Nov. 2009

My life is this incredible circle that somehow inspires me over and over again. The wind is sound enough to create my interest in what exists around me. The sun so bright my eyes must close and I go inward again…and the wind blows and it starts over and over, cycling. I received something to keep on me to protect me. To attach it with a pin and although its cold my jacket is not where it is pinned but to my camera strap as that truly what is my companion. I never would have known. As I never can, many smiles for that belief and the solidness of dissipated space as the concrete.
I soon fly back to the states. Texas will hold me for a few days then to mother and lutui in Danby. This extraordinary stage of travel for Habitat for Humanity as a volunteer, being overly paid in experience in a happy exchange for my time is ending in Europe and Central Asia. I have met extraordinary people, had many offers to be married off and witnessed many communities, even become a part of some.
My exploration of representing women in my personal work has come to new places. I spend time with women communicating in English, with a translator or just in existing in space together for extended periods of time. Their light enters my work and when the men step outside the space that is in the room has been taken over again by the women clan. I watch and participate.
The roles in Tajikistan, where I most recently was, I experienced as a women in jeans. Also I was invited to the other side where I wore scarves and was left to be with the clan. Men of Multiple marriages sat as we drank tea, me and all the men, glowing happy people. Or I was with the women and children to have Tea, depending on the house. Many men were not of multiple marriages but I came to understand that this point did not signify how much love was in the partnership or what kind of partnership it was. The older men with more than one wife looked much older than the men with only one. I can image it would be a lot of work, as they also jokingly say. An extended conversation for another time.
The water system is in need of more infrastructures. Habitat has a water filter programs there which seems to be a great investment choice for a family. But a greater distribution system is needed for the communities to have water year round and without needing to manually retrieve it.
The road to Radt is incredible. Beauty . in the fog the mountains look like an exquisite painting that is flat only the reality is so many distances and depths of detail. The tricks it plays with your eyes and the hawks flying around. The road goes on and on. Dirt for hours of bumpy driving.
Tajikistan is like Romania. I will be returning to spend time and photograph.
I am now in Kyrgyzstan.

A friend- aug 4th

August 4th
Romania
And the flight to Vienna will leave in forty minutes. That is of course the flight BEFORE mine. I have crossed security, without interest in totally missing my flight. Outside a woman I wanted to sit with. Relaxed in her long skirt something spread out on the ground under tree. An excuse of needing a light to speak but I did not, yet sat in front of her a bit and after she left for a while when she returned she sat down with me.
As well talked through some broken language communications but English fluidity to a good enough degree. She a Roma of back ground and of her history. At 15 married. Off to belgum to see her husband there for work, who pushed her into a car at that age to make her go to the hotel and then she was his wife. Instead of going to Germany to school or study other place. Interesting, was it all truths? I don’t know but she was safe in my space and me in hers. She spoke of corruption and very hard living but our energies were in line for the many hours we sat together in the darkening lawn from early evening till the day was soon to change to the next. Incredible to experience this would be a woman I would choose to be good friends with. If we crossed in our lives.
How different for either of us. A lifetime away from each others experience but friendship would grow with time, as something exists. I hope she is fine through the night outside the airport. I know I am fine in this waiting room. Although sleep could end in a missed flight. When the delay was mentioned I should have asked about an earlier flight. Being that I was here so early but I didn’t assume more than one went out in the evening. Being that chris dropped me an hour and half early. Here I am. Hopefully this flight…I can too leave on. We will see. How wonderful my full life. Not enough time for sleeping though.. Goodness Celine Dion , you are everywhere. Sleep.

BULGARIAn tourist

Sully has been extra present with me on these travels. I have decided some years ago that he visits with me randomly thought my life, travels and experience. (Taylor as well but somehow in a very different way.) As a way of him seeing and feeling, through me. A small shout out on this day.

Sofia, Bulgaria is where I landed last week and have been spending time. I traveled into the mountains and into another Roma community. I ran the streets with the kids, of a community filled with brick homes and rickety roofs. I left my translators to roam with a brother and sister that turned into a pack of children running around me. Four of the boys had bow and arrows. Made from a bambooish wood, hairties and long nails. Not so safe but everyone seemed fine with it. Wooping like Indians they showed off skill aiming at dogs that I of course intersected as a possibility of being ok wasn’t existing to me.

