jake lyell photography (blog)

I’m currently photographing on a four country assignment with BRAC, an NGO based out of Bangladesh. While I wish I could go there too, I’ve just finished up a leg in Liberia and am heading to Tanzania tonight. I first became familiar with BRAC after spotting their program signs at almost every junction in Tanzania directing highway travelers to nearby projects. They gained more attention last year after an agricultural grant from the Gates Foundation, another organization for whom I regularly photograph. Above, a mangrove swamp on the Sierra Leone River in Port Loko.

BRAC works in the areas of microfinance (small loans to individuals), sustainable agriculture, and community health. They primarily work with women and girls in these areas, as women of all ages are more vulnerable in the developing world, more likely to support their families and, as you can see from a past blog entry, doing most of the work here anyway. According to the Gates Foundation, women do about 80% of farm work in the developing world and, of course, a higher percentage of house work.

BRAC started programs in 1972 in Bangladesh, where they are based. Their approach was eventually recognized by the NGO community and began to spread to places like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Sub-Saharan Africa with the help of organizations/people like the Gates Foundation and George Soros. In 2009 BRAC began programs in two West African countries, Sierra Leone and Liberia, countries that were beginning the recovery process after years of civil war. Below, Eva and Rebecca, twin sisters in Jinja, Uganda.

Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee has expanded dramatically since its founding and now offers international programs in rural and urban areas. Most of my time in West Africa was spent in cities of more than a million inhabitants. Below, a bombed out army barracks in central Monrovia, Liberia’s capital.
I have to admit, I was a skeptic of microfinance before coming on this job. I wasn’t sure that debt in any form, no matter how small, could be beneficial to the poor. I was of the mindset that people in poverty should be given the start up capital as grants, not loans. But if I have learned anything from my time here in Africa, it’s that people seldom appreciate what they are freely given. Below, a young woman receives her first loan in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

For instance, when the World Bank wants to improve sanitation in the community, they don’t begin installing new, improved toilets in all village households. History shows that the toilets provided in this way won’t be cared for or used. The best way to go about improving sanitation practices in such a village is to first train local masons with the proper way to build more sanitary, improved toilets and to provide them with the tools to do so. The next step is to employ a group of local people to educate their community about the benefits of having these new toilets installed in (or just outside) their homes. The group then acts as marketers for these toilets. When a member of the local community decides to invest in one of these new toilets, it is used and cared for properly because the villager’s hard-earned money has bought it. I photographed this very scenario in southern Tanzania last year.

The point is that people use, people value, that which they pay for. The same goes for monetary loans. When women take out a loan in order to begin a small business, they work hard and usually make their payments on time. In Annie Walker’s case (pictured above), she began selling smoked fish on the streets of Monrovia, but with BRAC’s assistance that gradually grew into occupying a regular stall at the local market. Now her customers come to her.

There are a number of organizations in the developing world that have microfinance programs. Some of them are no more than banks. BRAC is unique, however. Many of the borrowers also participate in agriculture or community health programs, which I’ll touch on in later posts. BRAC borrowers meet every week in Freetown, Sierra Leone, as shown above, to pay installments on their loan and to discuss challenges and successes. If a woman is having trouble repaying, BRAC wants to know why and tries to help the family through without penalties, if reasons for default are legitimate.

It was a bold but fruitful move for BRAC to establish programs outside the well-trodden areas of East Africa like Uganda and Tanzania. The dynamic is different in the war-torn areas of Sierra Leone and Liberia, where infrastructure is either poor or non-existent. Above all, capital is being injected into some of Africa’s poorest areas, and women and their families are being empowered as a result.

I’m the farthest west I’ve ever been in Africa. I arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city, tonight, which proved no small feat. I waited pretty much all day to fly in from neighboring Liberia – planes around here take off when they want to, without a scheduled departure time. Freetown’s airport lies across a river (with no bridge – ferry is the only means of transportation) and two hours of snarling traffic through the downtown area to the nearest decent hotel. Hence, I had time for some visuals. One observation I’ve made is the similarity between Freetown and Haiti’s Port-au-Prince and Gonaives, with the rolling hills of the teeming cities’ leading down to the waterside and old wreckers lodged aground in the harbor. But unlike pre-quake Port-Au- Prince or Gonaives with buildings old and decrepit for lack of funds for repairs, the buildings here have been bombed or burned out during the 11 year civil war that ended in 2001. I’m here shooting for BRAC. I was in Uganda last week on a similar job, but I’m still working on those photos.

