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Who owns this land?

Published August 24th, 2011

I am in Nairobi in preparation for a photography assignment in Samburu, in central Kenya. Yesterday I went with friends to the Nairobi Wildlife Park, an important corridor for wildlife – giraffe, lions, buffalo, ostrich, baboons and amazingly many others. My friends exclaimed that there are new housing developments at the edge of the Park since the last time they were there. Kenya’s population was 10 million in 1975. It is now over 40 million. Housing is at a premium in a land where ministers of parliament earn more than Obama. Two hundred years ago, the British Colonials took this land from tribes who had lived on the land for 30,000 years. They have learned to do the same thing in turn. It is no longer enough to live on the land in order to claim it. The animals here will also have to learn to purchase what has been theirs for the past 30-50 million years. Or move to the United States, as other famous Kenyans have done, where the salaries are lower and the Parks are closi ...

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Fishing in the Desert...

Published August 15th, 2011

Paracas Reserve, located about 260 miles south of Lima, Peru, is one of the driest places in the world. "Paracas" is Quechua for "raining sand..." It covers an area of about 335,000 hectares and is one of the richest fishing areas in the world. An anomaly for a place where it never rains. The fishermen must travel for many miles across the desert plains because within the Paracas reserve, the largest population centers lack basic services such as drinking water, electricity, sewage services, garbage collection and schools.

The one exception is the tiny restaurant shown here, which serves tourists who travel across the desert sands to eat delicious fresh fish caught that day in the Bay.

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Published August 15th, 2011

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