Exhibition
Alixandra Fazzina
Escape from Somalia
BOSASSO, SOMALIA- DECEMBER 2007 : For this group of Somali and Ethiopian tahrib, the days of waiting nervously for their passage are long. There is little to do in the back alleys of Bossaso and the smugglers are keen that their human cargo don’t stray too far. In the heat of the afternoon, a group sit around smoking water pipes and sharing bags of the narcotic qat that they chew and then wash down with 7-Up and green tea. Most sit close to their plastic bags of possessions- a spare T-shirt, a mobile phone, a shawl and maybe a radio and some cigarettes. They have brought little with them on their journeys.In less than two hours, station wagons will come and collect batches of ten passengers at a time. Transporting them to waiting trucks at the edge of one of the town’s camps, where armed gangs will then escort them to the Horn’s remote beaches. Here they will spend their last night at the tip of their home continent. ©Alixandra Fazzina/ NOOR
©Alixandra Fazzina/ NOOR
SHIMBIRO, SOMALIA- NOVEMBER 2007 : Standing in choppy shoulder deep water, Somali refugees look back anxiously from the sea as they try to locate friends and relatives left behind on Shimbiro Beach. Preparing to board one of three smuggler’s boats that will depart simultaneously for Yemen, many of the passengers have become separated from those that they had hoped to make this high-risk journey with.As the crew hauls passengers from the water, each is already soaking wet as they step onboard. Before they even depart, the one hundred and twenty eight Somalis and Ethiopians tied down inside the tiny boat begin to shiver as strong winds blow in for the sea. Their fate is now sealed. Only eleven of the people who took this boat were to ever reach Yemen alive. ©Alixandra Fazzina/ NOOR
©Alixandra Fazzina/ NOOR
Djibouti, Djibouti- March 2008 : Nine year old Kali Abduhi Omar stares at her reflection in the screen of a broken television set as she sits in a make-shift room in one of Djiboutiville’s illicit doss houses.Following a mortar strike on her family’s home in central Mogadishu, Kali and her younger brother have just arrived in Djibouti after spending weeks on the road in a bid to escape Somalia. Their exhausted mother curled up in the corner of the room is sick and scarred from bullet wounds she sustained in the attack. Four other Somali women and their children share the cramped space with Kali as they wait to hear news from a female contact about the smugglers who will help them continue their journey in their bid for asylum in Yemen. ©Alixandra Fazzina/ NOOR
BOSASSO, SOMALIA- DECEMBER 2007 : For this group of Somali and Ethiopian tahrib, the days of waiting nervously for their passage are long. There is little to do in the back alleys of Bossaso and the smugglers are keen that their human cargo don’t stray too far. In the heat of the afternoon, a group sit around smoking water pipes and sharing bags of the narcotic qat that they chew and then wash down with 7-Up and green tea. Most sit close to their plastic bags of possessions- a spare T-shirt, a mobile phone, a shawl and maybe a radio and some cigarettes. They have brought little with them on their journeys.In less than two hours, station wagons will come and collect batches of ten passengers at a time. Transporting them to waiting trucks at the edge of one of the town’s camps, where armed gangs will then escort them to the Horn’s remote beaches. Here they will spend their last night at the tip of their home continent. ©Alixandra Fazzina/ NOOR
There are few places in the world more difficult and dangerous for journalists to work than in lawless Somalia. Similarly, living in the country which has been embattled by civil war since 1991 involves unrelenting poverty, unrestrained violence and little hope for sudden change.
Opening at the National Museum of Kenya, Alixandra Fazzina’s photo exhibition, A Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia, tells the story of the dangerous journey taken by Somalis in a desperate attempt to escape their volatile homeland.
As explained in Fazzina’s project statement : “With land borders cut off or closed, and surrounded by conflict on all sides, one of the only means of escape is by sea.”
Photographed over two years, A Million Shillings follows the path taken in pursuit of freedom from the Somalia reality. Through images that appear more inspired by Baroque painter Carravaggio more than by any photographer, Fazzina shows us the hardships of those fleeing the continent by sea. Viewers follow as hopeful emigrants meet smugglers who will take their million shillings ($50) as entrance fee for the perilous exodus. Traveling by boat from Africa’s Golden Horn across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen and beyond, the terrible journey is the only option for many in search of a better life.
Risking their lives to escape, there is, according to Fazzina, a one-in-twenty chance that passengers on the smuggler boats will not complete the journey alive. The smugglers could as easily be responsible for the death of people seeking help as they could be credited for facilitating safe passage.
A Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia has also been published in book form by Trolley. A serious essay from a country that is largely unvisited by even the bravest photojournalists, this is one of those rare emotional photo series that is at once beautiful and horrible and important and sad.
Alixandra Fazzina’s A Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia
Until May 15th
The National Museum of Kenya April 15 – May 15, 2011. Daily from 8:30am to 5:30pm. Museum rates apply. Museum Hill, Nairobi, Kenya +254 (0) 20 8164135 +254 (0) 20 8164136 +254 (0) 20 8164134
Clint McLean
Links
http://www.noorimages.com/photographers/alixandrafazzina/
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