Published in Harvard Review, Number fifthy-three
JULY 2001, mid-winter in the southern hemisphere, found me and my husband of six months on a beach in the coastal city of Beira in Mozambique. We had wanted to exchange the freezing winter temperatures of high-altitude Johannesburg for the usually sub-tropical climate of this crumbling city on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Sun, sand, sea, throw a few cameras into the mix, what could possibly go wrong?
We had just come back from our honeymoon in Eritrea. My husband, Greg, had accepted a video assignment for an international news channel, and going to Mozambique to work on a documentary project seemed like a good idea. We had found a Mennonite guesthouse right on the beach. It was clean, the food was fresh, and, more importantly, it was cheap. We had a room with a view and an en suite bathroom where we could process our film every night.
Well, let me correct that. Where Greg processed my film every night. He was doing video, which, in my opinion, was the easy way out. Video was nowhere near as demanding as still photography. To make matters worse, in place of the sub-tropical climate we were expecting, we found ourselves being exfoliated on the beach by cyclone-force winds blasting sand onto our legs. This made getting up to capture the early morning light, which appears for a few hours like a benediction, a misery. I felt that I had been abandoned to the elements. I was out there braving the weather every day, struggling to get good pictures. And he? He could film in any light indoors.
But Beira worked its charm on me. The bad weather had grounded most of the fishing boats, but life around the beach continued. Women fried small fish in huge steel pans over open fires. The lines grew outside the local curanderos' consulting room, perhaps because the weather was hampering the fishermen's ability to bring in a catch. One night we attended a Senhorita Cordas (Miss Fat) competition. The lovely, and by no means fat, contestants entered the stage to the tune of that year's hit, "Who Let the Dogs Out:' To this day I don't know if that was intentional or simply something that got lost in translation.
The Mozambican civil war had ended nine years earlier, but the fifteen-year-long conflict had lefts its mark on the city. Mansions dating from the time of Portuguese colonial rule were still standing but had been abandoned to the effects of a coastal climate. Four-by-four chapas, or taxis with raised suspension systems, navigated the potholed avenidas, loading and offloading passengers at random stops.
On the morning we got ready to leave, three missionaries were seated at the table next to ours. They were also packed up and on their way home. Dressed in white shirts and dark ties, with a Bible placed on the table beside them, they were discussing their week: the number of people baptized and converted and the deals they had struck in the market the previous afternoon.
That trip to Beira in the winter of 2001 kickstarted a photographic career that has taken me across the African continent from Angola to Zambia. My camera is a device that has allowed, and continues to allow, me to enter people's lives and make connections, even if it is only for a very brief time.
This post links to an earlier one I made on the qualities of film.