A Life Spent on the Baikal-Amur Mainline.

Filming a large open pit coal mine in Neryungri, Yakutia, Russia.

Neryungri is a long way from anywhere... from nowhere. Yet, 40 years ago, hundreds of enthusiastic, many young, people rushed to the far reaches of the Siberian taiga to build the greatest of all railways. The idea was to create 14 industrial centres and connect them to the world with rails. But, what looked good to bolster the Communist ideal of a "Светлое Будушие," a brilliant future, didn't pan out in the real world. Only one centre was built, making many concider all the effort to naught... the railway to nowhere.

Raissa Petrovna shows me pictures of her garden,
her family and of her trip to China.

To the individuals who built the railway it remains the greatest of all railways. Raissa Petrovna, originally from Bielorussia, came to join the efforts in construction with her husband and newborn child, Dima. "Sixty degres below zero in the winter, but we still worked," reminisced Raissa. "People from all nationalities worked together. Everyone helped everyone." When the railway was built, Raissa stayed on to work accompanying the train to Moscow and back... a journey of 5 days, one way. Recently, and suddenly, her husband passed away. Tears were in her eyes when she showed me a picture of him on the balcony of their house, giving her a kiss on the cheek. 

The north shores of Lake Baikal, where one fifth of
the world's fresh water lies.

Her son Dima, grew up in Siberia and went on to study social work in university. But, there isn't much other work here except for the railroad. Dima also works on the same train as his mother, taking on the night shift.

There are plans to create a BAM 2.0 to help exploit Siberia's riches. But, it probably won't be done in the same idealistic spirit which drove Raissa Petrovna and hundreds of others like her. Their's is a story of passion, toil and family, of simple pleasures and great dreams. BAM is Raissa's life and is her greatest railway.

Most theatres are labyrinths. I imagine even veteran actors get disoriented once in a while. The Mariinski Theatre in St. Petersbourg, Russia is no exception. We filmed all over the old building, all the while following our guide. By the end of the two days of filming, I began to recognize some hallways and could sometimes get an idea of where I was, but if the guide left for a bit, I just stayed put, not wanting to forever roam the halls with ghosts of other lost journalists or stage hands.

The Mariinski has seen a lot of history and has artfully interpreted passing epochs. The evening we filmed, English director Graham Vick presented a modern version of the 19th Century opera Boris Godunov by Alexandre Pushkin. It put the storyline in the events of the fall of the Soviet Union. I felt a bit old watching it, because here is an opera about events which I lived through! They even had a television crew on stage filming the protests.

A new Mariinski theatre will open at the end of this month and I'm glad we got to film in the old one. People working there seemed very proud of their work and inspired by the history and tradition of Mariinski. The new building will have a modern stage built for modern, more technical plays and operas. The old theatre will continue, though and maybe the ghosts of lost soals will simply have another building to wander.

Born in Africa, “Racial” Scars and the Internet Gap

Let’s just say, you’re better off not getting sick or injured in an African village. If the wound or disease isn’t too bad, you may suffer, but you will get better. Anything worse, you’ll probably have the money to pay for transport to a hospital in the city. If you’re from the village, you will probably die. Speaking with most women, they have many children, partly because they don’t know how many will survive. A typical response… “ I have had nine children, four are dead. Now I have five.”

Gbemissola just had another baby nine days ago. She waits in this medical centre until her husband comes back with money to pay for the birth(probably around 10 €). Gbemissola’s face is decorated with scars. Decorated, because it is a symbol of her tribe, the Houli. She says she is neutral on the subject. “That’s just the way things are,” resumes Gbemissola. She won’t scar her newborn’s face. Not because she is against the practice, but because the scars are passed down from the father and Gbemisolla’s husband is Fon, so no scars. In general, this practice is becoming more and more rare.

There is no electricity in Kpokissa. There is no running water. And, of course, there is no internet. In the last 20 years, our lives in Europe, America and Asia, have changed drastically because of Internet. A world of information is at our fingertips. Friends from afar are only a Skype away. When I used to come to villages like Kpokissa, they seemed underdeveloped to be sure. Now, they seem like another planet, but it is more that we in the west live on another planet. The gap between us has increased by trigabytes. A kid in Europe copy-pastes his homework from Wikipedia on his ipad, as Gbemissola’s little baby waits in the dark for his father to return with money so they can leave the rundown maternity… probably by foot.

Taking pictures of misery

I have always said it is not easy to take pictures of misery. Not only emotionally, but composition, feeling of the picture. It is difficult to convey what poverty is like when, many times, it is sunny. The buildings around are lapidated, but still you don’t feel the pain of poverty. People are usually smiling. You know they suffer, but they don’t show it. It is very hard to capture in a picture.

But, today, misery was in plain sight. We were driving back from the border of Togo where we interviewed the Commissar about how he and his men can stop child trafficking. I noticed, just off the road, a bunch of people digging. Then I noticed most of them were children. We stopped the car and I went over to film. Kids, as young as probably 4 years old, were lifting picks bigger then themselves. It was hot. There were a few adults. No one stopped me.

And that was strange too. No one thought anything was wrong with this scene. Kids are helping their parents. But breaking up gravel in the hot sun for sale is no work for small children. One little girl in her little yellow dress, barely looked up when I went to photograph her. Other kids laughed and wanted me to take their picture. It was almost a haunting feeling filming this little girl, this silent little girl lifting the huge pick while other kids laughed around me. What was going through her head?

