Bread for the bread basket

Seattle is a photographer's wet dream!

2011-03-26T00:34:00.000-07:00

Tucked up against Canada's southern border, coastal mountains to its east and the Pacific ocean to its west, Seattle holds the allure of adventure. Somehow the city has immortalised the excitement and prospect of wild Alaska to its north.

It rains a lot in Seattle, storms blow off the Pacific and dump copious amounts of precipitation on the city. While it rains life at Pike Place market continues at its own exuberant pace. Coffee shops bustle with traffic, the promise of low-flying fish draws crowds and eccentric musicians entrance kids.

The light here is soft and diffused, and the weather is constantly changing. Overcast skies give way to dramatic cloudscapes. The sun pushes through, the streets glow, and then the sun disappears behind the wall of another approaching front.

After booking a cheap hotel on Hotwire for my first few nights, I decided to move to a hostel for a little more atmosphere. At City Hostel art not only hangs from the walls, but in each of the rooms local artists have painted the walls of the historic building, adding colour and character.

From here, and with the guidance of awesome hosts, I explored Seattle's city centre and neighbourhoods. Capitol Hill and its funky bars and coffee shops, Fremont for its bohemian Sunday market - and the best-ever naan, baked in a hot oven as you order - and Ballard and its, locks and docks with strong links to the city's original trade, fishing.

By far my favourite find photographically, however, was an unassuming 1950s-style barber shop. Gino, a basketball fanatic and ex Ralph Lauren employee designed Gino's around collectible artifacts that deserves to only been seen in black and white. But Gino challenges this assumption with selected pops of colour that kept me shooting for several hours.

I returned the next day, kept my camera in its bag and sat in the chair that has a window on the world passing by for my most memorable hair-cut experience ever. Gino's every stroke of the blade was smooth and considered. His attention to detail bordered on pampering and I walked out almost an hour later feeling like a new man! See some of the images below from Gino's barber shop on the corner of 7th Ave and Bell St in Seattle:

Despot-dominoes

2011-02-22T02:03:00.000-08:00

The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that have ousted long-standing dictators are inspiring.

Libya's people are facing stiffer iron-fisted resistence. Of course with 41 years of rule under his belt, and the fourth longest serving non-royal leader in the planet's history, Muammar al-Gaddafi knows every trick in the book to supress opposition. The old codger won't lie down, dictators never do, and many more lives will be lost if Libyans are to succeed.

The dynamics in Libya are significantly different to those that recently led to Egypt successfully engineering change, but I live in hope. If Gaddaffi is given the boot, surely that will be a catalyst for a heightened fever of social change regionally and south through the continent.

It is ironic that the remaining longest standing current leaders in history are:

- Paul Biya of Cameroon. His 35 years of rule puts him at number 11 on the list of longest serving leaders of all time;
- Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen has ruled for 32 years and is number 14 on the list;
- Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea has ruled for 31 years and is the 19th longest-standing despot.
- Jose Eduardo do Santos of Angola has also ruled for 31 years and is placed at number 22 on this role of dishonour;
- Robert Mugabe's 30 years of autocratic rule in Zimbabwe earns him position number 26.

These men are not leaders, but greedy self-serving dictators. Leadership is defined as the ability to inspire and enlist the support of others for common good.

May 2011 be the year of the great despot-domino-effect and open the way for real leaders to step forward in Africa.

Jenje the Egyptian Goose

2011-01-25T23:39:00.000-08:00

It struck me in a Skype chat with my mum today what I miss about Africa.

She has this Egyptian Goose that my Old Man found as a gosling orphaned in Kariba, I think. In the absense of any kids or grandkids to love and care for my mum took on the gosling as her own. In chats over the past few months Jenje has come up in conversation. I've imagined the cat, the dogs and Jenje negotiating past each other in the kitchen.

Today Jenje came up again. It is clear that my mum and Jenje have built a special bond, but now Jenje is ready to fly!. Below is their extract. It made me smile:

"I'm back. Man oh ... man. My Jenje is something else!!! he's almost fully grown .... and flies to me when I call him!!!!

