008 (when I first launched the blog) I was getting an average of 18 hits per day.  Through 2009 I averaged 144 hits per day.  So far this year I’m getting an average of 410 hits per day. So, erm, a humble thank you to all of you who’ve dropped by (be it once or many times) and made me feel like the words I’m writing are actually being read and enjoyed by people.  It means a lot to me.

This year, I’ve been very honored to have my posts placed on the WordPress homepage no less than 9 different times (which has been a lovely boost to my readership) (yeah, I know, I was born a numbers whore).  These are:
Why Aid is Slow Getting Through to Haiti
The Prom
Tasmania: The Taster Tour
Dragon’s Lair
Faces from a Guatemalan Village
Wat-er Mess (or, Why Society is Once Again Seriously Screwed)
Analysis: Social Media and Humanitarian Response
Embracing the Chaotic: Cynefin and Humanitarian Response
Back in the Field

Most of these are among the most popular posts I’ve written.  ‘Why Aid is Slow Getting Through to Haiti‘ has the largest number of discreet hits, at 6,813. However the third most popular post, ‘One for the Roads‘ (2,747 hits) generates its traffic by being placed high in the search engines for people looking for roads and highways.  The 6th most popular, ‘Haitian Seaside‘ (1,842) generated a huge spike, for obvious reasons, in mid-January 2010, after it was picked up in people searching for images of Haiti.  And #8, ‘Light on a Cloudy Day‘ (1,667), just seems to get a lot of hits. I’m not sure what drives people to it.

My search-engine items are a little more embarrassing.  Number one, with 1,730 referrals, is ‘gungrave’, the title of an anime show I quietly reviewed and posted here.  Clearly the otaku are onto me.  (And while I take note of people telling me I should specialise my blog and not post any more anime reviews- *sniff*- I guess someone’s reading them, as ‘speed grapher’ (#8: 568 referrals) and ‘claymore’ (#10: 535 referrals) both feature highly, and four more anime search items show up on my top list as well.  Erm… yeah… embarrassing.

Of the rest, #2 is ‘annapurna’ with 1,248 referrals, and links through to a number of my posts on the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek.  Number 2 is ‘sunset’ (988 referrals) and presumably links to one of several such-tagged posts.  Numbers 3 (‘highway’), 5 (‘roads’) and 9 (‘road’) all link to the ‘One for the Roads‘ post, cumulatively accounting for 2,350 referrals and making that post the single biggest search-engine drawcard. ‘desert sky‘ and ‘chess‘ fill in the remaining top ten spots.

And now a word for our sponsors…  WordPress.com, courtesy of the posts I have had on the front page, has given me 15,918 hits- by far my most generous contributor.  Next come some of my social media outlets- Twitter (cumulatively 865- a pretty significant drop), Facebook (cumulatively 714) and Flickr (902 across a number of different flickr photos I’ve posted- including this one which has linked 108 times alone).  Stumbleupon and Googlereader have given me 361 and 282 respectively.  However my biggest shout-outs go to the personal blogs who send me traffic.  Bill Easterly’s Aid Watch blog (specifically this post) has sent me 184 readers, while the fabulous Tales From the Hood has sent me 170 (big shout out, J.)  Viv McWaters has fired off 121 in my direction, while Saundra’s Good Intentions blog has sent 215 my way from several of my posts linked there.

Thanks team! 

***

So while I’m on the topic of talking about myself (or, more accurately, my blog), you may have noticed a few changes in the layout today.

Yes, your eyes don’t deceive you.  I’ve changed themes.

Why?  Well, as a Third Culture Kid, Global Nomad and Change Junkie, I am addicted to change.  I’ve had the old theme for 2 years, which is waaaaay too long: I’ve had 5 different homes (about to move into my sixth) in that time.  Gotta keep moving.

Do let me know whether you like the new layout or not.  It’s experimental.  Honestly, at some stage (when I have time, and possibly resources) I’d like to self-host and give myself a little more freedom.  So this won’t be the final iteration.

Also, apologies in advance if there are some glitches with layout, formatting etc., as the different column width means that old posts may not fit quite the same.  But as I explore and tinker, hopefully I’ll get things looking okay.  I’m wanting to pull a number of my blog posts into pages so that they can be accessed via the drop-down menus as well, but that’ll take a little time to organize, sadly.

However the new format lets me post pictures in a larger size in my posts.  My biggest complaint about the old theme is how narrow it is, wasting huge amounts of potentially creative screen space.