You're never without help in Africa

We head out of this northern town to the village of Tepridjissi to film a group of women who raise fish for sale. The idea is to give women extra revenue so they can help provide for the family and thus run less of a risk that the children look for work and fall into the hands of children traffickers.

As we arrive at the fishpond, massive black clouds billow at the horizon. The women must have felt something because they weren’t anywhere to be seen. We decided to head back for shelter. Arriving back to the path, we discover the 4x4 vehicle axle deep in mud. Worse, the driver had closed the doors with the motor running and by some automatic system, the doors locked.

As the skies started to open up and the rain came pouring down, we all climbed into the back of the truck. Some women came walking by and asked us if they put their sacks of fertilizer in the back of the truck to protect them from the rain. After a while, a whole group of villagers were hanging around the truck, shivering in the pouring rain. We got out and broke a window to get in the cabin and the villagers helped out, lifting the truck and putting branches under the wheels. The path is now a stream, but after 20-30 minutes, we finally get the truck out of the mud.

The showers stopped our filming for the day, but we had a small adventure and got to share some time with some nice people in a little African village. You're never without help in Africa.

Dédougou, Burkina Faso: Not yet the economic opportunites of a city, but no longer the familiar support of a village.

Lightning illuminates the sky almost constantly. Thunder grumbles and every once in a while explodes as though it were right on top of you. The rain comes down not so much in droplets as in streams. It is the rainy season in sub-sahelian Africa. And it is during these short four months of rain when everyone must produce enough food to last the rest of the other eight months’ desert dryness.

A young girl doing her chores in the shade.

The road to Dédougou from Bobo Dioulasso is paved and pothole free. The toll is 400 FCFA or about 60 euro cents. The heavy rains have inundated some of the crops and the countryside is green with grass, trees and shrubs. Father Philippe, who is driving me to Dédougou has spent over 12 years in the region, speaks the language and knows what it’s like also in the dry season. “Everything is brown and dry,” he tells me. Along the way, there are no electric poles because the villages here have no electricity. They do have mobile phones though as we pass GSM towers every so often. “Usually, someone has a generator and can make a little business charging phones,” tells me Father Philippe.

Learning the land.

Here to do a story on an educational programme for underprivileged (living in the “developed” world, most would probably consider just about everyone here “underprivileged”) youth, I get the opportunity to follow Apolinaire, 16 years old, to his home in Dédougou. Burkina Faso is a Muslim country where men can have more than one wife. Apolinaire, one of eight children, introduces me to his father and “aunt” whom I later learn is his father’s second wife. His mother is in the fields. It is sometimes difficult to get the story right concerning family relations. It is his father, worried about Apolinaire who had left school, who got him into the education programme.

A young girl may have her life already planned.

Apolinaire is still quite shy with the white foreigner. Although most people speak pretty good French, communication doesn’t only depend on the language. There is a big cultural difference. My life must seem as strange to Apolinaire as his life seems to me. At 16, Apolinaire says he would like to know about this thing called Internet. Thinking about all those kids back home glued to a computer screen instead of under the shade of a big tree with the whole (or most of) the family, I wonder who has the better life.

Ibrahim makes the night rounds.

At night in the centre for the programme, I hang out with the crew on night guard. They have to keep an eye out to make sure a goat doesn’t get loose and go eat the budding crop or that a neighbour’s animal doesn’t venture into the school’s fields. As Ibrahim, 16 years old, makes tea over glowing coals, Bernard, 13 years old, beats the adult guardian at checkers and others prepare a meal of To (corn meal) with a sauce of leaves. In this town, not yet a city, but no longer a village, the stars and constellations fill the immense African sky. 

Burkina Faso ; Land of the Honest People

« Faso » in the Joula language means « country ». Burkina in Mouré means « honest » or in French, « intègre ».  So, Burkina Faso is the land of the honest people. Joula and Mouré are the two dominant languages of this land-locked Sahelian country. Marcel, the young man who cleans up around the church grounds where I am staying taught me that. The languages are very different. Marcel speaks those languages and very good French as well. Many Africans are polyglot learning the language of their neighbours as well as the former colonial language.

I arrived on Thursday from Paris to Ouagadougou, the capital. Alain met me in is well-cared for but ancient 2CV. I thought to myself, « are we going to drive all the way across the country in this ? » No, I just stayed the night at Alain’s bed and breakfast he and his wife built and the next day I took an air-conditioned, modern bus to Bobo Dioulasso.

Marcel shows a map of Burkina Faso.

Buses are a great way to meet people. Next to me on the sold-out bus, was Clément, a mechanic in a gold mine near the Niger border. He was going back to Bobo to visit his family. Clément seems to be a happy young man.  « They treat us well at the mine (owned by a British company) and I have a good salary, » he tells me just before his smartphone rings. Clement works 7 days of 12-hour shifts and then has 7 days off. He makes the all-day trip by bus every week instead of hanging out in the capital. « I don’t feel at home in Ouaga. My friends and family are all in Bobo. » He says he always looks forward to seeing the family and drinking beer with his mates. I have the feeling he probably gets more rest at the mine !

Clément may be one of the lucky ones. Walking around Bobo, many young men, even boys, ask me to come look at their necklaces, paintings and other souvenirs. Bobo has a cooler climate than the capital and is clean and calm. But tourists have stopped coming. « With what is happening in Mali, people are scared to come here, » laments Roger.

I am in Burkina Faso to do a story on a programme supported by the Foundation Follereau de Luxembourg to help underprivileged children learn a trade and get a basic education.