Dear all,

we made it on time!
On July 26, more than 14 months after leaving Germany with our Land Rover, Chiho and I arrived safely back at my parent’s house in Daun.

In a ceremony at the local mayor’s office we got married on August 8, 2008.
Our wedding celebrations turned out to be a wonderful event, perfectly planed and warmly executed by my mother and my father. We were humbled by the amount of neighbors, relatives, colleagues and friends who came to congratulate and share this day with us.

The wedding was also a great way to end our epic journey through Africa, with our trusted Land Rover performing his last duty of the journey as the official wedding car.

We were exhausted but happy and a little proud when we finally arrived in Germany. In 444 days of constant traveling we had driven 59.316 Kilometers (36,857 MIles), and circled almost the entire African continent overland.
On the map it looks like this:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/Map%202.html

We visited France, Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria on our journey.

38 Countries total.

The purpose of this journey was to get an overview. We attempted to learn as much as possible about the vastly diverse societies and cultures of the African continent in a very short amount of time. We were always very much aware of the limitations of our endeavor, but were also deeply grateful to be able to realize such a trip at all.
This journey was not a photojournalistic assignment. It was an adventure. Chiho and I will work hard in the coming months to put together a book about our Land Rover trip and we hope to be able to make it into our third published work.
The most important thing that remains to be said is that Chiho and I performed this huge undertaking together. Because of my work as a photojournalist we are often separated. I’m never home. To be able to spend almost an entire year together in Africa was a great gift and I am convinced that we will remember our Land Rover travels as one of the happiest times in our lives.

Many things have happened since we set out in May 2007.
While we were on the road we published the Iraq book, both in English and German.
I won some prizes, gave interviews and published pictures. We organized a show in New York and as the faithful reader of my dispatches will recall, on this occasion I had an operation on my butt.
We also managed to attend my sister’s wedding in New York and my mother’s 60th birthday in Daun. We were both forced to interrupt the Africa trip several times with excursions to New York, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Germany and The Netherlands.

There were sad moments too. While we were on the road my Iraqi colleague Khalid Hassan was murdered in Baghdad. An event that saddened my deeply.
Not so long ago, while we were in Egypt, we had an accident where a small girl was injured. A nightmarish episode and probably the darkest hour of the entire trip.
The little girl was rushed to a hospital after the accident and was surprisingly discharged immediately.
Over the internet I was lucky to find a German hotel owner in the small town where the accident occurred who volunteered his help. He was able to locate the girl and her family and had serious news for me. The girl, who’s name is Hanan, was more seriously injured than the doctor in the local hospital had realized. She has been receiving treatment in a specialized hospital since the accident for a swelling of her brain resulting from a concussion she suffered during the accident. I was deeply shocked to hear this news. At the same time I was greatly relieved to learn that Hanan’s family still did not accuse me of causing the accident and did not express any demands.
As a gesture of good will I was able to pay for most of the medical costs, which was made possible by the German hotel owner, who coincidently is one of several volunteers that work for the German embassy in Cairo in cases when Germans are in need of help in Egypt.
The good news is that Hanan’s condition seems to be improving and that she will be returning home soon.

So what will the future bring, now that our long journey is over?
Well, first Chiho and I will be going to Japan for yet another wedding, this time a traditional Japanese one.
After all these weddings we’ll return to Germany for the opening of a show in the gallery of my agency laif in Cologne, which will coincide with the Photokina (http://www.photokina.de/) Europe’s most important photography fair. The opening will take place on September 26. I will send out a separate invitation later.

In the beginning of October we are planning to finally be back home in New York. From there I will set out on shorter trips to the Middle East and Africa where photojournalistic assignments and projects are waiting for me.

If you don’t mind, I will keep you updated every once in a while.

All the best
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in Daun, Germany
cell Germany: +49-170-8642-912
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://www.iraq.christophbangert.com/
http://www.travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de/

Dear all,

Chiho and I are in Egypt. Yesterday we left the African continent and we are now in a small town called Nuweiba on the Sinai peninsular. When I look up from my computer screen I can see the deep blue waters of the gulf of Aqaba right in front of me and the Saudi Arabian shore in the distance.

We traveled a great distance since my last dispatch reached you from Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. Many things have happened. I’ve been wanting to write this dispatch for a long time, but other things always seemed to get in the way.
In Uganda I was persuaded to shoot down some huge rapids of the Nile river in a rubber boat instead of writing a dispatch. In Kenya I spent all my time underneath my Land Rover repairing prop shafts, replacing rubber bushes, break pads, engine oil, gear box oil, filters, etc…
In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, I was struggling to find a decent internet connection, which I finally found in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. But there I didn’t have time to write a dispatch either, because I spent my days and nights under my Land Rover once again, changing wheel bearings, engine oil and fixing tires. All this happened on Sudan’s only camp site at 45 Degrees Celsius. That’s 113 Degrees Fahrenheit. How was I supposed to find the energy and concentration to write a dispatch anyway?
In Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt I got sick with a bad cold and fever despite the incredible heat and I barely managed to sit up straight in my driver’s seat.

So here I am, on the shores of the Red Sea with a nearly impossible task ahead of me, namely to cramp almost one third of a journey of a lifetime into one short dispatch.

But first some practical notes:

On Wednesday, August 6, 2008, two days before our wedding, something very German will occur in front of my parent’s house in my home town of Daun in der Eifel. It’s called a “Polterabend” and it involves the destruction of old ugly plates and tea cups as well as the consumption of lots of beer and sausages. Please consider yourself invited, you just have to bring some old china. (yes, that terrible flower patterned one that you never liked anyway.) We wold love to have you there.

Here again a link to Chiho’s blog. She has been working hard on it every other day or so, while making me (!) correct her english spelling each time:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/Blog/Blog.html
Here in Japanese:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/CF9DBF1E-9DEB-4735-BA07-91818EAD8EBD/025A919E-4072-4144-81D9-A3FDF9419BE3.html

And again a map of our great journey so far:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/Map%202.html

Some new pictures and a video you can find here:
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

No dispatch would be complete without a friendly, but persistent hint towards my Iraq book. (As the ever present Egyptian hasslers always put it: “Just looking, no buying!!!” Right.) Here we go again:
http://www.amazon.com/Iraq-Between-Jon-Lee-Anderson/dp/1576874001/ref=pd_sim_b_title_2
And the German version:
http://www.amazon.de/IRAK-Schweigendes-Land-Christoph-Bangert/dp/3771643694/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205256569&sr=8-1

I was very lucky to win one of only two honorable mentions at the international festival for young photojournalism called “Lumix” in Hannover, Germany.
You can check out the other winners here:
http://www.fotofestival-hannover.de/index.php?id=54&L=1

And at the Look3 Festival in Charlottesville, Virginia, I was represented with a slideshow this year.
http://www.look3.org/2008/index_08.html

That was the easy part.

I did not even notice it. We were driving extremely slowly, maybe with 20Km/h through a busy market in an Egyptian oasis town called Bawiti. I heard a terrible sound, but did not understand what had happened. Some men in the crowd pointed at the car and shouted. I stopped the car immediately, and to my great horror I watched a man pull a little girl from underneath my car, right next to my window. I don’t have the words to describe how I felt in that moment. It was the worst possible thing to happen, a terrible nightmare that became a cruel reality.

That was three days ago. I hit a child with my car.
The man held the seemingly lifeless body of the maybe five or six year old girl in the air. Her eyes were closed and she did not make a sound.
A crowd formed quickly and people were very angry and enraged. They were shouting and wailing in a way I had witnessed so many times before in the Middle East. I was horrified and scared. Did I just kill a human being? Just like that? Without warning and without a chance to react?
The girl must have run right in front of my car. She was shorter than the hight of the bonnet, so if she was running very close to the front of the vehicle, I couldn’t possibly have seen her.
To my great surprise and relieve the men in the crowd did not blame me in any way for the accident. They just kept saying “mish mushkile!” – “No problem!” while motioning me to drive on. This was a good sign. I had been in a few mob situations before and I knew that in Africa and the Middle East a car accident can cause a bitter and violent response from an angry crowd. For a moment I saw Chiho and me being dragged through the streets.
A fat woman came running over and made a terrible wailing sound. She was probably the mother. Before the girl was shoved into a nearby taxi I noticed that she had started to cry. At least she was alive.
With people in the crowd motioning me to carry on, I followed the taxi to a nearby hospital. I checked that nobody was pursuing us and counted the money in my pocket. I must have seemed calm, but I wasn’t.
I tried to talk to the sympathetic driver of the taxi who had stayed outside of the hospital. He didn’t speak English and kept saying: “mish mushkile!”
Together we went inside where we found the girl in an examination room, screaming. The mother and some other people were standing around while a doctor examined her. They were pale and in shock. And so was I.
A short while that seemed to pass extremely slowly, I spent waiting outside the doctor’s room. I felt empty inside. As if to add to my misery the Egyptian hospital closely resembled a hospital in Baghdad that I had been working in. The same tiled walls, the same smell, state of disrepair, veiled nurses and unshaven, tired doctors. I had seen horrible things there.

Finally the whole group came out. The girl was still crying, the only difference was that she had her foot patched up with some bandage material.
Confused, I went to find the doctor. He told me that the girl was all right. She had apparently received no serious injuries, no broken bones, just a superficial wound on her foot.
I was greatly relieved, but also skeptical. How was this possible? I had rolled over a small girl and the child was just fine?
I thanked the doctor and ran after the group of people with the girl who had already left the hospital. On the street I caught up with them. A young man spoke a few words of English. He said that everything was fine. No problem. The girl was in his arms and had already calmed down a little. I suggested that they go an see a doctor again the next day, just to be sure. I gave them some money to pay for the medical costs if there would be any complications in the future. They didn’t want to accept the money, but I insisted and they took it reluctantly.

The group soon disappeared and I went back to Chiho who had waited for me with the car.
Only later, when we were on the road again I realized that in the heat of the moment I had failed to ask for a phone number or email address. I deeply regretted this, especially after having to drive for many hours in the monotonous desert afterwards with my mind recalling the terrible event over and over again, in an endless loop. I felt a great sense of guilt and maybe an even greater sense of failure. How was it possible that I did not see the girl? I always made a point of driving especially careful and slow in towns and villages. Was it really not my fault? It must have been possible to prevent this. It must have been.
But I didn’t.
And I will never know if the little girl really will be OK in the end.

I know that I shouldn’t be too hard on myself and instead should acknowledge how incredibly lucky the little girl and I had been that day.
The accident and my struggling to come to terms with it still added to a general feeling of exhaustion.
I’ve been on the road in Africa for over 13 months now. I am still battling a persistent cold that just doesn’t want to go away even after a week of swallowing antibiotics.
I feel sad that our great journey is slowly coming to an end. In less than four weeks we have to be in Germany to attend our wedding. In a way I’m thankful though, to have this deadline and to be forced to end this trip. Chiho and I are having the time of our lives, but we are very aware that the journey can not and should not last forever. There is a time for traveling and there is a time for being at home. Both states of mind can only be fulfilling in my opinion if they are taking turns in one’s life.
This sadness that we feel, especially after leaving the African continent just yesterday, is mixed with a strong feeling of gratefulness. We feel very privileged to have been able to spend a year of our lives exploring Africa and learning about this complex, diverse and often troubled continent.

Of course having a deadline can be a blessing, but it is almost always a curse as well. For our journey it means that we are forced to travel too fast.
This can be extremely unsatisfying, but I don’t want to complain. This is the most incredible journey I have ever done.

And this is how it went. From Dar Es Salaam on Tanzania’s coast we traveled to Arusha, passing the famous Mount Kilimanjaro. We then proceeded to the impressive Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park before reaching Lake Victoria. In Mwanza, a town on the lake’s southern shore we met Bonnie and Matthew, a couple from Canada and the UK, who are traveling with their Land Rover from Cape Town to Jersey, Matthew’s home. We immediately got along very well and traveled together to Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, where we visited the deeply moving Genocide Memorial Center.
Alone we travelled on to Uganda, a country that we liked a great deal. From Kampala we went to Jinja, where we had our first and only encounter with African extreme sports. We went white water rafting on the Nile, which was spectacular and a wonderful way to get to know the Source of the Nile. We crossed the border shortly after into Kenya, I country that is still recovering from political and tribal violence following the elections earlier this year. We stayed in a great place in Nairobi called Jungle Junction, which features not only green grass to camp on and clean toilets (!), but also a workshop with tools and helpful advice from the German owner, a professional mechanic. Our Land Rover was showing serious signs of fatigue by then after traveling some grueling 45.000 Kilometers on Africa’s roads. I spent many days in Nairobi improving my mechanical skills.
(”What’s the difference between a black man and a Land Rover driver? — The inside of a black man’s hands are white.”)

