Kaya

Kaya, the little girl who lives at the backpackers where we stayed in Coffee Bay, Eastern Cape.

Patrick, our 'ferry' guy, that rowed us across the Mtata mouth.

One of the very common sights around Coffee Bay...

Magic boys

As we drove towards Coffee Bay in the dark and on a road splattered with potholes , our fancy rental car got an unavoidable puncture. The next morning we had to take the tyre to a man called Magic, who fixed it while we waited. Soon enough we had the neighbor's two little boys curiously watching our every move.

My friends, Steve and Ilse started playing a chess-like game with bottle-tops in Magic's garage. I can't remember the name of the game, but only the most important rule: "A touch is a move!".

After a while the boys grew bored of watching the game and discovered an Auto Trader magazine that provided them with a wonderful escape into the world of cars. At this point, I was still curiously watching them.

I thank God for a blessed weekend with wonderful people, a puncture and everything else that flowed from it!

Coffee Bay, May 2010

Josh

It's been a while... I drove to Blouberg two weeks ago to photograph little Josh, an appointment long overdue.  Josh got attacked by a big dog a few weeks earlier and still had some remains of the scars and a couple of band-aids on his cheek as reminders of the episode.  

The pic was one of those moments that I can only thank God for, I couldn't have orchestrated it close as beautifully as He did...  The light, the stone in Josh's hand, the plaster, the expression on his face- I don't know. I watched 'Where the wild things are ' recently, and it just gave me a new perspective on the complex life of boys trying to find their place in the world.