jake lyell photography (blog)

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Missionary Greg Clodfelter has a unique way of talking about sex to secondary school students in Kenya. His organization, Right Choices, has presented its message to over 15,000 Kenyan students in the past three years.

Clodfelter realized students were not receiving proper education about sex when young women in his church youth group in Nyeri, Kenya began getting pregnant. He soon began regularly discussing sex, dating, and marriage within the group. After receiving an invitation to share from a teacher in a local secondary school, Clodfelter realized he needed to take the message to more and more students throughout the country. Right choices was founded as an organization after presenters Monicah Odera and Leah Nyawera joined the team.

Students and teachers have responded enthusiastically to Right Choices’ message. Kids are paying attention and changing their lifestyles.

Kotido’s weekly cattle market is deep in the land of the Karamojong tribe. It’s a great place for those seeking discount prices on livestock. However, sometimes the great bargains come at the expense of neighboring tribes.

Living Hope Education Centre, a primary school in war and disaster-torn northeastern Uganda, is beating the odds. As much as I can, I am an advocate for this school, which is doing wonderful work in the lives of young ones.

It’s hard to believe it had been five years since I’d been to Ethiopia, not counting the many hours of down time spent making a connection in Addis Ababa’s airport. Recently I arrived a couple days early for a ChildFund assignment in this Horn of Africa country so that I might explore an ancient city in Ethiopia’s exotic East.

Harar’s meandering old town is other-worldly, a step back in time along the caravan routes of the middle ages. Indeed, if it weren’t for Coca Cola’s stubborn presence inside the city walls it may sometimes be difficult to decipher which decade, or even century, you were losing your way in.

Most Ethiopians don’t mind having their photograph taken. It was my original intention to shoot only portraits for these two days I’d set aside. However, I was quickly enveloped in the atmosphere of the town and the eye candy was too much for me.

The green leafy substance seen here is known as khat, a highly addictive stimulant originating from Ethiopia. It appears to be both the boon and bane of Harar. Many farmers spend their entire lives cultivating it. Many women earn their living selling it on the streets. Many people, mostly men, spend far too much time idly chewing it in a hypnotic daze.

The World Health Organization classified khat as a drug of abuse in 1980. Though its use is illegal in many nations, Ethiopia is not one of them, and the country brings in a great deal of revenue every year in exporting the plant to places like Somalia, Kenya, and Djibouti.

Khat does not come cheap. A lesser-quality bag begins at 100 Ethiopian Birr, or about $6, which is about three times as much as the average Ethiopian earns in a day. Consequently Harar’s alleyways are lined with addicts who are broke and sleeping on the street, sometimes begging in hopes of scrounging up money for the next fix. Khat, along with coffee, are Harar’s two main cash crops.

I spent much time indulging in the latter.

For the nerds out there, on each of these photographs I confined myself to either a Canon 16-35mm 2.8L zoom or a 50mm 1.2L prime lens, more so for the sake of continuity than portability.

After years of foreign aid pouring into the East African country of Rwanda following its 1994 civil war and genocide, its citizens are used to receiving help from those on the outside. Those tables could finally be turning, however. Recently I documented the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Purchase for Progress (P4P) initiative, a program wherein food aid for Africa is bought, not from a farmer in Iowa or Australia and shipped thousands of miles to its destination, but from right here in Africa.

Rwanda is home to some 55,000 refugees, most of whom are sheltering from ongoing turmoil in the Democratic Republic of Congo, its neighbor to the west. Most of these refugees are landless and unable to provide for themselves and their families. Consequently they’re reliant on food aid. Above, children race a homemade scooter through the streets of Kaziba refugee camp along the shores of Lake Kivu in western Rwanda.

The Gates Foundation works through its grantee, the UN World Food Program, (WFP) to connect small farmers to a larger market by setting up cooperatives at the village level. Training and capacity building of these farmers are essential parts of the program in order to ensure that a quality product is passed on to the recipient. Above, Niyonsaba Gaspard (16) harvests corn in Musaza village in Eastern Rwanda.

For the first time this year, the World Food Program held a trade fair in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital city. The forum was an opportunity for food buyers to connect with P4P’s small farmers cooperatives from different parts the country. By pooling their resources and selling their food in bulk, Rwandan small farmers are now not only supplying food to the WFP but also exporting it to other markets in East Africa and beyond. Above, women from the COACNU in Musaza cooperative winnow corn outside their co-op’s headquarters before it’s weighed, bagged and shipped off to Kigali.

For decades small farmers have been crippled by lack of access to markets despite their geographic proximity to food buyers and recipients. By forming into cooperatives, farmers now have an opportunity to enter the market and sell their surplus harvest at competitive prices. Buyers like the WFP can distribute their food aid more quickly without having to pay for pricey freight and insurance costs when buying from outside. It’s a win-win situation for buyers and farmers.

