Nakwenda Tanzania
I'll be in Tanzania for the next three months - follow the TRAVEL BLOG, with mis-spelled, rambling, frantic updates from whenever and wherever I manage to find internet. Africa has not let go. I have not seen Africa. There are few gross generalizations as odious as the Western simplification, amalgamation, of an entire continent's cultural plurality, socio-political diversity, ethnic multiplicity and historical discrepancy to a single noun. I have not been to Africa; no one has; there is no Africa. Three years ago, however, I spent six weeks in Tanzania. Tanzania has not let go of me, nor has its promise of a window - an entry to the mythic Africa - let go of my dreams. I am returning. In a month's time, I will land in Dar es Salaam. I am going back because I must; I wish I could explain why. I wish I knew why. I am a travel-junkie. I am an addict. Ask me where I want to go and I will spin a globe; everywhere, eventually, should there be enough money and time. I do not want to go so much as I want to be – I am a travel-junkie and a back-packer snob. I am an anthropology student. I don't go unless I can stay; weekend jaunts and postcard sprees have no appeal beside immersion. I will go to Tanzania for three months; I will go to Tanzania and hopefully prepare to to spend a year there, in a year's time. I know that my experiences have not let go. I know that I am going to keep promises, I am returning to a place that, undeniably excruciatingly foreign, I felt released, and to a place that has more to teach me. I am going to be shown. I am going back to a small square room in which I slept on a perfectly square bed, inside of an exactly square window, outside of which the women beat the dirt streets at dawn with inefficient straw brooms. I am going back to a stone room with a few scraggly desks at which we pawed through the single volume of an old encyclopaedia and traded words for cups of tea-like milk. I am going back to the prayer in the mornings and the songs in the evenings. I am going back to the saturation that American and Britain could not begin to imagine, much less paint with daily carelessness. I am going back when I should be staying, here, in a grey stiff land of brilliant dry wit and cutting camaraderie, of nostalgic pride and wounded joy, to build a future. I am going back to Tanzania when I should be returning home to a beige stretch of parking lots and centre dividers, U-turns prohibited, in which I could refill an empty bank account and rekindle friendships and family bonds. I am going back - to wake up. I will be, hopefully, putting trowel to earth and digging at a sixteenth century trading settlement on the southern coast at which the language was constructed in the conjoining of traditions and cooking. I will be trying to find the warm mothers and seeing grandmothers, proud fathers and wise grandfathers, who gave and would not take thanks; to find to the expectant friends and demanding children, who laughed and sobbed in the same breath. I am going back because I have not forgotten.
PDF of photographs from Tachilek and Kengtung, Burma. In Februrary 2008 I spent two weeks in the Shan State of Burma (Myanmar).
Said the Men of Babel
Syllableshave drifted lose from
words - which lacked the
weight to hold them
in, having themselves seceded
from the hierarchy
of syntax (forsaking
the patriarchy of phrases)... "Wallah wallah,"
said the men of Babel and
the first generation, they
nodded sagely (with blank eyes
and empty smiles)
still thinking they understood -
it was the second that went insane
(trying trying trying)
but the third that figured
it out, stuffing wax in their ears. Read more...
Peel, For Me
Peelback
your skin. There's a
mask
underneath - don't you
feel it? Doesn't it
itch?
It's made of bone
and not yours. Read more...
PDF of photographs from Dhadhing and Dola, Nepal. While volunteering for the Umbrella Foundation in Kathmandu, I was invited as a guest to the homes of a wonderful family. I visited twice, the second time taking photographs as a gift and trekking even further, several hours into the mountains, to meet more of the family.