Nearly scared away from journalism

Now I realize that the quality of my writing doesn't stand par with most of the writers already out there, since I rely a little too heavily on cliches and run-on sentences. However, I want to ascertain that becoming a journalist has been a long-standing dream of mine. I have made it into a few riskier countries that are off-the-beaten-path, but to tell the truth, personal safely had been pretty much guaranteed in most of those cases.  I was yelled at by the North Korean Military for taking disaster relief photos, nearly fell down far too many mountains when losing my footing,  and have been chased around in a Hummer by armed guards in Dubai, but in most of those cases the only  real threat was having my photos deleted.

This photo was the last of a particular roll I was shooting, just in the vicinity of Pristina, Kosovo. This situation was similar to the last couple mentioned. I had managed to hitch a ride into a post-war reconstruction area with Stig, the head of a Swedish construction-focused NGO. He would be busy with meetings that afternoon, so I took the opportunity to take a walk around the area where the reconstructed housing was scheduled to be built.  I ended up wandering out of the "secure area" - there were no signs or other demarcations, how could one have known.

I ended up spotting a rather old Greek-Orthodox church of the old order. From what I recall, while much of Kosovo had converted to Islam, the followers of Greek-Orthodoxy moved into modern-day Macedonia.I took this photo as I moved closer to the ruins of the old church. The intricate stonework caught my eye, and strangely enough the KFOR (Kosovar Forces of Resistance) soldiers barely registered in my narrow line-of-sight. Depending on the Political circumstances occuring in a country, you could either only see a civilian police force from time to time, or you might see a constant ocean of soldiers. At the time, certain regions of Kosovo were similar to the latter. Most entry points and secure facilities were under guard by various guises of UN soldiers. Transport conditions between Kosovo and Macedonia changed radically every few days, when different nation's Peacekeepers were assigned border duty. I won't rehash any old stereotypes, but the attitudes of the French, German and US border guards behaved exactly as lax, strict or overconfident as you'd have imagined them to.

So, seeing soldiers in the corner of my eyesight never really caused me to have second thoughts, as I assumed they were just another incarnation of the various UN forces.

Shooting away, I switched rolls after capturing the up-close shot of the church, that is the next shot in the gallery. When you take photos you aren't supposed to, but need to take for the sake of journalism, you learn a few techniques for quickly switching out memory cards and rolls of film. I forgot where I stuffed this last roll, but let's just say they'd have to look pretty carefully to find it.  I recommend having a spare memory card on hand with A bunch of REALLY POORLY TAKEN, seriously up-close self-portraits with vague blurry backgrounds like the sky. If you can switch this into the camera quick enough at a security stop, the guards won't bother looking for the "spy shots" that they are monitoring for.  Just remember not to accidentally include these shots in a professional slideshow presentation of your journey.

Anyways, one of the guards started calling out to me in what I'd assume was Serbo-Croation. So "Zdrabvo!" (Hello!!) I called out back to him. He continued calling out, but I shook him off as an overly-polite stranger, and continued to creep closer to the old church, trying to take some cool shots of the rusty padlocks and the latticework in the doors. At this point, he was not so much yelling, as he was screaming at me.

Lo and behold, I turn around and there are two soldiers who are rather, shall we say, displeased with me, and rather than waving towards me, are instead sticking out their rifles at me. Charming...

I likewise responded with the universal peace symbol, the hands-up-no-sudden-movements pose.  This, they appreciated, and the closer one of them responded in kind by prodding me with his rifle's tip, and grabbed the camera from my neck. Likely following the How-deal-with-journalists-playbook, he promptly proceeded to open the filmback of my camera, tore out the film, and tossed the camera, exposed film cartridge still attached, into the dirt. Despite the rifle still pointed in my general direction, my eyes dart down towards the camera, and the only thoughts that pulse through my concrete-thick noggin are 1) the film is a goner, and 2) I didn't hear the lens crack. *phew*.

So I reach down very slowly, and carefully pick up my camera, letting the film trail out onto the ground and abandoning the film and cartridge on the ground. You know when Gollum of Lord of the Rings has the smacked out of his hand?  That's how most photographers will naturally react when you tear a camera out of their hands, or how Russel Crowe reacts when his photo is taken.  However...   playing it cool, I simply picked up the camera, with one of the filmback-door-hinges snapped off, held it close to my chest, and backed slowly, very slowly, z.e.n. m.e.d.i.t.a.t.i.o.n .s.l.o.w.l.y....    and moved away from the scene.

Curiously, it wasn't until two days later, when I accidentally let some of the details of the event slip in a conversation with the volunteer-supervisor, that I began to have an emotional reaction to the event. The supervisor explained quite clearly how the soldier was under no commitment to let me leave. International Law and War-Criminal-Trials aside, If I were to have disappeared at that junction, there would be no questions directed towards that soldier, and since I hadn't properly explained my day's plans to the supervisor, (obviously not, since it would have been rejectied) the volunteer group, and associated NGO's would have no leads to go on, as to my whereabouts. That could have been the end.

