Rural Life in the City Age

Shot on assignment for the Leeuwarder Courant (European Newspaper of the Year 2014) for an article about the Millennium Development Goals.Rural Life in the City Age is a visceral and visual photographic essay about the people living in the rural areas of Namibia. It tells the stories of those who lose their lands and ways of life due to the urbanisation throughout the country. Hunting for survival and living in the wild is no longer permitted. As a result, many tribes migrate to the urban areas, with dreams of a better future. But with no education, working experience and lack of money, most people find themselves ending up in one of the many city-sized slums, located on the outskirts of Namibia's urbanised world. One of the important goals in 2010 from the Millennium Development Goals stated that every child should be able to attend school and have access to education by 2015. As part of this project, I visited several pre-schools in the slums of Epako, on the outskirts of Gobabis along the Kalahari desert, where young children were starting to receive education. The first steps towards a better future.

Photography