“I went to see the witch doctor for the pain in my bones and legs. He said he was powerless to help me, that I was bewitched by someone more powerful than he. He referred me to another witch doctor. I gave up going after that.” That was many years ago. Elizabeth Ramazan, pictured above, has in her lifetime begun to witness a change, albeit not sweeping, in her village’s approach to healing. At over 70 years of age (she doesn’t know it for certain), she has walked one and a half hours to the medical dispensary organized and funded by Light in Africa at the Lutheran Church in the village of Chekereni in northern Tanzania.

Mrs. Ramazan queues with about 80 other men, women and children who have heard via announcements in their churches, mosques and village meetings that free medical care will be given in Chekereni on this day. The care is basic: an interview with the a doctor, a blood pressure reading and a perhaps a listen to the lungs through the stethoscope. Then it’s on to the nurse to have the recommended prescriptions filled. Below, nurse Grace Boniface (white shirt) fills prescriptions with the help of volunteers at LIA’s dispensary in Kilombero Village.

The ailments found here are all but predictable: parasites for the young, arthritis and hypertension for the old, malaria for all. After 10 patients come through, the dispensary seems to be operating more like an assembly line. Can the simple doling out of all this medicine after a five minute consultation really be effective?

I ask the patients themselves. “This is the only place I receive medical treatment,” says Mrs. Ramazan, who has sought help at this dispensary for five years now. “Nowhere else.”

Mrs. Rolvana Masawe who walked with her two year old child, Kevin, from the village of Kawaya, has been attending for three years: “Here it is easier to get medicine, and we trust the medicine… they’ll sell you anything, ” she says, referring to the sometimes expired or knock-off pills sold in the pharmacies in town. “The first time I came here the doctor prescribed medicine for my daughter and she became well.”

The availability of proper medical care is scarce in rural areas of Tanzania, where more than 80% of the country’s almost 40 million people live. For this reason Light in Africa holds mobile clinics in remote villages like Kilombero and Chekereni, villages that have no doctor or medical dispensaries of their own. They are no substitute for a primary care physician. However, the villagers here have no other option. Below, a woman from the Maasai tribe awaits a consultation outside the dispensary in Kilombero Village.

Perhaps these dispensaries are most effective because of the regularity with which they occur. Every month Light in Africa holds a dispensary in either Chekereni, Kilombero or Mererani, covering each village at least four times a year. By making regular visits, the overall health of the community can be evaluated and more serious health problems can be identified.

Of course, not all ailments can be cured with the popping of a pill. Rebecca Makombe waited in line like the other 174 people that attended LIA’s medical outreach dispensary in the village of Kilombero in Simanjiro District. At 15 years of age, she’s walked with crooked legs the majority of her life because of the poor water quality in her village. She and her mother have come to the dispensary this day to see if LIA could be of any help to her.

There’s something in the water in Simanjiro District– an overabundance of fluoride- where Rebecca (shown above) and many others live who develop crooked legs in their youth. Light in Africa currently houses four children from this district who have recently undergone or who are awaiting operations to correct bone deformities.

Today is Anitovja Suiliman and her son Mwacha’s (both pictured above) first time at the Chekereni medical dispensary. She comes clutching prescriptions from KCMC hospital in Moshi dated four years ago. Now tattered and worn, they lay softly in her hands more like scraps of cloth. Mwacha has a deteriorating eye condition and has been unable to attend school for years now. He sought treatment at KCMC hospital, a four hour drive one way from their home by public transport, four years ago. Only now do they have enough money to fill the prescription. They have come today to ask for funding for the transport and hotel so that they may return to KCMC.

Both Rebecca and Mwatcha’s treatments are currently being funded by volunteers at Light in Africa. Mwatcha receives medicine and regular checkups at KCMC, while Rebecca is currently boarding at a LIA guest house awaiting her operation. Below, LIA volunteers and staff struggle to get to the Kilombero dispensary on time.

When LIA holds a dispensary, anywhere from 75 to 200 people turn up for medical care in the span of a few hours. The fact that so many people seek the help of modern medicine in rural areas is significant. While few will ever admit to a westerner that they seek help from witch doctors, they are still very much in practice in Tanzania.

