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If you’re joining the story late, c to start from the beginning. And whatever you do, don’t eat with your left hand now will you.
Episode 9 of my nepal comic continues. The asterisk from the first panel was to say that the lady in question was undoubtedly a local, who spent equal parts of the flight looking panic stricken and staring in wonder at my in-flight entertainment mini tv screen. So my hunch is that the tears were ones of relief that her ordeal was coming to an end. Remember, you can help support my trip (which focuses on using visual storytelling to help trafficking survivors give their testimonies to their communities in comics form) by buying a print or original of these here webcomics. Unsurprisingly, all you have to do is click the “Buy Print” button below the comic.
Before you ask, the pastry Gemma’s holding in the last panel was a portuguese custard tart. And it was delicious. More on Nepalese trafficked survivors to Lebanon here.
Aforementioned Kickstarter project is currently awaiting official approval, for launch this week (hopefully before I leave for Kathmandu on weds). The artwork attests to the challenge of penciling, inking and watercolouring on a airline tray table, flanked by two portly co-passengers. I’ll post the process photo tomorrow. Coming up: what tools I’m bringing on the trip, to satisfy your inner graphic journalism geek.
With the announcement of any new project, you always get the predictable “been there, done that” crowd. Not that graphic journalism’s ever reared its inky head in Nepal (to my knowledge) for that matter. If you’re looking for a link to the Honduran comic, then voila.
I must’ve had this conversation a dozen times in the past few weeks, to varying degrees. With good reason! Hopefully this comic will make the project and my goals for it all the more clearer. As for examples of real-time reporting, the only one that springs to mind are Matt Bors and Ted Ralls’ graphic reports from Afghanistan in 2010. Of course, Joe Sacco beat us all to the punch in the 90s with Palestine, but that was before the ubiquity of the internets. Feel free to correct me if you know of any by leaving a link in the comments below.
Updates three times a week as of today. I’ll leave the exposition to the panels so you’ll just have to keep coming back. News updates are below the comics posts, so you’ll have to scroll down to see a preview of my latest comic’s cover, and learn about APE this weekend.
Update: for those of you interested, Japanese encephalitis is a mosquito-bourne virus prevalent in domestic pigs (apparently more outdoor-bound ones aren’t at risk) and herons. And the lower-lying areas of Nepal (along the southern part of the country) known as the Terai. A ton of threads on various traveller forums suggest that for the huge cost and minimal risk, it’s not worth it, but given the symptoms and low probability of recovery once infected, I thought I’d not risk it:
severe rigors mark the onset of this disease in humans. Fever, headache and malaise are other non-specific symptoms of this disease which may last for a period of between 1 and 6 days. Signs which develop during the acute encephalitic stage include neck rigidity, cachexia, hemiparesis, convulsions and a raised body temperature between 38 and 41 degrees Celsius. Mental retardation developed from this disease usually leads to coma.
I love the reassuring use of “usually” in that last sentence.
