“…the upshot is that while we now feel we know nearly everything that African states societies, economies, are not, we still know absolutely nothing about what they actually are…” (Mbembe 2001:9)

Introduction

This collection of photographs, taken during recent visits to my native Sierra Leone, are part of a continuing effort to help others see a bit more of the everyday in Africa through my subjective eyes –behind the objective lens of a camera, of course.

The images are not intended to (UN)change anyone’s perceptions of the beautiful, diverse, and vibrant continent of over fifty(50) separate, independent countries that constitute AFRICA.

Such (r)evolutions are best left to western media and (ma)paternalistic observers who continue to distill their (in)versions of Africa.

We, Africans, do not often get the opportunity (or take the time?) to interpret the sights or sounds of our countries, as we see fit, in order to resist the uniform exaggerations of an exotic, faraway place ravaged by poverty, starvation, disease and conflict.

As Mbembe asserts, “… there is language that every comment by an African about Africa must endlessly eradicate, validate, or ignore, often to his/her cost, the ordeal whose erratic fulfillment many Africans have spent their lives trying to prevent…” (Mbembe 2001:5).

Everything takes place within the context or contours of the preceding or existing discourse.

Hopefully, these glimpses do not nullify that greater purpose…

********

All photographs courtesy of Fodei Batty

Ships docked at the Queen Elizabeth II Quay in Freetown, Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

Any Postcolony without a port to exploit its resources is not worthy of its misery

Although the Queen Elizabeth II quay is said to have one of the world’s deepest natural harbors, the presence of such a fine seaport has only expedited the exploitation of Sierra Leone’s natural resources by various multinational mining companies who use its fine services to ship commodities out of the country.

An Australian’s best friend: Diamonds from Sierra Leone — Bo, southern Sierra Leone

You, too, want a piece of me? An Australia diamond merchant seeks his fortune in the Postcolony.

Winners of Chinese Language Scholarships at the University of Sierra Leone — Mount Aureol, Sierra Leone, July 2015

From North-South to South-South domination? These students at the University of Sierra Leone were the “lucky few” who won scholarships to study the Chinese language at universities across China. They will be excellent speakers of the Chinese language, for the future.

Chinese car dealership in Freetown, Sierra Leone — Lumley, Freetown Sierra Leone, July 2015

The Great Wall goes South: Chinese car dealership in Freetown

Chinese merchants in Freetown, Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

The Chinese are busy in Africa. Here a Chinese expatriate family hangs out in front of their store in Freetown as their employees also lounge rather idly nearby

On Umbrellas… — Lumley Market, Freetown Sierra Leone, July 2015

…and on Jerry cans: President Obama is the Midas Touch in Sierra Leone — Construction site, Freetown Sierra Leone, July 2015

Sierra Leone is a place in search of heroes and inspirational figures. Most Sierra Leoneans tend to look elsewhere because examples of good leadership within the country are rare. Hence, President Obama’s popularity across the country. Everything emblazoned with his name is an instant bestseller. The photograph of an umbrella carrying President Obama’s name next to a woman carrying her wares on her head and his name on a jerrycan are all evidence of the president’s popularity.

From Virginia to Sierra Leone: With Love? — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

A huge market for used cars; you cannot miss America’s finest anywhere you go on the streets of Freetown

Gifts to the Postcolony: Trojan Horses? — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

A popular sign across the developing world, all USAID-funded projects carry the questionable phrase “from the American People.” This one was stamped on a wall commemorating American support for a project preventing bush fires in the Postcolony.

Warscapes and Mercedes Benzes in Kenema, Sierra Leone — Kenema, eastern Sierra Leone, July 2015

Even though the war ended thirteen years ago, the landscape across Sierra Leone is still littered with the bitter memories of war –warscapes

Headscratcher: Office of Nuclear Safety, in Sierra Leone? — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

The postcolony is rife with contradictions. The sign on this building made for one head scratching moment. Nuclear energy in a state that has not found a way to provide sufficient thermal or hydroelectric energy to its people a century after the invention of electricity?

The sign on this nearly decrepit building in the heart of Freetown says it all: BE SMART! — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

Philadelphia Medical Clinic in Sierra Leone: another sign that says it all — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

Road Crossing Sign on the street of Freetown — Lumley, Freetown Sierra Leone, July 2015

This sign struck me as quite ironic because the constant flow of traffic does not allow children to cross the road safely on this busy street in the west of Freetown.

