Sharing Stories - A Glimpse into Another's Life - Africa Defined

kpuikkonen — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:45:19 GMT

The motor of Kilimanjaro III vibrated my achy body as the ferry pulled away from Dar es Salaam. The sea breeze evaporated the sweat from my face as the ship picked up speed toward the island of Zanzibar.
After three mind numbing weeks on a jolting truck ride through Eastern Africa, I needed the gentle, chiropractic massage of a rocking boat to realign my mind and body. During my confinement, I had read African history and watched my African experience speed by, but I really wondered what the real Africa was like.
“Is this your first time in Zanzibar?” a voice to my left asked.
I looked over into the smiling eyes and matching tooth chipped grin of a sharply dressed young African with designer sunglasses on top of his closely shaved head.
I answered yes.
He told me he was covering the island’s annual Sauti za Busara music festival for a special weekend edition of his new television show.
I was more interested in the TV show than the music festival.
He skillfully opened up his laptop and navigated to a video clip that played a hip-hop beat as a Tanzanian dala dala taxi van rolled up on screen. The exterior portrayed a bright yellow and orange African sunrise with silhouettes of people in the foreground. The interior transformed into a mobile television studio that could still fit upwards of 14 people inside.
During the week, this lawyer turned media man offered men and women of Dar es Salaam a free ride and while in transit interviewed them about their daily lives. Recordings were then produced and the voices of Tanzania were shared on screen each night.
Impressed by this young man’s open and honest approach to communication, I was curious about the kind of questions he asked.
“Everything,” he immediately replied.
So I began asking him the questions I sought on this African trip. Over the course of two hours our wave of communication covered everything from family to corruption to tourism to natural resources.
As he told me about the Africa he knew, loved and believed in, I smelled the African soil, I saw the crowds running to his taxi van, I heard their voices, and I felt the warm love Africans have for family and for each other.
At one point he said, “I’m not afraid of anything.” I believed him.
This young man found a way to live for the moment, for the truth and for his country.
I had wondered what the real Africa was like, but I realized this concept didn't exist. There was only a New Africa and he had just spoken to me.

My Photo Scholarship 2010 entry

kpuikkonen — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 03:57:00 GMT

The initial lure of Tibet was my eagerness to experience a culture formed by the highest mountains on earth. However, once I arrived, both of these expectations disappeared into the thin air. The commitment of the people to their pilgrimages and devotion to their revered leader amidst the stirring isolation and oppression they experience, are apparent in the quiet forms of the pilgrims and monks who dedicate their lives, not to the mountains that are so demanding to live in, but to a higher level of consciousness that reaches past the peaks to the heavens. This series of photographs present this view of that silent, distant feeling: There was only one shoe on that mountain pass, the pilgrims enter the monasteries one by one, the monks are called from seclusion to group worship, prostrations are done individually at the Jokhang temple amidst fellow devotees and the vastness of the Potala Palace walls dwarf the pilgrims at journey’s end. The aspiration of my life is to find a way to live rather than to exist. I travel, not to see how I live in the world, but how the world actually lives. It isn’t just about what I want to see, it is about seeing the reality of things as they are. Traveling has taught me what it means to be human; every single person can experience the entire range of human emotion in whatever walk of life he/she lives. I hope to learn how to capture the breadth of our human condition in my photographs and instill that same emotion in the viewer (even as I learn to feel it myself), either through the people of the place or the natural world that awakens the senses. In order for me to feel alive, I travel. But for those people who don’t travel, I hope to rouse their pedestrian emotions into an active relationship with the world they live in.

My Photo Scholarship 2010 Entry

Sharing Stories - A Glimpse into Another's Life - Africa Defined

My Photo Scholarship 2010 entry