3rd April 2014
Barely halfway through the first day of the KBE and I was already exhausted for visiting beautiful resorts. What in the world had I signed myself up for? Would we be driving around a bus for 16 days just for this? Sigh – just the thought was killing me and I needed a break (add: thankfully, later on the KBE had more to offer). I was not alone feeling like this. When we left the resort Somantheeram in Chowara to go visit a nearby beach village Manaltheeram, I noticed Edin was just as desperated to get away, just for a while. “You guys wanna walk? Can we walk? It’s not that far, right? Let’s walk!” – Edin
Gio, Dina and I were keen on the idea and went with Edin. Our legs needed to be used for the reason man has legs, and our eyes wanted to see something authentic. While the rest of the group waited for cars to pick them up, we simply walked out the resort and turned right out on the street. It wasn’t until later we realized, we had made a wrong turn. Neither of us had understood that we were suppose to visit a new place before going back to the bus. We laughed our asses off. We might had made a wrong turn, but in our eyes it was the right turn. Now we had 45 minuts to do whatever we wanted to and just stroll around the streets, while the rest were drinking hot tea in the warm Indian weather at beach village Manaltheeram.
My three amigos got some money changed to rupees, and we marched down the streets as kings with our pockets full of dough. “Let’s buy a house here! Live like kings and queens! What about this one? You wanna live there? Yeaaahh, let’s do it.” They were crazy, but my kinda crazy! This was the first time I actually got to know them and their company suited me just fine. Gio & Dina are the silly kids from Indonesia and Edin is the laidback Miami-based Mexican, who swears more than a sailor with his ass on fire. Or technically he isn’t swearing – he just has a creative way of expressing himself using the word “fuck” or any other derivative of that word to emphasize something, good or bad. Ohh and not to forget the classic: “What’s up, bro!”
In my eyes, Edin was the king of the streets, a true genius in respect to street photography. Fast, determined, thankful and direct – bam, bam, bam – he got the picture. I was walking behind him like a small puppy trying to learn by the see and do approach. The whole concept of sticking my camera in some stranger’s face (with their approval of course) is still a boundary, that I need to learn how to cross. Practice makes perfect they same, so I’ll keep practising until I get as good as Mr. Chavez himself (www). The taste of freedom didn’t last long and soon again we found ourselves on the bus with the rest of the group. The last pictures is far from a masterpiece, but I L-O-V-E Dina’s expression, when she saw some of the other KBXs driving back in a car. You can almost hear her do the Nelson “HAW HAW!” with a finger pointing at them saying ‘you guys missed out’!
