View from a Microscope

May 26

TIA

My friend taught me an expression, TIA. It stands for “This is Africa”. When our plane is delayed 3 hours on the tarmac, TIA. When we miss our connection and the next flight isn’t until the next day, TIA. And when the airline didn’t book us on the next day’s flight and we’re told we must buy our tickets 45 minutes before we board, TIA. It means that things take longer here and the goals you set will often not be met, this isn’t the US, or China, or the UK, this is Africa.

The head of the NGO we’re traveling with is a practicing Buddhist. His teacher once told him in order for one to be happy one must give up their expectations and accept that goals aren’t always met. The student replied, “But then you won’t get anything done”. “You will get done whatever you get done”, says the teacher. Well… yeah, that’s true.

The NGO (Spark Ventures) sends us out on an assignment to film poverty. An uncomfortable task, made worse by the fact that whenever you point a camera at a kid they’ll smile and wave. Poverty doesn’t smile and wave, poverty kicks your ass. Later when I’m trying to shoot some men working on a mud house one of the workers yells at me to stop, running towards me with his shovel. I put down the camera and apologize, glad that poverty didn’t just kick my ass.

So I settle down with my long lens and wait. I park myself in a part of the community and wait for the people to get bored with me so I can get some shots. I sit and I wait. This may take a while and I have a lot to do today. I think to myself, “TIA”.

Oct 4

Scenes from Sturgis: Diesel

Sturgis is some quaint little town in the Black Hills of South Dakota, 40 miles outside of Deadwood and maybe an hour and a half’s drive from Mount Rushmore. Every year come July the this towns modest 6.000 person population explodes as every motorcycle enthusiast crawls out of their respective rock, dusts off the old bike and sets off on a ride to Sturgis. People say the population grows 50 times over, roughly 300,000 people. They pack up their bikes or their trailers, hauling with them their gaudy leather clothes, their Kid Rock CDs, and, of course, what’s a stupid road trip without the wife and kids.

Meet Diesel, that’s diesel like diesel truck, diesel fuel, Vin Diesel, diesel like my parents love motorcycles so much they decided to name after gas-o-fucking-line. At 3 1/2 years of age and 3 feet tall, Diesel is the tiniest biker I know. Yes, this child has a motorcycle, or in his words, “I ride a hawg”. Diesel tears up his neck of the woods in his Honda 50. I don’t know what a Honda 50 is, but a few seconds on Google show that it also goes by the name Honda Cub, a 4 stroke engine 50cc dirt bike that looks like a bicycle with a toaster on it side, it tops out at 50mph. Now now all you overly protective mothers out there, wannabe MADD members, and boo boo kissers, don’t go fretting yourselves with the dangers of an infant with a motorcycle, he wears his hemet and the motorcycle has training wheels.

This future Evel Knievel, leader of the Orphans of Anarchy, rocks out in his Harley Davidson leather vest, and though the tattoos that cover his bare chest are temporary, I suspect his love for motorcycling is not. I won’t be surprised to come back in 10 years and find that this little biker has grown into a slightly older little biker with some now permanent tattoos and physical damage to his body. His career in the juvenile detention system looks bright. Rock out Diesel! Rock out! The time will come very soon when your love for all things motorcycle just isn’t cute anymore. I don’t want to sound too cynical so I will admit that for the meantime he is very very cute in his tiny leather vest.

Sep 16

Pictures from The Sunset Strip Music Festival

Our friends at @SwingHouse Music Studios put on this festival August 26th-28th. It featured musical acts by Smashing Pumpkins, Slash, Common, Kid Cudi, Neon Trees, Semi Precious Weapons, and Saint Motel.

@SamSanchez and I roamed the festival shooting from the street, the stage, and the pits.

Aug 18

62 mph on a Skateboard

Vaughn dismounts his skateboard 100 feet in front of me, but he’s still wearing his microphone, in my ear I hear a prayer, “Thank Lord, 62 miles”. His team runs up to him yelling “61.5! 61.5!”, Vaughn says “dang, off by half a mile”.

Just to clarify, that’s 61.5 miles per hour, over an eighth mile, on a skateboard. I’m at the Sturgis bike rally in South Dakota watching Vaughn attempt to set a world record for dragboarding. He made the name up, which he can do since he’s the only person who does it. As far as I can tell, he’s strapped a suped up lawnmower engine onto a skateboard and hops on for the ride.

