jake lyell photography (blog)

It’s my job to shove my camera in people’s faces. Though I’m usually more tactful and delicate than that, it sometimes feels like I’m intruding beyond my bounds – at times being insensitive. Today was one of those days. I’m in Georgia (the Republic) and I’ve spent the day photographing some of those displaced by the recent war between Georgia and Russia.

It can be distressing to be in the same room with the victims, hearing their stories of how their homes were destroyed, fields burnt, loved ones killed, while I am forced to walk a thin line between having a sympathetic ear and getting the job done.

These people have lost virtually (or almost) everything except their lives. Even if they had homes to which they could return, the political situation in South Ossetia, where most refugees shown here are from, is not welcome to ethnic Georgians and is still occupied today by Russian troops.

“Its very difficult for a Georgian living in Tskhinvali (South Ossetia’s capital); they kill Georgians there,” says Natia Bdziharashvili, 25 (shown above in black). “So why do you want to return?” I ask through my interpreter. “Because I was born there. Every blade of grass and every stone is ours. It is my motherland.”

These photos were taken in the town of Gori, the nearest Georgian town outside of the separatist province of South Ossetia. It is the hometown of Joseph Stalin. Oddly enough, he’s still admired here despite the recent display of Soviet-era aggression by Vladymir Putin. Above, a statue of Stalin stands in Gori’s main square. These days, the Red Cross uses its spacious tarmac to park their distribution trucks.

The Gori area experienced casualties and heavy damage when Russia invaded Georgia proper after pushing the Georgian army out of South Ossetia. Above, a government contractor works to repair the bomb-damaged home of Larama Tlashadze in central Gori.

The small country of Georgia is providing shelter for about 90,000 people left homeless as a result of the recent conflict with Russia and the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Many are living in the Gori area. The Georgian government, in conjunction with NGOs like the Red Cross, has moved efficiently to provide food and shelter for the refugees and to restore damaged homes when possible. Some live in refugee camps like the one shown above located in Gori’s central park. Others live in schools. Below, Valia Baryachvili is an ethnic Russian whose home in a border village was destroyed by Russian troops.
Fearing that most would not be able to return to their homes, the Georgian government immediately began constructing homes outside of South Ossetia for the war-torn region’s former residents. Residents in the refugee camps complain that such housing is sparse compared to the large farm estates where many lived before the war. It is the goal of Heifer International, with whom I am now on assignment, to begin agricultural and sustainable farming projects with refugees once they move out of temporary housing.

These projects will help the refugees establish themselves in the area and begin earning an income. Below, a woman shows me an image captured on her mobile phone of the shell of her war-damaged home.

The compensation for my discomfort regarding these photographs came from the subjects themselves. Many were eager to tell their story. Many welcomed me into their quarters with whatever they could offer: a chair, some chocolate, a cup of coffee. I hope in turn I will have had some small part in the process of returning their lives to a state of normalcy.

Parts of Haiti are under 16 feet of water this week. Over the past month the country has been inundated with heavy rains brought by four storms: Fay, Gustave, Hanna and Ike. Caribbean nations are often the first to bear the brunt of these powerful storms that form in the Atlantic.

Last December I photographed for ten days in Haiti. Most of the time was spent in the Northern port city of Gonaives, where these photos were taken. Today Gonaives is the scene of some of the most widespread devastation wrought by recent storms in this developing nation that sits just a stone’s throw away from the Florida coast.

Gonaives occupies a low plain between the bay to the west and the mountains to the north and east. Haiti is known for its extensive deforestation, and the mountains around this city are representatives of this trend. When rains come, the surrounding hills become quickly saturated, soon flooding the town below. A witness in Gonaives during the recent tropical storm Hanna described this scenario as a “river of mud” flowing off the hills and into the town.

Above, this is what Gonaives looks like on a good day: trash piled up around pools of standing water. Even when rains have long since passed, flooding is a problem in this city. Most of Gonaives has no organized trash collection, nor any structured drainage system. The water crested this week at 16 feet and has now gone down to about chest level.

