Editor’s Note: Eliana Aponte is a highlighted photographer this month on the Reuters website. See an extensive portfolio of her recent work here.

 
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

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.”

Sleep is overrated.

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.

.

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…

Israeli soldiers carry their comrade on a stretcher as they run during a training session at their base near the southern city of Ashdod, October 29, 2009. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Two surfers are seen behind Nicholas Elias’s Sculpture “A symbolic inscription of the imaginary” as part of the Sculpture By The Sea exhibition at Tamarama beach in Sydney, October 29, 2009. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz

President Barack Obama participates in the dignified transfer of U.S. Army Sgt. Dale R. Griffin at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, October 29, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young

Click here for the full Editor’s choice slideshow and click here for further showcases of Reuters photography.

James Bowers, dressed as Uncle Sam, asks people if they can “spare a trillion”, as they walk past him outside the front of Federal Hall, near the New York Stock Exchange, October 28, 2009. REUTERS/Chip East

Fire fighters extinguish fire while people survey at the site of bomb explosion, in Peshawar located in Pakistan’s restive North West Frontier Province, October 28, 2009. REUTERS/K.Parvez

A migrant worker looks on from behind a glass door as she waits for her documents to be processed after arriving from Malaysia, at a special terminal for migrant workers in the Soekarno-Hatta airport in Jakarta, October 28, 2009. REUTERS/Beawiharta

Click here for the full Editor’s choice slideshow and click here for further showcases of Reuters photography.

A homeless woman seeks shelter from the rain in a telephone booth along a street in central Moscow, October 27, 2009. REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov

Horses pull the carriage of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and India’s President Pratibha Patil as it approaches Windsor Castle in Windsor, southern England, October 27, 2009. REUTERS/Lefteris Pitarakis/Pool

A girl comforts her friend who holds a picture of Mohamed El Mathari during a memorial march in Frejus, southeastern France, October 27, 2009. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

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President Barack Obama’s personal aide Reggie Love peeks out through the curtain as he waits for Obama to deliver remarks at a committee dinner in Miami, Florida, October 26, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young

A U.S. Marine of the 8th Regiment Second Battalion takes up position after they came under fire from Taliban insurgents while patrolling in the Mian Poshtay area in Helmand province, October 20, 2009. REUTERS/Asmaa Waguih

A boy cries as he recuperates after surgery at a hospital in Manila’s Makati financial district October 26, 2009. Operation Smile aim to provide free surgery for about a hundred children inflicted with cleft lips, cleft palates, and other facial deformities. REUTERS/Cheryl Ravelo

A resident of south Florida holds a sign protesting healthcare reforms during a visit by President Barack Obama to Miami, Florida, October 26, 2009.  REUTERS/Carlos Barria

A man, fleeing a military offensive in South Waziristan, carries handouts outside a distribution point for internally displaced persons at Dera Sports Stadium in Dera Ismail Khan, located in Pakistan’s restive North West Frontier Province, October 26, 2009.  REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

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Joshua Grant (L) and Brock Hayhoe, members of New York’s professional all-male Dance Company “Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo”, also known as the Trocks, pose for pictures in Sydney October 23, 2009. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz

Shi Liliang, 33, a monk from Southern Shaolin Temple, performs a special Chinese martial art stunt, known in Chinese as Shuishangpiao or “running on water”, at a reservoir on the outskirts of Quanzhou, Fujian province, October 22, 2009. Shi ran on the surface of a row of 1-centimetre-thick (0.39 inch) plywoods for 18 metres (59 feet), breaking his own record of 15 metres (49 feet) created several days ago, local media reported. REUTERS/Stringer

A policeman beats a man, who was fleeing a military offensive in South Waziristan, for cutting in front of others at a food distribution point for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Paharpur, 40 km (about 25 miles) by road from Dera Ismail Khan, located in Pakistan’s restive North West Frontier Province, October 22, 2009. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood

A Palestinian woman holding a photograph of her jailed relative is reflected in a photograph of another jailed Palestinian as she takes part in a protest in support of Ahmed Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in front of the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza City October 22, 2009. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

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China’s elderly find life and joy in exercise

By Grace Liang and Lucy Hornby

BEIJING - Gao Mingyuan has found joy at age 66.

Joy, in his case, consists of bending himself double and hooking his legs around a pole that runs behind his shoulders, in a Chinese meditative martial arts tradition.

Gao is one of many Chinese seniors, freed from the rigors of work and raising children, who are turning to martial arts such as tai chi, bopping to trendy beats or singing patriotic songs as they seek health and friends in parks across the country.

“We forget all our troubles when we practice,” he said as he contorted himself at the Temple of Heaven, where seniors exercise beneath the gnarled trees at dawn.

China has over 140 million people over the age of 60. Many lost out on an education, thanks to the Cultural Revolution, and have retired early as state-owned factories went bust or to help care for grandchildren.

About 54 million engage in some sort of physical activity to enliven their golden years.

“Sportswear companies would well take heed of that figure, given how obsessed they are with the youth market,” said Kunal Sinha, who studies the aging demographic for Ogilvy & Mather in Shanghai.

The elderly Chinese who swarm to the Temple of Heaven are a treasure-trove of traditional folk arts, martial arts and Chinese opera, sung in cracked voices that are still in tune.

Crowds of other seniors bop to a trendy beat, try their hand at Indian dance, waltz or join a chorus of patriotic Communist songs rarely heard any more.

“In India, seniors pass on traditions and social norms. In China, they’re an untapped resource, because so many young people want to turn toward what’s modern,” said Sinha.

“On the other hand, because China is so in flux, we see a lot of old people picking up customs from young people. For instance, the phenomenon of the hip-hop granny — you don’t see that in India.”

For 63-year old Wang Yongzhen, a grandmother who swing-dances in large gold-rimmed sunglasses and a traditional purple velvet cheong-sam, retirement is a time to indulge talents she never had time for when she was young.

“I liked singing and dancing when I was young but never had a chance, because work was busy and the kids were little. Now when I dance at the park, my heart opens up.”

(Editing by Sugita Katyal)

Los Angeles Dodgers hitter Manny Ramirez gets ready to hit in the eighth inning of play against the Philadelphia Phillies as fans hold up signs in Game 5 of their Major League Baseball NLCS playoff series in Philadelphia, October 21, 2009. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

A novice Tibetan monk pauses during a prayer meeting at Lower Wutun Monastery in Tongren, Qinghai province October 22, 2009. REUTERS/Jason Lee

A crane lifts a damaged coach of a passenger train at the site of a train accident on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Mathura October 21, 2009. A speeding passenger train rammed into another waiting near Mathura city station early on Wednesday, killing at least 21 people and injuring several others, officials said. REUTERS/K. K. Arora

A victim of a train accident is carried by rescuers and army soldiers at the site of the accident on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Mathura October 21, 2009. REUTERS/K. K. Arora

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