A Safe House
A young woman poses in a safe house in North Kivu after telling me her story of survival. Magic 287/365, A Safe House, DRC, 2017
Survivor
This is Asha Wanda. I spent valentine’s day of 2017 with her and three other survivors of sexual violence in Walikale, a small village in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. They shared their stories with me and I was overwhelmed by the positivity they exuded despite the atrocities they had experienced. For the full …
Beautiful Light
Light. Beautiful, sweet light. It’s something we take for granted. I learned this during my travels in DRC because most of the country remains in the dark once the sun goes down. But thanks to my awesome fiancee, Antonio Nevada Martinez, and the amazing project we worked on, ASSP, these people in Kawadje, just outside …
Water Girls of Congo
Many people hear the words “water” and “Africa” and immediately think of dry wells in the desert. Congo is actually one of the most water-rich countries on the continent. The problem is the water is often not clean enough for consumption and people don’t always know that simply boiling it would make it safe to …
Maman Speak
Shortly after my success with malaria bed net distributions, I was given the dual role of “Communications Specialist” because I could take decent photos. And then once again I was thrown into the fire and asked to develop a communications strategy to help our program reach its beneficiaries with life-saving information. Our $283 million dollar …
Teaching English in Bigu
During my time volunteering in Nepal I spent a few weeks at Bigu, a Tibetan Monastery near the border of Tibet. Each afternoon I walked down to the village school and spent an hour trying to teach these cute kids how to speak english. I had no idea what I was doing and , as …
It’s Not What it Looks Like
It looks like he’s digging a grave right? He isn’t. He is digging a latrine. I took this photo last year while we were building a latrine out of local materials in Kawadje, a village just outside of Gbadolite, Nord Ubangi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Magic 241/365, Not a Grave Digger, DRC, 2017
Les Kinois
This photo was taken on a sunny day in Kinshasa. The REAL Kinshasa. My colleague/architect/boyfriend was consulting on a solar installation at a health center in one of the quartiers in Kin. Our org works solely in the distant rural areas, so it was a special treat to get to tag along and check out …
Together
I traveled to a village in Nord-Kivu to interview these women, who were all survivors of rape. The message I took away from this experience was not one of hurt but one of togetherness. Read the whole story here. Magic 235/365, Together, Walikale, February 14, 2017
Coming to a village near you
One of my favorite projects during my time in DRC was our partnership with Girl Rising to show their film in villages across the country. It was also the most harrowing. Getting the equipment out to these remote locations was a logistical nightmare and then training villagers how to USE the equipment and collect data on smartphones …