Exploration with Culture
Welcome to Wasemo in Menogelty in the Lower Omo of Ethiopia. This is the Hamar region where tradition prevails as elders meet with their guns, muscle and testosterone while work with Lori Pappas of the Bainbridge Island based nonprofit Global Team for Local Initiative.
Travel Photographer Interviews: Cameron Karsten by Lola Akinmade (from The Traveler’s Notebook)
Photographer Cameron Karsten is currently traveling around East Africa, documenting the work of various communities and nonprofit organizations. With a unique eye for composition and lighting, Cameron is capturing particularly soulful images. According to him, “he yearns for expansive adventure of the deepest value in order to express the tales of humanity.”
Cameron Karsten has also written a series of spiritual and health travel articles for Brave New Traveler. He left his formal classroom studies to indulge in dreams of travel at 19 years old, and has been wandering ever since.
Over the past few months, Cameron has also contributed to MatadorU’s Travel Photography Program. Matador Goods Editor Lola Akinmade and Matador contributing editor Paul Sullivan took some time out to ask Cameron a few questions:
How long have you been a professional photographer?
I’ve been practicing photography for six years. It was only two years ago I decided to convert the hobby into a passionate career.
What – or who – got your initial interest going in terms of photography?
Travel. At the age of 19 I left my comfort zone with backpack, journal and pen, and my camera. I began writing and photographing in order to share my experiences and inspire other individuals to follow their passions. Today, with diligent practice and belief, I continue to develop and evolve my skills to create the life I desire.
What were your first photographic experiments or experiences?
The first time I mindfully began photographing was on the first day I landed in Bangkok, Thailand at 19. The new culture, architecture, environment and faces sent my eyes spinning along every street. I was enthralled with the new surroundings and found every detail, from an old shirtless man to the spires of a golden temple, worth photographing.
My family and friends had to see what I was witnessing. It became a way to transport my followers into my traveling adventures and become a part of the journey.
How would you describe the work you do now? Are you involved in the commercial world also? Any stock photography?
I am continuously building and expanding my photographic styles. Currently, I work as a professional portrait, wedding, and event photographer. However, my drive is to develop into a full-time commercial, travel and editorial photographer with fingers in lifestyle and fashion. The possibilities in the industry are limitless, and these options keep me inspired as I move forward.
Which other photographers – old or contemporary – inspire you most?
Ansel Adams with his patient lighting. Ricard Avedon with his brilliant creativity and stylistic eye. Annie Leibovitz through her skill of caricatures and personalities. And Steve McCurry for his wanderlust.
You seem to have an eye for shapes and working with patterns. Is this a fair assessment?
Shapes and patterns are where my eyes are drawn to. Within my surroundings, through my lens and into my brain, I see the world as shapes creating patterns. Everywhere, there are arrangements of order built within a format of forward-movement. From whatever cause, whether my practice in meditation to my careful observations abroad or at home, I have adapted this technique as my first and foremost.
Like jumping into a stream and letting the current take you, I pick up my camera only when the moment feels right, only when that inner fuel burns and that surge of inspiration sears.
When you are approaching subjects to shoot, how do you set about it? Do you chat and explain what you’re doing? Or shoot first, ask questions later?
As mentioned above, when there’s inspiration, I shoot. When there’s none, I leave it alone and keep truckin’. Often, I leave my house, hotel, or camp without my camera.
There are many scenes, subjects and settings that are so captivating, there’s no reason to try and capture it. Then and there, I soak it in and use that moment for my inner fires.
Pick and choose selectively. Don’t shoot everything. Beauty is everywhere, all the time.
When approaching a human subject I wish to photograph, the situation varies. Sometimes I sit down and create a conversation before photographing; therefore, the image will have a deeper story in my memory and in print. Other times, I make eye contact, smile and politely ask/gesture for a photograph.
Other times, when in the zone and feeling the comfort of the atmosphere, I shoot and shoot and keep shooting, moving my feet while snapping the shutter. I go with my instincts photographing, writing, traveling, and daily living.
