Jacqueline Kubania
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| An aerial view of Nairobi at dusk. The Unscrambling Africa project, a 15,000-mile road trip across southern Africa, will begin in the Kenyan capital. Photograph: Mutua Matheka |
Four Kenyans about to embark on a road trip from Nairobi to Zimbabwe plan to overturn hackneyed perceptions of Africa by documenting 13 major cities
Everybody likes a good road trip and Mutua Matheka is planning one that will take him on a whirlwind tour of Africa in an ambitious project to explore urban life across southern Africa.
Eschewing the traditional safari route with which the continent has become synonymous, Matheka and three of his friends will travel and document the lives and vibes of people in 13 cities in 10 southern African countries.
His motivations are eloquently captured in the trip’s title: Unscrambling Africa. “It is a play on the colonial partition of African land, the scramble for Africa, that introduced borders which violently separated African people,” explains Matheka. “Although colonialism is now long gone, those borders still exist, more so in our minds, where Africans rarely know about what goes on in neighbouring countries.
“Unscrambling Africa will aim to explore a section of Africa, tell stories of its people and its cities through visual documentation, and – hopefully – stir curiosity and a sense of togetherness among Africans who follow our journey.”
The team includes Lulu Kitololo, an artist and designer, Joe Were, a photographer, and Josh Kisamwa, a documentary film-maker. They will leave Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, on 10 January and spend eight weeks on the road, travelling through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
The group will document their travels through blog posts, YouTube vlogs, podcasts and Instagram posts. At the end of the 15,000km journey, they will produce and sell a web video series, a coffee-table photo book, photographic prints, colouring books and postcards. If they can raise enough money, they also plan to exhibit their work in the cities they visit.
The decision to focus on southern Africa was influenced by the fact that, of the countries they plan to visit, only South Africa requires Kenyans to obtain a visa. In 2013 the African Union announced plans to abolish visas for all African travellers, but in the meantime many states in west, central and north Africa have stringent visa regulations for African travellers, making journeys within the continent difficult and expensive.
For six years, Matheka, an architect and father of two, has been taking striking photos of Nairobi. He likes to scale tall buildings and capture bird’s-eye views that offer an alternative to the bleak portrait often depicted in the news, where poverty, wildlife or societal failings resulting from corruption are often the focal point.
Matheka’s photos convey a sense of a bustling metropolis alive with possibilities and interesting people with interesting stories to tell.
We will rely heavily on their local knowledge and we hope to take great pictures and clips
Mutua Matheka
But photographing Nairobi isn’t easy. Photographers often fall victim to harassment by police and local council officers, and are sometimes arrested or have their equipment confiscated.
There is increased paranoia about photography on the streets and in shopping malls after 2013’s Westgate mall attack, which left 67 people dead.
Matheka has had his share of run-ins with the authorities, whom he says are often just looking for a quick way to make an extra buck by extorting money. “I have lost count of the number of times that I have been in confrontations with the police, watchmen or city council officers in the course of my work. They always ask to see my ‘permit’. But because I am aware of my rights under the law and I know that permits are only for commercial photography, I am usually able to talk myself out of any tight spots without acquiescing to bribery.”
Matheka hopes the cities he visits during the Unscrambling Africa project will be more amenable to street photography. However, just in case they aren’t, he has identified local artists in each city who can show him the ropes and keep the team out of trouble.
“A lot of Unscrambling Africa will involve collaborative efforts with local photographers and filmographers in the cities we visit,” he says. “We will rely heavily on their local knowledge and we hope to take great pictures and clips with them.”
The quartet has ploughed roughly £8,000 of their own money into the trip, with a successful Kickstarter campaign crowdsourcing a further £28,000.
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