Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine
A UN vehicle is speeding by in the back, while a mentally challenged, needy, third-world citizen is left to herself on the street. Kathmandu, Nepal, 2005. (C) Morten Svenningsen.
First off, apologies for this blog post which is going to be a bit of a rant about stuff in my brain, what I’ve been up to etc. Just to let you all know that I’m still here. And doing fine, by the way!
My Daughter
By far the biggest thing in my life now, Julie, soon 5 months old. I’ve set up this cute little photo blog for her (text in Danish), to keep family and friends up to date about events in her life. Boy, she’s taking a lot of our time. By now, I must have the number of all the local clinics and hospitals on my speed dial. Not that there’s anything wrong with her. But being concerned parents, we just don’t take any chances. Like today, she had rashes all over her body. Went to this little clinic in the morning just to be told, like all the other times, other issues, “Don’t worry”. This kind of rash apparently doesn’t itch and goes away by itself after a few days. Ok. Just taking a lot of time. Slept 4 hours last night. Needed a nap. Then the cooking and cleaning. And all the time she’s awake, she appreciates attention. Demands it! Needs to be carried, held, talked to, played with… That’s all fine. Just wondering: How on earth does everyone else manage to have a lovely 5 months old daughter and still get any work done?
My Work
Which brings us to this next topic. I feel better positioned, equipped and educated than ever before to do my work. But I just don’t have much time to do it! My head is filled with ideas. Would love to do an in-depth, long project, piece of investigative photojournalism.
Just to mention one idea, a story I really think needs to be told: The whole NGO scene here in Nepal. How well is it actually working? They’ve been here for 60 years. Yes six-ty years! The country is still not functioning. By some standards it could even pass as a failed state. It’s still one of the poorest and most corrupt places on earth. So, has the presence of all those NGOs (currently more than 30.000) made things better or worse? Ok, a lot of things have improved. Literacy has gone up from less than 5% to more than 50%. Road connections gone up from a few kilometers to thousands. Health conditions vastly improved. I’ll give them part credit for all that. But look at one organization, UN for instance. Would love to ask them some questions: What have you actually achieved? How much have it cost? If you pulled out tomorrow, how long will your achievements last? I see lot of UN 4WDs passing in and out of 5 star hotels. (Hence the lead photo up top…) Everyone have private chauffeurs, air-conditioned offices. UN helicopters fly over our house every day. How much is going to waste here? What is actually being accomplished? They were 500% off target when they had to count the Maoist combatants. Is this representative of their standards and understanding of this country? Just shooting of questions here, naturally. Not implying anything…
And by the way. One of the UN organizations recently had the nerve to ask me to provide a cover photo for their magazine. Only thing, they wanted it for free! Who is the UN anyway? Some poor sod sitting on the street with an eye patch and a tin cup in one hand? (To paraphrase Harlan Ellison).
Anyway, would love to do some quality piece of reportage before I leave this country.
Leaving Nepal
Which brings us to this: I’m finally leaving Nepal! After 4 years, we handed in the application for my wife’s Danish residence permit this week. So will be stationing myself in Denmark by the end of the year, if everything goes as planned. Still have perhaps 4 months left here, I guess. Won’t be leaving for good. Hoping I’ll be able to come here again, once a year or so. To do some work, say hi to everybody and perhaps time for a hike in the mountains! But looking forward to leaving all the noise, dirt and over-populated streets behind for a while.
The Biggest Problem in the World
Just mentioned the over-populated streets here. Gave it some thought. I actually regard this as the biggest problem in the world. No, it’s not poverty, war, hunger, AIDS, financial crisis, climate change or whatever. It’s the population growth! Globally speaking, the population grows with 1.2% per year. Big deal, you say. But if it continues like this on a large time frame we’ll reach a 1000 billion people in less than 500 years! 10.000 billion in another 200 years. 100.000 billion in another 200 years… (We are about 7 billion people here now). It’s just too many, man! I know, neither you or me are going to live to see the day. But no-one else will, I’m sure. If we don’t find a way of reducing the growth, nature will do it for us, I’m sure. Deaths on a massive scale! Perhaps that Swine Flu is nature’s way…
Hmm, another story that needs to be told. What better place to do it from than here, in the heart of an Asian capital…
Photojournalism
And although I’m not that much ‘out there’ shooting projects these days, not as much as I’d like to anyway, I’m still doing a lot in this field, photojournalism. For more than half a year now, I’ve been running Gaia Photos, a global photojournalism project I’ve set up. It’s coming along nicely, got a lot of good response on it. You should take a look! Anyway, it’s one thing that I CAN do these days. Whenever I have an hour free time, between feeding and nursing, I can sit down in front of the computer and work on the various creative and managerial issues that comes with it. Right now, writing a bunch of small articles on photojournalism. Just to promote the project, bring more visitors to the site, increase our collective exposure. Let me know if you are interested in those articles, I can send links when they are ready and online – it’s free.
