I have to admit I brought some rage with me here to New Orleans. It’s been building up watching the news for the last 45 days now, as each night more oil gushes into the Gulf, and a parade of arrogant oil executives marches across the screen promising to clean up a mess that never had to happen, and never should have, here along the Gulf Coast. Working for a client down here, I headed down yesterday to Venice, one of several Ground Zero’s here from which the oil clean up is being staged. I came down earlier in the week with a range of fairly high level local government officials – I’d rather not say who I’m working for here so as not to cause any problems. We headed out to the staging area and found clean up workers, hired by BP, standing in lines to deal with a newly instituted system requiring two forms of picture ID and a BP issued badge to get into the site. Many were grumbling about the delays, and though our group got in, escorted by a Federal health official sent to meet us, my camera attracted immediate attention. Within seconds, a BP official approached and asked who we were with – politely, but firmly. Two more were to make the same approach over the next few minutes, and the first word of caution offered by our host was not to take any photos other than of the two trailers from which they were working themselves, administering health care to workers injured or sickened by the clean up. He didn’t want to see our camera confiscated, he said.
Until that minute I suppose, I hadn’t thought about what was really going on here, and who was really in charge. If you are looking for swarms of volunteers cleaning the beaches and marshes of oil, you won’t find the here in Louisiana. BP hires local fishermen to do the work. That’s as it should be – they are most affected by the disaster here. But what it means is that BP is still deciding who does what, when, where, and with what. They are in charge, and the federal government, along with the state and local law enforcement, works for them. If you needed another example of how Big Oil runs America, the oil spill here will provide it.
In teh afternoon I met up with two photographers who had chartered a small boat. They were heading out into the marsh to get pictures they said, and after some quick negotiation a travel companion and I got on for the ride. The caption – I’ll call him Don - fished for 27 years in these waters as a shrimper, and now as a charter boat captain taking small fishing parties out for speckled trout in the Gulf. He was taking a risk by taking us out, he said. If the police find us, they’ll run us off. It’s still unclear to me why, and under whose authority. We were’t disrupting any clean up – there wasn’t any that I saw. We weren’t destroying the boom left to float along the edges of the saw grass marsh, two-toned from the oil that had already come ashore and found its way in among the stalks.
With the photographers off in the grass, wading through oily water to get their shots, I spoke for awhile with Don. He told me how he used to shrimp but the regulations got too complicated, so after a few years trying unsuccessfully to make some onshore businesses thrive, he turned back to the fishing that he loves. May and June are his busy months, he said, so the oil could not have come onshore at a worse time. All but two of his clients booked for May cancelled. BP pays him $5,000 a month now just to make up for the lost revenue, about a third of what he would have made fishing last month. Still, I thought to myself, pretty good pay. I took out my notebook and asked Don to describe the impact of the oil, fully expecting at least some of the rage I’d brought down with me. But I was surprised by what I heard.
Don’s real worry is not the oil, but the fact that Obama is halting offsea drilling for 6 months. How can you penalize one airline, Don asked by way of example, because a plane belonging to someone else crashed? People here depend on that money, and on that work. Not just the workers themselves but the small mom and pop shops that sell the supplies and the meals and the materials that the men on those rigs need. Aren’t you worried about the marsh, I asked? Won’t this oil kill everything? The oil will eventually clean itself out, he said, and added that BP will bring people in to clean every stalk, literally, with rags “until it shines.” He says he’s seen them do it before.
I have to say it wasn’t what I was expecting. Here’s a man who lost his livelihood to oil, but who was hesitant to blast the company whose oil it was. He’s bothered by it – don’t get me wrong – and offered my favorite quote of the day, delivered with that slow southern drawl that no non-native Orleanean can do justice. “They can put a Tonka toy on the moon and play with it for a year, but they can’t fix this.” But there was no rage.