We then teamed up with Thomas, a German traveler with a Toyota Land Cruiser, whom I had met in Cameroon before and again in Dar Es Salaam, and Matthew and Bonnie, who we had just met in Tanzania and Rwanda, in order to travel together to the wild and remote area around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya and the Omo Valley in south-western Ethiopia. This was a particularly beautiful part of our journey and we greatly enjoyed traveling in a small group of very reliable and enjoyable people. (Matt and Bonnie keep a travel blog, check it out here: http://www.travelpod.com/members/bonthorn)

In Addis Ababa we finally got our Sudanese visas sorted out, a major achievement. Along with Matt and Bonnie we then traveled on to northern Ethiopia, visiting Lalibela, the monasteries on the islands of Lake Tana, and Gonder. Thomas stayed behind in order to spend some more time in Ethiopia, while the four of us proceeded into Sudan. The Sudanese landscape and culture could not possibly be more different than it’s neighbor Ethiopia’s.       The incredible heat hit us like a giant hammer after descending from Ethiopia’s cool and green mountains down into the barren and flat desert landscape of Sudan. While Ethiopia is dominated by an ancient christian culture, was never colonized, and has always been a unique and independent nation in Africa, especially northern and central Sudan in contrary is strongly dominated by muslim arab culture. Although geographically located very much in Africa, Khartoum and northern Sudan culturally strongly resembles the Middle East, just as Egypt does to the north. The Sudanese people struck us as some of the most hospitable and genuinely welcoming people we met in Africa.
By ferry we crossed from Sudan into southern Egypt on lake Nasser, the huge artificial lake created by the damming of the Nile close to Aswan. Bonnie and Matt’s as well as our own Land Rover made the same 17 hour journey a day earlier on a cargo barge that we were lucky to be able to hire for this purpose. Other travelers who arrived in Wadi Halfa, the Sudanese port town only two days after us and who took the same weekly passenger ferry are still waiting in Aswan for their vehicles to arrive today.
We were not prepared for what awaited us in Egypt. Mass tourism. After so many months spent in sparsely visited corners of Africa, and especially after just arriving from northern Sudan, where we camped most nights in the uninhabited, beautiful and peaceful Sahara desert, at times even sleeping undisturbed right next to ancient pyramids, entering the shameless mass tourism of Egypt was a great shock for us.
At times we were not sure if we were more appealed and disgusted by the disrespectful behavior of the international package tourists, who thought of nothing wrong in strolling through a conservatively muslim town practically naked, showing off tattoos, holding hands and kissing in public, or on the other side the aggressive and intolerable hassle that Egyptian shop owners and street vendors put you through even if you are just trying to buy a bottle of water or some bread for the same price as the local population buys it.

Despite all this we were deeply impressed by Egypt’s ancient temples, tombs and treasures that we visited around Luxor and at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Additionally it was great to see the Aswan Dam, the river Nile, that never fails to overwhelm you, the Western Desert and the Suez canal. Yesterday we also visited Mount Sinai where Moses is believed to have received the 10 Commandments and the Monastery of St. Katherine at the mountain’s base.

So far so good.
What lays ahead of us is a short, but interesting journey through the Middle East, namely Jordan and Syria, then on to Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Germany.
We hope that our trusted Land Rover will take us all the way back home without falling apart too much. In Nairobi in Kenya he was diagnosed with an engine problem by a Land Rover specialist. The engine needs to be completely revised. When I asked the man if it would be possible to still drive the Land Rover all the way to Germany before fixing the engine, he looked at me and smiled. “Maybe.” he said.

Wish us luck.

Best
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
Thuraya Sat phone: +88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://www.iraq.christophbangert.com/
http://www.travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de/

It’s raining. Thick, heavy drops are shooting from the sky.
Once more the rainy season has caught up with us and there seems to be no escape. Several times every day the unbearable, tropical heat is broken by heavy rains.
We are just south of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. The Land Rover is parked under a palm tree on a beautiful white beach. It sounds like we are having a vacation, but we’re not.
Chiho and I are working hard on our computers and also on the Land Rover. We just returned from Amsterdam, where we traveled for one week in order to pick up my ‘Honorable Mention’ at the World Press Photo Award ceremony. We attended lectures and presentations by other photographers, and I was invited to present some of my own work. We also met with editors and other photography people, so the trip was half work and half pleasure. We stayed for a couple of days on an air mattress at our friend Vero’s place, where me made good use of her super fast wireless internet connection. After many months in Africa the experience of a DSL connection can be quite magical. We also met up with my parents who came over from Germany, partly in order to deliver some formal wear for the award ceremony. Even the Prince of The Netherlands was present at the event, so I was happy for not having to stumble on stage with washed out jeans and a faded old T-shirt.
This year’s World Press Photo Awards are somewhat of a departure from previous competitions, as there were less pure news pictures chosen, typically coming from one of the wire services, but more well composed, moody, and photographically sophisticated stories and images that showed a clear authorship by a single photographer. It seems that slowly the walls between what is still known as photojournalism, documentary photography, art photography and commercial photography are crumbling and I think that this is a good thing. Many of the prize winers this year are very young photographers, young both in age and also in their approach. I feel very proud to be part of this new generation of people who are not so much thinking in categories any longer.
http://www.worldpressphoto.org/ …

Another group of photographers I am very honored to be part of is this one:
http://www.battlespaceonline.org/
About 22 photographers collaborated in a group show and book project called “Battlespace: Unrealities of War” that became one of the most powerful visual statements about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that I have ever seen.

The Iraq book, both the English version and the German version keeps making a silent, but persistent noise in the publishing world and among readers and I am very happy that several publications wrote reviews about it. The latest could be found in the Tages-Anzeiger Zürich, and it looks like this:
http://www.tagi.ch/dyn/news/buecher/866193.html

The book was also awarded at the Photo District News (PDN) photo annual as one of the best books of 2007.
Here the book again in English:
http://www.amazon.com/Iraq-Between-Jon-Lee-Anderson/dp/1576874001/ref=pd_sim_b_title_2
And in German:
http://www.amazon.de/IRAK-Schweigendes-Land-Christoph-Bangert/dp/3771643694/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205256569&sr=8-1

Before I forget, and before you delete this message, because it became once more terribly long, please check out some new pictures and video on my blog:
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

Apart from shooting and editing video and still pictures, Chiho was also working hard on her own blog, which can be seen here:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/

In Japanese, the whole thing looks like this:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/CF9DBF1E-9DEB-4735-BA07-91818EAD8EBD/025A919E-4072-4144-81D9-A3FDF9419BE3.html

A map of our travels can be seen here:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/Map%202.html

My last dispatch came from Cape Town in South Africa.
We left the city early one morning and made our way down to the Cape of Good Hope, where we took some pictures with the Land Rover, proud to have reached this important point in our journey. The following day we also  visited Cape Agulhas, the largely unknown most southern tip of Africa, which is located several hundred kilometers east of the Cape of Good Hope.
At this point, where the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean meet, our journey to the South came to and end. From now on we would constantly drive in a northerly direction, all the way back to Europe.
We followed the South African coast to the northeast, visiting the well known Garden Route, the Wild Coast and the Transkei which is home to the Xhosa people. In Umtata we went to see the Nelson Mandela Museum and went on to Durban. We then turned northwest towards the Drakensberg Mountains and went on to Johannesburg.
In South Africa’s largest city which locals refer to as Jo’burg, we hired a guide to take us into the crime infested city center. Especially at night this is an empty, violent and lawless place, with one of the highest crime rates in the world.
We also spent some time in Soweto, South Africa’s most famous and historically important black township. Nelson Mandela used to live here as well as Bishop Tutu. Both the Hector Peterson Museum and the excellent Apartheid Museum were highlights of our journey to South Africa and helped us tremendously to understand the history and trauma of this African nation. And although South Africa is not our most favorite African country, it certainly is the historically and socially most interesting place we visited on this continent. In no other country is the gap between rich and poor so severe and so plain to see. Few places are struggling as much as South Africa with an exploding crime rate. The rich and middle class, both black and white are living their lives behind high walls and barb wire fences while a large portion of the population is struggling to survive in the many shanty towns outside the cities, just as they did during the Apartheid years.
If South Africa, with it’s huge shopping malls, American style supermarkets, fast food restaurants on the one hand and shanty towns and buildings occupied by squatters on the other hand, was thought provoking, our next destination surely was even more so.
We decided to travel to Zimbabwe, a country that is terribly suffering under an economic crisis which was caused by mismanagement and the forced eviction of white Zimbabwean farmers from their land by one of Africa’s last strongmen, the 84 year old Robert Mugabe.
Local, parliamentary and presidential elections were to be held in Zimbabwe on March 29. There were almost no foreign journalists permitted to cover the elections. Even in normal times permissions to work in Zimbabwe are rarely granted by the government, resulting in journalists posing as tourists and working under cover. Several foreign journalists working in this way were arrested in the past, just like their Zimbabwean colleagues, who are frequently facing imprisonment and mistreatment by government security forces.
Before Chiho and I entered Zimbabwe we went shopping. We bought everything we needed for the next two weeks, like loads of food, water, diesel, batteries, toothpaste and cherry flavored candy. I hid my press cards and extra passports deep inside the Land Rover and burned all my business cards that say “Christoph Bangert -photojournalist-”. On a deserted South African camp site not far from the border I seized to be a photojournalist and became an engineer.
I was very nervous when we crossed the border into Zimbabwe at Beitbridge. On the one hand I really wanted to be there during the elections and document this crucial time in the history of Zimbabwe. At the same time I had to work under cover, pose as a tourist, which in some way I was, but by doing so I risked arrest and imprisonment by the police or the secret service, possibly bringing our Land Rover journey to an abrupt end. I wasn’t too concerned about going to jail myself, but the thought of Chiho having to go through arrest and spending time in an African prison made my stomach turn.

For 11 days Chiho and I traveled through Zimbabwe, while strictly keeping to the touristic or formerly touristic sites that the country has to offer.
We were wearing funny hats, huge sunglasses, shorts and white sneakers in an effort to appear as tourists. We talked to Zimbabweans, both black and white as much as we could to try to understand the immense problems  that the population is facing. Shops were empty, fuel was only available on the black market, long queues formed in front of banks, where people patiently waited for days to receive only worthless pieces of paper. The annual inflation rate has reached 100,000%. A teacher earns about $10 a month while prices on the black market, almost the only source from where food and other supplies are still available, are on a similar level as in North America or Europe.
I was lucky to be able to work for the New York Times again and some of my pictures where published here:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/04/02/world/20080402ZIMBABWE_index.html

On April 3, the The New York Times writer Barry Bearak, who was working without official permission in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, was arrested by police forces. We hadn’t been working in the same places and didn’t meet, but my pictures were published alongside his texts both online and in print and both our names had been mentioned in the credits.
I learned about his arrest late at night from the picture desk in New York and it was decided that we should try to leave the country the following morning. Chiho and I were concerned that we might get arrested before or during the crossing of the border. An under cover human rights activist had been taken to prison while attempting to board a plane out of Zimbabwe.
After a sleepless night we woke early and drove the few kilometers to the border. We were lucky to be in Victoria Falls, a small town next to the famous water falls of the same name, where the huge Zambezi river spectacularly slams down into a deep gorge. Despite the morning chill we were sweating considerably when we handed over our German and Japanese passports to the Zimbabwean immigration official. We had been hiding all our photography gear and computers in the car and were wearing our tourist uniform again.
With great relief we watched the man un-ceremonially stamp our passports. The crossing of the old steel bridge over the Zambezi River into Zambia turned out to be one of the happiest moments of our journey. We felt as if we had committed the perfect crime and had just gotten away with it.
From Livingstone, a small Zambian town just across the border, I called my editors in New York, who had been very concerned and had provided us with great support and understanding.
We went into a supermarket to see a very different picture compared to the one only 10 kilometers away in Zimbabwe. Shelves were bending under South African and European products, there was bread, meat, sugar and cooking oil readily available, supplies that were almost impossible to come by in Zimbabwe.
As I am writing this today, more than a month after the elections, there are still no results for the presidential race announced, and the situation for Zimbabweans of all classes and races is still as desperate as before. Although Robert Mugabe has clearly lost the elections, he and his party, ZANU-PF, refuses to acknowledge defeat. Currently a run-off seems likely as none of the three presidential candidates appears to have won a clear majority of more than 50% of the vote. This is disputed by the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC, who claims to have won 50,3% of all votes.
My colleague Barry Bearak was released on bail four days after his detention and was said to be OK.

