Meet Grace | Photographer and Night Guard

Grace works here at Bob and Suzy’s as the night guard, but he is also working on starting up a wedding photography business.  Bob told me about Grace when we were in Sudan, but it’s taken me this long to actually meet him because he comes in after dark, and I don’t go outside after dark or else I will get carried away by mosquitoes!

Monday evening Grace came in early and so I went out to officially meet him and talk about photography.  It is very difficult to begin a business here because there is a very small percentage of the population who uses the Internet, and you really have to have a physical location for your studio in order for Africans to take your business seriously.  Grace has business cards, a brand new studio, and a portfolio that he is building (which is really quite good).

Grace invited me to visit his studio, and I have been very eager to get out of the house and out of a car and just walk around Kampala.  Grace came by the house Wednesday morning to “pick me up” and head up to his studio.  I asked him if we were walking there, and his response was, “Well, I don’t know if it is too far for you.”  Haha…mzungus can walk! I asked how far we would be walking and he said it was only about 15 minutes away.  That’s not too far at all! So I grabbed my backpack, cell phone, and a few thousand shillings and off we went. 

Grace had warned me that his studio was in the slums of Kampala…I had no idea what to expect because there are a lot of places here that would qualify as slums in America, but not in Uganda.  Anyway, we walked to the end of Nyangweso Road (our road) and then Grace stopped and said, “Do you mind trespassing?” Ummmm…I guess not!

We walked the 15 minutes (trespassing several times), getting curious looks from passers-by, and then came off of a dirt path onto some railroad tracks…and into the slums.  It was not nearly as bad as I expected.  In fact, it felt a lot like the marketplace in Sudan (I guess when you’ve been to Sudan, everything else is a step up).  Here, slums do not mean dangerous places where drug deals take place and people are injured…they are just very impoverished areas with no running water or electricity.  Again, like Sudan.  However, the people there were very friendly, curious, but friendly.  Not a lot of mzungus venture to the slums…but I believe I will be going back! 

Here are some shots from Kanyogoga (edited to fix, because I was WAY off the first time)…

This little girl was on her way to collect water coming from a pipe from the hillside…

Here is Grace’s studio…

After we sat in the studio and he showed me many more pictures from other photo shoots (he uses Photoshop CS3 to edit, for the photogs out there), we decided to walk around Kanyogoga and meet with some people.  It was so good being with an Ugandan, because he speaks the local tribal language, Luganda, and could ask people if I could take their photographs.  He also got his camera out and we just walked around and played…

They wanted their “snaps” taken.  As I held the camera up, one of the guys asked, “Do you charge for this?” I had gone into this adventure with a pocket full of shillings because I had been told that sometimes the people will request a tip if I ask to take their pictures, so I chuckled when he was asking me if I would charge!

After we walked around a bit, Grace then took me to his friend’s mother’s house, Jennifer, and she and some other women were making the paper bead necklaces and handbags to sell in the marketplace (Whites love them, I was told).  I think I’m going to go back down there and learn how to make the necklaces and such, and just help them work while visiting.

This young woman is weaving a satchel.  It will take approximately one week to make, and she will sell it for approximately $5.  Lord give me Your eyes for just one second; give me Your eyes so I can see.

Jennifer and I…

We also randomly stopped in at a little nursery school that was in session.  It was in a tin shed-type building that was in a state of disrepair, but there was a teacher who was working diligently to teach the twenty or so children how to read…

Some other random photos…

(The building is the background of the above photo is the nursery school.)

Me with some sugar cane…

One last look at the “slums” before I headed out…

It was such a great time! Grace graduated from secondary school and even has a year of university under his belt, so we were able to have discussions about many, many things involving our respective cultures, etc.  It was also a LOT of fun to teach him some new things about his camera.  He shoots with a Nikon, so it took me a bit to figure out how to change settings, but what felt like playing for me will hopefully help him significantly! 

I am very happy for him, because it takes a lot of courage to start something new. As I said, it is especially difficult because it’s not like he can get many clients from the Web first, and then rent a studio space once he has saved enough money. It doesn’t work like that here, which means that there’s a much greater risk up front. I think that his photographs are very good, though, and I can really see him being successful.

Please lift Grace up in your prayers as he takes on this endeavor!