Taking Portraits of Girls - My New Plan

As most of my readers know, I love taking portraits when I travel. The desire started after six weeks traveling around Europe. I found that when I looked back at my pictures there were lots of pretty buildings but the thing that differentiated each country were the faces and I had no pictures of them. So now I boldly engage with as many people as I can when I travel so I can bring the richness of those faces back to you.

Unfortunately on my recent trip to Israel I felt like I was not allowed to take any pictures of people. Every ask was denied. Its not that there aren't wonderful faces there. Gosh, I could spend a lifetime looking at the peyos on small Hasidic children and the long beards on some of their men. And as you probably have noticed I have and admiration and fascination with the Islamic veil. In the West Bank, women wear colorful, decorated and gracefully wrapped veils, that were different from the other places I have been.

Usually I can always count on children to let me photograph them. Boys love to ham around and make funny faces, but on the West Bank, even many of those faces evaded me. While some boys allowed it, girls always said no.
Because of this, I tried a new tactic: how about giving girls my camera to take pictures of me with them or for them to take pictures of each other? At first they were reticent and then the magic clicked. Somehow when girls were taking pictures of girls the shyness fell away. And thankfully I have these photos of beautiful Palestinian girls in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem and the Jenin refugee camp to share with you.

As always I wish I could bring all these bright girls back home with me and expose them to the opportunities I've had, but in lieu of that at least I hope you can see the sparkle in their eyes and think of them when you hear about Palestinians and the painful world they live in.

The story of photos continues...

The night we took most of the pictures in my previous post, we stayed in the Dneisha Refugee Camp in Bethlehem. While we were eating dinner suddenly the air filled with wild party music and fireworks started popping into the nearby sky. It seemed clear that something was going on and that clearly meant I should go try to enjoy the action. Sue, my travel roommate, and I promptly set out to find the party. We walked about a block and when we turned the corner to follow the lights and sounds, we found a huge party in the street. As I looked around and sized up the situation I noticed we were the only women among hundreds of dancing men. A quick thought went through my mind about whether it was appropriate for us to be there, but luckily before I had to think much about it I was approached by a kind looking gentleman. He pointed towards a building with a blowing sheet over the entrance and asked if we would like to go in the woman's tent. Before we knew it we were swept into a room with hundreds of Palestinian women dancing, chatting and celebrating a wedding. As you can imagine, our entrance made a splash. At first I fingered the small bag of candies I had been handed right away as a party favor and wondered what I had gotten myself into. Luckily right there in the back of the room was my little budding photographer friend and her family. Within moments they cleared seats for us and invited us into their little circle. Between dances, of which there were many!, we sat with our friends.

As soon as we sat down, our friend asked if she could see my camera and look at the pictures she had taken and show the rest of her family. Quickly the story changed to something much more substantial in the spirit of the occupation. After they looked at the photos they had taken they started flipping through all my shots. In that digital card I had all my photos from the last few days of the my trip (about 300 shots) These included all the shots I had taken on our walking tour of Old City Jerusalem. Under the current occupation travel to Jerusalem is wildly restricted for Palestinians without work permits or residential permits for Jerusalem. Although Bethlehem is only about 15 minutes driving distance from Jerusalem, the Wall, check points and the harassment they bring makes the trip hours long even if you are granted a permit, something you must plan months ahead to try to get. This means that most Palestinians have never been to Jerusalem to see the historical and religious sites there, including the Dome of the Rock, the third most holy place for Muslims. So as they clicked through my pictures they got very excited. I watched the mom point and explain to the kids what things were. Along the way they stopped and asked who people were and what places were.

At that moment, even in a very joyous party that had transported me far from the disturbing issues I had been seeing first hand on this trip, I felt very sad for a group of people who are being forcibly separated from their land, history and culture.

P.S. Unfortunately photo taking was strictly forbidden so I will have to live with the memories of hundreds of women dancing and reveling only being in my head.

