Bongo
written by: Franco Forleo
I woke before the sun had even considered lifting its golden head. During the night, the cold had crept in and settled well below zero. For a moment, I pulled the blankets higher, weighing the comfort of staying warm against the obligation of going.
But I couldn’t let the club members down. There had been much anticipation leading up to this Sunday morning outing. The once-prestigious Crown Mines corrugated houses stood empty against the old mine dump, abandoned to time many years ago.
“They’ll make for great creative shooting,” our club chairman had said. “Especially at first light.”
He was right. We all knew it.
I arrived before the others, dressed for the bite of a South African winter morning. Woollen gloves cradled my Olympus OM-4, fitted with a 28mm lens. Inside the camera, a fresh roll of Kodak 400 ASA waited—fast, grainy monochrome, heavy with contrast.
The road that crept past the abandoned houses was eerily quiet. Lampposts leaned in silhouette like exhausted sentries, standing watch over a place that no longer needed guarding.
First light crept over the scene like an artist’s brush on canvas. It never ceased to thrill me. No matter how the world seemed to be unravelling, the sun still rose. Light still found a way in.
I selected my first shot: a wide-angle view down the street, with the houses to my right, the rising sun straight ahead. The shadows were long and pronounced; the stark road showed signs of neglect, the ribbed, corrugated-iron walls, and the decaying wooden balconies. All this picture needed was a solitary figure walking in the distance, or even a stray dog to bring life to the desolate scene.
Most of the windows and doors were shuttered. Homes that had once been prestigious were now slowly being claimed by the homeless.
A few cottage-pane windows remained. One in particular caught my eye: a frozen crystal tear sliding down cracked glass. I changed lenses, something longer. I wanted no distortion for this shot.
I set it up carefully. Light caught the ribs of the iron framing the window surround, the peeling paint, the frost, and fractured glass. The composition was perfect.
I pressed the shutter.
And then, through the viewfinder, to my surprise, a face appeared at the window.
My heart pounded, not from fear, but from excitement. Shots like this are usually staged. This was real. It was a true grab shot.
I pressed the shutter, and then, again.
After making eye contact with, and with an astonishing mix of surprise and fear, the man disappeared. I tapped gently on the glass. His face reappeared briefly in the lower pane. I pressed the shutter once more. Then he vanished again.
“Don’t be afraid,” I called. “I’m not here to harm you.”
Slowly, the door squeaked open.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m a photographer.”
He opened it a little wider. He was draped in blankets, hair long and knotted, eyes heavy with sleep. Slipping one hand free, he raised it in a small sign of peace.
“I am just cold,” he said. “I was trying to keep warm. I’m leaving now. Please don’t hurt me.”
“I would never hurt you,” I replied. “When did you last have something to eat?”
“I can’t remember.”
His feet were wrapped in hessian and newspaper.
“Wait here,” I said.
I returned to my car and opened the boot. Inside was my old thermos, the neon-blue one my dad used to take to work on cold winter mornings. The plastic mug had faded to a creamy grey with age. It carried more than coffee; it brought many fond memories.
I had also brought a box of Ouma buttermilk rusks for the club members, who seemed not to be coming after all. Perhaps there’d been a change of plan? Something I missed?
When I returned, he was sitting on the wooden step, choosing not to invite me inside. The smell told me why.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Bongo.”
“Here,” I said. “Have some warm coffee and a rusk.”
He hesitated, then took the flask with trembling hands and drank straight from it, flinching as the heat hit his stomach.
“Slowly,” I said.
I took it from him and poured the coffee into the cup. He dipped the rusk, his toothless mouth working carefully at the sweet biscuit.
“I used to work here,” he said at last. “Many years ago. My boss, the mine manager, lived in this house.”
We looked back at the building, once the prestigious home of a mine captain.
“If they had told me, I would one day sleep here, I wouldn’t have believed them,” he said softly. “But here I am. An old man. A homeless man in a house I could only ever dream of.”
As the sun rose higher, its warmth settled over us on the veranda steps. Bongo found his voice. He told me he was from Mozambique. When the mine closed, work became scarce. His savings ran out. He should have gone home before that had happened, but time slipped away.
He knew he did not have long left. He didn’t want to die as an unknown, buried in a pauper’s grave.
That was when I decided to act.
I cleaned him up. Clothed him. Shaved him and fed him. Helped him reclaim his dignity. I arranged his documents with much bureaucratic effort and eventually booked his passage home.
At Park Station, I stood beside the train as he leaned out of the window.
“You clean up rather well,” I said to him. “Keep your papers safe. We went to a lot of trouble for them. You are Mr Bongo Machado now!”
He smiled. Constantly looking around, searching for his reflection wherever he could find it, and admiring what he saw.
“Let me take one last picture,” I said.
I raised my Olympus OM-4 and framed the shot carefully, making sure the SAR logo formed part of the composition. His wide-brimmed hat sat tilted forward. Neon lights washed over his dark skin. It could have been a studio portrait.
He reached out his hand, and I met it with mine, a hand that had handled dynamite, lifted shovels, picks, and had lived a life underground. His eyes held a quiet glint. He said nothing, but everything was there.
The train jerked and slowly moved away, our hands separating.
I stood long after the platform cleared, the air thick and clammy. I sighed with ease in knowing where Bongo would sleep that night and hoped that someone would be waiting for him on the other side of the border.
I had done what I could. I told myself, but had it been enough?
Bongo’s face stayed with me for years. In the darkroom, I watched his image emerge again and again on sheets of photographic paper, coaxed into reality by developer and fixer. Each time felt like a small resurrection.
His portraits have hung in galleries around the world. They have won awards. People speak of his eyes, his dignity, the poetry of the image.
My clubmates call me fortunate for not having read the last-minute cancellation email.
And sometimes, standing alone under white gallery lights, I wonder whether I gave Bongo more than a man that morning, or whether, in the end, I kept the better part of him for myself.
I still think back to that winter morning, when we shared a moment. A moment only he and I understood. Two men, two cultures, two worlds.