Anyways, that’s enough talking about blogs for one day.  It’s a stinking hot Nigerien afternoon outside, so I’m cowering indoors with an internet that mercifully hasn’t given up on me yet.  Four more days here, and then I’m back to Australia- and much as I’ve enjoyed being here, it will be nice to head home to loved ones.  In fact, nice doesn’t cut it.

Thanks all of you for stopping by and paying me a visit- I really appreciate it.  I hope you have a lovely week.

Shalom. Salaam.  Peace out.

Photos:

1. Barefoot- sandals in the Sahara Desert

2. Nomad’s Return- footprints on Saharan dunes in northern Niger

3. Giggles- A girl outside a school in central Niger

4. Road Trip- Highway, South Australia

5. Country Roads- Rural lane, Western Australia

6. Colours of the Annapurnas- Umbrella with Macchapuchare and the Annapurna Himal beyond

7. Desert Skies- Saharan dunes, Niger

8. Crossing Wapta- Backcountry skiing, Yoho National Park

9. Vanquish- Chess pieces in light and shadow

Image Width Test

This post is testing how large I can post images on this new theme.

Image 1. Honeymoon island from the hills of Nacula, in the Yasawa group, Fiji.

Image 2. Window in a red wall in Antigua Guatemala.

Big is beautiful.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Niamey, Niger

Ponderings On The Road

The air-con is broken. This is rarely a good thing at the best of times, but when it’s so hot outside that opening the window doesn’t reduce the perspiration soaking into the back of my t-shirt, it starts to become something of a drag. We’re halfway into the ten-hour journey between Maradi and Niamey, and the day’s still getting hotter. Happily my iPad doesn’t seem to mind the heat. So far…

The trip is much as I remember it. Long, dull and unremarkable. But then I’m seeing it through the eyes of familiarity. Granted, a familiarity several years old. But I’m seeing only a couple of differences. One is the amount of green. This I recall from the very first times I did this journey, the same season in 2005. It was striking, because the fields seemed so lush for a country in the grip of it’s worst famine in a decade. But as colleagues pointed out to me, if the food is still growing in the fields it means it’s not on people’s plates.

Of course, the last time I did this journey it was the height of the dry season. I have vivid memories of stopping for a comfort break (‘checking the tyres’ as an Ivorian colleague euphemistically observed) along some desolate stretch of country far between villages. The air was so hot that inhaling it made the lungs burn. My skin sang under what felt like pressure coming from the sun, and I got little shivers up and down my back. Crickets whined a persecuted song, but otherwise the landscape was silent. In the distance, across brown scrubland near a line of low flat-topped hills, a pair of dust-devils, small brown tornadoes, twisted in a macabre dance. It was the sort of scene to crush a traveller’s weary soul.

Thank God for the rains.

The other difference now is the road. I noted immediately in 2005 how good the highway between Niamey and Maradi was at the time, certainly compared to other Sahelian roads I had driven. I can no longer make the same claim. While much of it is still in good nick, there’s a good two hours of driving where the blacktop has deteriorated into a potholed mess barely better- and in some cases far worse- than a dirt road. I have had a number of colleagues tell me that life here for the population of the world’s poorest country has gotten harder over the last half-decade.

Otherwise the journey is remarkably similar. It is an alternating pastiche of farmland with antenna-high millet, thicket-spotted scrubland running to a low, flat horizon, and run-down villages replete with square mud-brick buildings and ricketty wooden roadside stalls. The few towns are dusty but buzzing with energy. Gigantic overladen trucks jam the streets. Vendors hawk loaves of sugary yellow bread, cheap plastic wares imported from Nigeria, and chocolate wafers that taste like cardboard. Where we stop for lunch at a stall in Dogon-Doutchi we chow down on a plate of rice and sauce, liberally sprinkled with a local spice mix that is both tangy and delicious. It costs a buck fifty a head. Standing out on the street a few minutes later waiting for the car to come back for us, a skinny old man shuffles past us. His trousers are held around the middle of his thighs, he’s covering his genitals with a school exercise book, and nobody pays him any attention as his bony, dusty buttocks recede down the street. It’s a tragic indifference to poverty and neglect in a country where most people live on less than two dollars a day.

But now Ravi, our driver, is tootling along at 120kph, and if you see this post online it means we haven’t ended up as a metallic confetti at the side of the road, which some do as evidenced by twisted vehicular remains littered along the highway. George is dozing in the front seat, Cam has his head in the open window catching the breeze on his face like some satisfied pooch, and Mike is next to me in the short-straw seat in the middle, listening to an mp3 player (I’m trying to talk him into getting an iPad; which I do with most people). And we’re all looking forward to getting to our hotel rooms in Niamey, having a cool shower, and heading out for some Bieres Niger and good local cuisine.

