jake lyell photography (blog) » Personal Work

gray days, Amuria District

Jake — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:31:23 +0000

I’ve made remote Amuria District my base this year. However, I may not be able to go back for some time as all the roadways into the main town have been rendered impassable by floods. A month ago we were wondering if the rain was ever going to start. Now it has come full-force, isolating villages, bringing down huts, and flooding farmers’ fields. For the moment, more work from PSI has kept me in Kampala. Below, a motion picture of the dreary view from my concrete house in Amuria town.

Nature is never kind in this part of Uganda. Far from the dependable, fertile, rolling hills and mountains of the west, the eastern land of the Teso tribe almost counts on nature’s capriciousness, alternating between flood and famine. “Every year it changes,” says Samuel Opio, a resident of Kapelebyong, a sub-county of Amuria District. “Some years there’s too much sunshine, some years too much rain. This year the rain started in March, and it has already resulted in floods.”

Last year only a few showers fell from the sky causing widespread hunger and skyrocketing food prices. Conversely, 2006-2007 saw some of the worst flooding in memory in northeast Uganda. The devastating waters affected 17 districts and resulted in a 60% crop loss in the northeast, a delayed second planting season, the uprooting and relocation of entire villages, and the outbreak of waterborne diseases like cholera.

There’s isn’t one stretch of tarmac in Amuria District. All the roads are as you see them below. The sandy red mud turns into an all out slip n’ slide at the slightest downpour. While being based out of such a remote area of East Africa has had it’s rewards, it’s also quite challenging.

The village of Asuksuk in Amuria District’s Kapelebyong sub-county has been particularly hard-hit by flooding this year. Mr. Philipo Odella (pictured below) has lost nearly his entire harvest of cassava, peanuts, corn, millet and sorghum. Walking through his cassava fields things look pretty green, but you can smell the roots starting to rot below. “Even if I pull them (the cassava root) up now, there’s not even any sunshine to dry them out.”

“Why not grow rice?,” I counter, but the irregularity of rainfall from week to week makes it too risky a prospect.

“We have appealed to the sub-county headquarters and we are hoping for word that we’ll receive tents and food” says John Robert Ogwang, a Kapelebyong LC (local council leader) and resident of Asuksuk village. While the loss of home and harvest now is nowhere near as widespread as it was three years ago, this is of little comfort to those in Kapelebyong, where most endure the heavy rains in delicate grass huts.

Because they’re there…

Jake — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:39:46 +0000

On the Road… Kondoa District

Jake — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:25:48 +0000

Beginning a week ago, I’ve left my “desk” for a road trip across East Africa to shoot for myself for a little while. I began where I live in the Kilimanjaro Region and have headed South-West, into Central Tanzania. I don’t have too much of a plan but hope to end up somewhere in Uganda. Highlights from the first few days, in Kondoa District, are below.

My bus broke down toward the end of the journey to Kondoa, prompting me to walk for two hours to the next town.

Various stages of dinner:

Holy Ghost Power

Jake — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:17:13 +0000

The Spirit was unbridled on Sunday down at the Huduma ya Ephata, where I sometimes attend services. I prefer a quieter, more contemplative service and it’s not usually quite this charismatic. However, when the Spirit descends you’ve got to, sometimes literally, roll with it.

Fighting Chance

Jake — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:36:43 +0000

Education is neither universal nor compulsory. Most people have no choice but the out-of-pocket health care plan. Tanzania is anything but the land of opportunity. At least the kids at Light in Africa have a chance at a fruitful, prosperous life. Often times it is a better chance than those living outside the walls of these children’s homes in the Kilimanjaro Region.

The Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania’s most populous outside of Dar es Salaam, is home to some 20,000 orphaned children. The idea of immediate family in Sub-Saharan Africa extends beyond the borders of mother, father, son and daughter; the majority of those without surviving parents stay with aunts and uncles, cousins or grandparents. Where this is not financially feasible, where home life has been deemed unsuitable, or where the child has no surviving relatives, they enter life in a children’s home.

The region, like many other populous areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, is still suffering the effects of the AIDS crisis that began to spread here in the mid-1980s. Around a third of the 150 children in Light in Africa’s care are HIV positive. Thanks to the strict antiretroviral treatment made possible by the Global Fund and PEPFAR, most are living normal lives and on the surface seem oblivious to the virus in their bodies.