What’s the craziest or most inspiring encounter you’ve had in general?
Most inspiring moments are when I find myself in nature. I spent four weeks backpacking from Giri to Everest Base Camp alone, without a guide or porter. That time by myself was intense during the off-season. I met locals. I sat alone atop granite spires overlooking the Khumbu Valley. I walked through sun, wind, rain and snow. I sat with locals and heard their tales of The Yeti.
I bumped into Maoist rebels and experienced the tension of a violin string coarse thru my veins. And I drank chai with Royal Nepalese soldiers over conversation about the region’s struggles.
Those memories will live on forever.
What kit do you use / carry with you / can’t do without (camera make, lenses, flashguns etc.)?
Nikon for life. I used to carry two lenses, a 55-200mm Nikkor and a 28mm. Yet, I’ve liked the challenge of cutting out the zoom and forcing myself to get into the scene, closer and more intimate. Therefore, I’ve sold the 55-200mm and dove into the photograph with my 28mm.
Finally, what else are you working on right now and what are your ambitions for the future in terms of your photography work or anything else?
Currently, I’m finalizing a new photography website that will enable me to sell and distribute my work online to a wider audience, which can be found on PhotoShelter. This site is combined with new websites for my writing and multimedia projects. I’m off to East Africa in January 2010 for six months to document the visions and progress of various communities and nonprofit organizations through these mediums.
My ambitions are to continue creating a lifestyle of travel with photography, writing, and multimedia as an outlet to educate and bring awareness to the world about different cultures, their current issues, and how we can preserve their environments for sustainable well-being.
To see more of Cameron’s work visit his site, www.cameronkarsten.com
Paradise Lost
A conceptual image of Paradise is reality, but can only be found within the architectural framework of an idealist’s imagination. Just like Happiness and Sadness, Good and Evil—these concepts do not exist, yet are everywhere. They are undiscoverable, can’t be found, hidden from the materialistic world; though they simply wait, readily available to be experienced whenever the heart is open and the mind broad.
In The Island of Lost Maps, author Miles Harvey states:
“These days… not even the truest of true believers would dare to put Paradise on a map. Yet despite the cynicism of our age, we humans have not lost our urge to quest after that place of perfect contentment, never quite finding it but never giving up hope, sometimes drawing so near that we can almost smell the faint sweet scent of its blossoms or spy the distant glimmer of its waters” (Harvey, pg. 234).
Our paradise began with a departure for Africa, leaving the ardors of daily living. The smells of inky bills. The sounds of scratchy cell phones in spotty reception. The cluttered schedules boggling a mind of needs and necessities. What a dream. Then, their complete disappearance as paradise blossomed, thrived, and then wavered in and out of reality as we experienced the traveler’s lifestyle. But the very concept continued to flourish. We moved through life. We felt the gift of the present moment, lost in distant lands and foreign cultures. From Ethiopia to Djibouti, to Ethiopia and Kenya—three months with one backpack of amenities. The simplicities of the very basic.
However, as suddenly as human life is extinguished, paradise can be lost. For our African journey—presently exploring the Kenyan coastline of sand, sun and sea—this slippery concept fell from the rocks and crashed into the sea. It came to an end as the same fate threatened our very own lives.
Saturday night. The beach empty. A moon neared its full capacity as the calm waters of Ras Kitau bay lapped at the shimmering sands. There was a man approaching. I watched him with a keen eye. As he neared and greeted, he grabbed my hand and drew me in. Suddenly, his weapon appeared and caught the moonlight above my head. Lily screamed.
Akamba Buses carried us from Nairobi to Mombassa, east to the shores of Kenya. From there we hired a taxi, took the ferry and continued south towards the Tanzanian border. It was dark by the time we got to Ukunda, where we turned left and headed into Diani Beach.
