A House for Mr. Yabako
A man builds a home for himself once in a life time, where he will return tired at the end of a hard days work, where his children will play and grow, where his wife will cook and clean. I was interested in looking at the Nubian Vault not as a technical miracle or an ecological life saver but very simply as a home. The day Mr Yabako sees that Mr Agama's family is happy in their new home, which incidentally is a Nubian vault will Mr Yabako think of building a Nubian vault home for himself. I hoped that my photographs would bridge the distance between Mr Yabako and his Nubian vault home. Not only that, I hoped that the photographs would bring pleasure and pride to Mr Adama and his family, the masons who built it, and all those who in some way shared this dream and are working hard to put it to reality. In a way I was not photographing the Nubian vault, it was the families that had decided to spend their entire life in them and the masons and trainees that were to earn their livelihood building them. I managed to squeeze an extra 6 days from my project in Mali, packed my reflector, tripod, light meter and a 24 mm Nikkor lense and made it to Boromo. Five days of crazy driving, using the window to get out of the car, staying out of dehydration thanks to litres of millet beer, talking to masons, to people who lived and were planning to live in Nubian Vaults, meeting a simple village woman, mother of four children who had taken it upon herself to popularise the Nubian Vault in her area and doing pictures. I hope the photos do them justice.
