Kids

I was checking last month some of the portraits I did of the kids these last years and realized how much they have changed and grown. So had to do dem face dem again. 

On the other page, they wrote and drew things that they want to do this year, or that they like. I like having them participating in the books. My folks always made elaborate photoalbums keeping memories of our daily life the way a journal does. I don't really do photos. I feel that the thousands of digital pics made by cellphones, cameras, are staying hidden in a machine. I like to spend time opening something and having to tell a story, not just zapping. It is about the time spend drawing, the time spend opening and sharing. 

The kids love to draw on the pages of the sketchbook, and many are filled with their impressions of  the holidays, chameleons, dragons, hearts and I Love You graffittis. I love to have them in these pages, it makes it real.   

New school year is starting

Second of Septembre and the end of the long, long, extended holidays. Yeah said the Parents, Yihaa said the kids. first time in a whilethat they were up and running before sunrise.

The car went, and then came silence. 

Biiig silence. 

The type of silence where you cannot not even hear a shout, a cry or some lego crushing on the ground. 

To top it Zesa was down, no power, so not even the rumble and hiccups of the fridges.

Silence from 7:30 till one. 

Then came thunder, and I realised, hearing the three chatting about their new teachers, friends and things, over-shouting each other, that silence was gooooone, and that they were, indeed starting a new year.    

With the beginning of classes, comes new projects too. Did a small study of one of the weirdest creature, walking on his hind legs, full of scales, snot nose, eating termites, and rolling in a ball, theeee pangolin!
Also pretty much endangered.

Week in sketches

It has started, and I do quite enjoy being back to "skool", really feeling that I have to follow what a digital professer tels you to do, over the internet. It somehow pushes me to complete activities and get back to sketching in a bit more systematic way. Which is good. 

The first week of Sketch book skool was set under the tuition of Danny Gregory, and here under are the consequences of my week on paper. Two lessons for last week: 

- sketch something that is meaningfull for you, focus on the feelings it brings. 

- Sketch your day, journal your life and enjoy. 

 I am still struggling finding time to do so, and the distractions such as the world cup are not helping.  

Today is friday and I now am following the next lesson, its really fun. I think that the assignement for next week is : Draw Outside and Try colour pencils. 

Haha, and my challenge is that next week I am running a workshop, in Kinshasa.  First time I will go there.

So no way I can find "confortable" spots, places I am familiar with or people to come along on a sketchcrawl. Great challenge indeed. Will come back next week.

 

Houseboat on Kariba.

Houseboat on Kariba, 

 

House boat on Kariba, a perfect title for a movie that can have tons of sequels. The principle is simple: bring a bunch of people on a boat, and let them float and mature  for a few days,  on a lake full of wild and dangerous animals. And add, as an option, some alcoholic beverages, swords and knives, a fishing rod or two, non-floating children, sun-cream, and kilos of biltongs.  

Depending on the proportions things can go horribly wrong, or beautifully right. For example: throw a non floating child in a crocodile infested lake when the adults are looking for another alcoholic beverage – that can go wrong- , but then add a fisherman and the child is caught and all is merry and good again. Yey. 

There is a story of a houseboat were things went out of hand. A group of friends, happy and jolly good fellows, went for a fishing trip on such a boat, nobody really knows what happened, probably some old frustrations and feud got back on them (most certainly about a girl or a guy on board who had a previous fling with one or more of the partners of the others and drunk eyed them inappropriately, or maybe about the exact size of the bream caught, or divergences on how to resolve Fermat’s problem, or something similar). All we know is that the boat now floats empty, and the people were never to be found. It’s a classic story, the ghost ship etc. but it could be true on lake Kariba. In a place where there is even a paddle steamer, anything can happen. 

Vacans en Sxis/ Halada in Sxis sketchbook

Sketchbook done about my holidays with the kids in the Alps, in a french village next to Chamonix.  

Nothing much much to say about that one, really, except that Emirates Rocks when travelling with kids: private TV with 275h of cartoons, special food and attention, amazing service etc. 

I am still struggling with the scanning process. I am so disappointed with the scanner results that I rather take pictures with my cellphone and use them. Any tips are most welcome.

 

I used some of these figures for a wall proposal in zimbabwe (Check Newlands facelift) 

Gorongosa

Gorongosa, yeah! 

