I felt this intense urgency at the end of 2014, after spending a year in New York to return home. New York was a dream. I was a journalist in one of the most inspiring cities I had ever been to.
Everyday I would discover a new complexity to the city that fed my curiosity and challenged my growth. But the news coming from Nigeria of massacres, violence and kidnappings were hard to ignore.
Every African Diasporan living in the west knows this sound. It’s a haunting noise, echoes of hardship from the motherland that clash with the relative comfort of our Diasporan lives.
So I made the choice to return to Nigeria and put everything I had learned as a visual journalist to some use.
Yesterday I was awarded a grant by the @IWMF fund that will allow me to expand on my documentation on IDPs in northeastern Nigeria impacted by the Boko Haram insurgency.
The grant will allow me to carry out in depth documentary work in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states for the next year. An idea that has resided in my head since I landed in Nigeria has now been made possible by this fund.
I can’t overemphasize the importance of the work that organizations and foundations that support Journalists do. I can’t thank the IWMF enough.
#IWMFgrantee #IWMFfund #photojournalism #journalism #africa #Nigeria #bokoharam #storytelling #documentary ?: @rahimagambo