March 11th, 2010 at 16:44
(Haiti)
Horisto is 4 years old. When the earthquake happened he was together with Jaz, another 4 year old. The walls of the room they were in broke down and Jaz died on the knees of Horisto. Horisto only got slightly hurt on his head. 5 days he lied underneath the ruins with the dead Jaz on top of him. His hand touched Jaz body and this is the reason it got infected and had to be amputated. He lives in the general hospital for the moment. His mother died during the earthquake, so his father is with him. They don’t know where they want to go after his release from the hospital. When I met Horisto, he ran towards me, hugged and kissed me. He smiled and danced and he is one of the most cheerful kids I have ever met.
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March 11th, 2010 at 02:03
(Haiti)
Christelle Doralus is 5 years old. The roof of her house broke down during the earthquake and she lives now with her family in a shack in Carrefour.
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March 10th, 2010 at 03:34
(Haiti)
I’m sitting in Natachas room in the morning without electricity and no Internet. Once a day we use a generator to get electricity for 1 or 2 hours. I use this time to charge my computer, my batteries and my cellphone. This weekend I have spent in Jacmel. I met two women who are working for the Kindermissionswerk and I stayed with them. I found that the situation in Jacmel is much better than in Port-au-Prince. Most of the people live in real tent-cities, where NGOs bring food every day. In Port-au-Prince is still a lot of chaos. Some people have tents, other don’t and have built shacks in the middle of a public place, food isn’t coming to all people, … I think it’s really important that people start working again, selling their own products, so that they don’t rely on others to feed themselves. In the next days I want to help a few families by buying food that they can sell on the market. They should start their own business again. I’m still a little bit ill, so I took the day off yesterday to relax and do nothing. I have much more energy again. Today I will go to Carrefour to photograph another project of the Kindermissionswerk. Tomorrow I want to start taking some pictures for my own projects. On Thursday a journalist will come to sleep in Natachas house. I’m looking forward to this; I hope we can work together. This weekend 15 American doctors will come and stay here for one week. This will be really chaotic. The house is big, but has only 2 bathrooms… 2 bathrooms for 20 people… 
Now it’s evening. I have spent the day in a school in Carrefour. On the schoolyard 600 displaced people reside in self built shacks or self built tents. On this picture you see family Francois - in the front is Nikensia, 4 years old. Their house crashed completely during the quake and they lost their father.
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March 6th, 2010 at 01:04
(Haiti)
Yesterday I arrived in Port-au-Prince around lunchtime. I flew in the country with a commercial flight, which is possible again after the earthquake since Monday. I don’t see much difference to the situation when I was here in January, except that there are more tents everywhere. Most of them look rain-resistant, so that’s good. People that didn’t get a tent, started to built shacks in the middle of the city. There are shacks in very weird places – in front of the university on the sidewalk. The rainy season started already, yesterday evening it rained for about one hour and today the sky was gray and it was quite cold for Haitian conditions. It’s amazing to see how life continues normally. When you are in a bus and don’t look outside, you would not notice any difference of the country.. People dress as before, they act as before, they smile as before. But when you do look out of the window you see that so many of the buildings are destroyed, it’s horrible.
I’m staying in the house of Natacha, my friend who is the director of the NGO “Haiti Care”. She moved into a new place last year and this house is really amazing – it has not one scratch. There still is no electricity at all, but she has a little generator that we use from time to time.
Today I took pictures for the German NGO “Kindermissionswerk”. I will work for them most of the time that I am here (I will stay for 3 weeks). Tomorrow I will visit a project of them in Jacmel.
A Haitian man sleeping in the streets.
Don Bosco center for streetchildren.
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February 11th, 2010 at 12:17
(general, Haiti)
Togehter with the ARTCO Gallerie in Herzogenrath, Germany we will organize a print sale of 49 of my Haiti pictures.
My pictures are sold in an edition of 15 pictures and the first 3 of these 15 will be sold for the good cause. 100% of the amount raised will go to projects in Haiti.
These are the prices:
20×30cm - 300 Euro (special price for this campaign - normal price 400 Euro)
40×60cm - 450 Euro (special price for this campaign - normal price 550 Euro)
60×90cm - 600 Euro (special price for this campaign - normal price 700 Euro)
The award winning picture (Unicef picture of the year 2008) - 1100 Euro - (special price for this campaign - normal price 1200 Euro)
The pictures can be bought online here: http://artco-ac.de/
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January 28th, 2010 at 13:13
(Haiti)
I’m sitting in the airplane of the Belgian Air Force. A few hours ago the plane took of in Santo Domingo to go back to Belgium.
