jake lyell photography

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.

Heavy, loud, and concentrated. These are words I use to describe Haiti’s assault on the American senses. But its more than the intense atmosphere and lack of polish that keeps westerners away. People from developed countries are a rare sight in Haiti due to its poor security and lack of infrastructure. Those that come remain sealed off in walled compounds and are sped away in the relative safety of a tinted-window, 4-wheel-drive rent-a-car. The warnings of violent crime issued from behind the desks of those at the US embassy in Port-au-Prince are not unwarranted; kidnappings, robberies and murders of the wealthy do occur. But the situation here is one that requires vigilance and common sense, not paranoia and seclusion. For those of us who step beyond the boundaries of our comfort zone, the rewards seem endless. Investing in a good insurance policy is also recommended.

700 miles to the South-East of Florida, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world. Occupying the western third of the Island of Hispaniola, it is a microcosm of the world’s humanitarian problems: unclean water, lack of health care, environmental degradation and an economy in shambles. These problems are interdependent and where solutions are brought about, new troubles emerge. As the nation’s fragile new government slowly takes hold and security improves across the country, Haiti is opening a new chapter in its restless history.

I left Port-au-Prince with my interpreter Romel the day after I touched ground, though I would return later to spend several days there. My thinking was that as the capital is the most unstable part of the country, and I had a greater risk of having my camera stolen there, I would prefer to have that happen after I had at least a week’s worth of images safe and backed up. Riding the crowded tap-tap (public bus) to the North, our destination was the city of Gonaives. Despite Haiti’s small size, (its area is comparable to that of the State of Maryland) traveling from one end to the other by tap-tap can take an arduous 48 hours. I decided to break the journey to Gonaives in the valley town of Mirabalais. Click the map below to trace the route of my journey.


We were fortunate to arrive in Mirabalais on market day, when people come from the town and surrounding countryside to sell or trade their goods while stocking up on needed supplies. Despite its bustling streets, people in Mirabalais like Etide Francois (shown below in her sewing shop) complained of low wages and not being able to make ends meet. Madame Francois’ story echoes national statistics. Over two-thirds of people in Haiti are unemployed or underemployed. Most people in Haiti have jobs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that income is being generated. Therefore, the term underemployment has come to best describe the economic disposition facing the majority. Many days may pass without a sale made or a service rendered. While more than 80% of Haitians live below the poverty line, I seldom encountered beggars on the streets.

Below, a woman named Yvette makes cornmeal near the market with the help of her daughters.

Though it was hard to judge at the time, the outlook in Mirabalais was brighter than in other parts of the country I was to visit. It seemed most people had electricity in their homes because of the town’s proximity to the same hydro-electric dam that supplies power to Port-au-Prince. Consequently, Mirabalais’ streets and shops remained busy well into the night. While most did not not have running water, communal water stations like the one seen below piped in fresh spring water from the surrounding countryside.

We were hard-pressed to find affordable lodging in town that did not double as a brothel. Luckily, a woman named Dada offered to put us up for the night in her home. That evening as I was editing photos in my room, much of the neighborhood came by to watch the town light up on my laptop’s screen. Some curious residents are shown posing below. We departed early the next morning for Gonaives.

Haiti was pounded by Hurricane Jeanne in September 2004. The damage was particularly severe in the port city of Gonaives. Rushing water from the passing hurricane emptied off the mountainsides surrounding flood-prone Gonaives killing over 3,000 of the city’s residents. The flood damaged every building in the town and left 250,000 people homeless.

Charles Luders, shown above, lives with his wife and seven children in the mountains that surround Gonaives. From his house you can see the entire town: the dusty hills that ring the city, the winding avenues that lead you through the cauldron of downtown until you reach the shoreline. Charles and his wife moved to the hillside 11 years ago. Moving to the outskirts of the city was the only way that they could afford a home and education for their children. “I have struggled a lot to provide a better life for my children than I have had” says Luders, who has made education a priority for his children. “With education you can make a life for yourself and earn a living.” Luckily, their move up the hill also allowed the Luders family to escape the destruction of Hurricane Jeanne. While they experienced mudslides and minor flooding in their home, the heavy rains had a far-worse impact on the downtown area.

Like the rest of Haiti’s countryside, the hills surrounding Gonaives have been stripped of the trees that once enlivened them. In fact, 98% of Haiti’s original tree cover has been lost due to the common practice of harvesting trees for lumber and charcoal. Neighboring Dominican Republic passed laws back in the 60’s outlawing commercial logging. Haiti followed suit by outlawing logging by unauthorized individuals but was never able to enforce such measures. Today, Haiti’s lumber regulation consists only of educational programs and minor replanting efforts instituted by the Ministry of Environment. Knowing the lack of trees in his neighborhood causes increased soil erosion and exacerbates flooding downtown, Luders and his neighbors have made an effort to plant trees throughout the neighborhood.