“Traditional medicine is difficult to categorize,” says Simon Msango, 83, whose parents were both witch doctors. “One kind helps you with herbs that can be found and sometimes they work. Another tries to help you using chickens’ blood or albino body parts. These also create enmity between people by saying that one has bewitched another.” Mr. Msango refers to the killing of over 40 albino Tanzanians since last year, carried out by men hired by witch doctors. According to some witch doctors, the use of albino body parts in potions can bring about riches or the healing of diseases. Of course not all traditional healers dabble in sorcery, now banned as a practice throughout the country after the recent spate of albino murders.

Close to two-thirds of people living in East Africa consult a traditional healer first when trying to cure an ailment. Such healers are highly regarded in rural communities. In many cases, modern medicine simply isn’t available to patients, or if it is, is unaffordable. Hospitals and dispensaries are concentrated in urban areas, sometimes many days’ drive from a rural village, compounding the relatively high cost of treatment. Those living in Kilombero, for instance, are a 90 minute drive from Mererani, the nearest town with a doctor. That’s if a car happens to be going; no public bus does. Arusha is farther afield. A bus leaves on weekdays from a neighboring village at a cost of 3,000 Tanzanian Shillings ($2.30) for one way.

The majority of what is dispensed here are over-the-counter pain killers, de-worming tablets and anti-malaria medication. The anti-malarials are the most expensive, and also the drugs that are furthest out of reach for the populations in Kilombero and Chekereni. Malaria is also the gravest of illnesses should it go untreated, killing more people in Sub-Saharan Africa each year than any other disease. When I contracted malaria two months ago the test and treatment combined cost me 8,800 TS – not even seven US dollars, but far too much for a family living off the land.

As Western countries constantly wrangle with how to fix the cracks in their own health care systems, most Tanzanians’ access to any health care in any form is limited at best. Very few government programs exist. Looking on the bright side, there’s one giant clean slate upon which to write for anyone who dares to pick up the chalk.

I never knew the significance behind breeding seeds, or that it could even be done to produce beneficial results. Without understanding the exact science behind it, I can emphasize that it’s very important – important enough to be able to lift lives out of poverty.

My most recent assignment was here in Tanzania with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation photographing agricultural projects. (If you frequent my blog, you’ll know this subject is familiar territory.) Since 2006, the Gates Foundation has supported an organization headed by Kofi Annan called Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The grantee’s goal is to spark the same agricultural revolution that led to India’s self-sufficiency in grain foods beginning in the mid 1960’s. This is done partially through the Gates PASS (Program for Africa’s Seed Systems) initiative, whose projects I photographed in recent days.

In the 1990’s, an epidemic called Cassava Brown Streak Disease began terrorizing farmers throughout the Zanzibar Archipelago, a series of islands off Tanzania’s eastern coast. Cassava was grown by over 90% of rural households until production all but came to a halt in the early part of this decade. AGRA quickly noticed the devastating consequences of the loss of the staple crop and began empowering local scientists to breed new varieties of cassava that were resistant to the disease. Today, farmers successfully cultivate the crop throughout the archipelago.

Breeding new, disease resistant varieties of crops takes years of educated trial and error. Researchers use their knowledge of dominant and recessive genes combined with expertise in cultivation and crop varieties to make newer, stronger versions, gradually breeding out the unhealthy qualities and leaving in the good. The bulk of this is done in the field amid crop rows, where researchers get their hands dirty – not behind a microscope.

Better, stronger cassava varieties don’t just mean that a family has ample food for the table. Increased crop yields equate to sales at the market after nutritional needs at home have been met. Income generated from market sales can be quite significant. Farmers not only now make a business of selling cassava root, but also the cassava cuttings: small branches placed in the ground that take root, becoming new trees. The sales of his disease resistant cuttings also help to disseminate these better varieties throughout the islands.

More and more, the global development community is realizing that agriculture must be a key concentration in poverty reduction. The majority of the world’s poor live in rural areas after all, where if income is earned, it is usually through farming and animal husbandry. The Gates Foundation, known more for its emphasis on health care and education, has taken broad action in providing top quality seeds to farmers throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

Abundant corn, sesame, and sunflower grow in a Tanseed International demonstration field on Tanzania’s mainland. Like a car dealership showplace, these fields stand gleaming on roadsides throughout the region telling farmers, “This could be you.”

Educating the public by demonstrating the product of good seeds is necessary. The majority of Africa’s farmers do not buy their seeds in stores but instead use what has been saved from the previous year’s harvest. Unwilling, or unable, to make a small financial investment that could double production in a given harvest, most farmers scrape by with smaller yields.