Just the right time to post about Gorongosa it seems, since its top of the news. The army bombed and attacked the Renamo's paramilitaries there last week. The opposition kept some armed men in the district since the end of the armed conflict in 1992. Well it seems to be the end of that. They are out of the place and back shooting people on the road, attacking taxis, villages and creating a rotten climate of fear here. People are afraid that this can mean a new start for the civil war. Nobody wants war, memories are still strong...

Gorongosa is a district of Sofala, a province in central Mozambique, and there is one of the best national park/ nature reserve that can be found.
www.gorongosa.org
The national park is amazing but since Girassol hotels took over the management of the lodges, food and accommodation prices are outrageous, and clearly out of reach for the middle-class Mozambicans. the only way to go is to camp there, or to sleep 50km from the park. It is sad that wildlife conservation is reserved for luxury and wealthy tourists.   
Why Gorongosa worth the visit? Because you will drive within a short space in different ecosystems, from wetlands, bush, plain, fever tree, masasa or Ilala forests, tropical rain forest, mountains etc.
The different ecosystems are always showing something great, and are full of moving creatures.

I went there for two days in September, it was my earthday and my family was in Zimbabwe. So I borrowed a tent and a cooking device, packed a mattress, some food and drinks- mainly cerveja and jumped in my car, to get to the park gates before it closes.

I was driving sweetly until my tyre exploded. For no reason, no potholes, no stones, no dead goat no piece of scrap metal from the previous truck accident. The tyre was completely ripped. No big deal, I have a spare one and changing it shouldn't take too much time.
Or so I thought.
A couple of months before I moved my tyres around and put 2 new ones in the front. I did that in Harare, in a legit shop.
They screwed the nuts back too tight.
I completely broke two wrenches- a shiny one, brand new chinese quality - the seller warned me about the fragility of the utensil but I choose not to listen - and my other old one, who was, well, too old.
I broke 2 wrenches, and was sweating with only one nut off.
A guy came to help, I stopped sweating and started watching. He came to the same conclusion than me, went to fetch a third guy, with another wrench and a 2 meter pipe. It took the tree guys jumping on the pipe to enable to get the nuts off, and then change the wheel. Once the nuts were out it took 3 minutes to change the tyre.
It may seem as a detail, but in wild wacky Afrika, a tight nut-job can make all the difference between life and death. Always better to stay a bit on the loose side.
 I got to Gorongosa just on time and spend the two next days enjoying spending time sketching animals, spending time looking at them, driving little,... just taking time. Generally, when we go to nationals parks with the family, the balance between driving and keeping the kids entertained watching an animal is very narrow. If you drive too much they complain and your game drive will last 2 hours and see all your snacks eaten. If you stop too often they get into a fight and out of 4 children there will always be one who shout/ want to go/ wants to eat/ don't want to share.
So for a WE I enjoyed my own company. I need to do that more often indeed. It is incredible the amount of things to be seen when you do not drive. As well I had the great chance to be in the park when pelicans and African monarchs were there to rest, eat and be eaten.
 Oh and my tent has been attacked by a porcupine at night. I know it would have sounded better for me to say that I was surrounded by lions and hungry hyenas and that I had to defend my grilled chicken against wild and blood thirsty beasts, but it was not the case. I was sleeping and a porcupine' mouth noises woke me up, he entered my tent, then probably saw that I was not his type and decided to leave. It was good. When you lie down half sleeping, a porcupine seems very big. 

So I had a great time.
.
Here under some of the sketches done during the 2 days, trying to fit them all on one page. 
Done in Prismacolour and Unipen. My book (Seawright) is too old and its paper has become very very porous, incapable of holding water any more. So I have to draw dry. I bought 2 such  books ages ago. The first one I used 10 years ago in Benin, and the paper was great at the time. I have since seen that some inks have made their way through the paper of that one. bizarre. must be due to the humidity. And this book I have now is not able to deal with water or any wet thing.


 

Great Zimbabwe

Great Zimbabwe, with its enclosures made of stones without any type of cement, embracing the rocky landscape, its stone hills and kopies. I am not going to jump into the heated debate on who build the stone houses that can be found in Zim and Mozambique, whether Phenicians on a mission for King Salomon, the arabs, shonas, lost tribe of Israel, indians or Ananarkis and other aliens of the like. History is always more fun when people really have something to prove, I think. 

