Portraits of the Near East

Title font used: 'old printing press'

Backgammon

So recently I have done quite a bit of travelling within the Near East and as a result am pretty exhausted, so this is a kind of random filler story about backgammon rather than any kind of update...

 One day I was downtown, camera in hand, without much to do so I went for a walk around to see what there was to see and more importantly photograph. The area was quite dull, generic architecture, traffic, Starbucks - it could have been any city in the world. That was until I stumbled upon the game of backgammon...

I don't know about where you are from but in the UK it is not an everyday occurrence that you see a sizable group of 40-50 somethings gathered around a board-game on the side of a busy street in the middle of the working week. Here it actually seems perfectly ordinary, in fact men sitting around generally doing nothing in the middle of the week is ordinary here. Of course the sight of this group got my 'interesting photo opportunity' sense tingling. I would love to say that I made a beeline for the group, quickly introduced myself and began an impormptu photoshoot.

The truth however is possibly mildly more amusing and certainly paints me in a less glorious and more accurate light... The men were sitting on the pavement on the side of a roundabout. I saw the group when I was about 1/3 of the way round the roundabout which is when my interest was spiked. As I got to where they were sitting I realised that I could barely speak a word of Arabic and was clearly a tourist, waltzing around with an expensive DSLR over my shoulder.

I chickened out. I passed calmly on by with an air of determination as though I was actually headed somewhere just around the corner and not at all interested in taking pictures of what was clearly the most mundane activity imaginable - a group of oldies playing a board game. Seriously my life is just one big adventure ...

So anyway after I had passed them by I looked back over my shoulder and winced slightly as I watched a perfect photo moment slip by because I was too afraid to capture it. I continued walking all the way around the roundabout and back down the street I had approached from. The internal dialogue at this point was something along the lines of ...

'Seriously?! What is the worst that could possibly happen, they say no? They start speaking in Arabic and waving their arms about as you take photos? Would they really chase you away? ... Seriously man up and just go take some photos!'

This is not a game of backgammon but I did see this on the way.

After about 5 minutes of walking the wrong direction I decided to throw caution to the wind! ... I crossed the street and headed back to the roundabout.

As a brief aside this whole experience involved crossing the road a lot of times and it was on one of these times I realised that they don't have zebra crossings here. Instead crossing the road is similar to photo opportunities, you pretty much just have to put yourself out there and hope that you don't die.

I arrived at the backgammon game which still lived on - it seemed they were not planning on going anywhere too soon. I walked over and stood looking over the shoulder of a guy observing the game and tried to do my best 'This is a genuinely enthralling game' face, despite not knowing the first thing about the game of backgammon.

After a few minutes one of the guys spotted my camera and saw straight through my paper thin guise of watching the game for interest, he started speaking in Arabic and motioning with his arms. Fortunately it was not as I had feared, he was not shouting and waving menacingly but rather giving the gesture for taking pictures.

I took the opportunity, muttered something in English and quickly retreated behind my camera and just started taking photos. It turns out the group of guys was pretty friendly, one of them had lived in Germany for 20 years and spoke some English, I spent about 30 minutes trying to scratch together a conversation with him and intermittently taking pictures. They were all taxi drivers who were passing their time at a slow point in the day.

My conversation with this one guy was actually quite sad, he was asking where in the city I had been and was quick to advise me where in the City not to go, he pointed over my shoulder down one of the roads and frowned. I asked him why I shouldn't go there. He explained that it was not safe, or clean there because it was the Muslim quarter. I was shocked at his casual prejudice as he continued to explain that he was Catholic and that this whole area, including the group of backgammon players were catholic. (It explained the rosary beads that they were carrying) As the conversation continued he explained the different catholic areas that I could go to and what they were good for, being a taxi driver he was of course trying to offer me a lift to these places. 

Interestingly the prices he was quoting me were excess of triple the going rate, no doubt seeking to take advantage of the naive tourist. To me this was a very interesting insight, outwardly people here are usually extremely friendly and polite but the truth is that they trust you as far as they can throw you and do not care to be trusted by others as far as I can see.

What is sad for me is that the Catholic community is this nations perception of what it means to be Christian and it is a poor display. The struggle to promote Christ in a predominantly Muslim region is made that much harder by those who misrepresent him. 

Title font used: 'Cubic'

Lethabong

This past week has been a busy one - doing different practical ministries each day within the local area. One of these days I visited Lethabong - a very small township that lives in deep poverty, the houses are corrugated iron shacks that are (if you are living in the UK) probably no bigger than your bedroom and they are occupied by families of 4 or 5. There is no running water and no electrical hook up in the area.

