Camilla the Duchess of Cornwall (L) reacts as she waits for her husband Prince Charles to fire the gun on the HMCS Haida in Hamilton, Ontario November 5, 2009. REUTERS/Fred Thornhill

Drivers of mass transit system buses receive H1N1 vaccine injections at a hospital in Hefei, Anhui province November 6, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer

Tiger Woods reaches for the ball as he plays on the 8th hole during the 2009 HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai November 6, 2009. REUTERS/Aly Song

Native Brazilians from the Xavante nation carry out a ritual before the start of a canoeing competition at the Indigenous Nations’ Games in Pagagominas, north Brazil November 5, 2009. REUTERS/Paulo Santos

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Being a photographer is one of the best jobs in the world because when you enjoy what you do it is more a hobby than a job. In our case, it is a hobby with considerable responsibility.

As a journalist traveling through different countries, meeting interesting people, or working in inhospitable places, storytelling is a privilege. I have always thought that my eyes are the eyes of many people, and that through them others can see what is happening.
 
When I started as a photographer I always wanted to contribute my bit to make the world a better place. Many of us think that when we are young and full of dreams. As time passes, I realize that the real changes in history are made by the people who are living their own lives. Photographers just document what happens, nothing more.

Reuters  photographer Eliana Aponte (2L) is seen while working next to colleagues in the West Bank village of Qabatiya near Jenin, May 15, 2006. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

When I was in Colombia, I spent almost a month in the wildest part of the country where the sun never shines, the sounds of animals never cease and the darkness is neither gray nor black. Reuters was witness to the freeing of 300 policemen and soldiers who had been kidnapped by FARC guerrillas and held in the jungle.

It was the hardest experience in my life, both as a photographer and as a human being. I learned there is nothing more degrading than being deprived of freedom in the jungle. I slept, ate and lived like any of the real hostages in those camps. It shocked me to see their blank stares, the paleness on their faces and their hope to walk out of there one day alive; this is what I remember the most.
 
Life in the jungle is an arduous test of mental and physical strength, both of which are necessary to survive. When we arrived at the first camp, everyone wanted to know who we were, and why we were there. To a certain extent our presence there was a confirmation of their freedom but the skepticism in their eyes remained. We told them many times that their captivity was almost over, but they didn’t believe it. We were led to three different camps after long hikes and many hours by boat and vehicle through inhospitable terrain, without the faintest idea of what part of the jungle we were in. As the days passed we reached the conclusion that we were being led in circles around the same area just to throw off our sense of direction. For those who don’t know the jungle, everything is the same, green everywhere.

Forty-six Colombian policemen held prisoner by Marxist FARC rebels huddle in a boat June 20, 2001, as they are escorted by guerrillas from behind, near the end of a two-day river journey on their way to being freed in a unilateral release set for June 28. REUTERS/Eliana Aponte

The big day arrived and 300 policemen and soldiers recovered their freedom. All local and international media received them as they exited the jungle. The guerrilla leaders called it a humanitarian gesture.

A Marxist FARC rebel crosses over to land as 46 Colombian policemen held prisoner by the group huddle in a boat near the end of a two-day river journey on their way to being freed in a unilateral release set for June 28. The FARC have already freed more than 40 sick policemen and soldiers in return for the government returning 15 sick guerrillas held in state jails. Picture taken on June 20, 2001. REUTERS/Eliana Aponte

The saddest part of this story is that 6 years have passed and some of the group we saw are still kidnapped in the jungle; not all of them made it to freedom. Soldiers and policemen are still rotting in the jungle more than 11 years later.

But my work has had also beautiful and happy moments. I covered the carnival of Rio de Janeiro, which filled my soul with images of happy people to which dance is sacred in their lives. While walking back and forth taking pictures through the early hours of dawn, I did not feel tired because their happiness was enough to overcome my fatigue.

Members of Brazilian samba school Salgueiro dance in Rio de Janeiro’s Sambadrome during the first of two nights of competition, February 22, 2004. REUTERS/Eliana Aponte

Being a woman photographer among so many men has some advantages, depending on which part of the world you are in. Women have the ability to show another angle that men often do not see. I call it female sensitivity. We tend to do stories that are more human, emphasizing sensuality and childhood. I assume that it has to do with the maternal instinct we carry within.