For sixteen days we found home and lived a paradise at Diani Beachalets. For 800ksh a night, Lily and I stayed in a banda, our small cottage, one without electricity, without a fan and with lots of monkeys. When it rained it leaked. And when it rained, the grasses turned green with the scents of earth filling the sea air. We did much of nothing. We read close to ten books a piece. We lounged on the beach in the sand and up on the grasses upon wooden plank chairs. We walked the beach. We swam. We met our traveling neighbors and exchanged stories. We explored the strip of Diani Beach, shopped and prepared our meals morning, afternoon and evening, fending off the marauding primates. It was rustic; that yearned for simplicity the traveler craves. And with it all, we immersed ourselves in the local culture.
“Rafiki, rafiki! Jambo!” A tall lean man slowly walked towards us. “Howz yo day, brotha?”
“Good, good. The ideal holiday.” And it was. Lily and I were sprawled on the beach under intense sunrays. Heat penetrated and sunk into our bodies, causing perspiration to spew from every pore. Every ten minutes we rose to cool in the crystal shallows of the Indian Ocean.
“Yah, brotha. This is good, the good life.” There was an awkward silence. Then he continued. “So brotha,” he started squatting next to me. “I’m a business man and wanted you to promote me.” His name was Alex, aka Coolio. He was our trusty Kenyan Beach Boy. Others exploited us, ran away with our cash. Beach Boys like The Kenyan Busta Rhymes and Simple Max offered their services, granted us trust and then never came around again. But Alex was different. He was real. I could look into his cloudy eyes and see honesty. With most you couldn’t.
“You know,” he began, “Many Beach Boys smoke heroin and look for their money. They will scam and they will run.”
“Like your friend Busta Rhymes?”
“No man, he is different.”
“Really?” Lily asked. “How could he be different? He took our 700ksh and left.”
“His family, you know. One just died of malaria.” Alex nodded his head. “Really.”
“Ohhhh,” we replied suspiciously. Yet we trusted him. We bought homemade sandals, which his mother made for us. And we bought bracelets for friends, a personalized wooden sign and a keychain pendant, along with a batch of fresh coconuts. One day, as I was stepping onto the beach, I saw him whistling to a shell.
“Alex, what the hell you doing?” I figured he was just stoned, whiling away his time.
Alex looked up. “Hermit crabs, you know, they like the whistle. When you whistle, they come out. They say hello to the whistle.” Only in paradise can you find hermit crabs dancing to a melodic whistle.
We met more Kenyan Beach Boys in other places. Vasco de Gama and Omar were brothers, partners in dhow sailing. We became closer with them then Alex as the two Kenyan sailors helped us, supported our emotions in a time of need, and showed us their seas with respect. Vasco was a local from Lamu. Omar was a local from Pate Island.
Paradise can often be confined to a generalization: Isolation. Relaxation. Serenity. Peacefulness. Even a Corona advertisement—sun, sand, turquoise waters, your lover, and (for me) a Negra Modelo with two lime wedges. Paradise varies as often as the clouds of the monsoons, and each can be described differently. Lily and I lived our paradise in Ethiopia within the metropolis of Addis Ababa to the desolate Hamer region, and on to the comforts of Nairobi towards the beaches of Diani. Then we transitioned and came away with a little less baggage and a lot more awareness.
From south to north; Diani above Tanzania to Lamu below Somalia. We bused it. We ferried it. And we arrived, carried away to a beach on an island in the middle of nowhere. We expected another paradise and saw it. It was Shela Beach on Lamu Island at the Sunset Guest House. For six nights we had the top floor terraced-bedroom complete with electricity, multiple fans, a solar heated shower and refrigerator. In fact, we had the entire accommodation to ourselves, and what often felt like the entire seaside.