After one night in a noisy and overcrowded backpacker’s lodge in Livingstone, another stark contrast to the almost deserted guesthouses and hotels across the river, we made our way northeast towards Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, and from there on towards the South Luangwa National Park. We decided to take a short cut not usually used during the rainy season, that was just about to come to an end in this part of the continent. We also took two hitchhikers along, Diana and Kate from the US, who were great company and of good help during our two day odyssey through the wild bush of Zambia.
The road was heavily overgrown and muddy and the friendly villagers we encountered on the way were happy to see us. We had been the first car since January.
Once I almost flipped the car onto its side while attempting to drive up a steep river bank. I failed to see a deep hole that was covered with vegetation and proceeded to slam the Land Rover into it. The vehicle was on the verge of tilting over and we had to climb out the side window. Very, very slowly. The left front wheel was dangling about one meter in the air and it took us a while to secure the car with straps that we attached to a nearby tree. The following rescue operation was unnerving because I first had to climb underneath the tilted vehicle in order to retrieve our winching gear.
Once more the electric winch that is attached to the front of the Land Rover saved us and after an hour the car was standing on all four feet again.
We saw hippos, elephants, zebras, giraffes, baboons, wildebeest, buffaloes, countless antelopes and even a sleepy lion during our visit of the South Luangwa National Park. A few days later we proceeded to Malawi and it’s capital Lilongwe. There we met Kate and Neil again, British travelers who are on the road with their four children and an old Land Rover Discovery. We had seen them last in South Africa.
We spent only a few days in Malawi, visiting Livingstonia, an impressively remote and beautiful mission, and Nkhata Bay, a village on the shore of the wonderful Lake Malawi.
We entered Tanzania on April 14th and made a our way to Dar Es Salaam, the largest and economically most important city in this East African nation. On a beach just 8 kilometers south of the center we set up camp and immediately started to work on the car, which badly needed some maintenance and also on our visa application for Sudan. The Sudanese visa is not easy to get and it can take up to three weeks to be granted. After visiting the Japanese as well as the German embassies in order to get recommendation letters we applied for a Sudanese tourist visa, which will hopefully be approved by the time we reach Nairobi or Addis Ababa, where it then actually will be issued. That’s at least how it works in theory. We will see.

The rain has stopped in the meantime and the sun came out between the clouds. Chiho and I are repacking the Land Rover. Tomorrow we will leave this wonderful spot on the beach and travel to the northwest to Mount Kilimanjaro, the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park. We will then visit Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya before we make our way up to Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. We unfortunately only have three months left for the last part of the journey, which is not much given the bad roads and long distances that are still ahead of us.

Best
Christoph.

Dear all,

we made it.
After 32.707 Kilometers on Africa’s road and about seven months of travel we finally arrived in Cape Town, South Africa.
To view a map of our epic journey from Daun to Cape Town, please click here:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/Map%202.html

Chiho and I are in good health, which is the most important thing. Our trusted Land Rover is also doing very well, apart from general maintenance and countless flat tires there are no major repairs to report. Given the rough conditions in Africa like rain, heat, mud, sand, potholed roads and bad fuel, this is a miracle.

South Africa will not be the end point of our journey. We decided to drive the Land Rover back to Daun in Germany via East Africa, the Middle East, Turkey and Eastern Europe. Unlike for our arrival here in Cape Town we will have a strict deadline for the remaining part of the journey because we have a wedding to attend in Germany on August 8th. Our own wedding. This means we only have four and a half months time to reach Europe from here, which is very ambitious, but possible.

I haven’t been writing a dispatch in a long time, since Cameroon, actually, but before I venture into a short, yes, short, description of the journey from there to here, I would like to mention some things that have happened in the meantime. So here is the ’shameless self promotion’ part of the dispatch:

First of all, I am very happy to announce that the Iraq book was published in Germany by Fackelträger, a Cologne based publisher.

It looks like this:
http://www.amazon.de …

There were only few copies printed, so order one soon, before they are all gone. My first book “Travel Notes” just sold out, only one year after publication.

The English version of the Iraq book is still available, though and can be found here:
http://www.amazon.com …

I was surprised to have won an “Honorable Mention” at this year’s World Press Photo Awards. An “Honorable Mention” is one of the smallest prices on offer at the contest, but I am very happy about it and well, very honored.

It looks like this:
http://www.worldpressphoto.org …
Strange picture, right? The image was part of a story I did for Stern Magazine last year about the German military’s mission in Afghanistan.

A story about the first part of my journey through Africa was part of the current GEO special Magazine, which has as it’s topic “Adventure Travels”. In addition to providing the images for this article, I was also asked to write the text, a task that I seriously struggled with, but I finally succeeded with the great help of the editor of the issue, Tom Dauer.

The magazine looks like this:
http://www.geowebshop.de …

I also had some of my Iraq pictures published in this month’s “green” GEO Magazine, which was a big success:
http://www.geowebshop.de …

Two pictures of mine were chosen to be part of the group show “BATTLESPACE: UNREALITIES OF WAR”, which premiered in New York last month and will tour around the US in the near future.
Check it out here:
http://www.battlespaceonline.org/

So much about self promotion.

I feel very lucky that despite my being away and taking time off from the daily news business I am still able to publish pictures and actively take part in all kinds of photography activities. I am also able, more or less successfully, to run a small business while on the road. The internet makes it all possible, but I am also paying a high price for this by spending much too much time working on the computer.

Before I forget, please remember to check out some new pictures and our latest video that Chiho just edited here:
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

If you ever feel like reading about our trip in Japanese language, please go and have a look here:
http://web.mac.com …

I am writing these words from the front porch of a backpacker’s hostel. The place is very special, the outside of the house is painted completely purple. They have a bright white pool table and there are mirrors everywhere, even inside the shower…

Many things have happened. I don’t know where to start. Chiho and I parked the Land Rover in Cameroon and flew from Douala to New York on October 24th. There was a technical problem with the airplane and we had to wait for nine hours in Zürich. Exhausted, we arrived at home and immediately started to work feverishly on our Africa pictures for GEO, our Taxes, the Iraq Show and a million other things that had been waiting for us while we were on the road.

After only a few days in New York I left to Amsterdam to attend the Joop Swart Masterclass, a workshop for young photojournalists organized by the World Press Photo Foundation. On the way to the airport I managed to pick up the first advance copies of the Iraq book, that had just arrived that day. An exiting moment for Chiho and me to finally hold the completed book in our hands. By rental car I drove from Amsterdam to Hamburg to deliver my Africa images to GEO. I spent most of the night before the meeting in my friend Martin’s apartment in Hamburg working on the images and captions. Dead tired and terribly jet lagged I arrived late the following night back in Amsterdam. Due to a misunderstanding between me and the excellent staff of the Masterclass team, it turned out that there was no hotel room reservation for me that night and I ended up driving around Amsterdam at 2:00 AM looking for a place to stay. Without success. Not even a lice infested mattress under a bridge was to be found that wasn’t already occupied by someone else.
In my small Opel rental car I spent three hours sleeping in a car park at the airport before I returned the car and took the train back to the city. I was so tired I did not even wake up once despite the freezing temperatures.

Things started to brighten up as soon as I had eventually taken a hot shower and met the other participants of the workshop. The group was very diverse and consisted of some of the most gifted and interesting photographers I have ever met. We functioned very well as a group from the start and with the help and guidance of the invited “masters” or teachers, we experienced a highly productive and inspiring event.

Personally I wasn’t too happy with my images that I had taken as a “homework” prior to the workshop, a set of pictures about Senegalese fishermen and illegal immigrants. I was terribly angry at myself that I hadn’t been able to come up with better work. An important, but painful lesson to learn. Sometimes it does not work out. And as my friend Rocky Balboa used to say: “It’s not about getting knocked down, but it’s about getting up afterwards.” Or something along these lines…

Back in New York a mountain of more work awaited me, but only one day after my return a problem appeared: A pain in the butt. Literally. When I went to the doctor two days later he sent me straight to the emergency room. The pain had become severe and I wasn’t able to sit or lie down any longer. We were only one day away from a public lecture I was invited to give at the International Center of Photography and two days away from the long awaited book launch of the Iraq book with an exhibition opening and all. My parents were on the way from Germany to attend the proceedings and so were my sister and her husband from Florida. Chiho and I had been working so hard for months to prepare and plan everything and now we found ourselves waiting around in an emergency room in some hospital in Queens instead of putting final touches on everything.

The verdict was spoken later that night and it was decided that I had to have a surgery the next morning. A huge infection had developed deep inside one of my butt cheeks for an unknown reason and it had to be opened up. Only later I found out that the “tiny cut” that the surgeon would apply, would in fact be a huge and deep hole in my cheek. When I asked the doctor if I would be able to deliver my speech the following day, he just smiled. “It will be painful.” he said.

It was.

Only three hours before my lecture I was still in a hospital bed. After finally being discharged, Chiho and I jumped into a taxi (I was laying in it, because I still couldn’t sit), drove home, changed our clothes and stumbled into another taxi. We drove for two minutes only to discover that the draw bridge that connects Greenpoint, where we live, with the rest of the world had been drawn up. A time consuming event that occurs only every three months or so. All other roads into the city were jam packed wit cars. Rush hour in New York. It was getting late. Only one hour to go before the lecture. A nervous call from ICP. We climbed out of the car and I limped down the stairs to the subway station. We made the final edit of the pictures for the presentation on the laptop computer on the V train. Standing up all the way, of course, as I would not be able to properly sit for the next ten days.

We arrived just in time. The lecture was a big success and everybody had a good laugh about my butt story.
Also the exhibition the following day was an event Chiho and I both enjoyed a great deal, despite me still being a bit shaky on my legs. Many friends and colleagues came to celebrate with us.

In the following weeks I slowly recovered and was well taken care of by Chiho, who cleaned the wound several times a day and thereby prevented it from getting infected again. What would I do without her…

We managed to send out many copies of the Iraq book to editors, magazines and colleagues but also to friends and family. Up to this day we receive many kind and encouraging words in response to the book from both, photography people and ‘normal’ people.

Of course there was also some criticism. Some was very helpful, others made me extremely angry. I spontaneously sat down and wrote an outline for my next book. I’ll show them. Damn it. On December 7th I left alone back to Africa. Chiho was leaving to Japan a few days later. She had been planning to visit her family and take care of some things back home for a long time. For the next two months I was on my own again and some of the most difficult part of the journey lay ahead of me.
After being thrown back into the shocking tropical heat of Central Africa, I picked up the Land Rover from our friend Hans’ company in Douala, where it had been safely parked. The month long trip to New York, Amsterdam and the emergency room was terribly hectic and exhausting, but also rewarding and productive. It is hard to interrupt a long and ‘epic’ journey like mine. In a way you always start all over again after an interruption. The same problems to find the right traveling pace, peace of mind and mental balance. The same anxieties and confusion like in the beginning of the journey have to be overcome.
In addition to this disorientation I felt very lonely. I missed Chiho from the start. I realized very quickly that the time in my life were I loved and preferred to travel alone for long periods of time, like I had done during my Latin America journey, was once and for all over.

I drowned my sorrows in endless and stubborn driving. I drove and drove. For days and weeks. In Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon I applied for visas to Gabon, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo and also met some fellow overland travelers. Mike, Chris, Dan, Ed and Chris were traveling by motorbike from Britain to Cape Town and Thomas did the same from Cologne in a Toyota Land Cruiser and Ab and Mathijs came from Holland in a Nissan Patrol. Some of the guys have websites:
http://brighton2capetown.googlepages.com/
http://www.motocrossafrica.co.uk/
http://www.mikeybeckett.com/

After saying goodbye to the traveler’s gang I left in high speed gear and drove through Gabon towards Congo. Gabon, a small and seriously oil rich country is one of the most stable countries in the region. But also here there are great problems looming beneath the surface. The greatly impoverished population in the countryside barely manages to survives as peasant farmers while businessmen in the cities drive big Mercedes cars and make big money.

I spent Christmas with some elderly and kind nuns from Spain and France in the Catholic mission in Lambarene, the same small village in the Gabonese jungle where the Albert Schweizer Hospital is located which was founded and run by the famous doctor, musician, cleric and humanist.

Through an extremely remote area I made my way to the border with Congo. The smaller one of the two Congos is located north of the river carrying the same name, used to be a French colony and is still in the recovery process following a civil war that during the late 1990’s devastated many towns and its capital Brazzaville.

The road leading from the West of the country to the capital is feared among travelers as one of the worst parts of a Trans-Africa journey. And it has it all: Mud holes, sandy tracks, illegal roadblocks by rebells, legal roadblocks by soldiers, perfect tarmac, lousy tarmac with potholes the size of a family car, river crossings and dusty gravel roads.

I was very lucky and made it through without much problems and just a minimal amount of bribes. My fellow travelers Ab and Mathijs, who came this way only five days after me had a very different experience. They got hopelessly stuck in the mud several times and were threatened by Kalashnikov and hand grenade swinging rebels.

I spent New Year’s Eve in Brazzaville with a new friend of mine. Peter is a teacher from Uganda. In the corse of his life he was forced to flee from one conflict to another. It almost seems that war was following him like a curse. He had to flee Uganda under Idi Amin reign and went to Khartoum in Sudan. When the civil war broke out there he fled to Kinshasa in Zaire and worked as a teacher in the American High School. Interestingly it as the same school that George W. Bush attended as a teenager. His father was the ambassador in Kinshasa at the time. Peter said he was an unruly student. And he laughed while he said it.

When war broke out in Congo in 1998 between Laurent Kabila’s Congolese government and rebels supported by Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan, Peter being Ugandan, found himself on the wrong side once again. He was arrested by Kabila’s forces who tortured him. Joseph Kabila, the then president’s son, and current president of the Democratic Republic of Congo interrogated Peter personally and had his men brake his shoulder. The Red Cross saved Peter shortly before his scheduled execution and brought him across the Congo River to Brazzaville. For eight years Peter was squatting in a windowless car garage waiting for his seven children and his wife, who were still stuck in Kinshasa, just across the river to be allowed to follow him.

