Madiba's People

Madiba's People is a collection of photographs taken during 2 time frames, the latest being  2011 - 2013 while I was living in the Eastern Cape, Wild Coast amongst the amaXhosa people in the rural apartheid era homelands (formerly known as the Transkei). 

 This set is called "Makhelwane (My neighbour)"

During the time I was teaching English and basic literacy to the local people and established a Reading Hut for the children in Coffee Bay.  Please have a further look at my blog www.wildcoastgypsygirl.blogspot.com to read about my adventures here.

The earlier set is from an earlier project during 2007 - 2008 taken in the Cape Town townships of Khayelitsha and Imizamu Yethu, while photographing for the Niall Mellon Housing Township Trust.  

This set is called "Ilungile (It is good)".

Any prints can be ordered directly from me.  A 40 page Madiba's People postcard booklet is also available to purchase.  Direct any enquiries to me at Lavonnebosman@gmail.com

Thank you for your interest and support! 

Josh

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.

The following pictures were taken during 3 weeks spent in Greece, (Athens, Crete and throughout the provinces of Messinia and Calamata for Operation Joshua.)  

We were a group of about 150 people from all over the world (SA, America, Canada, Romania, China, Greece, Australia, Holland etc.) delivering 44 000 New Testament Bibles to more than 300 villages in  2 provinces of mainland Greece.  Some Bibles were received with gratitude, but a lot with distrust and we got thrown with Bibles at places and some just ended up in the trash.  We pray that the people will have open hearts to the truth about Jesus and be set free, as the Word that landed on fruitful ground will come alive and spread like wildfire!

For more information visit

 www.operationjoshua.net

Little refugee boy at the Love Meal, Athens

Man at a Café

Our friends from the mountain village

In the morning we read from Isaiah that the Lord will let it rain upon His thirsty land etc.- (I will just need to find the exact scripture again). A thick cloud followed us to our first village of the day.  We hardly started handing out Bibles before I heard the shouts of an angry priest.  I quickly got back to our car as the first drops started falling.  The priest also got in a car and stopped behind us.  He didn’t want to hear a word from us and tore the pamphlet inside the Bible to pieces, for a moment hesitant to tear the Bible as well.  Our Greek speaking guys calmly spoke to him, but he was shaking of anger and ordered us out of the village.  His younger companion also got really worked up and started taking down our number plates and calling the police.  By this time the rain was storming down.  So we left the town and searched for where to go next, as the angry priest sped past us towards the next village.  We ended up driving around a bit in circles and found ourselves on a little road between olive groves.  In front of us a big olive branch lay directly in our path.  We immediately suspected an ambush, but saw that the branch had just broken off by itself.  As the guys got out to remove the branch, a farmer on a tractor came up from behind.  Our guys had a little chat with him and he gladly received a Bible.  So we continued up to the mountain village, where we met Panagiotis (who went by another name because of a story that 3 previous men with the same name died in a row in the same village, and he was trying to trick the angel of death).  Panagiotis and his friends treated us to strong coffee before we went our way and the kids guided us through the village as we continued delivering Bibles.  When we got back to our camp at the end of the day, we learned that we were the only group out of 13 that got rained on that day. 

Dimitri, our young Greek friend

It was the end of the day and we were a bit behind schedule.  We got a bit lost from our group and finally found our Greek speaking guys at the church, speaking to the local priest.  It seemed quite peaceful, which was unusual in our experience.  So we just hung around at the car waiting for them to finish.  This could be a very valuable conversation, because the priest was very reasonable and actually gave our guys the opportunity to tell him more about this Bible (which carries the stamp and signatures of the Orthodox church and should be in no means a threat to them, although many people perceive it as exactly this).  Anyway, in the meantime, young Dimitri kept us company, and although he didn’t speak a word of English, he was very happy to see us, and was quite interested in the 2010 happening in South Africa.  Blessed is this boy.  

The gift of fresh mountain origanum

This day was rather peaceful.  We got thrown out of a village by a priest, who told us to go and collect all the Bibles that we just handed out.  We didn’t, of course.  At another village we met 3 lovely old ladies who received us gladly and were all smiles.  That’s were we also met the friendly English speaking man who drove a taxi (although he wasn’t a taxi driver) and gave us directions.  When I asked to take a photo of him, he quickly got this bunch of fresh origano , that he picked in the mountain, and gave it to us, as well as another big bunch to our other car.