Just a few miles out of Kabwe we stumbled upon this unlikely scene: rows of terraced houses with carports and small gardens. So different from the usual bungalows on walled plots. It could almost have been the Netherlands. Who lives there? What do they make of their suburban dream home? Is this the new Zambia?
Tag: photoblog
Praise
Glory to you for the feast-day of life
Glory to you for the perfume of lilies and roses
Glory to you for each different taste of berry and fruit
Glory to you for the sparkling silver of early morning dew
Glory to you for the joy of dawn’s awakening
Glory to you for the new life each day brings
–
Gregory Petrov
Dream tree
When we had just moved to Zambia, people often asked us: What is it that you miss most? The presumed answer – I guess – was ‘my family’ or ‘that the power stays on’ or ‘pindakaas’. What I used to answer, however, was trees. I missed the trees I grew up with. Trees here, they have another shape. Their leaves are just not right. Their bark is different. Maybe that’s why I like to play around with my photographs of trees: to highlight the sense of not-belonging that they give me.
African yellow white-eye
One of the common birds in our garden is the African yellow white-eye. I love the bright yellow color!
Road works
Road maintenance in Zambia happens less frequently than one might wish for. Especially the road from Lusaka to Livingstone has spectacularly bad stretches. In an attempt to let the users of the road pay for their maintenance a system of tolls has been implemented. Let’s hope that the revenues find their way to the potholes!
Happy Mother’s Day!
A female waterbuck and her calf.
Photo taken in Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa
The Other?
I love this picture, taken during a play about witchdoctors. This is dr. Koko, and he is eating a snake while the audience scampers away in fear. The purpose of the play was to show how witchdoctors play on fears of their audience, and how they use props such as chemical reactions and rubber snakes to do that. But if you don’t know that background, what you see might well be the image of dark Africa: superstition, backwardness, scary occultism. That’s not the image of Africa that I want to spread. So… lovely picture, but it cannot be used?
Remember
The tenth of May is a special day for me, a family day. It is the day that my paternal grandparents – Egbert Kamps and Johanna Vrielink – married. It is also the birthday of my maternal grandmoter – Dina Roseboom-Noppers. Today I offer this rose in remembrance of my roots.
Otherworld
What would it be like to live in another world? A world with different laws of nature, or different moral codes? I’ve always been fascinated by books that explore this question – fantasy, science fiction, utopias and dystopias. I think these books have prepared me, maybe more than anything else, to live and settle in a different culture.
Photo taken somewhere between Kafue and Mazabuka, Zambia
Awesome wonder 