The beauty of this job is that we get to cover all types of events, from politics, religion, and war, to sports and fashion. We often witness history being made.

Jewish Ethiopian men attend a morning prayer service at compound awaiting immigration to Israel in Gondor March 8, 2007. More than 5000 Ethiopian Jews are waiting to immigrate to Israel to reunite with their families. REUTERS/Eliana Aponte

A few days after being posted to Jerusalem I received a call from my editor who asked me to go to Hadassah hospital where Ariel Sharon had been taken. I froze for a few seconds. I ran to my hotel room, grabbed my equipment and I headed to the parking garage. I could not find my car, and when I finally managed to locate it I started to drive without first realizing that I didn’t have a clue where the hospital was.

I am a disaster with directions; I literally can get lost in an elevator. But that night my internal compass worked beautifully and I made it there. When I got to the place, there were at least 150 journalists. It was the news of the moment worldwide.  For me, it was also kind of ironic. The day Sharon fell sick I had photographed the pool pictures of his usual meeting with the ministers and to my surprise soon after, those were the last photos of Sharon as Prime Minister that the news agencies distributed of him.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon attends a ceremony completing the sale of Bank Leumi to a private U.S. investment group in his office in Jerusalem January 4, 2006.  REUTERS/Eliana Aponte

This is the way this job is. I never know what will happen tomorrow or, in this case, from one minute to the next. This is what I like most about my job; routine doesn’t exist.

In 2004 I went on an embed with U.S. troops in Iraq. I had to wait days for them to let us do something. It was one of the worst stories I have covered. Usually the fate of embeds are run by luck, and unfortunately I didn’t have much. As I waited I had no choice but to play cards with the soldiers on the outskirts of Falluja. They were young soldiers with little or no experience in war. Many were there simply because they couldn’t find any jobs back home.

One day we were sitting playing cards when suddenly a mortar landed near us; we heard the explosion and we all ran to take cover beneath armored vehicles. Five seconds later another mortar landed and killed eight soldiers. We all watched as their bodies flew through the air in a surreal scene that still haunts me. We were paralyzed. There was silence until the captain shouted, “This is Iraq. Move!” I took some pictures from the distance, they didn’t let me get closer as the injured where rushed onto a helicopter.

U.S. Marines carry an injured colleague after exploded a mortar at their position in Sunni Muslim city of Falluja, November 10, 2004.   REUTERS/Eliana Aponte

Traveling the world taking pictures and doing stories is interesting, but ultimately what counts for me are the memories, good or bad, that stay with me. The rest will only be a document, a file for history being done by an honest photographer.

Thanks to the camera, I have learned about various cultures in the world, their sorrows and joys, their hatred and alliances. It has taught me that tolerance and respect are key for human survival. No matter what our beliefs are, it is important to be impartial and tell the facts as they are.

A Mexican group performs the Aztec dance in honor of the dead in San Gregorio Atlapulco cemetery during the Day of the Dead in Mexico City, late November 1, 2009. On the Day of the Dead, Mexicans pay homage to their dead relatives by preparing meals and decorating their graves. The Day of the Dead festival has its origins in a pre-Hispanic Aztec belief that the dead return to Earth one day each year to visit their loved ones. REUTERS/Eliana Aponte

New York Yankees players celebrate with Alex Rodriguez (13) after they defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 6 to win the 2009 World Series in New York November 4, 2009. REUTERS/Bill Kostroun

Visitors at Durban’s Ushaka Marine World get a good view of a shark, November 1, 2009. REUTERS/Rogan Ward

Buddhist monks walk through the Shwe Indein Pagoda near Inle lake November 4, 2009. REUTERS/Soe Zeya

Nuns listen to Pope Benedict XVI as he leads his weekly audience in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican November 4, 2009. REUTERS/Alessia Pierdomenico

A policeman kicks at a boy, who is fleeing a military offensive in South Waziristan, to force him back into a queue for handouts at a distribution point for internally displaced persons (IDP) in Dera Ismail Khan, located in Pakistan’s restive North West Frontier Province, November 4, 2009. REUTERS/Mustansar Baloch

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Former Iron Curtain oddity now a tourist hotspot

By Caroline Copley

MOEDLAREUTH, Germany - A tiny village of 50 residents straddling the former border dividing East and West Germany and nicknamed “Little Berlin” has preserved its own 100-meter section of the Iron Curtain — for tourists.