Total Domination in/of the Postcolony — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2015

A Total gas station. Next to residential dwellings…

The lifestyles of the rich and shameless contrast sharply with others: a mansion in Freetown — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2012

Hardly do structures such as this make it into the pages of western media. There is, in fact, a direct correlation between the construction of mansions such as this one and the misery of the people. The more mansions rise, the more the misery of the people increases.

Not a mud hut in sight! Juba Hills, Freetown, Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2012

You see what you want to see in the postcolony. There are mud huts, diseases and poverty galore but there is also what you see above. In some cases, those who live here are responsible for the conditions of those who live where capitalist western media would like to divert your attention.

More mansions blend into lush foliage around the hills of Freetown — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2012

And then there is this one, also in Freetown, Sierra Leone: Not your average mud hut? — Freetown, Sierra Leone. April 2007.

A street scene in Freetown, Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone. April 2007.

There is also the everyday.

Ingenuity — Freetown, Sierra Leone, July 2012.

Ingenuity is evident everywhere on the streets of Freetown. This is the postcolony, after all.

In a mud hut in eastern Sierra Leone – November 2006.

Perception is not reality. I could choose to show you the above…

Beautiful sunset along Lumley Beach, Freetown Sierra Leone — Freetown, Sierra Leone, circa 2007

…this beautiful sunset

*****

So, you see? My photographs have just played tricks on you by showing you the AFRICA that I want to show you! Perception is not reality…

The post (Alter)Native Lens: Seeing my Sierra Leone like a Postcolony appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

There is a rich and diverse contemporary culture that rarely makes it to the news. There are artists, craftsmen, designers, musicians who struggle everyday to preserve a sense of normality that allows for the expression of their creativity.

They are profoundly rooted in the culture and tradition of their country while striving to explore new languages and creative forms.

The Little Book of Kabul is a narrative in fifty photographs and twenty short stories; it is a book made of small close ups and emotions that aim to disclose this hidden face of the city. It is a book of photos and words, of visual and textual snapshots that wants to tell the story of Kabul from a different angle. The Little Book of Kabul is composed of evocative fragments of the ordinary moments of artists’ daily life. It is a homage to Kabul as it is a celebration of creativity, determination and the unexpected potentials of beauty.

The post The Little Book of Kabul: a project by Francesca Recchia and Lorenzo Tugnoli appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Last December, we visited the Turkish town of Reyhanli, close to the Syrian border, to volunteer at a local Syrian school for refugee children with the Karam Foundation’s Zeitouna programme. Many of the children had been displaced as a result of the Assad regime’s repression after an initially peaceful revolution. The escalation of violence meant many families had to seek refuge across the border in Turkey.

When you cross over into the Atmeh refugee camp just within the Syrian border you are crossing into another world. It is a world of mud and despair peppered with a few specks of hope. There is bitterness, and people quickly shout at us, telling us to stop taking pictures, to bring blankets and heating gas instead. We pick our way through what is the main thoroughfare, a thoroughfare that had only recently had members of ISIL driving up, who would surely have taken exception to expat Syrians wandering freely through the camp and mixing with the inhabitants. Atmeh had, on the day of our visit, about twenty five thousand cold, hungry and desperate souls encamped within its olive groves.

As we walked past a makeshift clinic we came across a long queue of children holding buckets. This was the central kitchen where food was prepared once a day with whatever food was in their stores. We were yelled at and told to wash our shoes with water. It wouldn’t do to bring the mud of the camp in there. An apologetic supervisor explained to us that it had taken a long time to try and bring up hygiene standards in the kitchen, and we watched as the cooks prepared a gruel of some sort in half a dozen large vats. The children were still jostling outside when we walked out, and a man who stood guard outside had to yell at them to stand back. The mud sucked gratefully at our shoes as we returned to its fold.

This was my first time back in Syria since before the revolution, even if I was only less than a hundred meters past the border. My two companions had been there six months before, but it had been easier then, before the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had started to overrun the border areas. The Atmeh crossing is an unofficial crossing where people can ferry back and forth using a rudimentary microbus system that seems to go through based on the whims of the commanding officer at the Turkish guard post.

In their last visit my companions had taken pictures of some of the children in what had been called the School of Return. The School had now been moved out of the tents where it was held previously into a rudimentary set of rooms that one could almost have mistaken for stables, were it not for the sign that declared it to be the School of Wisdom. Its central muddy courtyard sloped and lacked proper drainage. If rains fell the lower level, classes would flood. This was the harsh world that the children of the Atmeh camp had to endure.