Let me just tell you why I started this project. First, I’m a quite globally minded kind of person, I guess. For practical reasons I haven’t renounced my Danish citizenship. It’s just too damn handy. But ideally, I’d rather be a “world citizen”, I’ve never felt that I belonged to a country. Hate nationalism. So I guess this was sort of a driving factor in me becoming a photojournalist originally. Wanted to “promote inter-cultural understanding across all the borders of this world that we all share”. I think that’s how I formulated it many years ago somewhere… But somewhere along the line, I forgot that vision. And after having done this and that in photojournalism, gotten myself carried away, trying to chase the market, I got a bit bored, lost my passion. Thought about leaving photojournalism again. That was a couple of years ago. But then it dawned on me. Return to your original philosophy, the reason you started this thing anyway! And the passion returned and the idea of Gaia took form. With the help of other people’s ideas, I should say. Greg deserves some credit here!
Ok, think I’ll stop my rant here for now, leave other of the weird scenes inside to goldmine for later…
Buy Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine, lyrics by the Doors on this album (via Amazon):
Award-winning Danish photographer and photojournalist, based on Bornholm Island (Denmark) in the Baltic Sea. 5 years experience working in Nepal/Asia.
I like what you said about “I’d rather be a “world citizen”… I have been thinking that for a long time, but the nation state, / the corporate state, is no different than the tribal state, or tribal nations. In order to get a one world state, we need to start with creating the one person state. It’s my thought, that no social ism of whatever kind will ever work without a free and individual state. A State of You! There is no other you, even in the theoretical multiverse; there will never be another you. We are each: “appropriate, best, certain, characteristic, chief, choice, defined, definite, designated, determinate, different, earmarked, especial, exceptional, exclusive, express, extraordinary, festive, first, gala, individual, limited, main, major, marked, memorable, momentous, out of the ordinary, particular, peculiar, personal, primary, proper, rare, red-letter, reserved, restricted, select, set, significant, smashing, sole, specialized, specific, uncommon, UNIQUE…” beings, being and becoming, in this world state. Religion has always betrayed us; for all their sweet promises of a heaven, were always premised on a hell. What if there is no heaven or a hell, but that we make them so? I think many of us have wondered, and thought about that, and maybe a few have written of it. So how do we get to the one world state, when we are still trapped, and locked outside of our own personal state. I say outside, because I think at times it seem like an outside inside / inside outside is really the same reality. It seem like, we are all still “Waiting for Godot,” / (God?) but maybe “Godot” is already here / there inside each of us? One time, on the dark side of the moon, I met a lovely lady who asked me, if I knew where Godot / God was? I wrote her these lines and slipped them to her through the bars of the prison we were both in:
“And We Are Gods
We come together
Borne in a beginning
Where there were only ends
Trembling, embered we rise
Before the idle winds of Time;
Trusting No Martyrs, No Masters of Sin,
Indignant and angered we come,
Foundlings from the stony darkness
Of deserted cradles
…
And we are Gods,
Not of the Kingdoms of Things;
Not of Others,
But of Ourselves;
Hunters of riddles, immigrants before a magic door,
We are the Gods within and without,
All else is absurd and mocks of fools:
Frightened, evil / good men and women
Sucking dry wounds in the tombs of Death,
Children, gnawing the idols of their thighs;
We are the Gods within and without,
All Else is absurd and mocks of fools…
(c)Edmund I Watts 2009″
I never saw her again. I know she is out there somewhere looking in a looking glass looking for herself. Well, I need to go. As always, I get carried away when someone puts forward such great ideas, like: “I’d rather be a “world citizen” …I would too..
Edmund, in Prague
PS
I found it. It must have been just there in the corner of my mind. It’s John L. song…
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
“Religion has always betrayed us; for all their sweet promises of a heaven, were always premised on a hell.”
Love it!
I guess, Edmund, you know the term “If God didn’t exist, we’d have to make him up”. We humans always like to find “the reasons behind”, “The Truth” and all that. Can’t bear the thought of things happening without a reason:
- Humans were “put” on this earth with some intent, right? Must be! Just a random bio-chemical freak occurrence, you say? No, couldn’t be!
That Lenon song has somehow help shape my life…
Thanks for sharing your profound thoughts here!
Yep, no less than the Intl red Cross and something called the Global Heriitage Fund ALSO wanted photos…for free. Not even a token honorarium of a few Euros. Like they don’t have a budget? Give us a break!!
Sorry you are leaving Nepal.
Hey Morten
I feel really strongly about a lot of what you said here. From the first day I stepped into Nepal, I did not have a good feeling about the NGO scene there. The UN jeeps driving around all over the place just make it all the more obvious. And, yet, so many people I know want to work for the UN in Nepal. I understand why, but am frustrated by the system of it all.
Moreover, I went hitching all around Nepal for a month and was passed by so many UN jeeps while the crowded trucks picked me up. It became a mission at one point, to get picked up by the UN jeep….I was sure it would happen at some point, but it never did.
Anyway, best of luck with everything. I wonder how we never crossed paths in Nepal. I am not there now, but will be by the time you are gone.
I also have a blog about Nepal, called Dal Bhat Tarkari:
http://www.anyavaverko.com/blog
best,
Anya
Yeah, strange we didn’t meet so far. Been really busy on the family front for a year now though. Pheeeew. Need a holiday. See you later perhaps.