ALMOST got him to get on my lap. He used to love being touched by me, but is VERY wary now and pulls away whenever I try to touch his chest!!! Its one of those where HE WANTS ..... BUT .... doesn't want ....!!!! if you know what I mean!!!

Sadly, I think that he is almost ready to "take off" and find his own way in life !!!!

We are off to Kariba this weekend and considered taking him back to where he was found, but the journey would be tooooo traumatic for him now!!!! So have just decided to let him "take flight" when he is ready...

He is now 3 months and a few days ....... sooooo I don't think he'll be around much longer ...... sadly :("

To Jenje, fly on and find yourself. Just remember to enjoy the journey, thats why you want to fly.

Mum, I reckon you gave your feathered son more than just 3 months of life.

The value of a watch

2009-02-28T00:09:00.001-08:00

Golden in British Columbia is a frontier place to be. There is a rich history of the mountains here. The Swiss have guided and ironed out a path for the Canadian Pacific Railway, the aorta that links east to west in Canada. Along this line through the Canadian Rockies, Highway 1 is plotted. This railway, the paper mill and the seven-year-old Kicking Horse Mountain Resort are the main employers here.

Anyway, this watch.

I am currently in Golden, and a couple of Kiwis rent our basement. With a little sub-one-year-old boy in the family, its nice to have familiar faces around the house. Kind of like a big family away from home. In any case these Kiwis had a cousin coming to stay. Maev and I assumed another young Kiwi doing his thing, seeing the world, and on the hunt for some Canadian powder (like the rest of us).

I'm sitting in front of a cast iron furnace that heats the house and is the pride of my existence. Outside its cold, the sort of cold that grips you and makes you shiver hard. The mountains around here are wild that reminds me of the bush in Zim. This week a guy was found after being lost for 10 days. He and his wife had headed backcountry from the resort, and something must have gone wrong, probably lost and ill-prepared. It is a tragic story. His wife died, and with several SOS messages spotted by helicopter pilots and guides, but never acted on, they could have been found and saved earlier. Nonetheless, the backcountry of this area cannot be understimated, or reckoned with.

Nigel, the cousin arrived with a bold knock at the front door. Vistors in the later evening are a rarity nowadays, our new adult life full of the responsibility of raising a family. Opening the door, the cousin was not as we expected. He was older, as Maev put it "Crocodile Dundee". New Zealand's Crocodile Dundee.

His watch, the watch, was encased in leather. I never actually saw the watch. But the leather casing immediately took me home. As far as I understand it was worn during the war to shield the effect of sun refracting on its shiny surface, and therefore giving away position to 'gooks' and enemy forces.

Along with hunting purposes that may have been their design. But for me it stirred up a deep sense of passion about who I am, in the most unsuspecting of places, from the most unexpected of sources.

That may not be the value of the watch, but it is a story. And here is an image to accompany the story. It is a view of the mountains from home, taken by Maev.

And there is a place I like reading a story. http://www.chrisallan.co.za/.

Tomorrow's Promise

2008-07-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

This clip is made for my son. It is a document of our voyage while he developed in his mother's uterus. But compiling it has been a personal journey too.

Maev and I went to Zimbabwe for six months before our contract in Canada started. It was an opportunity to dip a toe into the turbulent Zimbabwean waters and to sample a much talked about life in the bush. Compiling these photos has enabled reflection with the comforting space of time.

Finn is now seven-and-a-half weeks old. I have had seven-and-a-half weeks to get used to the idea of being a parent. Over and above all the magic, there is the inextricable fact that this baby's survival is dependant on its parents: Maev and myself. I have on occasion found the thought overwhelming. And yet, a photograph taken on a dusty forecourt of a rural supermarket in Victoria Falls' Sinemani Shopping Centre reminds me that I have little to be overcome by.

Every photograph ever taken, is a split-second of time, a key that unlocks a sequence of events, opens the floodgates for a stream of thoughts and sentiments. In most cases, the circumstances surrounding each captured moment are as vivid as the image itself.