Apparently it is here, according to others I’ve spoken with. They say if this doesn’t get fixed soon, something will blow. But still – I expected…more. More anger. More frustration. More indignation at the destruction, gallon by gallon, of the Gulf Coast and the way of life of Plaquemines Parish, for one. But somehow the lack of outrage was more disquieting. We outside of Louisiana scream for the blood of BP. They’ll never get away with this, we say. But they will. Because as we’re screaming, we’re driving – guzzling that oil that we in America are all addicted to. And that’s why the oil execs on TV look so smug: they know it. The government knows it, and the fishermen here on the Gulf Coast know it too, even as their livelihood disappears in sludge. BP’s money will buy them a free pass – the money that passes from our hands, past our screaming mouths, and into their pockets.
Maybe, I thought, if Don’s not that bothered by it, I shouldn’t be either. Maybe none of us who don’t live here really understand this. Or maybe a company that made $6 billion in profits for the first quarter of this year can make their own reality, and get away with it, as long as we all keep filling up at the pumps.
Oil coats every stalk of cane grass in the marshes at the edge of the Gulf.
A fisherman examines the damage done to cane grass by oil
Oil coated cane grass
Oil coats a cleanup suit worn by a photographer working in the marsh near Venice, LA
A lone crab clings to an anchor rope as the water around him turns to an oily mess.
Boom offers a thin and imperfect barrier against oil reaching the delicate marsh grass
Boom placed by fishermen employed by BP
Oil is almost as much a way of life as fishing is along Louisiana's Gulf Coast.
A lone fisherman heads out to the Gulf to fish one of the few remaining open areas.
June 4th, 2010 | by David in Travel
Have spent each of the last few days in an area called Shivaji Nagar – a slum area of about 600,000 people in Mumbai city. ICRW is training mentors for young men, many of whom live in this area, to serve as role models for them, and as a resource on issues relating to gender. Here are few pictures of women I met today in the slum.
May 2nd, 2010 | by David in Travel
A few pics from a trip to the sprawling Shivaji Nagar slum yesterday with the International Center for Research on Women…
April 28th, 2010 | by David in Travel
Wrapping up my time with CRS here from New Delhi. Had a few hours before it got dark this evening to duck out from the hotel and take a walk around. Sounds like a simple thing, I suppose, but too often on these trips I’m working 17 hour days so even a simple walk is welcome enough.
You really almost have to experience an Indian city to really get what it looks like, what it sounds like. I grabbed my camera and just stood for awhile on a corner to watch what happened. This city sort of just unleashes a torrent of humanity past you, every second – cars a buses, rickshaws and small motor transports, bikers and walkers of every possible description. It makes me a bit crazy at times – makes me want some quiet corner of Montana to just sit down and look up at the sky and hear nothing. But if it chases your mind to some distant piece of solitude, Delhi – or any city here – is also a reminder of how lucky you are to have what you have, to make your living with your mind and not your body, and to have the option, as I did, for an afternoon’s walk instead of peddling a rickshaw in 100 degree heat, earning for your efforts the equivalent perhaps of a few cents.
Off to Mumbai tomorrow.
April 24th, 2010 | by David in Travel
A quick note from the road. Got to India a few nights ago and made my way out here to Orissa, on the East Coast, doing some work for Catholic Relief Services. If you even wondered what it felt like inside your oven, spend time in eastern India in April. It was 109 degrees the other day – 96 degrees at 8pm when I landed in Delhi Thursday night. Makes for some toasty days out in the field.
Here to see some disaster mitigation projects for CRS. They are what they sound like – projects designed to reduce the impact of disasters like floods and cyclones, which are common occurrences here in India. Today we were in a village called Bhaunreswar where CRS has helped to train 20 local villager sin all manner of disaster preparedness – from first aid and search and rescue to early warning systems. Quite interesting, really, but very much a common sense approach to what has become the all too frequent disaster in this part of the country. The villagers themselves will always be the first responders, so why not train them how to rescue people, and better still, how to warn the community of pending disasters like floods so they can save what property they can and get to high ground. I spent just two days here, then I’m off to two other sites in the country this coming week to see similar projects in other areas. Then, down to Mumbai for two weeks with the International Center for Research on Women to photograph some projects of theirs in and around the city. Right now, enjoying some air conditioning before bed – increasing my own carbon footprint I know…
April 18th, 2010 | by David in Travel
A rare moment to breathe and catch up on things like blogs today. After 6 weeks of 18 hour days, 7 days a week, most aid agency staff seem to be laying low today on a Sunday, trying to catch their breath. I’m with CRS now, still in Port au Prince, and have switched from pics of disease surveillnace as I was taking with the CDC last week to water and sanitation pictures, as CRS gears up for large scale water programming. Visually it may not be that exciting – latrines and water tanks – but the work is vitally important in the camps, which remian crowded. No one is going home yet, and it may be years before some do.
