Wednesday, November 26, 2008

the boys playing mweso, kampala uganda

boys playing mweso phil philip bowen photo photographer kampala uganda

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1 comment:

  1. philNov 26, 2008, 10:34:00 PM

    sabiti s. and kyeyune a. have been helping me with some work in the garden over the past couple weeks. they sat their exams for p6 (primary 6) earlier this month and they don't start s1 (secondary 1) until feb. so they've been excited to have some occupation during the holiday. according to them, the holiday has been very boring and they like being at our place because it is cool and quiet.

    on monday they brought us a present. the board game (literally in this case) is called mweso and the object is to move your piece from one end to the other first.

    the play proceeds thusly: when it's your turn you hold out your hands, one of them containing a trinket (chalk in our case). the other person guesses which hand it's in. if he guesses wrong, you get to move a space and go again. if he guesses right, he takes the chalk and it's his turn.

    you'd think it would be 50/50, but i kept getting beat by 5-7 spaces. maybe they got a good read on my (lack of) poker face. not surprisingly, when they played together it was a lot more animated, with lots of theatrics and hand slapping and such.

    they're getting used to me being around with the camera, so i'm starting to get some authentic emotion, which can be difficult with ugandans.

    i tried shooting with the camera upside-down and the flash pointed at the game, hoping it could glow and reflect light upwards in to their faces. no go. so i resorted to the straight forward approach of on-camera flash backlit by the sun.

    though for on-camera flash, i'm pretty happy with balance of light in this photo.

    don't tell anyone about the upside-down camera, bounce flash off the floor trick, though. i think it may be an original idea.

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