Nevertheless, life can be a struggle here. HIV positive at ten years of age, Abraham has been through more troubles than one person should see in a lifetime, yet still manages to constantly wear an engaging smile. His parents died of AIDS related illness when Abraham was very young. After being shuffled around between various family members he came to live at a children’s home in the town of Boma Ng’ombe. It folded due to financial difficulty, and he, along with 24 other children living there, came to LIA. At school Abraham’s eyes grew too tired to carry on reading or studying after 45 minutes at a time. It was soon discovered he has cancer of the eyes (though he himself is unaware, thinking it is only allergies). Unable to continue in school but eager to learn, Abraham carries out an independent study program with volunteers at LIA.

There was a thunderstorm and a power outage last week. I thought it would be Abraham’s last night – sweat pouring off him, heart beating like a racehorse. He was visibly in pain. After nursing malaria during the day, his fever climbed to 40 degrees during the night. At this point Mama Lynn drove him to hospital where his condition stabilized.

Things aren’t quite so dramatic in Yohannas’ life (pictured above). At age 11, he’s learning to count and make sense of numbers. Getting from one to five is not a problem. However, if you ask him to count to ten he has trouble even getting to four. Still street savvy, he spent the last two years sleeping on the streets of Moshi and knows how to spend a fifty or hundred shilling piece, making change when necessary. However, since the 50 shilling coin is the smallest unit of currency, it’s difficult for him to get his mind around the fact that the numbers don’t start at 50 or that a 50 shilling piece actually stands for 50 smaller units. When I counted out a pile of 50 small stones, he didn’t believe what 50 looked like and had to get another child to confirm the quantity. Progress is slow.

At Amani Farm, a large 6 acre plot of land owned by Light in Africa in Boma Ng’ombe, things are moving more swiftly. Construction is nearing completion on cement post making facilities. Cement posts, each 9 feet tall, are used to fence property around here, as wooden posts are quickly consumed by termites. LIA currently has a need for 3,000 of them to fence compounds in Boma Ng’ombe and Mererani. Two older boys, Frank (17, above) and Eliazor (19) are the first to learn the trade and have been putting in long hours helping the hired builder, Joshua (below), with the prep work.

The workforce is the only option for these boys. Both of them HIV positive, Frank never took much to education and Eliazor spent much of the last four years ailing at home in his grandmother’s bed without proper nutrition or access to needed ARV drugs. Eliazor came to LIA with a t-cell count of just 0.6, a level so close to death’s door that it’s a miracle he’s now shoveling dirt two years later.

I’ve been spending my days as a foreman and laborer on the cement post project at Amani Farm, at times feeling like a post myself, baking below the scorching sun. The boys will be paid a wage for each post they make. LIA will buy the cement posts for less than they can be purchased in town, but at a price where the boys will still make a healthy profit. Sales and profits will be put into a bank account to buy supplies to make additional posts.

Depending on how many they make in the next year, the boys should have a small trust fund each left over in the bank with which they can set out on their own, no longer dependent on LIA’s help. This is just the first stage of the Amani farm project, a project that is meant to wean these young men off dependency and prepare them for the real world. While most children here will continue on to secondary school and hopefully university, LIA is planning other projects, such as goat and pig farming at Amani Farm, for those that don’t.

Light in Africa is now entering its ninth year of service to orphans in the Kilimanjaro region. As the influx of new and younger children continues, some of the children who began living here during LIA’s infancy are soon approaching the time when they must leave and set out on their own. While preparing these children for self-sufficiency is mostly uncharted territory, it is a challenge that is being met head on today.

Visit Light in Africa‘s website to help in the work being done there. The names of the children mentioned in this entry have been changed for the sake of confidentiality and protection.

at home in RVA

Jake — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:05:54 +0000

It may appear that the only time I take my camera out when I’m in Richmond is when I’m at a party. This isn’t exactly true, but my friends have been the extent of my documentary endeavors since Christmas. Over the last few weeks I’ve been sharpening my eye and testing out new equipment at the expense of those closest to me (along with their pets) in preparation for an upcoming assignment in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition to testing out my new Canon 5D Mark II SLR camera, I’ve been refining my use of flash with ambient light, especially outdoors (see the last pics of my friend Justin in the Manchester district’s train yards). I’ve also been trying out my new camera’s ability to shoot HD video. In the past, some clients have asked if I offer video as part of my services; I hope I’ll soon be comfortable answering in the affirmative. The 5D Mark II is nice, but I’m not sure I see too much difference in the extra 10 megapixels it has over its predecessor, the just plain 5D, but the video option makes it well worth the transition.

