Saturday, May 26, 2007

Connecting the dots ...

Kelli is visiting Beira, and took some time to find my childhood home. Here's her account of that experience.

"But today’s most incredible accomplishment was finding a friend’s childhood home. She grew up in Mozambique and asked me to try to photograph her old house. With the decaying roads and neighborhoods in mind I wasn’t hopeful, but I told her I would try. She printed off aerial maps of the area and gave me her old address – certainly I’d be able to locate this tiny spot 10,000 miles away between two small landmarks. Right?After showing the maps to our driver and patiently driving and then walking in circles for about 30 minutes, not only did we find the house, we found the family who has been living in it for the last 31 years. The neighbors remembered her. They were surprised and very interested in hearing about the first people to ever come back and photograph the neighborhood. It was surreal. They looked at the Google maps and stared at their homes as seen from space. They couldn’t get over the technology, or that a woman now living in America was looking at them from so far away, wondering about the small cement house she once called home. I can’t wait to share the photos with her when I return." - Kelli

I want to share this with my sisters.

2 comments:

Vera said...

Me too, I grew up in Beira. How old are you ? ...

Eduarda said...

Nasci em 1962, e tu?