Reuters multimedia project Route to Recovery: A trip through the epicenters of the American recession

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According to a 2006 report by the UK-based NGO ‘Womankind,’ anywhere between sixty and eighty percent of marriages in Afghanistan are forced, 57 percent of brides are under the age of 16, and 87 percent complain of domestic violence.  Afghan women suffer from the lowest literacy rate in the world, at 13 percent.  

Photos and video:  Lucy Nicholson

Producer:  Jill Kitchener

 
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Lucy flying with Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah to a campaign rally in Samangan province.  Photo: Tyler Hicks

In Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan on Thursday, the traveling press piled into the back of pick-up trucks following Abdullah Abdullah, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s main rival, from the airport to the Shrine of Hazrat Ali.

Supporters race to keep up with Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s convoy as he arrives to give a campaign speech at the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Around 50,000 supporters jostled between the cars in the convoy, so each truck would accelerate, then slam on the brakes.  Abdullah supporters were grasping the back of the truck and trying to climb up.  It was really challenging to stay standing to take photos without being launched into the crowd every time we went from 30-0 mph in 3 seconds.

Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah is mobbed by supporters as he arrives to give a campaign speech at the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

It was 104 degrees Fahrenheit at the shrine, and all the sweaty media members got separated as we fought our way through the throng.  People were horribly packed and a few ended up in hospital with injuries and heatstroke.  It was brutal fighting my way through the crowd.  Even hard to breathe at one point.  The crowd was all men so I was fighting off wayward hands.  The lens hood broke off one of my lenses and the filter on the front of the lens smashed.

Campaign workers attempt to cool off Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah with water before he gives his campaign speech at the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif in Balkh province.  REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

After Abdullah’s speech, the whole crowd was trying to fight its way back into the mosque.  The security guards forced the door shut against the crush.  I kept knocking to be let in and they eventually opened the door, but the force of the crowd propelled me backwards onto the floor of the mosque.  I was sweating profusely and breathing fast, so a man poured water on my head, soaking all my camera equipment.

Lunch, as always in hospitable Afghanistan, was a beautiful contrast.  Time slowed down as we drank tea from delicate china cups in an anteroom at the governor’s mansion with spinning chandeliers.  Upstairs we entered a banquet hall and were served at least six different meat dishes, rice, naan, okra, soup and watermelon.  Bollywood music videos, and later Abdullah’s speech played on the flat screen television next to Karzai’s portrait.

Then came the rally car drive back to the airport with all the young drivers in the convoy racing each other.  Guys with Kalashnikovs hung out of the back of many of the pick-up trucks and the whole convoy drove at high speed.  They overtook on roundabouts, sounded police sirens, shouted at each other, and screeched tires on every turn, slamming on the brakes for cyclists and donkeys.

Cars tend to barrel towards you on both sides of the road in Afghanistan.  Drivers in both directions abuse their horns until one driver loses his nerve and swerves away from the impact.  We joked about dying, but laughed most of the way because it was just such a relief to not be at the mosque.

The view home flying over the Hindu Kush is a beautiful distraction from the noise, fumes, and claustrophobic heat of the Soviet-era MI-17 “flying truck” helicopters and troop planes the candidates use on the campaign trail.

The remote photo I took of the Olympic flame from the roof of the Bird’s Nest stadium during the opening ceremony ended up on the cover of Time Asia this week.  I had thought the photo was a failure because the torch bearer lit the cauldron with a long fuse, so he ended up being cropped out of my remote camera frame. 

Sportsshooter

4.30am and traffic is actually moving at the busiest freeway junction in the U.S. If only I could drive everywhere at this time.

Photographer Mike Blake has been up all night waiting to hear whether he will have to evacuate from his San Diego home with his wife and son. Luckily the wind has changed direction and the expected firestorm didn’t make its way to the coast.

Californian homes burn fast.

Not like brick or stone houses. A couple of hours after the first spark, all that remains is a pile of shredded paper. The powdery landscape is broken up by satellite dishes, burnt-out car chassis, metal-framed garden furniture and the odd piece of pottery. An acrid chemical smell lingers for days.

Survivors often use the word “rage” to describe the fire blown through their neighborhoods by 100+ mph winds. It cruelly levels some people’s homes while leaving their neighbors’ untouched.