Tanseed is the only company in the region focused on providing quality, locally produced seeds. Other companies selling seeds in the area’s shops have bred their products hundreds or even a thousand miles away in Kenya or Zambia. This company is familiar with the nuances of the local breeds of crops, and the results show.

Even though Tanseed is a private, for-profit institution, its impact was recognized by AGRA in the last three years. Through the Gates Foundation, and AGRA, Tanseed is able to continually breed better kinds of seeds, produce them in large quantities, and sell them to small farmers at an affordable price.

A better seed is a great start, but it can only get you so far. Proper agricultural techniques must be implemented to insure abundant yields. Having a genuine interest in seeing the surrounding community flourish, Tanseed works with local government agricultural extension workers (like social workers for small farmers) to insure that best practices are carried out from planting to harvest.

Concrete results are sometimes actually concrete. Above, a farmer attributes her family’s new house, habitable though still under construction, to last year’s increased crop yields.

The PASS seed project has particular impact because it addresses challenges that are experienced at a local level. However, the same process is implemented in localities throughout 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Though in existence for just three years now, it has already begun to have an impact, and will continue to change lives as more farmers have access to higher quality seeds.

All photographs Copyright 2009

I’m behind on my blogging. I know.
I have an excuse; I’ve just arrived in Tanzania, where I’ll be for the next few months. The internet is so slow here it takes me all day to do what I could do back in the States in an hour. I’ve spent the last several hours trying to upload these photographs, something I think I’ll only be able to do monthly from now on.

I’ve been on the internet since 9 this morning attempting to pay bills and answer emails. My online banking took about 20 minutes just to sign in while the guys next to me in the internet cafe took up all my bandwidth laughing hysterically over old episodes of Tom & Jerry. The very second the page finally loaded, the power went out. Things take longer in Africa, where urgency is seldom found either in an internet connection or a hospital.

These pictures come from a recent assignment with Heifer in Cameroon and Malawi. Some of them are a bit more portraity/commercial in nature than perhaps I would instinctively do. They work well for Heifer, though, and that’s what’s important. These people are happy; their lives have changed for the better. I continue to count it a privilege to document good in the world. There’s not a whole lot out there.

I can’t be sure what comes into mind when you think of Peru but I imagine your thoughts are similar to thoughts of Egypt: ancient ruins and exotic kingdoms. Lately when I mention I’ve been in Peru the next question is usually a bright and inquisitive “Did you visit Machu Pichu?”

Unfortunately I did not, though it’s not a total loss as I much prefer the company of the locals to 50 or so backpacking gringos. While some might have to do a Google search to match the country of my latest destination to its continent, Peru’s ruins, its mountains, culture, customs and even cuisine have put it squarely on most westerners’ mental gazetteer.

This is my second journey into Peru. My first was exactly one year, and maybe 12 or so blog entries, ago. Back then I found some very dire living conditions in the Amazonian city of Iquitos, but nothing as desperate as the struggle for life and death that I’ve witnessed many facing in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Peru can be classified as moderately poor country, where around 44% of people live in poverty and around 13% live in extreme poverty. It is most fortunate that one would be hard pressed to find starvation or rampant levels of HIV infection here. Most people are making do but are still striving for a better quality of life; I suppose we all are. With increasing foreign investment and trade, however, Peru’s economy is expanding. It is a country that is rapidly changing as globalization expands and as people leave their agrarian lifestlye for the cities.

Despite our ever-expanding global village, there remain frontiers so remote in this vast country that their inhabitants have never had contact with outsiders. Though my most recent journey was not so pioneering as to have stumbled upon undiscovered peoples, it is possible that Christian (writer and traveling companion) and I were the first gringos ever to visit these villages, at least for some time. Christian and I actually began the Peruvian leg of our trip in the warm and dusty region of Piura, near the Pacific Coast. We took a detour to the Andes in search of photographs and stories of alpacas.

Somewhere between the cities of Chiclayo and Cajamarca (I still haven’t pinpointed exactly where) lies Incawasi, a district of Lambeyeque province. In the villages of Incawasi (Quechua meaning House of the Incas) ancient tradition continues to thrive. The district’s inhabitants continue to adorn themselves in colorful dress while maintaining their agro-centric lifestyle much as they have for centuries past. At first I was want to think that the colorful garb was a show for the newly arrived visitors, that I was experiencing the equivalent of an historical reenactment at Colonial Williamsburg.

