Tag: photography

Before + Now: Dorothy

“We know that people who buy the coffee are interested to know where it comes from.”

With her loveable personality and seemingly endless wisdom, Dorothy is an anchor in her community. At forty-three years old, she’s no stranger to farming coffee. Her family has been growing it since the 1970s. Farming coffee isn’t difficult, she says, but it takes diligence and hard work.

“Coffee is like raising a child. You have to wash them, nurture them, and look after them.”

The happiest moment in Dorothy’s life was when she learned that she was pregnant. Having been told by doctors that she wouldn’t be able to conceive, falling pregnant with her first daughter (and the five children that followed) was a tremendous source of joy.

Dorothy tries to include her children in the farming process as much as she can, passing on what she’s learned from her grandmother. Growing up, Dorothy’s mom gave her to her grandmother to be raised because she had little means to do so by herself.

“My grandmother became the person who taught me about life and the way to live. She taught me everything I know.”

When she goes out to work on their family’s fields, her youngest daughter tends to follow. She’s recently been teaching her children about the effects of soil erosion, and what they can do to protect the soil. Together, they are planting vegetables around their home and in the small plot of land behind their house to prevent the soil from eroding in the future.

“What is most important though is to lead by example. If I pick up a hoe, they’ll follow and also pick up a hoe.”

Dorothy’s hope for her children is that they finish school but continue to farm, because to her, farming is life.

“The legacy that I would like to leave is to plant coffee trees, so that my children can look at them in the future and say, ‘My mom planted these’.”

“I want to teach them that those coffee trees are not permanent; that they must change them when they get old, so that their children will see them in the future.”

“I was taking photos, hour by hour, of my everyday activities. When you wake up, you wash your face and brush your teeth.”

“I was going to plant yams.”

“An association has helped farmers to keep bees. I was bored staying home, only doing housework. So, I thought let me go out and work with others. As a woman, if you just do housework people think you are not a very important person. I haven’t got a lot of honey…yet.”

“I gave my children each a chicken and one rooster to share. I gave each of my blessings a blessing. Now we will see who gets more chickens. It’s like a test of the blessings. I have to teach them how to have a small business. We don’t know. If school doesn’t go well, the children can start with an idea of what they can do in the future.”

“We were ready to go to church.”

“I took this because of climate change. There is a disease affecting the coffee trees. The coffee cherries are not nice. Some have not ripened, others have dried out. I threw this coffee away.”

“Before + Now” is dedicated to bringing the voices of marginalized coffee farmers into the field of vision of everyday coffee consumers. It includes a series of photographs made by coffee farmers in Burundi, East Africa as well as a large-format portrait of each farmer. This series makes it possible not only to see life in East Africa and the coffee process; but also to connect clearly with the dreams, fears, and hopes of coffee farmers. Read more about “Before + Now” here.

April 29, 2021
Before + Now: Salvator
“I liked seeing other people’s photos and hearing their opinions. Doing that, getting closer as a community, helps us to grow.”

Salvator is a forty-two year old coffee farmer from Gaharo hill in Burundi. He comes from a big family, and is a father to four young children- all of whom he dotes on. “Family is so important to me, especially children. Without them, you cannot be happy.”

During the week, Salvator is not just focused on farming. He is also a member of a Village Savings and Loan Association, the Red Cross, and a traditional brick-making association. It’s not uncommon for people to travel all the way from Bujumbura, the country’s capital city, to the northern province of Muramvya¹ to buy the bricks that are made in this region.

“One of the association’s laws is ‘ubuntu’ or humanity. It is important for me to have ubuntu where I live, in my community.”

To have “Ubuntu” is to respect, love and help each other so that we can grow together. ⁠In Kirundi (the local language spoken in Burundi) “Ubuntu” refers to the grace and humanity of each person that can be shown to other people. It is a complex term that comes from the Bantu languages mostly spoken in Sub-Saharan Africa. It has many interpretations and definitions, but is commonly translated as, “I am because we are.”

“My mom is on the right with my sister who was carrying a baby. They were preparing traditional banana wine that we were going to give as a gift to a relative who was having a party. This is important to me, because no one can manage to prepare a party alone without the help of family, neighbors, and friends. We also used to prepare the wine to drink at home but now there is a disease that attacks the bananas, turning the plant’s leaves yellow. When one banana is attacked, all the trees in the plantation are infected. I had 23 bananas trees but now I have only 5. This disease has particularly affected Munyinya² hill where you can only see a desert where there were once bananas plantations…”

“A salon that belongs to my brother-in-law. He promised to teach me how to style hair.”

“Our Village Savings and Loan Association of twenty members from the neighborhood. We meet twice a month, and everyone contributes the money he/she has. We use this money to give loans to the members and they reimburse with interest. After one year everyone receives the amount they contributed, and we share the interests from loans.”

“I am a member of an association called Dufyature turwanye nyakatsi (Kirundi: “Let’s make bricks and fight against houses made entirely of straw”). We make bricks to sell. This man was finalizing our kiln so that we could fire the bricks. After the sale, we keep the capital in the association’s fund, share the profits, and pay communal tax. We manufacture these bricks ourselves without outside labor and we sell them twice a year.”

“The man had just helped this woman putting the bricks down and she was happy because they were heavy and difficult to carry. The people who do this job have to climb over a mountain to carry the bricks from where they are made to the main road. It’s hard work that is done by poor people who don’t have another choice.”

