That’s what one would think by looking at this photo. That these people mean serious business. But the minute you put that camera down they are all smiles and laughter. Congolese people crack me up with this serious business because they are actually some the most light hearted people I have ever met, with smiles …
Congo is a very male-centric society. The men think they run the place, but they don’t. It’s ladies like these that make the world go round in Congo (and beyond). These ladies, probably the wives of the man of the house, spend their entire day growing food, picking food, preparing food, serving food, cleaning up and …
I was walking through a village in Bosobolo, Nord Ubangi, near the northern border of DRC and CAR. I was looking for a new mother that had received one of our safe birth kits. As I was stomping through the small path led past the small parcels with their token mud huts I looked to …
This is a photo that I took of the school across the street from Antonio’s house in Kananga. In the rainy season, these kids missed a lot of school. Antonio, being the big-hearted man that he is, ended up putting a roof on the school soon after this picture was taken. This school was actually in …
This is a picture I took in Loko, Nord Ubangi, DRC of a young village girl on her way to the local water source. In this region a water source is usually a stream at the bottom of a hill. Seeing these young girls carrying jerry cans back and forth all day really puts things …
I took this photo as I was walking through a village in Kalonda Ouest, Kasai, DRC. We were there to interview beneficiaries of our nutrition program. This woman lived next door to one of them. This photo has an ancient feel to it even though it was just taken a couple of years ago. That’s …
I took this photo outside of a health center in Kasai in 2014. At the time I felt sorry for this woman, but the desperation pictured here has been driven to deeper depths of my heart now that I, too, am a mother. I imagine myself in this mother’s shoes. Lying there on the concrete …
This is the same child from yesterday’s post just a few months later after spending time at the nutrition rehabilitation center in Kananga. When I first met him he couldn’t even walk. After only a few months of rehabilitation he was like a new child. We saw many stories like this in our nutrition program. …
This is a photo I took during my second year in Congo. I was in Kananga interviewing volunteers for our nutrition program for a story I was doing. One of them told me about this malnourished boy. So we went to see him. He was in such bad shape that we took him that day …
This is another photo from that one day when I got left in a village in Nord Ubangi. See the full story here. This is the truck and the crew that I traveled to Loko with. We broke down along the way, which is a typical occurrence on trips like these. The roads are terrible and …