Although the residents on Gonaives’ hillsides have managed to escape the worst of the city’s flooding problems, the outlook for some appears no less bleak. Sylvia Hertel sells vegetables in the market while her husband is a tap-tap driver. She is shown above with three of her children (youngest to oldest: Wilson, Kenkenn and Dieukinet). Her and her husband’s combined income is not enough to send their four boys to school and two of them have had to stay home this year.

During my interview with Sylvia Hertel I noticed one of her boys, Dieukinet, had a nagging cough. Sylvia, rather gaunt herself, explained that two of her sons, Dieukinet (above) and Kenkenn are kept up in the night with coughing, fever and sweats. My interpreter Romel, himself a medical student, suspected the children of having Tuberculosis when Sylvia stated that they have been coughing up blood. Even though Haiti lacks universal health care, government hospitals will treat anyone diagnosed with TB without cost. Stressing the urgent need for care, Romel and I made arrangements to meet the family the next morning in order to accompany them to the hospital and cover and any fees that are incurred. (They didn’t show.)

Down at the waterside, Goniaves’ port is bustling as a handful of rusty freight liners and a shell of an American school bus lie grounded along the shore. It seems only the old wooden sail boats, some propelled by motors, continue to traverse the waters. The boats bring in goods from around the country and some goods from afar. As workers unload large oblong bags of charcoal from ships by the hundreds, buyers come to haggle with the managers. The charcoal sold here comes from the North-West province - places like Bombadopolis and Anse Rouge. As in much of the developing world, in Haiti charcoal is made from wood and is used for cooking in every household, street-side eatery and many restaurants. Imitating a practice begun by European colonists for the expansion of agriculture, residents obliterated Gonaives’ surrounding forests long ago. As demand for charcoal and lumber continues, new sources must be found further afield.

Above center, Tifamm Val, 30, has sold charcoal in the market since she was ten years old. Below, lumber vendors await a sale in Gonaives’ market district. With the exception of a couple of small protected (not necessarily enforced) areas, wood is free game in Haiti.

50 kilometers north-west of Gonaives, the town of Marmalade is the hometown of Haiti’s president, Rene Preval. Surrounded by brown, barren hills, Marmalade is an oasis of waterfalls and shade below towering trees from the blistering sun . Lush as it may be, Marmalade is the origin of the charcoal sold by an old woman on the street just outside my hotel in Gonaives. As Marmalade was only two hours away, I decided to make a day trip of it.

There I encountered what I had set out to find; though they weren’t the ruthless tree-choppers with gnashing teeth that I had expected. Charcoal makers worked all over the hills surrounding Marmalade, most of them on their family’s plot of land. Like other poor farmers in the area, Fritznel Silvain, harvests trees from his land, buries them under limbs and brush to keep the air out, and sets the mound to smolder. The process is a tricky one and if any oxygen gets inside, the batch is lost. Mr. Silvain has made a business out of selling charcoal to restaurants in Gonaives for the past two years. Between his charcoal business and growing bananas, he is able to provide for his family of five, as well as the two children (shown below) of his deceased brother and sister-in-law.

It should be mentioned that the FAO, (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) has a small office in Marmalade. They are responsible for environmental education and replanting efforts in the area. Despite their presence, Mr. Silvain, shown below, has never been contacted by anyone from the FAO or the Haitian government concerning his charcoal business.

Back in Gonaives, UN soldiers patrol the dusty streets where revolution flows in the blood of the city. It was here that Haiti declared independence from France in 1804. Exactly 200 years later, gangs opposed to the authority of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide began an uprising that led to the leader’s ouster. Gonaives has seen a return to near-complete calm in recent years and appears at peace with the Preval administration.

It seemed like the Haitian government was taking a proactive step in preventing another Jeanne-like catastrophe. In February of 2006, private contractors commissioned by officials in Port-au-Prince began to construct a series of gutters and canals throughout Gonaives to channel floodwaters pouring from off the surrounding mountainsides. Entire roads were shut down and bulldozed to make way for these massive canals. Somewhere along the way, officials forgot to finish the project; or perhaps more likely, used the funds for personal expenses.

Begun nearly two years ago, today these would-be canals dotted throughout the city are giant cesspools where people throw their waste and where mosquitoes breed. They stand as giant pools of filth and stench. Unconnected to any drainage network, the pools stand idle, save for the occasional passer-by falling in.