Uncomfortable travel is a part of any aid worker’s job description- and any foreign correspondent’s too. It is, of course, by far the most dangerous part of the job we do- even though it gets far less press than abductions and hijackings. The combination of poorly maintained vehicles, bad drivers, meandering donkeys, long distances and deteriorating roads make traffic accidents among the leading causes of death for adults across the developing world- and that includes foreigners silly enough to take to the roads as well.

I actually quite enjoy road travel as a rule. I prefer it if I’m the one driving, and if I’ve got the time to stop, explore, take photos and let the roads lead me. However even on work trips, it makes for a great way to see the country up-close, to get a feel for landscape and people, and show how things hang together.

In my early twenties I wrote a list of things I wanted to accomplish or expeience. It was (unsurprisingly) quite long, but I recall that one of the things on the list was ‘to have a job where in order to commute I need a four-wheel-drive’. I’ve certainly ticked that one off the list. Just in the last four days I reckon I’ve spent an easy 24 hours in Land Cruisers getting to remote field locations, mostly on sandy tracks through the scrubland and getting nicely knocked around in the process.

The novelty wore off a long time ago, but it still beats the heck out of the Monash freeway at rush hour.

(Actually, root canal work beats the Monash at rush hour, but that’s the subject of another post…)

So our wing-mirror slips down the length of another overflowing truck trundling the other way up the narrow highway, and the verdant landscape glides past in a blur of contrast with rich red soil. Heat haze makes the horizon white and featureless, like a washed-out photograph. The car stinks of dust and diesel fumes, and the clothes I’m wearing now will need to be washed before I put them back on, even though they’re fresh from this morning. The sun slanting through the passenger window washes out my iPad screen, but not enough to halt my typing. It burns my skin and makes my eyes squint. Mumford & Sons are singing ‘Awake My Soul’ in my ears as we pass some dead animal hidden in the bush, and the stench fills the vehicle.

They’re the moments both mundane and exotic that form the patchwork of memories that are often all that we, sojourners, get to carry away with us when we leave these places through which we pass so temporarily and so frequently. On the one hand, they tend to fade, after so many similar journeys, into an obscurity that is hard to distinguish one from another. On the other, they sit at such sharp contrast from the routines of our daily lives that they become in their own way enough of an experience to justify coming here; just to live the difference.

Both a privilege and a pergatory.

Yet another example of the dichotomy that is the aid worker’s existence.

Three more hours till Niamey…

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Niamey-Maradi Road near Dogon-Doutchi

Legacies

It’s day three in the field.  For the last two days, we’ve been spending most of our time looking at the nutrition program.  It’s been a mixed mission.  On the one hand, we’ve still got Mike and Cam, the journalist and cameraman, with us doing their story on the Niger nutrition crisis- and me (oddly enough).  On the other hand, I’ve been using this opportunity to spend time with the field teams, check up on the work we’re doing, and orient myself well for the next three weeks of work here in-country.

Today, though, we’re all about the media stories.  It’s been an interesting experience for me, watching how the news is made.  Mike and Cam are both at the top of their respective fields and they’ve been a pleasure to work with- even if there are moments when I cringe at the thought of what the villagers who watch our antics must be thinking.

We going a little more into the background of Niger- and my background as well.  It’s a nice angle for the story- an aid worker who was here in 2005 during the last crisis, returns in 2010 and comments on his journey, and what he’s seeing.  So I’m doing a few pieces to camera, usually interviewed by Mike, either beside me, or perched to one side of the camera.  When I’m not on camera, and because most of the things we’re seeing today are not part of my program responsibility, I’m a little off-duty, which is nice because I’m free to take photos.  Which of course I do.

The work aid agencies like mine do is built around both long- and short-term realities, and each has to take the other into account.  For example, although my focus is on acute malnutrition and how to make sure that hundreds of children in our areas of operation don’t die between now and November, the team also has to be aware of the long-term context.  There’s issues of chronic malnutrition, health care, disease management, clean water, hygeiene practices, breastfeeding, and a host of other trends, changes within which are measured in years, yet which have a direct and tangible affect on our work.  Likewise, when our colleagues in the development wing of the organization are designing their fifteen-year program cycles, it’s essential that these programs are built around the emergency contexts that are likely to arise during that time (such as acute malnutrition) so that the root causes of these emergencies can be tackled over the long term.

So the first place we stop is outside a small village on the horrendous road to Dakoro.  I say horrendous, because the Senegalese are funding a road project to pave it all the way up.  I remember this road from my time here.  It was laterite- a bright red dusty unsealed track running due north for several hours.  It was one of the more uncomfortable journeys to make, as the road was marred by rock-solid washboard, and you spent the journey trying not to let your teeth grind down with the jarring.