It’s been since November since I’ve been out of the country and I’ve been itching to leave again. I may be working my way toward a semi-permanent transition to living and working out of East Africa, though I won’t be traveling there on this trip. Beginning the 27th I’ll be in Cameroon with Malawi to follow after that. I’ll try to post some images while on the road.

(almost) left behind

Jake — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:03:16 +0000

This week I started cleaning out hard drives of the some of the superfluous images from last year’s assignments. I deleted quite a bit, but I also found some photographs that I previously thought either didn’t pass muster or that didn’t fit into a thematic essay. Some turned out to be real gems and a few will likely end up in my portfolio. I was blessed to be able to travel a great deal in 2008. These images come from Ecuador, Peru, Zambia, Tanzania, Armenia and Georgia.

“I need a bailout too.”

Jake — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 00:38:56 +0000

We do need to have a healthy economy and we do need wealthy people in our society if we’re to accomplish our goals of halving extreme poverty by 2015. I just hope when all this is over we can devote as much energy to catastrophes outside our borders as we do to our current economic crisis. Not likely.

Around a third of the world’s people still can’t afford the necessities of life: health care, proper housing, education, sometimes even food. As long as we’re shelling out all this cash to companies that can’t seem to run themselves properly, why not throw a in little earmark for people like Karen Lopez, pictured above in her neighborhood in Peru’s Amazon Basin.

My Grandmother the Obama Fan

Jake — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:17:56 +0000

So I am back from Peru now. I have a lot of great photographs from Lima, but before I get to those, many people ask what I do when I’m at home. Here’s a little bit of insight into my life in Virginia…

I don’t put my camera down when I’m back home, though I’m not as good at toting it around as I am when I’m on assignment. I’m still trying to get into the mentality that I am always on assignment, even when I’m not in a foreign country. On Wednesday I went down to Chesapeake, a 90 minute drive, to hang out with my grandmother. Above, our lunch outing at her favorite restaurant, the Pirate’s Cove.

At 85, my grandmother still gets out and does her own shopping and errand running, though at a slightly slower pace than she’s perhaps used to. Her shopping destination of choice: Walmart, or Walmark as she calls it. For her, nothing beats the convenience of one -stop shopping.

My grandmother likes to hear about my latest travels and look over my photographs. My late grandfather was a Chief in the US Navy and their family spent years in Japan and Korea, two countries where I have yet to travel. She also keeps up with politics and world affairs and can talk my ear off about US history since 1942 as if it were yesterday. The war in Iraq in particular is an issue that irks her, and one on which she speaks out.

In my grandparents’ day, war was a last resort and something to be avoided at all costs. She is still angry at the casual, hasty way in which our country invaded Iraq, and the continued expenditure of resources there. McCain’s continued support for the war is one of the reasons she’s casting her vote for Obama in November. “McCain will just go along with what Bush has done. He’s a Republican and we need a Democrat back in office,” she says.

“They talk about him (Obama) being young, this that, and the other, but that’s what we need.” She goes on to compare Obama to JFK: “I remember when he was a young Catholic, and everyone had reservations about voting for him. But I feel the same about Barack Obama, he’s just what the US needs to give us new life. I just think he’s got more ideas about this country moving forward… he’s younger and more energetic.”

Having lived abroad extensively, my grandmother is also worried about the way our country is perceived throughout the world: “Nobody respects the US anymore.” She doesn’t think a McCain presidency would do much to improve our country’s standing. With less than three months to go until election day, the two candidates now appear to be in a statistical dead heat among likely voters. An Obama victory may lie in bringing out unlikely voters who may never have cast a ballot before. One thing’s for certain: I’ll make sure my grandmother gets to the polls on November 4th.

a Change of Scenery – my week in Ireland

Jake — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 20:54:19 +0000

Not exactly an assignment, but still mostly a working week, I’ve recently been in Ireland. The occasion: my friends Ryan and Aoife gathered the closest of their friends and family from throughout the world for a week-long convergence in County Wicklow, just south of Dublin. At the end of the week the two bonded in holy matrimony on a hillside near the town of Blessington.
Though we’ve known each other for about 15 years, Ryan and I became good friends when he returned to Richmond a couple years ago after living in Chicago, Italy and Ireland, respectively. A talented web and graphic designer, we’ve collaborated on a few projects as well. He is the architect of this blog and my forthcoming website. Both of us well traveled, we share a love of other cultures and ways of life. Shown above on the windy moors, Ryan holds on for dear life.

