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Cedric Kalonji on Photographing Congo

Jennifer Brea · 22:03 · Sub-Saharan Africa

lingua → fr · pt · it · mg · es · jp

Cedric Kalonji is a reporter for Radio Okapi and author of what is arguably Congo's most popular blog.

But in addition to his radio work and blogging, Kalonji is also a prolific photographer, and I spent the last few days poking around his photostream on Flickr.

Kalonji uses photosets to tell stories, for example, how rapid erosion in the Binza Ozone neighborhood of Kinshasa claims more and more homes with each heavy rain:

MONUC soldiers on strike:

An interview with Senegalese musician, Ismael Lo:

And the sad story of two men arrested in Kinshasa, one for stealing a length of wire, the other for purchasing it:

What I really liked about these photographs is that whereas international media images of Congo tend to depict disaster or the strange and exotic, Kalonji's photographs the ordinary, everyday of life in Africa the outside world does not often see.

So I decided to ask Kalonji about his photographs and he graciously agreed to answer my questions, which I have translated here from French.

When and why did you decide to create a blog?

I created my blog in September 2005. At the beginning, it was for sharing my photos, my day-to-day life on the internet. I noticed that there were ore and more people who were interested in my photos and so I posted more, adding a little text. Very quickly, there were hundreds of visitors, mostly Congolese i the Diaspora. That is where my motivation to continue with this blog, which now receives an average of 1000 visits a day, came from.

congo children school

When did you start taking photos? What do you think a image can communicate that text cannot?

I started taking my first photos with a digital camera my mother received as a gift in 2002. I think that for reading and writing, one must first be educated, but with images it's different. You may not know how to write and yet you can take photos that can say as much as a written article. You may not know how to read but you can understand a situation exposed by an image.

What do you think of the image of Congo abroad? Do you think this image reflects the reality?

Congo is perceived as a country at war, in chaos, where everything is destroyed, where nothing works. This image is true in a sense because after 32 years of dictatorship under Mobutu and over ten years of war and 5 million dead, it is true to say that things are not going well.

At the same time, there is something that we often forget to note, which is that the Congolese are still smiling, welcoming and passionate for life, despite all of the traumas they have suffered. There is still human warmth, and I think that is a great wealth.

Why do you like to take photos of daily life, of ordinary moments?

Because I said to myself that there are certain things that people living elsewhere in the world cannot imagine, things that I live every day. My first motivation is to share these ordinary moments, to let people put themselves in the skin of a Congolese person, of someone in Kinshasa, by looking at these photos.

What role do citizen media play in your profession? (Or is there a role to play? The majority of your readers are abroad, in part due to the lack of internet access in Congo.) What role might they play in the future?

Citizen media allow us to go beyond borders and to build bridges with very meagre means that would be impossible with traditional media. In my case, the advantage of a blog is that it allows me to express myself in a completely independent way and to be read by readers from the four corners of the world. So I have the possibility to share my life and to connect with readers from different countries with different visions and cultures. I think that for countries like Congo and Africa in general, blogs are an especially important means of communication.

To share this passion, I've trained young Congolese on a volunteer basis to allow them to understand how blogs and new media work. The youth I have trained have already created two sites, Ndule2Kin.com and rdcbel. I would love to extend these trainings to other parts of my country as well as the whole of the African continent.

Are most of the photos you take for your reporting or are they also a hobby?

For me, photography is a hobby. I am almost never apart from my camera and I take photos almost everyday. I have thousands and it is always a pleasure to look at all of them, because they remind me of precise moments.

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D.R. of Congo: Streamline architecture in Bukavu and getting by in Kinshasa

Fred R. · 15:50 · Sub-Saharan Africa

lingua → fr · es · fa

Kivu Express [Fr] celebrates Bukavu's heritage of architecture from the last days of Art Deco with a series of photographs of buildings around town. They're all slightly mouldy these days, but still remind him of a time when Bukavu was declared “the most beautiful town in Africa”.

Commenting on the post, a resident of Bukavu in the 50s agrees that it was at least one of the most beautiful towns in Congo, and says the photo above gives a strong impression of what it was like back then.

Don and Marsha of Congo Chatter have a detailed post on ‘how things are sold' in Kinshasa. Whether you're looking for a European used car, a Coke bottle full of diesel, a walking stick, a football, a 10 cent bag of drinking water, a hard-boiled egg, a bunk-bed or a full sofa suite, it's all right there on the side of the road:

Wanna buy a used car? There aren't more than 4 or 5 car dealerships in Kinshasa, and not one of these has a used car department of any consequence. Most used cars are sold off of “used car lots” along the side of the road. Here's a used car dealership alongside Mulumba Blvd. — each morning about 50 or 60 cars appear alongside the road — there are occasional lookers and buyers, and then at night all the cars get driven somewhere to be stored overnight. Almost all the used cars here come from Europe, and still have their identifying European country sticker on them — “B” for Belgium; “F” for France; “CH” for Switzerland; “D” for Denmark, etc. Someone buys them in Europe and ships them down here. The process of licensing, registering, reporting sales to the government, sales tax — no clue what happens. But the inventory always changes and cars are being sold from under the trees.

Cédric's [Fr] neighbour's handyman has invented the most cost-effective automatic closing gate you're likely to find anywhere.

