POLE STAR’S POSITION

IRENEUSZ MAZURʼS passion is pinhole photography because, as he tells HEADSET ONLINE, itʼs so beautifully unpredictable

 

I come from the Sudetenland in the beautiful mountainous south west of Poland. I always dreamed of standing at the foot of the Himalayas and so I came here where I could earn money much easier and fund the trek. The dream fulfilled, I stayed on. I have been living here for over ten years and feel well adapted though I still feel like a foreigner – but maybe thatʼs just in my head.

I ended up feeling like a river restricted by an invisible dam. I needed new goals and got talked into doing the A level photography at the college by a cousin of my girl­friend who enjoyed the course very much.

I canʼt study without an income so I work as a gardener during the day, which keeps me close to my beloved nature. I would say thereʼs much greater care for the envi­ronment here than in Poland.

I like pinhole photography simply because it is unpre­dictable, like humans. Thereʼs a real sense of deferred gratification in waiting for the image to emerge. And I am often surprised at the effects achieved; working in the darkroom also preserves a continuity and intimacy with the subject matter as it emerges through a processes of care. In digital photography this is just a con­version to 01010101010!

My thematic concerns are the environment – billions of years of evolution are being destroyed before our very eyes. We have become careless in the extreme and it pains me.

At college I have had a lot of creative fun. As for studying at uni­versity level, weʼll see. I donʼt want this to become too serious as it would spoil the enjoyment!

 

 

GREAT EUROPEAN POWER GAMES

by JEKATERINA NEFEDJEVA

Visaginas, a small town located in the north-east of Lithuania, was built in 1975 mainly for workers of the Ignalinos nuclear power plant and their families to live in. More than six out of ten of its population is Russian, the highest per-centage in the country. During the era of the Soviet Union, when internal borders were open, a lot of Russian nuclear engineering specialists moved to Visaginas, looking for new opportunities and a better quality of life.

In 1991, side by side with other former Soviet republics, Lithuania became independent and the nuclear plant came under its control.

But three years ago, Lithuania jumped from one union to another and joined Europe. While this gave Lithuanians a lot of possibilities by freeing up travel, study and work opportunities – Europe needs a lot of specialists which Lithuanians can provide – there is a downside. The EU insisted on the closure of the Ignalinos plant, even though it still had many operational years left.

The EU wants Ignalinos shut because its nuclear reactor is of the same type as Chernobylʼs. There are fears that should there be an accident, the radioactive contamination will be similar to that produced after the explosion at the Ukrainian plant in 1986.

But the planned closure ignores the fact that Ignalinos was taking on board all future eventualities and had worked for years researching and preventing actual risks: nuclear specialists did not see any problems in the plantʼs operation.

Yet the reality of having such a productive energy supplier within the EU has not gone down well with western European heads of state.

Why? Because it is more profitable to sell energy than to buy it. Ignalinos produces about 80% of the electricity consumed in Lithuania and more than half its output supplies the neighboring countries of Latvia, Russia and Byelorussia. And because the energy is cheap, it is competitive.

The plantʼs closure means that Lithuania has shifted from being an energy exporter to an importer. The Lithuanian economy, already under stress, could go into freefall. But no one really cares when it is beneficial for Europe.

The plantʼs closure will have a severe impact on the Baltic stateʼs economy. Lithuania has a population of around three million and 30,000 people, workers and their families, are dependent on Ignalinos for their livelihood.

The EU has announced that the planned closure two years hence will be delayed, but that wonʼt stop thousands from losing their jobs and joining the exodus from the country.

The question is, what will happen to those left behind, people now in their 40s and 50s? Many are highly skilled, intelligent and ambitious people whoʼve worked decades at the plant.

Now theyʼll be forced back on meagre state benefits or they will learn another language, update their qualifications and seek work in a better place. This isnʼt easy to do in middle age and the reality is that many whoʼve emigrated do not continue a professional career but end up as cleaners, babysitters or drivers just to support their families back home.

This is certainly not the dream of going West they had while studying at university.

Finally, what is going to happen to Visaginas is a town of nuclear engineers and highly professional town planners, who built a town in the shape of butterfly, surrounded by millions of pine-trees and some of the most beautiful lakes in Lithuania?