This is a busy city of 300,000 to 500,000 depending on how much of the surrounding area one takes into account. If you can look past the garbage and sewage in the street, it has a bit of an old world charm. Most of the activity centers around the lively port and market which are in close proximity to one another.

Back in December I discovered that the Haitian government had commissioned a French private contractor to build drainage canals throughout the city in order to channel water from the hills outside town to the bay. These canals were begun, but very early in the process the funding disappeared and the project was never completed.

In addition to a terrible eye sore, these canals became a dumping ground for the city’s waste and a breeding pool for disease carrying mosquitoes. Now that these cesspools throughout the city have flooded, the humanitarian catastrophe will surely be compounded. For more on these canals see my post from last December.

It’s difficult to asses the full scale of the disaster in Haiti as flood waters have yet to fully recede and some areas still remain inaccessible. Higher estimates put the death toll in the 700s. Gonaives remains largely deserted as people continue to stay in shelters outside town. Those that remained were forced to stay on the rooftops of their houses in order to fend off looters.

Though the recent storms in Haiti have proved disastrous, the destruction they leave behind is still not on the scale of the worst hurricane in recent memory: Hurricane Jeanne. In 2004 Jeanne pounded Haiti’s northern mountains with rain before it came sweeping into Gonaives killing 2800 of the city’s residents.

After all this it is clear that Gonaives’ finest asset is its people. They are patient, tenacious, and most of all, resilient. In this the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, most have no choice but to return to town and attempt to rebuild lives with whatever the storms capriciously left intact.

Rusty ghost ships linger in the city’s harbor, left over from the days of François Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude, who ruled the country from 1957 to 1986. Despite it being common knowledge that these presidents looted tens of millions of dollars from Haiti’s coffers, there is a longing for the return of the old leadership. The New York Times recently reported growing frustration by Haiti’s poorest who have seen security lapse, food grow scarce and garbage pile up in their streets. Life was more stable under the rule of harsh dictators. Reforms introduced by current president Rene Préval have been slow to take effect.

The national government has such little power here, it cannot coordinate disaster preparedness or response in such emergency situations as were experienced in the past month. It is forced to rely on humanitarian efforts of the UN and other NGOs for relief efforts. Such is life in a fledgling democracy that seems to take more orders from the wind and the rain than from the people themselves.

CARE is contributing to the relief effort in Gonaives.
Words & Images Copyright 2008 Jake Lyell Photography

Peru’s capital is a teeming megalopolis of street vendors, exhaust fumes, cathedrals and bright lights. Following my most recent assignment with Heifer, I spent four days photographing some of Lima’s 8 million residents. I’ve divvied up the following photographs into what became four dominate themes: work, devotion, transit and leisure. From the wealthy suburbs of Miraflores to the up-and-coming pueblo joven of Villa Maria, Lima enjoys a stronger economy than the rest of this developing country. For this reason, many leave their homes elsewhere to make new lives in this boomtown on the Pacific.

Work…








Devotion…










Transit…











Leisure…















All photos Copyright 2008 Jake Lyell Photography

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

Traveling in the developing world can wear on one’s conscience. Although the simplicity of lifestyle and overwhelming hospitality found there can be extraordinary, more often than not, essential needs are not being met, and daily life is a struggle. As my friend, writer Christian DeVries put it while remarking how fortunate we were to be born in America, we (Westerners) hit the jackpot in the global lottery.

Lucky we are indeed. It is my observation that those in the States, regardless of background, who truly work hard and make good decisions can provide for their own needs and those of their family and possibly even save a bit on the side. This is not the case in many places in the world. Work ethic is certainly an essential ingredient in success; but drive, determination and hard work mean nothing when the pillars of society are not in place to reward such attributes.

These same thoughts were stirring in my mind last year while in an open-air restaurant in Iquitos, Peru, on the Amazon River. Until a few moments prior my greatest anxiety was how I might purge my mouth of the intolerable fiery sensation leftover from consuming the world’s hottest chili pepper that had innocently garnished my plate of octopus and crawfish.