Cowboys and Indians have made their way around the world and the Indians are who the majority wants to be here, well idolizes to say the least. As we drive the streets back in the city the bus is plastered with a bigger then life “Indian”, a tan Bulgarian in a head dress, etc. and his gold rings and watch like a good business man and drums on the side. The drumbeat is referred to in the slogan of a the rhythm of the banking service. This reminds me of the phone adds in Romania and other strange references that is an excepted and thought of as showing respect and honor to a culture that is thought so highly of. Something like our Braves team, the Redskins or Cherokee Jeep I suppose. Offensive iconography for possibility of financial gain.

I spent my first two real days as a tourist while in Bulgaria. I realized I have not done this in any other country. I went and saw all the sights: The extremely large orthodox church, with beautiful paintings in side and the domes on top of real gold. The energy of the icons is so incredible. All the centuries of people staring into and praying to that framed image that stands in from of me. I started really experiencing this in all the Monasteries Ade and I visited in Transylvania and I continue to be moved. CHECK. The Russian mosque. Very sall in comparison. Lovely. A woman cleaning in a classical outfit that one would see in a Paul Strand image that we think is long gone. She stood in the doorway leading back outside. Her backdrop become Terenova and Bulvigar and a bank on a busy urban street. It was a doorway she stood in. (something like the lion, the witch and the wordrobe in the world change of the passageway) CHECK. The Vertue store. With a body guard to unlock the door for each client and only three phones kept in the store for display at a time. This was something new. I though I-phone envy crazy was silly in the states, with prices and options. Some of these phones have diamonds. Others have all sorts of special materials used. Out of three phones the low end was 4,500 euros. That’s some where close to $7,000. The upper end in the store was 6.500 euros. “what can it do?” we ask. “make reservation at the most elete places all over the world”. HA. CHECK. Old men in the park playing Backgammon,,,oh I wanted to play. And the contemporary art gallery of course.

An exhibition from Vienna architecture students, in preparation for architecture week to come soon to Sofia. They were great projects on the topic of redefining living spaces. Making more use of space, allowing for more integration with green space and light, while searching for these for communities that live traditionally in low standard housing. Students, low income, migrant communities, for example, were displayed in installation, wall text and enterable spaces. Luanne I’m bringing the info back for you.

I did some shopping and found the hip hop local clothing company. Nice wok, always happy to support local artists too! I ate healthy food and fresh juices. Nam and Gerald know that if I wasn’t on a volunteer gig you would be getting some new gear on my arrival. Lucky for me my Habitat affiliate guide, Yana, was into homeopathy and clean eating. Definitely the healthiest I have been while on the road in my European time. Rice and veggies, tofu and hummus, arugula salads with eggplant and goats cheese. Yum yum feels like home. Quite often its fried cheese that I get for many a meal because I don’t eat pork and really can only eat meat once and a while or my body isn’t happy. Everyone tries but its not always so easy in the location we are.
As I do everywhere I go, I look for the synagogue and Jewish cemetery. They say this is the largest Ashkenazi synagogue. I would believe it by the size of what stood in front of me. It was built just 100 years ago though, in 1909. Three years before my grandpa was born. It doesn’t seem so long ago. Or a life time when I listen to his stories.

I have just finished my Tajik Visa application and Im heading back to Vienna now to go to the embassy, before heading back to slovakia to edit in the office and hopefully finish the ever awaited web page of mine, prepare for my visitor from Poland (IVP rockstar Bobby) and then head off to Paris to see how the Parisians are making photographs these days and make some of my own.
Oh if your in Bulgaira eat the Shopky salad and I forgot the name but it is a baked red paper with cheese inside and a garlic/yogurt sauce! Those two were all I ate years ago at Mirjanas place on the sea here…and again I found them to be ultimate choice any time I was in a traditional restaurant.

Romania...part 1

I have been asked to describe What Romania is like. As you see from my little red lines from paint accessory I have been around the country a bit. My first trip started in Bucharest, the capitol. Not the friendliest of places here but it is like many major cities, too many cars speeding around, Kenvelo, McDonalds and Sephora as landscape and of course the Palace of Parliament.
The history of this building is overwhelming. While standing some distance back from it the size of it is overwhelming. If you turn around the lined trees that go aways to another cemented area of importance. All of this was cleared to make the direct viewing available from the palace. The palace its self is the second largest building in the world in surface area. Towering high and wide and going down many meters in the earth. In the early 80's when so much struggle was for food and medicine Ceausescu started building. Something like 700 architects and a consistent work force of 20,000 people worked around the clock. People have told me the ornateness of the interior, which is still not completed to this day. The building is used for government things now but its presence makes a strong statement about life for many years.
Corruption and power struggles in stories of hotel rooms and politicians mixed with bread lines and lines for receiving a car and many more queue pepper my mind.