Footnotes
1. Muramvya is a province in the central part of the country, and also Salvator’s home province.
2. Munyinya hill is a distinct geo-political region in the Muramvya Province.
“Before + Now” is dedicated to bringing the voices of marginalized coffee farmers into the field of vision of everyday coffee consumers. It includes a series of photographs made by coffee farmers in Burundi, East Africa as well as a large-format portrait of each farmer. This series makes it possible not only to see life in East Africa and the coffee process; but also to connect clearly with the dreams, fears, and hopes of coffee farmers. Read more about “Before + Now” here.
April 29, 2021
Before + Now
Cultivating Connection With Coffee Farmers Through Cameras

The coffee farmers we work with have always been central to who we are, but until 2017 their stories were always filtered and shared by me- an outsider looking in. We began Long Miles thinking we knew what farmers needed, but could we really know if we never experienced life through their eyes? In the first years of Long Miles we were so absorbed in the challenges of building a business in Burundi that we didn’t slow down enough to consider this.
Milda conducting the first round of
Before + Now in 2017
Milda with Before + Now participant Dorothy
In early 2017 a PhD candidate named Milda Rosenberg changed that. She came from Norway to intern with us in Burundi and she brought with her some cameras. Her goal was to give cameras to coffee farmers so that she could learn more about what they valued and their challenges. I had never heard of this approach and was really intrigued. In her months with us, we overwhelmed Milda with all sorts of young start up company needs, “Fire up our Instagram account!” “Help with farmer pay-day!” “Take the truck and wait in line for fuel!” “Photograph harvest!” Milda ended up handing out the cameras to farmers when she had just a few weeks remaining in Burundi. Despite the truncated time table, the results of her project opened our eyes to a new way of connecting and thinking. After Milda left, I was determined to carry on the project and in 2018 we re-launched it.

Once we began we got glimpses into farmers’ everyday lives, which felt like sacred ground. It was such an honor to meet newborn babies, attend funerals, and learn to love their sons and daughters through their photographs. Our team sat for hours on small wooden village benches hearing important stories and digesting meaningful photographs. Images of devastating rains wiping away valuable coffee trees were sandwiched between pictures of smiling children and church services- a testament to the complexity of life. We learned new things about how farmers approach the painstaking and time consuming acts of caring for, harvesting, and transporting coffee.

Forty farmers, twenty from Bukeye and twenty from Heza, participated in Before + Now. This is such a small amount of what they photographed and had to say- but it’s a start in sharing the beauty of their lives and perspectives.
November 18, 2020
Family On Polaroid Film

Today I was talking to some friends about joy. Specifically about what gives us joy. Photography and family were the two things that immediately popped into my head. Yes, I LOVE photographing other things… but I feel so much joy photographing my boys’ journeys into grown-up-hood (lets face it… they might protest this whole thing soon!). Like that photograph of my Biggest Little and his “Myles’ Magic French Words” card. We made him that so he had words he could show his teacher if he was struggling to understand French at school. Lentement means slowly, in case he wanted his teacher to speak more slowly. I don’t think he ever used his magic French cards at school, but it made him feel more secure having them. Now he doesn’t even take them to school anymore. He just speaks.

So much of life can be forgotten so quickly. We humans adapt and adjust, and before we know it… we forget that things were ever different. That’s why I photograph them… so that I remember how we like to make a game of having no electricity, that they once loved to cuddle, that my Littlest Little sometimes puts his foot up on the table after he’s eaten breakfast, that they can’t get enough of building towers or hijacking the nearest computer. I never want to forget, because it all goes SO FAST doesn’t it?

Love,

me

Hasselblad 501 C,

with Polaroid back

Fujifilm FP-3000B

February 22, 2012
Happy Weekend! Hope you make time to appreciate all the little things that make life great… like underwear.

Love,

Kristy

August 20, 2011
Expanding.

Last night we signed papers to sell the house. It is a solid offer, and we”ll know within a few days if the whole thing is going through. I know it will, I can feel it. This is it. In eight weeks we will have the family packed and we will be leaving the place that I have called home for nearly a decade. The home I brought my children home from the hospital to. The home where we’ve had countless parties and numerous family style suppers, to the sound of the African night birds and the sight of twinkling fairy lights. We’ve hosted countless guests from all over the world here. Grandparents. Friends from college. Friends of friends. They have all had a space here. This is our home. Here we have journeyed into the people we have become. We’ve… Become parents here. Laughed here. Cried here. Lost things. Gained things. Failed. Succeeded. Pursued a big dream. Seen it come to life, seen it flourish, seen it move us.

As I was photographing the most beautiful pregnant woman in the world yesterday, I could not help but think… as this baby comes, we will leave. Two births at one time. I feel tied to this baby I have not met, but already love. We are linked, because this baby is our starting marker. We will look back on life with these friends and say, “Don’t you remember, we left for Burundi when she was born.” As that baby grows multitudes every day inside her adoring mom, I am aware that this is urgent. Time is overpoweringly short, and this little baby girl has become my inspiration. She reminds me every day that I have to grow too. If I can not expand my comfort zone every day and embrace this journey every day I know I will fail to meet this amazing year head-on.

Despite the sadness at leaving this house and this life, I am awe struck at the perfect timing of it all. Had we sold the house at any other time, we would have had to rent somewhere else before we left and it would have put our family in an uncomfortable limbo. For this perfect timing, I credit God in all his amazing-timing-ness. I am very grateful, and very sad. Now I have to decide what parts of my life will fit into 6 suitcases and one vehicle that will journey with Ben on an 11 day drive from Durban, up through the heart of Africa, hopefully arriving in one piece in Burundi. He will drive a vehicle that we have not bought yet, and that we have no idea how we will afford, on roads that I am trying desperately not to worry about, through countries that make my totally nervous. Here. We. Go. It’s time to trust.

Luv,

Kristy

March 20, 2011

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