A young man, about my age approached my table peddling newspapers, magazines and talk time for mobile phones. Without success at mine, I watched him as he criss-crossed to each table in the crowded restaurant without making one sale. I could genuinely feel the discouragement in my own heart that I’m sure he felt inside, and I also knew that this discouragement was nothing new to him. I wondered what kind of home he might go back to empty handed that evening.

What is different about my assignments with Heifer International is that the day is spent documenting progress and change. I dwell on successes in farming, education, economy and family life, not sickness, injustice and upheaval. The people I photograph, if they haven’t already done so, are climbing farther out of the desperate circumstances into which they were born. Never is it discouraging work. On the contrary, it is inspiring.

Heifer Project International (HPI) is a development organization that fights poverty and hunger by implementing long-term agricultural programs that lead to self-sustainability. Usually that program is an integrated approach that combines a variety of solutions to meet this goal, helping the farmers along the way with whatever materials or training they may need. For example, Mr. Ndossi, above right, received cows from Heifer. He uses milk from the cows that he doesn’t drink to make cheese and sells it in the market. He spreads the cows’ manure on his coffee and banana trees as fertilizer, producing more at harvest time as a result. He also shovels the manure into a pit where it gives off methane. The methane is piped into his home where it used to light lamps and as fuel on his gas stove. Mr. Ndossi has no need to chop down trees for firewood or buy candles in the market. He has plenty to eat and earns a steady income.

On my third assignment with the NGO, I have recently been traveling in Tanzania and Zambia. While it’s true that I mention Heifer quite a bit in this forum, it’s not simply because they are a client; Heifer’s approach to ending poverty works, and to this I am a witness. Above, Yedida Matonya is a Heifer recipient (project participant) near Dodoma, in central Tanzania. Below, participant Ryness Himululi helps her daughter Jennifer with her school work near Ndola, in Zambia’s Copperbelt.

Heifer’s effectiveness as an NGO can be attributed in part to its community-based organization. More often than not, community groups will approach Heifer after hearing of the success of other project farmers, rather than the other way around. After a dialog with local HPI country staff, Heifer will then form an animal or agricultural project that best fits the needs of the given geographic area. Below, Kulwa Selemani farms chickens in Tanzania’s Coastal Province, near Dar Es Salaam.

As a project is established, country staff select members of the local community to act as intermediaries between themselves and the project participants. Supervisors must show leadership skills and a desire to help their neighbors before undergoing training on how best to implement Heifer’s 12 cornerstones (ideals such as Sustainability and Self-Reliance) in the community. Sister Alexandra Buretta (below) is one such person. At the age of 69, she supervises a Heifer pig project with over 200 participants in various villages on Tanzania’s Mt. Kilimanjaro. By using community-based supervisors and local staff, HPI employees are already versed in the language, culture and community nuances in which they operate.

Tourism is booming in and around Arusha, about an hour west of the great mountain. The city is the gateway both to Serengetti National Park, where wide-eyed travelers come to spy big game like elephants and giraffe, and the snow-capped Kilimanjaro, where trekkers can ascend Africa’s highest peak. Many Tanzanians come here in hopes of finding employment in the tourism industry. Most residents in the area, however, benefit little from the constant influx of foreigners to the area.

In 1999, residents of the Village of Mkuru (above) approached Heifer International and requested assistance. The village, located in a dry, isolated region one hour North East of Arusha, lies at the base of Mt. Meru. The residents here are members of East Africa’s formerly nomadic Masai Tribe. In 1999, children in Mkuru did not receive any formal education. Soil quality was low due to overgrazing, and infant mortality was high from lack of access to medical facilities. Heifer concluded that cows or sheep were not what the village needed to improve their way of life. Though these are familiar livestock to the Masai, HPI in turn introduced 12 camels to the village, along with training in veterinary care, plowing, and camel breeding.

You won’t find many camels farther south than Northern Kenya’s Chalbi desert. Though it took a while to catch on down here, they turned out to be just what Mkuru needed. In the dry, harsh conditions of the village, the grazing habits of sheep and cows make them ultimately unsustainable, eating the vegetation that does grow and trampling away what is left. Camels do not compete with such livestock, preferring thorny scrub brush to grass; and unlike hooves, their soft padded feet don’t contribute to soil erosion. Known for trekking long distances without needing to refuel, camels are shoe-ins for the area’s low water table.