Photo Credit:  © Mohamad Ojjeh, 2013 (Syria)

Remarkably, and in spite of the material hardships, life has found a way to carry on. There was a butcher, a green grocer, and a man who had opened a “supermarket” which consisted of a tent and a square cut in the side through which people can buy the merchandise on offer. There was a “fast food” shop proprietor selling soft drinks who had shrewdly invested in a bit of marketing by throwing a morsel of fat onto the hot coals. The sizzling sound and the smokey flavour of barbequed meat floated past us, giving a surreal impression of normalcy for what was anything but. In one small brick shop a barber busily plied his trade. Life also carried on for the children. On his previous visit, one of my companions had taken pictures of several children in the camp, and as he proceeded to take more pictures he was angrily rebuked, “No more pictures. We are tired of pictures. We are dying of the cold!” But thankfully these protests quickly died out as we were mobbed by the cries of children asking to be photographed. It was the simple, innocent curiosity of children who, in spite of spending over a year in such conditions, still felt it a novelty to have their picture taken. And my colleague had thought of that. Since his last visit he had printed out the pictures of dozens of the children he had met previously, and we walked around the camp seeking them out, asking our guides if they knew who such and such a person was. Often it was the groups of children themselves who would recognize their friends, and who would helpfully lead us to their parents’ tents.

When we arrived at the tents we were entreated to stay and join the tenants for tea, with many inhabitants even insisting that we join them for dinner or stay the night. We experienced a remarkable hospitality that stood in sharp contrast to the wretched conditions of the hosts. We politely declined and moved on after sipping our tea. During this visit, I saw a child with some kind of scarring over her nose. Surely, I thought, this isn’t the leishmaniasis I had read about? It was, and the girl I saw it on was one of the lucky children who was being treated. It’s worse the deeper you go inside, we were told. Deeper, I thought. It sounded like they were referring to some terrible and dark place, a jungle, or maybe something like in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. And always there was the mention of ISIL, in hushed and fearful tones. In my mind’s eye I saw our little group being surprised by them, taken calmly somewhere and shot or perhaps beheaded. It gave the whole visit an underlying rawness and reality. It was only as we left the camp that I noted with some irony that fear of the regime was the last thing on anybody’s mind.

Earlier, as we had stood by the camp soup kitchen, I had noticed a pretty blonde girl with a pony talking and wearing a black baseball cap bearing an Islamic creed of faith, the Islamic Front’s logo, emblazoned on its front. We had also seen a jeep marked with the Islamic Front drive down the muddy thoroughfare as we entered the camp. The girl had been staring vacantly, her mind elsewhere, when she noticed me smiling at her. In an instant her face lit up in a toothy smile that melted my heart. My colleagues had been busy talking with children and asking about the pictures. Later I met her with her friends as they asked us who we were and where we had come from. They didn’t go to school, they told me, but intended to enroll in the “new school,” the School of Wisdom with the muddy courtyard and the classes that flooded when it rained. As we chatted a man drove up the thoroughfare with a pickup truck. He was selling lettuce and cried out, calling for people to buy. A gang of children had already gathered, and I watched silently as they picked the errant remnants of his produce. Sometimes they would pick it out of the mud and munch on it hungrily. There were no fat children in Atmeh.

When my colleague finally found a child or children he had photographed, all the other children would gather around, chattering away or squealing with excitement. “Is that what I look like?” asked one of the girls. It then struck us that even something as mundane as a mirror would probably be a luxury for most of the people in this camp. The young girl probably hadn’t even seen what she looks like since arriving. Perhaps that was a good thing, that they could not see the utter hopelessness of their situation. Their parents, however, saw it, and one man who was wondering what the fuss was about came over to see if we were distributing anything useful. He sucked through his teeth and nodded indifferently. “Pictures?” he said, and gave a look of disgust. “That’s no good to anybody.” But for the children it meant the world, specks of hope floating amidst the misery.

The post A Day in Atmeh: Reflections and Images from Syria appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

These photographs arose out of a long-standing interest in the modes of authority—religious, economic, political and cultural—in visual culture across the world. This set of images, dated between 2010 and 2012, was taken during field research throughout North Africa and the Middle East, in my capacity as a regional analyst, artist, photojournalist and academic. In each of these fields, my work explores the performance of political legitimacy and contestation in a variety of media—aiming to illuminate the processes by which individual actors play on sensory affect to articulate visions of idealized future(s) through reference to localized inheritance of the past(s).

The post Picturing Legitimacy: Snapshots from the Arab World (Photo Series by Amanda Rogers) appeared first on The Postcolonialist.