Food aid from the west hasn’t been discontinued. Rwanda does not yet have the capacity to completely provide for itself and the refugees within its borders. But as the Purchase for Progress effort is scaled up, we can look forward to a day when Africa and other developing areas are food secure. P4P is working in 21 countries world-wide, 15 of which are in Africa.

You would think as much as I’ve photographed the lives of women that they were getting preferential treatment here in Africa. Sadly in most cases it is the opposite. Though women are increasingly gaining more roles in government, Liberia’s current president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, remains the first and only elected female head of state on the continent. Although countries like Uganda and Rwanda do have significant female representation in parliament (in both it’s mandated by law), this inclusion hardly ever trickles down to the village level. Last year there was quite an uproar in Sierra Leone when a woman made a bid to become chief. Places where women are marginalized are often places where crimes against them go ignored and unpunished.

As part of my most recent assignment with AcionAid, I visited the Women Won’t Wait Centre in Mubende, western Uganda. The center is one of four such locations in Uganda run by ActionAid where women can seek safety from domestic violence. Furthermore, women have access to counselors and even a lawyer at each of these shelters. Above, Nagabugo Agnes (r) seeks advice from a counselor at the center in Mubende. “I heard about this program on the radio,” she says. “I’m feeling good. I hope my problems will be solved here.” The NGO works hard at getting the word out to women before it’s too late, both by informing women of their legal rights and empowering them speak out and effect change in their governments and communities.

Take the case of Naziwa Annette, shown above, age 20. One evening she was severely beaten by her husband, but when she turned to the police, her husband fled the village. The police and local officials said they were powerless to act until Naziwa and her family came up with facilitation fees for the investigation. Two weeks later, while the family was scrounging up what they could, Naziwa’s husband returned and, in a fit of rage, severed both of her hands in front of her mother and daughter. Following ActionAid’s intervention Naziwa’s husband was caught, prosecuted, and imprisoned. Today Naziwa’s mother Patricia cares for her daughter and granddaughter.

This past Women’s Day Naziwa marched through the streets of Mubende along with other women who have been victims of domestic or gender based violence, brass band in tow. Hundreds of supporters from the local community, both men and women, trailed in their wake. It was a bold move on the part of these women and a sign of hope to those that still suffer. To express your own support for these women visit ActionAid’s website.

I haven’t been in the States during International Women’s Day in quite a while. Unless things have drastically changed, I can’t remember it being a big deal there. In Africa things are different. Currently I’m in Western Uganda gearing up to photograph a Women’s Day march and rally as part of a larger assignment for ActionAid. This coming Tuesday marks the 100th annual celebration of the event. Before I get to that however, detailing my previous assignment with the Uganda Women’s Health Initiative couldn’t be more appropriate for the occasion.

One of UWHI’s main programs is to deal with the diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer, which is the leading cause of death for women in Uganda outside the child bearing age bracket. A joint study by the Uganda Ministry of Health and PATH found that 67% of bed occupancy in the gynecological ward of Mulago Hospital, Uganda’s largest, is of cervical cancer cases and 70% of the women who die in this ward are cervical cancer patients.

Above, Mrs. Christine Babirye, diagnosed with cervical cancer last year, now receives radiation therapy at Mulago Hospital in Kampala. The machine, procured with the help of the Uganda Women’s Health Initiative, is one of only a few in East Africa and the only such one in Uganda. Patients travel from Rwanda, Southern Sudan, and the DRC to receive radiation therapy here at Mulago.

Even in developed countries, treatment options for advanced stages of cancer are extremely limited. Consequently, UWHI puts most of its efforts into screening and prevention. The organization works out of two separate clinics in Kampala to provide free breast and cervical cancer screenings each weekday to any woman who walks in. Nurses and midwives of the Uganda Women’s Health Initiative also have the capacity for treating precancerous lesions at the clinics. They have supplied training and equipment to another such clinic in the eastern town of Mbale.

Women whose cancer has passed all early treatment options must be referred to Mulago in Kampala. Because of the burden of transport and being away from their homes and families, some women never seek treatment for their cancer and inevitably succumb to it. For those who can make the journey to the capital, the Uganda Women’s Health Initiative has constructed a hostel where, for a nominal fee of about $4.25 per month, women can stay while receiving radiotherapy treatment. Thus more women are likely to make the journey to the capital to receive radiation to treat their cancer.

Uganda Women’s Health Initiative, in collaboration with University College, London, has also pioneered a number of studies focused on reducing women’s postpartum hemorrhaging following birth, as well as techniques to reduce child mortality in a country where giving birth is one of the most dangerous things a women can do. Results and details from these studies shall remain undisclosed until their publication.

In addition to continuing their work in maternal and infant mortality, the UWHI hopes to scale up efforts for the treatment and prevention of cervical cancer in Uganda by establishing treatment and screening centers in each of Uganda’s 100+ districts.