As many of you know, I have been looking forward to offering a workshop on photography for persons from four established parishes here in southern Madagascar – three participants from churches in Toliara parish, one from Fort Dauphin (a three-day trip each way from Toliara), and one from Sakaraha. In addition, several other participants who are involved in the English-speaking program at Ankilifaly were able to attend. September 1-3, this past Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I met with 8-10 persons from 9-noon and from 3-5:30, including Aubin, who is an excellent interpreter. I could never have done it without him! The participants included Zefa, Dauphin, Bon Admit, Victor, Mbinitsoa, Rija, Dacise, Josianne, and Johnson. With donations from Ascension parishioners, I brought five cameras for the parishes; the participants learned to use the cameras and also learned basic principles of photography. Most had never used a camera before and none own one. Since we had more participants than cameras, they shared. And we practiced a lot!
As you will see in the pictures, all of the participants were very serious about their photography, eager to help each other, very much enjoyed each others’ company, and formed a small community through which they will support each others’ continued progress as photographers for their parishes. They also learned a lot, as their photos demonstrate. They will be taking photos at the youth conference in Toliara next week and of the experiences and work of the mission team that will arrive in a couple of weeks. I shared with them many of the ideas from Jan Phillips' book God is at Eye Level: Photography as a healing art and practical guidelines that have been helpful to me.
We took a field trip Thursday afternoon to a sacred site outside of Toliara with huge ancient banyan trees. On Friday we went to the Victory Hotel, where missions teams typically stay, and took photos of the beautiful gardens, gift shop, and each other. Then we went to the Gathering Place, learned about the history of the church (Andranomena) on the site of the Gathering Place and took photos, including the beautiful sunset. I am sending photos to Fr. Brett in this email and several others. The photos include some I took, but the majority of the pictures I am sending from the class meetings and field trips were taken by the participants.
It is difficult to describe how much fun I had! Bishop Todd and Patsy are wise in suggesting that one bring one’s passion to Madagascar to share with people, and I lose track of time taking, editing, and enjoying photos. The workshop and field trips were a wonderful way to get to know the participants, thanks to Aubin’s help in translating and Patsy’s willingness to take all of us in their truck on the field trips. Hopefully the pictures will make sense without more details. Enjoy the photos and all the smiles in them (by the way a number of the photos were taken by the participants with the self-timer feature). Most of them will probably not make it into this blog posting, but you can view them in the Madagascar slideshow on our church's website, www.knoxvilleascension.org
Peg, from Toliara 9-5-10
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