“When we get camels we are happy because they changed our life,” says village chairman Isaya Shakwet (above right). “Camels can carry a lot of goods like water and supplies. We are able to take people to the hospital by camel.” The improvements are many. The overall nutrition of the village has improved since 1999 as residents are drinking milk from the camels. In addition to the animal’s use for its plowing abilities, crop yields have increased as a result of better soil quality. Families are being fed larger meals and are earning an income by taking the abundance to the market. Parents are now able to afford medical and education fees for village children. “Through camels we get a lot of income… We pay doctors once a month to come out and give medical care to pregnant and nursing women. Our community is improving a lot because of all of these things,” continues Shakwet.

As if all this progress is not enough, Mkuru is now earning the majority of income in the tourist industry. Tourists arrive in the village where they begin a 3 or 5 day Safari on camelback through Northern Tanzania’s rugged wilderness. Even after Passing on the Gift (a system where animal recipients give offspring to other villages in need), Mkuru now has 26 camels in the village – more than enough to provide for the village needs as well as meet the demands of carefree foreign adventurers. Before 1999, no one could have predicted the changes that would come about in this village in the next ten years, and no one could be more pleased than the villagers themselves.

Bordering Tanzania to the Southwest, remote and landlocked Zambia is one of the world’s poorest countries. Sparsely populated, its 12 million residents are quartered mainly in and around its capital Lusaka and in the Copperbelt region to the North. HIV/AIDS has had a devastating effect on Zambia’s population and economy. Today, nearly 17% of the country’s citizens are living with the disease, causing the average life expectancy here to sink to just 38 years. Above, the main thoroughfare runs through the town of Mumbwa in Central Province.

With such overwhelming statistics, HIV/AIDS has had an effect on nearly every family we visited, including the Kalusa family. When we visited them in a village outside Mumbwa, Mr. Kalusa was away attending the funeral of a relative. His wife Bess Mutelo is 38 years old, and together they have nine children. As if nine weren’t enough to provide for, the Kalusas have also taken in Bess’ mother Olipa, as well as seven other children – relatives whose parents have died. Below, the Kalusa children bring water from a well dug by HPI in the village of Mika, near Mumbwa. Well installations are not something that Heifer is particularly known for. However, when it became apparent that a great need for them existed in rural Zambia, the NGO stepped in.

In addition to a nearby well, the Kalusa family has received goats and draft cattle from Heifer. The goats provide meat and milk for the family. The draft cattle provide milk as well but are mainly used for plowing fields. With sixteen children in the house ranging from 8 months to 24 years, there is no shortage of hands to work the field. However, in years past, providing enough food to go around was a problem. The use of manure as fertilzer and the cattle’s plowing abilites have a significant effect on crop yields. Remarking on successes of the project, the oldest son, Loswell Mutelo says, “The biggest impact I have seen is that we produce more food than before. We are a big family but we are able to feed ourselves.”

In light of the recent spike in global food prices, especially in the developing world, the fact that this family of 19 is able to raise enough food to provide for themselves is remarkable. In fact, they produce more than enough milk and vegetables to feed themselves; they are able to take some to the market, thus earning an income. The excess produce is reflected in one of the houses on the Kalusa’s compound, where Bess Mutelo, the family’s matriarch, displays her collection of fine dishes.

Is the Kalusa family rich now? Not by our standards they aren’t. But like many farmers that are Heifer participants, they are past the point of worrying whether or not they will find enough food and are putting priority on things like education and caring for those in their community and family that are in need. In more ways than one, they are passing on the gift.

Our journey ended in the town of Livingstone, near the Zambia/Zimbabwe border, where a different attraction is drawing large numbers of tourists. A massive gorge of the Zambezi River, Victoria Falls stretches 1.7 kilometers from end to end with a height of 108 meters. Though the falls can be viewed from Zimbabwe as well, sightseers have all but given up venturing into its political instability. They come from all around the world in droves to lay eyes on the falls and don rain ponchos to protect from the endless spray emanating from the rushing of water into the deep basin below.