The canal that runs down what was once Vernet Street seems the most egregious of them all. Vernet Street borders Gonaives’ central market to the north. The Vernet canal bisects the former roadway leaving a small sidewalk on each side for the busy market traffic to negotiate. On the south side of the canal, waters run nearly to the doorsteps of houses and shops, climbing into the dwellings during the rain. Harold Previse, 31, who sells mattresses on the south side of the canal is especially incensed over its presence. Up until 2006 he owned a shop on one Gonaives’ busiest streets. Now he sits within two feet of the rank sewer and business is no longer booming: “My business has decreased since this was installed. No foot traffic, no tap-tap, no cars. So no one can see my business.”

Along the same block, a group of bored Haitian youth hang out on their doorsteps, most sporting white t-shirts. Among them is Desmite (above left), whose front doorstep faces the canal. Asked how life has changed since the building of the canal, he complains of flooding in his home and subsequent health problems for him and his family: fever and diarrhea and other digestive problems. Desmite goes on to tell that he sees people fall in the canal daily, especially at night as there are no streetlights to illuminate the area. As the canal is over 8 feet deep, several have even lost their lives doing so.

It seems officials have already forgotten about the destruction of hurricane Jeanne. Gonaives’ drainage system has remained incomplete for nearly the past two years and is now a ticking time bomb waiting to unleash squalor and sickness throughout the city at the next passing hurricane.

At the port, the bawdy seafaring mob continues on as it has for centuries past. The women smoke tobacco pipes as the dockworkers load sugar cane into old sail boats. An itinerant preacher bathes along the shore while calling out to the indifferent crowd for repentance. After washing his hands of them he moves along. I left Gonaives with a feeling that a force majeure more imminent than the Judgment was at hand.

Busy, chaotic Port-au-Prince has one foot in the door of progress. The other one will take a while to catch up. Take for instance trash cans. More than just a novelty here, they actually exist on street corners for people to dispose of their garbage. Furthermore, they are collected regularly. But that’s only for some neighborhoods. The automatic weapon-toting police presence on the street is also a sign that Port-au-Prince is entering a new era, however sluggish. Though many officers are more interested in flirting with women or trying on sunglasses than walking the beat, their actual presence on the street is something not seen a year ago. Even once impenetrable neighborhoods like Cite Soleil have shown improvements in security. This week Doctors Without Borders announced it was turning over operations in the dangerous seaside slum to the Haitian Ministry of Health due to the improving situation there. However, the announcement came back to back with a plea from President Preval to gang members that they may release child hostages and cease abductions in the city. Violent crime, while still rife in the capital, has decreased significantly in the last year.

Like many capitals in the developing world, Port-au-Prince has seen an influx of migrants from around the country, drawn by its wealth and infrastructure. Makenson Pierre (below left) is known by his peers as Baby. He left his home near the market in Gonaives several months ago to come live on the streets, taking his place along side what UNICEF counts as 7,000 other street children in Port-au-Prince. Baby looks to be around 9 or 10 years old, but he doesn’t know for sure how old he is; he’s never been in school or celebrated a birthday. The street kids always travel in numbers here for protection. Older boys often prowl the streets looking for kids to beat up just because they can get away with it. Baby admits that life in Gonaives was much happier for him, but he won’t return: “I won’t go back home because my mother cannot help me.”

A middle class was ubiquitously evident for the first time in Port-au-Prince. In Plaza Champ de Mars, just a block from the presidential palace, primary school children in uniform play on the steps while couples clad in business attire take an evening stroll. Men gather every evening under the shade of a large oak tree and form several circles debating politics. Listening in on their conversation, they are infuriated by the state of their country and the corrupt practices in the government ranks. Below, a man known as Petit Marx (hat) who spent several years in Cuba, argues the advantages of a communist system.

Port-au-Prince seems stricken with an identity crises. It is the most economically prosperous and at the same time the most crime-ridden place in the country, home to a large middle class but also home to one of the largest slums in the hemisphere. Yet as I watched the men debating politics in the park, or the youth painting a street mural on the eve of World Aids Day (see below), I encountered a spirit that I had not witnessed in other places in Haiti: an unyielding passion for change and the dedication to make it a reality.

…with thanks to Guillet Adolphe.

