Prints In Lesotho: Paula Wade

Traveling through Lesotho in 2009 and 2011, my husband, Harland Edwards, and I carried a battery powered photo printer with us. Everywhere we stopped, we would snap a photo for those living in what we call the background; grounds men, mill workers, herdsmen, drivers, cooks. In a country where 30% of the people have HIV (everyone there is raising two to four children who are not their own), it is so valuable to give people a link to family and history, to have a touchstone that they exist and to see themselves as valuable, for orphan siblings to have a photo taken together.

One day we took a friend to work at the Mants’ase Children’s Home. This is an orphanage where 80 children were being cared for at the time. We took a portrait of everyone and printed them out as the children and staff gathered to watch the process.

Oh, such fun.

When we returned late that evening to pick up our friend, quite a few of the children were still holding their photo in their hands. They had not put them in their bunks but were still attached to them eight hours later!

We also visited the Trading Post and Leratong Community Centre in Roma, Lesotho. On our second trip we were visited by people who stopped working and who shyly and quietly, almost whispering, came up to tell us, “I remember you. I still have my photo you took last time in my house.”

Again, we took their photos, the second time they were more relaxed and smiling. A few of the older ones willingly posed again but, as during the first time, they sometimes had tears in their eyes as they posed not accustomed to such attention and opportunity. Quietly asking, “May I please have a second one to give my child?” or “Can you take one of all my family tomorrow?”

I don’t think I would ever travel without the printer. The connection it creates is just too lovely to miss. The value to the recipient is deeper than I, in my world of abundance, can understand.

– Paula Wade, Portland, Oregon, USA