Returned today from Northern Sweden with my parents where we took what I’m now dubbing our “Arctic Road Trip”. Activities enjoyed included jumping at the Arctic circle, taking a moose farm detour, visiting the summer stuga (cottage), digging into reindeer meat, riding in a dinghy, fishing, eating surströmming, hiking, checking out Storforsen, trying all forms of lax (salmon), floating (yes!) in a Falu red cottage in the middle of a pristine lake, and lots more all in 3 days.

So I’m currently backlogged sorting through photos and stories while still entertaining the parents here in Stockholm.

Wanted to share my latest BBC essay in the meantime.

The backstory behind the photographs is pretty sweet. I was hanging with fishermen and fishmongers at Ebute Lekki (also online at BBC) when I saw a couple of  kids dressed in yellow and green uniforms walking towards the shore.

Curiosity piqued, I asked one of them, Musili, a 13-year teenager who was holding a wooden paddle where he was going.

“Home,” he replied. Across the lagoon to his village.

So I grabbed my camera and started snapping away as dozens of children loaded into wooden canoes and began their daily commute.

After sorting through 1,400+ photographs, I’ve finally picked just 145 shots to showcase online. Loved traveling around and experiencing Egypt in a new way. The people were exceptionally warm to the point of foregoing routine and protocol as evident by this dispatch.

Check out the Egypt Photo Gallery (145 photographs).

You can page through the thumbnails using the black arrows in the gallery, and then click on a photograph to enlarge.

Also  published a few photographs over at Matador Trips in a piece titled – Egypt By Sea and Sand.

[ 4:35 am ]

I stumble upon what appears to be security once I cross into the domestic travel side of the airport.

Three men stop abruptly, taking me in like I’d walked in with firearms. The small narrow alley is filled with three clouds of smoke. The one closest to me is a burly man in a tan security uniform and equally burly black mustache.

He holds a lit cigarette in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, and is standing behind a small podium I assume is a form of passport control.

“Yes??” he asks me. I’m not sure if I am lost.

“I’m trying to connect to Hurghada,” I respond.

Setting his cup of tea down, he summons using a hand towards one of the other two who begrudgingly pushes off a chair and drags over to a scanner. He flicks on a switch and the machine grunts for a few seconds before resuming its normal flow.

He’s ready for my bags.

The burly smoker reaches a hand towards me, cigarette still in the other.

“Your passport?”

I slip the new blue book in his hand, unsure of what the outcome would be. Before flipping through it, he studies me through brown eyes beneath heavy black brows.

With my trusty green passport, at least I knew what was at stake. I knew all the possible scenarios that could play out. It came from two decades of travel with that little green book, now in its fourth edition.

This new blue book seems foreign.

“You, Oprah Winfrey?”

As if playing charades, he drops his cigarette and mimics the flow of hair over his head, moving his hands in wave-like motions. I find this quite amusing but play along, even though long locks of braids flow down my own head, in direct contrast to the mass of relaxed curls Oprah usually carries.

I didn’t expect him to know these details. Deciphering black hair remains complicated even for me.

I remember a dear white friend who’d once complimented a passer-by on her hairdo before asking if it was real or not. After all, he had freer rein with me when it came to those types of questions. She’d first cut him a piercing reprimanding look that said, How dare you? before following up with some verbal vitriol.

The burly, now non-smoking passport control officer grabs my Egyptian visa sticker and attaches it to a free page. He stamps the book and hands it back to me.

“Shukran!” I offer up some thanks.

“Bye, bye Oprah Winfrey!” he waves me off.

Next, I proceed over to his colleague with the scanner, barely ten feet away.

I place my bags on the belt, and look at the other security officer now sitting behind a computer screen which appears black from my angle.

I’m not sure what he is looking at. He is sipping some hot English tea instead.

He senses my concern.

“Would you like to drink some tea?” he offers up.

“La shukran,” I shake my head with a smile. I need something a lot more refreshing.

I wait till my bags pop through the other side of security.

Picking them up, I walk over to a deserted sitting lounge, open up one of my bags to grab a large bottle, and take a long refreshing swig of water.

