Yo debo (I should)

I've been in site for a few weeks now. I've almost earned the privilege of carrying a camera again.

About Wednesday of this week, I let myself highlight the best of the project ideas I've spent the last three months scribbling in my notebook. That was probably a little premature.

I'm in a new place, shouldn't I be taking pictures? I'm starting two years of work, shouldn't I be planning projects? Maybe. There are definitely pictures that need to be taken and projects that need to be planned. I am not yet, however, the person to address those needs.

Currently, I am in the process of trying to understand my new home. I go to work everyday, some days in one of my schools, others at the Cooperativa. I walk around or buy random things from various ventas as an excuse to talk to their owners, but mostly I sit in the park drinking coffee and talking to strangers. Even now I probably don't do this as much as I should. It may be the most important thing I do in the next two years, not only because my most lasting impact may be the impression I leave about North Americans, but because the success of all my other projects and my ability to tell the story of this place when I leave depend on understanding what this place is, who its people are, what they want, what they have, and finally after all of that, what they might need that I can help them with.

This may be my only chance to do things this way. The jobs that offer you the chance to go live in a place for two years and tell you that its OK, even encouraged, to take the first three to six months to get a feel for the area and its people before starting to work on new projects, are few and far between.

I'm not going to lie, it is hard to take things slow. We want to act. In “we” I include both development workers and people in general. We see things that are different to us: different living standards, different patterns of behavior, different social norms, different faces, different landscapes. We see things that we think are beautiful or horrible. We see things that we wish were different or we wish would never change. So what do we do? We think, “I should do something.” Take a picture. Start a program. Give money. But how do we know what we should do if we don't really understand what is going on?

When I take a picture I don't just capture an image; I create an image. My responsibility as a photographer is to make sure that the image faithfully represents the subject and the situation (check out this entry in Ancora Imparo). When you choose a project you decide to spend energy and resources in a way that means other things go undone. It is my responsibility as a project planner to make sure these are well spent and that they serve the interests and needs of their target population, not my desire to be doing something.

Responsible photography is the perfect reminder for me about responsible development work, or responsible decision making. A good picture is a wonderful thing, worth a thousand words so they say. One you understand very well may be worth that much and more. But a picture you don't understand, be it of something beautiful or tragic, may do more harm than ten thousand words can correct. It cements itself into your thinking about a place or group of people. If you use it to teach others, it provides a distorted perspective to your audience which affects the way they feel and act with respect to people they haven't met and places they have never been.

Laguna de Apoyo

The view from one of my schools

I do love photos though... here's a few from my first few months.