Finally, Le Congo C'est Là [Fr] has a handy guide to identifying ‘un vrai Z' in the Diaspora (Z for Zaireois, that is). It seems you're a real Z if, among other things:

you always dress in flashy colours
you keep your D&G label to show its authenticity
you always fly with excess baggage but get angry when asked to pay for it…
…and you always take some Pondu (Cassava leaves) with you, even though it's sold everywhere these days

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Egypt: Doctors shoot video of hospital blackout emergency

Juliana Rincón Parra · 05:03, June 6th, 2008 · Middle East & North Africa

lingua → mk · ar · pt · bn · zht · zhs

With more frequency now, hospitals are being managed as big businesses with clients instead of health facilities with patients. Doctors who wish to honor their Hippocratic Oath have to hope that their hospital management has the same ideal of keeping the good of the patient as the highest priority. This was the case last week in the Al Matrya teaching hospital in Egypt, where 4 babies and 2 adults on life support lost their lives due to a 2 hour blackout in the early morning hours and generators failed to kick in once again.Zeinobia writes

Last week Al Matrya educational hospital had seen a tragedy on the 22nd of May 2008 when a power outage took place , yes Power 8 outage took place for two hours leading to the dramatic death of 4 babies in the neonatal intensive care.

You must know before this outage on the 22nd of May , the hospital witnessed an another outage from three weeks before for 5 minutes and you must know that the back up electric generators did not work !!

More important you must know that the administration of that hospital in Cairo that follows the ministry of health knew that. You must know that the administration of that hospital faked the time of death of those infants three hours before the outage so it would escape the legal accountability !!

During the blackout, doctors who were on duty with Dr. Akroot, known in YouTube as akroot4ever, recorded on their cellphones their desperate attempts to save these babies' lives. He explains in the video's description [ar] that the Hospital Administration knew that the generators weren't working since three weeks before the 2 hour blackout the lights were out for five minutes and the generators had failed to kick in, which was unusual, so when the tragedy struck at 3am on May 22nd, the life support machines had no power and this caused the deaths of the babies in the nurseries.

Following, two videos recorded by doctors during the blackout, where the sound of beeping machines, babies crying and doctor's distressed voices accompany images of these same doctors trying do to everything possible to save these babies' lives: (1, 2, and 2[ar]):

Another video uploaded by akroot4ever shows a patient attached to a monitor that reads vital signs… the only problem is that the monitor is displaying the DEMO options where vitals are represented as standard for a healthy patient, and the patient connected to this monitor has already passed away, unnoticed by most of the staff:

Support is strong for Dr. Akroot according to Zeinobia at the Egyptian Chronicles, where the team of doctors are being hailed for their determination to save lives during the crisis and strength to come forth and expose what happened at the Al Matrya educational hospital.

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Nicaragua: Twittnic and the Expanding Blogosphere

Rodrigo Peñalba · 03:39 · Americas

lingua → mk · es

The twitter hype came to Nicaragua, and a community website soon emerged called Twittnic [es]. The website follows any twitter feed by anyone who lives or is from Nicaragua. The community was an idea of @jorgecerda and @ajulloa. The twitter use @penalba is also helping, but on a more “philosophical” level, and @gandulo was the one who skinned and developed the website using Wordpress. The website is currently following 38 twitters.

New logo voted on and selected by community members.

Some new and interesting twitter accounts have also been created, for example @ajulloa took the iniative to combine the RSS feeds of local newspapers and web forums in order to turn them into Twitter Feeds: @elnuevodiario, @laprensa, and @bacanalnica; but only El Nuevo Diario was able to work because the RSS feeds of La Prensa and Bacanalnica were not compatible to twitter, and nobody knows the reason.

New (or emerging) blogs

Notas de una nica [es] (Notes from a Nica) is a blog by Yaozka Tijerino Canton. In it Yaozka writes about real life in Managua, politics, phony cinema directors, music, and using local currency.

Ha notado que cada vez que usted va a un restaurante, a una tienda e incluso a una farmacia los precios están en dolares?. Que curioso que si nos pagan bajo la moneda nacional; es decir, en Córdobas, todo lo paguemos en dolares.

Have you noticed that everytime you go into a restaurant, a store, or even a pharmacy that the prices are expressed in dollars? It is interesting that we are paid in the national currency, Córdobas, but we pay everything with dollars.

¿Y ahora de que vamos a hablar? [es] (¿And what are we going to talk about?) is a blog by Naren Mayorga. It covers political matters, music from the 1980s, “freaky” subcultures, e-commerce and phising in local banks, Paul McCartney's old songs, and firsthand reporting about the latest transport strike

Andando por las calles de managua no he visto nada fuera de lo comun, ni grandes filas de carros por algun tranque ni grandes grupos de gente esperando rutas que nunca pasan. Quizá es solo mi percepcion, pero creo que las protestas están a nivel externo de la capital. Ya ando la cámara en el carro por cualquier cosa que vea.. vamos a ver como se desenvuelve esto.

Passing through the streets of Managua, I did not see anything uncommon. There were neither long lines of cars due to a blockade, nor large groups waiting for routes that never seems to pass. Maybe it was my perception, but I think the protests were outside the capital. I have a camera in my car just in case I see something… let's see how this plays out.

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