The locals are dependent on truck-delivered water and cook on open fires. Any electricity they have is from personal generators. It is a place of great need. We were in this area partnering with another organisation that has started a pre-school in the centre of town for the education of the next generation and also so that the parents are able to look for jobs. We were there to paint the pre-school (also corrugated iron shacks) to make it a more colourful place and increase the longevity of the buildings.

Despite circumstance these people seem to have a richness in community and contentment in life that is a challenging thing to encounter. As I was painting and thinking to myself how little benefit a pretty looking shack is to people who have no water - a young man who was walking by shouted to me:

'yes! More! More!- Good! Good! Nice job! God Bless you!'

Then I started thinking how amazing these people are.

Where there are people the gospel of Coca-Cola is never too far away, it is in a lot of ways (somewhat ironically) a sad sight.

But it is nothing in comparison to the heart crushing sight of the church building...

This is very typically African in my limited experience and it makes me sad - in the middle of a town of maybe a few thousand who have nothing - the people who can bring hope and light into such a community instead bring a massive church building that probably has more monetary value than the whole rest of the town and then tell the people there that if they would just love God enough and give enough money then they would be laughing all the way to the bank.  Meanwhile they question how they will eat that night.

To those of you who read this and do not call yourself a Christian because you do not want to be associated with people like this - please know that these are wolves that dress themselves as sheep but that does not make being a sheep bad.

Title font used 'Henry'

Edits

Sitting in front of a laptop for several hours trawling through thousands of photos to try and whittle the number down to a manageable collection of pictures from an event or season that tell a coherent story is not always as fun as it might sound.

I know this because I have experienced it many times and especially over the last week. Having taken 12 days out (mentioned post before last)to go into rural south Africa and taken aprox 1,200 photos of ALOT of African kids I felt a little photoed-out so when this was immediately followed up by a trip to a national park (last blog post) where I was also official photographer for the group - (this basically means that you are obliged to take photos of anything that is even remotely interesting because if you come away from a national park without photos then your trip there was wasted) meaning that I racked up another 800 photos in a single day only 3 days after getting back from the photo-thon that was rural.

So after filtering through 2000 photos to produce around 20 that can be used for blogging and facebook purposes I was tired of photography. This happens sometimes and it is largely because I am dealing with photos that I have no particular interest in - why do I take said pictures in the first place? Because being the 'photography guy' people inevitably (and actually multiple times a day) will ask me for my photos. In principle I have no problem with this. I love to use my ability, equipment and time to bless other people with photos  the problem arises with quality. My definition of a useable picture is very different from that of most people. They would prefer quantity over quality and therefore I end up processing lots of frankly lame pictures.

So I felt photoed-out and could not be bothered to take any more pictures, I was quite happy to leave my camera in my room and forget about it for a while. So typically the following day a friend asks if I will take some photos of him for his news letter. So I oblige and as I am taking the photos the difference hits me like a wet fish - when the photos have an intended purpose it is so much easier to both take and edit them. My friend also wanted to be shown  what software I used to edit my pictures so I gave him an overview of Adobe Lightroom 3 by editing the pictures of him. This was a joy rather than a chore - actually taking the time to make good photos great and turning them into something that perfectly suits the intended purpose. So now I know how to cure photoed-out-ness, ironically it is to take more photos.

So these are the edits of some more of those 2000 photos that I took in the last 2 weeks - Enjoy!

This is the friend who wanted the profile pictures taken so if you can read Spanish go check him out... http://diegocaceres.org/

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War Stories

I have spent the last 4 days telling and hearing war stories and I don't want you to feel left out.

I have just got back from 12 days of rural outreach in Belfast - a tiny village in Gazankulu - a 7 hour drive east from our training base. I led a team of 10 amazing people who I now have a new found love and respect for. I could not possibly recount all of the crazy, hilarious, scary, amazing, mind blowing stories that these 12 days produced in as many blog posts let alone 1.


However to give you an idea of the scene ...

we were camping in the front yard of the pastor who we were staying with and supporting/ being supported by for our time in Belfast. - Meet pastor Jeniffer:

There is no running water and the taps that are dotted around the village seem to operate independently from one another meaning it is a wild goose chase to find water. Our shower consists of a piece of tarp wrapped around 3 poles and a bucket and obviously we are using a long drop - to those of you who are not familiar with this it is essentially a hole in the floor with a cesspit below it - good times. All the chickens in the village thought it was a great idea to scream at the top of their lungs capacity every night at around 12, 3 and 5 AM and in between them the witch doctors (Sangomas) of the village get up and have a drumming party to put curses on the Christian pastor of the village and her white guests. Good times!

This is a sangoma herding his cattle to new pastures. Pray for him.