More refreshing than the cool water of the Zambezi, however, was to be outnumbered by the hundreds of middle class Zambian tourists who came to glimpse the falls at the same time as I did. Only then could I begin to visualize an Africa where its citizens had not only attained the necessities of life, but also the luxuries of leisure.


-Jake Lyell travels regularly with freelance writer Christian DeVries to document the work of Heifer International. The quotes in this post were provided by Mr. DeVries.-

The President is just back from a whirlwind tour of Africa. He swept across the continent in 6 days, leapfrogging to friendly and peaceful countries while dispatching Secretary Rice to areas that need a little work (see my Kenya post). While much of the headlines these days deal with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration has been waging a more silent war against AIDS in the developing world.

I’ve spent the last month in Northern Tanzania, observing the work of an NGO called Light in Africa. Light in Africa, or LIA, began as a children’s home on the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. Since work began in 2000, founder Lynn Elliot (aka Mama Lynn) has gradually expanded its ministries to include food, nutrition and medical programs to the surrounding areas. The operation has since moved off the mountain to be mainly concentrated in the village of Boma N’gombe. LIA now raises some 150 children, around 40 of whom are living with HIV/AIDS. Below, children at Light in Africa’s Pilgrim House for boys.

A marked change has come since former visits I’ve made to LIA in 2002 and again in 2004: all the children who previously lived (or sadly, died) from day to day with the effects of HIV now have access to antiretroviral drugs without cost. Furthermore, the children receive regular checkups from doctors and nurses. Thus, children whose quality of life was once severely diminished can now live a relatively normal life compared to their peers who are not infected with HIV. Below, Omega and Felix are two of about 40 children at Light in Africa with HIV.

Antiretroviral drugs suppress the replication of the HIV virus in the body, allowing more T-cells to grow. T-cells are needed for a strong immune system in order for the body to fight off diseases and viruses. Such drugs are expensive. The majority of people around the world infected with HIV lack access to them either financially or geographically. It is little known that George W. Bush has made it a goal of his administration to change this. Below, Sonya lacked antiretroviral treatment from an early age. Her condition is now moving from HIV into AIDS.

Doctors recommend beginning antiretroviral therapy when one’s T-cell count falls below 350 and surely when reaching dangerous levels below 200. When word of Phineus reached Light in Africa, their social worker, Samueli was sure he could not be saved. Samueli had been dispatched by Mama Lynn to bring the child, whose parents had both died of AIDS, under her care. Phineus was langushing at home in bed, nursed by his grandmother with what doctors would later find to be a T-cell count of 6. Upon seeing his condition, Samueli returned to LIA without the child. By now accustomed to miracles, Mama Lynn insisted Samueli bring Phineus to live at LIA.

Two years later, Phineus (shown above on a recent checkup) is now healthy and lives once again with his grandmother. He receives antiretroviral drugs and health screenings from nurses and doctors at a local hospital or LIA’s clinic. The medication and care he receives are made possible with funds from PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief.

Passed by Congress in 2003, the Global AIDS Act that authorized PEPFAR was first touted in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. The program has continued to be funded each year since and was greatly expanded in 2006. The funding is distributed both to trustworthy local governments as well as to aid-groups and hospitals in the field. PEPFAR is currently working in 13 “focus” countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, in addition to Vietnam and Guyana.

In addition to structured prevention, care and treatment programs for AIDS, the act also authorized funds for the prevention and treatment of malaria and tuberculosis. Despite the relative lack of publicity, malaria is the continent’s most deadly disease, though AIDS can be more debilitating for a longer period of time. The incidence of co-infection of HIV/malaria and HIV/tuberculosis is also common. As of 2005, an estimated 24.5 million people in sparsely populated Sub-Saharan Africa were suffering with HIV. Though the area accounts for just 12% of the world population, it contains a disproportionate 60% of the world’s total AIDS population.

