The Eyes of Africa

I don't remember any names. I don't know who these children have become. I don't know which of them is in school today, who is already working, who is raising younger brothers and sisters, and who has long been swept away by a road that we don't even know exists. But I remember their eyes.

When you first come to Africa, you expect to see poverty. That's what photography, television, charity videos, and statistics from international organizations have taught us. You arrive prepared for the numbers, but completely unprepared for the looks. Because poverty can be described. But the look is not allowed.

There was more dignity in one look from a little girl wrapped in a faded cloth than in many classrooms I've seen in my life.

She wasn't looking up, not asking for or expecting help. She was just watching. Like a man on a man. There was no self-pity in that look.

And then, for the first time, I felt strangely embarrassed. Because we used to believe that compassion is always directed from the well-off to the needy. But sometimes the opposite happens. Sometimes it's someone who has almost nothing who helps you see yourself.

I photographed children.

They surrounded me everywhere.

Mud houses appeared around the corner,

They looked out from the crowd,

They held their younger brothers in their arms,

They walked barefoot on the red earth in torn slates,

They smiled and laughed,

They watched the stranger with the camera warily.

Some looked openly and boldly.

Others are careful.

Some of them smiled as if they knew some secret that adults couldn't.

And some of them looked at me with a look that I was used to seeing only in old people.

The children holding babies in their arms were especially striking. They were still children themselves, but they were already responsible for another person. Their childhood didn't end — it just became an adult very early.

I saw a look in one African boy that I still can't forget. He stood with his back completely straight and looked at me so seriously, as if in front of me was not a child, but a man who had already made some important decision. There was no fear in his eyes. There was no curiosity. Just calmness.

It's the way people look when they've been exposed to life too early.

And yet, more often than not, there was joy in those eyes. Not happiness as a state of possession, but joy as the ability to live. Joy for no reason. Joy without guarantees. The joy of today.

Four boys hugging each other in front of the camera laughed so sincerely that for a moment everything around them disappeared: poverty, heat, cracked walls, old clothes. There was only laughter.

Then I realized that a human smile has nothing to do with wealth. She is born in some other place. That's probably why photos of African children are so hard to forget. They don't make you think about Africa. About us. About how many things we consider necessary for happiness. About how much effort we spend fighting for comfort. About how often we postpone joy for later. Someday. After the next project. After the next purchase. After the next victory. And these kids don't put anything off. They live now. And they're watching it now. Maybe that's why their eyes seem so deep. There is no future or past in them. There is only the present in them.

Today, looking at these photos years later, I increasingly think that I did not bring the pictures from Africa. The camera brought the pictures. I brought the views. Dozens of views that continue to live somewhere inside me and from time to time remind me of a simple thing: human value is not measured by what we own. It is measured by how we look at the world. And perhaps that's why the eyes of African children remain one of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen.