Chokwe is a small town on the banks of the Limpopo River as it runs to the sea through Mozambique. There is mot much there bar an air strip and a small river, or more like a spring of crystal clear water. Jantique is the name of the stream and from it water is drawn for drinking, and while drawing swimming is a past time of the children.
As I write here Oliver Mtukudzi sings Hero, while at the stream nothing but the song of children is heard above the sound of the generator pumping up the crystal clear for others to drink.
While making my pictures I can see my head once again, I can hear the songs and thoughts, the words of the bible bashers trading local commitment for access to something that I forget now to a perspective of a faith already told but as yet unrecognised by the new comers.
While watching the images slide across the perspex of my light box I see again the things that I saw at the time, yet, so much more crams in with a quiet I told you so, and I see agains. The “you forgot this and that” while I search for images that will make this story link together and speak for its self.
So much more the f-stop and aperture, so much more the depth of field. So much what’s in my head, so much the what I want to say and make out of where I find myself at the time.
It’s the egg sandwich, and the cold beer when I am back in Maputo, it’s the frowns of the “blessed” as they look down on the “unbeliever” with the 2M cold in his hand exhausted but carrying an aspect of a place seen and soon to be seen by the others still waiting. The blessed gather around inwards, do they stop to see what is so possessed, what they might try to take away without first seeing fresh, not seeing that perhaps it might be better, the walk away and leave intact.
It’s a simple task, but it’s the all around that is complex and all absorbing, so much more than ISO and shutters.