Two hours from Moshi by dusty, bumpy, almost-undriveable road to the dry Tanzanite mining town of Mererani, nurses from KCMC hospital in Moshi have come (thanks to a lift from Mama Lynn) to conduct HIV tests. Enough funding for the program exists for the hospital to regularly distribute antiretroviral medications to the village should enough people be found to have the virus. Word spreads quickly of the nurses’ presence and within a few minutes there is a line of twenty or so people waiting to be tested.

Sun pours in an otherwise dark room where tests are being conducted. The atmoshphere is tense. One man, after waiting all morning for the nurses’ arrival, is overcome with the anxiety of knowing his diagnosis. He removes the tourniquet from his arm before nurses can take a blood sample. After a few minutes he again consents to the test which later comes back positive. It seems that many who enter already know their fate and request antiretrovirals before the test is even administered. After the first 90 minutes, all but one of the villagers tested is HIV positive.

Assuming that KCMC approves the outreach to Mererani, the HIV+ villagers there are more fortunate than most. Even though antiretrovirals are freely administered in hospitals, they are far out of reach for people in remote areas like Mererani. The drugs may be free, but getting to and from the hospital requires bus fair, meals and a day or more away from the shamba, or field, where most people earn a living. Furthermore, queuing at a hospital in Sub-Saharan Africa is often a multi-day ordeal.

This is where PEPFAR’s work is most effective. By bringing the medicines as well as medical workers out into the bush, PEPFAR is sustaining the lives of many who would otherwise have stayed home.

“I know it is about life, and it is! But what do they do out in Checkireni (another remote region of Tanzania) when they don’t have the money to feed their kids and have to come up with 10,000 shillings to get to KCMC?” says Laura Cox, Mama Lynn’s daughter and fellow worker at LIA. Sadly, for most, there is no answer.

We return to Light in Africa later that evening to find that social services has delivered two more children to the orphanage: Hasani, a boy aged four, and his sister Azziza, aged 2. The pair look as if they have come from a famine-stricken refugee camp; Hasani weighs about 16 pounds and his sister not quite 10. They suffer from AIDS and Tuberculosis. The two however, did not come from a refugee camp, but from a mother who is dying of AIDS in a hospital bed at KCMC; they are despairingly inconsolable and in tears at being separated from her. Above and below, Mama Lynn and Laura administer antiretrovirals to Hasani and Azziza.

Within a few weeks in Light in Africa’s care, Hasani has shown improvement and is able to walk while holding someone’s hand. Azziza (below) does not fair so well and is checked into the hospital with pneumonia.

Despite its generous and far-reaching effects, PEPFAR is not without its critics. One third of the program’s prevention budget, or 6.6% of the overall budget, is spent on abstinence-only programs, to the chagrin of some public health experts who are concerned that Christian or moral agendas, rather than those of public health or human rights are PEPFAR’s motivating factors. Certain restrictions for funding are also placed on organizations working with prostitutes.

Whatever the motivations, according to PEPFAR’s reports, the program has administered antiretroviral therapy to some 1.4 million people. Though a tremendous amount of work remains, the results are significant. As the program expands, people are healthier and living longer, economies are strengthened because of a greater workforce, and HIV infection rates are decreased giving greater hope to the next generation. Time will tell whether or not these achievements will be overshadowed by the administration’s foreign policy failures elsewhere in the world. But one thing is sure, as the President leaves office next year, he leaves Africa in much better shape than when his two terms began.

Momentum can be a dangerous force. Just ask former Senator George Allen, whose political career as a darling of the Republican Party was brought down by the momentum of the Macaca incident in 2006. Were it not for such a slip (and the hoopla that followed), Barack Obama could well be riding his current wave of momentum to a race in November against Allen, who was a very early GOP front-runner for the nomination. While Virginia won’t be selecting a nominee from its native sons or daughters this time around, it will certainly play a more crucial role in the nomination process than in the past.

Obama swept Democratic primaries and caucuses held across the country Saturday and Sunday, and poles have suggested that he will continue to fair well on Tuesday’s primaries in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC. That Obama momentum was felt by thousands of people inside and outside of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Siegel Center on Saturday night in Richmond, where the Democratic Party of Virginia hosted its annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. Below, a police officer works to keep Hillary and Obama fans from spilling into the street.

