Since I’ve been gone less than 2 years, it feels oddly strange to be back in South Africa. Probably because my memories are still so fresh, but the faces that once populated my days here are now scattered all over the globe. This is the peculiar right of the aid worker I suppose. The friends you make are also travelers, and no one stays put for long.
But its also strange in the way that South Africa is strange. Wonderful and dynamic, but also strange. Sandton, where I am now, is perhaps the strangest – a piece of Los Angelos in Africa, inhabited by the blondest, fittest women and a grossly disproportionate number of $60,000 sports cars. For those who have never been to Africa, or never been to South Africa, this is probably a difficult image to conjure. But it you figure that white South Africans had, until something like 5 years ago, the highest standard of living anywhere in the world you can more easily imagine it. Put it this way – for most of the last 50 years, every white South African essentially had 7 black South Africans working, in one way or another, to make them wealthier – or at least not impeding that progression with competition.
My verdict, much as I love all of Africa, is still out on South Africa. I’m a pessimist by nature, and though South Africa has been heralded by the world as a glowing success story for escaping post-Apartheid bloodbaths during its transition. The future seems less likely to be so glowingly positive. Small changes are afoot that hint at a darker future. Blackouts, brownouts, paperwork that was never there before. Corruption is creeping in quickly – get pulled over by a policeman in South Africa and judge or yourself. All of these are small but pernicious – haunting ghosts of Christmas future for Africa’s golden child. Let’s hope I’m wrong – I often am. But the next generation of South Africans – white and black – may well be researching present day Zimbabwe for insight into problems no one today seems able, or willing, to admit as possibilities.
August 11th, 2007 | by David in Uncategorized
Hard to believe it’s been 8 years – nearly to the day – since I was last in Kosovo. Then it was much different, of course, coming in as I did just one day after the end of the NATO bombings that forced the Serb withdrawl from the province. I walked past teh Grand Hotel here in Pristina today, and remembered having a coffee on it’s street-side terrace, watching a poorly-driven British NATO tank careen off of another parked tank in the middle of the street on June 17, 1999. A random memory. Everywhere I look now I see homes that are newly built. I well remember the scale of the damage as I drove in from Macedonia in June 1999. Every house along that route was damaged or destroyed. On a more personal level, its harder still to believe where my life has gone in those 8 years. Kosovo was my first major emergency, as I was then just two years into a job with Catholic Relief Services. After three months in the Balkans that spring and summer, I moved directly to Africa, where I worked for most of the next 6 years on an Emergency Response Team, traveling almost constantly to places like Kosovo.
If the physical scars of the war here have healed, the more subtle reminders of that ethnically-charged conflict remain. All these years later, miinority Serbs and Roma are still afraid to return, or unable due to the lack of job opportunities in Kosovo today. While Kosovo awaits a UN vote on its future, many seem to be waiting to see what their next moves will be. Any vote is sure to see a movemnt, into or out of Kosovo, by some elements of the population. A vote for independence will surely bring some movement of Serbs from the province. It remains to be seen how many, but right now the mood here is one of waiting, while the long process of rebuilding from the conflict of 1999 continues, slowly.
May 27th, 2007 | by David in Uncategorized
I spent much of the day today – Easter Sunday – with a family of refugees from Iraq. They, like 750,000 others who have fled from Iraq, are living in Jordan illegally. They are among the minority of Christian Iraqis, but with little money, Easter mass at a small Latin church in Amman was followed only by a some sweet tea and cookies. There was no Easter meal with the family.
We have an assumption in America that people choose to break the law. That is true, I believe. But there are times when the choice is made for you – when your own life or that of your family depends on what choice you make.
For the vast majority of the refugees living in Jordan, like Habib, the man with whom I spent the day, that choice was no less stark. Though he left Iraq 5 years before the 2003 US invasion, he fled at a time when the danger was just as real. With 5 sons, Habib feared losing them to conscription in the Iraqi army – fodder for Sadaam’s military machine. The choice then to flee to neighboring Jordan was easy.
But the 9 years since have been anything but. Because he could not risk returning to Iraq and not being allowed back into Jordan, Habib overstayed his 6-month Jordanian visa. He has been living in Jordan illegally ever since, unable to work, unable to send his then teenaged children to school, unable to access quality healthcare. He and hundreds of thousands of others like him are now trapped in a legal limbo in Jordan, disenfranchised and unrecognized, unable either to return to Iraq or immigrate to third countries.