Vaughn Shafer is a remnant from the old days, the Evel Knievel days of adrenaline junkies. Back when the builder, rider, and wrecker were all the same person. I don’t know many other 48 year olds that ride skateboards, let alone ones able to reach speeds of 75 miles per hour.

When I ask him why he rides the board he replies, “I want to be different”, his friend behind me whispers, “Well you accomplished that”. It’s not just the dragboard, Vaughn has other odd interests. When designing his custom motorcycle (which took 2nd place at the world championship 2007) he studied the anatomy of the sabertooth tiger for a year before making the bike. The frame is metal fashioned to look like bone, the lungs are the exhaust system, and the kick stand is a foot.

Vaughn travels the country with his wife, his team, his bike, and his skateboard showing his prized possessions off where he can and racing at whatever speedway will let him. He’s waiting for someone else to pick up a board and strap on a motor; he’s waiting for someone to race, because right now he’s setting world records against himself and one player games can get to be lonely.

Jun 18

My Charity My Greed, a story about napkins in Honduras

Quick backstory. Last month I was in Honduras working on a project to educate and empower female embroidery artists. The organization I was working with would teach the Honduran women new dying and stitching techniques and then they commissioned them to create a piece for the country. The women signed contracts stating that they would be paid a fair wage (for Honduras) of 35 Lempiras (2 US dollars) and hour.

As my time with this organization was winding down I thought it would be a good gesture to buy a piece of embroidery work from one of the women. I get an authentic souvenir and a gratifying feeling of having helped out, great.

Upon my request one of the women had brings down a suitcase full of napkins, aprons, and blender covers. For something I never knew I needed she sure had a lot of blender covers. I rummage through the bag and pick out a couple of napkins. I bring them over to my friend Maria Amalia who is translating for me and ask how much. “$16!” I think behind my polite smile, “for 2 napkins”.

I realize $16 isn’t an insane amount of money, but I don’t have a lot of money and that would easily eat up my napkin budget for the whole year. Maria Amalia, sensing my hesitation, tells me they are trying to pay a fair wage and each napkin took 4 hours to make. I look down at the napkins and think I’ll just get one. The woman abruptly stops me as I try to put one of the napkins back, “How much would you pay for the two?”

This is about the point where I ran into my dilemma, if I haggle with her then she will make more money, but after just telling her her work is worth x amount I will be going back and saying it’s worth less. I explain this to Maria Amalia and tell her I can’t haggle, without missing a beat she asks, “But how much will you pay for two?” I know exactly how much I will pay for both but I let the moment play out, looking around at the women, the napkins, my wallet, “I dunno, ten dollars”, as I say this I squint my face and drag out the last syllable, “dollllaaarrrssss”.

Now either something was lost in translation or the woman had no idea how to haggle because she comes right back at me, “8 dollars”. I laugh and hand over the 10 bucks before I take my hard won napkin booty. So, although I diminished this woman’s self worth and undid a lot of the work from the past week, she made 10 bucks and I got a couple souvenirs, which isn’t really that bad, right?

Jun 4

Darling

A quick background before I get into the story. I went down to Honduras to work on a documentary piece about the education and empowerment of female embroidery artists. My party included, Sam Sanchez and Andy Patch, fellow film crew, Natalie Boyette, teacher and creator of the Chicago Weaving School, and Maria Amalia Wood, this project’s organizer. We met with an up with an NGO (FUNDEIHM) in the town of Gracias, and from there headed to nearby towns. Alright, now to the story.

Over the 3 days I knew Darling he never spoke a word to me. Not one word. It wasn’t for my lack of trying, when I would talk to him in my broken Spanish he would stare away. When I would point my lens at him he would walk away. In the photo above he’s out of focus and his back is to camera, it is nevertheless the best one I took of him. Everything I know of him comes from second hand accounts or observation.

I first met Darlie Naun Vasquez when we stopped in San Manuel to drop off supplies for the next day’s lesson. As we opened the door of our car there he stood, like he’d been waiting. To look at him you know there’s something off, his clothes are dirty, his face is dirty, nothing too uncommon, but he doesn’t stare at us gringos with a face of wonder as the other children do, he doesn’t smile.

Darlie is an 8 year old boy, but he looks older. Before I fact checked this piece I put his age at 11 or 12. Each day I saw him he wore the same tattered white shirt, blue pants, and rain boots typical of any Honduran schoolboy. His name, Darlie, is a common name for both boys and girls born in the 1990s. Parents would hear foreigners call each other “darling”, they liked the name and not knowing the spelling they went off sound, thus Darlie.