I met an educated and proud African man who, despite his hopeless poverty and traumatic experiences, managed to be neither bitter nor resigned. He just never seemed to give up. I learned a lot from Peter the teacher and I was grateful to have met him. I recorded a long interview with him and took some pictures. Some weeks ago my mother in Germany received a telephone call from Sweden. It was Peter. He just wanted to let me know that he was fine. He and his family were finally reunited and the Swedish government granted all of them asylum.

My Land Rover and I crossed the Congo River on a bright late afternoon after we had patiently waited for almost six hours before we found a spot on the small, rusty ferry boat that, while chained to two identical, but engine-less boats makes the 45 minute long crossing from Brazzaville to Kinshasa three or four times a day. The ferry is constantly overloaded with goods which are transported by aggressive and drunk young men. I saw two serious fist fights during the course of the short river crossing. Policemen and men in civilian clothes on the Kinshasa side were geared up with batons and thick robes which they used to bring some sort of order into the fighting, shouting and sweating mass of passengers, porters, beggars and thieves that simultaneously loaded, unloaded, embarked and disembarked the old vessel. In the middle of all this pushing and crushing into each other stood I with my Landy, desperately trying to get off the boat. I only succeeded after handing over my passport to an uniformed official, a decision that I was wondering if I would regret when I saw the man disappear into the crowd.

I was lucky though, and after a half hearted attempt to extract some sort of bribe from me, I was the proud owner of an entry stamp for the Democratic Republic of Congo, the bigger one of the two Congos and former private estate of King Leopold II of Belgium. The country has been in turmoil ever since its creation which is caused by its incredible riches in minerals and a succession of corrupt, dictatorial governments ruling over 62 Million people who have little in common with each other. In contrast to the East of the country which is still experiencing violence from rebel groups, former rebel groups and the army, the west of the country and Kinshasa has been calm for some time now. From Kinshasa I drove west towards Matadi, a town on the banks of the Congo River that is located close to the border to Angola.

It is difficult to get a visa to Angola. I know of travelers, who applied for a tourist visa in the Angolan Embassies in Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo and DRC only to fail miserably each time. If you are intending to travel by road from Europe to southern Africa via West Africa your only hope is the tiny Angolan consulate in the border town of Matadi. If for some reason the visa is denied here, you journey is over. The only visa that is issued in Matadi is a 5 day transit visa. It is almost impossible to cross Angola in just five days, though. The roads are too bad, the country too big.
I luckily got the transit visa. A great relief. Together with my new travel companions, Ab and Mathijs from the Netherlands with their 20 year old Nissan Patrol that looks like it is coming straight out of a Mad Max movie, I crossed the border into Angola. We had met several times before on the way and decided to travel through Angola together. I was very happy not having to travel through this country alone. Although Angola is yet another country currently recovering from decades of civil war, the overall security situation is good at moment. The main problem for travelers who are on a rather tight budget is that the few places to stay that Angola has to offer are extremely expensive, so the only option is wild camping, which is much easier and safer with two vehicles. You just have to watch out for the land mines. Angola is still one of the most heavily land mined countries in the world, although Angolans told us that there is progress being made in de-mining the countryside.

Eight days we spent in Angola, a country, which struck me as one of the most hopeful places that I visited in Africa. Roads and other infrastructure are being built everywhere. I saw few villages that did not have a brand new school building. People were mostly full of hope, although the mental scars of a society that spent the last 40 years at war were obvious and plenty.

When we entered Namibia, after a week of camping in gravel pits along the road, on beaches and parking lots we were dusty, tired and hungry. We stumbled into a huge supermarket and were sheer overwhelmed by the variety and quantity of products on offer. After many months spent in Western and Central African countries where we were happy to buy whatever little there was on offer, I just couldn’t decide what to buy when faced with such choices. Namibia and South Africa have European or American standards in almost everything and I have to admit that despite my joy to finally be able to buy real gummy bears and eight different kinds of toilet paper again, I was suffering from a slight culture shock.
For two weeks I spent each day working on the Land Rover in a small northern Namibian town called Tsumeb. Some long overdue maintenance work had to be taken care of and I also bought and mounted a brand new roof top tent on the car. The days of unbearably hot and sleepless nights that Chiho and I spent in the cramped and stuffy back of the Land Rover were finally over.

Our new South African-made tent is spacious, comfortable and most importantly, well ventilated.
In Tsumeb I also met Claudia, Thomas and their son Leon, a German family that is traveling with an old Hanomag truck. (http://www.afrikatour.de/)

As soon as the Land Rover was ready again it was already time to fly to Germany. My mother’s 60th birthday was celebrated in Daun and I wanted to be there. Chiho arrived in Germany from New York and Japan, and after less than two weeks we were back in Africa again. Together we traveled around Namibia a bit and visited the well known Etosha Pan National Park, Swakopund, Sussusvlei and finally the Fish River Canyon. We liked Namibia a lot, which has truly stunning natural beauty to offer, friendly people and a great infrastructure. The only drawback are the for African standards high travel costs and the many German tourists. If you are driving through the emptiness and wideness of the spectacular Namibian desert and are suddenly faced by a bus load of white legged, khaki pans and sun hat wearing crowd of elderly Germans who all ask you the same question: “Did you really drive down here all the way from Germany???” (The great irony lays in the fact that many of these ‘all inclusive tourists’ actually don’t know where exactly they are when they say this.)

Only two days after crossing the border into South Africa we reached Cape Town.
Chiho, who is sitting next to me just had a quick look at my text and started laughing. “You wanted to keep it short!”
Oh well.

Best
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in South Africa
cell South Africa: +27-780562152
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://www.iraq.christophbangert.com/
http://www.travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de/

Hello,
I wish all of you a Happy New Year.

I am in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo.
Check it out on the map: (you can zoom in)
http://africa.christophbangert.com/map-test/
2007 was an exceptionally good year for Chiho and me. We published two photo books and traveled together all over West Africa with our Land Rover. I took part in the World Press Joop Swart Masterclass, gave a public lecture at the International Center of Photography, had an exhibition and book launch with the Iraq book in New York and had the opportunity to work in Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
Also on a personal level the past year has been adventurous.
On a beautiful, remote beach in Ghana I asked Chiho to marry me. She said yes.
2008 will be marked by some more traveling in Africa as well as work in the Middle East and elsewhere. And a wedding or two.
For the moment I am traveling alone, but Chiho will join me again in Namibia. We decided to attempt a return back to Europe by road via East Africa after we have reached Capetown. This part of the journey will take us through 14 African nations, the Middle East, Turkey, Eastern Europe and finally back to Germany. We hope that our beloved Land Rover will keep going as it has always done in the past. However, the success of our expedition is extremely uncertain. Horrendous roads, an accident, a technical brake down, an illness or ants eating all our Japanese Ramen noodles can end our great journey at any given time. We will keep you informed.
Best wishes for 2008.
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in Congo (Brazzaville)
cell Congo: +242-7621576
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://www.iraq.christophbangert.com/
http://www.travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de/

Dear all,

The book is out. As some of you know my new book IRAQ:The Space between just came out and can be ordered in your local book store or on Amazon. For more details please click here: http://iraq.christophbangert.com/

Although many people already received their copy, even my mother got hers already, ironically Chiho and I were not able to see the completed book ourselves yet. The work proofed to be hard to come by in Africa. And although we were present during the printing of the book in China, both of us are suffering from recurring nightmares of finding the book horribly misprinted and of terrible technical quality on our return to New York.

We are both burning to see the final product but with equal intensity fear the moment of holding the book in our hands.

Yesterday I became a member of the Bird Watcher’s Club of Limbe, Cameroon. To be quite honest I don’t know anything about bird watching. The private Club that I just joined consists of a small yellow house that is placed on a dark volcanic rock overlooking the ocean. The house is surrounded by the vast Botanical Garden of Limbe, which is home to a large variety of tropical plants and trees and, well, birds. On a clear day you can see the massive Mount Cameroon in the background. The club, a small and homely place has a wonderful terrace and serves good and inexpensive food. There are only two simple, but very clean guestrooms, (I never got to appreciate a clean toilet more than after traveling in West Africa…) one of which Chiho and I are occupying since yesterday. The non-profit club was created by Hans, a wonderfully relaxed and hospitable Dutch man who likes to invite his friends and guests to this beautiful spot. Most importantly, though, he is providing us with a safe place to park our Land Rover for about one month as we will interrupt our long journey through Africa here in Cameroon. On October 23, Chiho and I will fly from Douala, about 70 Kilometers away from here, to New York. I will then fly on to Amsterdam on October 31, where I will take part in the Joop Swart Masterclass, before I’ll return to New York on November 10. The show opening and book launch will take place on November 15, one day after a lecture that I was invited to give at the International Center of Photography.

After some more promotional work for the book and accomplishing tasks as enjoyable as preparing my taxes, I will then fly back to Cameroon in the beginning of December to continue my trip to South Africa. Chiho will unfortunately not join me on this part of the journey, because she had been planning to travel to Japan around the same time.

At the moment we are both sitting on the Bird Watcher’s Club’s wonderful terrace, listening to the sound of the waves below and working hard on our computers. Although this would be the perfect setting to write an entire book, I will try especially hard to keep my dispatch short this time.

From Accra in Ghana, from where I sent my last update, we left after saying good-bye to our friend Jane, and drove along the coast to Lome, the capital of Togo. We only spent one night in this former German colony that has seen political unrest in recent years but held parliamentary elections last weekend where for the first time all major opposition parties took part in.

Togo’s neighboring country Benin is famous for its Voodoo culture and is, like Togo, francophone. After visiting Ouidah, a former major slave trading hub, we crossed the small nation of Benin, which is along with Togo squeezed between Ghana and Nigeria, from South to North.

The following days and weeks were marked by constant driving. The paved roads in Niger and Nigeria were mostly in good condition. Only sometimes there were terribly bad stretches of cracked-up tarmac with almost insultingly huge potholes. Avoiding these requires great concentration and a little bit of experience. But even after putting all available skill and effort into not hitting these often surprisingly fast approaching holes, you sometimes find yourself hopelessly slamming your vehicle into the deepest hole imaginable, shaking the car’s body to its bones and causing the axles and chassis to produce a heart wrenching, earthshaking thud.

A great defeat every time.

After crossing the border from Benin to Niger, where we had been earlier on this trip, we headed east towards the city of Zinder. We were happy to be back in the hot but dry climate of the Sahel after having experienced the tropical heat of the coastal areas further to the south.

After crossing the country Niger following its southern border from West to East, we entered Nigeria, just north of Kano.

Nigeria is a country of extremes. It is Africa’s biggest oil producer and its most populous state. The country is ranked the second most corrupt country in the world and it has a history of religious violence between its Muslim population in the north and Christian population in the south. Earlier this year I had the privilege to document Nigeria’s presidential elections as a photographer for the New York Times. The elections (locals referred to them as “selections”…) were widely rigged and marked by sporadic violence.

Despite the incredibly bad reputation that Nigeria enjoys, especially among Africans, we found ordinary Nigerians as some of the most friendly and welcoming people on our journey so far.

Having said that this positive impression of Nigerians does somewhat not include policemen and hotel managers.
Unfortunately people with precisely these two professions you encounter very often when you travel through Nigeria. The country is famous for its roadblocks and police checkpoints. During our brief three-day stay in this country we came across 30 checkpoints manned by police, military or customs representatives. 11 times we were stopped, questioned and our paperwork was thoroughly examined. We have a lot of paperwork. Passports, driver’s license, car title, customs forms, proof of insurance, vaccination certificates. The list goes on.

One might wonder why a local Nigerian policeman would be concerned about anybody’s state of yellow fewer and cholera vaccination, but the reason is obviously the hunger for bribes. If there is something wrong with your paperwork or vehicle it’s easy to settle the problem with a “present”. This “present” usually consists of a small sum of cash and will only partially end up in the individual policeman’s pocket, but will be collected and handed over to the local commander, who is required to send some of this income to his own boss and so on. The effect is that the most senior officers get the largest cut and the Nigerian or say, Cameroonian state gets nothing and looses out because there are almost never official tickets and fines issued that generate income for the country.

The local policeman is just the lowest link in this chain and can’t be blamed for this poor state of affairs. Not only the state, and thereby everybody in society, suffers from this system, but mainly the country’s poor population that has difficulties to afford constant bribes in order to use roads and run small businesses.

As a western traveler you are often spared. Although we are constantly asked for “presents” (some officers even ask for “souvenirs”, or an “appreciation of their work”) we almost always get away with a friendly handshake, a joke, or by handing over some sort of eatable.

In Nigeria the total of our paid bribes amounted to 8 pieces of candy, two Bic plastic pens and one fourth of a fried chicken from the day before.

Whatever you do, you should never attempt to single-handedly end corruption in Africa or change the ways this continent functions. Most people who decide to lecture European efficiency and honesty at African road checkpoints fail miserably.
Nigerian road blocks were numerous and time consuming, but to be fair almost all the officers were friendly to us, unlike the hotel manager of a run down hotel in Maiduguri, who insisted to charge us the full price for a double room, although there was no running water and electricity. We had asked him if we could camp in the large parking lot of his hotel for one night, which made him furious and he shouted at us: “What are you doing in this county!?!” As I timidly answered that I was a tourist he just produced a blank stare as if I’d just explained I came from Mars in order to experience Nigerian hospitality.