I arrive in San Diego and call our fire photography guru, Reuters freelancer Fred Greaves. I’ve been listening to local AM radio for the last couple of hours and have called the San Diego fire service command center. While there are countless home evacuations and miles of brush burning, there are also no recent reports of homes on fire. I ask Fred’s advice on where to go. “Follow the black smoke,” he says.

Greaves is close to the Mexican border, I am in the east, Mario in the west, and Mike is covering the evacuation centers.

I can’t see any black smoke through the thick grey smoke. Just a beautiful deep red sun rising.

Immediate mandatory evacuations have been ordered in a rural area out east, so I head that way. I cross a police roadblock with my press pass and my car is the only one driving east as I pass miles of traffic queuing to evacuate in the other direction. The wind pounds my car and I finally see black smoke on an Indian reservation in the distance.

I drive through an eerie deserted landscape of burnt-out cars and buildings. A few people are running. An empty casino is untouched. I see a burning home in the distance, so I stop the car. The wind is swirling, throwing sparks from the flames onto the trees in every direction. I run through a field towards the intense heat, shoot 4 frames with my camera then run back to the car. There are no firefighters in sight.

Further down the road a woman is watching her neighbor’s trailer home burn to the ground as her husband sprays their yard with a garden hose.

Next stop is an affluent area in the hills further west. There is a fire truck in every other driveway. I head toward a plume of black smoke where I find firefighters trying to put out a fire in a private vineyard while pushing the flames away from homes.

When I first began to shoot fires in California, Fred Greaves took me to be outfitted in a firefighter suit and helmet with an emergency fire shelter, and told me to wear jeans and cotton clothes underneath and leather shoes.

The shelter is a reflective sheet which you are supposed to whip out and crouch underneath if fast-moving fire heads your way. A photographer from USA Today told me he had to use his once and ended up in the burns unit. He had to ask his wife to peel crispy skin from his back every night for weeks. “That’s love,” he told me.

All the stores are closed, so I sit outside a gas station in my yellow outfit to transmit photos. My face is smudged with soot, and my hair is matted. A woman rests her hand on my shoulder, tells me “God Bless,” and offers me a sandwich. I tell her thanks, but I’m not a firefighter. “You’re working hard out there though,” she says, but retracts my sandwich. It looks so good.

Prisoners are used a lot for fighting wildfires in California. They stand out in their orange suits. The women work together and most of them chain-smoke as they do the physically exhausting job of clearing brush for a dollar an hour. I once came across a group of male prisoners attacking bushes on a hillside with chainsaws as they tried to prevent a flare-up.

As the sun sets, I see some National Guard troops protecting an evacuated neighborhood from looters. A soldier, who told me he was glad to be home from Iraq, was politely asking residents to park their cars and stand in line.

The area was heavily hit by the fire and there are hundreds of people lining up. I ask a cop what is going on and he says they are escorting people to their homes to collect medication. I asked him if they needed to show a prescription, but he is taking the humane approach. He tells me that as long as people tell him they are going to get medicine, he will let everyone be escorted to see their home.

Most people do not mind being photographed – some are indifferent, some excited to be in print.

One woman who has lost her home starts screaming at a local newspaper photographer taking her picture with a long lens. He apologizes again and again but she continues her tirade. I apologize too, even though I wasn’t photographing her, and she walks away. He seems upset, so I tell him he wasn’t doing anything wrong, that most people appreciate us being there to tell their story. I also tell him he probably made her feel better, by allowing her to vent at someone, even though I’m not sure if this is true.

350 miles after the beginning of the day, I scrub the soot out of my ears, wash my hair, wrap it in a towel and fall asleep before I remember to take the towel off.

Mike and I are flying to Denver to shoot World Series baseball this weekend. I’m not normally excited about high altitude (1 mile above sea level) and temperatures just above freezing, but it will be good to breathe again.

A Catholic boy runs away from a bonfire during riots to commemorate the anniversary of the 1971 establishment of the internment laws, under which people could be detained by police without having to be charged with a crime, in West Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 8, 1994.

My first job was as a reporter at the Mid Sussex Times in England.  

At some point I realized that photographers spend 100% of their time outside the office & began to teach myself photography.  

I went to see an exhibition of Don McCullin’s photos and he became my first inspiration.