Lamu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Narrow winding alleys, exquisitely carved wooden doors lining coral pathways and the bustling Arabs with the men’s flowing white gowns and the women’s mystic black bui-buis (traditional Islamic head scarves), each sparkling in the fierce village lighting. The town is enchanting with scents of humanity harvesting, preparing and cooking spicy Swahili dishes. Mix the aromas with various loads of donkey dung, cat shat, raw prawns and decomposing red snapper, and some squashed cockroaches into the perfume and viola—a rustic seaport ripe with tradition. Only two cars exist on the island—one belonging to the hospital, the other to the police station—therefore the colony of donkeys dominate transportation, together with the fleets of dhows and long narrow motor boats.
Saturday was such a day for exploring the civilization. Lily and I bought our groceries at one of the two shops and drank a fair share of fresh juices from coconut and sweet lime to tamarind. It was late by the time we were heading back, too late. We had to cross the DMZ between Lamu town and Shela Beach, a forty-minute walk passed the jetty, along a boardwalk and onto the sandy beach. It was dark. The moon was waxing. The stars danced silently to the whispers of the sea.
As I stated, Lily and I were alone on the beach. It was approximately 7:30PM. I had on a backpack stocked with groceries and my camera was slung on the outside across my shoulder. We were close to Shela Beach, too close.
Suddenly a man neared. He approached, held out his hand in the dark and spoke, “Jambo!” I returned the gesture and in a strange manner felt him draw me nearer. As I looked into his white eyes, I felt his hands trembling over mine. He was repeating something in Swahili. He was expressing desperation, appearing possessed. Then, he pulled me closer. I tried to step back, withdraw my hand, but it was too late, too close, too dark.
The stranger was dressed in a traditional red-plaid kikoi (sarong), with a white tank top and a shirt wrapped around his head like a Sikh turban. I remember his hands being strong, his biceps pronounced. He was dark, a real dark black, and was wielding a panga, or an axe, in the local Swahili language. Suddenly, Lily screamed as the man swung the weapon above my head and moved his other hand over my throat.
It was a blur, caught without Time, experienced on a supposed utopian island in the middle of nowhere. Lots of money flowed to the island thanks to tourism. Big hotels. Fancy restaurants. Old merchants descending from the rich Arabic economies of the 16th and 17th slave trade. And adjacent to the affluence was desperation.
With happiness there is neighboring sadness.
Inside paradise exists hell.
For when there is light there is darkness.
Lily and I were momentarily shoved into the middle of these juxtapositions, where duality persists, the truth of our humanity flickers, as well as the fragility of human life.
My image remains to this day: a man trembling, chanting, bewitched with terror, swinging an axe toward my skull, threatening my life’s blood to spill upon the wet sands of heaven. He was aiming for my head, my shoulder, my chest. And he still spoke his mantra as I deflected the attempts with one hand, struggling to escape from the grip upon my throat. Lily still screamed. She shouted. Her soul fought for comprehension through a decibel unheard of. The man was obviously thrown off by her reaction, which I hardly heard, for my world was silent, my head clear, my vision of the axe sharp in the moonlight. Suddenly, with a push, the man stumbled back and his hand slipped from my throat. The axe came down.
It was odd standing there, utterly calm and serene, conscious and at peak awareness. Lily was still screaming fifteen feet away. She was crying and began heaving. The man was standing some twenty feet away in the other direction; the axe in one hand and an object dangling from the other. I stared at him. He stared at me. Lily continued and began shouting. Then, he turned and ran. I watched him the whole way, sprinting from the beach up into the bush, until disappearing. I turned to Lily and moved towards her, wrapping my arms around her sobbing body. We turned into each other and then walked away briskly, grateful for living, for each other.
We were alive. We were in shock. Yet the man had obtained one important element of my soul. That object dangling from his grasp, which had recently slipped off my throat was my camera—a Nikon D200 carrying a 28mm Nikkor lens with a polarized filter, an 8GB RiData Memory Card with over 300 priceless photographs of Lamu and one Nikon Li-ion Battery Pack. Total value: $4000USD. I felt as though I lost a limb. I still feel the loss today—a creative eye devoid of expression, a career lacking the necessity to continue, but a life saved and another thief existing in darkness, another personal hell thriving in paradise. The duality of Mother Nature exists in the paradise experienced and remains in a paradise lost. The journey ends with a certain death; metaphorically in terms of creation and purpose, and literally among family and friends.
