photos on a wall.......and a happy abuelita

beed always takes a ton of photos when he is on a trip to central america. he take very few of the team that he goes with. he usually focuses on the locals and they are mostly of the children. beed also thinks they are absolutely beautiful children with their olive skin and dark eyes. some of their eyes are almost black. you can't really tell where the pupil ends and the iris begins.

beed liked the photo of the girl above because of the look on her face and the pose.

beed really loves the look on this girls face. it's kind of shy and almost has a look that says "why would you want to take my photo. oh, rule number one. beed always axes permission before snapping "puedo tomar tu foto por favor?" can i take you photo please? beed also loves her little dress. some of you women love your slacks and baby can have her blue jeans on but beed will tell you ladies, wear those dresses if you really want to turn our heads.

this hombrecito (little man) had been kicked in the head by a horse. fortunately for him it happened when we were in town and beed watched one our doc's cut the hair around the wound, scrub it vigorously and then stitch it up. the little fellow was a champ too, no screaming and crying from him, that's why beed called him a hombrecito. check out his hands.....yikes, he racked up from the toy ladies.

beed 'splained in an earlier post how every gringo ends up with a special friend for the week. the kids will pick out their favorite gringo and follow them around like they are glued to you. ya'll know that beed loves the female of the species. this little girl, for whatever reason picked out beed to be her buddy. beed couldn't leave the clinic and go anywhere without holding hands with this precious little bundle of joy. anytime we had church service she would find beed and come over and hold his hand or just lean against him.

and she knew how to defend her turf too. if she saw another little girl or boy tryin' to make time with dahbeed she would let them know immediately who beed belonged to. you ladies can be as possessive as menfolks.....maybe more so. beed loves the lighting in that photo and the shadows it created. it was taken inside the church. beed had picked her up and put her on the window sill as there were no available seats and sometimes you just have to make do with what's available

no story on this boy, beed wuz just busting the chops on a bunch of boys and snapped this one. plus beed knows he has a lot of female readers and beed wanted to provide equal opportunity for you guys as beed could easily post all female photos.

tell beed that this little fella ain't a shite. you can see it in his eyes. beed loves characters and this boy has character written all over him.

what do u add to this? one word. bella (beautiful)

this may be one of the prettiest girls beed has ever seen on his trips. just drop dead model gorgeous. in beed's always humble o-pin-eeeon. beed told her mamacita, "tu hija es absolutemente bella" your daughter is absolutely beautiful. her mama replied "oh, muchas gracias, es porque su papa es suizo" oh, thank you very much, it's because her father is swiss.

never passing up a chance to spit a little game beed told her that she looked pretty fine to him and her daugter was not beautiful only because her dad was swiss that the mother had impact on it too. beed actually made her blush. this is her photo below.

back to the title "photos on a wall......and a happy abuelita. these photos all came from a little village named israel nicaragua. we went back to that village again the next year and here is the story.

beed always gets double prints of his photos. it doesn't cost that much and you can always give them to someone that doesn't have a good camera and wants some of yours. anyhoo, beed came up with the bright idea of giving them to the people in the photos. he obviously couldn't go door to door so this is what he did.

he took some boxes and cut them up. he then used duct tape (what separates us from monkeys, some say the opposable thumb, beed says duct tape) to make this huge poster board. he then made little rolls of duct tape and put it on the back of each photo and then stuck them to the poster board. some of the little boys helped beed do all of this.

we then put the poster near the front of the clinic where everyone passes through. if they saw a photo of themselves they were free to take it. the people loved the photos of themselves as most of them are dirt poor and have no photos of themselves.

beed was working as a translator for a nurse and there was a young lady around 17 years old with a baby that was a little bit malnourished. so the nurse and doctor both agreed to give this lady a bunch of formula but she had no way of getting it to her house. beed has always been pretty damn strong for his size and he volunteered to carry all of it to her house. it was a mile away. that shit got heavy but we had a nice conversation about everything and nothing on the way to her casa. when beed got back the nurse he had been working with was very excited and said "oh david, you just missed it". beed said "missed what"

she told beed that there was this little abuelita (grandmother) that had been standing in the line. she did not know about the rule for the photos. she had spied her grandaughter in one of the photos and wanted to know if she could buy it. the person working the door said, "you don't have to buy it, they're free". they said the woman then started crying, (tears of joy).

she told them that she had not seen her grandaughter in over 9 months as they had moved very far away and she also had no photos of her. she wanted to meet the person that took the photos and give them a hug. see, beed even generates grandma lovin'. they told her where beed had run off to and she waited as long as she could but her ride was getting ready to go and she couldn't miss it. she made them promise to tell beed how happy he had made one little grandma.

beed is always missin' out on good stuff like that but he has had enough good times that it balances out. heck the walk to the ladies casa had been a good event as it got beed out of the clinic for awhile and let him work on his spanish in a one on one environment.

from that trip forth beed always brought his second set of photos with him. if we went to the same village we would hang them up. if were were going somewhere different beed would leave them with the mission staff and make them promise to put them up on the next trip to the village.

beed has never taken a class on photography or even read a book on it. all of those photos were taken with a minolta maxim. it was the very first autofocus 35 millimeter camera. beed bought it around 20 years ago and it has taken absolutely great photos for the beedster. not bad for an amateur that don't know his ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to photography. but it helps when your subjects are as beautiful as these kids are.

your buddy,

ansel dahbeed.