It pays to check out craigslist, especially if you’re a freelancer. In passing, I just sold a hand-truck in their classifieds for $10 within 30 minutes of posting it. Over in the the jobs section, when a request came up late last week for a fashion photographer, I responded immediately. This job was far different from the last one I got off craigslist, which was photographing a junior soccer league. Hey, anything to fill in the gaps.
Will West (shown above) is burgeoning a fashion designer out of Virginia Beach. He came to Richmond on Friday night to showcase his Don Bazaar clothing line at the Hyperlink Cafe.


I was brought on board to document the evening, from the models getting ready backstage to the last strut down the runway. Ending at two in the morning, this is one of the latest jobs I’ve ever had. However, it was well worth staying up late to be in such marvelously fine company.


It’s been since August since I’ve been out of the country and I’ve grown a bit restless being back home for a couple months. It was great to be able to pick up such interesting work during my time here in Richmond. Staying out of the country for weeks at a time and then coming home and getting jobs has proved a challenge, but I feel I feel I have kept the balance rather well this Fall. I leave for Haiti next week… wish me luck.

Sitting in an internet cafe in the steamy Amazon port city of Iquitos in North-Eastern Peru, I began to get a glimpse of what my life could be like if I continued to work hard… a nomad or a bedouin of sorts, but less romantic, with a hotel for a home and Sky Chef as my most-frequented restaurant. It was in Iquitos that with a bit of trepidation and negotiation I received my China assignment with Heifer International. There I was, halfway through my stint in Peru knowing that the second I got back to the states I had just over two weeks to submit my work, get a visa from the Chinese embassy and send my passport off to Philadelphia. Additional pages needed to be added to make room for the official stamps given at each border I might cross for the next few years.
I’d have no idea what was waiting for me on the other side of the immigration gate in Beijing. To begin with, my 13.5 hour flight direct from Washington was delayed for a bit, allotting me just two hours to pass through customs and immigration. After getting through what seemed more like a Russian bread line, I had twenty minutes to check in and make my flight. I resigned myself to the fact that if I made it, my luggage would not.
I sprinted to the Air China check-in, but after pulling out my passport and itinerary the two guys at the desk just kept scratching their heads at the screen in front of them. Finally they handed them back and said “ticket office” - never a good sign. I went to every Air China office I could find but no one seemed to know anything, and no one spoke English. Two hours later I was still frantically running around the airport, now with two hawks (whose aid I had not requested) carrying my bags while demanding in a primitive international sign language that I go to the nearest ATM to take out money for their services. I finally got to a small Air China desk that seemed to know perfectly well what had happened, promptly printing me a boarding pass on the next flight to Chendgu, (above) the hub of South Central China. I never found out what the problem was until meeting up the next day in Chengdu with Christian DeVries, a freelance writer with whom I’d be collaborating over the next two weeks. In an effort to cut air pollution ahead of next summer’s Olympic Games, the Chinese government had canceled a number of domestic flights and barred half the cars in the capital from driving on the roadways for the day. I wonder if mandatory conversational English crash-courses for all airport personnel are not somewhere in the list of all the draconian measures Beijing’s officials are enacting.

The day after my arrival in Chengdu, a city of five million, I was immediatlely catapulted off to a world I never knew existed. We headed south near the Tibetan border to the cool mountains of the Sechuan region. There Christian and I were to meet the Yi people, an ethnic minority whose way of life carries on much the same as it has for centuries past, in stark contrast to the bustling, westernized streets of cities like Chengdu. The Yi people are well known for their ornate traditional dress, still worn by most women and some men, but less known for their habit of sitting and even lying on the roadways during their down time. This can make for an interesting drive through the region’s winding mountain roads. The ease with which I could photograph people was somewhat hampered by the necessity to use two translators (English to Mandarin to Yi) to get my words across.

If you’re unfamiliar with Heifer International (HI), take a brief look at my Ukraine post from June or their website. Of the many development organizations working in poverty-stricken areas around the world, I have become partial to Heifer’s model of self-sustainability, having witnessed its effects first-hand. Heifer works mainly in rural areas, where China’s poorest live. It’s hard for us to imagine how a cow or a few goats can transform the life of a family, but as in most pastoral societies, wealth is measured by the amount of livestock one owns.

The Jieshuo family (shown above) has moved out of extreme poverty since receiving their 15 or so goats from Heifer. The goats provide meat for the family, and offspring are sold or bartered for additional food supplies: “Our children live better and better as the years go by. Before the project we only had potatoes to eat. Now we have rice, more meat, and eggs for the children,” says Chuomu Aniu, the wife and mother of three (above, far left). In addition to their three children, Chuomu Aniu and her husband Jieshuo Er’ri are able to care for their nieces and nephews, whose parents are deceased.