I have spent one week in Port-au-Prince and I am sorry that I didn’t find time to write my blog. This time I wrote a blog in my native language German, which can be found here:
http://blog.zdf.de/3sat.Kulturtube/ -> scroll down
Haiti is widely destroyed; it’s horrible to see. An estimated 200 000 people died and the number rises each day. The hospitals are filled with patients; most of them get a Körperteil amputated and are left alone afterwards. They find themselves alone in the streets, without house, often without family and sometimes even without friends. So many people have lost everything. I talked to a 22-year-old boy, who has lost all his family and all of his friends. He happened to be in the streets during the earthquake, while his family was in their house and his friends in school – both buildings collapses and buried every person who was important to him.
I always thought everything happens for a reason. No matter what happens to me or to any other person, if good or bad - would have some kind of sense behind it. But in this situation I just cannot find the sense at all. A country that has been one of the poorest in the world since many years looses many of his kids, of his teachers, of his hospitals, of his universities, of his bancs… It basically looses his future. It’s not that they have to start at point zero - no, they first have to get all the broken buildings, all the mess out of the city before they can start all over again. And this isn’t easy with an almost complete lack of an infrastructure.
Here in the airplane are also 13 Haitian orphans flying with our group. They have been adopted and will get to their parents in Belgium as soon as we will land. They are saved. I hope they will have a good life in Belgium and I wish that when they’re grown up, Haiti will have succeeded to restart all over again and be a nice place.
I don’t think I need to write more – I think my pictures tell more than my words:
http://www.photoshelter.com/
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December 14th, 2009 at 14:35
(general)
The sharp peak of scissors is drilling in and out of an empty Red Bull can. Slowly it starts to form a precise circle, which is then rolled up between old looking fingers. Cutting, winding, rolling, gluing and testing - until the metal is transformed into a flower. “Golden” works every day very hard in his little house in the middle of the biggest township of Cape Town, Khayelitsha. He creates daisies, roses, sunflowers, and margaritas – in blue, red, white, yellow, green and pink.
After dreaming three times of an angel whispering to him in a low voice he should go to the garbage dump and find flowers, Golden got the idea of creating flowers out of tin cans. Nowadays he is the owner of a flourishing business, got himself and his family out of poverty and even has his own street sign so that the tourists can find him in the middle of the township.
You can find pictures HERE
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December 8th, 2009 at 17:03
(general)
.. so this is the time that I start reflecting about what happened in 2009. It was not an easy year, but one of the best I ever had. I learned many lessons. When I was in South Africa I found this saying on someones wall:
I asked for wisdom…And I received problems to solve.
I asked for prosperity…And I got brains and the strength to work.
I asked for courage…And I faced danger to overcome.
I asked for love…And I met troubled people to help.
I asked for favors…And I found opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted.
I received everything I needed.
That’s how I feel about my life and it was thaught to me especially this year. (I changed the quote a little bit so it fits into my thinking).
I have been twice to Haiti this year, I travelled to India, through Europe and a few weeks ago I visited South Africa. These all were such enriching experiences and I learned so much through each of them.
I moved out from my mum’s house and now live alone with a friend - which is wonderful. I started to earn my own money, to get assignments and jobs, I sold prints and had my first solo exhibition in a museum. It is wonderful to be independent and to live from such a wonderful job as the photographers one.
My life really took a turn in the last months. I started to read much more than I used to. I found H. Hesse or Hesse found me ;-). I jumbed the highest bunggejump of Europe in Switzerland, I went to Africa and to Asia both for the first time of my life. I found sponsors for Landa, the girl of the Unicef picture of the year and her siblings as well as 4 others. So 10 kids in Haiti are now able to go to a good school. Like in the years before, I met courageous and interesting people all over the world, had experiences that I never had before, which were so wonderful that it often took my breath away.
So what can I say as a conclusion? Life is often not fair at all, but in the end it is wonderful.
My advise to everyone is to take the chance when it’s ahead of you. Don’t be afraid, take the risks - living is taking risks. To say it in Philips words: Who is afraid to die, is afraid to live.
