Music credits:

Balmorhea, "Limmat."

The Afters, "Beautiful Love."

Thanks guys.  And of course, Esther.

after Enoch, the translator, convinced them I wasn’t necessarily looking for kung-fu moves, the children settled down long enough for a portrait…

a young man sets out to fish, or perhaps play, in Lake Tanganyika.  The mountains of Congo loom in the background.

what a face…

the marketplace in Gitega.  you can find just about anything you can imagine.

a young boy with toy in hand.  I posted an image of him on an earlier blog, but this one speaks to me as well…

the burundian upcountry as the fog begins to lift…

I’ve been thinking…  there’s a lot of sadness within this blog.  Since these are stories that are personal in nature to those I’ve photographed, I though it right for me to share a personal experience one often might not share.
I’m passing along stories and images that brought me to tears in the last few weeks.  I remember laying in bed early one morning and I started to weep.  Weeping because I heard stories hours before of women in a silent suffering, nearly unable to escape what has been brought upon them.  Then it hit me.  Thousand upon thousands more women in neighboring countries are suffering the very same or similar injustices and it became too much for me to handle.  I wept for those who weep in silence.  I shared this with Madam TeTe, the member of Ugandan Parliament whom we were working with on one leg of the trip to help her fight FGM in her country.  I shared because I wanted her to know that it mattered to me.  She looked me in the eye and told me that she had been praying that someone would come along side her and weep with her for the injustices that had fallen upon her people.  Her prayer was answered.

imagine if we all used our gifts for the benefit of others, not just the benefit of a padded back pocket and 15 minutes of fame.  imagine if humanity cared for humanity, on a whole.  what if we woke in the morning and thought about how we can help those in need, at home and abroad.  is that too ideological?  I don’t believe so.

I’ve come to a realization on this trip.  Yes, people need help and often it takes money and other resources to lend that hand.  Yes, there is suffering in our world, even in the US.  Yes, it’s easy to see the need and feel overwhelmed.  Perhaps that’s because the workers are few…  If we all did one small thing each day to help, how would things be different? 
When I visited Naomi and the children in Rwanda she was excited, i can’t tell you how excited…  And yes she was thankful for the stories I would take home to see if perhaps it might spark someones heart to help her to clothe the orphans or finish a room outback so they don’t have to sleep in the mud.   The most important thing to Naomi?  That I came.  That I held her hand.  That I loved her and the orphans.  The most important thing was telling the unforgotten that they are not forgotten. 

Please use your gifts, whatever they are, to change the world.  And when the freshness of this trip has worn and I’m settling back into my rut, please challenge me to do the same.

i’m pleased to introduce you to mama Naomi.  to say this woman is an overachiever is a slight understatement. 
Naomi, in her sixties, is a reverend pastor of 8 churches, choir director and mother to some 500 children.

Naomi’s house is a mud brick structure under 900 square feet.  The roof is tin and if you look carefully, you can see the stars from under it when you lie down at night.  About 15-20 children stay at the house at any one time, the rest Naomi finds places for them to stay within the village until she can find some permanent structure large enough for all of them.  This picture shows a room out back in which she hopes to complete so an additional ten children can stay at the house.

With all they have seen, with all of their loss, there is one thing they know they can rely on, one thing that can never be taken from them, their faith, their God.

the largest room at Naomi’s where many children sleep.  They have no mattresses, just mats that are rolled out to keep them off of the floor.  Naomi
said that mattresses, which cost very little, would be a huge blessing to the children–and blankets.

naomi looks after these two young brothers.  during the day they attend school.  At night when the building is empty, they sleep together on a table with one sheet to cover them and no mattress.  If my memory is correct, both parents died from HIV/AIDS.

HIV/Aids…  Naomi directly oversees about 15-20 children who are HIV+.  The school in which we visited had more than 40 children infected.  This woman, infected as well, counsels the children. The little girl she’s pictured with is HIV+, but does not yet know it.

A woman looks on during a church service.  she made Lauren and I the most beautiful prayer mats.

Porridge fills the cups, then the stomachs…

one of Naomi’s
churches…

On the way to the airport…  The rav-4 decided to hug the bank a little too tight and within a second i was thrown against the door with a nice view of a rock and mud embankment.  My initial thought?  "At least we’re in the shade."  I had seen enough happen on this trip to know that it was all in God’s hands.  If i was meant to miss the flight to Rwanda, I was mean to miss it. 
I was excited to see some good Burundian engineering and I knew without a doubt these 30 men would get the rav-4 out.  They did.  my flight? It was canceled anyway and I flew to Rwanda the next evening.

due to the war and rebel attacks, we very well could have been the first Mzungu visitors to this park in about 15 years.  Our walk through the park marked the arrival of one of Burundi’s greatest potential resources, tourism.
for the tech geeks… this was shot with Nikon’s 17-55.  I was packed for Rwanda by this time and since I wanted to travel light, I hadn’t any other lenses with me.  When i walked up to the ridge at national park I was seriously wishing my 12-24 made it into he bag.  This is a JPEG out of the cam, I shot RAW+JPEG so I’m excited to get back to the RAW Images and nab a little more dynamic range out of the series.

Someone started a revolution in Burundi.  At some point, very bad kung-fu "B" movies made it on to the scene.  Thus began the theory that all white people were martial arts experts like Chuck Norris.  On top of that, all white people might even be named Chuck Norris…  Just about every where we went in Burundi, from the city to the up country we would see some amazing kung-fu moves… All we could do was go along with it…  In this case, I took a ride in the back of the truck to get some fun shots of the kids running after us.  It didn’t take long for the kung-fu to bust out of this little guy…

Seth explained to us that the number one medical emergency in Burundi right now is, get this, people falling out of their gardens…  Terracing hasn’t been introduced yet and they garden on any piece of land they can find.  Often these gardens are on extreme slopes… Here’s a mama tha finds her garden on a very nice piece of land overlooking the river…

this woman is able to grow her business as she benefits from the micro finance program, Turame, offered by World Relief…  Microfinance is a great way to help those who want to help themselves, but need some capitol to grow their business.  You can contact World Relief for more info, or visit websites such as www.kiva.org.

this woman learns a fine trade in Africa, sewing.  Courtesy of a World Relief program near Kitega, Burundi…

I don’t mean to be crude, but in order to explain how this picture was made, I have to say that this stop was scheduled for a bit of off the side of the road "relief."  It’s pretty common for people to just pee right off the side of the road or side walk in Africa. (I’ve heard of this in Europe as well.)
I’m kind of a shy guy and decided I could wait another 20 minutes.
I was blessed to meet these two young shepards as a result.  They were excited to have their picture taken and equally so to get their reward of gnuts for standing in.

a man walks his bike up a hill near a tea plantation in the up country of Burundi…