With the much-feared national exams looming just a few months away, the students in Forms 2 and 4 were in need of official IDs, and I was asked to take the photos. Over the space of several weeks, with a red cloth draped over a spare blackboard in the shadow of a mango tree, I took a portrait of every kid in Day School (the 7:15am-1:35pm regular sessions, which I teach) and every non-traditional student in Open School (the abbreviated afternoon sessions, which are dominated by middle-aged learners). And the results were kind of beautiful. Credit it to the magic of rainy-season-filtered natural light, or to the fact that I know these students well and see them everyday, but there was something pretty moving about putting a camera in front of people who don't get the chance to be photographed very often and watching them transform. Clowns suddenly affected a glassy-faced calm, smiles bloomed across shy girls' faces, and some hammed it up in a way that only Malawians seem to understand (with a forced far-off gaze and a pained expression).
Chalo also had an ID photo taken to add fuel to the village-wide running joke that he's enrolling next term, which is being taken more and more seriously with every new word he learns, and which is a joke that will never ever ever get old.
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