Ecstatic Elephants & Horny Rhinos
Like a mystical revelation of sorts, a dreamland where things are real and others phantasmal, there was relief. It had been three days of torment—physical, mental, and hardly spiritual—traveling overland atop a lorry truck from Ethiopia to Nairobi. Three days of early mornings, tortuous afternoons, and sultry nights underneath holey mosquito nets.
Lily and I approached the Westland suburb of Nairobi, dazed by time and filth. As we arrived in taxi, the avenues grew emerald, denser with thick brush and high boughs. Trees were lush. They harbored blossoms of radiant oranges and opulent reds. It was as if we were driving down a boardwalk in Savannah, Georgia; huge homes covered in gray shade, ungodly in comparison to the neighboring slums. We continued and drove into the heart of gated properties, lavish arbors, and personal security booths before coming to Loresho, into one of those secured communities, and up a driveway where a guard smiled Welcome.
Now, as a virgin to the masses of Nairobi, swollen with the preconceived perceptions of a city littered with crime—my image was bleak, miserable, possibly even suicidal. But as a traveler, I figured it was worth a stop to decide for myself. I’ve been buffed into further partiality.
There was a maid. She was Kenyan. I mean she was black. Her name was Penina.
Penina cleaned the house, scrubbed the toilets, made our beds, washed the dishes, and scoured the stains off our clothes. She was beautiful, kind, soft-spoken. Penina was gentle. Next, there were our guards (plural). Together, they divvied up the 24 hour-seven day shift; and at each arrival or departure they would swing open the gate, wave hello as we passed, and congenially walk the door back to its original position.
Then there was a refrigerator. There was a shower with hot water. There was a polished porcelain can (two in fact!), which we sat on, thus relishing that unforgettable feeling of hot buttcheeks to cold seat. And there was beer. Tusker, Pilsner, Guinness. Crates of bottles all to our helping. Mystical.
At this point, I reached a conclusion: there is nothing like having family or friends, however far removed, living in a foreign land. Albeit, Allyson was not present on the afternoon of our arrival. She was working at an international school as a math and science teacher for the children of diplomats, bureaucrats, FBI agents and the like. It was a good job. And it showed. Being Lily’s cousin—half-removed, fully removed, third, fourth or one-hundredth (I didn’t mind)—an image of Allyson appeared in my mind as we first settled in her home. It was a statue of Jesus, the one found atop a church’s roofline or above an alter. He was standing above me; his hands spread wide, palms up, with white robes flowing to the ground. The face was Allyson’s and in her alluring posture she spoke thus: Come my brothers and sisters. Come hither and bathe in me waters, indulge in thee kosher pickles of mine. They are fuller and sweet, likened to my beer. I shall care for you. And I accepted.
Thursday afternoon and all of Friday, Lily and I lounged indoors, made sandwiches and ate, caressed our clean skin, read books, popped frosty 500ml bottles of Tusker, and in thirty-six hours feasted our eyes upon the entire first season of Lost. Ecstasy indulged.
But of course we were active. We did not let Penina do all the work. We folded our laundry, flushed the toilets, and did our dishes. And as the weekend dawned, we even stepped outdoors with Allyson to merge into that feared Nairobian society.
A city constructed by the advent of the East Africa railway, Nairobi boomed when the capital of the British Protectorate relocated from Mombassa in 1901. There, the government made camp beside a stream known by the Maasai as Cold Water, or Uaso Nairobi. On what was once swampland, wealth quickly flowed into the growing city via train, inviting humanity while slowly eradicating the roving lions and wildebeests.
“Nairobi is relatively safe,” Allyson informed us as we drove through the jam of city cars. “It’s only downtown after dark when there can be trouble. There are no apartments or homes for locals, only tourist hotels.”
Lily and I weren’t following.