On our way back to Sikumi - the camp we managed - from a supply run in Victoria Falls, we made one final stop at a supermarket known to have goods brought from across the border. This meant that we were likely to be able to find tins of baked beans, tuna, tinned fruit, pasta and possibly even powdered milk, all be it at massively inflated prices. During our short stint in the country, the government had decided the only way to curb an inflation rate running riot was to instill price-controls on absolutely everything. This of course proved about as effective as climbing Tour de France's Alp D'Huez dragging a trailer of breeze-blocks. In shops, shelves were simply not restocked, and for most others who continued do business with the intention of making a profit, rather than a loss, the growing blanket of the black market was the solution.

With the back of the bakkie (for those uninitiated in Saffa/Zimbo talk, a ute, or a pickup) loaded with crates of soft drinks, two drums of fuel - 400 litres - and vegetables, we hoped to finalise a very successful couple of days shopping with some South African dry goods that were otherwise impossible to find. While Maev went into the store to spend Z$20 million, I waited by the vehicle.

Across the way a frenzy of people gathered, advertising to the street that something was available. Queing in Zimbabwe is a culture in itself. People queue for everything: to buy milk; to draw money out an ATM; or even to earn (in most cases not such a quick buck), queing for somebody else - these are the professional queuers! And when there is a queue to join, people join them. In this case the excitement was palpable. Amid the flash of bright clothing, yellows, reds and greens against a vibrant blue wall, smiles danced about the small mob as one by one people walked away with one fresh baked loaf of white bread.

Before long, a young girl arrived on the scene before me. She must have been no more than 10 years old, and on her back was strapped a baby, probably a year old. She stopped and gazed at me for a minute or two, and then disappeared into the cheery mass of people.

Her responsibility resonated within me, and still does. Her circumstance is a mystery. Any combination of possibilities come to mind. I don't care to speculate. Instead, her innocent, unquestioning aura of duty remains. I surely have little to be overcome by.

I met a tobacco industry lawyer on the train from Edinburgh to London this weekend. She was in the UK on business and told me that a loaf of bread cost Z$50 billion before she had left a week ago (July 21).

Wimbledon Wars

2008-07-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

This is doing the rounds on email. I wonder if Mugabe sits in his lounge watching Wimbledon. If so, I wonder what he thinks about Rafael Nadel's guns?

A loaf of bread cost Z$9 billion in Harare on Monday (June 30).

Who is Bossy Cocks?

2008-06-21T14:50:00.000-07:00

Bossy Cocks is a pseudonym accidentally arrived at under the railway tracks of the yellow metro line 'R' on loud and proud Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, New York City. The continuous rumble of the silver trains thundered overhead and everyone on the busy thoroughfare oozed and breathed street cred.

I was waiting for the two Mexican guys, to whom I had given my name, a colour passport photo and one hundred and fifty bucks for a US social security card. After over an hour of waiting, the growing sense of unease and naivity that comes from being ripped off in a neighborhood that I've learnt from movies to be weary of took hold. A powerade and several chocolate bars from the corner store later, they returned, handing me a white envelope and ushering me on my way.

Once back on the 'R' train, guilty and curious, I opened the envelope. The card made little attempt to conceal its dubious origin. The photograph I had given them was cellotaped on laminated blue cardboard that comprised a poor quality scan of the US social security seal, a social security number dreamed up from who knows where, and my name: Bossy Cocks. Whether artistic license on behalf of the Mexicans, my Zimbabwean accent misunderstood, or my guilty voice drowned out by the sounds of the street, Bossy Cocks was born. And with that, a start in scaffolding in one of the world's tallest cities.

Just a couple of weeks before this, I had been in Zimbabwe. The cost of a loaf of bread then - two years ago - was Z$80 000. As of Monday this week (June 23) a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe, if you can find it, cost Z$3.5-4 billion. In the '80s Zimbabwe was labelled Africa's bread-basket. Nobody then could have forecast the desperate and tormented path that Mugabe and his dictatorship Zanu PF party have led the nation and its people down.