Though the nightly news reminds us all too often about the violence in Iraq, it puts no face on the victims. US servicemen and women killed daily. More Iraqi civilians also killed and maimed. And now more than 2 million refugees, adrift outside of a country many fear may never be home again.
April 18th, 2007 | by David in Uncategorized
It is Independence Day in Ghana – the 50th anniversary of the first independent nation in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a mouthful to say – but no one needs to say it. The streets of Accra are alive today with nationhood.
The crowds start early. Some have been out all night. By first light, throngs choke the streets. The colors of Ghana’s flag – a black star on a gold, green and red background – are everywhere. It is as if the nation’s symbol has come to life, multiplied, and migrated en masse towards Independence Square, site of the day’s festivities, stitched into every imaginable fashion, drawn onto every imaginable surface, painted onto the faces of babies.
The stands lining two sides of the square fill immediately. Around them, those too late for seating move in sweeping currents, seeking precious space from which to view the huge expanse of concrete square. Officials wearing uniforms of every possible description stride purposefully about.
Ghana’s traditional chiefs are the first to arrive. Some are sheltered from the gathering sun by huge shade makers of exquisite canvas or silk. Others arrive to the notes of horns carved from bone, heralding the movement of tribal leaders for centuries. All are dressed in traditional cloth – loose hanging robes of cotton or intricately woven patterns of kente cloth for which Ghana is famous.
Next come the military. A ringing cheer rises up when they march into the square – a rigid forest of red, blue and white uniforms, black bayonets and silver swords. Officers bark commands above the din, directing squares of men and women in drills of precision. The crowd delights, until finally the formations take up positions facing the grandstand, come to attention, and wait.
The dignitaries arrive with more restrained ceremony. Expensive cars, most bearing small flags announcing the nationality of their occupant, pull up to the red carpet laid out for them. They step from their vehicles, shake hands with the official greeters, and are shown to a spot in the arched grandstand, overlooking the vast parade ground. In all, 30 dignitaries attend.
But it is the last of these officials who sparks the now sweltering crowds. At the sight of the flag of Ghana, fluttering at the head of his vehicle, an electric charge surges through the crowd. It seems to bear the car onwards towards the small, flag draped podium that awaits. There, John Kufour, President of Ghana, emerges to cheers, and casts a wave to each section of the crowd. A military officer approaches, sword in hand, and bears the president on a review of the troops, before he takes his seat beneath the arches of the grandstand.
Over the next hours there are sweeping displays by hundreds of synchronized performers, bearing flags of the nation’s colors. There is military pomp and circumstance. Planes streak overhead, and draw roars from the crowd. The world’s press lean in, only barely contained by police, to get the shot they need for the news tonight. It must be said that it is grandeur far removed from the Ghana where poverty is oppressive, malaria rife, and food so scarce that there is seasonal hunger. There are voices in Ghana who question the government’s $20 million price tag for the nation’s birthday when so many go hungry. In Ghana, unlike many places in the world, they are allowed to ask openly.
Africa is a place of wonder. Life explodes here. Africa is also a place of poverty, disease and hunger, and life, however abundant, hangs always in the balance. The realities that make it so will still be here tomorrow, and many will continue to work to address them. But today, at least, in a humid city of gold and green and red, Africa is a place of unbridled celebration.
March 8th, 2007 | by David in Uncategorized
This is the first entry of my new web site. As such, I’m not really sure what form all of what follows will take. We’ll see where it all goes. What I can tell you is that what’s here is a glimpse of some of the things I’ve experienced over the last six years, since moving to Africa to do media and photography work for a Baltimore-based humanitarian aid agency. The Countries Visited link lists some of the places where I have lived and worked. Most of what you see on these pages comes from experiences I had in those countries.
Back now in the States I am adjusting to all of the newness of home, and am eager to branch out into new and different assignments, while still working internationally when emergencies arise. I will update this page as often as possible, and hope you will continue to visit. I hope as well that you gain something useful from the images and text found within these pages.
Should you wish to contact me about writing or photo work, or to comment on anything found on this site, just click “contact” in the upper right corner of this page
February 1st, 2006 | by David in Uncategorized
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
