The Whistle of Nqileni

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

South Africa | Tuesday, 8 November 2011 | 5 photos

The old man loosened his lips as he caught sight of the whale tapping its tail in the rough water of the Atlantic Ocean. Waves rolled into the mouth of the Bulungula River, and rain cascaded down, curtaining the performance behind a sheet of gray.

Children huddled in the corner of the rondavel. Disinterested in the ramblings of their elder they tossed their futbol, resuming the game inside.

“She’ll leave, but I’ll call her back,” he said of the dancing whale. His weathered fingers touched the whistle around his neck. An herbalist since he could remember, he harvested more than his dusty, bottled collection of plants. “My whistle calls back the ones who leave.”

Nqileni Village sits on shelves of green hillsides. Villagers wake to the conversations between roosters and end long days on straw mats. Women work the fields, and men, the animals. Children fish and fetch water. Some escape to schools while others are sent to work the mines. They send money back to be spent by elders in the shebeen, drinking deep into gossip.

News from Africa is singular - one place, one person, one story. It made me want to go in search of something more. I wanted to find truth; to document life. An airline ticket and camera were bought with promises to return soon. Yet after traveling 7,000 miles through nine countries alone, I - like the whale - vanished.

A photograph is fleeting. Unlike the herbalist, I had no whistle to call back the lost. I only had a camera. Yet it was like the shutter fell thousands of times and never opened. My photographs went unseen, and their stories, untold. Except for one.

This one.

I went to Africa and never really came back. I’m still searching for purpose in photography and so in myself.