Of Monkeys & Murder

What is your attitude to free stuff? Is it your objective to obtain goods and services for nothing at every opportunity or do you pay the proper price as a matter of principle? Does your attitude depend on whether the services or products are supplied by a Sierra Leonean? What are your experiences of supplying to this community?

In my photographic work I will almost always choose the Salone related engagement over another when faced with a choice, and this usually entails accepting a lower fee. I do so in part because it serves my (self-appointed?) role as a community documentarian. In twenty years I'd rather have an archive containing hundreds of thousands of images of our individual & collective Salone families in the diaspora as a record of our evolution in times sad and glad, than a collection of photographs of people I didn't really ever know and may well never meet again. There is a point beyond which the income differential will take priority but most of the time the community service principle prevails.

The price I agree for bookings always includes a "kinship discount" in anticipation of the presentation of coupons such as :borbor ah sabi yu mami, hah wi ol go Samaria skool," "yu wef na mi close fambul," and, "bo yu na mi main man." Even so there is always the notion, sometimes expressed, mostly implied, that one should be doing this for free, at least for this individual, or fro "granat koppoh." Many people are reluctant to secure their booking by paying a deposit, and will try to extract services way beyond those contractually agreed.

In my print on site event portrait work I also price under market rate and immodest as it may sound, the quality produced is better than good. Would it be rude of me to point out the irony to the man in his $400+ suit, $250+ shoes (and the most consistently impressive shoes I've seen on Salone men, I've observed since moving to Dallas) and bling, and his spouse in expensive fabric, exclusive designer labels and augmenting accessories? They approach my mobile studio looking fantastic as a couple and seeking to memorialize their glorious fabulousness in an 8.5x11 print, and balk at a charge of $10. I've resolved that next time this happens I will quietly lay down my Canon 40D camera with additional battery grip, speedlite EXII flashlight, and portrait lens, reach for my blackberry mobile phone, raise it to my eye and state calmly, "say cheese!" If you want to pay peanuts then I'm gonna monkey with you.

About four weeks ago I met a young Salone man aged about 20 in Dallas. He told me he was here for a few months before joining the military and that meanwhile he'd like to assist in my work and learn photography. I took his number and told him I'd give him a call when a suitable booking arose. Two Sundays ago I saw his uncle at an event and recounted the conversation to him. He informed me that the young man was back in New Jersey as he had shown up unannounced and that the joining the military was something he was thinking about but had not started the process. I learned that as a child the young man had been an excellent student in Sierra Leone, and that had continued when he arrived in the USA some 10 years ago and attended high school. However, in the last couple of years he had become involved with drug dealers and adopted a lifestyle which had led to him being catching 8 bullets Fifty Cent style in Ohio, and being banished from the homes of a host of family members, including that of his father and stepmother, as his lifestyle was not conducive to living in a home with two younger girls, his sisters. The uncle and I spoke a bit about how to mentor young men on the cusp of adulthood and at the fork in the road where life can go permanently negative or positive and ended on the thought that whatever form of help could be successful would require a genuine intention to choose a positive path on the part of the young fellow himself. That conversation was had on a Sunday and by the following Wednesday, that young man was in custody in New Jersey accused of having broken into the house of his father and murdering his stepmother who was in her early 30's. A tragedy in the ending of two lives and devastation of several more.