For me it is just really inspiring, to see those big walls, with perfect alignment of stones, that have withstand 6500 /3400 / 2000/ 600 years (depending on your point of view, but in any case it is not older than 6500, because as every one should know, the creation had not happened then yet).

It is great to be in a place that breath greatness, that show with its buildings, traces of a well organized group, a rich culture and strength. It is the most interesting thing to hear the different theories about it, and realize that a lot of archaeological clues gathered on the site might have been twisted and re-twisted by the ones in the boss' seat. 

 

It is sad as well, for at the end of the day, there are great stone buildings but little understanding.  

So this is the story I like most. I heard it from an ancient Mozambican women, who was bling and blind but could see. She told me that she heard this tale from her mother, who heard it from hers and so long since the beginning of times. She was levitating in a small smoky bar in the deep African Veld. After some cups of a local fermented brew, she started to speak and trusted me with the story. She told me that she had no children to pass her wisdom, spoke with deep words she weighted with the thousands of year of oral tradition. When she finished. she died with a last but nevertheless horrible cough.

hum,- am clearing my throat- 

 

A long long time ago, there was a big fuss between the angels. The argument grew nasty and God decided not to intervene in settling the disagreement. He was tired of his last big job, the creation, and needed some amusement and distraction. He knew he had to cut down his staff and get rid of the losers. He was also a big fan of the theory of evolution, and its base stating that only the fittest should survive. One of the group won (the white robe ones). God kicked the losers out of his place, so the fallen angels went on exile, which happen to be on a spinning meteor, and dashed out of space with some key knowledge and wisdom they took from their previous boss. 

The feathered angels thought they got rid of the bad ones and continued having a sinless blast blowing trumpets and organizing the perfect paradise. 

HAHA, they were completely wrong. First because the theory of evolution failed to recognize the power of cooperation and symbioses between species, then because that specific meteor had a boomerang app in, and as an redundant malaria, zoomed past the earth a couple of thousands of years later. By that time the fallen angels, bored to hell on their piece of rock, had to adapt and put the knowledge stolen from God to good use, created TV and produced a show called Star Trek, which inspired them to invent a lot of things among which the machine that can zap you from one place to another. So they did. As soon as they were at a zappable distance from earth, a group of them decided to come. 

And they came with their great skills and technologies on an island they called Atlantis. From there they decided to go and teach the good words of the lost wisdom (referred to as the hidden book) and to push the human good folks into inventing the telly and new episode of Star Trek. 

So, in their flying saucers (they got zapped with the saucers, no incoherence in my story), they roamed the earth, and gave humans the greatest of their knowledge: Building Walls with stones,  without cement, which in itself is a proof of their extra galactic origin. 

Great places have been build where they stopped, in nowadays Egypt, India, central America and... Great Zimbabwe. The indigenous population was very grateful to the aliens and offered them mating partners in order to accelerate the invention of other useful things such as the zap machine, 3-D printers, the perfect expresso machine, flying saucer, universal healthcare, the secret of happiness and the end of stupidity (my story does not stop here). 

Humans were in any case super happy that the fallen angels had started their teachings by the secret of a great stone wall. Very grateful indeed.

The end of the story is not that nice, God got a bit edgy about all that wisdom and knowledge being shared with the descendent of the vegetarian sinner Eve and poor victim of female tricks Adam, so, with style and without any spirit of vengeance, he flooded Atlantis and spread the theory that is to doubt about the fact aliens are among us, or within us should I say, for these sneaky fellows were more than happy to bring some diversity into the genes of the humans they met. 

It was, however, very unfortunate for Europeans, who, at the time, had followed God's plan and invented cement for their castles. They understood that they missed out on the extraterrestrial parties, and grew frustrated about it ever since. 

SO To make it short, Great zim was indeed build by native zimbabwean, under the leadership and direction of inspired aliens, and that is why, when the english, portuguese and dutch people got there, they were unable not to recognize the touch of the fallen angels, and still utterly frustrated about what they missed, had to work very hard to find all the hidden links between them and the constructions. 

That is the story of Great Zimbabwe. Dare to prove me wrong. Am waiting with a smile.

That is my dad having a nap and baby Elena playing with a wasp 

Elena sleeping, Naomi in her princess dress, Charlie playing with her and Oscar far away, running to be the first on the hill.

Fred+Elena+sketchbook