It was a minor incident, and the odds of it having actually resulted in my disappearance were probably quite low when calculated statistically. However, feelings are not a direct result of logic, and that incident ended up scaring me away from danger spots rather prematurely. It was the following year when I decided to visit Japan for the first time, because it was so much safer. Safer perhaps, but I think after a decade since visiting Kosovo, I'm about ready for some more excitement again.

The drunken camel guide of Petra

I think we've all had our encounters with incredibly fascinating people, whose life experiences can really inspire us, and move us... except that, for some reason we're occasionally/often scared away from such a person from their intensity.

On my second day visiting the Petra Complex in Jordan, as seen in the 3rd Indiana Jones movie, I ended up with a climbing group consisting of a French backpacking couple, a Japanese and a Korean backpacker as well. As a group, we bought an impromptu lunch set, consisting of Pita bread (stolen... ah, borrowed from the hostel's breakfast table), little packs of cheese, some oranges, and a curious, giant, foamy-type of sausage... (Some kind of processed meat, or meat-substitute?), and set out to climb up to the highest point, the Sacrificial Peak (for ancient air burials) as the day's goal.

The Petra complex itself is incredible... The "Treasury" is usually the feature shown regularly on travel documentaries (and in I.J.3) but, but it pales in comparison to the massive "Treasury" facade towards the summit of the "End of the World," which is where a mountain range, and ridiculously deep valley create the natural land border between Jordan and present-day Israel. However, taller and wider than the Treasury, is the "Monastery." Which was carved by hand (and basic tools, of course) around the 1st century BC, by the Nabataean people. It takes at least an hour-climb to reach the site, and the "Monastery" facade stands 50 m high x 45m wide. There are quite a few photos of both sites in the Adjoining album.

The amazing thing about visiting the Petra complex, is that after a few days of climbing through the 2000 year old ruins, you begin to realize that the site hosts an ENTIRE, self-supporting city infrastructure, carved out of the mountain facades. Temples, living quarters, store fronts, sacrificial grounds, giant monuments, horse stables, you name it... everything carved out of sandstone as far, nee farther, than the eye can see.

On the second day, our group made our way arduously along several of the mountain paths, enjoying our lunch in the mid day sun, and making it to the Sacrificial Peak, perilously close to sundown.

While choosing some nice grooves in the mountain face, to rest and relax for a bit, a camel guide started yelling out to our group. We ignored him at first, but he was rather insistent in asking, then telling, then yelling at us to move over to his cliff spot to join him. Since we had found such cozy grooves, it took a while before we were willing to relent and trotter over to his spot.

Once we finally pottered over, his first greeting was to gesture that he wanted a cigarette.

By the time one of the French members got rolling papers from his backpack, and handmade a cigarette for the fellow, we came to realize that there were a lot of little liquor bottles gathered next to him... recently emptied it seemed. He then introduced himself as Abdullah.

He began with his set speech about the history of the region, and the laborious work that went into producing the site... but slowly started moving onto interesting, if not surprising subjects. Initially, that his family dated back to this site for generations and actually owned and lived in some of the rock-carved apartment huts. However, were pressured to move into government subsidized housing complexes a stones-throw away, when the site was declared a World Heritage Site. He pointed the houses out, and told us about his extended family.

First, was that he constantly bragged about the benefits of camel milk....

He told us that his Dad had three wives, and that he was the son of the second wife. He told us that his Father was a proud and virile man, capable of producing however many children any time he wanted.... the secret of which... I didn't discover until getting back to the hostel.

The next story, that kind of brought the reality of sitting over a mountain cliff to the forefront, is that he then went on to talk about the "cleaning crews" and how there's often nothing that they can do. These crews, you see, weren't litter cleaning crews, but body cleaning crews...

It didn't happen too often, in fact, only once every three or four years, but still enough to seem to have an emotional effect on our new friend. As he took that chance to open a new bottle of vodka that he unsheathed from his hoodie, and take a hearty swig. He pointed out the couple spots along the cliffs that tourists had lost their footing, or tried climbing foolishly and couldn't recapture a handhold. To really drive in the fact, he would point out his finger, and drag it down while making a whistling sound. "pssssss...sss...ss..s......crrrRCHh"

That's got to leave an impact on ya.

It was around this time that we realized that we had passed sunset, and the skies were darkening quickly.... Compounded by the fact that we had just heard some nasty stories, we realized it was time to start rushing back down the mountain.

He invited us out to visit a campfire set up by the other guides in the mountains, and we had to reject. He ended up calling out quite persistently, down the mountain, that we join him.