Faces from Palestine

Murals in San Francisco

Photos of the murals

Look who used one of my photos for a piece about Bolivia

First I got published in a Japanese magazine and now in this article in "Masa Acher" a leading geographical and cultural magazine, published monthly in Israel.

חמישים גרם אבקת צפרדעים
http://www.ifeel.co.il/page/13500

and also here on this funny site Una calle Salvador Allenda, dedicated to images around the world using Salvador Allende's name who published my photo from Mozambique.
http://www.abacq.org/calle/

Somehow, my pictures look much cooler surrounded by a foreign alphabet.

Traveling to Africa - Winter 2009

Women at a healthcare rally

I recently got back from 5 weeks in Africa where I was traveling for work. In case you don't remember, I now run Princeton in Africa, a program that annually sends 25 recent college grads on year-long fellowships in service organizations throughout the continent of Africa. The best bonus of the job is an annual extensive trip to Africa to do site visits to potential partner organizations to make sure they would be good places for Princeton in Africa Fellows. My recent trip took me to Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Kenya.

In many ways, traveling for work definitely felt very different. I was online and connected all the time, checking my work emails and attending to work responsibilities. This was possible because I had much more WIFI than I ever would have expected in Africa. All of this meant I had a slightly different lens to view things from. On the really good side, it was great to be able to visit an assortment of organizations doing valuable work on the ground. I visited health clinics, schools, agriculture micro-lending sites and more. As always the best part was being connected to hard working passionate people working to improve the world around them. This kind of travel connected me to local people beyond the tourist sector which made the places I visited even more real.

On the bad side, my intense work schedule made it hard to find as much time to write about my trip. You will see a few pieces below, but I spent more of my free time taking photographs. As always you can read the titles to hear a little more about the trip. Since Flickr makes it a little harder to see the titles during the slide show function, please be sure to follow the directions that are posted below the links.

Images of Obamania in Africa

Press Slide Show in the upper right corner, then press Show Info to see the titles as the slide show plays.

Photo album of Zambia pictures

Photos from Zambia

Press Slide Show in the upper right corner, then press Show Info to see the titles as the slide show plays.

Photo album of Mozambique pictures

Photos from Mozambique

Press Slide Show in the upper right corner, then press Show Info to see the titles as the slide show plays.

Photo album of Kenyan pictures

Photos from Kenya

Press Slide Show in the upper right corner, then press Show Info to see the titles as the slide show plays.

Traveling in Africa

I know this might sound strange to most of you that are reading, but I keep thinking about the fact that I am in Africa, a place that most people think is a basketcase and traveling here is so much easier than in India. Yes, sometimes the roads are bumpy or dirt, but planes arrive early. Airports are small and easy. Taxis are available. People have all been arriving on time. There is traffic, but it moves and we never get stopped by a cow sitting in the middle of the road (well, almost never.)

And my overnight bus even served snacks through the ride!

Yay Africa!

Travels in Zambia

Volunteers who go out into the community to teach about HIV

I've see so many new places, new countries and new sites on this trip that I'm just not sure where to start.

So here I am just going to talk about the last 7 days in Zambia and hopefully I will find a way to talk about Mozambique, South Africa and my day trip to Swaziland in future posts.

One week ago I arrived in Zambia. I spent 5 days in Livingstone visiting African Impact, an org that does voluntourism. Through them I was able to visit schools, farm coops and medical clinics. One day I was able to work at the clinic at first taking blood pressure, temps and weight to help the nurses out and then getting to weigh all the babies since Monday was baby weighing day. The walk through the HIV building was sobering. In one way I was proud to be an American and know that PEPFAR now makes it possible to give free ARTs to anyone

Faces in Zambia

Thoughts on Africa

Victoria Falls, the biggest waterfall in the world!