I already have plans for the next year. First I will be going to Haiti in January and February. I will stay there 6 weeks together with the girl -Feli- who did an internship with me in October. We will celebrate carnival in Haiti, I’m really looking forward to that! Another time of the year I’d like to visit Benin, I wanna return to India and in June I will take a few weeks of probably going to Bali to learn how to surf. Then again, I will go back to Haiti because I want to complete my work to bring out a photography book about Haiti in 2011.
These are my plans so far - they are likely to change, as always.
In case you live close to Aachen, Germany, I will be holding a workshop there at the beginning of 2010 at the Ludwigforum.
To conclude my words from before, here comes a little poem of Hermann Hesse for the German speakers:
Wie jede Blüte welkt und jede Jugend dem Alter weicht
blüht jede Lebensstufe,
blüht jede Weisheit auch und jede Tugend
in ihrer Zeit und darf nicht ewig dauern.
Es muß das Herz bei jedem Lebensrufe
bereit zum Abschied sein
und Neubeginne,
um sich in Tapferkeit und ohne Trauern
in andre, neue Bindungen zu geben.
Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne,
der uns beschützt und der uns hilft, zu leben.
Wir sollen heiter Raum um Raum durchschreiten,
an keinem wie an einer Heimat hängen-
der Weltgeist will nicht fesseln und nicht engen,
er will uns Stuf um Stufe heben, weiten.
Kaum sind wir heimisch einem Lebenskreise
und traulich eingewohnt, so droht Erschlaffen.
Und wer bereit zum Aufbruch ist und zur Reise,
mag gähnender Entwöhnung sich entraffen.
Es wird vielleicht auch noch die Todesstunde
uns neuen Räumen jung entgegensenden,
des Lebens Ruf an uns wird niemals enden.
Wohlan, denn, Herz
nimm Abschied und gesunde.
.
.
.
--- South Africa
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December 8th, 2009 at 16:33
(general)
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November 1st, 2009 at 22:03
(general)
After a flight of 12 hours I finally arrived in Cape Town on Wednesday morning together with Hedi and Claudia, who are employees for the “Kindermissionswerk”, the NGO I am working for. We checked into the Hotel, which is stunning beautiful (the owners are a supporter of the Zip Zap Circus). We drove a little bit through the city, which looks very European.
Directly on the first afternoon we went to Khayelitsha, probably the poorest township in Cape Town. We saw a dancing program for HIV-positive children, which was great. After the program we drove the children back home into their township.
We continued to drive and after about 15 minutes were thrown back in the “developed world”. It was quite a shock to see the poor and the rich living so close together. I have seen lots of poverty before, especially in Haiti (where the slums are much worse), but in Haiti you have poverty, broken roads and street children everywhere – so before I get from one extreme into the other I always have a long flight in-between. Here in South Africa you have only 15 minutes. It makes you question a lot of things.
Why is it still that way many years after the Apartheid? Why cannot more wealthy persons sponsor a child in the township? Why does the world have money to pay millions for the soccer world cup but not to support those people?
Many years ago we Europeans came here, stole their country and forced them to work for us. Now, many years later, we give them freedom and equality - > to live our lifestyle. But they have never learned our lifestyle.
Our way of thinking straight and forward having a goal in mind – this is what our parents, our society taught us. But no one taught it to them, so how should they know when their parents and their grandparents didn’t know. They used to live in the bush before we invaded their country. The only thing they had to think about was to get enough food everyday and to get along with nature. Nowadays you see lots of big advertising signs next to the poorest people – so it’s natural that they also want all of these things – that creates greed, which again creates violence.
Our system doesn’t work in Africa, if we don’t start to teach it to young children.
But if we would start doing that (which would be the only fair way), there would be a break in our system. People in developing countries would get a good salary, so prices in Europe would rice drastically. But as I said, I think that’s only fair. I know many people in Belgium that buy new shoes every month, new clothes, new cars, …. Why? Because the media is telling you that this is the only way to be happy and to be someone.
But isn’t the only way to really be someone to do something with your life that has a deep sense in it? Like helping other people?
Another project we visited is the Zip Zap Circus. I have put pictures on the blog yesterday. Brent (white South African) and Laurence (French), who worked in circuses as well in younger years, started it 17 years ago and they have been helping so many children to get out of the poverty and have a goal in life. To reach that goal, they have to work hard – they learn it at the Zip Zap Circus School. Many of the kids come from townships and without the circus, it could well be that they would be part of a gang and shoot each other in the streets. But instead they are now traveling through the world performing their acts on the trapeze, the trampoline, by joggling, …
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