Another image from the recent Conde Nast Traveller assignment to Sao Tome and Principe that didn’t make the final edit.
The red chair
- Post author By Stuart Freedman
- Post date August 2, 2013
Tag: Africa
Here’s another image from a recent Conde Nast Traveller story in Sao Tome and Principe. It shows singer Guilherme de Caravlho playing at home in Sao Tome. Outside the heavens had just opened and a rain storm was passing overhead. Behind the curtain his daughter danced to the music.
I’ve written before about music from former Portuguese colonies: the melancholy, the saudade. Here was a perfect moment to illustrate it. I hope that I did his song justice…
Here’s the first in an occasional series of unpublished images from a recent Conde Nast Traveller piece on Sao Tome and Principe.
I’d just finished a portrait down the road when I heard some music and drifted into a bar (as you do). I found a sound system and a few people swaying to the music between the tables. This elegant woman was dancing the afternoon away.
A thousand stories.
Here’s a recent tearsheet from the German Magazine Brand Eins Neuland. They commissioned me to interview three former alumni of Jacobs University for a special edition on the city of Bremen. I travelled to Ethiopia (Addis Ababa) and Bangladesh (Dhaka) to write the story and made a brief city reportage as well as the portraits.
It’s deeply saddening to discover that in Mali, militants seem to have systematically destroyed much of West Africa’s Islamic heritage by ransacking and torching the libraries that hold priceless Korans and Hadiths.
Some years ago I made a story in nearby Mauritania about the wind destroying the desert cities of Chinguetti and Oudane, both significant repositories of similar ancient manuscripts. I wrote:
“Once upon a time, the Wind grew jealous of the prosperous cities and resolved to bury them beneath the sands so that the only traces were old men and dusty books. So it was that the wind crashed against the purple stone mass of the Adrar, the mountain range that crosses Mauritania in West Africa. It blew until the rocks were carved into sculptures of fearful complexity. It blew until the dunes advanced and Chinguetti and Ouadane, two once mighty cities of scholars and traders of the Sahara, began to choke under the ocean of sand. Today they are almost gone…”
A couple of hours walking the streets of Addis Ababa.
Looking for colour.
Making images for the sheer novelty of it.
The light of an African afternoon.
I’m in Addis Ababa for the first time in eight years on a writing job but stumbled across a beautiful place seemingly frozen in time. If you’ve read this blog before you’ll know of my obsession with the Delhi Coffee House and all those sadly missed palaces of melancholy, the Classic London Caff.
It’s always a pleasure to stumble on a place like this – officially known as the Ras Mokonnen Pastry shop in Piazza – especially when I can’t find any mention of it online. The elderly owner, Mr Lubo tells me he bought it from a Greek man ‘about thirty five years ago’. He’d had it for at least ten years before that and he wasn’t the first owner…
Perfect macchiato, perfect baklava. A moment in time that I wasn’t expecting to find.
Many thanks to my excellent translator, Lily, (Simegnish Yekoye) not least for putting up with my excitement…
You can find it in Piazza – there’s no sign…