Well, it was late and we were exhausted so we swallowed our by then not so great pride and took the room. It was terribly hot and dark. The room was additionally inhabited by a huge swarm of starved out mosquitoes that attacked us mercilessly.

We did not sleep much that night.

In the morning, when we saw this ridiculous hotel disappear in the rear view mirror of our Land Rover we had a good laugh. It always feels good to get on the road, but especially so if you are driving off from an inhospitable place.

Cameroon greeted us with yet another endless succession of police checkpoints, although from now on “presents” were called “cadeaux”. Otherwise procedures did not change much.

We visited the Waza National Park in Cameroon’s most northern corner, just south of N’Djamena, the capital of Chad that I had been visiting in 2004. Although we came during the rainy season, when most of the park’s animals are hiding in the tall grass and are very hard to find, we enjoyed the untouched landscape of the area and spent a nice day cruising around the park in the company of an old and friendly park ranger who showed us a large herd of giraffes, some gazelles and birds. (Back then I wasn’t as fond of bird watching as I am today, though…)

From here on we slowly progressed to the south, passing impressive mountain scenery, steaming forests, beautiful volcanic lakes and truly adventurous roads. Several times we had to pass massive holes that were created by heavily overloaded trucks getting stuck in knee deep, heavy mud. Professional mud diggers, mostly young men from surrounding villages, were hard at work, in return for adequate pay of course, to dig out trucks, build firm ground with wooden planks and sticks and design detours for smaller vehicles like our Land Rover.

Once we had to wait for about two hours for a truck to be dug out who had attempted to pass one of the holes on the detour road, which is normally reserved for small cars and motorbikes. He got himself hopelessly buried, just next to a second stranded truck, which looked like he had been motionless for about a week. His 16-wheeler had literally fallen apart while he attempted to pass an especially deep stretch of mud hole. When we arrived at the site about 50 trucks and 20 vans and cars where waiting to get through with everybody standing around arguing and shouting. Nobody was working to get the truck out, which was hard to understand because there were about 150 men present, waiting. Maybe the truck driver that was stuck was short of cash, I couldn’t quite figure it out.

Some men who were just lazily sitting around, watching, were shouting at me: “White man! White man! Help us! Look how we suffer! You Americans have to built a new road for us!”

The longer I travel in Africa the less I believe in foreign aid to countries that are ruled by bad, corrupt governments. But at mud holes similar rules apply as at police checkpoints, so I refrained from giving a free lecture about good governance and accountability and just smiled uncomfortably.

Later, after much arguing, discussing and some more annoying “White man!” shouting, two trucks were connected to each other with thick steel cables, like a road train. Together they pulled out one of the stranded trucks under loud cheering and clapping of the exited crowd.

After some days of further mud fighting we finally reached Douala, the biggest city in Cameroon and it’s economic center. We were extremely lucky to be allowed to camp on the parking lot of the excellent Seaman’s Mission, which was already fully booked when we arrived. Here we found an incredibly fast internet connection, which was a great relieve, because we had seriously struggled to find working internet connections in the north of the country. Several times we had spent hours driving around bigger towns in search of a connection. An open internet café does not necessarily mean that there is a connection and getting a connection up and running on our laptop computers, often a huge struggle in itself, does not necessarily mean that you are actually able to receive or send your emails.

One day I wrote in my diary: “African internet connections are a source of infinite frustration.”

At the Seaman’s mission we not only spend long hours paying our phone and electricity bills in New York, answering emails and sending out pictures. Manfred, the German protestant pastor of the mission introduced us to Hans, the Dutch man who seems to become our savior here in Cameroon.

Last night disaster struck. I was typing this dispatch. Great thought and poetry on my mind.

It happened without warning. After three and a half years of tireless and flawless service, after countless nights spend together, wars fought together, letters written together, and globes circled together, my dear computer died yesterday. It’s hard disk stopped turning at 9:28 PM and will never turn again.

The last backup I made about three months ago. No pictures were lost, though. Just some emails and texts he took with him to the grave. I had to re-write some part of this dispatch, but luckily I had written most of it on Chiho’s computer earlier that day, while she was video editing our newest video on my machine.

(Please check it out: http://africa.christophbangert.com/)

So it’s all more or less under control. I was lucky that the computer did not brake earlier on the journey, but now, just days before I’ll go back to New York.

The sun spectacularly set over the ocean a long time ago. I’m alone on the terrace now, everybody has left. Lost in thought I’m watching the waves.

Good night everybody.
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in Cameroon,
on the way to South Africa
Cameroon cell: +237-96572516
Thuraya Sat phone:+88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://www.iraq.christophbangert.com/
http://www.travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de

Dear all,

Let’s face it. I’m not really in the mood for writing.
I’m walking up and down in the living room. I enter the kitchen in search for food. I’m looking Chiho over the shoulder while she is editing our latest video, which will be online by the time you read this. (http://africa.christophbangert.com/) Back to the computer. There’s no escape.

We are in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Our friend Jane, who has been living and working as a freelance photographer here for the last six months (http://www.janehahn.com/), arranged for us to stay at a place of a friend who is currently out of town. It’s a lovely little house with a safe driveway for the Land Rover in front of it. Yesterday night we slept in a real bed for the first time since we left Dakar about one and a half months ago. I never thought I could enjoy a hot shower so much.
Chiho and I both like camping with our vehicle a lot, but we were also reminded that there is an actual reason why people generally live in houses and not in cars. It’s far more comfortable. After having experienced great hospitality in Dakar, our buds were saved for a second time by a fellow photographer and we are grateful to be able to stay here for three days while we work on our computers and run errands in the city like stocking up on food and supplies, getting visas and doing some repairs on the Land Rover.

From Bamako, the capital of Mali, from where I sent my last dispatch, we drove along the great Niger River to Segou and Djenne, a small but historically important town and the home of a spectacular mosque, the largest mud brick structure in the world. Each year after the end of the rainy season a festival is held where thousands of men volunteer to remodel the building and coat it with a fresh layer of dark brown mud. When we visited the town the rainy season was still in full swing, though, and we were wading through ankle deep mud and puddles of water and sewage. Despite Djenne’s attractions and sights, my memory of the place is slightly overshadowed by impressions of feverish, sleepless nights and exhausting days spend commuting between the whole-in-the-ground toilet and the cod in the back of the Land Rover. Somewhere along the way I had caught a bacteria or virus that seemed to be determined to make me loose all my bodily fluids and about 10 per cent of my weight within hours. It was a miserable experience.
Four days, an endless flow of a special salt and sugar emulsion with a funny strawberry taste and a serious antibiotic treatment later, I started to feel a little better and was even able to slowly return to eating solid food.
A phone examination by my father, who is a doctor, saved me again, like so many times before. Not having to face these troubles alone, but with Chiho at my side providing me with tea, white rice and toilet paper (quickly!!), made a huge difference. Individuality, stubbornness and the determination to do things alone are great things, but man, I was happy not to be alone in Djenne.

Although I was still a little weak, we were in good spirits and happy to be on the move again, when we drove on to Mopti and a village called Bandiagara. There we hired a local guide for two days who showed us around several villages of the Falaise de Bandiagara, a fascinating rock formation that stretches over about 150 Kilometers through the dry and generally flat plains of the Sahel. The villages that are lined up like a string of pearls along the base of this escarpment are inhabited by the Dogon people, one of the better known African tribes, who’s members until very recently lived a traditional way of life only minimally influenced by the outside world. Today Coca Cola, Motorola and Adidas are just as present here as they are everywhere else in Africa and the world. And although the Dogon people are still mainly living in traditional mud huts, are tending their fields like they did generations ago, are not connected to the electricity grid, and keep their traditions alive, like mask dances for example, that they are regularly performing for tourist groups and at local festivities, the days of the great African tribes are over. Education, tourism, the introduction of money as a means to trade goods and the wide availability of western and Chinese made products have reached even the remotest corners of our planet. It is sometimes hard to tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing in my opinion. It is a historical event and it results in both, terrible losses and great improvements. Who am I to judge.
After our visit of the Dogon people we continued on a great tarmac road to a town called Duenza, from where we embarked on a 250 Km off-road journey following a rough piste to the North, all the way to Timbuktu.
The landscape gradually got dryer and increasingly barren as we approached this once famous and legendary city on the southern edge of the Sahara desert.
About 20 Kilometers before reaching Timbuktu we crossed the spectacular Niger River by ferry boat. Dark, almost black rain clouds formed over our heads and together with the setting sun and the surreal landscape of sand dunes that surround the banks of the river created a stunning, and unforgettable scenery.
In Timbuktu, now a sleepy and dusty town, we visited the houses of several foreigners who were the first outsiders to visit this formerly thriving and culturally as well as religiously immensely important city only in the mid 19th century. Several of them died trying to reach Timbuktu, or were murdered shortly after their departure. This and the city’s significant role in the trans Sahara trade contributed to build its legend, which made the name Timbuktu a synonym for inaccessibility, mystery and unimaginable wealth.
For Chiho and me it turned out to be harder to leave Timbuktu than to reach it. Although the road we used to come here was rough and had cost us a flat tire, it was very easy to navigate on it and highly frequented by local traffic. Because there are few things I dislike more than having to go back the same way that I came from, we decided to try to follow a rarely used and extraordinarily sandy track that roughly runs along the northern shore of the Niger River for about 450 Kilometers through the desert and northern Sahel to a large city in eastern Mali called Gao. After reading reports about banditry on this route we were hiding most of our cash and valuables in remote corners of our vehicle and discussed the situation with local drivers, who assured us that although the track is hard to find at times and rarely used, no security incidents had occurred lately. But then, how can there be incidents when nobody is using the track…
Prepared to face hordes of bandits with knifes between their teeth and with sand boards and shovel at the ready we left Timbuktu and headed east. It had taken us as all morning though, to track down the manager of the hostel in which’s driveway we were camping in order to pay him, change some money at a local bank, a one and a half hour procedure, and find our way out of the mud brick labyrinth of the outskirts of Timbuktu.
For two long days we drove through an equally impressive and barren landscape, partly consisting of the typical scrubs and thorny bushes of the Sahel and partly of great sand dunes and endless gravel fields of the Sahara desert. The only security incident we had to report as we safely reached Gao was a lost yellow plastic bowl that we used to wash our dishes in and that was forcefully taken from us by an impressively forceful sand storm hat surprised us when we camped out in the desert and were just about ready to boil our daily ration of pasta. Like scared chicken we fled into the Land Rover while throwing kitchen utensils randomly into the vehicle. The yellow bowl was left behind and in the morning, as the storm finally had settled, an hour-long rescue operation remained without result. I am not ashamed to admit that the loss of my plastic bowel hit me hard, as I inherited the piece, which had been in my family’s possession for decades, from my mother and it had served me well and without complaint throughout my journey through South America. Mom, I lost the bowl.
From Goa we started off on a long drive that led us south to Niamey, the capital of Niger, where we stayed three nights and treated ourselves to a pizza dinner and a fast wireless internet connection.
The most significant memory of Niamey will probably be me spending half an hour late at night at the side of the road in the center of the city taking half of the Land Rover’s dashboard apart in order to reach and examine a broken light switch that resulted in the cars headlights to stop working. Only minutes after the light broke the problem attracted the attention of a grim looking Nigerien traffic cop who, with a dramatic gesture and angry blows into his little referee whistle made me stop at the side of the street. The glare of money in his eyes.
After a short discussion, obviously the policeman was in a far better position as I in fact had been driving at night without headlights, which is against the rules probably in any country, but is to my defense a common phenomenon on African roads, I began to search for the cause of the problem. Luckily I was able to find the defunct light switch very quickly and bypassed it by rewiring some cables.
Visibly impressed by my work, the policeman glanced at me but nevertheless had the nerve to tell me while looking at his cheap plastic watch: “Well, normally a simple problem like this should only take 15 minutes to repair. How come it took you 20 minutes…?”
He was not joking. Bloody male pride.
I managed to stumble something like, well, I’m sure a Nigerien mechanic would have done a much better job (I was not joking either…), which he apparently liked as he gave me a dramaturgically flawless verbal warning for my braking the laws of the Republic of Niger and let me and Chiho, who was still covered in piles of tools and parts of the dashboard, drive on.