Away from the capitol to my first Roma village while here. (I started in Romania in July when I first came over, I just returned a few weeks ago for a second trip and part of the country). I was happy to be out of the city. Many people of not so many family names, lots of children and challenging living situations. I watched as they melted metal over an intense flame and then poured into a mold, which was packed sand in the form of a very large cauldron, in a box. It hardens, it is banged out of the box, sand everywhere, and sprayed with water from a punctured soda bottle to cool it.

Off to the Black Sea on the eastern coast for a build that was taking place in Constanta. Great people volunteering and working as usual! Jez, Chris and me went for a night swim, after cultural night with the group, and again in the morning with packed beach before hitting the road for a day of driving to our next destination. Many speedos and thongs. I'm not in Kansas anymore :)

On the move and sunflowers as far as i can see many times over. I want to come back in the season that they are all fresh, newly opened and vibrant.

At the next build I learned to speak, no to understand Barnsley and other such ways of speaking:) a great team with smiles and energy and delivery of the 70's afro wigs I finally saw in their intended use a week ago. It was the first steel frame building I had seen being done.

That was in july/august. On my recent return I was in the Carpathian mountains. Close to the boarder with Ukraine, and the town my grandmother and her family came from. I was mostly in Transylvania. It was very peaceful on the drive with Adi for 12 hours on one day as we moved locations. The leaves were changing colors and the winding road continued on and on. It made me think of home in the Fall, minus being at almost cloud levels.

Vanatori - Neamt

Poland

Warsaw- The G family lives, four, in a 9 square meter room. He works full time as a tram driver plus a part time job for the same company. She works part time on a flexible schedule. Their older daughter has just started school and their baby girl is actively being a babyJ . They share a bathroom and kitchen with his father step mother and brother who share the other small room. The rooms in the home are one bathroom, one kitchen and the two rooms. At night they pull down the couch to its bed position and the tiny one for the girls. There is not much space to move around. The table for eating on is a tiny child table for the girls. The housing situation in Warsaw is problematic.
They have been chosen for a Habitat house and while I interview the family both of the parents talk about returning to school, in turns, when they have moved into the new home. She would return to finish her masters and he would return for his bachelors. They will have possibility to live in a new way. The small family space and sharing sound and space with three others is challenging. They will breath in a new way when their older girl will have a room to run around in and space to do her studying when she gets to that stage in school. They spend most of their time away from the home in the summer, just sleeping there. In the winters this is not an option, everyone is home.
This is a situation for many families as a result of the transition from communist time, when everything was owned by the government, to a time when the government was to have no ownership and involvement in housing. Market high prices and banks extreme interests and low approval rates have forced many hard working families striving for more, to be in stagnancy in regards to Home. This is a brief wrap up of a lot more information.
I am making a video short about them. They allowed me, THANK YOU, to go to the park with them and come back for the girls’ bed time baths and story time. Hopefully some footage will make YouTube. I will update.
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http://www.wolnabialorus.pl/news.php?nr=27

The site was last updated in 2006 but the efforts of youth through music and education on Bialoria continues. Investigate and watch youtube videos of the music from the yearly concert of Solidarity. Promoting governmental change and free media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaJMElNCSME

Introduction

I am actually a fairly privet person but feel almost selfish not to share this incredible adventure of life I am being blessed with. I am the volunteer photo and video specialist for Habitat for Humanity Europe and Central Asia. This is a personal blog, not on behalf of the organization. I will of course be telling stories from my travels and information and joys from my time working with this organization. The majority of the photographs I am making I am giving to Habitat ECA use, so if you are interested in seeing more photographs then I post here you can follow their web site and facebook (soon to come). Also many of my personal images are being made on film so...until an exhibition or my working with the images further...those will be something to look forward to. Lastly I am a photographer as my main mode of communication. I have never shared writing, we'll see how this goes. I hope these posts bring joy and contemplation.

I began in mid-July on a new journey. I left behind Texas on a flight...