For more than 38 years Moedlareuth belonged to two different countries and ideological systems. The 2.5 meter (eight foot) high Wall, similar to the famous Berlin Wall, remains a fixture in the village center even 20 years after Communism collapsed.

Nowadays the farming hamlet that lies some 300 km (186 miles) south of Berlin has become a prime destination for tourists searching for the remnants of the Communist era when East and West Germany were divided.

“Visitors can come here to get a real glimpse of what it was like to live here with the Wall running through the middle of the village,” said Robert Lebegern, director of the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum in the heart of Moedlareuth.

For four decades the villagers of Moedlareuth were divided by the Iron Curtain. Half of the village was in the old German kingdom of Bavaria, the other part lay in the eastern state of Thuringia. It was one bizarre aspect of the country’s division.

A neighborly cup of tea is now a mere matter of a few steps, but traces of the old division still persist: there are two different post codes, two dialing codes and two different school systems.

Those living in the former East greet each other with “Guten Tag” (good day) while their neighbors from the heavily Roman Catholic state of Bavaria tend to use the traditional greeting “Gruess Gott!,” literally translated as “Greet God!.”

In addition to the original segment of Wall — which looks like a compact version of its big brother in Berlin — the old border posts, watch towers and barbed-wire fencing still stand in their original positions.

The occasional barking dog — an eerie echo of the past border control — interrupts the droning of a tractor in the nearby fields. But gone are the armed guards who once surveyed residents. Instead snap-happy tourists arrive by the busload.

The inhabitants of sleepy Moedlareuth have grown used to the constant influx of visitors who shuffle to the museum to watch a 20-minute film documenting the peculiar split reality that became normality for nearly four decades.

NO WAVING

More than 60,000 visitors came to Moedlareuth in 2008 and the museum expects a similar number to make the trek to the isolated village this year as the 20th anniversary of the Wall falling approaches.

“It feels very frozen in time,” said Huw Diprose, 20, a student of International Politics at Aberystwyth University in Wales, who was on a walk along the former Iron Curtain.

“I was barely a year old when the wall fell. I wanted to come here to get into the mindset of what it was like back then.”

East Germany started to fence itself off from the West in 1952 — a border that for centuries had been administrative then divided families, friends and neighbors. East Germany built the Berlin Wall in 1961 and at the same time in Moedlareuth.

Even neighborly greetings were outlawed.

“We could wave to our friends on the other side of the wall, but they weren’t allowed to acknowledge us back,” said Karin Mergner, a 62-year-old farmer living in western Moedlareuth.

When the Wall finally cracked open in 1989, eastern Moedlareuth was overwhelmed by the sudden media attention. Residents quickly became resentful of visitor stereotypes of backwardness and reports of bitter East-West division.

It took a while for the small town to reunite. Four weeks after the Berlin Wall was opened on November 9, 1989, a direct border opening was finally made in Moedlareuth on December 9 1989 but everyone was still required to present their passports.

It wasn’t until six months later, on June 17, that people were allowed to cross the border in “Little Berlin” freely, after the mayor on the Bavarian side, Arnold Friedrich, knocked down larger chunks of the Wall with a digger.

“It was a great moment of celebration,” said Lebegern, director of the museum. “But afterwards some East Germans complained that he had damaged East German property.”