The raucous crowd inside, overwhelmingly in support of Obama, often became vocally impatient for their candidate to take the stage. Addressing the crowd early in the evening, Clinton had a bit of a disconnect with her audience when compared to Obama, who would speak over two hours later. Her supporters were out-shown and out-shouted by those of her rival.
In a broad attempt to combat perceptions of un-humanness, Hillary Clinton continued a recent trend of laughing and smiling incessantly on the campaign trail and at the podium. Noting primary and caucus victories on days subsequent to performing the stunt, political strategist and pundit Ross Catrow predicts that Hillary will have a tearful moment before the cameras on Monday, ahead of key primaries in the Mid-Atlantic.

The event was also a rock-star rally of sorts for local Virginia Democratic politics, which up until a few years ago, would usually have hosted its annual dinner at the back room of a Ruby Tuesday’s. A man named Mark Warner changed the Party’s prospects, however. Taking the governorship after Republican Jim Gilmore’s reckless term came to an end in 2001, Warner showed Virginia how to run a fiscally sound government while maintaining important social and education programs. Warner’s policies helped Virginia steer around many of the economic problems facing other states in post-911 America. Below, the Virginia Governors from left to right: current Governor Tim Kaine, Mayor of Richmond and former Governor L. Douglas Wilder, former governor Mark Warner.

“Remember when I was governor that year?” the Democratic heavyweights schmoozy it up backstage.
While Wilder and Kaine have both endorsed Obama, Mark Warner does not plan to endorse a candidate until the nomination is sealed up. Anticipating a seat in the Senate next January, Warner wants to ensure a smooth working relationship with whoever occupies the Oval Office. As the Democratic candidate for Senator, the popular Warner should win handily against the current GOP front-runner, the aforementioned Gilmore. With Jim Webb already in office, Virginia will have two Democratic Senators and a Democratic governor for the first time since the Norman conquest of 1066. Okay, so if it’s happened before, it was probably back in the 30′s.

The big question is… can Virginia bare to vote Democrat in the general election? Could it be turning into a blue state? If Clinton were the nominee in November, I dare say Virginia would tip McCain. However, Obama is a much easier shoe for Virginians to slip on. Obama’s record (or at least rhetoric) of reaching across the isle to get things done is a strategy that has proven effective for Virginia Democrats like Kaine and Warner. Below, Obama and Kaine wave to a sold-out crowd on Saturday evening.

Obama has proven he can gain support among independents and moderates. He is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate able to attract young and old with his compassion, wit and charisma. The Superdelegates who may decide this race for the nomination would be wise to keep that in mind. Meanwhile, as McCain tries to beef up his conservative credentials, he will likely alienate independents who supported him. That makes for an easier race in the general election for Obama. But with the delegate race in a dead heat, let us not look solely at Obama’s current momentum to sum up the outcome; look at the numbers. Hillary has long-sought the nomination, and to think she would give up before it got into overtime would be what Bill Clinton would describe as a “fairy tale.”

Words and Photos – Copyright 2008 Jake Lyell

No one predicted what has come over Kenya in the last month since its disputed presidential elections. But since then, the country has fallen from the grace of being one of the most-stable countries on the African Continent to being the host of machete wielding street mobs of young, angry, disenfranchised men. Tourists and ex-patriots have largely left the country as security and the economy have plunged amid the unrest.

In all likelihood, Orange-Democratic Movement leader, Raila Odinga, won Kenya’s presidential election against incumbent Mwai Kibaki on December 27th. Raila, an ethnic Luo, widely led in opinion polls up until the election, accusing Kibaki, a Kikuyu, that he had not done enough to tackle corruption. Kenya’s other various minority tribes have long been hungry for a more prominent role in government. With the slow and non-transparent way the votes were counted in the days following the election, many were convinced fraud had taken place.