From Niamey we moved on to Ouagadougou, one of the lesser-known capitals of the world. Can you guess it? Well, the corresponding country is Burkina Faso, a nation that impressed us with wonderful people, maybe the most helpful and friendly we met so far, and a certain feeling of liveliness and business sense.
After only a short stay we proceeded south to Ghana, where we visited the Mole National Park and had our first encounter with wild elephants, monkeys, gazelles, and ground hogs.
One of the monkeys, a large baboon, helped us to rearrange the interior of the Land Rover, but luckily did not figure out how to use our precious mosquito repellent. I should have closed that window.
The dry and barren Sahelian landscape, that dominated our travels through Senegal, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso gradually changed and got greener and more densely populated as we slowly proceeded south through Ghana, until we finally reached tropical climate and banana and palm trees began lining the road. The north of Ghana had seen major flooding in the past weeks, but the rains had ceased as we traveled through the area and the apparently significant damage on crops and infrastructure wasn’t really visible in the areas we visited.
After a stop in Kumasi, the second largest Ghanaian city, we spent some days camping on a breathtakingly beautiful and remote beach near a fishing village called Dixcove. We were reading books, planning our onward travels and walking on the beach. And of course I spent hours doing what I love to do the most apart from driving: working on my Land Rover. I admit it’s more like fiddling around. I’m rearranging things, checking something here and fixing something there. I can do this for days on end and completely forget about everything.
We made a serious effort to take a deep breath and relax a little, which wasn’t as easy as it might sound as it can be hard to slow down after many weeks of restless travel.
After four days our little vacation was over and we drove along the Ghanaian coast eastwards, heading to Accra. On the way we visited the famous coastal forts of Elmina and Cape Coast, which were built along with 35 other such castles along the coastline of what was once known as the Gold Coast and today is called Ghana. The forts, large, white washed stone structures, were built by various European powers in the 17th century to serve as trading posts. The Portuguese, Dutch, Germans, Danes, Swedes, French and British were competing heavily on the Gold Coast, trading ivory, gold, spices and later mainly slaves. Between 12 and 25 million people were forcefully displaced from Africa during this era, most of them were brought to European colonies in the Americas, many dying on the way from exhaustion, cruel treatment, torture and abuse. A large percentage of these slaves came from West Africa. We had a moving and thoughtful visit to the forts, but preferred the excellent museum in the fort in Cape Coast over the overly dramatized and inaccurate guided tour we took in Elmina. Growing up in Japan and Germany and being endlessly confronted in history lessons with both our countries sad histories of mass murder and torture, I guess we have a more sober, maybe a more realistic idea about what horrendous atrocities human beings are capable of committing. So the tour guide only managed to make one or two of the American visitors on the tour cry, but not us. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. The guy knew every trick in the book, but Chiho and I just couldn’t get past his inaccuracy and propaganda.

Accra greeted us with seemingly endless traffic jams. We managed to get visas to Nigeria and Benin, and finally found a great mechanic who helped us to fix a persistent problem with the front axle, which would uncontrollably start to shake and vibrate at a certain speed. Daniel, the mechanic, moved to Ghana from Germany about two years ago to pursue his dream of building his own cars. He just completed his second prototype that he designed and built from scratch. A soft spoken and quiet man, who with a mixture of southern German stubbornness and geniality refuses to give up his dream.

For somebody who didn’t feel like writing I ended up writing far too much.
Several more things I’d like to mention, though:
A map of our travels can be found here, for those who still don’t know were Ouagadougou is. (like myself two months ago…)
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/iWeb/Africa/Map.html

Chiho is almost daily writing a little blog about our travels, which can be found here:
http://web.mac.com/chihochiho/

Don’t forget to watch the newest video and check out our still images here:
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

My new photo book about Iraq is already available online on Amazon, fresh from the press, so to speak. Links to different Amazon pages can be found here:
http://www.iraq.christophbangert.com/

Let us know how you like the book. Chiho and I will only be able to see it after our return to the US next month. The book presentation and show opening will take place in New York on November 15, just one day after a public lecture at the International Center of Photography that I was invited to speak at on Wednesday, November 14. Please save the dates, an invitation for both events will follow. Of course.

My next dispatch will hopefully reach you from Cameroon in roughly one month. We will have to interrupt our great journey through Africa there again for about four weeks and are still looking for a safe place to park the Land Rover in or around Douala. Every suggestion would be highly appreciated.

It got very late. Chiho fell asleep on the couch next to me a long time ago. Good night everybody.

Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in Ghana
on the way to South Africa
Ghana cell: +233-245831859
Thuraya Sat phone:+88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://www.iraq.christophbangert.com/
http://www.travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de/

Dear all,

we are in Bamako, Mali. We? Yes, we. My girlfriend Chiho joined me on my travels in Dakar and together we will spend a couple of months exploring West- and Central Africa. Chiho is a designer and photographer and we frequently collaborate on projects, the last one being the Iraq book (http://www.iraq.christophbangert.com/) which we edited and designed together. Chiho is also an excellent co-pilot, navigator, cook, and packer of things. She has the ability to make huge piles of equipment, clothes and camera gear fit into a tiny metal box.
Additionally she is an experienced video shooter and editor. We started to publish short video clips on my blog, so please take a second to check them out, along with some new still images:
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

The real reason for Chiho to be part of this trip is obviously to bring some sanity and patience into the Land Rover, which so far has worked extremely well. It has been a huge improvement for the journey to have her with me.

The last dispatch I wrote a long time ago from Dakar. In the meantime I flew back to New York to attend my sister’s wedding. This involved me being one of the groom’s men, wearing a rental tuxedo and feeling adequately awkward, giving a speech, teaching my father how to ride my old motorbike on a Target parking lot, showing up at the wedding with a rented pick up truck carrying my bike on the back (my sister is used to trouble, she just rolled her eyes…), fixing my brother in law’s car, and bringing my uncle to the doctor for the treatment of an ear infection.
After the wedding Chiho and I flew to Hong Kong and China to attend the printing of the Iraq book, which was equally exciting and exhausting because of the great summer heat in southern China and the gruesome 32 hour non-stop printing marathon that we embarked on.

Back in New York we only had three days to take care of a million things, most importantly the preparations for the Iraq show that will open on November 15th at the Redux Gallery in Manhattan.
We barely managed to catch the plane from JFK to Dakar, where we arrived exhausted and terribly jetlagged, not sure if our bodies were still on New York or Hong Kong time.
We were extremely lucky to be able to stay at Finbarr O’Reilly’s house in Dakar, where he and his girlfriend Uma provided us with a perfect place to get some rest and re-pack the Land Rover that had been blocking Finbarr’s driveway for about a month. Finbarr (http://www.finbarroreilly.com/) is a Canadian Reuters photographer who is based in Senegal and I was introduced to him by Tina, a friend and photo editor who lives in New York. Tina, Finbarr and Uma saved me and I am very grateful for their help.
Chiho and I spent about ten days in Dakar, getting sorted out and hunting for visas. Apart from visas to Mali, Ghana, Cameroon, Niger and Burkina Faso, we proudly received Chiho’s new working visa for America, at the US embassy in Dakar, which was an important step for us as we had spent many months to obtain it.

Equipped with a variety of colorful little stamps and stickers in our passports we finally said goodbye to Dakar and headed for Mali. Still in Senegal though, on the road between Kaolack and Tambacounda, we were for the first time confronted with two realities that will pose a continuing challenge on our African journey:
Bad roads and rain.

After crossing the border into Mali, which proofed to be a surprisingly straightforward procedure, we used a perfect tarmac road to go to Kayes, where we took the decision, perhaps out of guilt to be driving on such a perfect road, to try to use the 500 Kilometer, direct, almost purely off road route to Bamako that is rarely used by local traffic during the rainy season. And that is exactly what we found ourselves in: the heights of the rainy season in Mali.
Encouraged by mixed reports about the road, ranging from “the road is closed” to “there is a lot of mud, but it should be possible…”, we headed out, just to see the road blocked by a truck that had been stuck and couldn’t be bypassed after only 10 Kilometers.
Because the sun was already setting we decided to return to Kayes and try again in the morning. After stocking up on fuel, water, toilet paper and candy, we passed the spot where the truck had been stuck without any problems. All the problems started later…
We had a very interesting visit of the remains of the first French settlement in Mali, Medine, thanks to a knowledgeable young man called Abdoulaye Sissoko, who showed us around and also took us to the spectacular Felou waterfalls nearby.
What followed after this rather tranquil visit is easily the most difficult thing I ever attempted with my Land Rover. It took us almost five days to drive a distance of 160 Kilometers, or 100 Miles, from Kayes to Bafoulabe. It might have been faster to walk. We kept getting mixed reports from local travelers on the road. One of the troubles was that apart from us everybody else was traveling by bicycle or small motorbike. The only truck we encountered, and who’s tracks we followed for half a day, which filled us with great hope and joy, we found hopelessly stuck in knee-deep mud, the driver and his helpers looking exhausted and hungry. (We shared some of our imported Japanese rice with them)
But although the situation was truly hopeless at times, we somehow managed to continue. We got stuck in the mud many times. We had to dig for hours, use our sand boards and winch on a regular basis. At times we had to rebuilt parts of the road with dirt and stones after the rain had washed the even in good times poorly maintained path away.
We had great moments of joy after passing particularly difficult obstacles, like a river or a deep mud hole. Sometimes people told us that the road would be getting much easier ahead, only to be disappointed later by having to face a long stretch of wet and impassable passage. A large part of the distance that we drove I ended up walking as well. We discovered early on that it was faster to stop the Land Rover frequently to walk ahead and test the surface of the track on foot, than having to dig out the car after failing to see a soft spot on the track while driving.
The days were marked by constant setbacks, usually followed by great relieves as we continued our exploration. We visited small villages that are virtually cut off from the outside world for months during the rainy season. We met wonderful, warm and hospitable people on the way. Everybody tried to help us in any way possible. About 20 young men and boys were hard at work for about three hours, basically carrying the Land Rover down an especially muddy bank of a wide river in order for us to cross it.
I learned a lot on this part of the journey. It proofed to be not only a great, at times seemingly impossible challenge, but also in a sense a humbling experience. We are so much used to be dictating to nature our human ways that we rarely encounter the forces that nature is able to impose on us. We live on the surface of the earth and we drive over it with our vehicles. Only sometimes this nature changes from being a soft-spoken friend to an aggressive enemy that we are forced to fight against, while we quickly realize how hopeless and ridiculous our efforts are.
The true adventure of a journey like mine or ours lies not in the distance we travel, the exoticism of the countries we visit or the amount of mud holes we escape from. The challenge lies in the uncertainty of our travels. It is constantly unclear what will follow next. Disaster or revelation. Despair or hope. Mud or firm ground.
With a mixture of luck, German stubbornness, Japanese optimism, and not to forget the genius of British engineering, we somehow managed to reach the little town of Bafoulabe, where a ferry boat, that was apart from us and the Land Rover transporting a donkey and some chickens, brought us across the Senegal river.
Tired and happy we stumbled off the boat. We really made it. A great moment in our lives.
From Bafoulabe onwards the road constantly improved and a couple of days later, we reached Bamako, the capital of Mali.
The shower was heavenly. Almost a week of camping in the bush had left its marks on us. My beard almost reached my belly button. Well, almost.

Tomorrow we will continue our journey through Mali, stopping in Djenne to see the famous mud (!) mosque, Mopti, the Dogon country, Timbuktu and Gao. Niger will be the next country we visit. At the local Land Rover garage we met a fellow traveler, Arle from Norway. Since February 2006 he and his great Defender are on the road in Africa, traveling from South Africa home to Norway, visiting every single African country on the way. His website, which features Chiho and me today can be found here: http://www.cape2cape.no/

Best
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in Mali,
on the way to South Africa
Mali cell: +223-3099642
Thuraya Sat phone:+88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://www.iraq.christophbangert.com/
http://www.travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de

Dear all,

It’s done. After more than one year of work on this project, the Iraq book was printed this week in Shenzhen, China.
Chiho and I were present during the printing, which was done in a 33 hour non-stop marathon session. At the moment we are in Hong Kong and we will fly back to New York tomorrow. On August 1st we’ll be back in Dakar, Senegal to continue the overland journey through Africa.
The Iraq book is published by powerHouse books and will come out in November this year.

It can already be ordered here on Amazon.com.
And Amazon.de in Germany.

On November 15, 2007 there will be a show opening and book signing event at the Redux Gallery in New York.

On July 13, my Iraqi colleague Khalid Hassan was murdered in Baghdad. “Fat Khalid” as he was usually referred to was a 23-year old fixer and translator for the New York Times Baghdad bureau. We had been working together regularly during my stays in Iraq. I felt a deep pain and personal loss after hearing of his death.
I just printed this book about the war in Iraq and I could not help but constantly think about what happened to Khalid. And about what happened to Iraq. It makes me terribly sad.
I don’t have the words.

Please find the story about Khalid’s death in the NYTimes here.

Some of the NYT correspondents wrote personal notes about Khalid here.

If you would like to make a contribution in support of Khalid’s family, please find some information below:

Remembering Khalid

Khalid Hassan, member of The Times’s Iraqi news staff, was killed on Friday, July 13.
He supported his mother and four sisters. The Foreign Desk has started a fund to raise money for his family. Tammy Golson (212.556.4667/ tammy@nytimes.com) is handling all contributions for Mr. Hassan’s family. If you would like to contribute, please make checks payable to:
“The New York Times,” noting Khalid’s name in the memo field. The Times has paid for all funeral costs, offered to relocated the family, made a generous contribution and plans to match all money raised by this fund.

