My photography and film-making took me into more parts of unseen Africa travelling to Tanzania and Kenya with my old friends Ace Africa this February.
Kome Island is a remote outpost on Tanzania’s southern section of Lake Victoria. A couple of hours drive and two ferry journeys away from Mwanza. It is a new and challenging venture for Ace Africa.
Far from tourist eyes, this island is home to two distinct groups of people. The indigenous farming community predominate with their rural agriculture-based subsistence way of life and their deeply entrenched beliefs in black magic; then alongside them – but socially separated – there is the much smaller itinerant coastal population who work as fishermen out of the sandy lakeside village of Buhama Mchangani; complete with their prostitutes and their tough, ascetic way of life.
On Kome, with its strange paradoxes and remote setting, I found perhaps some of the poorest people I have met anywhere. One house I visited (the home of Leticia pictured here with her 6 children) was perhaps the most meagre home I have ever entered. It had nothing. No furniture, no possessions – nothing!
There is a hardness here; something that is etched in the faces of the people who live here that I have not really encountered anywhere else I have been in Africa and is really quite disturbing. What it is precisely is hard to quantify. I think it may just be the result of living without hope.
The journey continued up into Kenya. Back to Bungoma. The original home of Ace Africa and the place I first photographed for them back in 2003. I was making a film with ACE Africa beneficiary Christine Nasimuyu, a 38 year old woman who had been left by her husband while pregnant with their seventh child. The photographs here are different; full of possibility and purpose.
I look forward to returning to Kome one day in the not too distant future to find that the same attitude has developed there with the help of Ace Africa.
To see a much larger range of my pictures for ACE Africa and to find out more about their work please go to ACE-Africa.org
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- A fishing Dhow cuts through the calm waters of Lake Victoria in the early morning light.
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- Two men fish from a canoe in the early morning light off Kome Island on Lake Victoria.
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- Egrets wait for the fishermen to return with their catch hoping for a free meal.
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- A woman carries water back from the lake. In the foreground thousands of small fish called Dagaa dry in the sunshine.
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- The Kome Ferry disembarks on to the mainland
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- This old man was travelling over to Kome on the ferry with me
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- A Kome Island fisherman relaxes on the shore
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- A fisherman sits by the local authority building.
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- Two Kome Island fisherman return from their boat with their catch
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- There are no permanent buildings in the village so every structure is made of wood or plastic sheeting.
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- The cafe serves tea and delicious African chapatis along with ugali the staple carbohydrate of the local diet.
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- Two women of idle away the heat of the afternoon in the shade. Almost every woman here in the fishing village is a prostitute. HIV rates are high.
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- The girls have little to do while they await the men so they spend their time socialising and beautifying.
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- Drinking and hanging out in the bars and shops are popular pastimes fro everyone when the work is done.
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- Ajida was with a group of women cleaning fish on the lake shore.
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- Leticia and her desperately poor family lived in a hut with virtually no posessions. Her husband had abandoned her with their 6 children to look after.
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- Petro, Leticia’s son, is ten years old and the man of the house as the eldest son.
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- Happiness and Salapio live openly with their HIV+ status in their community. A brave step where individuals can be stigmatised by this admission.
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- The Kome Ferry prepares to depart the Island.
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Kome Ferry 2
The Kome Ferry prepares to depart the Island.
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- Paul is a 14 year old boy with a plan to go to boarding school.
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A Boxful of Hope
Paul 14, lives with his widowed mother , Rosemary Sirengo, 48 in Kikwechi village Bungoma, Kenya. Paul worked for three days digging sand in the river for a local contractor so that he could afford to buy this box. He needs it if he is to fulfill his ambition to go to boarding school. All he has to do now is fill it with a uniform and other school necessities and then raise the fees to go there!
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- The son of an HIV+ family living in Songo village, Bungoma stands in a doorway.
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- Widow and ACE Africa beneficiary, Rosemary Sirengo, 48 outside her house in Kikwechi village, Bungoma, Kenya.
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- Christine Nasimiyu, 38, was abandoned by her husband whilst pregnant with their seventh child. Since becoming an Ace Africa beneficiary has learned not only to stand on her own two feet again but developed the skills to train and support many other people in her impoverished community.
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- Ferdinand Wanyama is one of a legion of Ace Africa volunteers. He plays a pivotal role seeking out those individuals and families in his community who are struggling with poverty and sickness. After bringing them to the Ace team’s attention he becomes a sort of liaison officer ensuring that the assistance provided is working properly.
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- A child of a family recently discovered in Songo village, Bungoma by Ace Africa living in poverty with HIV.