The forgotten - Bluewaters Refugee Camp

Caught in a legal limbo, victims of the mass xenophobic violence that recently ripped through South African townships struggle for asylum. Having recently discovered that South Africa is in no way safer than the war-torn countries from which they fled, they are uncertain whether to attempt to leave the country and return home.




Children, who have crossed most of Africa with their families to escape faction fighting in their home country of Somalia, give the youngest a bucket bath inside one of their UN issued tents.

A policeman calls out names for processing from a loud hailer inside his car.

Home Affairs, supported by SA Traffic Police come to tell refugees that their application for asylum has been rejected on the grounds that they have asked to be repatriated. They are given thirty days to leave the country.

Listening to the 24 hour BBC report on Somalia.

Normally hidden behind purdah, friends Sharifa dresses-up for a portrait.

Children stuck in the refugee camps are unable to attend school or get medical check ups as the camp's remote location is excluded by government bus routes.

Written in Stone

Project Bluewaters Continued

Priscilla Hamandishe plays with her daughter Julie inside their UN issued tent. Priscilla was half-way through a Bachelor of Science degree when she was forced to leave Zimbabwe along with thousands of other refugees, who crossed the border into South Africa to escape starvation and unemployment due to mass hyper-inflation, and persecution from Zanu-PF militia.

How The Sun Was Made - Part 2

Clanwilliam community project part 2.

Project Bluewaters

After the spate of xenophobic attacks in South Africa this year, refugees from all over Africa have been moved to safety camps outside of the city centres. They are housed in family sized tents supplied by the UN and provided with two meals a day by the City of Cape Town. A week ago the many camps around Cape Town were reduced to four, one of them Bluewaters outside of Michels Plain.

Most of the refugees say they are too scared to attempt reintegration into communities where they were staying prior to the xenophobic attacks. Most are lobbying to go back to their countries of origin, but the remote location of Bluewaters and the economic losses suffered by most whilst fleeing their homes in April means that the majority of Bluewaters refugees are unable to afford transport into the CBD to look for work, let alone transport home. The city of Cape Town has proposed a repatriation program due to be implemented next month.

All of the refugees photographed here were originally from Somalia. The portraits were taken as part of a project to provide the refugees with a visual record of their surviving relatives. Many have lost family members due to war or ethnic persecution in their countries of origin, their often gruelling and illegal journey down through africa, and again in the recent attacks on foreigners in South African townships.

How the Sun was Made - Canwilliam Community Project

Clanwilliam community project organized by Pipa Skotnes, Mark Fleishman and John Parkington: 'How the Sun Was Made'.

Helena

Memory comes when memory's old
I am never the first to know
Following the stream up north
Where do people like us float

There is room in my lap
For bruises, asses, hand claps
I will never disappear
For forever I'll be here

Whispering
Morning keep the streets empty
For me

Where Sky Meets Heaven

Borderline Tibet

Border Line 3 - Contemplating the Indo Tibetan Border

High in the Himalayas, Ladakhi Indians eek out a living using pre-iron-age technology to plough their high altitude fields and raise their sheep. At the largest, their villages consist of four families and are up to 5 days walk from the nearest road and electricity. Summer is only 4 months long. For the rest of the year the surface of the earth is covered in thick snow and temperatures drop as low as -40 degrees C.

Border Line 2 - Contemplating the Indo-Tibetan Border

A couple of hundred kilometres away from the Chinese border and 3000 meters above sea level in the valley of Ladakh, India, Buddhist monks begin a sand mandala - a visual prayer for world peace and global understanding. The mandala will take 7 days to complete, after which the coloured sand will be scraped off the template and poured into the nearest river.

Border Line 1 - Contemplating the Indo-Tibetan border

The Tibetan border between China and India, which has been closed ever since riots broke out in Lhasa in March this year in protest against the Beijing Olympics and ongoing Chinese oppression. Pangong lake is 30 percent in India, 70 percent in China (Tibet). People that live just inside of the Indian border are allowed to practice their strain of Buddhism which includes praying the Dalai Lama unmolested. Those who live on the other side, however, can be arrested for being in possession of his image or uttering his name .

Imagining Borders - Tibet in Exile

Protesters march with the Tibetan flag in April 2008, Dharamsala India, a month after riots in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa that marked years since the failed uprising of Tibetan nationalists against Chinese occupation were met by unfounded violence by the Chinese national security.



His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama arrives back to his home in exile in Dharamsala, India where he is protected by the Indian Army.



A Tibetan refugee prostrates herself as a form of spiritual and physical exercise at the Dalai Lama's temple in Himachal Pradesh, India.



A monk spins prayer wheels at the Dalai Lama's summer palace in India.







Dharamsala has a large population of Tibetans who have fled across the border into India in their search for refuge from Chinese persecution since the 1950's. Still more arrive, having walked across the world's highest mountain range, surviving up to two months of freezing conditions and near stalvation. Dharamsala is also home to the Dalai Lama in exile - spiritual and political leader of Tibet.

These photos were taken during the build up to Beijing Olympics, where I was witness to an escalating feeling of anger and injustice surrounding the event.