It’s raining here now fairly often – every night, or two of the last three I think now. That makes it hard to camp, as many of us are here, with computer and camera equipment constantly in damp weather. Btu it’s far worse for the people living in the camps, many of them under just thin shelters of plastic tarp, with dirt floors.
Though I used to do emergency work often, it’s been awhile now since I was in one this big. It is a strange and quirky atmosphere, difficult to describe for those who have never been to such a place, at such times. People from all over the world coming together to work on any number of disaster related issues – logistics, communications, security, camp management and HR. They gather at the few hotels available each nigh to drink beer and discuss the day. You can just as easily hear English as French or sometimes Spanish in any given circle at any given time. Many know each other from other disasters from other parts of the world – I’ve met 6 or 8 people here I knew from my days at CRS, some of whom I haven’t seen in many years. Everyone is disheveled – a day spent sweating in 90 degree weather in a warehouse or a displaced camp doesn’t leave you looking fresh and ready for a dinner date. People are sunburned and whiskered and spending inordinate amounts of time on their phones, trying to make plans for the next day or sorting out problems from today. Often things don’t go to plan – I’d be OK saying usually. Trucks break down, partners don’t or can’t do what they promise to do, some staff just drop the ball in the midst of the crazy pass. Beneficiaries in cash for work programs quit, saying they want more money. Sometimes things go really wrong and trucks carrying supplies get looted – spontaneous distributions as they are euphemistically called. Things fall apart for no reason at all sometimes.
But in general, eventually, things get done. Shelter kits get distributed, water trucks arrive, and latrines are built. People eventually recover. Aid workers fly off to France or the US or England and get ready for the next disaster. And today, it is so nice to have a few minutes to catch up to myself. And I have only been here a week.
February 28th, 2010 | by David in Travel
You forget, when you haven’t done emergency work in awhile, just how strange a scene these things can be. I;m at a hotel tonight after week of camping on a rooftop. And I’m camping here as well, in teh small yard in front of the hotel, which is filled to double occupancy with aid workers from around the world. I ran into several old friends already, which is always nice, especially in an emergency. I’m tired after 5 days, and people have been here for almost 7 weeks now, some of them. To say nothing of the Haitians, sleeping outdoors till, many of them, for fear of going back inside. It’s common after earthquakes – people are traumatized, an the thought of being killed or pinned by falling rubble is too much for weeks and months after a big quake like this one. Its hot and humid at night now, but mosquitoes are a problem. Malaria rates will surge in the coming weeks as teh rains come, and with them the standing water in the more than 300 camps will certainly breed disease. A woman died of typhoid in one of the camps today, but this far there is nothing like an epidemic, which is a rare piece of good news. Midnight now – off to my tent.
February 24th, 2010 | by David in Travel | 1 Comment
A word tonight from Port au Prince. I’m typing between two chairs, hunched over for the third or fourth hour now so please forgive any typos. Got in yesterday on the second day of commercial flights, Baltimore to Maimi, Miami to Port au Prince. Spending these first few days with the CDC – Centers for Disease Control – which is always an interesting experience. Basically they are doing what they call shoe leather surveillance, which means getting out physically to the largest of the more than 300 camps that now dot the city like ragged pock marks, sheltering many of the more than 1.1 million people now in need of shelter here. After any such disaster, rescuing survivors is always the first priority. But with that phase over – Haiti has lost as many as 230,000 people – the next great worry is disease, even as aid agencies scramble to provide food, water and shelter to survivors.
The CDC is here to prevent the type of outbreaks that made the Goma camps of the early 1990′s a nightmare, where hundreds of thousands of Rwandans, many of them complicit in the recent genocide in Rwanda, crowded unsanitary camps just across the border in Goma, Congo
. Thousands died there of cholera, which spreads rapidly once the genie gets out of the bottle in a crowded camp. The team I am here following is out and about, working with NGO’s in the camps to help them to serve as the front line of reporters for potential outbreaks of things like cholera, typhoid or malaria. Once the system is up and functioning fully, in about a month, medical staff in the many camps can report suspicious illnesses and provide the samples needed for further testing, so that any potential outbreaks can be quelled quickly.