Similar to the Egyptian story, some people might say in hindsight that he may have planned to con us, or charge us for guidance to the exit, in the darkness.... but I really got the impression that it must really be quite lonely, being a mountainside camel guide. .. Oh, and that I need to be more careful when climbing in the future. :D




PS: At the hostel I learned that "Camel Milk" is considered to do domestically produced "Viagra" in Jordan. :b

North Korea - At the the end of the tunnel

This is one of the first pics I took in North Korea to really start leaving an impression on me.

This was taken through a cracked open window, on the bus heading down the "highway" on the way towards Kaesong Village. I put "highway" in quotations because in the 2~3 hours we were driving, we only encountered 8 or 9 vehicles total. That includes the construction dump-trucks that served as buses for the junior-military (AKA: construction crew) and the radio-trucks for blasting "patriotic" music to inspire the workers during their backbreaking duties.

A week before we flew to North Korea, on October 18th 2007, there was a series of torrential rainstorms that flooded and ruined farmland, and devastated many mountainside villages. Under the support of the Soviet regime, the industrial machine of North Korean industry dramatically outperformed that of the Agrarian South Korea of the 60's and 70's. However, such dramatic industrialization had a devastating effect on parts of the landscape, and large swathes of the forests along mountainsides were cleared out, without any seedlings planted in their wake.

Following decades of deforestation, the gradual cycle between alternating periods of floods and droughts, now leads to serious landslides that afflict many of the mountainsides across the country. I caught these workers under a bridge, just before exiting the tunnel, and getting my first sight of the results of those landslides.

I decided to display this one, rather than the following pics of the roadside labor crews, that were trying to stem the flow of the landslides, and reconstruct collapsed infrastructure, using only their bare hands, crude tools, and Oxes. The only vehicles used for this work, were dump-trucks that doubled as buses and trucks... that simply served as radio loudspeakers.

The people I met in North Korea were quite warm and friendly, and certainly had their own complicated personal lives, and loving relationships with friends and family. I interviewed a girl, whose parents were soldiers, but she was going to University to become a movie scriptwriter, and I interviewed guys who like to play soccer and go drinking with their buddies on the weekends. Strangely enough, most of the people I talked to were politically apathetic for the most part. To be safe they had to tow the political line, or suffer the consequences... but being so busy, stressed, and involved in their personal lives. Including many who are struggling just to put food on the table, literally. I didn't come across much discussion of the direction the country was going in. From the outside, I guess it's relatively easy to get an idea of the impression your country is leaving on the rest of the World, but when you're inside and only exposed to domestic media, it's that much harder to gain a wider perspective, and that much harder to begin sowing the seeds that lead to political change.

I'll go into detail in future entries, but one of the main inspirations for my graduate research, was discovering the underground NGOs that are focused on not just getting news and information out from North Korea, but also ones, like AsiaPress, NKNet, and Radio Free Korea, that are focused on getting information out-of, into, and around North Korea. It's really hard to be critical if you're not aware of the problems, and the only way to do that is through a free press. While a free press is still illegal in North Korea, and crippled and compromised in many other countries, active support for underground-citizen-journalism in countries without the right-of-free-speech is an important step on the road to finding the light at the end of the tunnel for those still living under dictatorships.

Kosovo Volunteering 1999 - the children and the car

I'm not sure exactly what it was that reverberated within me after taking this photo, but it was a serene moment. This was taken in '99, during my first year of undergrad, where I had the incredible opportunity to accompany a small group of intrepid volunteers.

That's a whole other story there, but the set up around which this photo was taken is that our group was traveling around some of the war-affected areas in Kosovo, setting up little impromptu carnivals for the kids. I really like the mass of vibrant energy in the background. That is a group of kids being chased around by some of the volunteers in a game. That building is the entire school building for grades 1 through 6 of an ethnic Albanian town just outside of Pristina. Since it's a single room schoolhouse, grades 1~3 were taught together in the mornings, and 4~6 were taught together in the afternoons. There was no running water at the school, and washrooms were cleaned by the students themselves using water taken from a stream down the mountain.

In contrast, the Serbian schools we'd also visit during the trip, were large, air-conditioned, beautiful buildings right out of the Sound of Music. Of course, if you see the mountains in the background, almost all of Kosovo is an incredibly beautiful country with a Mediterranean climate. I was quite surprised to arrive, because in the news Media of the time, I could only remember rocky ruins, and desert villages suffering from bomb damage. The actual beauty of the landscape upon arrival was quite disarming.

I don't know what the kids in the foreground were thinking, and I couldn't have know even if they tried telling me, because the only Albanian word I knew at the time was "Toong" (hello)
Most likely they were simply thinking it was a cool car, but there was something about their body language, and their pause... that made me think they were reflecting upon something deeper. I'd like to think of this car as a means to their future. This photo was taken a decade ago, but, it was only a couple of years ago that Kosovo finally achieved its independence after a very difficult period. If only it weren't so difficult for people to find a place they could call home.