Ah the good old days.

Today, the road is under construction.  The first few miles are now metalled, and the rest is undrivable.  In fact, we spend most of the journey not on the road, but on a set of sandy tracks which drivers have been forced to forge off to one side of the road because it’s gotten so bad.

It’s a relief to branch off straight into the bush when we do.  We’re accompanying a wizened farmer who’s one of the more entrepreneurial types.  Instead of just growing millet, he’s planted acacia trees to stop soil erosion, as well as cassava (an edible root crop), melons, hibiscus, sorghum, and a bunch of other things too.  We walk around his plot and he shows us what he’s doing.  This is all good for the long-term growth of the rural areas, and the health of communities, if what he’s doing can be replicated to others.

I take a portrait of him which I love.  He’s wearing a red-and-white chequered headscarf in the bright overhead sun, and his face is full of lines, evidence of a life lived hard.  He’s looking at the camera, and I’ve stopped the 85mm lens down to f/1.8 so that the background is thrown out of focus and the details on his face are extra sharp.  It’s one of my favourite types of portraiture, and one of the most satisfying when it works.

Our next stop- and photographically my favourite- is further north at a village with a second-chance school.  In Niger, many villages don’t have schools, and those that do are often understaffed.  Children who don’t enroll into primary school at the correct age are not allowed to enroll at a later age, and therefore if they miss registration one year (or in some cases, if they have no birth certificate) they miss out on being able to gain a formal education altogether.

These schools have been set up as a safety net for kids who’ve missed out through the normal channels.  They teach the national curriculum, but teach it over four years instead of six, so that the kids can catch up sufficiently to be able to attend college (secondary school) when they graduate.  The children themselves understand the importance of education (I always enjoy visiting schools in rural communities, because the kids understand what a privilege it is to be at one, unlike so many classrooms in Europe, the Americas or Australasia).

The children in Niger are beautiful.  They’re graceful and have elegant features, and are a joy to shoot.  I mean, kids are great most places, but I’ve always found the Nigerien children particularly endearing.  These ones are no exception.

Mike and Cam set up some interviews with some of the children, and again I’m free to do some shooting.  Which I do.  Some more from this shoot (and some of my favourites from this trip- and for a long time) will show up on a later post.

From here, we visit a cereal bank.  I was involved in setting up our cereal bank program back in 2005 (when I knew very little about them; the advice was coming from our local staff who had worked with them before).  The principle is, you provide some sacks of food to a village committee when food is at its cheapest (right after harvest).  The committee then keeps this food in a central location.  If people in the village need food, they can buy food from the cereal bank at rates cheaper than the market rate- a benefit to the community- but still more expensive than the food was purchased for at the start of the year.  If the bank is managed properly, the committee should have enough money to replenish the store when the next harvest hits the markets and grain prices are surpressed again.  If they’ve done a good job and market prices have worked in their favour, they may even gain some profit which they can then invest in their own community development.

The cereal banks have come under fire at different times.  When they’re not managed well, communities expect NGOs to top them up for them, so it can become a hand-out project if not carefully supervised.  They’re vulnerable to market shocks and food shortages.  However this one we visited had done well for itself.  Over the last five years, only this year had they come to us for help to restock it, and that because the food crisis was so severe.  We gave them a few extra tonnes of food- not a huge amount- and they reckon with that they’ll go back to being able to replenish their store again in the next harvest, in a few weeks’ time.  Meanwhile, over 800 families in the community benefitted in some way from the bank’s work over the last year.

It’s nice (and remarkably rare) to be able to step back into a country many years after leaving it, and to see a project that you’ve contributed to in some small way having made a difference to peoples’ lives.  I can assure you, it doesn’t happen often.

(And obviously, when the chats and the interviews are over, I head off and take a few photos of cute kids. )

On the drive back to Maradi, Mike and Cam want to recreate some background shots from the Dafur incident.  Part of their piece on me will involve a brief re-telling of the ambush.  They shoot some stylised footage of the vehicle in the bush, of us taking cover behind the dashboard, and of Idi, our driver, wearing my turban and menacing the vehicle.  It’s all rather hilarious in its own way, four guys with expensive gear playing Cowboys and Indians making light of a very serious situation.  But as we watch the sun start to kiss the tops of the millet stalks, we settle back into the bumpy ride and muse on yet another good day in the field.  We’ve been lucky with the times we’ve had, and we all know it.

Tomorrow we drive back to Niamey.  Ten hours.  It’s going to be fun.