Random thoughts from the camera-toting stranger.

I wanted to post this sometime last week but our internet was out for about 5 days since then, and is still struggling (naghihingalo!). So a bit of a delayed post but oh well.

While I’ve been in Kindu for a few weeks now, I haven’t really had much time to go exploring on my own. Shameful, I know… but there are reasons for this. One, the office and the house are in the same compound, less than a minute’s walk apart, meaning it’s easy to actually not see anything of the outside world Two, about three out of my five weekends here have been spent trying to finish reports for a deadline. The times I’ve done some exploring have always been with someone with me, or in one of our trusty (I was tempted then to remove the t from trusty, but I thought that was mean.) vehicles.

So last, last weekend, I decided it was time to go explore on my own. Given my quite impressive bad sense of direction that has more than once led to tears, I decided to just walk along the train tracks up to the old train station since I figured there was no way I’d get lost doing that. Although… I never did make it to the train station, because I was too scared to cross a very old-looking and menacing bridge (just take my word for it) with huge, huge gaps between its planks, so I decided to turn back --- much to the amusement of the people sitting and children playing outside their houses by the tracks, who watched as I stopped for about a minute at the top of the bridge, pondering my sense of balance, and then said out loud to no one and everyone in particular ‘Umm.. Non. Pas aujourd’hui, je ne suis pas prete’ (Translates to a cowardly, ‘No. Not today, I’m not ready’). Yes, they did laugh at me and ask me if I was scared.

So since my attempt to reach the as-of-yet elusive train station failed, I want to instead recount a little ‘trial’ I decided to do with my camera on my way to the train station. Explanation as follows…

Even without a camera, a foreigner (especially a female or females alone) will get noticed. So adding a camera to the equation, I wanted to see what difference it made if any. I wasn’t planning to take any photos, and just wanted to see how people would react to me walking around with a camera. I thought this would also be a good way for me to find out for future reference what seemed to be okay, and what was not, photography-wise. (Another disclaimer: No, I am no expert or especially great photographer; I merely love and enjoy taking photos of everything. So the following ramblings about cameras and photography are wholly and only from that perspective. But I’d be curious to know what the dilemmas might be for someone who does this for a living.)
Before I came here, I searched through flickr for people with photos of Kindu to get an idea of what it was like. This search came out with a grand total of two people, one of whom provided a useful and important analysis of how most people in Kindu react to foreigners with cameras. He said: ‘In most parts of Congo people are quite ambivalent about photographers or even like the attention. In Kindu many people don’t want to be photographed nor do they want you to photograph the town. It as if the camera makes painfully obvious the heights from which they have fallen.’

I don’t want to theorize ‘the camera’ and how it can affect a person’s perception of you, but aside from irrational over-thinking being one of my talents, I’m also very, very conscious of offending people by taking a photograph of them or of something they don’t want me to. I may say I’m based in Kindu for the moment, but I know that the operative phrase in that sentence is ‘for the moment’ – a transient, camera-toting stranger. And I feel that a camera (a not particularly small one especially) can magnify this position and leave you disconnected. (But then again, foreign-ness is something that’s - more often than not, at least – obvious with or without a camera, isn’t it?) So yes, I think that afternoon I did get a few cold looks.

But, (and this is a good but!) I also arrived at another realization quite the opposite of this. As a few people surprisingly approached me themselves, asking me to take their photos, I realized that while the camera can sometimes serve as a means for disconnection, stuck behind a lens, it can also actually serve as a way to speak to people, or in my case, for people to actually open up and speak to you. While I admit that that afternoon was a bit stressful at times due to some rude and even aggressive remarks addressed to the lone female (remarks that you’d get anywhere, mind you), it was enjoyable and even enlightening. Here are just some of the people I spoke with, and the some of the photos that came out of that afternoon.

I had my first conversation (if you can call it that) in Swahili (if you can call it that too) with this lady.

Little boys playing football, who paused their game so I could take their photo.


(Unfortunately, the internet isn't letting me post as many photos as I want to, but I will post more on my flickr
this week.)

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Since that weekend, this camera-toting stranger decided to take photos of the sunrise over the Congo River, and as a result, got detained for a bit by the Congolese military. Next on the piroguepilot!!

Karibu hapa Kindu (....or, [un]necessary introductions)

Getting here wasn’t easy. It’s a story that’s 4 months long, ridden with visa and travel problems (including a brief stint as an illegal immigrant), lots of waiting and uncertainty --- 2 days worth of tears at one point, about 6 flights and as many airports. But today marked my first month in the town of Kindu, in the Maniema province of eastern DRC where I’m working with the organization Merlin, and I thought it was about time I started the blog that I said I’d start in March. Always the procrastinator.

But I do have a reason (or excuse?) for being late. I didn’t want to write about a place I didn’t know, that I had just got to. I didn’t want to talk about Kindu as a complete stranger, throwing around shallow first impressions and judgements. One month isn’t a long time, I know, but I think it’s given me time to maybe gain even just a little familiarity with a place so different from anywhere I’ve ever been to before, and maybe think about things with a different perspective. (Please note the 'Maybe'.)

I remember planning to just keep a simple photo-blog thing, but I soon realized that while photos can tell you a lot, there are many, many things that photos cannot say. Like for example how surreal it felt (still is) to be sitting on a balcony overlooking the Congo River, watching the pirogues pass by, when a pirogue filled with a choir dressed in uniform patterned bright yellow and green pagnes crossed the river to Kindu, singing all the way. Or even how the flour mill right behind my room wakes me up everyday at 630 am (including weekends). Earlier on bad days, but later if we’re lucky. (Note: I am keeping my photos on flickr. And I may be starting a photo-blog for Merlin.)

I sometimes think blogs can be a teeny bit self-indulgent and a teeny bit pretentious, but oh well, I will indulge myself [--- and provide disclaimers that: I do tend to ramble quite a lot (often senseless ramblings too); being incoherent is a talent of mine, that I attempt to hide through little notes in parentheses such as this; and I have a tendency to write the way I talk, which I imagine can be a bit irritating. Disclaimers that assume someone actually reads this. Hmm…]. So, self-indulgent maybe, but in the end of it, this will be my reminder of how it was, and my way of ‘sharing’ Kindu with anyone else who cares to become acquainted with it. My way of counting souvenirs. And maybe (hopefully) I’ll even be able to say something useful…

So more in this space very soon… and welcome to Kindu, or as they say it in Swahili here… Karibu hapa Kindu!