Oodles

We're a little over half way through our trip, and I've already shot 40 GB worth of pictures. For those of you who don't know, that's a lot. It's copious. It's a profusion. It's a plethora, a myriad, a veritable cornicopia (yes, I will again). Oodles. The silly amount of pictures I have taken deserves a word as silly as "oodles". I have kept roughly 3400 pictures. "Kept" is really the operative term here. I have deleted many many more that do not factor into the 40 GB that I currently have saved - at least as many, maybe more. Much to my dismay, retouching pictures and uploading them to my blog is just too painstaking a process for it to be practical while I'm here. The the nearly negligible ability available to make them viewable, combined with the speed of the internet connection and the time it takes to upload really makes it not worth trying anymore. Sorry. You'll just have to wait for another week before I show you anything. Delayed gratification is good for you.

A very high percentage of my photos have been taken from the windows of moving vehicles. Because of the difficulty of capturing the right image in the split second that is available, these are also most of the ones that get deleted. What is really painful for me, are the shots that I see with my eyes too late to capture with my camera. Again, most of these happen in the car, but a handful have slipped through my grasp even while walking around. There's always a focus issue, or a film speed issue, or an exposure issue. Sometimes, I just don't have the right lens on the camera, and by the time I make the switch, the moment has passed. The life of a perfectionist photographer. I've been generally proud of the work I've been doing, but like a poker player who remembers every detail of the hands he has lost, I'm destined to come home thinking of the shots I've missed. I would say I've missed oodles. At least.

On the way home from Limuru, we got a ride back to Nairobi, but we still had to take a mini-bus and then walk a ways to the bus that would take us across town to the hotel. As we were walking, Nairobi was in full swing. It's a huge city, with oodles of people, and the amount of hustle and bustle makes New York look like Fargo. It's just dirtier here. The sun was setting, and the light was perfect. I had my camera with me, and my wide-angle lens all ready to go. It was a glorious moment for a photographer. But my camera was stowed in my backpack. No, it's not broken. Let's go back to the beginning.

As we were riding in the mini-bus, there was suddenly a lot of commotion, and the assistant started yelling out the window. (Taxis in Nairobi commonly have two workers. A driver, and a guy that rides along - sometimes hanging out the open side door - to collect fares, open the door, and assist with luggage.) Then he started banging on the side of our van, and then the side of another van, and then jumping out and yelling some more, and then banging on a car and pointing in the opposite direction. Our driver flipped a very abrupt U-turn. As did three other cars right ahead of us. In the moment, I had no Idea what was going on, but I found out later that there was apparently some dispute between the local hawkers (you know, those who hawk) and the police. The hawkers were throwing rocks at the police. Rock-hucking hawkers. My compliments to the very capable team of driver and fare collector operating our van. They recognized the scene immediately, and with as much melodrama as possible, got us going the other way, along with all of the other cars on the road, before a riot broke out. But we still needed to be on the other side of the scuffle. So we had to walk. Faustin asked me to stow my camera because it was apparently too dangerous to just have it strapped to me. Our safety would be compromised. Reluctantly, I complied, not wanting to worry my travelling companions. Had I been alone, I would assuredly have had my camera out and firing rapidly. Had I been alone, I might have been hit with a rock. I might have been hawk-rocked. But I bet I could have captured some amazing shots. So we walked through a photographer's paradise with my camera in my backpack. I imagined how awesome it would be to have a compartment in my pack with a window for the lens to poke out that would allow me to take pictures remotely with my hand in my pocket. A project for another time. We got to our bus safely, where I removed my camera from its cell, and we mourned together, my camera and I, over the oodles of shots we missed.