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January 21, 2011
Investing some heart
Sale of Yoram Kastiel’s art goes to schools.
OLGA LIVSHIN
When Yoram Kastiel was a young man serving in the Israeli army as a commando fighter, he often participated in dangerous missions. Some of those missions involved arresting Palestinian terrorists. “I still remember their children, how they looked at me. I remember their eyes,” he told the Independent.
After that experience, he began searching for a way to improve the lives of children all over the world. Two years ago, he founded a charitable organization, Twenty Years from Now, to “empower people of the developed world to pressure their governments to eliminate poverty and illiteracy around the world.”
These words are printed on Kastiel’s business cards, but they are more than just a motto. The photographer lives by them. In the spring of 2010, he traveled to Ghana to see for himself what he could do as a person to create a better future for the children of Ghana. His photographs from those travels are now being exhibited in his solo show, Kumra, My Child, at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery.
“My goal is for Canada to adopt one country, to build schools there, to raise a generation who [will] be able to take care of themselves. Canada has to show the other developed countries that it’s possible. During my research, I decided to concentrate on Ghana. It’s smaller than Canada – only 22 million people. It’s one of the safest countries in Africa. It’s a democracy…. As a father and a Jewish man, I’m doing it for my children. We are blessed in Canada. I think that every child in every corner of the world deserves the same opportunities my children have here. Otherwise, one day my children, all of our children, will pay for it,” he explained.
Kastiel’s journey to Ghana is documented in a photo album as well, with text written by his 10-year-old daughter, Ya’el. The album is available for perusal in the gallery, and the photos in it, together with the photos on the gallery walls, tell a fascinating story.
For two months, Kastiel volunteered as a teacher in an orphanage in Tenurase, a small village in the eastern region of Ghana. “The orphans there are lucky,” he said. “They have school. They have one guaranteed hot meal a day. Not every child in Ghana is that lucky.” One of the photos in the album shows a standard schoolroom – for 300 children and one teacher. Although Ghana’s educational system is considered one of the best in Africa, more than half a million children in the country can’t afford school tuition.
Kastiel met such a family in Tenurase: a grandmother with seven grandchildren, all of whom had been abandoned by their parents. Beautiful and smart, the orphans wanted to go to school but couldn’t – the family had no money. Compelled to do something for them, Kastiel adopted the family. He built a house for them and he pays the kids’ tuition so they can go to school. According to his daughter’s text in the photo album, Kastiel bought the land for the house he had built for the family for less than the cost of her computer. In the end, Kastiel adopted the entire village as a personal project and he plans to build an office there, new classrooms, and install an electrical pump to provide the villagers with running water.
“World poverty is a huge problem, too big for any one organization,” he said. “But we citizens can do something about it together. If everyone in Canada who owns a car donates $20 a month, and the government matches dollar to dollar, then we can educate half a million children. These children will have a chance at better jobs … [and] boost Ghana’s economy. Schooling is the solution to poverty. It’s … investing in children.”
Kastiel has invested not only money in the children of Ghana. He also has invested his time, getting to know the children and photographing them. “I never directed any of the photos,” he said. “I would hide behind a big rock and catch the kids as they are in real life; no posing.”
One of the photos, “Evolution,” shows a boy climbing a coconut tree. “I was the first white man he had ever seen,” Kastiel remembered. “He wanted to impress me, so he climbed the palm to get me a coconut. I gave him three dollars, and he cried. He never saw so much money in his life.”
The openness of his subjects radiates from the photos. They gaze at the photographer with questing eyes, which appear, at times, too old for their young faces. His subjects seem to want know what is beyond their living zone; but many will never leave the area.
The children work at home, carving, cooking, sewing, and then sell their goods in a market, Kastiel said. Some children walk several miles every day to sell their wares. The photo “Hollali and Friends” captures a group of girls heading along the sandy dunes to the market. An ocean rumbles a few steps away, while the girls walk, silent and unsmiling, but standing tall, full of resolution. Their poverty is not glaring but the far-reaching scourage is implied.
In many of the photos, people carry weight on their heads, as is traditionally done in Ghana. In “Destiny,” a collage of three photos, the youngest boy carries one brick on his head, smiling proudly. An older boy beside him carries three bricks. Next to them, a man carries a large rock.
All proceeds from the sale of the photographs will be used for building schools in Ghana. Kumra, My Child is on at the Zack Gallery until Feb. 6.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She’s available for contract work. Contact her at [email protected].
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