Amuria Health Centre has been packed beyond capacity in recent weeks, with more people occupying the floors than hospital beds. As the rains continue to fall, more and more people here contract malaria. During the rainy season, when streams rise and lowland areas become flooded, mosquitoes breed in greater numbers. This health centre’s resources (Amuria has no official hospital) are stretched thin even outside the rainy season. The entire district of over 300,000 shares just one doctor for all its public health centres. He travels around from village to village and is rarely in one place for more than a day. When medicine and supplies are available, the cost is picked up by the government. When they run out, which is all too often, the only option for patients is to pay cash for drips, drugs, and needles from the local pharmacy and bring them to the hospital. “Most of[…]
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gray days, Amuria District
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,[…]
Read MoreHard Labo(u)r
Recently I photographed for the first time as a still photographer on a film documentary. The dynamic was a bit different working alongside a film crew and not having the subjects to myself. Still, I feel was able to get some compelling images. The documentary is produced and directed by Christy Turlington Burns (below, right), who in recent years has made efforts to bring the issue of maternal health in the developing world into the spotlight. Entitled “No Woman, No Cry,” the film highlights the difficulties of bearing children in four different parts of the world. I was happy to be part of the crew here in Tanzania. Some photos from this shoot also appeared in Marie Claire. I also contributed to another Marie Claire article on UNICEF education programs. You can read that here. Look for the release of “No Woman, No Cry” soon.
Read MoreMicro lending, macro change. On the road with BRAC.
I’m currently photographing on a four country assignment with BRAC, an NGO based out of Bangladesh. While I wish I could go there too, I’ve just finished up a leg in Liberia and am heading to Tanzania tonight. I first became familiar with BRAC after spotting their program signs at almost every junction in Tanzania directing highway travelers to nearby projects. They gained more attention last year after an agricultural grant from the Gates Foundation, another organization for whom I regularly photograph. Above, a mangrove swamp on the Sierra Leone River in Port Loko. BRAC works in the areas of microfinance (small loans to individuals), sustainable agriculture, and community health. They primarily work with women and girls in these areas, as women of all ages are more vulnerable in the developing world, more likely to support their families and, as you can see from a past blog entry, doing most[…]
Read MoreShoreculture II: Lake Malawi
More like an ocean, Lake Malawi runs almost the entire length of this Southern African country. I went to one of the least developed parts, the northern town of Karonga, on my way down to a recent assignment shooting Gucci funded UNICEF projects for Marie Claire Magazine.
Read MoreKEEPing the rainforest alive – Kenya’s Kakamega Forest Reserve
I was recently in Western Kenya. What was intended to be a quick stopover en route to Uganda turned into four days of rummaging through a rainforest with my camera wrapped in plastic shopping bags. As my “hotel” was without it, I had to hitch a ride on the back of a motorcycle to the nearest place with electricity so I could download images and charge batteries every night. Not too long ago Africa’s midsection was a band of almost solid rainforest, stretching over six million square kilometers from West Africa along the Atlantic, through to the Central African Republic and the DRC, into East Africa. Today, the Guineo-Congolian rainforest, as it is known, is now just a remnant of what it once was, its canopies having suffered the impact of logging, oil and mineral exploration. In the case of the Kakamega Forest, large areas were cleared during colonial times[…]
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