–

Read Dispatch I here.

[ 3:40 am ]

My Portuguese seatmate, a small framed man with sunken cheeks and blond highlights streaked through thinning black hair asks me a question 15 minutes before touchdown.

Our only other interaction had been a quick acknowledging nod shared four hours ago while boarding in Frankfurt.

“You work here?” he probes, intrigued by my one-page Arabic language cheat sheet.

“No,” I reply. “Just ..hmm…traveling. I need to learn a few phrases, you know.”

He works in Cairo. Been working here for seven months, he proceeds to tell me. He works with aluminum and iron at a factory where out of 200 workers, only 14 or so spoke English.

A nuisance, he adds. After which, he tells me he is Portuguese and slips me his business card.

The Airbus suddenly banks sharply to the left, catching us both by surprise, but from his window seat, we see a sparkling Cairo sprawled across the landscape, shining so brightly even at 3:40 am.

“Look!” he quickly points down to a dark narrow patch of blackness, outlined by dots of light before our plane levels once more.

“It’s the Nile.”

“Ha!” I respond, trying to imagine if the Nile down below cloaked in darkness still exuded her biblical eminence.

The portly Egyptian businessman across the aisle next to me seems unfazed by the plane‘s sharp move. He is chatting up the rosy cheeked German flight attendant with the brown bob haircut and bangs, who is seated directly in front of me, facing me awkwardly.

“So when do you go back?” he asks.

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow??”

“Yes, tomorrow, ” she answers with a smile.

“Must you go home?”

“Yes, I have to. You live in Cairo?” she asks him.

“Nooo,” he retorts with a deep tone like he’d been insulted. “I live in Manchester, England.”

“Oh, okay.”

“So what will you do tomorrow?” he continues.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe go to the market. This is my first time in Egypt.”

“Really? So where is your hotel?”

–

Until they noticed me snapping away and instantly turned into model kids once more…

Currently typing aboard a classic wooden sailboat called La Vela anchored within open waters in the Red Sea. I’m traveling around Egypt this week to often more remote desert locations so internet access will be limited.

The photograph above is of our Bedouin drivers sitting atop a 2,000 year old well out in the middle of the desert….way out in the middle of nowhere.

I’ve uploaded a couple more photographs (under Set II) for you to check out. On my trip this time around, I focused on slice-of-life snapshots to truly capture a sense of the diversity and daily lifestyle of Lagos.

Check out the Nigeria Photo Gallery – Set I | – Set II

I felt uncomfortable watching her writhe in pain, wailing. Other village women tried consoling her, but her screams were deafening. From what I could gather, she’d lost a loved one and her wails were a mixture of grief and regret. Regret that she’d failed them in so many ways. My heart was breaking.

Oh, she was good.

Darn good because it was all improvised and seemed all too real.

To reinforce what they’d been learning in the 3-day community outreach seminar organized by the local NGO, C.H.I.E.F on the topic of orphans and their caregivers, the villagers of Ibeju-Lekki decided to split themselves into groups and put on little plays depicting various scenarios where orphans and their default guardians interact.

One such scenario depicted a stepmom (ironically acted by the chief’s 2nd wife, a natural talent) screaming at the top of her lungs at her stepchild who was a maternal orphan. The point of the play being that verbal abuse wasn’t the right way to treat and take care of orphans.

I love outreach work because it forces one to find new ways of communicating to drive home the grassroots message and overarching point of why an organization is there; helping, teaching, and providing for impoverished local communities.

[ Travel Photography ]

Check out Set I – Photographs from Nigeria (40 photos).

I’ve picked just a handful from thousands of good shots to post online. Will share Set II in the upcoming week as well as more themed write-ups and specific photographs.

I really can’t post them all right now as they’re being reviewed by various sources and for other projects at the moment.

Lagos, Nigeria - One of the vivacious women that sell fish in Lekki village along the lagoon shows off her newly caught Nile monitor lizard.

Shot with Nikon D300 from safe distance.

Now begins the most important week for Christians…

Revelers in an Anglican Palm Sunday procession in Lagos, Nigeria. Shot with Nikon D300