There are hopes it will become a new tourist resort, but no one knows when this future is going to dawn. Without crucial investments it is destined to become a ghost town. The younger generation will leave and only the elderly will remain. The only thing for sure is that the European Union, rather than opening new prospects for its residents, is condemning them to a future of uncertainty and a sense of loss for the good old days.

KABUL TIMES

by SALAHODIN MAJID

The day Iʼd been waiting for finally came when, after seventeen years away, I got off the plane in Kabul, my native city.

Iʼd been contacted by some journalists from German television in Hanover, where I then lived. They wanted to make a documentary about Afghanistan and they were looking for an Afghani interpreter who spoke Dari and Pashto as well as good German. I fitted the bill – Iʼd lived in Germany since the age of 12 so I have a fluent grasp of the language.

Was I interested, they asked. Of course I was – how could I turn down the opportunity to travel back to my country, meet my unfortunate people and smell my own countryʼs air again?

That was how, a month later, we met on a wonderful spring day in Frankfurt airport to catch the Kabul flight. For the first time, after so many years, I saw the name Ariana, the Afghan airline, on the departure board. The sight made me weep and there were other Afghans nearby who seemed to have the same sort of emotion.

There were a lot of nervous look­ing people on board, because of the Taliban regime, but they were happy too: at long last they would meet their relatives again. After a 12 hour flight, we got to Kabul – a dream came true, I was back in my homeland.

When I got off the plane I was sure that I was home. It just smelled like Afghanistan.

But as we drove into the city, it was like a shattered picture frame, with pieces scattered everywhere and the houses, building, hospitals – everything ruined. Pain and suffering were etched in the faces of every man and woman we came across.

In the spare time from my translat­ing job I managed to visit the school I had attended and there I met some of my classmates, who were now teaching there. As I talked to one of them, I could see from his expression all he had gone through. But he was staring at me and evidently couldnʼt remember who I was. So I introduced myself and said Iʼd been in his class. He was astonished and invited me to his house that night. “Do you recognize me now?” I asked. Yes, he replied, and he remembered that I used to sit next to Ajmal, who was my best friend at the time.

That night, when I caught sight of his house, it seemed perfectly normal. But inside was divided into a warren of small rooms and he lived in one with his wife, four children and sick mother. There were some old bedding and no light and there was one candle, which he lit.

Later I found out they only had one chicken from which they were taking eggs and they had killed it because of me. That made me upset and I was even more so when he told me, hesitatingly, that Ajmal had been killed with all his family. He tried to comfort me: “Thereʼs no point in being upset,” he told me. “I also lost three of my brothers. You were one of the lucky ones who moved abroad while you could. You did not wit­ness the tragedies and humiliation of people murdered more viciously than Vietnam victims.”

It was one of the most tragic nights of my life and I will never forget it. But a consolation was the Afghani music everywhere I went, which had been banned during the Taliban regime. It was what I used to listen to and indicated that some still had hope; at least they had some time to listen to music, despite all the difficulties and the war. Every step I took, I thanked God that despite eve­rything I was witnessing, I was still very glad to meet my people

The interpreting job took me to those parts of the country which I had never seen before: Mazari-Sharif, Jelalabad, Herat, Maymana and many other cities. On one occasion, I interpreted for the Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his cabinet. My first impression was that he was very calm and relaxed – he seemed a perfect gentleman and genuinely interested in where I was living and what I was studying.

At the end of six months, I felt Iʼd helped gather enough material to produce a documentary about the different peoples of Afghanistan and this was screened shortly after our return on German TV. It got an excel­lent response from viewers.

Looking back, I had the impression that despite the suffering of the Afghan population and what they have been through, the warlords are still taking advantage of the situation by using the support from the West to line their own pockets.

And Afghanistan remains a coun­try of broken pledges: five years ago the Minster for Water and Energy Ismail Khan was asked during an interview when electric lighting would be restored to Kabul. His answer was in a yearʼs time, but still thereʼs no electricity – just one small example of empty promises and lies.

Even so, the Afghan poor still have hope and one of my enduring memories of the trip was seeing kids splashing about in a muddy pool. One day, I hope, theyʼll have a decent pool and will swim happily there.