Let me show you, what I currently own. These are the things, that I feel, I need and consider mine. In these suitcases is everything except the camera, that takes the pictures and clothes that I am wearing.

I’ve always been a light packer. The amount of things people want to take with them to traveling is dictated by how much they own. I don’t own much, at least not anymore, but it was slow and painful progress, changing the mentality and then to go trough all the years of collected stuff and then not giving, not storing, but throwing them away. Throwing away the idea, “I might need this thing in a year”. This has also helped drastically cut new unnecessary purchases to almost zero.

So it shouldn’t come as surprise, that I’ve been playing with the idea of going to Africa, only with hand luggage. So far, everyone who have heard this idea, have dissuaded it. For me, it gives me mobility, being careless with things, in the end, I wont be using half the things anyway. Let me explain why it might not be so bad idea.

Being without luggage, or overall without things, gives this incomparable feeling of freedom. My home is where is my body and my ten things are. With these things, everything I want to do, is possible. There is no case of “I will draw or edit photos when I get back home” or “damn I am not sure where is something I might need”. Everything owned is carefully chosen and known. This feeling, not having to split my life into being away and being home, is the feeling of freedom. Of course I feel more homely in some spaces and whatnot, but I almost never feel away anymore. My home is where is everything I need and everything that are needed are always with me.

Only time when I have exceeded luggage restrictions, or even had luggage as far as I can remember, was when I came back from Istanbul, from living there for five months. And it was over the limit, only because I tried to take everything what was mine back. While succeeding in packing everything in to the bag, it was too much for the airline. This included blanket, that found it sad ending in the trashcan, logitech speakers and backgammon board game. My obsession of being luggage free, is so big, that I even know that if the blade of the knife is shorter than 6cm, I can take it on board.

So, hand luggage for three months?

 

This is one of those unfinished projects. It was filmed through two training days, on Thursday and Friday. It shouldn’t have, but it took me by surprise of how camera shy people are, as only couple of years ago I wouldn’t have imagined even putting my name on the internet and now I try to do regularly vlogs. Vlogs is probably the most personal thing one can share on the internet. While making this video at one instant a person even stood up and started to walk away, just because there was camera facing her. Luckily, I got something from everybody and beside the sound quality, it came out quite well.

Total edit time: 6h

Most of the time was spend trying to get the audio sound bit better, as microphone I ordered should arrive sometime this week.

 

On the upside, after I called embassy today, I was told that my visa is ready and should arrive sometimes this week. Is it really so and did the girl really understood what I was asking, we will see.

Although I am doing several different projects currently, they are not yet ready to be shared. They are not finished at all or not baked enough for public eye. What I can tell is, that I had first official EVS related video task while we had our two day training session. Sadly though, the microphone I ordered will arrive sometime next week. I am already anxious about the sound quality I have to work on the videos that are recorded without microphone.

Finally reached embassy by the phone, they have no idea about the location of my documents. Apparently there is somewhere a post-it note on this subject and promise to call back.

But I moved out of my apartment. There is no reason to occupy space here for three months, when in reality, there is no one to occupy space. And to avoid last minute storm, that will hit anyway, packed my life into three suitcases and moved on to other people couches.

 

written from couch

Now it is official. One of my responsibilities for the EVS project will be to record this whole experience. So it is time to start practicing English in front of the camera.

 

As for other things, apparently someone messed up my malaria prescription. I was prescribed pills that are not meant to be consumed more than 28 consecutive days. My stay will last for three months. Sadly it was discovered only after the pills were already paid for, but there is hope. I got myself already new prescription and pharmacy asked to come back tomorrow, they might be able to switch them around.

And the visa. Plane tickets are not bought before I have receive my visa, but Cameroon embassy in Berlin, is quite unreachable. I’ve tried many times in the past, twice today, and Heleri, our local coordinator, tried today 18 times, before she got hold of someone…. who gave her a short answer of “call back tomorrow”.

Second work in the series was birds eye of view to the street of Karlsson-on-the-Roof. I don’t remember reading books nor seeing it on the tv and the brightest memory of Karlsson probably comes to me from a play in the theater. The only piece that is still recoverable from the dream-like state of this story is piece consisting of roofs and balcony-like structure where Karlsson lived and this was all I had to work with. Trying to ignore all the later popular-media portraits of the places, I came up with a bit of distorted-rubbery-like street, as in dreams streets often crawl like snakes trough city. As I have such hesistant memory of this story, the owner for the house on the roof isnt certain person. It might belong to Karlsson, it might be just another added building on the roof.

This time I used quite a bit finer pen, but I think it is still not fine enough. Problems start to arise when trying to find even finer, as any dedicated shops usually end with 0.05. Coloring is done with Manga Studio. Altought I am quite a bit more happier with this one than Pippi’s house, there are still things that would like some retouch. For example yellow house could use smoother color, background roofs need better solution(details!) and the street is quite awful.