Within the Yi prefecture and to a greater extent in other areas of China, the young are fleeing the countryside and their agrarian culture to make new lives in the cities. Urban life offers higher wages, and for some, the chance to earn an income for the first time. However, this phenomenon creates problems on both sides: a lack of workforce and production in rural areas and overpopulation and unemployment in the cities. Above, Jiese Wujia (68, left) and her husband Mose Youha (71, right) will retire when their bodies do. Below, a man passes a sleeping street-child in early morning Chengdu.

I’m fortunate to have navigated the ropes of many developing countries with minimal physical wear and tear throughout the last few years. However, I wasn’t so lucky in rural China. On the third day of the trip, I asked our driver to stop so I could photograph a herd of water buffalo that was approaching our vehicle on the road. As I was shooting, I backed up straight into the vicinity of a dog chained on the side of the road who wasn’t so happy that I entered his territory. I ran back to the car pulling up the torn leg of my jeans, dismayed to see that his bite had caused some bleeding. Bei, our coordinator and Christian’s translator, was on the phone immediately as we drove back to town. Joy, my translator, offered endless condolences. The rabies vaccination was not available in our area but was to be delivered to the hotel later that night. The five-part vaccination required me to stop into the clinic two additional times while in China. Furthermore, since the vaccinations in China and the US differ, I had to bring the last two doses back with me on the plane in an ice-packed thermos. I just received my last dose this week. Below, I receive complementary medical care from The People’s nationalized health system.

The second half of our journey took us north of Chengdu to Nanbu County and east to the municipality of Chungqing. In this swelteringly hot region of the country where temperatures reached well over the hundred degree mark, villagers were harvesting their rice fields. Below, farmer Zhang Weishu separates rice grains from cut grass. Heifer donated pigs to his family, but also set him up with a bio-gas unit for his kitchen. Bio-gas is a method of cooking where manure from animals is placed in a pit outside the house. The methane that the manure gives off is transported to the kitchen’s cooking range just like natural gas or propane; with no observable odor. “Using bio-gas has saved resources; it is clean and saves time,” says Mr. Zhang.

Zhang Weishu’s neighbors, Zhang Weiping and his wife Xie Shutang (shown respectively in the following two photographs), are also Heifer project participants. In fact, most everyone in this village has been helped out by Heifer. (The name of the village is Village #12, can you get more Marxist than that?!) Residents say their village was all but forgotten by the government until Heifer started working here and began bringing families out of poverty. Only then did the government build a road through the village.


Not only has the Chinese government kicked in to help out where it previously hadn’t, but it has also mimicked the Heifer model of livestock distribution to needy families in places in China where Heifer is not already working. Below, Wen Yongqing and her husband Wu Yuantian sort silkworms given to them by HI. “Before I was not so hard working and my wife was always angry with me. Now she doesn’t get mad so easily because I am working hard,” says Mr. Yuantian. (We all know his wife is probably just too demanding.)

Driving around Chengdu at night with the windows down, Christian and I marveled at glitzy neon streets and the abundance of advertising billboards that often stretch across the width of entire skyscrapers. Western brands are popular here, from the ubiquitous Starbucks and KFCs to high end fashion like Louis Vuitton and Hugo Boss, while BBC and CNN are banned. Homesick for American radio, Christian and I would often sing the songs of our homeland during long drives, perhaps sometimes to the chagrin of those in our entourage. That night we began to sing “Sounds of Silence” when after the first line, our driver, who spoke no English, immediately perked up and began fumbling through the glove box. He found a CD and slid it in. We waited to hear what it was: “Hello darkness my old friend…”
We almost lost it. Christian and I started laughing hysterically while Bei and Joy were perplexed. By the second line we were belting out the words right along with Paul and Art. Unable to discuss politics or religion or media coverage openly, it was as if we were sending out all that we meant to express in code: “Hear my words that I might teach you, take my arms that I might reach you.”

As China’s economy continues to open and grow, more and more people continue to climb out of poverty. In fact, if the UN reaches its Millenium Development Goal of cutting global poverty in half by the year 2015, it will be because of promising statistics coming out of China and India. Around 10% of the Chinese population is living below the poverty line. That sounds like a pretty good statistic until you figure that 10% of the population equals 130 million people, more than the entire population of Japan.

Cities continue to expand and quality of life there is, for the most part, better. But change is slow to reach the countryside where education is not yet a universal affair and where power lines and water pipes don’t always stretch.

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Words by Jake Lyell. Quotes provided by Christian DeVries. All images Copyright Heifer International 2007. Thanks to Christian, Bei and Joy.