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A Journey's Restless Aftermath
The animals were free, the people were behind bars' as seen in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Cedarburg -- The journey to Africa took five months of preparation, nearly a month of travel and about two months of making sense for children's book author Barb Joosse. For her travel companion and studio mate Vicki Reed, the journey to Africa is ongoing. "I'm still very restless," said the photographer, also of Cedarburg, who accompanied Joosse on her visit as a guest author to the International School of Kenya and the Lincoln School in Uganda. "I think my emotions have settled a little bit, but my attention span is still very short." Joosse, 48, was invited to Africa by the principal of the International School, who formerly was principal of an elementary school in Sturgeon Bay. She taught classes and spoke with parents and students to give them exposure to an author and her work. Children from all over the world attend the schools. For Reed, 43, who used to be a police photographer and photojournalist, it was an eye-opening journey, one that she's trying to sort and sift through as she writes about her adventures, develops her film and hand-colors her prints. "One impression was that the animals were free, and the people were behind bars," Reed said. In the Nairobi home of the International School director, Joosse and Reed slept in a house that had a fence, a gate, three locked doors to the bedrooms, a 24-hour guard and two guard dogs, because "one dog could get ambushed." By the end of their stay, they had learned to sleep through gunshots. While the women were locked in the house, zebras and giraffes roamed freely beside the roads just outside the city limits. "If you could say quickly what Africa is, it is a lot of contrast," Joosse said. She described seeing the "sublime beauty" of a sunset on the Masai Mara Reserve in Kenya as a backdrop for a cheetah and her kill, complete with the smell of blood and the sound of crunching bones. Joosse, whose books include "I Love You the Purplest" and "Mama Do You Love Me," and whose work is published by Chronicle Books and Harper & Row, among others, also described the incongruity of attending a dinner in her honor that was hosted by the U.S. ambassador to Uganda. At the reception "were all these beautiful people squirming to get into the right photographs for the newspaper," while just down the street stood schools that had no electricity, maybe some chalk, and, if "they were really exotic," they might have books. Another time, in the middle of the Masai Mara, when the women got off a plane, which had landed in the middle of a field, stood a warrior ready to greet them with hot chocolate. "You stop being surprised because there were so many surprises," Joosse said. Perhaps one of the most difficult contrasts to deal with was that between the lives of men and women. "It was pretty accepted that women were property," Joosse said. She asked one of her warrior guides, who "for three hours was warm and funny," if he beat his wives. "To my surprise, he said, 'Well, yes. It's expected. We all beat our wives. It's part of the fun,' and then he laughed," she said. "I can't put that in together." Another unsettling experience for Reed was when she encountered a Ugandan woman named Margaret September outside a school where Reed had been greeted by song and a trail of flower petals leading to the building. "I saw a woman in an empty church -- I was drawn to her," Reed said. "I asked if I could take her picture. "She said she had five children: three girls, two boys, and they were all dead," Reed continued, her eyes tearing up. September had three girls with her, whose parents had died. She was taking them to register for school. "I wanted to hear more of this woman's stories," she said. "It was all I could do to take her picture." Reed said she was haunted by visions of the girls who were registering for school. "When they're 11 or 12, they have to start fighting off the men making sexual advances," she said. "I look at my 14-year-old daughter . . . It's very difficult to print pictures of these girls." Reed said she would eventually return to Africa to do a photo essay of the everyday lives of women there. She also may return to try to help the people. In the meantime, Reed keeps up with news on-line, and she plans to support Freedom From Hunger, an organization that directly assists African women by helping them form their own businesses and to become self-sufficient. "I have unfinished business," Reed said. If Reed is still chewing on her African experience, Joosse has digested hers. "Now I'm using the energy I got from it, now I'm using all that stuff," Joosse says. "I feel really strong." But it took her a couple of months to sort everything out, and it took her time to be able to write again. First, she had to physically recover from the trip and put her questions into words. But questioning and answering her questions and questioning them again didn't quite erase "the kind of physical malaise" that had overtaken her. "Instead of the normal waking up feeling fizzy -- that I can't wait because there's magic everywhere -- the exuberance wasn't there," Joosse said, of the days after her return. She surmised that it might have been the result of losing her naivete. But that really wasn't it, she said. It was a culmination of all the warnings and words of caution she received before and during her trip from well-meaning friends, which made her normally adventuresome personality more subdued and circumspect. "I decided I'm not going to be stupid about things, but I'm not going to be cautious, either," Joosse said. "Instantly, the fizz was back. Africa did not silence me, but it made the stakes higher." Since her return, Joosse has completed a children's book about death, "Ghost Wings." And she intends to write a children's book about a boy's journey to Africa, "No Top to the Sky," based on a child she met on her trip. "It's about stretching yourself and leaving devices behind," Joosse said. "It's about what I experienced there. The sky is bluer, the water is wetter. My publishers are very excited about it." Her illustrator will be traveling to Nairobi to visit the same school Joosse visited. Joosse said that her experience has enabled her to be more true to herself. "I take real pride that I ask questions for children, for kids who are not powerful enough to ask questions," she said. "I couldn't say that (Africa) was fun. I couldn't say it was a nice time. A lot of people would not believe that I'd do it again, but I'd do it again in a New York minute."
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