Bostan Khanr, who is fleeing a military offensive in South Waziristan, waits for a medical check up, at the Army Field Camp Hospital for internally displaced persons (IDPs), in Dera Ismail Khan, located in Pakistan’s restive North West Frontier Province, November 3, 2009. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

A 32-metre (105 feet) statue of late Chairman Mao Zedong in his youth is seen under construction in Changsha, Hunan province, November 3, 2009. REUTERS/China Daily

A member of the Philadelphia 76ers “Hare Raisers” grabs the ball to dunk in between periods of the Philadelphia 76ers versus the Boston Celtics NBA game in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania November 3, 2009. REUTERS/Tim Shaffer

A man wearing a mask is reflected in the mirror window as he leaves a shop in the centre of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, November 3, 2009. REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin

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On Wednesday, I was up at 5:30am so I could start my White House shift. U.S. President Barack Obama had 5 press events on his schedule for the day, so I ended up staying until 7pm. I had just sat down to dinner at 8.30pm, when I heard my cell phone ringing, it was Washington Editor-In-Charge Jim Bourg calling about breaking coverage for an Obama event but it was being kept very quiet. The President was planning to fly to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and take part in the dignified transfer and return of 18 U.S. personnel who died Monday in Afghanistan, so I had to be back at the White House by 10pm. The event would be covered the White House travel pool, a very small group of photographers and reporters who always travel with the President, but what we would be allowed to cover was unclear..

The pool left the White House at 10:45pm for a short drive to Fort McNair military base to board 2 U.S. Marines’ helicopters for the 40 minute flight to Dover. The president would depart separately from the South Lawn on Marine One and we would meet at the Air Base in Dover. The details of Obama’s trip would not be released until the official pool report is released in an email as he departs on the helicopter..

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We arrive a couple of minutes before Obama and we are told that we can only photograph the President’s arrival on Marine One, but is was unclear whether we were going to see any of the soldiers return. We were taken to a holding room and given a military briefing on how the event would take place. Even though 18 soldiers and DEA agents were returning to the U.S., the press would only cover the dignified transfer of U.S. Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute, Indiana, as per family member’s wishes, and witnessed by Obama. Obama would be meeting with the family members and taking part in the return of the other 17 personnel over the next 3 hours. There is no press coverage..

We waited on a bus for the signal that we could drive out onto the tarmac and at 3:50 am we head out to the C-17 military transport plane and it is very, very dark. The event takes about 10 minutes but the actual transfer from the plane to the truck is over in seconds. Obama walks off the tarmac and we are rushed back on our helicopter for the flight back to Washington.
A very quiet and solemn event, but with all dignity and respect for a soldier who lost his life.

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I start filing while still on the tarmac and I manage to get 4-5 pix filed to our pictures desk in Singapore by the time we take off. We can still get an aircard signal on the flight back, but it fades in and out, and sometimes it’s very weak. We return back to Fort McNair and board our vans for the ride back to the White House. I finish up my filing at the press room and wrap up at 6am, 23 hrs after my day had started. The sky is starting to lighten and someone else will be coming to the White House within the hour to start the morning shift, so it’s time to go home and get some sleep..

But a couple hours later, I can hear my daughter calling out to me downstairs. Time to get up for another day…

Heart shaped balloons fly next to an installation by artist Nathan Coley in the grounds of the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland November 2, 2009. REUTERS/David Moir

A member of a fumigation brigade sprays a home in Havana November 2, 2009. Cuba conducts regular fumigation inside homes to check the spread of dengue, a mosquito-transmitted virus that causes a fever which can be deadly. REUTERS/Desmond Boylan

A woman wades deep into a river bank to collect mud to pan for gold at a river bank in Pidie district in Indonesia’s Aceh province November 2, 2009. REUTERS/Tarmizy Harva

Surfer Raph Bruhwiler carries the Olympic Torch while coming ashore along Pacific Rim National Park just outside Tofino, British Columbia November 1, 2009. REUTERS/Andy Clark

An Afghan girl and her mother sit in a minibus in Herat November 1, 2009. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl

Maoist supporters and activists take part in a torch rally in Kathmandu November 1, 2009. Nepal’s Maoist former rebels have re-launched their nationwide protests to topple the government over the army chief sacking issue. REUTERS/Gopal Chitrakar

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