I’m sitting at my Zambian backpackers (hostel in southern African terms) and watching the rain pour down and thinking, somehow everything in Africa is more extreme than others places I’ve been. When it rains it really pours. The streets turn to steams. The full big open sky rumbles. Also in my time in South Africa, the bugs I saw were huge. Everything on steroids. Six inch crickets. Two inch beetles. Bigger, brighter colors, more pizzazz. On safari, I got to see the huge animals of the savanna. I got used to Asia elephants over my last few trips and now I was reintroduced to African elephants, who make Asian elephants seem tiny. Then it really is amazing how much lions and leopards look like kitties except they are bigger, faster, stronger and significantly more dangerous. Then there is just the color everywhere. The women are dressed in bright patterns. Its rainy season so the landscape is lush and green. Most of the time the sun is bright and strong.

And lastly there are the big smiles. The friendliness and openness is intoxicating. Little kids waving from the side of the roads. The rawness and realness of this continent is just incredible.

Happy Valentines Day

I would have thought Africa was a good place to escape all the Hallmark silliness that surrounds Valentines Day, but its turned out to be quite the opposite. I can't get over the big v-day displays everywhere. Every grocery store is selling red hearts, stuffed animals, fake flowers and champagne. Events are being held. Merchants are walking around with single stemmed roses for sale. Here is Livingstone, the movie house in town has a Valentine's Day Special showing "What happened in Vegas" and "Why did I get married" instead of Saturdays normal soccer games. (Something I thought would be really fun to watch on a movie theater size screen in Africa with a bunch of screaming Zambians.)

So it looks like I will quietly sit out Valentine's Day while the Africans revel around me.

Go Obama!

I brought a role of Obama stickers to spread the O fever

Maputo, Mozambique

Cordelia's Journeys is back in business. Yup, I'm on the go again and I promise to try to write a bit more about what I'm seeing versus just posting photos.

So I'm here in Maputo, the capitol of Mozambique. For those of you who aren't as up on your African geography, Mozambique is on the east coast of Africa bordering on South Africa. Its a former Portuguese colony that gained independence in 1975. That was followed by a civil war that lasted till 1992, but at this point it is relatively stable, pretty poor but on the slow road to development. NGOs are hard at work helping it grow and Maputo is where most of those aid folks live. Its an beautiful breezy city on with water on either side.

For me that meant a ferry trip out to Catembe yesterday on the other side of the bay for a long walk on the beach and a great view of the city and a TERRIBLE sunburn! (Hey, that's the down side of warm breezes and bright sun. After the last weeks in NY, I was vitamin D deprived but now I'm all set!)

The reason I'm here is because I have a few meetings with potential partners for Princeton in Africa. I started the morning with Save the Children and ended at a beach side bar learning about Opportunity International, a microlending organization.

But one can spend only so long in meetings and then in between I've had time to explore the city. Today I walked around the city for 4 hours. It was GREAT. I love feeling my own way in a city and figuring out its energy. Maputo has great energy. There is a mix of modern and old. The Portuguese have a liberal live life style and they leave that mark on their colonies. I was expecting more conservatively dressed people and instead I see spaghetti straps. Also there is a tradition of music and we spent an evening at the French Cultural Center where they have a big amphitheater. By the time we actually got there most of the music was over, but the reason we went is because we could hear the music echoing in the street and we had to go in after listening from the sidewalk. Lastly a wonderful thing about Maputo is that there are tons of outdoor cafes. It just a lively social scene.

Gotta sign off for now, but there will be more to come with 4 counties in 5 weeks...

Photos of Maputo

Inaugural Week in Washington

Photos from the Inauguration

Jane and Cordelia get published in the Greenwich Citizen! Read more!

Look Back, Move Forward

A Mother and Daughter Travel the Deep South After Obama's Victory
By Jane Milliken

Unfortunately the link has been taken down... Suffice it to say, my mom and I had a very interesting time exploring Alabama and Mississippi and you can read some of my thoughts connected to the photos in the slide show in the next post.