Let there be no doubt - our time in Belfast was incredible, we had an hour by hour schedule drawn up for us by our pastor - she was well prepared for our arrival so we worked very hard for the time that we were there and saw some amazing fruit from out labours. We also had our fair share of tough lessons learned and scars to prove them. Among other more personal things I learnt that trying to make veet Coek (Fat cake) in the dark over an open fire that I was maintaining with very hot oil in the pan and the spoon in my hand while trying to pick up something else is too many things at once. Oh and I learned how hot that spoon really was as displayed by the title picture.

This was the view that saw almost every night...

So here is a little glimpse of the face of Belfast and here is the story that we heard which is seemingly the same in all of Gazankulu...

I saw this beautiful young girl almost every day - I did not see her smile once. Pray for her.

I met this little ones family ~ they were lovely people, her older brothers have just finished school and are unemployed. We didn't even ask about the father. Pray for them.

This is the Grandmother of the house ~ she has been completely blind for 2 years and I have met few people more content in Jesus. Pray for her.

The Women hold this place together - there is low employment rate so the men are demotivated. They almost unanimously turn to alcohol to drown their sorrows based on the number of liquor stores in a place that has no running water. So the men are absent. Those who have jobs work 7 days a week, the ones without go and find a tree somewhere and sit under it for weeks. The wives and mothers are left at home with numerous children and sometimes grandchildren. They grow some of their own food on their own property but there is no way they can be completely sustained by this. They cook all the meals (it's a bigger deal when you have so start a fire with wood that you have gathered in order to heat your food) They also bring in some income if they have a skill set that is practical.

These women are amazing. They some how battle on through a sea of apathy.

One of these mats takes 5 days to complete, working all day.

The church is largely the same - it is 95% women and they carry all the weight / host all events / do all that needs to be done to make the church function practically. Animism is also rife - the worship of ancestors is common place even within the church, a lot of people will still consult witch doctors and the spirits of their dead grand parents for protection and guidance. This gave rise to the Zionist church which is an odd mix of Christianity and ancestral worship but even outside of the Zionist church ancestral worship is so ingrained into society that it happens everywhere. Talking to Pastor Jennifer about this I asked her how she managed to cope with so many people trying to serve 2 masters and the absence of men. She laughed, looked me in the eye and said 'I have been faithful to the lord since the day he saved me and he sustains me' Such an incredibly refined faith, simple and strong.

This is the daughter of a sangoma who had just been healed of acute pain in her side through the power of prayer and decided to live her life for Jesus, she seemed pretty happy about the decision. Pray for her.

So despite the darkness the surrounds Gazankulu I do not despair because I know there is a very real and very strong hope.

A lady being prayed for that pain would leave her body ~ which it did. Pray for her.

Title font : 'Lithos Pro'

Friends#1

A closer look at some of the amazing people that I am sharing the next 6 months with, I have only been here 2 weeks and I am already know as the 'camera guy' which I am quite happy about, people are getting used to the fact that it is not in my interest to take bad photos of them and as a result tend to freak out less when a large lens is pointed their way.

It is amazing how quickly it is possible to get to know quite a few people - and of course make friends - when you spend a lot of time with them, sharing a room and every meal time with other people takes me back to my boarding school days which are very fond memories.

I have heard more life stories since being here than in any other 3 week period of my life and it is amazing to hear how vastly different our backgrounds are and how phenomenally consistent God is to all of us.

We are currently doing 6 weeks of training called 'inside out' the idea being that we deal with that which we have kept inside, and bring it out into the open in order that transformation might take place. As you might imagine it is pretty intense. It is so amazing to watch people going through this process and seeing their whole demeanour change as deep healing takes place - it is one of the most profound miracles I have witnessed and those of you who know me will understand the weight of that statement.

So what have I actually done over the past week?

• Heard the most insane (wicked awesome) conga playing ever
• Taken 2(!) trips to the local mall the first of which was intensely boring as I had no money
• Purchased a mosquito net! (suck on that mosquitoes - oh wait you can't cause there is a net in the way!)
• Made 2 very close friends - I know quick work ehy? (p.s this was a massive answer to prayer thank you to people who prayed)
• Had a candle lit meal?! (More photos may feature)
• Lead a bible study on 1 John 1
• Attempted to no avail to call home a couple of times (If you are reading this PICK UP THE PHONE!) 
• Took around 100 photos
• Laughed - ALOT
• Took a walk (and a swim) in the rain (yes there was rain and yes there will be a blog post on it cause it was amazing and unfortunately no I don't have a picture of me walking in the rain because it doesn't mix with cameras too well)
• Fried enough bacon to feed 70 people - bacon is so good.
• Had a bonfire!
• Witnessed more lightning that I have done in England in 20 years of living there.
• Saw the sick healed (?!?!)
• Loved Life
• Glorified God

And now some photos where I actually feature - quite rare.

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