Allyson continued. “It’s a trap, attracting criminals to a city in the dark that’s scattered with cash-toting tourists. If there were locals living in apartments or affordable housing, an ordinary society of ordinary citizens would exist. But when businesses close for the day and workers return home to the outskirts of the city, there remains the tourist at hotels, restaurants and bars mixing with the locals who join, along with the many creepers hiding in shadows.”
We nodded and watched the vendors with newspapers, magazines, maps and cheap sunglasses scurry between traffic. Our first stop of the day would be the Nairobi National Park just outside the city. We wheedled thru cars, beat the circles’ red lights and surpassed the traffic cops in Allyson’s rattling Isuzu Trooper. Shortly, we entered the Park’s gates. We were on safari.
Odd to be minutes away from the city with pulsing pollution and hordes of humanity moving in all sorts of means. Calloused barefeet, bicycles carrying a six-foot stack of plastic crates, human mules lugging wooden carts of furniture, 150cc motorcycles spitting noise, graphic matatus, righteous buses and lumbering lorry trucks swerving; and then to emerge in a sanctuary where wildlife bounded freely. Home to masses of birds, the world’s largest concentration of rhinos, along with lions, cheetahs, leopards, buffalo, antelope, ostriches, warthogs, and more—the Park’s fence remains agape, allowing the nomadic herds to move in and out between the great Rift Valley. But with a constant supply of water even in the dry season, the Nairobi National Park is plentiful.
As we pulled in with the Trooper, a giant family of monkeys sprawled across the road. They groomed one another, picked their own butts and others, and gave chase in the trees’ limbs above. They looked at us with imploring eyes, then turned back to their present occupations, ignoring our similarities and differences as if we were twin species.
Our car rested on the side of the road for ten minutes as we observed. I could not help but feel their likeness, as if they were communicating their emotions thru eyes, cries and gestures. And not to digress into a thesis on evolution, but the link between their posture, their movements and actions with that of our own was hard to deny. They were a hillbilly family of over-simplified humans, minds focused on the rudimentary, yet filled with the baser instincts of survival. However, we evolved and moved on.
We saw the rhinos and giraffes, the buffalo and ostrich, the massive birds in aplenty, along with gazelles and antelopes, and the twitching ear of a lazy male lion asleep in tall grass. All the while we were in our own vehicle, cracking cans of Redds and wrenching back bottlecaps of Tusker with a bag of spicy Chev between our laps. The monkey-man’s safari, but it was perfect for what it was.
The following day consisted of elephant orphans at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and a visit to the Langatta Giraffe Centre where we handfed Rothschild’s giraffes on their blue tongues of sandpaper.
Four days and five nights rest, relaxation, over-indulgence on grub and booze, and a laid-back sense of exploration. We did much of nothing and much of everything in Nairobi, where for the first time on our three-month journey we felt the shine of holiday. We could do whatever we wanted. We could go anywhere and hold zero responsibility of when to return. We were on vacation, and before we took this party to the Kenyan coast, we spent our final day exploring the downtown sector on foot.
Beneath tall buildings, well-manicured Kenyans along a network of avenues and highways intermixed with Lily and me. We wandered Nairobi. We tucked into shops and offices. We ate and drank a selection of international cuisine. And we ran the brunt of our errands, securing timetables and scheduling departures. We entered Uhuru Park (Freedom Park), which commemorates Kenya’s 1963 independence and we sat in the shades, silent, witnessing. We spoke casually with locals, asking the time or requesting directions. We found the Internet and connected with family. We did what any backpacker, traveler or tourist would do—the Nothing and the Everything. Nairobi was fanciful: a mixture of reality and hedonism. It’s a culture I will return to any day.
Early Tuesday morning we left, catching a bus to Mombassa for the coastal sunshine. Yet, with paradise comes hell—with light there shall be darkness—and far from the saintly shelter of Allyson’s home, Lily and I were exposed. We would be lucky to walk away with our lives.
To be continued…
Cameron Karsten's Imaginarium 