Please mail checks to:

Tammy Golson
The New York Times
Foreign Desk/3rd Floor
620 Eighth Ave.
New York, NY 10018

Thanks and best
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in Hong Kong
international cell: +1-917-679-4440
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de/

With the intention to finally start to select about 20 pictures from Iraq for a gallery show that will open in the fall, I am turning on the computer. As usual the little machine is placed on my knees while I am sitting in the front seat of my Land Rover. Outside it’s already dark. The sun was swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean some time ago, ending a hot and humid day. The inside of the vehicle is being dimly lid by the computer’s screen, making me blind to the dark surroundings of the makeshift campground that I am calling my home for more than a week now. I am the only guest. Just a few moments ago, while deep in thought, I noticed some sort of movement on my right side. When I looked up I saw the dark face of a huge man just millimeters away from the glass of the car’s side window staring at me out of the night in total silence and with great seriousness.

Overcoming my shock and surprise I stumbled a clumsy “Bon soir.”, gratefully recognizing the man’s face as the one of the night watchman, who had come to say hello and observe me at work.

I am in Dakar, Senegal.

First of all I would like to thank everybody who responded to my last dispatch. Not all responses were positive, which I was quite happy about, because it helps me to improve things. I never felt very confident about my writing and I only see it as a supplement to my images. I am a photographer not a writer. Nevertheless I feel that it is important to condense some thoughts into words sometimes. I am continuing to write in my little blue diary every night.

To sum up the reactions to my last dispatch: My mother loved it. My sister thought it was too negative. My father probably did not read it because it wasn’t in German. (And I admit, it was terribly long, too. He has my full sympathy on that one.) My girlfriend just kept laughing.

Please do not hesitate to let me know if you want to be taken off this email list. I do get tons of annoying mass emails myself, so if you think that my occasional dispatches are just unnecessarily adding to the mountain of “free Viagra” and “Instant penis enlargement formula” emails, please tell me.

I completed the first part of my journey. From Daun in Germany to Dakar in Senegal. 8,515 Kilometers in about six weeks. The trip went very well so far, but it has to be said that this was probably one of the easiest parts of the journey. I am in good health, and the car is running without any problems. Like an old steam locomotive. It’s not the fastest or most elegant vehicle around, but it just never stops functioning.

I am happy. It was a bloody good idea to do this trip. If I’m lonely? Yes, I little bit. I miss my girlfriend. A lot. It makes a huge difference if you are in a relationship or not when you do such a long journey. When I was traveling from Argentina to New York, I had no girlfriend, well, most of the time, so there wasn’t really anybody to miss.

From Nouadhibou in Mauritania, from where I sent the last dispatch, I was traveling off road through parts of the Sahara to Atar. The track, which passes several long stretches of sand dunes, follows the train track that runs parallel to the Mauritanian border with Western Sahara. Several times a day the track is used by the supposedly longest train in the world, which is carrying iron ore to the port in Nouadhibou. The train that is pulled by at least three heavy locomotives has a length of about 2.5 Kilometers. It’s an impressive spectacle to watch and hear this monstrous machine slowly plow its way through the barren landscape of the desert, while creating a deafening noise and kicking off huge clouds of dust.

About five days I spent camping in the desert. I think these were the most moving moments of this journey so far. I saw the stars at night shining so bright like I’ve never seen them before. It was almost frightening. Certainly an overwhelming and humbling experience.

During daytime I was driving my Land Rover across huge flat gravel plains, through stone fields and over sand dunes. The window was always open, while hot and dry air was blowing in my face. I was deeply impressed by the landscape of the Sahara. An experience I find impossible to describe in words or pictures.

These were not days and nights spent in complete solitude, though. I had two companions while I was traveling in Mauritania. Vula and Akis are from Greece and the couple is traveling with a brand new Land Rover Discovery 3 around the world. Akis is a journalist for the biggest automotive magazine in Greece and they are both reporting from their two and a half yearlong journey for Greek radio and TV stations as well as for their online blog.

We got along very well and I was happy to have a second vehicle with me, especially as I got stuck in the very first tiny sand dune that found its way underneath the tires of the Land Rover. Although my sand driving skills rapidly improved after this first encounter, both our vehicles got stuck in deep sand several times over the following days and we helped each other out by digging and by using sand ladders and long pulling straps.

It made me very happy to drive the Land Rover under desert conditions and I was once more impressed by it’s abilities. Although almost ten years old and with more than 100.000 Kilometers on it’s back, one third of them being travel kilometers on South and Central American roads, the “English Lady” as one friend keeps referring to my car is holding up very well. We had no problem to follow and match the performance of the brand new, well equipped and with 100 additional horse powers, much more powerful Discovery 3 of my Greek friends.

I’m not afraid to say that I love my car. It’s not just a simple liking or a sense of admiration. It’s a deep bond. We went through so much together. There is still so much road ahead of us. We are driving over the surface of the planet and we are unstoppable in a way. We measure the world in its true greatness. Kilometer by kilometer we explore this earth and we have the privilege to meet its inhabitants on the way. We see all the world’s beauty and its ugliness, too. We collect our experiences and carry them with us wherever we go, with a certain pride and loneliness.

I wonder what my car would write in its diary at night if it could write. Would it write about the beauty of the mountains in the afternoon light? The endless desert sky? Would it write about stinking, crowded cities? Or the cute little taxi that we passed today? Dusty tracks? Stony paths? Heavenly tarmac roads?

All this I’ll never know. Maybe I am loosing my mind. Or I’m just in love with the idea of my personal freedom. Maybe I am just young and stupid. Stubbornly I keep driving. Days and days behind the wheel. It fills me with the greatest joy imaginable. Just to drive, just to touch the surface of the earth with the tires of my Land Rover. To keep moving. Obsessively running. Even long after passing the finish line.

From Nouadhibou to Atar. From Atar to Chinguetti. From Chinguetti to Nouakchott. From there to the border crossing to Senegal at Diama. St. Louis followed and finally I reached Dakar. And so it went.

I remember the endless drive through the featureless, flat desert from Atar to Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, as the hottest day so far. The outside temperature was about 41 Degrees Celsius. Inside the vehicle it must have been even hotter, as the Land Rover features all kinds of luxuries like a CD player that regularly refuses to eject the CD inside, which forces me to listen to the same 12 songs for a whole entire day, and a sunroof that can’t be opened and leaks when it rains, but what it does not have is an air conditioning.

Instead I usually open the side window and have the desert wind blow in my face like a giant blow dryer. A side effect of this way of traveling is that every corner of the car’s interior is getting covered with layer upon layer of fine dust and sand.
Like a spreading disease it slowly makes its way into the car’s seats, my sleeping bag, inside the bag with my clothes, the kitchen box, into my ears and between my teeth.

I am in Dakar now for some time already and I started to work on a story about local fishermen. I was invited to take part in this year’s Joop Swart Masterclass in Amsterdam, a workshop for young photographers, which is a great honor to be selected for. All participants are asked to produce a set of images to a given theme. And so I spent the day yesterday from 7:30 in the morning to 5:30 at night on a tiny wooden fishing boat with three young Senegalese fishermen. The three men caught only five small fish in 10 hours of hard physical labor, which is not the case every day of course, but one of the reasons why I got interested in this story. Most of the fish is caught by huge foreign fish trawlers, leaving the local fishermen only with the meager leftovers.

Idrisa, the 25 years old head of the crew, returned from the Canary Islands only a few months ago. He illegally traveled on a wooden fishing boat from Senegal to the Canary Islands along with his two brothers in order to reach European territory. About 31,000 Africans left their homes and reached the Canary Islands by boat in 2006 alone in the hope of a better life abroad. The hazardous trip takes eight to 10 days and thousands of mostly young men are dieing on the ocean while attempting the journey. Idrisa was among the first group of immigrants that was repatriated from Spain with the help of the Senegalese government. His brothers made it to Barcelona.

Now the young man is back in his old life as fisherman. Every day he takes his boat and his two companions out to the sea in search of fish. Often they are returning empty handed, or just with a few small fish that they don’t bother to try to sell, but they take it home to eat instead.

I will be in Dakar until July 3rd. I will leave the Land Rover behind for a while and will fly to New York to attend my sister’s wedding. After the wedding Chiho and I will travel to China for about a week to be present during the printing of the Iraq book. The book is published by powerHouse and will come out in November. It can already be preordered at Amazon.com.

www.amazon.com

www.amazon.de

www.amazon.fr

At the end of July I will be back in Dakar, from where I will continue my journey through Africa.

Slumped into his white plastic chair, the night guard fell asleep some time ago. He dutifully places himself right next to my car every evening. I am trying not to wake him up when I tip toe past him later on my way to the outdoor shower.
I am staying on a private beach. The place is a little run down and the adjoining restaurant has a distinct colonial touch. All the waiters are wearing a bright red tidy uniform and on Sunday afternoons you can see elderly French couples havening lunch alongside Lebanese and Senegalese upper class families. Every day I go to pay the fee for the camping at the bar. There are two receipts written. One is for me and the other one is promptly carried by one of the staff to the ‘patron’ of the establishment, an elderly white man, who spends his days lying on some sort of stretcher in the shade wearing old-fashioned sunglasses and a Panama hat. The waiter makes a slight, but noticeable bow while he hands over the receipt to his boss. Not a word is spoken.

The other day I saw Idrisa again on the beach, pulling his boat out of the water. He couldn’t stop laughing. Proudly he showed me the small pile of big, fat fish he and his men had caught that day. He was a changed man. A happy man.

Best
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in Senegal,
on the way to South Africa
Senegalese cell: +221-240-2331
Thuraya Sat phone:+88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de

Dear all,

I am in Nouadhibou in Mauritania.
I’ve been trying to avoid writing this dispatch. I repacked the Land Rover again and again. I filled some oil into the engine, I made travel plans, pored over maps, read in my guidebook, drove a lot through the desert, cooked some spaghetti, and drove some more through the desert. Finally there wasn’t anything left to do but to reluctantly sit down and start to write this dispatch.

I like writing. I do write every day in my little blue notebook that I bought on the day I left on my great journey to South Africa in my little hometown’s only stationary store.

At night you can see me sitting in my car accurately noting the day’s traveled kilometers, date and place into this small diary. I am writing about the highlights and low points of the day and about people I met. But mainly I am writing down my thoughts and ideas, as there is a lot of time to think about things when you are driving for days and days all alone through the desert or the mountains or on a Spanish motorway.

I decided not to write a daily online blog, but write an old-fashioned hand written diary instead, just as I did on my last long trip through South America. And although I know that this is a little disappointing for some people who where hoping to get more frequent updates on my travels, there are several good reasons for this. First of all a diary is something extremely personal and it is important that it contains some things that are not for everyone’s eyes. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a diary, but a dispatch or an article. I found it very important for my last trip that I wrote very personal things in a way where it didn’t matter how many grammatical errors the notes contained or if it made any particular sense to the reader, in my own language, German, and with the knowledge that not every online geek will read it. My last diaries were the basis for my first book, and it wouldn’t have been possible to edit a meaningful book without writing things up in a very straightforward way while on the road. The only solution would be to write two diaries one on a paper and one online, but I simply don’t have the time.

So there will be no daily blog, but there will be regular dispatches, like the one you are reading, every three weeks or so. And honestly, who really has time to read blogs? I don’t.

I will mainly use the blog to post some of the images of this journey, my current location and updated contact information. You are also able to find my location on a map and all travel dispatches will be collected there. I just uploaded new images, so check it out:
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

I am sitting in the pleasant and shady communal space of a small dusty campground right next to a gas station in the center of town and I not only have to fight the blaring TV that is producing an incredible noise by presenting French afternoon game shows to the half sleeping guardian of this place, but also a local visitor, who additionally to the TV terror, has just decided to reset the ring tone of his brand new cell phone. The only possible way to do this, naturally, is by listening to all of the 50 or so different tones and songs that are on offer. We just finished listening to the entire melody of “Jingle Bells” and are now slowly, after some consideration, moving on to a Shakira song that I can’t recall the title of. I am sure I will be cursed to carry around the melody in my head all day, though.

I will not use these minor distractions as just another excuse for not finishing the task at hand, which is to write down some notes about my travels. I will concentrate as best as I can.

I am now on the road for about three weeks. I traveled from Germany to Luxemburg, France, Spain, Morocco, Western Sahara and just arrived in Mauritania. During the first five days of my trip I was accompanied by my girlfriend Chiho, who had to fly back to New York from Southern France. She was attending a photography event in the US that she had signed up for some months ago. Although we are both used to long separations by now as I spent long periods of time during the last four years on the road working, it was a sad departure. Chiho will be in New York to work on her own projects, but also in order to take care of some things that we have been working on together. The main project is the photo book about Iraq, which we edited and designed together and which will come out this fall. Without her taking care of the book, the planned exhibition and a multitude of other projects and duties, I would not be able to do this trip.

Even with Chiho being in New York, it is tough for me to keep our little company together. For visa reasons I actually had to start my own company, called Christoph Bangert Inc., of which I am the president, secretary, and main shareholder. Being the president of a company presents me with many responsibilities. While in Southern Spain I was tackling a mountain of un-replied emails that had been waiting in my mailbox for weeks as well as sending out some pictures and invoices to clients. In the Moroccan Atlas Mountains I was battling with the American Tax Authorities who wanted some paperwork from me, which had to be faxed from Germany. In the Western Sahara I finally managed to finish up, with the great help of my friend Johan who is currently traveling in Turkey, all the texts for the Iraq book and I also received the introduction for the book from Jon Lee Anderson, who had just returned from Afghanistan.

