New Jersey: A Smithville Facet

United States. New Jersey. Smithville at sunset. 

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Etats-Unis. New Jersey. Une facette de Smithville au coucher du soleil.

New York: Times Square Go-Go Dancer

USA. New York. Times Square Area in early sixties. Go-go dancer.

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Etats-Unis. New York. Times Square dans les années soixante. Boîte de nuit.

Brazil’s Amazon: Machete-Wielding Yanomami Woman

Brazil. Amazon rain forest. Yanomami indian cuts a path to an abandoned jungle garden where there is still some manioc to harvest. Her beby girl clings to her back without any help.

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Brésil. Amazonie. Femme Yanomami  s’ouvrant un passage à un jardin abandonné où elle trouvera encore un peu de manioc. Sa petite fille s’agrippe à son dos comme elle peut.

Brazilian Amazon: Yanomami Indian Warrior

Brazil. Amazon rain forest. Yanomami Indian holding bow and arrows. He covered his hair with bird's down.

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Brésil. Amazonie. Homme Yanomami empoignant arc et flèches. Il s’est couvert les cheveux de duvet d’oiseau.

Brazilian Amazon: Crab-Hunting Yanomam Woman

Brazil. Amazon rain forest. Yanomami  woman hunting sweet water crabs inside their holes in the ground.

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Brésil. Amazonie. Femme Yanomami chassant des crabes d’eau douce au fond de leurs nids dans la terre.

Brazilian Amazon: Giant Leaves Shield Yanomami Mother And Baby Against A Downpour

Brazil. Amazon rain forest. A Yanomami woman on a gathering expedition with other women seeks shelter from a  downpour under several large leaves.

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Brésil. Amazonie. Une femme Yanomami en expédition de collecte avec d’autres femmes et jeunes enfants se protège d’une averse.

Conversations With Ava Gardner, by Larry Grobel

Check my friend Larry Grobel's last book, Conversation With Ava Gardner http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E2VK5CQ

Elephant Scare

 In 1992, at the end of a ten-day hike around the Samburu camps of Kenya’s Mathews Range with three Samburu morans and three pack camels, I needed someone to drive me back to Nairobi, the country’s capital. So at dawn the next day, with Leneemi, Lekerepes, and Lalaur, I walked to a lodge in the Kittchich National Park to use its radio. For a while we moved cross-country, then followed a dirt road. As we waded through a river a Samburu man caught up with us. He said he was a game warden, and he joined our march. Here is what I wrote in my diary that day.

     On the other side of the river the road climbs out of the valley, littered every twenty meters or so with the dropping of elephants that came to drink earlier.  They are so fresh that the urine in which some of them sit has not yet soaked into the dusty ground. The warden looks around warily.

     "This is a dangerous time to walk this road," he tells me in English. "I cannot avoid it because last evening I got permission to spend the night home after work under the condition that I would be back to the lodge before eight, but you should not have come this early. Generally the elephants keep away from the road, but in the morning and evening they use it to go drink. Last evening, near here, I was charged by one. I had accidentally banged a can I was carrying, and the noise enraged him. Though I literally flew down the road, he was much faster. I threw myself into the underbrush, zigzagged for my life, and cut back to the road again. Looking back, I saw the elephant hesitate, and give up his pursuit. If we see elephants, do not speak, do not make noise, tread carefully, and they will keep quiet."

     Worried by his words, I scan the bush around for a possible escape road. But there are no trees big enough to climb, and the bush is so closed and thorny that to try to run through it before an elephant would be offering myself to it on a silver platter. I have not resolved what to do in case of an emergency when, on our left, in a clearing not 20 paces away, stands a huge elephant.

     Anguish silences us as if we had just heard a fatal verdict. Looking to the left, we walk as if on eggs--I, on shaky legs. The elephant is feeding. Though he eyes us suspiciously, he does not move. He would make a great picture, I think. And that reminds me of all the times I have had, in the face of danger, similar thoughts though not the courage to act upon them. I survived each time only to blame myself later for my timidity.

     Thus I stop, and while the Samburu walk on, subtly shaking their heads at me in silent reproach, I slowly point my camera at the elephant. I click once, but even that minor sound irritates it, for it lifts his head, shakes its huge ears, and takes three steps in my direction. Horrified, I resume a cautious march. Trying to look immobile, I stretch my steps as much as I can. I try to hurry without haste. Fortunately, the elephant reverts to its browsing. As soon as I lose sight of it around a bend of the path, I run after my companions. Suddenly, perhaps to dampen any further wish to take elephant pictures, they have plenty of elephant stories to tell me.

     "I knew a man," says the warden, "who fell asleep in the bush. An elephant came by, dragged him to a tree, and beat it against it to pulp."

     "Many a Samburu," says Leneemi, "facing alone with his spear a pride of lions threatening his herd, has frightened it away, but those who have seen a single infuriated elephant trample to death twenty of their cows have had no alternative but to run for their own lives."

     As predicted by the game warden, our return through the park much later is uneventful. We meet only three morans on a strenuous eight-day round trip to Marsabit, to the north-northeast, to buy spears from the famed local smiths. Like Leneemi and Lekerepes, they were circumcised and became moran only some months ago. The spears they are carrying were lent to them. Those spears are their only luggage. Their only food will be the milk they will get in Samburu camps, their only water that which they will find along the way, sometimes at great intervals. In the desert, where they will walk one exceptionally long day without either milk or water, they will risk their lives.

Algeria: In Salah's Invading Sand Dunes.

Algeria. Sahara Desert. In Salah Oasis. Area invaded and destroyed by moving sand dunes.

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Algérie. Sahara. In Salah. Des dunes mouvantes recouvrent cette partie de l’oasis.

Belgium:Bruges' Holy Blood Procession

Belgium. Bruges (Brugge). Leading the Holy Blood procession.

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Belgique Bruges. Précédant la procession du Saint Sang