MTV - 3

Hello again and welcome to day 3. (Confused? Link to day 1 and day 2)

I will start this post by telling you that during this MTV event it was raining and cold and I have a small umbrella and everyone makes fun of it because it’s so small and it does this... a lot!

For the first MTV event we had written consent to take photos of anyone in attendance, as they knew ahead of time the nature of what we were doing and why.  While we set up on the edge of town, where a large number of immigrants resided, I started taking photos of the surrounding area.  The hillside we were on was covered in trash and animal remains.  Sheep, goats, farmers and children passed by dumping their trash on the ground without a second thought. 

Can one of my vet friends tell me if this is a jaw of a goat or a sheep?

After taking photos of the area I moved right into taking photos of the event.  However, I did not remember to ask my boss if we had consent ahead of time to take pictures of the participants.  That was a mistake.  Normally, I’m very good at checking with people first before taking photos of them, their merchandise or anything else they might own.  I blame the cold rainy day and my eagerness to capture some shots before a total downpour that caused the mental gap (and I know that this is a sad ass excuse).

Quickly someone noticed that I had taken their picture and started to get angry.  He did not come towards me but instead at one of our immigrant coordinators, demand that I stop taking photos.  I was then called over to show the photo I took and give confirmation that I deleted the photo he was in.  I then promised not to take photos of him anymore. 

My boss reassured me that I could take photos of people, just not their faces.  So I kept my camera out and took photos of the MTV and the back of heads.  Regardless, I saw how the men reacted to me every time I came near or lifted the camera up.  Some of them even started to leave before getting a HIV test.  It was then that the immigrant coordinator explained to me that some of the people we were reaching out to are here illegally.  They were afraid that if photos were taken of their face, they would be at risk for deportation.  I felt horrible.  The fact that my actions could have caused someone to leave without receiving a HIV test and valuable information made me feel completely counter productive to the cause. 

These two guys are OPALS representatives going to spread the word about testing.

My boss and the immigrant coordinator had differing opinions about whether I should continue to take photos of the MTV event.  My boss wanted photos of the event for her reports and to show the diversity of OPALS events.  The coordinator wanted people to feel safe with a organization they were unfamiliar with.  This put me in a difficult position, but it was up to me and I agreed with the coordinator and put my camera away.  By that time though, I already had the reputation of “the girl with the camera” and no one wanted to talk to me about what we were doing.  I was only useful that day to the participants who spoke English.  While there were only a few of them, it was nice to be able to speak confidently about what OPALS was doing.   

Here are some sheep doing sheep things.

Between the rain, cold and camera issues I was feeling pretty useless and miserable.  However, I did learn a lot about the people I’m working with and maybe what to expect in the future at the MTV.  

And I got a new umbrella.       

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Tomorrow is our final day for the MTV blog posts where I fight The Man! Sort of…