Following that CDC team I spent a few hours today in two of the camps here. The first, now covering most of what used to be an airfield on the edge of the city, is home to 43,000 people, living under plastic tarps, mostly. Others are building with wood and even corrugated metal salvaged from their homes or the remnants of others, now destroyed. For the conditions, I found people remarkably upbeat. People smiled, posed, and joked. It never ceases to amaze me how resilient human beings can be. One man with a badly burned leg called me over and posed for a photo. I came across a boy of maybe 14 in another camp flying a kite, despite the third degree burn on his wrist, the result of a cooking fire accident in the camp. The fact that the wound was open and untreated, however, is a prime example of just how vulnerable these displaced remain and just how much work remains to be done.
February 21st, 2010 | by David in Travel
Again, I marvel at those how find time on such trips to post blogs each day. I know I’m supposed to be linked, minute by minute, to the rest of the world in this global IT age, but I wonder if people are connecting with each other every minute, when do they have time to live their lives? So busy have I been here in Peru that I haven’t had time to write a single blog. I got here on the 10th and took a rare bit of ime off in the midst of these trips to go to Macchu Pichu. The site itself was amazing, as you would imagine – an ancient civilization frozen in time. But everything leading up to it – the town of Cuzco where most tourists leave from to reach Macchu Picchu, and the town of Aguas Calientes at the base of the mountain itself, are everything that has gone wrong in a gloablized world. Every shop in the ancient town of Cuzco, one the Inca capital, is either a money exchange, a tourist booking agency or a restaurant – including a McDonalds, tucked into a corner of the ancient square.
Working for three different agencies this week has been interesting. Perhaps the oddest moment came last night when I was literally shooting photos in a gay sauna for a health agency while talking on the phone with a priest to coordinate today’s work at a seminary outside of Lima. Such is often my life on these trips. In fact, have to run now and find this seminary…
December 20th, 2009 | by David in Travel
Just over a week now in Brazil. I came down last week for the CDC Foundation, who are supporting a range of projects up in the state of Amazonas, in Brazil’s vast northwest. Amazonas is Brazil’s largest state, but also, I believe, its least densely populated. As the name implies it encompasses a vast swathe of Amazon forest, and is bisected west to east by the Amazon River or its tributaries. I spent four days in the city of Manaus, the state capital, which though interesting also represented my failure to reach a smaller town upriver known as Coari. After many years of living and traveling in Africa I thought I was prepared for the many small hurdles you have to jump to get things done, on any given day. But this effort to reach Coari ranks up there as one of the most frustrating. The tickets that were supposed to be waiting for us to take a boat upriver were in fact not waiting for us. So, we booked a plane ticket for the next day and went to work getting pics in Manaus. After a three-hour delay for a technical problem with the plane the next day, that flight was also scratched. Returning the next morning for what we were told was a definite flight up to Coari, we boarded the small 10 seater aircraft, took off, and at 2,600 feet began descending again. The pilot returned to the airport and announced that the problem from the day before had not in fact been fixed, flight delayed or canceled. Since that left us only one day in Coari, and the distinct possibility of being stuck up there if the return flight didn’t work out, we ended up never reaching Coari.
I flew into Sao Paulo three days ago – by far the largest city I have ever been too, with over 12 million people and a city center that stretches for miles. Yesterday we drove out to a project site. The drive, I was told, was over 20 miles, and took over an our in Sao Paulo’s legendary traffic, and still we were in the city of Sao Paulo when we arrived. I am shooting photos here today and tomorrow for two other agencies, then I am off Thursday morning for Peru. Though a very busy trip, with very long days, Brazil I can see is an amazing country. The diversity here is fantastic, from a photographer’s standpoint, and between the rain forests of the Amazon and the famous beaches of the east the country offers much – if not efficiency in travel by small aircraft.
December 8th, 2009 | by David in Travel
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