Faced with a Challenge

Posted in Ethics, Methods by Nathan Clendenin on February 1st, 2006

Was up early for morning prayer, arrived in Mamelodi at 5am.  After prayer I moved to Selina’s house where she was bathing the children.  Then I headed over to Granny’s and took some photos of her and a few even with the grandchildren, which has been hard.  Showing her interacting with them, caring for them.  Visually, her story is difficult.  On paper it’s a perfect story.  An old woman, who might die in the next 5 years, caring for 9 orphaned grandchildren on her measly 800 rand/month pension.  As she says, “I’m pulling with one gear.”  But visually, it is difficult because there is not much emotion in the house, she doesn’t interact very much with the children, two of the girls, one of which is pregnant and due any day, don’t totally feel comfortable when I’m around and usually go to another room, plus her house is not very run down, compared with many other Mamelodi homes I’ve been in.  I am faced with the challenge of choosing this difficult story, versus another story involving a family of 15 or so living in a very bad house that leaks, has only 2 twin beds and no money or food.  This story is much more about poverty than AIDS though, because they are orphans but there’s no way of telling for sure if their parents (there are two sets involved, so there are brother/sisters and cousins living together) dies from AIDS.  Most of the neighbors say that the mother of one set of parents committed suicide because she had it (back in the mid 90’s when it was very taboo to talk about it even).  But I won’t be able to have any of the children tell me that.  So they are indeed orphans, struggling to the fullest, and their living conditions are very visually easy to portray, but it’s not a clear AIDS related thing.  It is likely that some of the children have AIDS from sleeping around, and there have been rapes also from men breaking in at night, but I don’t think anyone has been tested and nobody is sick right now at least.  My hunch is to hang out with that family just a bit and see if I can talk about HIV at all and see what they say.  I also don’t want to give up on Granny and her orphans, just because it’s a difficult story.  I think I can shoot both and decide when I get home, and maybe even use both, emphasizing poverty on one and orphans who will be left without support in the Granny case.