The lady with the light
Be inspired: It is all about the lens.
Put on dark glasses and you’ll see dark things. Change the lens and new perspectives emerge. There is a tendancy for journalists (and filmakers and photographers) to focus on problems, to show the dark side and not the light. There is mystery and danger in the dark. There is the hidden side of life. There is a deep tunnel of unknown. But what about the light? What about the end of the tunnel? What about the solutions? What about the challenge of seeing things through a lens which can guide and reach into the brighter parts of humanity?
I have learned from my travels that if I choose to see the negative, the negative will surely be there. I’ll see the slum and not the school. I’ll see the pothole, not the pipes. Or the muddle over the map. Most dangerously, I’ll see the dark and not the light.
Case in point on my recent trip to Uganda. Walking through the dense bus park one rush hour afternoon, it was a hive of too many people and too little space. Hawkers out selling their wares. Touts looking for your business on their bus. People trading all things from watches to wellies. At the best of times it is a warren but on this particular afternoon it seemed worse, and to beat the crowds with an even harder brush, the temperatures were soaring. But a bus is what I needed and so the bus park was where I needed to be.
However some push and shove, and more push and shove, and then some more, then a nudge to my shoulder and a nudge to my hip and a bit of a spin later, I realised my wallet was gone. Credit cards too, plus the only money I was carrying to get me back across the city to the hostel I was in. Not good, not good. But the hostel was far, and now I was broke. How will I get back? How will I cancel my cards? Darn, I should have written down that banking number, or better, memorised it. But as we all know, hindsight has the magic of annoyance and right then I was in a bit of a bind. So I sat on some steps, trying to get my bearings.
All I really got however were some tear swelled eyes. “Grow up”, I tell myself, “not the end of the world”, but the thought of having to walk across the busy city, now with dimming light, is not appealing, especially with my sense of direction. Some tears fall, and just as I was about to let out a few more, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder, “What is wrong Madam?” It is the voice of a woman with a smile as soft to match, “What is the matter?” she asked again. I explained. By now a healthy batch of onlookers had now gathered. “Don’t worry, don’t worry”, they said in chorus. The woman was at my side,”Come with me”. So I did. Taking me into her little shop I see basins, buckets, cloth, locks, mobile phones, Russian manequins, a coke machine and, if I am not mistaken, a grandfather clock. Yes, a typical hardware shop in Kampala.
But I don’t have time to dander. There are cards to cancel and the minutes are precious. So I explain I have to get back to where I am staying. Quickly. She beams another smile and within seconds there is a man at my side. He is a bodaboda or moped driver. She has already paid him to take me wherever I need to go. As bear hugs go the one I gave her was borderline crippling.
I came back a few days later to look for the shop. My credit cards cancelled, but not my conscience; I couldn’t get her off my mind. But one shopfront looks much like the other in that area of town. A basin is a basin is a basin, and it all was just a blur. I wandered and wandered, but there was no sign of that gentle smile, no miraculous grandfather clock.
So I never got to thank her, or pay her back. I never got to tell her how amazingly kind she is, or how generous. So instead I have decided to tell you. And now, when I think about that rush hour mayhem, I am reminded of two things: of the light, that better side of our humanity which comes up for air when we need it most; and oddly of my trouser’s hem, where I really should sew in a stash of ‘mug money’, otherwise hindsight may just have another day out, and that really would not be a good thing.
With thanks to the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund and Connect World for their generous support for this project.
Words and Images by Clare Mulvany
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