I knew something strange had come over the city on December 29th when I took an early morning stroll on the shores of Lake Victoria in the Western city of Kisumu, the hometown of opposition candidate Raila Odinga. The election results had not yet been released but tension was in the air because the results had been delayed for a second day. I was followed down a dirt road by two men, when one, bearing a machete, announced somewhat casually that, “We are going to kill you.” It was a little too casually in fact, for he was not convincing enough for me to readily cede my camera.

Nevertheless I began to scream for help as I was hit twice in the arm with his (luckily dull) machete and knocked to the ground. I screamed as loud as I could as the two men tugged on my camera bag while I took a few kicks. I could not physically let it go. It was impossible. I had come to Kenya to work, and work was now my life. Within a minute, several dockworkers heard my cries from inside the port and came running, sending the thieves to scurry off down some nearby railroad tracks.

I was left only with bruises, scrapes and a small laceration where the machete had hit. Thanking my helpers profusely, I marched on to my hotel in order to wash up before going to the police station to report the incident. The police were surprised that this would happen in a normally safe and peaceful town. However, within the hour the city descended into chaos as a shocked police force stood in passive observance of mobs looting shops and burning the houses of anyone not of the Luo tribe.

The fact that I had just walked away from a machete attack camera in hand may have given me an air of invincibility, but I began to photograph the mayhem as it unfolded on Kisumu’s streets. In a tense moment of being surrounded by a crowd, a man named Joseph stepped out and began to mediate between me and the mob, demanding they go about their business and let me do my job.

Joseph stayed with me like a guardian angel for the next several hours as the rioters looted and burned every shop in town and did the same to the houses of rival tribesmen. Even the livestock were not spared. Goats and cows were savagely torn apart, their limbs paraded around like trophies. All the while chanting “No Raila, no peace!,” the rioters seemed indifferent that I was documenting their actions.

This phenomenon was to last only a short while however, and after a few attempts at my camera and a few more close calls with machetes, shooting became impossible. Joseph and I holed up in my hotel room and prayed for peace to come over the city.

Calm came to the city that night after the Kenyan army marched in, firing tear gas and rubber bullets at anyone left on the streets. But the quiet was to be only temporary. On the following evening, the Kenyan Electoral Commission announced the results in Kibaki’s favor and swore him in within 30 minutes of doing so, prompting new and increased outbreaks of violence.

Unable to get food or water and out of cash, by this time I was waiting at the airport for the next flight to Nairobi. After waiting 12 hours for the flight, it was canceled due to security concerns. I was able to make it on a later flight with a different airline that evening. The riots that had taken place the previous day in Kisumu were no longer just an affair of Western Kenya, where I was, but had now spread throughout the country. As our plane flew out of town I could see the flames engulfing the streets and buildings below.

The violent aftermath that has engulfed Kenya has not subsided in the past month. It has begun to take on an eerie resemblance to Rwanda in 1994, whose genocide occurred under similar post-election tribal strains that descended into civil war. Mediators including former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, have failed to nip the problem in the bud. Last evening, Mugabe Were, an Orange-Democratic Movement MP elected on December 27th, was killed outside his home in Nairobi. Officials have stopped short of calling it an assassination.

Since its independence in 1963 Kenya has been ruled by only three presidents: Kenyatta, Moi and currently Kibaki. All men have followed the pattern of being ever-reluctant to relinquish their presidential powers. Despite his failure to implicate corrupt government officials as promised before winning his first term, Kibaki is most remembered for making primary education universal for all children in the country.

After years of peace and functioning democracy, Kenya’s brutal tribal tensions have come to a rolling boil and are now exposed to the rest of the world. But before too much sympathy is given to Odinga and his supporters, there isn’t much evidence to show he would have acted any differently as an incumbent. While most likely the true victor, Odinga and his ODM party is also the likely perpetrator of electoral irregularities according to the New York Times. Let us also remember that Kibaki, the current incumbent, himself came to power in 2002 as the opposition candidate of change, vowing to rid the country of corruption but keeping many of the crooks from the Moi administration in office. At the center of the problem is a nasty tribalist mentality that will continue to draw blood and tear apart the country unless ordinary citizens can look past tribe and see one another as united Kenyans.

With thanks to Joseph Otieno.