Aoife, from Dublin, was studying abroad in Chicago when she and Ryan met. She then studied in Italy and Ryan went with her. Along the way, the pair (shown above) have made friends everywhere they’ve gone, many of whom came to the wedding in Ireland, where at least seven nationalities were represented.

This is the first year that I have begun to take my camera everywhere I go. Not just when I’m in a foreign country but to a party, or movie, or even the grocery store. In many ways, I think it’s changed the way I look at things. For one, I now feel that I’m always on assignment, that I’m always charged with the task of taking interesting photographs, whether or not someone has commissioned them.

As a photographer who seldom takes a photograph that doesn’t include a human being, I concentrated more on the people of Ireland and their environments than on it’s beautifully green landscapes. Here I was able to gain more confidence in approaching subjects to ask if they’ll allow me to photograph them, and seldom was I turned down. Carrying my camera with me at all times forced me to be so bold, lest I return to the hotel empty-handed. Above, a retired man outside his tenement building north of the River Liffey. Below, school kids take the bus from Dublin to Blessington. “Are you some sort of famous photographer?” the girl asks. “Not yet,” I jokingly reply.

To call me a devoted U2 fan would be an understatement. Though we stayed out in the countryside, I made several day trips into the band’s hometown of Dublin, keeping my eyes peeled the entire time for U2 landmarks and even once sipping a pint of Guiness in a bar owned and frequented by Bono and The Edge. U2′s Dublin was a Mecca of sorts to me. Never am I so berated for the love of a band than among my own circle of friends in the US, who constantly poke fun at Bono to annoy me. It was great to be amongst allies.

Though this is the first time I’ve visited, it is apparent that today’s Dublin is not the same city of the 80s and 90s. Although in some sectors it has not lost its working class and industrial flavor, Dublin is in many ways a posh and metropolitan European capital. It is clearly undergoing an identity crisis. Despite being Europe’s fastest growing economy and a top destination for immigrants from Eastern Europe, voters recently rejected the Lisbon Treaty, a European Union constitution-of-sorts that streamlined EU integration and further centralized power in Brussels.

Ireland is dotted with ancient and medieval sites. On a day trip I visited Glendalough along with Bill, Jeremy (fellow Richmonders) and Andreas of Germany. The site of an ancient Christian monastery, it was founded around 600AD and today contains ruins of churches, towers and countless headstones. Above, Bill strolls through the graveyard at Glendalough.

Never without a song when there’s a pint in your hand, the week was peppered with Johnny Cash, Guns N Roses and U2 singalongs. These groups seemed to elicit consternation on both sides of the Atlantic, but became the glue that bound our various cultures together.

At the end of the week, a dapper Ryan (above with the best man, Barry) wore less conventional attire for the wedding, even riding into the ceremony on his future father-in-law’s bicycle.

Above, Aoife walks to the altar with her father. She and Ryan were married in a stone enclosure on a country hillside, where friends and family encircled them. The guests then used bits of rope to tie an unbreakable knot around the enclosure, recalling Ryan’s years of training to be an Eagle Scout.

Every step of the wedding was planned by Ryan and Aoife, and it remained true to form for the couple. Shunning tradition and employing symbolism, Ryan even baked the wedding cake (although with some last minute help from his mother).

I’ve shot a fair amount of weddings in the past. I’ve approached them as any other cultural event that I document -as a story to be told. Lately, however, my schedule has been so packed with overseas assignments that booking a wedding has become logistically impossible (I’m writing this entry from an internet cafe in Ecuador).

Last August I had almost booked a last minute wedding. The bride had even sent in her deposit when I got a call to go to China. It was a difficult decision, but I ended up taking the overseas assignment. I now have to put my time and energy into doing what I have endeavored for years to do and what is now happening – photojournalism.

Ryan now lives in Europe. I hope that during my travels I’ll still be able to visit him and Aoife from time to time. The fact that so many of their loved ones traveled thousands of miles to be at the wedding in Ireland is a testament to the kind of steadfast and upstanding friends that they are.

Good times ahead.

Out of Egypt…

Jake — Wed, 02 May 2007 12:54:03 +0000

Okay, so I wasn’t really in Egypt this weekend. These photos were taken at Jockey’s Ridge in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Jockey’s Ridge is a massive sand dune park where extreme adventurers go to hang-glide, sand board, or in my case, just walk around and climb on the dunes. I thought I had the park all to myself but as I was taking some photos of the bare sand dunes, a big group of people came walking over the ridge. At first I thought I’d wait ’til they left but I saw something very surreal in how small and out of place everyone looked on these great piles of sand.

One can draw their own metaphors and Biblical allusions from here….