Monday, May 14, 2007

walking on paths with no names

In late Spring, the land sweats. The sun, in its Caribbean intensity, burns off any moisture from the earth and, as you walk, the water vapor being sucked from the dirt forms droplets on your skin. By late morning, all signs of the evening rain disappear in the cumulus clouds.
The countryside never hints at the 21st century. Neither modern structures nor sounds of industry interrupt the serene poverty. The sensation is at once as beautiful as it is tragic. Did time along with everything and everyone else just forget this corner of the world?
A woman prepares peanuts on the top of tomb of someone she most likely knew. This evening, her younger brothers will probably sit on the same tomb with a bottle of clarin (Haitian moonshine) and talk loudly into the night sky. Life goes on here, despite the lack of technological crap and electricity and cars and screened windows and tiled floors and three story houses and 7-11s, with persistence and passion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Down the road from the camp in Juba is a graveyard. It's full of trash and goats and smells pretty bad. I suppose reverence, acknowledgement, and indifference span a large scale.

It's still a great shot you took.