However, not much has changed here in the past 500 years since the fall of the Inca Empire. Though tourism is a massive industry in Peru, the isolated villages of the North remain a little-traveled backwater. Heifer began to work in this impoverished area a little over two years ago, providing villagers with instruction in productive farming, tree-planting and sustainable agriculture. Villagers received guinea pigs, used as food (they love them up here) and especially prized for their fertility, as well as alpaca, whose wool is used to make clothing or is sold or bartered for goods.

Above, Christian and Feliciana Calderon (37) converse though two translators, one for Spanish, another for Quechua. Here at 13,000 feet, Heifer is helping to streamline Andean agrarian traditions such as irrigation, fishing and the domestication of animals such as llamas and alpacas. Heifer is also introducing new conventions such as reforestry and gender equality, the latter of which is taking some time to catch on.

I say that not much has changed here in the last 500 years. The quality of life has improved somewhat in Incawasi since Heifer began working here two years ago, but Incawasi then fared just the same as it had two hundred years ago. The real change has come within our own society, so that we now look at another that has not kept pace with ours and say that lack of education among children is unacceptable, or that land to work and proper shelter in which to live is a fundamental right.

The people of Incawasi will not starve without Heifer’s help, but it is very likely that without the aid of the guinea pig or alpaca projects here, this district would lag a century behind in its development. Because of Heifer, it is on track to becoming not only a self-sustaining community, but a healthy and prosperous one. Above, Martina Sanchez Barrios (26) weaves clothing from sheep and alpaca wool.

The land of el Morante, 100 miles north-west of Incawasi couldn’t be any more different from the nearby Andean communities. Lying at sea level, this dusty, parched land is almost uninhabitable; in fact it was deemed such until recently. The government owned the once-vacant land here but in the last two decades began leasing it to lower income city dwellers who wanted to move in to make new lives for their families.

The new community is made up of hardy pioneers who constantly fight the region’s adverse conditions in order survive and, in some cases, prosper. Their greatest challenge: water. Unlike Incawasi, where fresh water flows freely from springs into strategically engineered furrows, the people of el Morante must trek long distances to the nearest watering hole.

Some families have closer access than others. However, for those we visited the journey involved waking each morning at 3 o’clock, loading up their donkeys with empty barrels and caravaning two and a half hours to the well. If all goes as planned, they will return home again, their barrels full, by 11AM, just as they heat of the day becomes most unbearable. Above, Perpetuo Cueva (42) and his neighbor Yolmer Delgado (41, far distance) travel to the well to fetch the day’s water. In the interest of sleep, we did not join them for the entire journey, traveling by truck to meet them at daybreak along the way.

Gender roles vary from culture to culture, especially in the developing world where they are often clearly defined. In el Morante it is the job of the men to fetch the water, unlike in African societies where the women inherit the task. The men of el Morante are charged about 35 cents per barrel, money that goes toward upkeep of the well and gasoline to fuel the pump that brings it from 180 meters underground. Because the water is so far below ground, building a second well is no small feat, and so for the moment this well must meet the needs of communities far and near.

Above, Maria Cuenca (44) takes laundry off the line. It doesn’t take long to dry here. A new well which is under construction just outside her house will save her husband 5 hours of commute time a day. Despite this, all of her children have left the area in pursuit of an easier life in Peru’s cities. Citizens here used to petition the government and NGOs to bring running water to the villages. They have now realized they would not be able to afford the subsequent spike in property values as a result of the service.

Sheep and goats are the only animals that people raise out here. It’s much too dry for cattle. Below, Madeline Quispe (38) and her husband Yolmer Delgado (41) have the best looking garden in all of el Morante, raising beans, tomatoes and kasava. They use manure from their goats as fertilizer and water from the well to irrigate the sandy soil.


Roxanna Garrido (28, far right) is the sole teacher at this one room school in el Morante. She technically lives in the city of Piura, three hours away. She comes to the village for five days at a time and returns home on the weekends. All of her students come from families that are Heifer participants. The fact that they are able to afford the services of a qualified teacher to lead the classroom is a result of extra income earned as a Heifer Project participants.

Whether it’s the high cool villages of the Andes or the dry scrub desert of el Morante, the demanding life of these inhabitants puts our own into perspective, making life in Western society, with all its stresses, feel like a vacation. Those of us who have experienced want in our lifetime should be ever grateful of our plight.

Copyright 2008 Jake Lyell Photography