Maria Amalia had met Darlie three months prior when she first scouted San Manuel. Back in March Darlie told her he was abused at home. Now he added that his sister was dead and his mother very ill. He was going around town asking people for tortillas and money for medicine. It’s not uncommon for poor children to make up stories like this, pull on your heartstrings and ask for a handout. We gave him some food and bought him the medicine. It’s dangerous to confuse children with angels.

The next day Maria asked about Darlie around town. His mother was not sick, though his sister was dead. The story Maria got was far more horrible than we could have imagined. She had gone missing a year ago; she was 13. It was Darlie who found her. She was murdered, her body dumped in the woods. And before she was found, the stray dogs from the town had followed her scent. It’s a wonder what such a sight would do to the psyche of a 7 year old, but I’m guessing it messed him up pretty bad. Again, he never smiles.

As I said, Darlie never spoke a word to me, but Natalie, the instructor for the program, managed to get him to open up. I should mention this was a program for women, not children; Natalie took on this project separately. She started with a game, maybe the simplest of all games, catch. She would throw the ball, he would catch it, throw it back. This went on until a student had a question for her, when Natalie turned to answer, Darlie motioned to her, “hey, throw the ball.”

The two of them moved on to writing. One would write a word, the other would copy it. At one point Darlie started copying a page from Natalie’s textbook. Although he couldn’t read the English he copied the letters. When he lost his place he continued on, forgetting spaces and adding numbers to what resulted in being one very long complex word.

Before lunch Natalie took Darlie to the sink to wash up. When she tried to take his hand to scrub it he immediately pulled back. She handed him the soap and he did it himself.

When it came time for Natalie to leave San Manuel for the last time she leaned in to kiss Darlie. I talked to Natalie about it afterwards. She wanted to believe her two days with Darlie had made an improvement, a kiss would prove it. He again pulled back. However, before Maria left the town, Darlie let her whisper a message from Natalie into his ear. It’s their secret.

To find out more about the documentary visit http://www.everyoneisarockstar.com/ & http://andypatch.tumblr.com/

More info on Natalie’s weaving school at http://chicagoweavingschool.com

Maria Amalia’s work can be seen at http://mariaamaliawood.wordpress.com/

May 27

Religion, Sanctimony, and Infidelity (Honduras)

According to the guide book 97% of Honduras is Catholic, the other 3% is comprised mostly of Protestants. On any given Sunday night you will find the streets are empty but the air is filled with the prayers and songs of the church. Abortion is nonexistent and contraceptives are few and far between. Yet oddly enough according to the Honduran people 97% of husbands are unfaithful, the other 3% is comprised mostly of married men that simply don’t have the resources to be unfaithful.

The dichotomy here is so severe that most marriages here happen outside of the church. The belief being that if they are married before the eyes of God when the men cheat on their wives they will be dooming themselves to Hell.

The number one source or GDP in Honduras comes from remittance, people sending money back home from other countries. For the most part these are men. I’ve heard estimates upwards of 1 million men living abroad; Honduras only has a population of 8 million. As a result there are far more women in Honduras than men. This leaves good numbers for those unfaithful husbands. And for the most part women have accepted this. They see it as a struggle that Honduran men have inside themselves.

Many men have two families, the one they have now and they one they started when they were teenagers. I have a friend, Jose, he is 32 years old, well educated, smart, and holds a good job. He tells me women often ask him if he’s married, he replies, “No, not married”. They follow up “but how many children do you have?”, “no children” he tells them”. They ask again, “how many children do you have?”. Many still do not believe him.

May 21

When Senors Riviera’s front teeth needed replacing she had the options of white, silver or gold. Her husband said to her, I want my wife to have gold teeth and I want them to spell her initials.

In 1998 Senora Riviera took a bus with her six year old son outside of San Manuel Cortes, Honduras. The bus caught fire en route. As the flames spread throughout the vehicle Senora Riviera took her son and threw him out the window, “I’d rather he break than burn”. The public buses in Honduras are the typical yellow buses you see every day shepherding young children to school. For safety reasons the windows in these buses only open halfway. Senora Riviera squeezed her adult body through the tiny window. Halfway to safety she was snagged, the opening was too small.

The event was a big story in Honduras, 21 people died in the fire. Both Senora Riviera and her son survived. Amongst the pandemonium inside the bus someone pushed her out the window. The fall shattered her wrist, leaving Senora Riviera with a reminder of what happened that day.

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