Additionally I was negotiating with a German magazine that will publish a story about my journey and I was selling some prints to someone in Australia who had seen a picture of mine in the New Yorker.

While dealing with all these business related things I still had to take care of all the daily travel procedures like reading the map, studying the guidebook, learning how to use a GPS in only one day, dealing with pushy tourist guides and street children, keeping the Land Rover running and in one piece, getting visas, crossing borders and finally, and most importantly, I also had to try to take some pictures.

This journey is not exactly a vacation so far, and of course it was never intended to be one. But that I have to deal with such a large amount of travel unrelated work, caused partly by the easily available access to the internet and cell phone network and partly by my annoying habit of trying to do everything at the same time, was a little disappointing at times and often left me with the feeling of being overwhelmed. There were moments when I was sitting in my car after a long day’s drive, exhausted and numb and unable to make any further decisions. In moments like these it would be good to have a travel companion. I am generally happy to be traveling alone, though, I’m meeting a lot more people that way and I even hope to improve my practically nonexistent French on this journey. So far communication has been rather rocky, and a lot of time conversation does not go much further than “Bon jour, ca va?…..”

I should have paid more attention in that bloody French class back in school. I guess my mother was right on that one.

But before I start to wonder off into my childhood I should write a little about the places I visited so far. In Southern France I got a massive sunburn. My bright white skin wasn’t ready for the Mediterranean sun and I ended up with nasty burn marks, huge blisters and stripes of skin falling off my legs. I also had a persistent cough, which would not go away and was only to be tackled with some doses of antibiotics, which helped a great deal with the annoying coughing, but left me with diarrhea instead. I was also still exhausted from several months of traveling to Afghanistan and Nigeria and busy weeks in New York in between those trips.

Basically, my body was a wreck.

The few days of rest that Chiho and I spent in Saintes Maries de-la-Mer in the Camargue were very pleasant and much needed. One day we went to see a bull fight, where young boys were running around a wild bull while trying to rip off a little piece of string from between the bull’s horns. The bull in turn tried to stab and kill the boys and in one instance he almost succeeded. However the outcome of the scenario, the bull gets to live in the end, unlike during bullfighting I saw in Spain some years ago. All in all it was a spectacular event that I enjoyed tremendously.

After dropping off Chiho at the airport in Montpellier and introducing her to her first European budget airline travel experience, including the privilege to share a packed airplane with a busload of German middle aged ‘all inclusive’ tourists, I made my way south, to Spain.

I spent my days on empty motorways and my nights on great campgrounds with hot showers, clean toilets, supermarkets and restaurants. One of them even had wireless internet access all over its grounds, which I celebrated with writing 49 emails in one day.

Because the vacation season hadn’t started yet, I met mostly elderly travelers on these campgrounds, a lot of them retired Germans, who are spending the winter months in the South. I liked talking to these people, who were mostly enjoying themselves and were interested in my journey. They had little German or Bavarian flags mounted on their caravans, were watching German TV shows, ate German homemade food while, of course, were having a cold bottle of German beer. The only thing that annoyed me a little was that after I explained the route of my trip again and again, everyone, really everyone, in order to say goodbye, wished me A NICE VACATION.

Crossing the Gibraltar straight with a huge ferry that mainly carried trucks from Algeciras in Spain to Tangier in Morocco was a great experience. On a beautiful and clear day I spent almost the entire time on deck watching the European coast disappear in the distance and observing the ship’s slow progress towards the coast of North Africa.

I was so excited about the ships journey that I completely failed to discover the ships’ duty free stores and, more seriously, the booth of the Moroccan border police, who does the border formalities for Morocco on board. When I drove off the ferry with my Land Rover, proud to be finally arriving on African soil and in high spirits, the adventure was abruptly stopped by several other border police officers that were controlling the Moroccan entrance stamps in everybody’s passports. Big discussions in French, German and Arabic all at once errupted and I ended up having to park the car in the harbor, which is always a great place to leave a fully packed and shiny car behind, and walk back onto the ferry, to try to find the Moroccan border police man who unfortunately had already disappeared. After waiting for a while and watching the first travelers going back to Spain arrive on the ferry, which made me slightly nervous, because I had no desire to go back to Spain while my car was parked on a dock in Morocco, finally a guy wearing a baseball hat and T-shirt arrived with a laptop and put and entry stamp into my passport.

Although my entry into Morocco wasn’t as smoothly as planned, which was of course my own fault, I liked the country from the start. It’s an easy place to visit, has a good infrastructure and amazing landscapes.

The only annoyances are the many tourists and the resulting fact that in many places you have to deal with hustlers who want to serve you as tour guides, moneychangers, drug dealers or souvenir vendors. There are no limits to the creativity of these people for finding ways to extract money from the visitor of their country.

After staying in Tangier I drove to Meknes, and on to Fez, where I visited the old Medina and took pictures of the famous leather tanneries. In general I have to confess that I wasn’t really in the mood to spend a lot of time in overcrowded souks and among people. I was longing for some solitude and tried to find it in the High Atlas Mountains. For some reason, possibly because of the close cultural similarities between Morocco and the Middle East, I had to think about Iraq a lot.
I chose a well known off road track that crosses the spectacular Atlas Mountains from the north east to the south west. The first part of the route, which takes several days to complete, passes and area called ‘Cirque de Jaffar’. Further on you pass small villages called Tagoudit, Anemzi, and Imilchil. I then drove along the ‘Gorges du Dades’, a stunning valley, which reminded me in its rock formations of nothing less than the Grand Canyon.

The whole journey followed rough and partly stony tracks and crossed rivers and high passes. The scenery was just breathtaking. The only negative aspect was the rude behavior of packs of teenaged villagers and shepherds that I was assaulted by on the way. In order to extract goods or money from me they climbed on top of the roof rack of the moving Land Rover and where trying to steal my parent’s camping table and chair that I had strapped to the roof, attempted to open all doors and banged their fists against my windows while shouting and screaming on top of their lungs. There was really no point in negotiations, as there were just too many kids to pay or please with presents. The only trouble really was that I had to ask for the way a lot as there were often several different tracks to chose between, which resulted in everybody constantly sending me in the wrong direction while asking for cigarettes, money, whiskey, or anything, no matter what. I met a middle-aged man who, with a dead serious face, asked me for some candy. Judging from his teeth he had been successful in the past with his request.

Of course one has to try to understand these people. I was driving through very remote areas and there is great poverty. Several times a day there is a big fat foreign four wheel driven car with white people in it rolling through these tiny villages. To these kids it’s a sport to harass these visitors that they perceive as being incredibly rich.

Well, after retracting my beloved camping table and chair from a nearby mud puddle, even my patience had and end. I shouted and cursed these teenagers while making in retrospect ridiculous hand signs motioning the sliding of a person’s throat, which surprisingly impressed some of the kids. Something I learned in the Middle East.
You don’t mess with a camper’s camping gear.

I spend the night in the back of the farmhouse of an incredibly hospitable and friendly family just three villages down the road. I was very grateful to these people, especially after the annoyances of the day.

After miserably failing to find some sort of peace and solitude in the mountains, I drove down south into the Sahara desert. From a small village close to the Algerian border called Mhamid, I drove westwards on an off road piste, alongside huge sand dunes and crossing dried out riverbeds and lakes. In my diary I wrote that day: ‘… And finally alone.’

My first encounter with the Sahara was a very moving experience. I liked the emptiness and seemingly monotonous, but ever changing landscape at once. I also very much enjoyed driving my Land Rover on loose tracks and across small sand dunes.

Passing Tata, Akka, Guelmin and Tan Tan, I slowly made my way South to the area that is referred to as Western Sahara. The state, a former Spanish colony, is administered by Morocco, who invaded the region in the 1970s and used to fight a costly war against Polisario rebels that were supported by Algeria and were fighting for the establishment of an independent republic.

Although the fighting has stopped after a UN brokered cease-fire in 1991, the final status of this area is still unresolved and a promised referendum on independence, as it was part of the deal, never happened. The landscape of this land consists of mainly featureless desert that is only sparsely inhibited.

I spent several days just driving on a good tarmac road south, encountering very little traffic. In Dakhla, the last city before the border, located some 450 km to the south, I stayed on a lonely and windy campground for two nights while finishing up some work mostly on the Iraq book and spending the nights commuting between the Land Rover and the desolate and smelly toilet block. Apparently I had eaten some bad food while having dinner in one of the local restaurants. Having bad diarrhea didn’t exactly improve my mood and my stay in Dakhla was unfortunately a low point so far. Things only looked up after I got back on the road again and after a long day’s drive and a successful border crossing into Mauritania I felt much better. The only nuisance was that I only got a three-day transit visa for Mauritania, which I am supposed to extend in Nouakchott, the capital. The visa rules for the border crossings were changed recently. I met several travelers who got one month long visas at the same border posts that I went to only weeks ago. I don’t have any desire to go to Nouakchott right now and after talking to other travelers with the same problem and some of the locals, I decided to either sort out the problem in Atar, a town West from here where I am planning to go next, in Nouakchott, where I have to pass through later, or when I leave the country.

Right now I am looking for other travelers that are also planning to take the desert route to Choum and on to Atar. I would prefer to do this trip with a second car, rather than alone, because the 450 km long track is relatively sandy, with lots of dunes and it’s easy to get stuck.

The most difficult part so far has been to try to relax a little and get this restlessness and anxiety out of my bones that I’ve been carrying around with me since I started the journey. The pictures I took so far are nothing special, lots of shots of the Land Rover of course, but I’ve been having a hard time to photograph people. To overcome true and imagined gaps between the local population and me, created by my relative material wealth, which expresses itself through my Land Rover, my huge camera, my white skin and my seemingly endless supply of ballpoint pens, will be the greatest challenge of this trip.

The TV set in the corner is still producing great noise, but at least it is showing a soccer game this time. Finland is playing Serbia in Helsinki. In the meantime I fled to my Land Rover for a while and completed most of this text while sitting in the front seat, the computer on my lab. After running out of battery I am now back where I started out, just inches away from the TV, close to the only electricity socket for miles.

The Mauritanian campground guard, Hassan, is still here and watches the game without much interest. I wonder how he imagines Finland to be like.

First goal for the Serbs! After only three minutes played. Beautiful pass into the center and Jankovic takes it directly and places the ball in the upper left corner of the goal. Spectacular.

Hassan decides to take a little nap.

Best
Christoph.

my latest dispatch:

Dear all,

I am in Southern France.
A couple of days ago I started on a half year long overland trip with my trusted Land Rover from Daun in Germany to Capetown in South Africa.
First plans for this journey were made in 2002 while on the road with the same vehicle from Buenos Aires to New York, a project that resulted in a book called Travel Notes. (powerHouse 2007, http://travelnotes.christophbangert.com/)

The final decision for this latest trip to Africa was made in Baghdad, where I spent about nine months on assignment for the New York Times during the past two years. Working in Iraq was professionally and personally probably the most challenging, serious, and also frustrating experience of my life. I spent the last several months putting together a photo book with pictures from Iraq. The book will come out this fall and will be published by powerHouse.

The idea was to keep my life somewhat balanced and to do something that is challenging in a different way than war journalism. I was hoping that this journey would help me to keep a healthy distance to places like Iraq, Lebanon or Afghanistan, so I will be able to go back there again with a fresh eye and without becoming a cynic or loosing faith in the human race over the years.
Basically it’s about keeping my sanity.

And just to make this clear:
No, this is not a vacation. No, I am not retiring from covering wars, and I am not planning to become a landscape photographer. Yes, I am available for assignment all over the world, at any time.

On my journey I will visit Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Republic of Congo, Angola, Namibia and South Africa.
I will generally travel alone, but will have occasional visitors. Right now my girlfriend Chiho is with me, but she will fly back home to New York tomorrow.

I will constantly be available by local cell phone and Thuraya Satellite phone. (+88216-51071135)
Email will work as well, but there will be times when I will only be able to check emails every three or four days. I do have an R-bGan Satellite device, but won’t be able to use it constantly because of the high cost. This is a low budget, self-assigned project.
In urgent matters, feel free to call or email Chiho in New York. chihochiho@mac.com , +1-917-679-4440
For picture requests please contact laif in Germany (http://www.laif.de) or Redux in the US (http://www.reduxpictures.com).

My current location and updated contact information you will always be able to find on my new blog along with some new images and short texts. The blog also has a map function, where you can exactly see where I am. Like a UPS package…
http://africa.christophbangert.com/

Once in a while I will write a mass email like this one to keep you informed about my whereabouts.
If this should annoy you, please let me know and I will take your address off my email list immediately.

All the best
Christoph.

Christoph Bangert
-photojournalist-
currently in Southern Europe,
on the way to West Africa
cell Germany: +49-170-8642912
Thuraya Sat phone: +88216-51071135
me@christophbangert.com
http://www.christophbangert.com/
http://travelnotes.christophbangert.com/
http://africa.christophbangert.com/
http://www.laif.de