The day ended with our waving good bye to our new found friends then quickly I realized the opportunity to create a series of portraits of these strong women and so we made a deal to be back at the big tree at 10am..."oh and we want fanta...coca cola"!...a common language everywhere no less...
The next day Scott and I arrived early to set up a traditional film based camera system. i kept wondering about shooting film but more importantly it had a focus "ring" that actually needed you to use a skill instead of just pressing the button half way down for the computer to kick in and focus for you. So this tree was about 12 feet across and provided solid content to the story....wood, big tree, wood, wood cutters...so we spread the gear out without the usual comforts of an advertising set and they soon started to wander in. By the time we were finished 4 hours later we'd shot the original 11 plus 17 "new" friends who wanted their photograph taken as well and so to keep the peace we wound through a few more magazines to please everyone...
With a few waves of their hands and feigned soft smiles appearing through hard-worked faces and lots of "Asanti Sana's"...we all bid farewell to each other and with that our team went looking for charcoal burners, which is also illegal so as a highly kept secret by just about everyone, our yield on this part was low so we headed back to the hotel to suit up, load up and prepare to head north to Marsabit...
Thanks to the FH staff, we were assigned a serious land cruiser for the open desert journey. At the end of the day, we'd traveled some 11 hours over open terrain, flat salt pan desert and volcanic rock fields all at high speed with us being thrown about like rag dolls - although visual to the core, we both found the desert to be majestically beautiful in its desolation with monkeys, guinea fowl and antelope running across our tracks...and soon the landscape changed from forested Meru to high desert Samburu lands with it's distinct tribal culture and then quickly changing again as we drove into Rendille territory - equally marked as a tribe with very dark skin - appearing to be nearly jet black in tone. All along the route young men stand at the side of the road watching over their grazing cattle, hesitantly returning our peaceful waves as we pass on the track north...
It all seems so pastoral, even picture post card-esque and yet just last night there was a cattle raid with a group of Turkana raiders stealing goats and cows from the Boran tribe - killing 5 Boran shepherds in the process and so the tribal rifts run deep with revenge blood feuds being commonplace...making you pay attention to where your path is taking you. As it were we stayed in Marsabit last night and are late to get on the road today, now 4:30pm as our driver was suffering from food poisoning. Hes not just any driver, Debaso is Gabbra, a tribe that is prevalent in the communities along with the Boran, living together in a town 3 hours to the North. Torbi is our destination which is about 30 miles from the Ethiopian border, infamous for a massacre in 2006 between the Boran and the Gabbra where scores were killed in cold blood - and so we will stay there for the next couple of nights...
While there we'll continue seeking out women which endure the heavy burden of collecting fuel for the family stove or to sell for money to buy food and we'll try to engage them through our interpreter to earn their trust. If we're lucky, we wont be rejected and in that I hope that I'm able to create portraits of these strong, dignified women that suffer under the hardest of labor...I'm sure it's culturally and tribally correct, but it surely has to be one of the most grueling forms of labor anywhere...
Scott's loading up the truck and so were away to T0rbi...till then...Rodney and Scott
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